“What?” I said as I swiped across the screen to accept the call.
“Did I interrupt something?”
I hesitated. Most likely, Calvin wouldn’t be too thrilled to learn I’d come back to the murder scene on my own…especially after what had happened to Athene the night before. “Not really,” I lied. “What’s up?”
“I got your knives back from the lab, so I thought I’d bring them over.”
Talk about timing. While I wanted my knives returned safely to their altar, I couldn’t quite help cursing the universe for causing such an interruption when I’d been so close to a breakthrough.
Okay, maybe not that close. But I’d gotten Lucien talking, which was something.
“Um…I’m running an errand right now. But I can meet you at my apartment in about twenty minutes.”
Maybe a brief hesitation, as if he was attempting to figure out whether I was being entirely truthful. But then he said, “Sure, that’ll work. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up, and I slipped my phone back into my pocket. No choice now except to head home and accept the return of my knives with as good grace as possible.
Before I left, though, I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with that extra sense of mine, the one that had come to my aid so many times before.
Nothing. Or at least, nothing beyond the vibrant life in the trees and the river, the slow strength of the earth beneath my feet. Lucien might have been here a few minutes earlier, but he was certainly gone now.
I let out a sigh and began to trudge back to my car.
15
Spells and Stories
I barely had time to take off my hiking boots and slide into a pair of flats — because one look at those boots, and Calvin would know I’d been up to no good — before the buzzer at the back entrance to the building sounded. A quick pass of a brush through my hair, and then I hurried downstairs to open the door.
“Hi,” I said, trying not to sound too breathless. “Come on in.”
Apparently, I wasn’t terribly convincing, because he cocked an eyebrow at me. To my relief, though, he only said, “Sure,” and followed me upstairs to the apartment.
He carried a baggie with the two knives inside, and set it down on the dining room table once we were in my apartment. “Here you go,” he said. “Forensics didn’t find anything.”
“I told you they wouldn’t.”
“I know. But the ‘I’s have been dotted and the ‘T’s crossed, so now I can say I did my due diligence.”
Meaning…what? That he now thought it was safe to date me, as he’d hinted the other evening?
“Well, that’s something.” I glanced down at the baggie that held my knives, but I didn’t bother to pick it up. Before I could use them again, I’d have to make sure they were cleansed and recharged. The Goddess only knew what kind of weird energy they’d picked up at the police station.
Calvin followed my gaze, and a small frown puckered his eyebrows. Maybe he was wondering why I hadn’t gone ahead and taken the knives back into the room that held my altar. His next question was one I’d halfway been expecting.
“Are you going to tell me where you were when I called?”
For someone who wasn’t psychic, he had good instincts. Too good, actually.
I’d lied on the phone, but I didn’t have the guts to lie to his face.
No, it was something more than that. I didn’t want to lie to him at all.
“I was down at the river.”
At once, his frown deepened. Voice full of warning, he began, “Selena — ”
“I know,” I cut in. Maybe I’d earned a scolding, but I wasn’t in the mood for one. “It’s just — you cut me short the last time I was down there. I hoped I might be able to pick up something more if I was by myself.”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” I said. “At least, at first. Lucien’s spirit is definitely hanging around there. He tried to communicate with me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Something about something vile and something huge.”
Calvin rubbed his chin. Although it was late in the day, I didn’t notice much stubble. “Was he trying to describe the person who murdered him?”
“Possibly. His spirit was very agitated, and so I think that was making it harder for him to get his point across.”
That piece of information didn’t seem to sit very well. Alarm flickered in Calvin’s eyes, and he asked, “Agitated how?”
I shrugged. “He was manifesting as a wind. It broke a branch off a tree and pulled the scrunchie out of my hair.”
Remembering the scene, I frowned. That had been one of my favorite scrunchies.
“You could have been hurt.”
“I don’t think so,” I said quickly. Why I felt compelled to defend Lucien, I didn’t know. Most likely, I just didn’t want to upset Calvin. “The branch didn’t fall anywhere near me. But it doesn’t matter, because you called, and that interruption was enough to break up his energy. He disappeared, and we’re not any closer to figuring out who the suspect is than we were before.”
His expression was still troubled, but to my relief, he didn’t give me any more grief over going down to the river. Was it possible he felt a little guilty about calling at exactly the wrong time?
“You tried,” he said. “And we’re working the other angles.”
“Like the medallion,” I replied. “Any news on that?”
A pause, and I wondered if he was going to tell me for the umpteenth time that he couldn’t discuss the particulars of the case with me.
It seemed he’d given that up as a lost cause, though, because he said, “We found a partial print on it, but so far that doesn’t seem to be much of a lead, since it’s not pinging any of our databases. Otherwise, there wasn’t anything else. No DNA or something that might give us a clue to who it belonged to.”
I’d expected as much — even if it had been spattered with blood during the murder, spending more than twenty-four hours underwater in the riverbed would have pretty much wiped it clean.
“That’s too bad,” I said.
He gave a philosophical lift of his shoulders. “It happens. Not that I’ve worked many murder cases, but a lot of the time, it’s two steps forward, one step back. We’ll get to the bottom of it eventually.”
I hoped he was right. Since he had a lot more experience in this sort of thing than I did, I’d have to take his word for it. “And Travis’s car?”
Calvin shook his head. “Nothing. No mechanical failure, no signs of tampering. Chief Lewis wants to blame it on Travis driving under the influence, but he seemed sober enough. Shaken, but I didn’t see any sign of him being high.”
I had to agree with that assessment. True, Travis seemed pretty loopy even when he was dead sober, but his eyes weren’t red or watery, and he hadn’t shown any other signs of having smoked a bowl — or however he partook — before heading out that night to drive Athene to the airport.
“That’s what I was worried about,” I said, and Calvin lifted an eyebrow.