She trailed off and batted the topic out of the air with an exasperated flick of her hands. Jonah tried not to let the little burst of crowing smugness he felt that he’d been right, shewasa lawyer, show on his face.
“There was a conference,” she said. “One of my old colleagues invited me to speak, and it went well. Afterward, I didn’t want to be the killjoy, the alcoholic from the Bible Belt, so I thought… just the one drink. Right? Then I woke up in a hotel, with no idea how I got there, and a stripper—”
“Arlene?” Jonah said.
Deborah stopped mid-story, thrown off the rhythm of it. She blinked and checked her watch with a tap on the screen.
“How do you know about Arlene?”
“You told me,” Jonah said. “At the AA meeting.”
“Oh.” Deborah rubbed her forehead, finger pressed against the deep crease between her eyebrows. “Of course. Anyhow, that’s when it started. Someone always had their eye on me. I could feel it—that itch at the back of your neck when someone is too close to you in the queue at Starbucks. I thought it was just the booze at first, paranoia. I deal with the business side of things at the farm. I write the contracts, commission the security systems, and meet and greet when I have to. I’m not part of it, though. That world. I’ve never seen it up close before. It wasn’t until what happened last night that I realized I was right, that somethingwaswatching me, and it would hurt people.”
“Last night?”
Deborah nodded, stopped, and rubbed her forehead again. “Of course not, last year. What happened last year. I’d finally admitted that I didn’t have it under control and gone to the first AA meeting I could find. They just wanted to help, but whoever did this to me didn’t want that.”
“So they killed him.”
Deborah nodded. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her lips pursed as she took a deep breath and then exhaled. After a moment, she opened her eyes again and wiped her thumb under her nose.
“That’s why I can’t go to anyone local for help,” she said. “If they’re involved, then they’ll have a perfect opportunity to finish the job and kill me. The only reason I’m alive is that they can’t get to me directly. The Farm is too well warded for the thing to get through. If they aren’t involved, then they’ll be next. Like Luke.”
“Luke’s fine,” Jonah said. “For now. I got him out before your hag could finish the job.”
“No,” Deborah said. “He died. It was in the paper.”
“That was Daniel,” Jonah said. “In Columbus, last year. You need to cut down on the booze, at least until this is over.”
She looked down at the vodka. Her face was set in a resigned, almost wistful, expression.
“You know better than that,” she said. “The worse things get, the more it seems like just another shot will fix it. Somehow. All evidence to the contrary.”
“First rule of being part of this world?” Jonah said. “Never get so drunk you can’t run when you need to.”
Deborah snorted but twisted the cap shut on the bottle. It might not last, but Jonah only needed her sober long enough to give him the info he wanted. Part of him flinched away from how cold that thought was, but Jonah swallowed the knot of guilt. He couldn’t save everyone from everything. There was a chance he couldn’t save any of them from the hag, but at least he had some idea where to start there.
He rubbed his hand against his leg and felt the scabs catch on the denim.
“I’ve heard that, for the right price, you can get into the strongboxes at the farm,” he said. “Could that be what’s come back to bite you?”
Deborah looked up. “What?” she spluttered. “No. It couldn’t, and I can’t. You heard that? Where did you hear it? Do you know whatthosepeople would do if they thought I’d done something like that? If they even thought I might do it?”
“Yeah,” Jonah said. “It might look a lot like this.”
The difference between Deborah and Ms. Slater of the Verborgene Farm was sharp. Now the focus was on the farm and not her own problems, Deborah’s jaw set and her nostrils flared with anger.
“The strongboxes are untouched,” she said. “I don’t have access. No one does. There is no way in hell that anyone got into the vault. Who said they did?”
“No one. They said you did,” Jonah said.
“Who?”
“Levi,” Jonah said. “He thinks you—“
“You talked to the Crows?” Deborah recoiled. She clawed at the door with one hand until she managed to hook her fingers around the handle. “I should have known better. They all say Babylon’s a cesspit, that you can’t trust anything that comes out of there.”
“That’s why I left,” Jonah said. “And how else was I meant to find you— Shit.”
