Page 73 of Speak No Evil

“Wha… what’s happening? Where am I?” She squints, shielding her gaze until her eyes adjust.

When they do, when she sees where she is, her entire body shakes. She turns to me, wild fear in her eyes. “How could you bring me here, Jade? You know my family escaped the fae city and that I escaped my family. You knew I was hiding in Blackwood to keep them from finding me.” She pauses, struggling to get her next breath.

When she does, tears fill her wide eyes. “How could you betray me like this?”

With all the space in my mind, I can push aside the need for retribution and make room to consider that AJ might truly not know what she’s done. And if that’s the case, then to her, this is the greatest betrayal she’s ever known.

I let that possible reality echo within me, seeing where it finds a home.

This might be the worst day of AJ’s life.

And that’s awful for her.

But it pales compared to losing my only sister.

I grab her throat and toss her toward the dais. She goes flying, spilling on the ground in a sputtering heap. When she looks back at me, tears and anguish and confusion meet me in those big eyes of hers. So I answer her question with one of my own.

“Why did you kill my sister, AJ?”

She shakes her head violently. Tears fly off her face, and a low groan leaks from her lips. “I didn’t. You must believe me. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“And yet, you were at the scene of a similar crime in your other form. You made a cast of the claw marks you saw in the victim’s wounds, claws that are exactly the same as your other form.”

“What other form? What are you talking about?”

“Yes, I’d like to know that as well, demoness. Please come to your point and stop torturing my granddaughter,” the fire fae says with the edge of a threat.

Granddaughter. So she’s royal. Hiding from the weight of all that power.

Boo-fucking-hoo.

AJ stops crying. Stops shaking. She turns to the dais so I can’t see her face. “Wha—”

I press on, interrupting her. “I found this creature in an apartment in Blackwood.” I project the image of AJ’s disturbing alternate form, in all its gaping chest, single-eyed, hunchbacked glory, into the center of the room.

Excellent trick, love. I can hear the smile in his thought.

It was a logical leap from projecting thoughts into other’s minds to projecting images.

Yes, but projecting images into a mind is far different from making them substantial enough so they’re seen in physical space. You’ve outdone yourself.

I allow the compliment to flutter in my chest but don’t respond.

The fire fae stills to an impossible degree, face stoic, inscrutable.

And that tells me everything I need to know.

I conjure another image. This one is Veruca, lying on the floor with her insides on the outside. Then another of the hamburger AJ made of the prior victim. And the one before that, and the one before that before finally making them look at Em’s cold, dead face, just as I saw it on her coroner’s table.

I let the spread of images linger in the fae court before throwing up an image of the beast unconscious on the ground, half shifted into AJ.

“You sought a career working with the dead because you couldn’t escape your nature, AJ. And even if you were unaware of what your true form was doing, it still happened.”

“Igris, what do you have to say about this?” the tree fae asks of the fire fae.

He rises and descends the dais to stand in front of his kin. “You shouldn’t have run, girl. We could have taught you how to tame your beast. You could have used it for good.” His face remains a mask of neutrality, but his voice…

In his voice is the clear tinge of regret.

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