bar—“is like something the Tsalagi would prepare in autumn. Traveling food. Dried fish and cornmeal and dried berries. Every clan and every family had its own recipe.” He bit in and tasted, chewing slowly. “I like the taste of sweet and salt together.” He inclined his head at me.
I inclined mine back and said to FireWind, “We have a lot to tell you, and I know you stopped at the police department on the way in, but for everyone here, I recently finished a prelim question and answer with the mother and the two sisters. Heirs to Stella’s land, personal properties, and liquid assets are the three of them and Catriona Doyle, who Stella knew for only a year. Catriona is a very weak witch, a musician in the band, and her sister is the stronger witch, Etain Doyle, currently allied with the North Nashville coven.”
“Yes,” FireWind said, licking his knuckle to get a salmon crumb, an unexpectedly inelegant gesture, but one that made me like him more. “Money, power, and passion, the roots of all murder. I spent an hour watching Catriona’s interrogation through an observation glass and she keeps her secrets well, though I gathered that there was something more than friendship between Catriona and her employer. I am currently assuming that they were lovers, not something she needs to hide in this day and age, but not a relationship that Stella’s more right-wing fans are likely to approve.”
Surprise flashed through me. Stella and Catriona were lovers? The odd comments by her mother and sisters suddenly made sense. I was an idiot for not understanding them, but homosexuality was severely punished in the church. It wasn’t the kind of relationship that was easy for me to recognize, falling into the unfamiliar.
He tilted his head, musing, “The Tsalagi have never understood the white man’s needs to regulate sexuality. My impression was a gut reaction and is perhaps incorrect. We’ll need Dyson and Racer to sit down with her.” He wanted Catriona truth-read by the unit’s empath and the unit’s probie truth-senser together. It would be impossible to hide anything from them working as a team.
FireWind met my gaze. “Thank you for sharing your food. It will hold me until we leave here for the night.”
“My pleasure.” And it was. FireWind was overbearing and aloof, a reserved man who was still deeply affected by mores, tribal culture, outdated social standings, and the way the law was interpreted and enforced during the long years of his personal and law enforcement life. Most of the time, I didn’t like him. But then he’d do something charming and my perceptions flipped. Besides. I liked feeding people. It made me happy.
He continued, “Catriona is a complicated woman. She, her sister, and her child are here in the States on visas from Ireland. Catriona keeps secrets. She is grieving her friend and perhaps lover. And because we have not completely ruled out death magics, she will be charged with multiple counts of premeditated murder by magical means in the morning, and likely Etain as accomplice.” He stared at the potted tree and added, “Unless we have found highly exculpatory evidence, or unless the sheriff and I provide means forcing Smythe to postpone bringing charges.”
“Smythe is an ass,” T. Laine said.
“True,” FireWind said. “However, can you absolutely, conclusively prove that this working is not from a death-witch curse, and that Catriona is not a death witch?”
“Not yet.”
“Then we must let it play out until we can prove or disprove those things,” FireWind said.
“I’d like to observe when Tandy or Margot talks to Catriona,” T. Laine said. “I want to say that she isn’t a death witch and these magics are not death magics, but there aren’t any studies on death witches, and we don’t even know what death and decay is.” T. Laine’s face pulled into a peeved expression. “In the distant past, all witches were burned at the stake by humans, but death witches were put down with extreme prejudice by whatever coven was capable of it. More recently they’ve been immediately placed into null room prisons for the good of the people around them.”
“Not always,” FireWind murmured, a small smile on his face.
“Whatever,” T. Laine said. “So we have no studies and no cases where death-magic energies were read by witches or a psy-meter. What we know from oral histories is that death witches lose control of their magics and end up killing their families. Sometimes their entire towns. From what I’ve observed, Etain’s