Page 81 of Bright Dark Curses

“See? Nothing to worry about. The truth always wins.”

Except on all those true crime documentaries about wrongful convictions, but it probably wasn’t the time to bring that up.

“You really think so?” he asked, hopeful again.

“I do. All you have to do is tell the truth.”

“You’re going to tell Officer Brooks?” Key asked. She sounded disappointed, but to her credit, she didn’t appear ready to argue. That was good—a great bounty hunter knew when to involve help.

Probably.

“I’ll call her tonight.”

Key still looked reluctant, but she let out an “All right.”

“What do we do now?” Shane asked. He reached over, squeezed her hand, then crossed his arms again.

Key sent him a small smile then addressed the rest of us. “We’ll wait to see what Officer Brooks has to say. I don’t want to get in her way.”

We all nodded in understanding. Even Ethan, although I wondered if he was still planning how to be two states away by morning.

“Sounds good.” I stood up. “We should all get a good night’s sleep and reconvene tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know what Officer Brooks wants to do.”

They all agreed, and we went our separate ways. The night was young and Old Olmeda’s partying in full swing, but it didn’t help dispel the sense of gloom clinging to my heart.

Our best suspect was dead.

There was a good chance the death had been intentional.

And I hadn’t been able to prevent it.

What a failure.

TWENTY-THREE

Fluffy’s happy barks greeted me the moment I stepped inside the backyard, but hugging her close and burying my face in her warm, dear fur wasn’t enough to lift my spirits.

Logically, I knew that even if we had involved Officer Brooks as soon as Brett had been poisoned, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Nothing had been proven, and she wouldn’t have come close to shutting down the filming over a few seemingly unrelated accidents. I doubted she would’ve visited the set or talked to the crew until she had something more concrete.

Our UNSUB would’ve still gone forward with the murder—if it was a murder.

We needed to get inside the murder trailer.

Correction—I needed to convince Officer Brooks to let me investigate the inside of the trailer to see if there were traces of magic.

“Don’t look so distraught, child.” Bagley’s muffled voice came from under my jacket. “For all you know, it was a dark witch taking out another dark witch. That should cheer you up, yes?”

Fluffy barked in surprise in my arms while Rufus looked at us with the canine equivalent of narrowed eyes.

With a sigh, I let Fluffy down and sat at the kitchen table. The surface was still covered with papers related to the shop, since I still hadn’t gotten around to buying an actual desk or table for the living room.

“Murder will never cheer me up, Ms. Bagley.”

The only silver lining to the situation was the fact we were now down to two main suspects and the fact Lee might’ve been the guilty witch and offed herself by mistake. Two silver linings. That was one more than the average, I consoled myself.

On top of this mess, Olmeda’s bad reputation as a cursed city for filming movies or shows would get worse.

They might not even finish filming the movie now that Lee was dead. As if getting a good book adaptation made wasn’t hard enough!

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