Page 38 of Incubus
"Anyway, thanks for the story," Sasha said, tugging on Nathan's arm. "I think we're just going to get what we need and make scarce. You be careful now."
Sasha pulled Nathan along with him toward the back of the store. By the time they were nearing the end of the produce aisle, Nathan’s reflexes finally caught up to him. He pushed Sasha away and gave the redhead a glare he hoped conveyed his anger.
“What?” Sasha shrugged, as if he couldn’t think of anything wrong with what he had done. “You were flirting with her.”
“Uh,yeah. It’s kind of what I do when there's a pretty girl around,” Nathan said.
Sasha leaned back against one of the refrigerator doors. His red hair was doubled behind him in the reflection like someone had colored out of the lines with a Crayola red crayon. “Nathan,” he said, somewhat patronizing. “Flirting isn’t always the best way to get information out of a pretty girl.”
“Hn. Always worked for me,” Nathan grumbled.
“I’m telling you. Sometimes a girl would rather think she is the last thing on your mind. I’ve gotten more propositions by acting practically uninterested in women than I ever have by flirting directly.”
“Oh yeah? And how’s your luck pretending to have aboyfriend?” Nathan snapped.
“Well…it worked, didn’t it?” Sasha smiled, but the expression wavered as he pushed away from the refrigerator door. “Look, I'm sorry. Really. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t mean to send any mixed signals here.”
“Heh. Right.” Nathan laughed, albeit a little bitterly. “Your signals are never mixed. Just obvious and more obvious.” But, as angry as Nathan wanted to be, Sasha's sheepish expression madehimfeel like the guilty one.
“Hey, did you guys find anything?” came the sudden arrival of Jim, appearing from around the corner of the aisle.
Sasha cast Nathan another apologetic look before answering. “More odd behavior to back our dark fae theory, but no real leads,” he said. “You?”
“Same.” Jim looked tired, like he was sleeping as poorly as Nathan was lately. “We need to get a look at what was going on in here before the murder happened so we can get a better idea of suspicious characters.”
“Well, they got cameras,” Nathan said, pointing to a dusty black dome on the ceiling.
“Good call,” Sasha said. "Come on." He motioned them toward the 'Employees Only' door in the corner. The acting manager wasn’t much older than sixteen, a freckled and gangly blonde mulling about the aisles with disinterest. Even though there were three of them, he didn’t notice when Nathan and the others snuck into the back room.
“Wait, won’t any surveillance tapes be at the police station?” Jim whispered.
“Small town like this, they probably watched the tapes here and left them to be catalogued later,” Sasha said. “Which hopefully means they were forgotten.”
It took only a moment to find the tiny surveillance office, setup with an old television and VCR, and, just as Sasha had predicted, as if a police officer had recently gone through the tapes only to leave them behind.
A live feed of the store was displayed on a separate monitor. They kept a close eye on that other screen for the manager as they popped in the first tape from the date of the murder.
Sasha fast-forwarded to around the time the incident had been reported. There was nothing strange about the store or its occupants at first but, eventually, there was clear footage of the woman Becca had called Mrs. Barnes when she entered the store. She was an older woman, finely dressed, and seemed perfectly normal. The change in her to go from casually shopping to a frenzied spree happened suddenly, as if a switch had flipped in her brain.
“Hang on,” Jim said, pausing the tape to rewind it. “Did you see the woman who went past her?”
He played the tape again from the moment before Mrs. Barnes started shoveling things into her cart. There was another woman with her back to the camera who walked down the same aisle as Mrs. Barnes just before she changed.
“She touched her on the shoulder,” Jim pointed out, pausing the tape again. “That has to be who we’re looking for. Maybe that woman touched Mr. Jonas outside the market before he came in too. Look,” he said, and let the tape resume. “She leaves after that. Are there any tapes from outside the store?”
Sasha shuffled through a few of the tapes beside him. “Doesn’t look like it. But I think you might have something with this. Power by touch is pretty common for fae. We need to find a clearer shot of this woman from the front.”
They switched tapes to one from the store’s second camera. The other woman visibly touched Mrs. Barnes on the shoulder,and she was almost painfully beautiful, even in the blurred vision of the VHS tape.
“It could be a nymph,” Sasha said. “That would explain the outbreaks of excessive behavior. Greed, violence, sex. One little touch and she has the whole town turned upside down.”
“One little touch, huh?” Nathan said.
Sasha smiled down at him from where he was leaning against the office desk. “Don’t worry, Nate. A nymph I can handle. Fae magic like that won’t work on me. Or Jim, since he’s a changeling. We’ll keep an eye on you.”
Jim snorted at the comment but quickly covered it with a cough.
"She should have some information about your bounty that we can use, even if it just points us in a new direction," Sasha went on. "Now we just have to find her.”
