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Any chance of friendship, or more, had died the same day Joy’s mum passed away.
Her dad touched her elbow, and Gabi startled out of the memory. “Just be fair and thorough. You can do nothing more.”
“Paulina’s already out for Joy’s blood.” Gabi tried not to show how deeply that troubled her. Joy wasn’t a murderer—she was kind and gentle and she worked in a sanctuary for near-extinctbirdsfor gods’ sakes. She did needlepoint and made handmade necklaces strung with sea glass in her spare time. She volunteered at every charity fundraiser and helped every little old lady across the street without prompting or promise of reward. Joy knew all her neighbours by name, spoke to them for minutes on end about their nephews in Australia and their latest brochure of Witch Knitting Weekly, and she did it with genuine enthusiasm. Joy Mackenzie was not a fucking killer. And Gabi would be damned if she let Paulina set her up for the crime.
Bo didn’t reply. He knew the way of Agedale better than anyone. As Pride, Gabi was responsible for enforcing laws and handing out justice, but she didn’t have any true power. At the end of the day, Paulina was head witch;shewas in charge of the town, and Gabi answered to her. Her shiny new car—or rather her pre-owned rust bucket—was courtesy of Paulina and she'd only been given it so she could get from crime scene to crime scene. Her kit and bag of tools were the same. If Gabi failed this trial, she’d have to pay back every last penny.
The thumbnail-sized golden sun badge on her collar and the ID in her wallet, too, could easily be revoked. She was at the head witch’s mercy, and she knew it. So did her dad.
If Gabi screwed up, the job would probably go to Big Phil, the aptly named witch and groundskeeper of Agedale High who’d tried to intimidate the town into staying honest since Gabi’s dad had retired—and failed. Thefts, attacks, brawls, home disturbances, and (of course) public indecency, had been alarmingly frequent under Big Phil’s rule. Gabi suspected he only took the position to get free pints at the Tipsy Witch.
Gabi looked at her dad, his lined face and knowing eyes. “Fair and thorough,” she echoed.
With a lot more effort and bravery than it should have required, Gabi set off back to the beach, to finish her observations of the scene, and to bring Joy in for questioning.
Fuck, this was gonna be hard. She could feel the ghost of their relationship breathing down her neck with every step she took.
THREE
JOY
It took four hours for Gabi to finish collecting evidence and taking notes but now she and Joy were here, the door opening in front of them. The house looked the same. Narrow and tall and completely unremarkable from the outside, but inside it held so many memories. Joy walked through every glimmer of the past as she followed Gabi down the narrow, brown-wallpapered hall, past doors that Joy knew opened onto a sitting room used for informal occasions, a records room full of paper boxes overflowing with files, and into the room tucked beside the kitchen—the room Bo Pride always questioned suspects in.
Joy’s heart raced, her palms pricking with sweat. Back on the beach, the sea had soothed her, keeping the frantic, falling-apart pieces inside of her steady through her fae nature, her connection with the sea. As much as Joy rarely called on the fae part of her, she’d been grateful for the tide, for theshhof the water that calmed her racing heart. Unlike a full-blooded fae, she didn’t have wings or sharply pointed ears, but she always felt safer near the sea. Now, away from the water, her heart thumped in her chest, and fear shivered through her, gripping her throat tight. A witch had been killed—killed.
Joy couldn’t get the image of the girl out of her head.
Gabi sat in one of the stiff leather chairs in the interview room, her notebook on her lap and her phone set to record, and Joy timidly took the chair opposite her, little tremors moving through her hands. Her eyes darted around the room, from the door to the small window to the placid art on the walls that was meant to be soothing, along with the pale blue decor. She reminded herself she wasn’t nervous because she had anything to be guilty of. It was being in this house, being near Gabi, and what she’d seen on that beach. All of those things were out of the ordinary. One on its own she could weather, but all of them at once? She was crumbling.
Joy needed everything to be normal,routine. It was how she’d survived since her mum’s death, how she’d got out of bed and gone to work day after day, how she was able to face the people of Agedale who had known her mum, who mentioned hereverytime they saw Joy. Routine was how Joy kept going, moving steadily away from that black hole in her past. It had been trying to swallow her ever since that morning she’d crept back into her house after a night spent on the beach, the morning she’d found her mum cold and still in her bed.
She died in her sleep; she’ddiedwhile Joy had been lying in the sand kissing Gabi, plotting the stars with their fingertips. While they’d been cuddling and laughing, Joy’s mum had beendying.
“I need to ask you some questions,” Gabi said now, facing Joy head on, her tanned face grave but her brown eyes sympathetic.
Joy could only look at Gabi’s shoulder, too aware of everything that had happened in those days after her mum’s death to look her in the eye. The guilt was suffocating,sickening. What she’d said…
“I know,” Joy said, nodding and trying to keep her voice even, perfectly neutral. She wanted this to be over so she could get to work, get back tonormal, and forget this whole thing had ever happened. A girl killed; Gabi back home for the first time since she left for university when she was eighteen—and never came back for six years.
Joy had been thoughtless and callous the last time they’d spoken. She’d wanted space, time to mourn. She’d wanted Gabi to leave her alone for a few days. Not for ayear, and definitely not forsix.
Gabi sighed slowly through her nose, fiddling with her notebook, and Joy wondered if she was remembering everything that had happened too, everything they’d said—every word was here with them, hanging from the rafters like cobwebs left for dust. “Alright,” she said finally, her expression focussed. “Start at the beginning—you were going into work? Tell me everything that you saw.”
* * *
There was hardlyanything for Joy to tell but the interview still took an hour, with Gabi firing question after question at Joy. Gabi seemed … different. She’d always been serious and intent but there was a honed focus to her now, a confidence Joy tried for and always seemed to miss. Gabi seemed happy in herself, confident of her role and her job, and if Joy hadn’t been so consumed with the need to leave, to get out into the sea-blown air where she couldbreathe, she might have been overcome with envy.
Her hands were shaking fully by the time they finished, and Joy shoved them into her coat pockets, following Gabi back through the dim hallway to the front door. Automatically, her body on autopilot, she hopped over the board that creaked wildly, and she refused to dwell on the familiarity of the Pride House.
She couldn’t let the past seep into the present when Gabi had so clearly moved on with her life. But she couldn’t seem to stop the memories rising up, like hungry sea monsters smelling blood.
“I’m sorry,” Gabi said abruptly, hovering on the threshold as Joy took a few steps onto the street outside, the cold already seeping into her bones through the fake fur of her coat. For a second, Joy thought she was apologising for all the bitter history between them, and she opened her mouth to say she was too, but Gabi went on, “For having to bring you in like this. I wouldn’t—” She bit off whatever she’d been about to say, her expression going eerily hard, a stranger staring out through her dark eyes. “Paulina. Nice to see you again.”
Her tone communicated that it was anything but nice.
Joy turned, hugging her arms around herself as dread opened like a pit under her feet, her body tumbling in. Paulina was storming down the road from the high street, coming straight from Town Hall, Joy guessed. When the large woman was close enough, she flapped her hand at both Joy and Gabi, the crisp paper in her grip crumpling.
“Joy Mackenzie,” she said in a triumphant voice. “I have a warrant for your arrest. Pride, do the honours.”
