Page 43 of Veiled Justice
She tapped a finger to her perfect lips. When Krieg glanced at us, no doubt having felt our gaze on him, she pushed her index finger into her mouth and sucked on it. The woman had zero subtlety.
Krieg looked from Louisa to me. I realised that I had crossed my arms. I met his eyes across the distance between us and rolled mine in exasperation. He smiled. I hoped he was amused by my exasperation and not flattered or interested in her exemplary finger-sucking skills.
I turned on my heel and left Louisa still going at her finger like it was a chocolate-covered phallus. It turns out you can be born to class but still have none. I was heading for the exit of the marquee when Rupert and Ava stumbled in, eyes wide. Rupert’s shirt had blood on it. ‘Is there a healer?’ he bellowed into the room. ‘Is anyone a healer?’
The music stopped abruptly. My brother looked at me, relief colouring his features that I was here to deal with whatever had him running down the dark alleys of panic.
‘Stacy! Thank God. There’s been another stabbing!’ he blurted.
Chapter 22
‘Take me to the victim!’ I barked at Rupert. He let go of Ava, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the garden. As he broke into a jog, I matched his speed; his urgency was contagious. I cursed my smart shoes – I had to run on the balls of my feet to stop my heels sinking into the soft lawn. I also cursed the fact that I hadn’t brought my briefcase with me.
I checked the time as I ran, 9.26pm. As I jogged I hastily pulled my phone out of my clutch bag and called for an Other ambulance to attend. Then I called Channing for backup. ‘Ma’am?’ he answered his phone with a yawn.
‘There’s been another attack.’ I rattled off the address. ‘Get your arse here now!’ I hung up without waiting to hear him confirm. He’d come.
The moon was high, giving sufficient light for me to look around as we hit the scene. I scoured my surroundings, looking for suspects. Up ahead, five tiki torches had been thrust into the ground in a circle, burning into the dark night sky. No, not a circle, the points of a pentagram. And a body lay unmoving in the centre of them.
Rupert moaned softly. ‘Oh God, is she dead? She was alive before. I shouldn’t have left her to die alone.’ He wrapped his arms around himself.
I ignored him and ran to the dryad in the centre of the pentagram. Her green skin looked deathly pale but I thought I saw her chest rise. I sank down next to her and reached for her neck to feel for a pulse. The moment my warm fingers touched her cool skin, her brown eyes flared open and she met my eyes. Her lips moved desperately but no sounds emerged. She gurgled; her throat had been cut, but not as professionally, not as deeply as Helga’s. But, like Helga, her pinky finger had been removed.
I looked towards the marquee. Krieg had nearly reached us but there was no one accompanying him. ‘No healer?’ I asked him. He shook his head, his eyes lingering on the dryad who was dying in front of us.
Fuck! Without a healer, she stood no chance. Even so, I had to try. I took hold of the fabric of my dress and ripped off two pieces, pressing one hard onto the gruesome wound across her stomach and the other on the cut across her throat.
‘It’s okay,’ I said calmly as I applied pressure onto the makeshift bandages. ‘Help is coming. You’re going to be okay.’ I was lying, of course. There would be no saving her, but goddamn it I had to try! Maybe someone would come. Maybe the ambulance was close enough.
I looked towards the marquee again. People were drifting out to look at the spectacle but no one was venturing over to help. A foot or two away from the dryad, Rupert was standing alone, handstwisting and his shirt splattered with her blood. The logical part of my mind knew he’d be a suspect for this. This was the second stabbing he’d happened to find in as many days. There would be real pressure to bring him in.
Krieg stood a short distance away. Ogres don’t believe in taking potions, so he wouldn’t have anything with him, and he had no healing magic. The dryad was dying; if I was going to act, it was now or never. I had to protect Rupert.
‘Can you check on my brother?’ I asked Krieg in an effort to turn his attention to something else. I saw him turn to Rupert – then I did something I had sworn to my parents I would never do.
I met the dryad’s eyes, pulled up the IR within me then I used my forbidden hidden powers to slip into her mind.Show me,I murmured to her.Show me who did this to you.
She showed me the image of a dryad, his face impassive as he thrust a serrated, hooked knife into her gut. I felt the agony of the moment, her fear, her pain. I tried to block it out, to focus on every detail she could recall of her killer.
Her attacker’s green skin was pale, more of a soft sage than her emerald, and his eyes were such a dark brown as to be almost black – or that is how she’d seen him. He had light brown hair and a faint scar on his neck.
The image started to fade and another one replaced it. Another dryad came – her mother – and then her father. They were cuddling her as a child; their eyes filled with such love. Images flashed faster and faster. Her riding her first bike, her sinking into her first tree, her baking with her nana.
I hastily pulled back and yanked my consciousness back to my own body. I took a shuddering breath and aligned myself with my physical form again. When I opened my eyes, the dryad woman had expelled her last breath. Her chest didn’t rise again.
‘Stacy!’ Rupert was almost hysterical. ‘Fucking hell, Stacy!’
My heart was thundering. Rupert wasn’t wrong: fucking hell.
I’d stayed in her mind too long as I looked for a clue to her killer’s identity. What I’d done was strictly forbidden to all sub-wizards because of the risk that we would die with the victim. The dryad had been reliving her life; if I’d stayed with her a beat longer, my mind would have died with hers. Not to mention that I wasn’t registered as a sub-wizard, and using their powers was strictly forbidden to me. With good reason.
I let my hands fall away from the bandages. There was no point now. We were too late. I checked my watch. Time of death: 9.29pm.
‘Stupid Pigdog,’ Loki said, hopping anxiously on the ground. I hadn’t even seen him fly out with me.
I didn’t have the heart to argue; I’d been very close to a fatal mistake. My mouth was dry and I had to swallow hard a couple of times before I worked up enough saliva to talk. ‘Can you scour the area?’ I asked the caladrius in a low voice. ‘Look for a dryad.’
‘Needle in a wood stack,’ Loki warned but he took to the sky. He flew up high, his little white wings fluttering rapidly as he scoured the area for me. He was right, though: the chances were the murdering dryad had sunk into a tree and was long gone.
