old lady while dancing around poo smears, I had been arrested for the murder of my ex-husband, Alan.
Now, to be fair, I had on more than one occasion thought about killing him, but no more so than any other woman with a douche canoe manipulating liar of an ex. However, I can firmly say I didn’t so much as put a bruise on him. Not that the police here in Savannah had believed me. Nope, they’d tossed on the cuffs and dragged me here to my own personal hell.
To add insult to injury, the police have taken my magical leather hip bag, which meant they are now in possession of my gran’s old spell book, the finger bone I use to summon Robert (shoot, that might not help me in the “I’d never hurt anyone” category if they ask me who it belongs to), and the book of black magic curses I’d picked up in my travels. They also have the two knives Crash made for me what felt like a lifetime ago. I wonder if the officers would be able to find them in the bag.
I hope not. I hope that my bigger-than-it-looked bag hides my goodies from the police.
The one thing they haven’t been able to take from me was the one thing I wished to heaven they’d been able to. Of course, he was the reason I was currently stuck in this poop-covered cell.
Alan, aka Himself, aka the ex.
“Seriously, Bree?” Alan stood on the other side of the bars from me. My ex-husband, dead as a doornail, had come back as a ghost to haunt me. The jerk. “What did you expect, hanging around with that freak show crowd? Acting like you’re some sort of super sleuth, when we both know you were always terrible at guessing how a book or movie ended. The worst.”
He still wore his paddy hat, and he lifted it to rub his mostly bald head. “I mean, even I know you didn’t kill me, but let’s be honest, any of those freaks you’re with could be the culprit—it’s not like I remember how I died. Maybe that troll you were making out with did it because he didn’t like the idea of me as your ex-husband.”
I stared at Alan. The troll he was referring to was Crash. Crash was fae, and he had a glamor that kept humans from seeing his true appearance, which was why Alan had seen him as an ugly lump instead of the stunning piece of man—fae—meat that he was. Then again, maybe I was the one who’d gotten it wrong. Because it turned out Crash wasn’t such a stand-up guy. I’d helped him face down the goblin king, and he’d left me high and dry afterward.
I leaned my forehead against the bars and whispered to Alan. “You realize that if I get stuck here, you get stuck here, seeing as you’re attached to me whether either of us likes it or not? Why don’t you see what you can find out in the other rooms? Try to figure out why they think I did it. Maybe it’s just a mistake.”
And maybe I was the queen of England, but I was hoping this could be dealt with before I had to use the toilet in the corner of the room in full view of everyone.
Alan frowned, which wrinkled a great deal of his forehead with that receding hairline of his. He tapped a finger to the hollow of his throat and then turned as he spoke. “I have to admit, I’d like to know what they have on you. I’ll see what I can find.”
His footsteps didn’t make a sound as he walked off. When he disappeared from view, I turned and found myself face to face with the woman who had the expensive clothes hanging off her frame. Her dark brown eyes were dilated as she stared into my face. “You crazy? Talking to yourself or your demons? Or still coming off a high?”
“Not crazy, not high, more like I was talking to a demon.” I tried to slide sideways, but she snaked a hand around the bar to my left, and when I shifted to the right, she grabbed a bar on the other side. Well then, apparently, we were going to have a talk. I grimaced and looked at her. “Look, I didn’t kill anyone, certainly not my ex-husband. I’m going to be out of here in no time, so no need to make friends.”