“My name is Officer Stephen Rakestraw. May I ask you a few questions?” he asked.
“Sure. Yes, of course.”
Mr. Duncan had been arguing with the pub owner about the meat.
Officer Rakestraw asked the usual stuff first, my name and address, and then he paused. “You work at the booth, correct? What is it you sell, exactly?”
“Therapy,” I answered.
He raised an eyebrow, but continued. “Is there any way you could tell me what happened this morning?” he asked.
“I walked inside my booth. I tried to turn on a lamp but the bulb burned out, so I turned on another lamp instead—and that’s when I found him… deceased.”
How had he died? Besides having his eyes cut out, I hadn’t seen any other wounds except from the vines, but they’d only punctured the skin. The thorns… the blood… Could it be the bloodthorn?
Officer Rakestraw continued drilling me, asking me every conceivable question under the sun. Did I know Mr. Duncan? How long had I known him? How long had his wife been my patient? Did the two of them get along? Did I have any recent dealings with him? On and on. My mind was a million miles away.
Perhaps the bloodthorn wore a human disguise.
My mind was buzzing with theories as to who had killed Mr. Duncan. The way he’d been killed with the vines wrapped around him suggested there was some sort of magic involved. I’d seen the way Prince Terminus had manipulated plants to fill the fairy tent. If he had done that, it didn’t take an extraordinary leap to think another being similar to Terminus could do the same thing.
Could it be the bloodthorn? I’d thought the creature was a myth, but most legends were based on truth. I needed to look into this myth a little more closely.
If it were some sort of fairy creature, then who was it? There were plenty of disguised people wandering the fairgrounds—the grim reaper, the black fairy, all kinds of nasty-looking characters. It could have been any one of them. But it was also possible that the murderer was a shape-shifter, and discovering a shape-shifter’s true identity was almost impossible. They took on their host’s form down to every last cell. Killing them would reveal their true nature, but other than that, the only way to find out who they truly were was if the shifter itself admitted it.
“Miss Kennedy,” Officer Rakestraw said, interrupting my thoughts, “I need your attention, please. The detective will be here soon, and he’ll have more questions. When did you last see Mr. Duncan?”
I tried to focus on the question. “Last night.”
“You’re sure that was the last time?”
“Yes. Positive.”
He gave me a hard stare. “Miss Kennedy, I need you to be very sure. As I said earlier, the detective is coming, and I want you to be certain that you’re not forgetting anything. You never came back last night—not for any reason?”
I didn’t like his tone, almost as if he were accusing me. “No. I never came back. Not for any reason.”
His glare deepened. He opened his mouth to speak when his walkie-talkie beeped. Through the static, a voice announced that the detective had arrived and was waiting at the front.
After radioing back that we would be there shortly, he turned to me. “Are you ready to meet with the detective?”
Whether I was or not, I wasn’t sure he cared. “Yes. Let’s get this over with.”
“Good,” he said.
As Officer Rakestraw stood, Officer Gardener walked inside the pub and made his way toward us. I stood when he reached the table.
“If you’ll follow us,” Officer Gardener said, and I detected a hint of a Southern drawl in his words that I’d not noticed before.
I followed the two officers through the festival grounds. I wasn’t in handcuffs, but it didn’t take a genius to realize I was most likely a suspect in the murder investigation. I’d been with the body when they’d found me. Mr. Duncan had been at my booth yesterday. We’d had a verbal confrontation, which had ended in assault with an “incendiary device.” The odds were not in my favor. With my luck, this detective would be a hard-nosed drill sergeant with a vendetta toward the opposite gender.
The officers led me toward the main gate. The wall rose above us, casting a glare as the noonday sun reflected off the large, white limestones. Booths and carts selling wooden swords and leather goods surrounded the wall, but we dodged the commotion and entered a small door at the bottom of a large tower. Inside, the room was empty except for a desk that was stacked with maps of the fairgrounds.
A man with dark hair stood at the back wall. He looked like a typical detective, wearing a long, tan trench coat, his hands clasped pensively behind his back. He faced a woven image on the wall that I recognized. It was a reproduction tapestry from the middle ages depicting a goat-like unicorn surrounded by a fence. With its goat-like body and horse’s head, it made me recall the description I’d read of the bloodthorn in the fairy tome.
Officer Gardener led me to the detective, although the man didn’t seem to notice us as he studied the picture. Officer Gardener cleared his throat, and the detective turned around.
I stood face to face with Brent Sanchez, my ex.
My mouth gaped open. I almost didn’t recognize him. He’d gotten a tan. I’d never thought he’d inherited much of his Latino heritage, but now it was easy to see in his dark skin and eyes. He’d let his hair grow a little, too, and it curled slightly at the ends.
But there was more.
