‘Who’s your alibi?’ Finn asked again.
I frowned up at him, then opened my mouth to say Malik—Then I didn’t as my mind hit a snag I hadn’t considered before. Not only was Malik laid out with his injuries right now, but naming a vamp as my alibi was going to be like waving a bloody flag in the face of the Witches’ Council. It was one of those ‘damned if I do and damned if I don’t’ things. Shit.
‘It’s a sucker, isn’t it?’ Accusation sharpened Finn’s voice. ‘Gods, Gen, why?’
I sighed. ‘I wasn’t with him, Finn, he was following me. But it does mean he can vouch for my movements after I got home.’
He pushed his fingers through his hair, a worried line creasing between his brows. ‘You weren’t actually with him in person when the human was killed?’
‘No,’ I said, turning back to watch the screens. ‘I was running. ’
On the monitor the florist’s boy came out of the shop and I picked my way past his flower buckets to talk to him.
‘The problem, Gen,’ Finn said, ‘is that even if you’d been with this vampire, I’m not sure how it would work as an alibi now. There’s been a lot of speculation in the newspapers, and quite a lot of the anti-fae prejudices have resurfaced.’ He paused. ‘Even the barrister I spoke to isn’t hopeful. He said that because you’re fae, he’d be happier if you’d been in a room with half a dozen goblins watching you, to testify you didn’t use any magic. He thinks that all it would need is the prosecution to suggest you could kill like that without physically being there ...’ He trailed off.
On the recording I stripped off my sweatshirt and dunked it in a bucket, then disappeared inside the bakery—walking into the trap.
‘So unless the real murderer puts in an appearance, I’m already tried, judged and convicted,’ I finished for him. ‘Looks like your ex has done a bang-up job,’ I added bitterly.
‘You disappearing didn’t help, Gen,’ he returned angrily.
‘Finn,’ I snapped, ‘Helen’s got it in for me because of you. You might think your relationship with her is over, but she doesn’t, and I’m the one that’s getting the short end of a very vindictive stick.’ I clenched my fists, my fingers sweating inside the plastic gloves. ‘You need to sort it out with her.’
He swung the chair round again and leaned down, dismay flickering in his eyes. ‘It is over between Helen and me, Gen, but it’s complicated. I didn’t realise it would affect you as it has.’ He dipped his head. ‘My apologies, my Lady.’
I stared at him, incredulous. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing with all this “my Lady” crap, but you can forget it.’ I turned back to watch the monitors. ‘And just for the record, “complicated” is not an excuse, it’s a way of life.’
The screen in front of me looked down on an empty, rain-blurred street. The stack of cardboard boxes outside the florist’s was doing a precarious Tower of Pisa lean to one side. The door to the baker’s stood open. The shop window was a blur of white. As I listened to Finn’s quiet breathing behind me I watched the empty street, wishing something would appear on the screen that would solve everything—the murder, Finn, the vamps, and all the other problems screwing up my life—so my own life could stop being so damn complicated. I almost laughed out loud. No way was that ever going to happen! In reality my life had never been that normal anyway.
‘No one could find you,’ he said. I heard the question in his voice, but ignored it. The chair moved as he gripped the back of it. ‘Helen even had a chapter of coven witches cast a Seek-and-Find spell. It came up negative.’
Strange ... I tapped my fingers on the chair arm, thinking. On the monitor the florist’s lad picked up a couple of boxes from the leaning stack and carried them into his shop. A Seek-and-Find spell, with the power of a coven chapter behind it—‘When did they cast it?’
‘Not till late last night. Helen had to wait for a warrant, and budgetary approval.’
“Last night” I’d still been out of it, doped up on morphine under Joseph’s medical care. Still, the spell should have found me; so why hadn’t it?
‘I watched the coven cast, Gen,’ Finn said. ‘When they couldn’t find you, that’s when I realised you had to be in Between. The spell wouldn’t be able to locate you if you were ...’
Of course, Between was out of this world. Literally. Except I hadn’t been—
‘... here with Tavish,’ Finn finished almost with a growl.
‘What?’ I said, irritated at his tone. ‘Why the hell would you think I was here anyway?’
‘I phoned the bastard and asked if he knew where you were,’ he said tersely. ‘He swore he didn’t.’
‘That’s because he didn’t.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose; my 3V headache was making its reappearance. ‘If he made you think otherwise, he was more likely doing his usual and yanking your—’ I stopped; satyrs are touchy about their tails, for some weird reason. ‘He was just doing his mischief-making thing,’ I carried on. Finn had to know what Tavish could be like since he’d just waltzed straight into his home—even if it appeared the pair of them had some sort of jealous rivalry going on over me. Something I wasn’t too impressed with! ‘I got here not long before you turned up and decided to go all postal!’ The florist’s lad stuck his lip out, admiring his silver ring in the shop window, then turned to look behind him at the empty street. ‘And why the hell were you lobbing Stun spells about anyway?’
‘So where were you then?’ Finn ignored my question.
I pursed my lips, still annoyed. ‘Staying with a friend.’
‘What’s going on, Gen?’ he demanded. ‘Why’d you disappear like that without even a phone call?’
I snorted in disbelief. ‘It’s difficult to use the phone when you’re unconscious.’
Finn jerked me round to face him. ‘What do you mean, unconscious?’
‘Un-con-scious,’ I said sarcastically. ‘It’s what happens when you get blown up, or haven’t you been watching the news?’
‘But you didn’t get blown up, Gen.’ Confusion crossed his face. ‘You were seen running away before the explosion—’
‘What?’ I grabbed his arms. ‘Who by?’
‘Him!’ He pointed at the screen. ‘The boy in the shop next door. His statement says you went in to sort things out with the baker and left shortly after, and then the place exploded. There’s nothing on the recording to back him up, but he’s so adamant about it that Helen thinks you used some sort of Compulsion or Memory-Altering spell on him.’
Crap! I hadn’t—not to mention I couldn’t afford any spell that expensive—but Malik had—or at least, not a spell ... he’d mind-locked the boy when he’d stopped him phoning the police as I’d asked.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t,’ I said, not sure if I was pissed off that Finn thought I’d deliberately disappeared after the explosion or mollified that he was now looking gutted that he hadn’t turned up at my sickbed laden with fruit and flowers.
Then remembering that Grace had advised me to talk to him ... I did just that.
I filled him in on most of what had happened, leaving out certain things—like the blood-flush, and where exactly I’d been, of course. ‘So the first I really knew about anything was when I came round earlier today,’ I finally finished.
‘Gods, Gen, I’m sorry. If I’d realised you’d been that badly hurt’—he brushed a strand of hair away from my face, remorse darkening his eyes—‘I wouldn’t have been so angry, or stupid. You know I’ll help you all I can, don’t you?’
A tense knot I hadn’t known was there loosened inside me and I realised now I wasn’t feeling quite so scared, or alone. And what about Helen? said a snide little voice in my head. It’s pointless bringing her up again, I thought, and silenced it.