Fort Rive was a small town, but we still got the sheriff.

Was it weird that I knew enough about small-town law enforcement to understand that wasn’t a guarantee?

Probably.

It said a lot about my second life. I was so good at staying out of trouble that I’d managed to meet the law enforcement of every small town I’d been in.

Judging by how quickly the sheriff arrived, he probably lived in Fort Rive. He introduced himself as Mark Shine. He brought along a deputy and a forensic tech type. The techie not only did the whole CSI thing for clues, but also took all the photos. The doctor showed up after them, and the deputy informed the sheriff, at the beginning of my interview, that an attorney was on his way but he still had an hour-long drive.

They were talking about their attorney. The one who was supposed to help the sheriff. The lawyer Iset had sent for was probably still a day out.

It didn’t seem fair to me that the sheriff also got an attorney, but I guess everyone needs help when there’s that much blood on the floor.

Sheriff Shine was a middle-aged man. It looked like he ran every morning to make sure he wouldn’t be ashamed if he had to chase down a bad guy, but he also had a small belly that testified of his love for southern cuisine. His accent was almost as thick as Vance’s.

If I’d been drawing a cartoon of his face, I would’ve used a ruler to get the lines right; it was a rectangle with a manly chin. His cheeks were so flat that they looked like stone slabs. He smiled at least once whenever anyone came to talk to him, and when he did, the plates of his face broke up, and the tectonic shifts pushed the top half of his cheeks so high, they forced his eyes into slits.

It looked unnatural.

We were—hopefully—almost done with my interview. The initial rush of energy that had been blasted into me at the sight of the body had faded. I was still buzzing, but there was a background of numbness and gloom building behind it. The deputy came into the dining room where the sheriff and I were sitting across the table from each other. He leaned over the sheriff and whispered in his ear for several seconds. When the deputy pulled back, the sheriff thanked him and smiled. I shivered when I saw it.

Sheriff Shine must have seen it out of the corner of his eye. “You cold, Miss Cole?”

“Shock,” I mumbled.

“Doc has told me he wants to take a look at you,” he said. “I can get him over here now if you need.”

I shook my head.

“Well, I appreciate you being so cooperative with our investigation,” he said. “Especially under these circumstances.”

He eyed me. I got the feeling I was supposed to read something from that, but whatever it was, I missed it.

Shine went on, “It turns out we’ve got a bit of a crowd gathered around. Not every day your mayor gets murdered.” He laced his fingers together, leaned forward, and put his arms on the table. “A witness came forward. They saw you waiting at the park, like you said.”

My breath whooshed out in a huge sigh.

Sheriff Mark Shine had been all kindness and unnatural smiles, and I knew that it’d be hard to forget a bald girl with a face as colorful as mine. There should have been no reason for me to be nervous. But when you’re facing a dead body and a whole lot of questions, logic like that doesn’t help much.

“Would you mind telling me again what time you got here?” Shine asked.

The tension I’d just let go of came scuttling back.

“Around two,” I said.

The answer was written down in his small notebook. It was laying a few inches off to the side, still open. He didn’t even glance toward it.

“That’s right,” he drawled. “And Miss Davids showed up around…?”

That was another notebook answer. Why was he making me repeat myself?

“Two-thirty.”

“Thirty minutes waiting in the park,” he mused. “That’s a long time. Did you get up and walk around at all?”

My brows pulled together. “No.”

“You didn’t go to the bathroom or anything?”

“No.”

“Didn’t go…play on the swings?”

I raised my voice slightly: “I was waiting for Ayla. I stayed on the bench the whole time.”

Shine held up both hands in surrender. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Considering how little my tone had changed, I thought he was putting it on thick, but his play-acting stole whatever anger I had worked up and made me feel sheepish.

He lowered his hands and continued, “I don’t want to inconvenience you—that’s all. What if someone else came forward and said that you weren’t there when you said you were? Then I’d have to call you up, or bring you in, and talk to you all over again, just for you to remember that you went to powder your nose.”

“Why would that matter?” I asked.

Shine shrugged. “We already know that the door to the house was unlocked. The driveway’s not that long. It just helps if all the time is accounted for, Miss Cole.”

I stared at him. My mind felt empty, like a house when no one’s home, but a sudden flare of anxiety cast light over all the dim recesses. In one dark corner, a part of me was crunching some pretty deep numbers.

I leaned forward while repeatedly tapping the table with all five fingers. “No, no, no, no. This is all wrong.”

“So now you remember leaving the bench?” Shine asked.

“How long does it take blood to congeal like that?” I demanded.

“Excuse me?”

“It looked like freaking Jell-O when we came in! How long does it take blood to congeal like that?”

Shine frowned. That expression looked natural on him. “That depends on a lot of factors, Miss Cole.”

“But that doctor must have given you an estimate for the time of death!”

“It’ll take a lot more work before we can nail down an official est—”

“F—” I stopped myself. “Forget an ‘official’ estimate!’ You think that I walked up here, brained Gladwyn, calmly returned to the bench without changing my clothes—gee, I hope I didn’t get any blood on them!—and waited for Ayla to get here so we could go in and discover the body together?”

Shine’s only response was a thoughtful hum.

Fear and outrage were duking it out inside me to see which would have dominance, but both emotions were making my hands shake. The fingers of the hand I’d left on the table pattered on the surface at a billion times a minute.

“No,” I insisted. My voice was husky. “That’s not how this works. Do you have a murder weapon? One that you can tie to me?”

The sheriff’s face went stiff. “You seem to know a lot about this kind of thing, Miss Cole.”

“Do you have a motive in mind?”

The plates that made up his face shattered, revealing frown lines like canyons. His brows pulled tight and low, his lip lifted to show his teeth, and his eyes glared. Below the wreckage, I could see rage gurgling like magma.

Mark Shine was definitely from Fort Rive. You could tell by the madness. I shrank back into my chair.

“Are you telling me how to do my job!” he snarled.

A voice from behind him said, “Sheriff Shine, are you in the habit of yelling at everyone trying to help you, or only young women who are already suffering from shock?”

When Shine spun around, I saw past him to the newcomer.

The man appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but I wouldn’t have bet a penny on that. He was too well kept. His body was trim. Every facial feature was smooth and streamlined, and there wasn’t a sign of a beard anywhere on his face. He’d probably look young even if he was a hundred. His skin color was the medium olive tone you’d get if you took a sample of every human skin tone on the planet and picked the one that was right in the middle. His black hair was cut short and conservatively styled. There was also something vaguely foreign-looking about him, but if you’d asked me to guess where he or his family was from, I couldn’t have even picked a hemisphere.

As he approached, I saw that he was average height. He and Darius could have stood eye-to-eye without either one looking up. If they ever met, they would probably do exactly that. I couldn’t imagine two men with suits that nice being in the same room without having to figure out who was the dominant male.

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Sheriff Shine stood up. “Sir, may I ask who you are?”

“Certainly.” A business card appeared in the man’s hand. He passed it to Shine as he said, “I’m the attorney who’ll be representing Miss Cole’s interests in this matter.”

I tried not to look surprised. It had barely been two hours! Whoever this man was, he could hustle.

The word “attorney” made Shine pause. He took his time reading the card. “Mr. Koawt—”

“It’s pronounced ‘Ko-awt,’” the lawyer said. “John Koawt.”

He stressed the first syllable and formed the second using a mouth shape that was never called for in English—almost “ko-ought.”

Shine did his best: “Mr. Koawt, I’m not in the habit of yelling at anyone, especially people who are trying to help me.”

“Shall we use the term ‘raising your voice?’ Are you in the habit of raising your voice?”

“If we’re going to debate terms, maybe we should start with ‘helping.’ It’s understandable that Miss Cole would be upset, and I have the utmost sympathy for her, but what she was doing wasn’t helpful.”

Mr. John Koawt shrugged and walked over to sit in the chair beside me. The way he pulled it out just-so-happened to move it several inches closer to my side.

“It sounded to me like she was asking reasonable questions,” Koawt said as he slid into the chair. He echoed me while adding a barely-there stress to the first words: “Do you have a murder weapon? Can you tie it to her?”

Shine sat down, his face stiffer than ever. “During the first part of an investigation, it’s usually me who asks the questions.”

The lawyer flourished his hands over the table. “By all means. I had assumed that, by now, Miss Cole and Miss Davids would’ve had ample time to tell you what happened, but if there’s still information you need…” He let the sentence trail off, then added, “I understand that investigations can be hectic.”

Shine glared. “Right now I’d like to know how Miss Cole managed to get herself a lawyer.”

I mentally winced. I’d told the sheriff about my phone call to Iset, but I hadn’t mentioned the lawyer. I thought it would sound suspicious, and I never thought he’d get here so quickly.

“Would you like me to answer or her?” Koawt asked.

Shine mockingly flourished one of his own hands. “You. If you don’t mind.”

Below the table, I laced my fingers together and squeezed until my knuckles ached, hoping, desperately, that the lawyer’s story and mine would tally.

“You understand,” Koawt said, “the first part is only what I was given to understand during my call with Ms. Iset. Miss Cole and I haven’t had the chance to talk yet.”

“Go on,” Shine said.

“When Miss Cole first found the body of Benjamin Gladwyn, she called her friend and mentor in a panic to ask for advice. Ms. Iset calmed her down and told her to hang up and call you. While Miss Cole was doing that, Ms. Iset called me and requested that I come.”

My fingers unclenched, and I stifled the urge to give the man a high five. Every last detail checked out. Koawt couldn’t have done a better job if I’d handed him a script.

“Why?” Shine demanded.

“Could you please be more specific, Sheriff?” Koawt said.

“Why would Miss Cole need a lawyer? She hasn’t been arrested. You have to admit, asking for a lawyer during a routine questioning—well, it makes a person look bad.”

“I admit nothing of the kind! Since there’s no such thing as a routine questioning, I believe that everyone should have a lawyer when they’re talking to the police. And Miss Cole didn’t ask for me. You may remember, Ms. Iset was the one who called me.”

Shine’s eyes switched over to me. “Do you want this man here while I question you?”

“Yes!” I blurted.

Oh, yes! I certainly did! I wanted him, his expensive suit, and all his smooth talking. If I was sitting across from a hostile, half-mad, small-town sheriff who was all but accusing me of murder, there was no one I wanted beside me more—except, maybe, Count Darius Vasil. But there was a chance this guy wouldn’t lecture me like Darius would. I would’ve stapled us together if I’d had a stapler.

Shine frowned, then returned his attention to Koawt. “And why did this…Iset…think that Miss Cole would need legal help?”

“Perhaps she was worried that Miss Cole would feel intimidated…by the situation.”

Oh! Even his pauses were smooth! It was exactly the right length to imply that he could have ended the sentence there, but chose not to.

“Do you have any more questions for my client?” Koawt prompted.

“Miss Cole, how did you get those injuries?”

My stomach didn’t have time to start sinking before Koawt said, “You don’t have to answer that, Miss Cole.”

“Is there a reason she wouldn’t?” Shine snapped.

“When it comes to injuries, there’s a high probability that the story is personal and relating it could be embarrassing. Why should she tell you?”

“Maybe it’s escaped your attention, Mr. Koawt, but I’m investigating a murder!”

“Are you implying that Benjamin Gladwyn might have beaten her?”

“No—”

“Then what could her injuries have to do with the murder?”

I bit down on both lips to keep from grinning. I might have been enjoying the exchange, but Shine wasn’t. It looked like he’d be capable of a little murder himself. He sat there, glaring at the lawyer as subterranean fury made his face shift.

“Do you have any other questions?” Koawt asked in a voice like polished glass.

“I don’t see that there’s much point,” Shine said, “if all you’re going to do is tell her not to answer them.”

“Then, as it seems that you’ve exhausted your list of relevant questions, I’d like a chance to talk to Miss Cole. Is she free to go?”

“She needs to stay where I can reach her.”

“And I’m sure that she’s already given you her phone number and the address of where she’s staying.”

Shine didn’t answer. When Koawt looked at me, I nodded. The phone number and address were also written down. There didn’t seem to be much point to the notebook if Shine wasn’t going to use it.

Koawt turned back to the sheriff. “Is she free to go?”

“Yes.”

Koawt stood up. “Miss Cole?”

I was already rising from my chair. I followed him out of the house and down the driveway. The silent crowd parted at our approach. Koawt only stopped when we were half a street away.

He turned to me and extended his hand. “Miss Cole, Iset and Big Jacky send their regards, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

We shook.

“Likewise, Mr. Koawt. Thank you for helping me out back there.”

His eyes were a vivid mix of blue, green, and gray. I thought I saw them sparkle.

“That was a pleasure too,” he said. “Not very challenging, but humbling a man like Shine is its own reward. Before we dive into any further pleasantries, I’m afraid there are some issues we have to address.”

“No, yeah—of course.”

“Iset has briefed me on everything she knows about the situation. Did you and Miss Davids find the lamp?”

“No.”

His eyes rose to gaze at the sky as he considered my answer. “Given that it’s missing, that means there’s a good chance it’s tied into the murder somehow.” His gaze fell back to me. “Did Shine ask any questions about the lamp?”

“No.”

“Is it possible that he or anyone on the investigation team might know about it?”

I bit my lip and rolled my weight onto the outsides of my feet.

“Miss Cole?” Koawt said.

“There might be,” I said.

“Go on.”

I explained to him about the text I’d sent Ayla Davids, baiting her to return home early.

“After I told him my part of the story,” I said, “Shine asked to see my call history. He said it was to get the exact times—”

“It was more likely to see if you would volunteer the information and if your call history agreed with your story,” Koawt said, confirming my suspicions.

“He talked to Ayla first. If he asked to see her texts, then he might know something about the lamp.”

“Interesting.”

I thought I saw the edge of Koawt’s lips twitch up, but it was hard to tell.

He went on, “It seems I’ll have to introduce myself to Miss Davids sooner rather than later.”

“Do you need her number?” I asked.

“Thank you, Iset already got it for me.” He conjured another card from his coat pocket and handed it to me. “My number. I don’t think that Sheriff Shine will feel the need to interrogate you again, but if he does, please call me. When I’m done tracking down Miss Davids, I’ll coordinate with the local Torr and the Torr courts to begin taking control of the more important elements of the investigation.”

“Is there anything that you want me to do? Or not do?”

“Nothing that you haven’t already been informed of. Avoid talking about the lamp with non-initiates.”

I put my hands in my pockets and leaned back to look at my fancy new lawyer. Sure, the idea of not being lectured had sounded nice, but now that the moment had arrived, it felt anticlimactic.

My disappointment probably showed on my face.

“Is there a problem, Miss Cole?” Koawt asked.

“I guess I’m used to everyone telling me to stay out of trouble.”

Koawt’s standard look was one of cool, slightly detached interest. While he’d been talking to Shine, even in the most heated moments, it had never wavered. I wasn’t sure if setting off dynamite in his cheeks would be enough to dislodge the expression—but now a smooth, slow smile spread over his face.

“Miss Cole, you are already in trouble. Big Jacky is paying me, rather handsomely, to get you out of trouble. Telling you to stay out of trouble would be a waste of words and show an imbecilic lack of self-interest.”

I had a vague feeling that I should’ve been insulted by that statement. Before I could figure out why, Koawt continued.

“When I’ve taken care of what I can, I’ll be checking into the motel.”

“Our motel?” I asked.

“I was informed there was only one motel in Fort Rive, so I assume so. You’re welcome to come by if you need me or if you learn anything, but I’ll ask you to wait until tomorrow for anything more casual. I just got in from Singapore, so I’m afraid I need some sleep.”

Singapore? If my abysmal knowledge of geography served me right, Singapore was somewhere on the other side of the world. Koawt must have barely landed when Iset called him. What a thing to come home to. “Get in your car, Mr. Lawyer. Our seer is involved in a murder.”

I tried to remember how long the drive was from the nearest airport to Fort Rive.

“Have a good day, Miss Cole,” Koawt said as he pulled out his phone. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Yeah. And thank you again!”

He nodded to me, then turned and walked down the street.

Shouldn’t…shouldn’t he have a car?

I watched him for a few seconds, then turned and wandered back toward Gladwyn’s house.

I’m sure that any normal person would have gone away from the scary place where they got to see a murdered body up close. Not me. No doubt there was some horrible flaw, buried deep in my genetic code, that made me do stupid things. It probably had something to do with how I got into so much trouble.

I didn’t have a good reason for going back either. My head was too muddled with sadness, frustration, and worry to work out anything reasonable. I was guided (or misguided) by my desire to find the lamp. The lamp was tied up with the murder, so I belonged where the murder happened.

When I got back to the driveway, the deputy was shooing the crowd away.

I stayed further back. Outside of shooing range.

Several of the townspeople glared at me as they passed. I thought I heard one woman call me “bitch” under her breath, but considering everything that had happened, it didn’t even phase me.

A few minutes later, I was alone on the sidewalk.

Sheriff Shine came out. As he was walking over to his patrol car, he saw me and his expression mutated into an angry frown. Clearly, I had left the man with a good impression.

He changed direction and came toward me.

I grit my teeth and locked my knees so I wouldn’t run.

When Shine reached me, he said, “Where’s that fancy lawyer of yours, Miss Cole?”

There was no smile for me this time. I realized there’d been no smile at all for Koawt.

I said, “He’s not here right now, but he told me to call him if I needed him.”

Shine let out a huh, then said, “If you’re looking for Miss Davids, she left a while ago. I understand she’s staying with another friend.”

He turned to leave.

“Sheriff!” I called.

He stopped and looked at me.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“About what?”

I nodded toward Gladwyn’s house.

Shine stepped closer so he could loom over me. The posture was too aggressive for it to be an accident. “Frankly, Miss Cole, I do mind. If you have something to say to me, then say it. But if you’re not going to answer any of my questions, I don’t feel inclined to answer yours.”

My frustration ticked up a few notches. I wanted to be reasonable—Shine had probably been under the influence of the accumulated magic for months—but I hated it when someone used their height to try to intimidate me. It always worked.

The frustration snuck into my voice. “I’m just curious.”

He tilted his head. “Have you read too many mysteries? Think you’re some kind of amateur detective?”

The answer, of course, was yes—but it had nothing to do with my nonexistent reading habits, and I didn’t think it’d be wise to tell him that.

He raised his voice. “Clear out!”

My temper flared, but I’d been inspired by Koawt’s unflappable calm. I did my best to copy the lawyer’s cool expression. “I’m standing on a public sidewalk, Sheriff Shine. Not to tell you how to do your job or anything, but I’m pretty sure that’s not illegal.”

Shine glared at me but didn’t answer.

“Shall we call my lawyer?” I asked. “I’m sure he’d be happy to weigh in on it.”

Shine’s foot inched nearer. He leaned in. “You’re awfully cocky for a girl who’s doing nothing but hiding behind an attorney. Stay the hell off Gladwyn’s property.” He turned toward his car, took two steps, and turned back, “And keep your nose out of my case!”