Page 76 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

“You also told me about your mother and how you were able to kill the Erlking.”

That she had not remembered. “Saga—”

“I understand if you’re not ready to dig up the past,” Saga reassured. “But I do think if we’re going to talk to…The Addler about curses, you should ask her about that sword.”

“I cannot.”

“Avery, I understand if you’re scared, but isn’t it worse not knowing?”

“No, Saga, I literally cannot talk to her about it. The geas I entered into prohibits me…” A dull ache in Avery’s head began to throb once more. The best thing to do was to mentally distance herself as quickly as possible before a repeat of last night occurred. “Even to her.” She sat back and took a deep breath. “So, while I may agree it deserves investigation, it is out of my hands at this time.”

Saga took Avery’s phrasing of “out of my hands” too literally. “What if I asked?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“That is not our concern right now. The sword is safely locked away in the vault, and beyond that, Iona has a very particular hold over you right now that I do not think it would be wise to tempt by putting yourself in a compromising position.”

Saga frowned. “You think she’ll try something again when we see her?”

“I do not expect a shark to ignore blood in the water, especially if that blood is from someone asking questions the shark does not want to answer.”

There was a particular quirk of the mouth Avery had begun to observe in her companion that she noticed now. It was a small, involuntary purse of the lips, barely perceptible and momentary in its duration. It was too subtle to be called a pout, but Avery had no better word for it. She’d seen it the day she’d accidentally revealed to Saga that she was a fey. She’d seen it when she refused to recuse herself from the last case. It was a hint of the stubborn nature beneath, the tell that she was not ready to let something go. “So, we should focus on Luna Ravenwood?”

“Yes. You mentioned you went to the library today?”

Saga placed the stack of papers on the table. “I decided to go after work and see what I could dig up.” She handed Avery the list of suspects from Blake Hingley. “You gave it to me when I was heading home, in case you don’t remember that part.”

She did not. “Did you find anything?”

“Mostly dead ends, but on a hunch, I also looked up your witness.” She filtered through her papers and handed one to Avery. “And I found this article.”

“UCL Professor’s Death Ruled an Accident…” Avery scanned over the remainder of the article as theories began to form and make connections even through the fog in her mind. She pushed herself from the table to retrieve her phone from her coat. “Betsey Paris went to UCL, did she not?”

“Yes, she did,” confirmed Saga.

Avery flipped through photographs until she found one of Betsey’s framed pictures. She pinched the image, enlarging it to get a better look at the girl’s face. It very well could have been from eighteen or so years ago. “It might have been around the same time as his death.”

“Exactly the same time, I found her graduation records.”

Avery turned around, which felt far more dramatic in her dressing gown. “Oh, you are clever.”

Saga beamed at her and moved to kneel on the floor, beginning to spread out the papers she’d found that she deemed important. “So, I called Reza and asked if he could retrieve any information he had on John Hingley for you.”

“How did he take that?”

“His tone indicated my dinner with them later this week might involve another terse conversation about inserting myself into dangerous situations…” Saga shrugged. “But since I’m also going armed with photographic evidence of everyone lying about my parents, I feel like I might win the moral high ground.”

Avery snorted and watched Saga place the information about Betsey’s graduation year next to the article of John Hingley.

“There’s this too.” Saga handed Avery another piece of paper.

Avery scanned it—recognizing it as a copy of the article framed in Luna’s home. “Can you link this to John?”

“Not definitively, but it would be a strong coincidence that this article praising Luna’s work as a psychic seems to align with how Blake lost his father when he was a baby. If he wrote it, and if he discovered she was a fake who maybe had inside knowledge of John because she was in one of his classes or something… It feels like the building blocks for a crime of passion are here.”

“It would be a possible motive,” Avery admitted.