she said when she’d set the glass back down. “They were hit by a drunk driver on the way to Azalea Manor.” Her friendly expression faded, replaced by sadness. “Beau was actually first on the scene, from what I understand. Louise and Brian were already dead, but he took Odessa to the hospital.”
“She was in the car?” It came out much sharper than I’d intended, but I was startled. If Odessa had boundary witchblood, and she’d been in a fatal car crash when she was eleven . . . what if she was a boundary witch? I remembered what Beau had said about the Olympics. Could Odessa be pissed enough to lash out by laying Beau’s favorite ghosts?
But Tallulah seemed to read my mind. She raised an index finger and said, “I know what you’re thinking, but Odessa wasn’t at great risk. She broke both legs, the poor dear, and there were some cuts, but she did not die. Of this I am absolutely certain.”
Her voice grew very hard on this last sentence, and for just a moment I saw the powerful witch behind the genteel southern mask. And something else—an unmistakable hint of revulsion at the thought of Odessa turning into a boundary witch. Tallulah had made damned sure that the girl’s heart hadn’t stopped before she’d let Odessa play with her daughter. It wouldn’t be that difficult for a witch with plenty of money to get hold of a medical file.
Tallulah gave a light laugh. “Of course, the hardest part was keeping Dessa off horses while her legs were in casts. Horse-crazy since she could walk, that girl. He wouldn’t say so, but I’m sure it makes Beau proud.”
The segue was very well done. I smiled awkwardly, not sure how to respond. I was used to talking to suspects. I didn’t know what to do with a glossy southern woman who seemed like a different species from the witches I knew.
“So,” Tallulah said pleasantly, uncrossing and then recrossing her ankles, “how are you finding Georgia? It must be so very different from where you’re from. Denver, is it?”
“Boulder.”
“Of course, my mistake. Will you get to see much of Atlanta while you’re here?”
I just looked at her for a moment. She was still smiling, but it was like looking at a wall.
You don’t have to play her game, babe. You don’t work for The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Fuck it. Sam was right. “Tallulah, would you mind terribly if we cut the shit?”
She simply raised a perfect eyebrow, giving away nothing. “I beg your pardon?”
“Beau brought me here because something is happening to his ghosts. Do you have anything to do with that?”
She put down her glass of tea with an air of poised indignation. “Of course not.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
I thought her lips pursed for a moment, but she shook her head, turning it into a hair toss. “I have nothing to do with Beau’s ghosts. I don’t pretend to understand his obsession with them, but as he probably told you, I make a nice living from Beau and his people. I have absolutely no reason to interfere with his . . . interests.”
She reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and as her silver bangles shifted, I realized they were catching on something instead of sliding straight down her wrist. When I looked closely I saw it was one of those paracord bracelets, the kind campers and hikers wear in case of emergency.
Interesting. Tallulah didn’t exactly strike me as the camping type. Even in Boulder, people were more likely to attach them to backpacks or camp gear than to wear them. Besides, this one was flesh-colored, clearly meant to be hidden by the bangles. “Nice jewelry,” I said.
She made a subtle adjustment to the bracelets, covering the paracord. “Is that all you needed to ask?”
“Besides me, are there any boundary witches in Atlanta?”
I was watching closely for some kind of subtle reaction, but she relaxed, leaning back in her seat. “I don’t believe so.”
“Would you know?”
She tilted her head a moment, thinking it over. “If a boundary witch came here and kept an absolutely low profile, without doing magic, I suppose not. But the Atlanta Old World is a fairly small community. I know every clan leader, every child with witchblood, every store that sells authentic supplies. More importantly, I constructed the wards for at least two of the locations where ghosts have gone missing, so I visit them regularly.”
“Would a