years now. He didn’t know that Jason was following him around New Orleans, stealing personal things, did he?”
Loriann rocked forward and back in her hard chair. Rocking, she raked her hair from her face in a gesture that looked as if she was tearing it out. We three watched her, no longer scrolling through Alex’s information on Godfrey, no longer talking. The NOLA witch looked defeated. Paler than when she arrived. She tried to speak, and the sound stopped in her throat, choked off by emotion. She went still and tried again, her words strangled. “It was three weeks after Rick and after the vampires, Leo Pellissier, and Katie Fonteneau rescued Jason.” Her eyes filled with tears and she pressed the back of her wrist against one and then the other to catch the tears. Her mascara stained the wrist feathery black. “He was playing golf with his father. I was … I was playing in the group behind them.”
“Ahhh,” T. Laine said. “You were stalking Rick. To help Jason, right? If I’d been blessed with a sorcerer brother, it’s what I would have done. Protect him. Family comes first.”
“Yes,” Loriann said, sounding relieved that Lainie understood.
Shifting subtly, Lainie mimicked her body posture until they were almost mirrored. It was standard Reid interrogation technique, but Lainie didn’t touch the witch, not even in the safety of the null room.
“Everything I did was for Jason,” Loriann said. “Always.”
T. Laine’s eyes shifted to the small mic on the table. Carefully, she covered it with her empty hand. “I get that. I do,” she whispered. “But you have to understand that the others, they won’t. Witches, witches stand together. But the mundane, they just don’t get it.”
Loriann’s gaze swung from the covered mic to the tee in T. Laine’s fingers, her tears flowing freely now.
“You’ve been alone, fighting to keep Jason safe all these years. Now you have help,” T. Laine whispered. “You’re not alone.”
Loriann broke down in sobs, her head on the table, her shoulders shuddering. As Rick had said, Loriann was wracked with guilt and anger, but also with loneliness. On some level, I understood that kind of loneliness. I’d been alone for a long time too.
“And that,” Tandy said, satisfaction in his tone, “is how you turn a suspect. At least until she realizes she’s been messed with.”
Gently, T. Laine added, “And then Jason disappeared, taking away all the items you had collected with Rick’s DNA on them.”
“I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”
“Lie,” Tandy whispered softly. “Lie.”
“Added that information to the file,” JoJo said.
In the null room, the interrogation of Loriann Ethier was ongoing, both witches sitting up now, and the mic uncovered. T. Laine’s cell was on the table beside her and by her next sentence I knew she had checked her messages and was up to date on everything we knew. “Your brother, Jason, tracked Rick to the Appalachians. Did you know he also joined with a vampire named Godfrey of Bouillon?”
Loriann looked confused. “Vampire?”
“Godfrey is a known pedophile. He or his people kidnapped a teenaged girl and killed her. And Jason was in the van when she was taken.”
Loriann slapped the table hard, coming up out of her chair. “No. No, that isn’t true.”
On her cell phone, T. Laine showed her the doorbell security system photo of the van with Jason’s face visible. Loriann wilted in her chair. T. Laine swiped the cell screen to show the photos of the girl on the side of the road. Loriann, who had to have seen worse photos as a crime scene tech at NOLA CLE, looked away.
“Jason is a blood junkie,” T. Laine said, her tone changing from understanding to inexorable. “He’s a witch.” Her tone went harder and firmer. “He’s a teenager. He may be sick from one of the cancers that male witches are prone to.” Her tone grew in volume. “You knew all this. And Jason is here in Knoxville. And he’s with vampires who have killed a human. Now. How are we going to find him, stop him from using the Circle of the Moon curse on Rick, and get Jason help?”
Loriann began rocking again. “The bond I put into Rick’s skin works both ways.”
JoJo said, “Both ways. That’s not what she said before. Not bad, Lainie girl.”
“Rick has to come to Jason if Jason calls,” Loriann said. “Jason can feel Rick’s location if he tries. I meant it when I said I can track my brother through Rick’s tattoos. If he’ll let