He whined as she deliberately hit his species’ trigger and refused to look her in the eye.
“Out with it, now!” she ordered, her voice hard.
Dave mumbled something, his face obscured by his hair.
Daffi leaned closer, frowning. “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch that?”
It had been something about Sybil. She was sure of it.
“We were seeing each other. Okay?” Dave snapped, looking at her through the shaggy fall of his hair. “Or rather,” he hissed in frustration, his expression pained. “I was her dirty little secret. I loved her and she wouldn’t even acknowledge our relationship.”
There was real rage and pain in his voice.
“Why was that?” she asked, not letting up on the pressure. There was more here.
“Because I’m a Jack-Shit, okay?”
“So we have a dog Shifter—who would have thought there’d be a Jack Russell cross Shit Tzu Shifter out there?—in a secret relationship with the victim, a killer with white hair—which is not a common color for a witch—and a missing afternoon tea,” Daffi mused later that night when they’d returned to the Mad Pumpkin after a long day of interviews.
Oberon had been let loose on the takeout menus again and the coffee table in the middle of the sitting area was covered in an assortment of boxes. All were mostly empty now. Daffi was snacking on what remained of the prawn crackers, a food stuff she was sure had never had so much as a passing encounter with an actual prawn, as she studied her “crime board.”
One wall of the suite was covered in clues and pictures all connected with colored string to a picture of Sybil in the center. It was an old one, from some school or other. Sybil was dressed in a formal academic gown with a sash covered in multiple badges and a mortarboard hat on her head. She wore the tight smile of someone for whom displeasure was a genetic trait rather than a fleeting emotion.
“Missing afternoon tea?” Garlick asked with a groan. All that was visible of the familiar was four paws sticking up in the air on the other side of the coffee table.
“Uh-huh.” She waved a cracker at the board. “Whipsnide has afternoon tea every afternoon at three p.m. On the day of the murder my disciplinary was in the morning and Whippy had three to three thirty p.m. blocked out in her schedule. Every other day, Sybil’s name was down, but that day it was scratched out.”
“And?” Oberon asked, idly feeding Garlick a piece of fried chicken.
“Whippy said, pointedly, to the watch that the last person to see Sybil alive was me. But I couldn’t have been. There’s no way Whippy would have missed her daily dose of sycophantic fawning.”
“So Whipsnide lied about it,” Garlick mumbled unseen from the other side of the coffee table. Seriously, she had no idea where he put it all. Even for a familiar, he had an impressive appetite. It rivaled hers. And add Oberon into the mix? The local takeouts must think they had a family of twelve living in here.
“We knew she was lying about something. Mr. Buffness here ratted her out—another piece of chicken if you would, garcon—thank you,” the cat mumbled as Oberon dropped a sweet and sour chicken ball his way.
“But how does white hair, a dog Shifter, and afternoon tea fit?” she wondered as she finished off the last of the crackers.
“Well, the dog didn’t do it,” Oberon rumbled. “He wasn’t lying. He was in love with her. There’s no way he would have killed her. Not with that look in his eyes.”
“Yeah? How do you know that?”
The sofa next to her dipped under a heavy weight and a deep voice murmured in her ear. “Because I know how he feels.”
She turned to find Oberon next to her, a dark and heated look in his blue eyes. She waited for Garlick to make his usually scathing remark and then realized the cat had either cracked familiar invisibility or he’d disappeared.
“You bribed Garlick. Didn’t you?” She smirked, not stopping him as he reached out to wrap a strand of her rapidly lightening hair around his finger. At some point she’d have to come clean about her real color, hopefully after she’d found the real white-haired killer. Otherwise she was totally back in the frame for murder. Because there was no way Jack hadn’t told Sergeant Abberline about the hair color and… hello, she had white hair and a familiar who claimed to have a link to hell.
Sybil had been killed with a machete coated in hellfire.
Daffi blinked. She’d been half-joking earlier but… “Someone seriously is trying to frame me for murder.”
Oberon moved in closer, big arm around the back of the sofa as he turned her into his embrace. “You can’t do anything about it tonight. Best to sleep on it…”
“I don’t want to sleep!” she insisted, trying not to get distracted by all that hot, hunky faeness.
“I was really hoping you’d say that, my queen,” he murmured, leaning forward to claim her lips.
A soft murmur escaped her and she relaxed into the kiss. It was long and sweet with hints of hot summer evenings, rose wine, and cool sheets. She moaned, her lips parting to allow his tongue to slide against hers. Heat rose and cool sheets gave way to the slide of skin on skin and the brush of blue wings against her body.
She lifted her head.
“Are you trying to enchant me?” she demanded. When had he managed to lie down, pulling her to sprawl over his broad chest?
“No.” His expression was too neutral and careful.
“You so are! Your wings aren’t that big.”
He grinned. “Not here they’re not.”
She gasped. “You were trying to enchant me!”
“Not permanently,” he reached up and stole another kiss. She let him. “Was it working?”
She bit her lip. It was so tempting to let go, just for tonight, and let the hot, sexy fairy have his wicked way with her. Then she could have her way with him. It was a plan with no visible drawbacks.
“I’m not agreeing to marry you.”
“Understood.”
“I probably won’t respect you in the morning.”
“I can live with that.”
“It’s just sex,” she said. “Hot and horny sex.”
“Absolutely.” He nodded.
She leaned down, whispering her lips over his. “Okay, handsome, let’s see how big these… wings of yours really are.”
11
The next morning brought bird song, traffic, and a second body.
Daffi stood in stunned silence as she looked down at the sprawled figure on the cobbles. Jack the Kipper lay in the gutter, his dirty greatcoat spread around him like wings. His arm was flung out, his fish lying on the pavement just beyond his fingertips. A terrible second smile was drawn across his throat, just like Sybil.
“Same murder weapon?” Daffi asked Sergeant Abberline, who was standing next to her studying the body.
The thin watchman shook his head. “The wounds are different. Forensics will confirm it, but I think we’re looking at different weapons.”
Daffi nodded as Abberline moved off to talk to the witch who had found the body. Daffi refused to call it Jack. She couldn’t. Mostly because she’d really liked the quirky little fae and had considered him a friend, but also because he was standing right in front of her, waving his fish madly to get her attention.