“So she’s a black widow, then,” I murmured. “One who likes to use her water magic to kill her husbands for their money, because she’s bored with them, or for whatever other reason she might have.”
Finn polished off his pie and shot his thumb and forefinger at me. “Bingo. All of the deaths were suspicious, though the police could never pin anything on Salina. Along the way, she’s collected an impressive fortune in insurance money, as well as what her hubbies left her in their wills. If I had to guess, I’d say that money is helping fund her return to Ashland. That might even be why she married all these men in the first place.”
“So she could return to town one day in lavish style?”
He nodded. “And there’s one more interesting thing about Salina and her hubbies. Here, see for yourself.”
Finn grabbed the folder off the table and handed it to me. Curious, I opened it and started flipping through the pages inside. Most of the sheets were copies of newspaper and magazine articles about Salina’s husbands that Finn had printed off the Internet. Business deals. Civic awards. Wedding announcements.
“Keep going until you see the obituaries,” he said.
I did as he said. One, two, three, four. I skimmed through the obits, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about them, just a headshot of each man and some facts about his life and those he’d left behind. So I went through the pages again, slower and more carefully this time, studying each one of the headshots, and I finally realized what Finn was talking about.
Black hair. Blue eyes. Nice smiles. Rugged good looks. Every single one of Salina’s husbands had the same coloring and the same features. They were so similar they could have been brothers—and they all looked more or less like Owen.
I sucked in a breath, but it wasn’t enough to banish the cold, sick feeling that filled my stomach.
Finn gave me a sympathetic look. “They say you never really get over your first love. Seems like Salina’s taken that to heart more than most. I’m sorry, Gin.”
I stood there, absorbing the news, then grabbed some forks, napkins, and a large tray out of the kitchen drawers and cabinets, along with an ice pack from the freezer for Owen’s black eye. I added a pitcher of milk from the fridge to my tray, along with some glasses. I reached for my Ice magic and used it to frost each one of the glasses, so the milk would stay nice and cold inside them, but I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing. All I could focus on was the four men Salina had married, and how they’d all appeared to be substitutes for Owen.
Still on autopilot, I carried everything into the den, with Finn following along behind me. Owen and Eva were exactly where I’d left them—him on the sofa staring at the television and her standing in front of the mantel.
“Eat up,” I said, putting the tray on the scarred coffee table between them. “Because we need to talk.”
Finn didn’t have to be told twice. He sat in a chair, leaned forward, grabbed two of the apple pies and wolfed them down, along with a glass of milk. I ate a pie as well, although the buttery, fried dough and sweet apples failed to satisfy me like they usually did. Owen only picked at his before grabbing the ice pack and holding it against his bruised face. Eva didn’t eat anything at all, although she did finally sit down on the opposite end of the sofa from her brother.
After a few minutes, we all gave up the pretense of eating, except for Finn, who never let awkwardness get in the way of something as important as his appetite. He was finishing another pie when I wiped my hands on a napkin, turned off the television, and stared at Eva.
“Why don’t you tell me how you know Kincaid, and why he said that Salina tried to kill him?”
Instead of answering me, Eva glared at her brother, her blue eyes cold and accusing. “Ask Owen. He’s the one who brought Salina into our lives, and he’s the one who always took her side over everyone else’s—no matter how wrong it was.”
I knew that Owen and Salina had been involved, but Eva made it sound like there was more to the story than just an old relationship—a whole hell of a lot more. I turned to Owen, letting him see the questions in my face.
My lover sighed, and his shoulders slumped, as if a heavy weight had just been yoked across them. He slowly lowered the ice pack from his bruised features and put it on the tray. After a moment, he drew in a breath and raised his eyes to mine.
“Salina was my fiancée,” Owen said.
13
Fiancée?
Salina had been Owen’s fiancée?
That sick feeling in my stomach spread through the rest of my body, like acid eating away at my insides. I’d known that Owen had had other lovers before me, just like I had before him. But a fiancée was something else entirely, something far more serious—and something I would have expected him to mention before now. Still, I kept my features calm and remote, as if we were talking about a disappointing football game, instead of the fact that Owen had never told me about this part of his past, a part that looked like it was going to be serious trouble—especially for the two of us.
“Fiancée?” Finn said in an incredulous voice. “You were actually engaged to her? Well, knock me over with a feather.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Eva muttered.
Owen opened his mouth to let loose some retort, but I held my hand up, cutting him off.
“Enough,” I said. “Enough. You and Eva sniping at each other isn’t getting us anywhere. Start at the beginning, Owen. I want to hear all of it. About you, Salina, and Kincaid.”
Owen got to his feet and started pacing back and forth across the den. He did that for the better part of a minute before he raked his hand through his hair and started his story.
“It was right after Mab had murdered our parents,” Owen said in a low voice. “Eva and I were living on the Southtown streets, and I had no idea what I was doing. How I was going to take care of us, how I was going to find us enough to eat and a safe place to sleep every night. You know what I’m talking about, Gin.”
I nodded. I’d faced the same challenges myself, back before Fletcher had taken me in. But I knew it had been even harder on Owen, since he’d had Eva to take care of and she’d been so young at the time. Still, that didn’t excuse the fact that he hadn’t told me about Salina before now, and it didn’t ease the hurt that I felt—or the sudden wariness.
“Anyway, the days went by, and I got more and more desperate. Eventually, I started stealing food from convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, anyplace I thought I could and not get caught. Only one day, I did get caught. I grabbed two apples from a bin at a convenience store. Two measly apples, and the owner was going to beat me to death over them. He would have too—if this thin blond kid hadn’t gotten in his way. The kid bumped into the owner, and I managed to break away and run like hell. I went back to the alley where I’d hidden Eva, and to my surprise, that same kid was there—and he had a whole bag of apples with him. Turned out he’d grabbed them while the owner was using my face for a punching bag.”
“So that’s how you met Kincaid,” I murmured.
Owen nodded. “That’s how I met Phillip. He’d seen me and Eva around at some of the shelters where I took her to beg for food. He said we could do a lot better if we started working together. So we did.”