“Emilio?” Elena called. “Sorry for the interruption, but we’ve got something.”
“Better be something good,” the wolf snapped, but he was already on his feet, awkwardly stuffing his considerable bulk into his jeans and reaching for his weapon on the top shelf.
The rest of us followed suit, spilling forth from the closet and stumbling into our various undergarments and bits of clothing. It was a terrible end to an otherwise magnificent evening, but it was an end none of us would fight.
We all knew the deal. Elena wasn’t banging on the door like a woman offering a round of coffee or even one telling us to keep it down in here.
She was banging on the door like a cop.
“Just got a call from Seattle PD,” she said from the other side, all business. “Two women were just detained after an altercation at Sea-Tac, boarding a flight bound for Toronto. They’re being transferred to Raven’s Cape PD as we speak.”
“We got IDs?” Emilio asked, opening the door.
Elena handed him a folder, her face severe. “Norah Hanson and Delilah Pannette.”
Thirty-Seven
GRAY
“Multiple counts of kidnapping. Human trafficking. Assault. Abuse of a minor by a person in a position of trust. Aiding and abetting a fugitive. Murder one. Forgery. Fraud. And this is just off the top of my head.” Emilio dropped a thick folder onto the table, and the woman cuffed to the chair behind it flinched.
The woman.Staring through the one-way glass into the RCPD interrogation room, I couldn’t bring myself to call the prisoner Norah Hanson. She looked nothing like the leader of Bay Coven. Where Norah had been tall and elegant, with steely-gray hair and intelligent eyes, this woman was easily fifteen years younger, with cropped, jet-black hair, violet eyes, and a scowl that would make most people cross the street just to avoid her.
“My name is Donna Calabrese,” the woman insisted, her voice flat and exhausted. Rehearsed. “I’m traveling to Canada with my daughter. You’ve got the wrong—”
“Save it, Hanson. Your fingerprints don’t lie. And once that protection spell wears off, your face will corroborate the evidence.”
She tried to feign ignorance again, but I’d seen the twitch of her jaw at the mention of the word spell.
Verona had told us that Delilah had come into her shop a while back, using Norah’s credit card to buy a combination of magical ingredients that would only ever be used for a particular spell. According to Verona, that kind of magic was intended to erase a person’s existence by altering the way they looked, their identity, their public records, other people’s memories of them, everything.
We’d gotten lucky that Norah had done the spell in haste. She’d missed a few crucial steps, and while it’d changed her appearance, everything else had remained the same—including her fingerprints and public records. The fake IDs she’d procured for herself and Delilah might’ve helped her slip beneath the radar, but apparently, she and Delilah had gotten into a heated argument on the jet bridge during boarding. An airline employee tried to calm things down, but Norah hit her, and everything escalated from there.
I turned to look over my shoulder. Delilah sat on a bench between Elena and Haley, wrapped in a blanket, sipping hot chocolate that Detective Hobb had brought her. Norah had been magically coercing her for months, manipulating her into doing her bidding. But like Norah’s identity spell, the magic she’d been using on Delilah required precision and clear intent, and Norah, in her haste to escape, had gotten lax. Delilah had begun to remember her true self. And just before they’d stepped onto the plane that was supposed to ferry them out of the country, Delilah pushed back.
“Let me berealhonest here, Hanson,” Emilio said. “You’re facing multiple life sentences. I’m not here to play good cop or offer you any favors in exchange for your cooperation. No matter what happens in this room, or in any lawyer’s office or courtroom hereafter, you’re going to die in a cell. You’re going to die alone. And you’re going to die with the knowledge that you were responsible for the slaughter of your own people, and possibly the downfall of humanity.”
I didn’t expect Emilio’s dire speech to have any effect on the woman, but in the heavy silence that followed, her head slumped forward and her shoulders began to tremble. Tears slid down her cheeks and plopped onto the folder in front of her.
It was a long time before she spoke again, but Emilio waited her out, his hip cocked against the table, arms crossed over his chest, his breathing steady and even as if he had all the time in the world.
The strategy worked.
“You’re right,” she finally said, and I heard the break in her voice. The moment when she’d finally realized there was nothing left to do. No tricks, no spells, no lies. Just the truth. “The walls are closing in on me, and I’ve got nowhere left to turn. No hope for a future. No hope for freedom. So what, Detective, could you possibly do for me?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“Shoot me. Right now. Tell them I became violent and belligerent. That I attacked you, left you with no choice.”
“Not gonna happen. But I can offer you one thing, Norah.”
It was the first time he’d used her given name, and she looked up at him, a flicker of hope flashing through her eyes despite the reality of the situation.
“You give me the information I need—information that leads to the capture or death of the dark fae and hunters behind this, the rescue of additional supernatural prisoners, and the liberation of the city of Blackmoon Bay—and I might be able to offer you a few nights’ sleep, knowing that at the end of all your scheming and machinations and plotting, you were offered one last chance to do the right thing, and you took it.”
He picked up the folder and tapped the papers into place, then left her alone with her thoughts, joining the rest of us behind the glass.
“She’s not going to crack,” Emilio said. “I’ve got nothing to offer her. No leniency, no community service, nothing. She’s broken too many human laws for that, and she knows it.” He crossed the room and crouched down in front of Delilah, offering her a compassionate smile. It reminded me of the first time I’d met him officially, the night of Sophie’s murder, when he’d come to our house to investigate. His kindness was one of the few bright spots I remembered from that night, along with Ronan’s rock-steady support.
