Saturday. 2:59 PM.

I was grateful that they let me sleep.

Though, thinking about it, it’s entirely possible that they just couldn’t wake me up. As hard as I’d been running my body, I was probably in some sort of ‘Don’t wake up unless there’s a tornado siren’ state of unconsciousness.

I didn’t dream. I was too tired to dream. I embraced the void of darkness, giving my body a chance to recover.

I was finally roused in the early morning, my pockets emptied, my backpack nowhere to be seen, cuffed to a table in a park just east of Union Station. It was hot, I was thirsty, and there was a rock in my shoe. Not my most pleasant morning ever.

The two counsellors were there, looming. They asked what had happened, and I told them. They asked again, and I told them again, in greater detail. It went on like that, until I gave them the full, unabridged production.

While my mouth ran on autopilot, my brain was working. If Agnita wasn’t the killer, then it stood to reason that there was either a fourth secret counsellor in the city, or it was one of these two.

Occam’s razor suggested the latter, I just had to play my cards right to figure out which of them it was.

So, I watched them. I chose my words carefully. During the lulls in the narrative, I tried to get an impression of who they were as people, to give myself an inkling of whom was more likely to cover up a murder.

Despite everything, I couldn’t pin either of them down, not yet, but there was still time. More important, anyways, was ensuring I got out of this situation without first spending a few decades in jail for something that wasn’t my fault, just so I couldn’t spill the beans.

I ended my story, finishing it with the note that I’d gotten the message out.

“So,” I said, sitting back, hands folded neatly in front of me. “You can make up whatever allegations you want, the truth is out there. By now, everyone knows what the council did, and they’ll know I’m innocent.”

I expected shock, surprise, maybe a bit of anxiety. Instead, both of them were smirking. That wasn’t the reaction I’d been hoping for.

I looked between them, frowning. “What?”

“First,” Davis held up one of his meaty hands, raising one finger. “You can publish whatever fiction you want, that doesn’t make it true. Whatever you know about the well, that doesn’t mean you’re innocent of the murder.”

That was a fair point, though I didn’t mention that I was still working on my theory of who the killer really was. “Okay. And second?”

Murray leaned in, speaking in a conspiratorial tone. “Do you really think we didn’t put a communications hex on your phone the minute it had a signal?”

Oh. Oh. I opened my mouth, closed it, and swallowed. “So…”

“So, you should have run for it when you had the chance, newsie,” Davis chuckled. “You might have made it a couple blocks before we caught up to you.”

That was troubling, but I wasn’t dead in the water just yet. “You still don’t have any proof I did it. Because I didn’t do it.”

“Besides your lifelines all over the victim’s home, her blood on your clothes, a connection between you and the victim,” Davis pointed out. “And the fact that you’re full of crap. Story doesn’t make any sense.”

Murray sighed, shaking her head. “Ainsworth...”

“We both know he’s doing it on purpose,” Davis grumbled.

“We’ve got an admission of using magic without a license, trespassing, and a couple counts of assaulting a council agent,” Murray pointed out. “With his parole, that’s ten years, easy.”

“It’s not a murder charge,” Davis growled. “Piece of—”

“Let’s go over this again.” Murray smiled, facing me with a sunny expression that was at odds with my circumstance. “I had a few questions about some… discrepancies.”

I could still salvage things, I just had to do it right. “Alright. What discrepancies?”

“It’s hard to know where even to start, but we can take it from the end and work backwards. You said that ‘Agnita’ cuffed you before the vampire came in, that’s why you had handcuffs on when we found you.”

“That’s right.”

“And this was after the vampire came in to attack you both?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I shook my head. “Before.”

“So, she showed up, cuffed you, and then she left before the vampire arrived.”

“No, she disappeared…” I sighed. “If you’re just going to repeat my story with errors to try and make me make a mistake, we’ll be here all day.”

Davis’s knuckles popped, but Murray shook her head at him. “Fine. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?”

I shrugged. “If that’s what you want to do. I assume you mean when I found Andrea’s body?”

“Right. The timing is… coincidental, to say the least.”

That was true, but it’s not like I’d staged it on purpose. “Sometimes coincidences happen. I didn’t plan to have the killer find me, it just sort of… happened.”

Murray shook her head, smiling like she’d caught me in some deep lie. “Not that. The phone. You expect us to believe that you just came in and found her phone, hidden in some far corner of the room?”

And there was my ace in the hole. I smiled.

It was her turn to be perturbed. “What?”

“The corner of the room?” Davis asked, looking over at her in surprise.

“Yeah.” Tapping the pen, she stopped the notetaking and flipped back, to where I’d talked about finding Andrea’s body. “Because it wasn’t in… her pocket...”

She froze, staring down at the transcript of what I’d said while she was gone.

…

Friday. 2:44 PM

The truth this time.

I pumped out hand soap from a dispenser shaped like a squirrel, running hot water up to my elbows, trying to get them clean. There was so much blood, but I had a task to focus on, and that kept me steady. Using a roll of paper towels to dry off, I focused my attention back on my goals.

My phone rang again. I hung up, and instead dialed Andrea’s number. It didn’t go to voicemail. It wasn’t off, it just wasn’t ringing. It wasn’t in her pocket, I would have noticed, but it was probably close by.

Shutting my eyes, I listened.

I could hear the sound of the HVAC, the whirr of the fridge, a few birds outside, and…

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

There it was. Almost inaudible, coming from by the wall. Turning, I faced it, approaching slowly so I could listen for the sound.

It was coming from the vent. The metal grate covering the air intake was old, and the gaps were big enough to allow a slender phone to slide right through. There were no screws on the grate, it was just held in place by friction, and I was able to pop it right off.

Squinting down the vent, I saw the phone, screen lit but showing only a patchwork of cracks and color bars. Lying on my side, I stuck my arm down the hole, pulled out the phone, and inspected it.

The screen was broken beyond the point of functionality, but it was something. I slipped it in my pocket, then started taking photos with my own phone.

…

Saturday. 3:02 PM

Murray was staring at me as though her gaze might bore a hole through my skull.

I ignored her as best I could, focusing my attention on Davis. “I… may have perjured myself when I said I found the phone in her pocket.”

He looked at me, a bushy eyebrow raised in confusion. “You lied?”

“I wanted to see if you’d notice,” I conceded, and then I finally let the penny drop. “Makes you wonder how Murray knew the truth when I’d made up where the phone was, doesn’t it?”

There it was, out in the open, so blunt and obvious that no amount of denial could cover it up. Katherine Murray knew something she couldn’t have. She’d been to the crime scene before me, and there was only one reason why that might be the case.

She was the killer.

The burly counsellor stood, took a couple steps back, hands running through his hair. He paced, spun, and turned to face his partner, something like horror in his expression. “Kat, I know he’s wrong. Tell me why he’s wrong.”

Murray had her eyes locked on me. I wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Anger, that I’d tricked her? Frustration at falling for it? Fear, maybe, now that she’d been caught out?

She turned to face her partner, looking up to him. “I was making sure she wouldn’t breach commonwealth confidentiality. There was a hex setup in her backyard, I had to check on it hourly. She saw me and tried to call that… journalist. I confronted her, and she reached down, and I thought she was going for a weapon. I reacted.”

I thought Davis might be sick. “Shit…” He resumed pacing, hands clenching and unclenching as he worked through it.

“It was a mistake.” Murray looked down, and it seemed like genuine regret. “I reacted on instinct. You know how these things can turn in a split second.”

Rubbing a hand at the back of his neck, Davis shook his head. “Kat… why didn’t you tell me?”

“I…” She frowned. “I thought you’d be safer if you didn’t know. In case this got to the wrong ears. You wouldn’t be culpable.”

“So how much is bullshit? Was Agnita really in town this whole time?”

Murray looked back at me, her jaw set. “If she was, I’m going to have strong words with some people about this. They shouldn’t have sent in another counsellor without consulting me. I don’t think she’ll cause trouble, though. She’d be implicated, too.”

Davis looked back at me, defeated. “I don’t know what to say.”

I stared between them. Is he going to… do anything?

Sighing, he added, “I wish you’d trusted me on this. I’ve got your back, Murray. Obviously. I know you wouldn’t do anything without a good reason.”

Oh.

They faced me, looking more resigned than upset, and Murray sighed. “I tried it my way.”

I swallowed. “Are you going to beat a confession out of me?”

Davis glanced at Murray. “You think there’s a point to that?”

Murray shook her head. “We can put him away for a decade just on what we’ve got, we’ve just got to keep this internal. Murder One might get too much publicity, anyways. Anything he says in lockup will just sound like bitter conspiracy theories.”

I cleared my throat, getting their attention. “There’s… something else I didn’t tell you.”

It was time for my second ace in the hole.