Page 35 of Booked for Murder

I understood why Bradley couldn’t let it go, either.

A noise from my bedroom caught my attention, and a sleep-rumpled Bradley staggered into the living room, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. “Do I want to know what time it is?”

I set my phone on my coffee table, grabbed my cane, and lurched to my feet. “Time for you to sit down while I make you something to eat that won’t try to kill you. Feeling better?”

“I think so. Please tell me your cooking is better than my cooking.”

“My cooking is far superior to your cooking. I’ve been doing it for years. You’ll be able to stomach it. You don’t want anything gourmet right now anyway.”

“I think gourmet is another word for pretty but bland. How long does it take for my taste buds to regrow after they’ve been burned to a crisp?”

Chuckling at the thought of my orange chicken doing his tongue in, I limped to the kitchen. “About two weeks. You’ll likely survive.”

“But are you sure?”

“I’m fairly sure you’ll survive. You won’t be impressed with what I’m going to feed you, but it should stay in your stomach where it belongs, and that’s the best you’re getting right now.”

Bradley took my seat between Ren and Beatrice, and he went for my phone, picking it up and swiping at the screen to review the webpage I’d been reading. “Ah, them. What did I miss? I’m going to guess Ren has tattled on my activities.”

“They had questions. I saw no reason to refuse to answer them. You’ve done a lot of work to make this meeting happen, so I cut through the typical bullshit, sir.”

“I have a name. It’s Bradley. You can use it. I even got Janette to use it, although she insisted on tacking a sir to the end of it. I have noticed she’s just using my name now, and I find this to my liking. I like my name, and I think people should use it more often.”

“You’re in a mood, sir.”

“I’ll consider asking multiple times in a form most people consider to be begging, although I will not make such commentary in public spaces or where my family might hear you.”

“Just give him what he wants, Ren. It’s not worth arguing about, and he’ll start whining in front of his family that his poor, fragile heart is broken because the people he has to spend the most time with won’t use his name. The Hampton family is fine with casual address as long as you remain respectful. I added the sir because it annoyed him.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Janette. You’re going to teach my bodyguard bad habits. You ran away from home, and now you’re digging in your heels and being stubborn. You can’t retrain Ren.”

While I had expected consequences should he learn of my survival, I had not expected the whining. “Why are you whining so much?”

“I’m whining so much because if I let you, you’ll retrain Ren.”

“Well, you should have trained him properly from the start. If you had, I wouldn’t have to retrain him.” I retrieved his rice from the fridge along with my jar of beef bouillon, grabbed a measuring cup, and went to work turning the rice into soup. “Do you think this group is behind it, Bradley?”

“I don’t know who is behind it. That’s the problem. Are they a possibility? Absolutely—and a strong contender at being behind it. Someone could also be setting it up to frame the group. That part I don’t mind as much, as that group supports the murder of those who do not have the appropriate magic ratings. They would kill hundreds of thousands of people for their cause, and I’m not all right with that. While my family and I would be safe, I know too many people who wouldn’t be—and if I allow those without magic to be wiped out, there’s nothing saying I won’t be next. I would rather go down trying to prevent this than go down as part of the next batch of victims because I stayed silent and did nothing.”

“What has your magic told you about the crime scenes?”

“Absolutely nothing of use.”

My brows shot up at that. “Nothing? How can your talent tell you nothing?”

“None of the victims were aware of any danger before their deaths. They saw no one, there was nobody suspicious nearby that anyone could see. One minute, everything is fine. The next, they’re dead. The only thing I find of comfort is that none of them suffered at all.”

I frowned, turning from the heating soup to face Bradley. “How is that even possible?”

“This is not public information, but according to the autopsy reports, the brain stem is severed prior to their forceful exsanguination. The autopsies also indicate that the second stage of the killing involves catastrophic brain trauma to ensure death is painless.”

“A humane serial killer,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes while considering the difficulty in such a planned attack. “The killer would have had to be nearby to make that happen. Or killers. There are not a lot of people capable of severing the spine like that.”

“Not the spine or spinal column. The brain stem. The spine remained intact in all victims, but the brain stem itself was essentially disconnected from both the brain and the spinal column. The damage is limited to that very small section. Biologically, the brain stem essentially connects the spinal column to the brain itself, so the damage is beginning in very close proximity to the brain itself. There’s speculation that the arteries leading into the brain were left open while the veins leading out of the brain were cut off, forcing mass quantities of blood to pump in with no way of leaving. This then leads to severe hemorrhaging of the brain. Add in some magic to increase the blood pressure, and the severity is increased to catastrophic. Then the telekinetic blow to the skull would result in the somewhat impressive spray.”

When I’d hit six stories, I’d done something similar, forcing blood to exit the cow’s body at high speed and volume. I marveled at the range of abilities required to pull the murder off, used in conjunction without any delays between phases of the killings. “That’s both horrifying and amazing.”

“It really is. We just can’t figure it out. Is it one person? Multiple people? How are they doing it? Why? We have so many questions but no answers—but that hate group? They’ll take advantage of the opportunity if the bill they were working on fails. And at this rate? It will. The rest of the politicians are terrified they’ll be next.” Bradley sighed and leaned his head back against my couch. “I warned him he courted trouble with that damned bill. He refused to listen to me. He didn’t understand why I wouldn’t approve. The bill, after all, benefits me and my family.”