that I’m telling you the truth. I have no reason to lie to you.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re lying,” Beau replied, almost apologetically. “I simply think you’ve made a mistake.”
“Odessa poisoned me with toxic honey,” I said, losing patience. We didn’t have time for this. “She shot and killed Becca Rhodes, who is lying dead in your barn right now. Aside from trusting Odessa to begin with, where exactly did I make a mistake?”
“As I understand it, mad honey is often used as a drug by young people,” Beau answered. “Odessa has experimented with narcotics before. She must have used the wrong jar to sweeten your tea.”
I clenched my teeth. “As for the gun,” Beau went on, “she probably realized her mistake with the honey and took your weapons so you wouldn’t retaliate before she could explain. You said Becca shot first, correct?”
“Odessa admitted it to me!” I said hotly. “She said she wants to kill you because you wouldn’t let her become a boundary witch or take Deimos to the Olympics.” That felt like an oversimplification, but I wasn’t sure how else to explain it at the moment.
Beau gave a patronizing laugh. “Why on earth would she want to be cursed?”
Milburn stepped forward. Apparently he’d refused to leave town tonight, which was exactly what I would have done in his place. Now he gave the cardinal vampire a grave look. “Beau, Odessa was the one who changed the arrangements for the blood tribute on Saturday.”
That brought Beau up short. He turned his attention to the taller vampire. “Excuse me?”
“The other night at Promenade, I couldn’t figure out why the witches were brought in so early, and from the north entrance,” he said. “Their arrival is usually so discreet.” He made a little throat-clearing noise, and I understood the part he wasn’t saying. For their own safety. “It didn’t seem likely that you’d made the change just so you could parade them in front of Sergeant Luther,” Milburn added, nodding at me. Once again, they were discussing me as though I weren’t right there. “So I asked Warton about it. He said Odessa had told him you’d requested the change.”
“And you’re just telling us now?” I said in disbelief.
Milburn had the grace to look embarrassed. “With all the excitement that followed, I forgot all about it.”
Holy shit. “She set me up,” I said in wonder. “She knew from what I’d told her at lunch that it would bother me to see the blood tribute. So she set it up for me to storm out.” I turned to Beau. “Can she shoot a rifle?”
Beau only stared, looking stunned.
“Better than any human I’ve ever met,” Milburn said grimly. “Beau taught her when she was little. She learned how to shoot in the dark.”
“Your attacker . . . he was male,” Beau sputtered.
“The second attacker was male,” I corrected. “None of us ever got close to the sniper. Are there any human men who’d do anything for Odessa?”
In answer, Beau actually put out a hand and rested it on the wall, as though to reassure himself it was still there. “She’s not a witch,” he whispered. “She can’t do magic.”
I sighed. “Anyone can do certain kinds of magic. But all her friends are witches, right? if she got them together, and she had the mandragora, and that tattooing . . .” I hadn’t gotten a good look at the tattoos on the lower parts of Odessa’s fingers, but they were intricate. “Do any of the local witch clans work with tattoo magic?”
Beau swallowed hard. “Clan Calloway has dabbled in it,” he said softly. “Her friend Emmaline.”
The blonde friend. I hadn’t noticed any tattoos on her, but she’d been wearing pants and long sleeves. “Sophia said a coven could do this, and I blew right past it,” I said slowly. Simon and Lily had used the word “coven” before, but I had only a faint impression of what it meant. Sort of an alternative to a clan, I thought. We needed to talk to a witch expert. Not Tallulah, though—Whitney might be involved too.
“Oh God,” Beau said, his voice faint.
At vampire speed, Milburn went to his side and rested his hand on Beau’s shoulder, similar to how they’d stood after Warton’s death. Beau stared into the other vampire’s face as though he’d never seen it before. “I am sorry, old friend,” Milburn said gently.
Beau just shook his head, but not as though he didn’t believe me—as though he didn’t want to believe. “How could