Shit. Muller had frozen everything around us, which probably included my crew.
It was just me and him.
And he had an Honesty Amulet.
Two minutes. That was the longest most Tocks lasted. I just had to outwit him for two minutes. And then he’d be spent. And we’d be in control again.
I closed my eyes and remembered Z’s words about outwitting Honesty Amulets and how he’d done it in the vault. I just had to tell the truth, but a random truth.
“Imagining killing someone and actually doing it are two totally different things.” There. Generic. True.
“Did you pay someone to kill him?”
Technically, none of my crew had been paid yet because the job wasn’t over. Andros hadn’t gotten a dime from me. So that was an easy, “No.” I glared up at him. “I can’t even believe you’re doing this shit on the day of my mother’s funeral!” I yanked my arm out of his grip. “Don’t I get a lawyer?”
I blinked and his arm was on me again. Had he sped himself up? I wasn’t sure. But the butterfly near us started flying again, its wings pumping as it fluttered higher in the air, so I knew that whatever Muller had done with his power had released the freeze on everything around us. My guys would be active again.
“Don’t lie to me.”
I laughed at the absurdity of his anger. “I can’t. You have an illegal honesty amulet in your pocket right now, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He’d blurted out the answer before he could think.
“Do you use an illegal honesty amulet to question all your suspects?”
“Yes.”
Muller’s face turned nearly purple in rage. It was a beautiful shade of anger and I wished he’d wear it more often.
We rewound, but this time, he was sloppy about it. This time I could feel it somehow; it made me dizzy and I didn’t quite forget everything.
Muller leaned down, his rotten breath fogging my face. “Did you kill Claude King?”
Fuck.
He said the name.
Immediately, Claude appeared right in front of me, smiling maliciously. “Well, well.”
My free hand flew up to signal the guys that the ghost was here.
Time froze.
Literally.
Everyone around me froze, though I remained able to move and completely aware. I glanced down at the trees to see Z and Andros working in tandem, talking to one another as each of them controlled different aspects of time. Andros held the entire area around me frozen, including a poor little blue butterfly who’d gotten caught up in our web. Z rewound Muller and Claude.
“We’ll have to patch our video footage,” I called down to them. Because if they hadn’t frozen Gray’s drone, it would show exactly what was happening.
The guys gave me a thumbs up to show they’d heard.
My eyes moved back to Muller and watched with fascination as his facial expressions reversed in slow motion. Even Claude’s appearance was broken down into tiny parts and I could see the light particles that he consisted of literally dissolving. As soon as Claude disappeared, I dropped my hand, signaling we were good.
Both of my crew lowered their hands and the clock was reset.
“Am I under arrest?”
“You will be.”
“Well, if I’m not now, I’ve got a dead mother to mourn, you fuck,” I turned and stomped up the hill.
Muller, of course, couldn’t stand being disrespected like that, and hurried after me. He grabbed me, but as he did, his eyes widened in horror.
I had to bite down on a smile because suddenly, Muller had a raging hard on. It wasn’t natural, of course. It was courtesy of a little Dick Tick present from Evan. But still. I faked horror. “Oh my God! You sick pervert! Do you get off on accusing people of shit? Get off me!”
Muller hadn’t realized yet exactly what was going on in his pants, and his fury at me outweighed a random boner. He shook me as he said, “I’m gonna prove that you killed Claude King.”
Cue the ghost.
Claude appeared the second his name was uttered. And my furious stepfather took one look at me, sizing up the situation, before he dove straight into Muller’s body.
Muller’s ghost-possessed hands came up and latched around my throat as I screamed.
37
Every news station played the footage of the attack on a loop that afternoon. The titles for the online articles were as lyrical and lovely as any song. “Mourning Daughter Accosted By Police Officer,” “Pinnacle Officer Uses Illegal Honesty Amulet And Attacks Girl,” “Officer Suspended After Attack Caught on Video.”
We sat under the picnic awning, watching clip after clip, flipping from station to station. The attack had even made the international news on some of the magical stations.
Teddy Hall was a hero. He’d swooped down with his camera, yelling for help, as Claude and Muller choked me. I’d covered myself in shadows, so that Claude’s icy fingers couldn’t penetrate my skin and he couldn’t move his possession from that dick detective to me.
I’d been able to stop that, but not the choking.
Teddy had really stepped up. He’d shot out ice, encasing Muller’s broad shoulders in huge blocks that looked like frozen football pads, cutting off the blood flow to asshole detective’s hands and weakening him until his grip slackened and I could breathe.
Teddy had shot fire at his ass for good measure and the sight of Muller’s pants on fire became our favorite clip of the day. Every time it finished, Z used his magic to rewind the computer and replay it, laughing until he had tears in his eyes.
“Please, let me save it to my phone. I need this picture to pop up when Hayley calls,” Z begged Gray.
“Nope.” Gray smiled but was firm in his refusal as he sat at one of the adjacent picnic tables and looked over gas station maps and Institute floor plans for tonight. My prankster was so grown up and business-like, already double-checking that he had three different possible escape routes for the evening’s jaunt over to the institute.
Meanwhile, Evan and Andros kept stopping by the spot where I sat on the grass. They came by with ice packs, ice cream, salve, tea—Evan had made a supply run for “first aid” supplies after the incident, because Joyland didn’t have much of those in stock. They bent over me every few minutes to examine my neck.
I’d gotten a pretty purple ‘choker’ out of the escapade, which had been a closer call than I’d ever admit to them. While Teddy was the official public hero, the only reason my windpipe hadn’t been crushed was because Andros had rewound Muller by milliseconds each time I’d stopped screaming. He knew and I knew that I’d played chicken and come close to crashing and burning.
It was worth it.
Evan, on the other hand, was just a mother hen.
But he was my mother hen and the ice cream and foot rubs aspect of his fussing was nice, so I let him do as he pleased.
He’d written a Healing Spell for me, but I’d absolutely refused the offers from Z and Andros to help speed it up.
“You need your magic at full power for tonight,” I’d told them.
Eventually, I’d even shooed Evan away, telling him to go practice writing spells that would jam up norm guns. “We’ll have enough magic obstacles to overcome, I don’t want to deal with guns, too.”