CHAPTER 19
AN INVESTIGATION BEGINS
“YOU THINKI’M INNOCENT?” EMBRY’S VOICE SOUNDED AS WEAKas she suddenly felt, all the fight flooding out through the soles of her feet onto the cool floorboards.
Rye’s mouth pulled up at one end as his green eyes narrowed. As if he was incredulous that she was incredulous. “Yes, I do. Of course I do and not just in the until-proven-guilty sense.Innocent.I know you better than anyone else on this rock hurtling eighteen and a half miles per second around the sun.”
“That’s oddly specific,” she pointed out with a low, unbidden laugh, though she wasn’t sure if it was funny that he knew the exact speed of the earth’s orbit, or that she wasn’t surprised Rye just had that number in his back pocket, waiting for the time to use it.
It wasn’t a hallucination, but this was so absurd after an even more absurd and horrid forty-eight hours that the sillies were taking over. If Rye noticed her giggle, he didn’t show it. Instead, his flair for the dramatic sparked, and he swept past her into her room.
“And,” he continued, “even if I didn’t know you better than anyone, spending exactly a minute in your presence would and should absolve you of any suspicion.” Rye turned to face her, his voice quick and low, mindful of Lazarus’s restorative rest down the hall but not diminished in passion. “Yes, you’re a powerful witch. Yes,I just joked you’re a weapon. But you’re also a nice person, who cares about other people and tries to help them.”
Rye was breathing hard now, hands settled on his hips, unwittingly allowing his sweatshirt to pucker at the waist. A sliver of taut skin flashed in the lamplight.
Embry blinked and spun to plant her bottom on her bed, and more crucially move herself away from a position where she could see any of Rye’s flesh except his hands, face, and neck. “Thank you for the vote of confidence and also the backhanded compliment?”
Rye turned to where she sat and thankfully dislodged his hands from his hips. The sweatshirt slouched down, covering the skin he’d inadvertently bared. “Em, if we’re going to do this, I need you to check your ego at the door.”
Now that one required a yoga breath. “If we do what, Rye?”
“Have you been listening at all?” He rubbed a hand down the side of his unshaven face. “If we’re going to find Oakley’s real killer, that’s what.”
Her shocked mind stilled as she realized what he meant. “You and me? Investigators?”
“Shaggy and Scooby, yes.”
That frisson of silliness surged within her exhausted mind and another bubble of laughter escaped. Embry pressed the heels of her hands into her tender, puffy eyes for a moment. When she removed them, her lips flicked up. “I’d say we’re more of a Daphne and Shaggy pairing.”
Rye’s own mouth quirked to the side. “You’re correct.”
“Are we starting this investigation now? If so, you might as well make yourself more comfortable.” She gestured to how he was standing in the center of her room as if he might burst into soliloquy. “Also, if we’re working together, I’d rather not feel as if I’m being lorded over.”
Rye’s gaze drifted to the spot on the duvet next to her. There was a plush accent chair across the room, but it was at enough of a distance that it would be inconvenient to talk quietly enough to spare Daddy their chatter into the wee hours.
After a moment, Rye nodded once to himself and then ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Perhaps we should move to the kitchen, so we don’t disturb Lazarus.”
“Tell me exactly what you did after you left the stadium,” Rye instructed as they set themselves up on the very same barstools Embry and Lazarus had used for pizza the night before. He’d stolen a yellow legal notepad and ballpoint pen from the study and crossed his ankle on top of his knee, ready to take notes.
Embry fiddled with the kettle before nestling a peppermint tea bag in her mug to steep. Rye had gone for full-strength black tea. In Embry’s estimation, caffeine could come later. For now, she relayed exactly what she’d told the various investigators, the headmaster, her father, Ames, and Fairfax. Though it was crucial information to her cause, it was also getting slightly repetitive.
“I asked you to take care of Daddy, then I rushed back to my room. Mostly because I’d started to tear up and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I just took the path as fast as I could walk in those heels, head down. I entered the wards at the dorm, sprinted upstairs, and locked my door.”
Rye thought about this. “What did you do after you entered your room? Did you go to sleep right away? Did you text anyone? Check your email? Anything with a paper trail?”
Unfortunately, the protective wards didn’t register entry and exit times of the dorm’s residents. And, even if they did, this alibi would be deemed unreliable because as a prefect, Embry was part of the student group that had recast the wards before orientation.As a former prefect himself, Rye knew this and didn’t go down that dead end.
“No.” She drew in a shaky breath here, a spike of tears threatening to resurface at the memory, even with all she’d done in that arena tonight. Perhaps for some hydration, she took a too-hot gulp of tea. After it incinerated her throat, she pushed on, a little raspy. “I did my skin care routine, changed into my pajamas, found my very best silk sleep mask, and tried to get some sleep. But I just tossed and turned until I gave in and took a sleeping draught.”
“So nothing with a timestamp.” It wasn’t a question as much as a lamentation.
Embry shook her head, her braid dancing over one shoulder. “If I’d known what the next day would bring, I most definitely would’ve done something to produce a timestamp. I also would’ve accepted your invitation to walk me to my room.”
There was a softness in his green eyes that reminded her of the sea on its calmest days. So different from their flashing fierceness in the moments after those final words to Oakley.
Embry gulped. “I’d also not have made a stupid Beetlejuice joke at Oakley’s expense.”
This suddenly agitated Rye enough that he recrossed his legs, tapped his pen on the paper, and shook his head. “Here’s the thing about that stupid Beetlejuice joke—it wasn’t ideal, no.” No, no, it wasbadly doneindeed, as he’d pointed out in the moment. “But it actually isn’t the most damning part of that stupid video. What is exceptionally bad for you is that Oakley accuses you of trying to control her and then, when she announces she doesn’t need you and tries to walk away, you’re caught on tapegoing after her.”
