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“Under duress?” Gabi asked, the side of her mouth curled up. Joy’s heart did a stupid little jump; she told it to stop that immediately.
When Gabi laughed, it was like being in the past. It was like no time passed at all. Joy rooted herself firmly to the spot on the linoleum to stop her traitor legs from rushing across the small distance. She wanted to throw herself into Gabi’s arms, but they weren’t together, this wasn’t high school, and Joy had embarrassed herself enough tonight.
“I should go to bed,” Joy repeated for the umpteenth time, walking backwards. Oh god, did that sound like an invitation? She really hoped not. Even if itwasGabi’s bed and she didn’t reallyneedan invitation to use it and—
“I still,” Gabi said quickly. “I have—certain feelings. For you.”
Joy stopped walking, her heart missing its next beat. “You have what?”
“Certain feelings,” Gabi repeated, closely examining a scratch in the table’s surface. “For you.”
Joy felt a laugh rise, and wondered if she was hysterical as she choked it down. After today, she wouldn’t have been so surprised. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have certain feelings for you.” Gabi shifted her weight, shoving her hands into her pockets, her shoulders rounded.
Ooookay.
Joy neared a step against her better judgement. “Is that why you kept the rowan cross?”
Gabi nodded.
Joy was making her uncomfortable.
“Alright,” she said after a moment. Maybe they needed to get all of this out in the open. “We’ll talk.”
She hoped she’d get through the conversation without blurting out anything else.
FOURTEEN
GABI
When Gabi drew her coat around herself the next afternoon, her body aching from the magic she’d used to set up a magical warning system around the Law House, she was surprised to find she wasn’t nervous about going to Joy’s house later. She was due to meet the coven when she’d finished work—well, when her official work hours were over. She never actuallyfinished. They’d agreed to gather everyone together to discuss how the witches might assist Gabi in finding the killer, whichshouldhave made Gabi nervous, or at least reluctant to share space with the chaotic coven again. But instead, she had an extra bounce in her step and couldn’t quite keep the smile off her face.
The day passed in a blur of activity, Gabi’s favourite type of day. The kind that kept her moving, kept her mind occupied, and kept her too busy to let a single worry of failure into her head.
She went from house to house, questioning Eilidh and the other friends and family of Freya Faulkner with confidence and sympathy—something Gabi struggled with on an average day. She hadn’t fully found the balance of sounding capable enough to be respected but sympathetic enough to coax people into talking.
Afterwards, her mood stayed buoyant even as she went door to door near the beach, where someone might have noticed something suspicious. It was a long shot, but she put up a board asking for people to come forward if they’d seen anything the morning of the murder. By the end of the day, Gabi’s business card wallet was empty, and she’d accomplished nothing, but at least she’d tried.
The only thing nagging at her was that she hadn’t had enough time to interview the witness Paulina had conjured, the one who saw someone who looked like Joy on the beach that morning.
It was five o’clock by the time Gabi got home, the sky dark already at this time of year as she heated up a microwave meal. Piling her bag, notebook, tablet, and ever-demanding paperwork on the table, Gabi allowed herself five minutes of stillness and quiet. Five minutes of inactivity to eat her food and begin to unspool the tension in her body, before she made herself a strong coffee and, tapping her fingers on the table in indecision, made a video call to one of her professors from university.
She’d only been in his class for eight weeks, a night course she attended to keep her communicative skills up to date—to help her come across as anything but a cold-hearted bitch, a reputation she’d earned after a few months on campus. Coming across as a detached, unaffected cop was fine when intimidating suspects but witnesses … not so much. The problem was Gabi preferred all her emotion to be on the inside, far down where no one could see it, not written across her face.
But through the class she’d met Rick Ali, whose main passion was criminal profiling. With a case like Gabi’s current one, she could use some light shed on the sort of person who carved the wordnaughtyinto a teenage girl’s face and stuffed her insides with rubbish. Short of knowing the killer was female and about Joy’s height—if Paulina’s witness could be believed—Gabi knew fuck all. She needed to narrow down the suspects, especially since Agedale was seventy percent female.
“Gabriella,” Rick greeted when he accepted the call. His eyes crinkled at the edges, a smile spreading across his brown face. “I heard you got offered a job.”
“Trial,” Gabi corrected, sitting straighter and trying not to let her frustration show. “It’s nothing guaranteed yet. And about that trial…”
“This isn’t a social call then,” he said knowingly. “What kind of criminal are you searching for?”
Gabi curled her hands around the base of the chair where he couldn’t see. “A killer. And not a regular one.”
Rick pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned closer to the screen. “How much can you tell me?”
“Without getting in shit with my superior? I don’t know. She’s … strict.” That was definitelynotthe word, but Gabi would prefer, but she had to at leasttryand stay professional. She took a breath and sat straighter. “The victim is a teenage girl, not involved in anything criminal from what I can tell, just a regular girl. Argues with her parents, sneaks out to see her boyfriend, goes shopping with her friends.” To the two shops in Agedale that sold something other than food and spell ingredients—options were limited. Gabi learned all this from questioning Freya’s family today. “And yet her body turned up on a beach with the wordnaughtycarved into her cheek, and her body was cut open and filled with empty crisp packets and cans and take-away containers.”
