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A shake of her head. “No, I’m okay.” She paused, pale lips pressed together. “I mean, I’m not…but I guess I am.”
I picked apart that bundle of contradictions and determined that she meant she was physically okay. Psychologically, on the other hand….
I wished I could see her aura, but that particular gift seemed to have deserted me for the moment. Yes, I was used to it coming and going. Still, its timing seemed even crappier than usual.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I’d asked the same question of Lucien’s spirit earlier that day, but I hoped this time I might actually get an intelligible answer.
Her fingers clenched more tightly around the mug she held. She lifted it and took a very small sip, wincing a little at the heat. Voice flat, she replied, “I saw Lucien get murdered, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Dear Goddess. I rubbed my damp palms over the knees of my jeans. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s….” The word trailed off, as if she honestly hadn’t known what she intended to say. “I was going to say ‘it’s okay,’ but it’s really not.”
At a loss, I waited, telling myself that sometimes all you could do was hold off until a person came to the right psychological moment to speak. I’d dealt with this sort of thing in my practice before, although I’d never had a client who’d been traumatized by witnessing a murder. And she was traumatized. If she’d been any paler, she would have looked as though she was ready to pass out, and a tremor went through her as she stared down at her mug of tea.
Finally, she continued. “We performed the protection ritual at the Airbnb,” she said, speaking distinctly, her tone almost detached. I got the feeling that she was trying to describe Friday night’s events as though they’d happened to someone else, that doing so would make it a little easier for her to tell me what exactly had transpired. “But afterward, Lucien still seemed restless. I told him we should go out to the woods and make love in the moonlight.”
“That was your idea?” I asked, doing my best to rid my mind of that particular mental image.
Her lip curled, and she lifted the mug of tea and drank a slightly larger swallow. “Yeah. Does that freak you out or something?”
“No,” I said calmly. “You’re an adult, after all.”
Those words seemed to reassure her. She sipped some more tea, then continued. “So, we went out into the woods. It was cold, but we’d brought a couple of blankets with us from the Airbnb. And actually, it was beautiful, with the sound of the river in the background and a gibbous moon overhead.” A little hitch of a breath, and she blinked away the tears that came to her eyes as she recalled one of the final moments she’d shared with Lucien Dumond. “We got dressed and were folding up the blankets, getting ready to go back to the car.”
She stopped there, pausing so long, I wondered if she’d decided she wasn’t up to this after all and wasn’t going to complete her story. But after she pulled in a ragged little breath, she resumed the tale.
“All I heard was a rustling in the leaves underfoot. Someone — something — came out of the trees and went straight for Lucien.”
“Something?” I repeated. “You mean it wasn’t human?” Once again, I experienced a nasty little chill down my spine. Were my earlier suspicions about a nonhuman entity being the true murderer correct?
“I don’t know what it was,” she said. She leaned over and set the mug of peppermint tea on the coffee table, then crossed her arms and tucked her hands under them, as if trying desperately to get warm. “It was huge — much taller than Lucien. Tall and dark.”
“Like someone with dark hair and a dark complexion?”
Violet shook her head. “No…just dark. It was a shape. That’s all. I couldn’t see anything else.” Her teeth caught on her lower lip, small and white and perfect. “I mean, until I saw the knife. It flashed in the moonlight. I saw it go into Lucien’s chest, over and over.”
“That’s okay,” I said soothingly. “You don’t have to give me any more details. What happened after that?”
“Lucien sort of staggered over to the river and fell in it. He didn’t move. The — the whatever it was — turned toward me. I screamed and ran.” Tears began to slip from the corners of her eyes. She blinked, then reached up with one hand to wipe them away. “I know I should have stayed to check on Lucien, but I was so scared — ”
Should I reach over and pat her on the arm? Probably not; she was holding herself rigid, and I had a feeling she wasn’t in the mood to have anyone invade her personal space like that. “It’s fine,” I told her. “No one would have expected you to stay when you were being confronted by a dangerous stranger like that.”
A faint nod, and she sniffled. “Maybe. Anyway, I ran to the highway. A guy gave me a ride back to Globe, and I got in my car and left.”
“Why didn’t you tell Athene what had happened?”
Another sniff. “She wouldn’t have believed me. She hated me.”
True, Athene had acted as if she didn’t have much use for Violet Clarke, but “hate” was a pretty strong word. I didn’t bother to rebuke her, though, reminding myself once again that the girl was barely out of high school and had traveled on her own to a strange place where she didn’t know anyone, only to see her lover murdered right in front of her eyes.
Probably, I should cut her a little slack.
But while her story had answered a few questions, it left a lot open. She was sipping more of her tea, so I decided to leave the issue of Athene’s feelings for Violet behind and move on to a different piece of the puzzle. “Where did you go? Chief Standingbear told me that a gas station attendant had spotted your car heading east on Highway 70.”
Violet was silent for a moment. She still gripped the mug like it was the only thing grounding her in this reality. Then her thin shoulders lifted and she said, “I just needed to get away. I was worried that whatever was stalking Lucien and me would track me back to L.A., so I went in the opposite direction. I hadn’t really gotten my stuff out of the car yet, so I had my bags with me. Except I didn’t have a lot of cash, and I knew if I used my debit card, my parents would figure out where I had gone.”
That explanation seemed logical enough. It made me a little sad, though, thinking of her parents, of how she’d taken off and hadn’t told them where she was going.
