Page 50 of Midnight Waters

“We don’t know it’s a he,” Kira said. “It could be a she, or a they.”

“Statistically speaking, it’s going to be a man.”

“Since when do dryads read statistics? Actually, since when do you read? I thought it creeped you out?” Kira said.

Allison wrinkled her nose.

The dryads’ disdain for books made sense, given what paper was made of. It had become a morbid tradition in the past that any war the dryads lost would see their corpses turned into books.

Learning that fact had made me look at my bookshelf a little differently.

“I listen to murder mystery podcasts,” she said. “For… fun.”

She bowed her head, almost as if she was ashamed.

“You devil.” Kira grinned and batted Allison with her wing, causing her to stumble.

I grabbed Allison’s arm to stop her toppling, and she stuck her tongue out at Kira.

“Gender aside, we need to catch this person,” I said. “They could be the same person who killed Tyler.”

“Do we really think that?” Kira asked. “These are two completely different methods of killing. Too different.”

I ran my fingers up and down my pendant chain.

She wasn’t wrong. Pushing someone off a cliff seemed more opportunistic, whereas poisoning would have taken far more planning.

The server at the café had appeared too legitimately surprised to have had anything to do with the poisoning. Which meant that whoever had tried to kill Jeannie had put a lot of effort into making sure the aconite found its way into her milkshake.

“So it’s possible there are two killers,” I said. “But why now? Dusk hasn’t seen a killing in decades.”

And even those had been mostly accidents.

The chance of two killers emerging at the same time seemed like too much of a coincidence.

At least Mallory would look at this case with a critical eye, and any leads she might unearth could point us toward Tyler’s.

If the same person who killed Tyler had also tried to kill Jeannie, they had just opened a whole can of worms that I was all too happy to delve into.

A loud bang made all three of us jump and the receptionist jerked out of her sluggish stupor.

I whipped around in time to see three police officers in uniform following a plainclothes detective into the waiting room.

“Which one of you is Maeve Arrowood?” The detective marched over to us.

With a smidge of hesitation, I raised my hand.

“Excellent. If you could please go with my colleagues, you are wanted down at the police station.”

Itried not to panic as an officer escorted me into Mallory’s office. Worst-case scenario, she had me pegged as a suspect. My ties to Tyler’s murder wasn’t exactly suspect-worthy, but the attempt on Jeannie…

Mallory was deep in discussion with another detective as I entered, and they immediately stopped talking.

The officer who had escorted me in closed the door behind me.

“Oh good, you’re here.” Mallory gestured to a seat opposite her desk.

Well, it didn’t sound like I was about to get interrogated.

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