Warping Minds & Other Misdemeanors - Annette Marie
Chapter One
I’m not gonna lie. Being restrained by handcuffs in a room with two powerful, beautiful women has a certain appeal. However, when those two women are cops and the room is a cold, barren box used for interrogations, the allure diminishes dramatically.
Captain Blythe dropped a stack of folders on the metal table with a loud smack, rattling the chains that ran from the tabletop to my wrists. She settled into the seat across from me and pushed up the sleeves of her simple white blouse. With wavy blond hair to her shoulders and cheekbones to spare, she had a kind of Cate Blanchett thing going on. Minus the charm. Or the accent.
“Kit Morris.” Her blue-eyed stare scraped like icicles. “Tell me everything you know.”
“Everything?” Did she mean that literally? I glanced at the second woman in the room for a clue.
Agent Lienna Shen. While Blythe had the Men in Black look down, Lienna might’ve wandered into the precinct by accident. Just shy of five and a half feet tall, she’d covered her simple blue-jeans-and-black-jacket outfit in knickknacks—leather bracelets, beads hanging from her ponytail of thick raven hair, silver rings on her slender fingers, chains and necklaces layered over her white t-shirt, and a hemp satchel slung over one shoulder.
When she caught me looking her way, she added a well-honed scowl to her accessories list.
Since neither woman was offering an explanation, I shrugged. “That could take a while. I know a lot of things. For example, the brachiosaur sounds in Jurassic Park were made by mixing whale and donkey noises together.”
Blythe’s eyes squinched. “What?”
“You said you wanted everything. I’m a bit of a movie buff, so I know lots of film trivia.”
“Do not screw with me,” she growled—and for a split second, both the table and my chair lifted off the floor.
The table and I hovered for a second, then dropped. My chair hit the linoleum, then my tailbone hit the chair. The impact jarred my teeth, the bang of the table landing ringing in my ears.
Oh, fun. Blythe was a telekinetic. And angry.
The captain leaned across the table. “Don’t forget where you are. This isn’t a TV show. We aren’t the police. You don’t get a phone call or a lawyer. This is the MPD, and in this precinct, you are completely, unalterably at my mercy. Do you understand?”
I nodded, playing it cool despite the dour voice in my head tallying all the ways in which I was completely screwed. My gaze darted away from her menacing glare and landed on my warped reflection in the one-way mirror behind her. It made me look like a deranged GI Joe doll.
To be fair, I hadn’t showered or shaved since my arrest two days prior, and this dull gray jumpsuit wasn’t doing my summer tan any favors—though it sure made my baby blues pop. But considering a very generous barista had once compared me to a young Chris Pine, the hobo-soldier look was depressing.
Blythe flipped a folder open. “We’re on our third interview, Mr. Morris, and I have no patience left. It’d be in your best interest to change your attitude before this session is over.”
Was that a threat? I’d liked her initial strategy better: the classic interrogation method where she’d started out considerate and conversational, offered me a hot drink and a snack, then subtly manipulated me into revealing self-incriminating tidbits about my past—or she’d tried. Maybe I should’ve been less obvious about deflecting her questions.
Not to say she was bad at her job, but this wasn’t my first interrogation.
I slouched back in my chair. “What do you want to know?”
“I want answers about your guild, Kirk, Conner & Qasid. Real answers.” She picked up a pen. “How long were you a member of KCQ?”
“About a year before shit hit the fan.”
“And the same night your guild fell, you attempted to flee the country?” Her tone suggested she didn’t think much of my bid to secure basic, prison-free survival.
“I did flee the country,” I corrected. “And I would’ve fled the continent too, but I didn’t expect MagiPol to send a superstar sorcerer after me.”
I gestured to Lienna, chains jangling unpleasantly. She maintained her scowl. Damn, her poker face was good. My previous interrogations had featured Blythe alone, so when Lienna had shown up for this one, I’d hoped for the timeless good cop/bad cop routine, but that didn’t seem to be happening.
“What was your role in KCQ?” Blythe asked.
“Support for the lawyers at the firm,” I answered promptly.