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“It’s interesting that you say what rather than who,” Aiden drawled. “Because it shows an awareness that neither they nor Teresa White or Gerry Schmidt were taken by a human hand.”
Just for an instant, fear flashed in her eyes. Fear, and a growing sense of horror. There was no doubt she knew what was going on.
“So while you might not be personally responsible for their deaths,” Aiden continued conversationally, “by inviting a soul eater into the reservation to do your dirty work for you, you are nevertheless accountable for their deaths—and any others that occur until this thing is stopped.”
“No! I swear, it wasn’t me! I’m not the one—” She clammed up again, her expression a mix of mutinous determination and fear.
“Did you hire a witch to call forth the dark spirit?” I asked.
Her gaze shot to mine. “No, I didn’t. Might consider doing so to get rid of you, though.”
“That’s going to be a hard thing to do from inside a prison cell,” Aiden commented. “And I can’t see your poor mother stumping up the cash for that sort of thing. If she did, well, she could be an accessory to attempted murder.”
“You leave my mother out of it,” Larissa bit back, with something close to fear in her eyes. “She has nothing to do with anything.”
I flexed my fingers and silently bolstered the power of the spell, this time leaving an open connection so I could tighten it again if necessary. Doing so meant it would eventually start taxing my strength, but we needed answers. Larissa might be answering the questions truthfully enough, but she still wasn’t telling us all that she knew.
“How did that spirit get here if not through another witc
h?” I asked, as the air shimmered around her with renewed vigor.
Her face reddened as she fought the order, but she had no choice now but to answer. “It was meant to be a bit of fun. We didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“What was meant to be a bit of fun?” Aiden asked.
“Using the Ouija board.”
I swore softly. Why on earth did people consider Ouija boards to be nothing more than a bit of harmless fun? They were a goddamn gateway to the spirit realm, and very dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing—and most people didn’t. Hell, most people didn’t even take any sort of precautions. They just opened the gate willy-nilly and expected only harmless spirits to come through. Witches had spent years—if not decades—trying to educate the masses, but it seemed the message still wasn’t getting through.
“So who was there, and what happened?” Aiden asked.
“We were at Frankie’s place—”
“Frankie?” he cut in. “Has she got a surname?”
“Kastle. She was a bit weird, in a hippy sort of way, you know?”
“And her address?”
“It’s a little weatherboard place on North Street.” She hesitated. “Thirty-one, I think.”
“Who else was there?”
“Aron, Marlinda, and me, of course,” she said. “Lance Marin was there, as was Gerry Schmidt, and a woman named Janice, who was one of Marlinda’s friends. I’ve never met her before.”
“You weren’t told her last name?”
“No, but she wasn’t a wolf.”
Aiden grunted, and looked at me. “Would a dark spirit hunt down those who called it into being?”
“They’re called dark spirits for a reason. And given these fools probably didn’t take the proper precautions before using the board, they’d be easy prey.”
“We drew a fucking pentagram on the floor,” Larissa growled. “We aren’t that stupid.”
“What color candles did you use?” I snapped back. “Did you create a basic circle of protection, or a more advanced one? Did you beseech protection from the right gods?”
She scowled. “How the fuck do I know? It was just a pentagram.”
