Yet even if she wasn’t exactly thinking straight, Embry didn’t ask the jailer why the inspector wanted to see her. There could only be one reason.
Formal charges.
Stomach clenching, Embry forced herself to keep her chin heldhigh as she marched through the door to the very same interrogation room she’d been in the night before. Inspector Brown came into view, slumped in the same chair as before. But he wasn’t alone.
Even despite her doubts, Embry literally squealed the second recognition hit.
“Daddy!”
Embry lunged for her father, newly shaven, properly pomaded, and dressed in a three-piece suit. It wasn’t until they’d already collided in an embrace that Embry remembered he was probably still tender from his vampire injuries. Lazarus wheezed under her vise grip, and she immediately loosened it and flung herself back until she wasn’t crushing his barrel chest. “Sorry, sorry—you’re here! I’m so happy you’re here!”
Just his presence made some of her doubts fade. Lazarus wouldn’t be here if he was doing the illegal things Inspector Brown believed he was capable of.
To Embry’s relief, Daddy chuckled, even as he rubbed where his enchanted sutures had been. “We’ve come to negotiate your immediate release.”
Joy rocketed through Embry as she squeezed his big, elegant hands. Finally! This farce was going to be sorted out and Balthazar would be apprehended. Lazarus tipped his chin toward the wall behind them, and Embry registered thewein his statement. Seven people in suits nearly identical to Daddy’s stood in a row, an assortment of briefcases, legal pads, accordion files, and monogrammed coffee mugs in their hands.
The flotilla of lawyers. Here for her rescue.
“Fantastic!” Embry exclaimed with a wave at the wall of legal representation.
They didn’t wave back—very professional—instead, the only response came from Inspector Brown, who coughed meaningfully.
Embry whirled back around as the investigator followed it up with his typical inflectionless droll from his bolted seat across the table, his slouched posture resumed. “There will be no negotiation until I see evidence necessitating the release of Miss Woodcross.”
Daddy dialed in on the Lazarus Woodcross lawyer voice as he straightened his tie and sank into a chair. “Well, now that we’ve determined the dorm room incident could not have been breaking and entering given it was her room, and nothing was removed—except by your team at the execution of your warrant at the time the room was unsealed—there’s only one true matter to settle. And that evidence will be available in just—Ah, yes, here’s Rye and the IT cart.”
Embry whirled again, watching as the door opened and Rye pushed in a cart holding a monitor, speakers, and a laptop as big as a pizza box. Faye, the cranky clairvoyant receptionist the station kept on hand to guard against any rogue and nosy tourists, held the door with a frown, before slamming it behind him hard enough that the monitor jiggled atop the rickety rolling cart.
Rye was here.
He’d made it off campus, roused Daddy, changed into his typical daily uniform of a rich boy whose clothes were lost at sea for months at a time, and was currently and obviously doing something to procure her freedom. Embry wanted to toss herself at Rye in a hug just as hard as the one she’d given Daddy. Not for the first time in the past twenty-four hours did Embry feel the overwhelming urge to kiss Rye. Instead, she forced herself to greet him as she would any other day. “Knighton.”
Rye glanced up at his name. His green eyes were shaded with shadows—his exhaustion clear—but relief swept them into crescents as his pouty mouth flicked into a quick grin amid the stubble she was starting to love.
“Woodcross.” He gestured to a seat Embry hadn’t noticed—onethat wasn’t bolted down but had clearly been dragged in to accommodate two people on one side of the interrogation table. “You need to see this as much as Inspector Brown.”
Embry sat in the chair and scooted it as close to Daddy as possible. Meanwhile, Rye worked to get the Table’s outdated machinery online. The button-up he wore over today’s T-shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, and despite everything, a warmth spread across Embry’s belly at the mere sight of the muscles there flexing and bunching as he moved cables and arranged tech until the monitor buzzed to life.
“Em, as Rye, our team, and I were explaining to Inspector Brown before your arrival,” Daddy said in a much softer tone before switching to his lawyer voice once more, “we have proof that the Riddle vampire family entered the Woodcross Residence during our coven meeting looking for a fight. This video proves that they were hunting you, not the other way around.”
Embry wasn’t a lawyer yet, but she could see this line of thought. If they could prove she didn’t lure the vampires to the grounds, all Inspector Brown’s assumptions about Embry’s past few days would fall apart enough to secure her release.
“Rye, would you like to tee up what you’re about to show us?”
Dutifully, Rye nodded, then paused something grainy on the screen and stood at his full height. As Embry had pointed out to grind his gears, he wasn’t a lawyer yet, or even a pre-law student because of his gap year, so Rye didn’t have the same code-switching, courtroom-swindling tone that Daddy had perfected over the past few decades. But what he did have was a long history of playing “all the broody beanbags”—i.e., kings—on Jonesy’s stage at the Marlow Theatre. And Rye used every ounce of that crafted stage presence as he threw back his shoulders and began a monologue he must have practiced before the sun came up.
“As we have explained, I have deferred my entrance to theUniversity of Maine so that I’m available to help Mr. Woodcross with several modernization initiatives for the Woodcross coven. The first project we wanted to complete was a high-definition live feed of our meeting pentagram so that the families of our junior members—e.g., students at Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted—could watch each meeting virtually.”
Oh.So Rye wasn’t just upgrading the coven website and snarfing Daddy’s espresso.
“As part of this project, I installed a web of security cameras surrounding the property.”
Embry was even more surprised. She’d always assumed Daddy was as old-fashioned as the school next door. Apparently not.
“This video is from Sunday night.” He pointed to a corner timestamp. “As you can see here, members of the Riddle family willingly enter the grounds of the Woodcross Residence from the gate at the Raven’s End Cemetery, using a coven coin to bypass the wards.”
They silently watched a few minutes of vampires, yes, using a coven coin on the wards from the Raven’s End entrance before streaming onto the grounds. When the last vampire strode onto the lawn from the cemetery and headed up the hill to the pentagram, Rye hit Pause and Daddy continued. “We believe the coin they use here came from Balthazar Hale.”
