Labyrinth

NINE

“Let me drive.”

“Huh?” I replied, glancing at Quinton. He raised his eyebrows at me. “I said, pull over and let me drive. You’re thinking too much.” I’d been letting my mind churn and was paying less attention to the road than I should have. But I still didn’t like the implication. “Are you saying I’m driving badly?”

“No. I thought you might prefer to do just one thing at a time. Although with these two along, shotgun has to play battlefield negotiator too,” he added, scritching Grendel behind one ear as the dog stuck his head through the gap between the front seats to sniff at Chaos for the dozenth time in as many minutes. The ferret made a hissing noise and gaped her teeth at him.

My face cramped from the depth of my frown. Maybe I shouldn’t drive after all. . . .

I pulled over and traded places with Quinton, taking the ferret and putting her into my purse on my lap, which made her bolder. Chaos crawled out at once and up onto my shoulder so she could lord it over the dog from the height of the backrest. Strangely, the dog seemed to think this was much better, too, and laid down with his head on his paws, heaving a sigh. Apparently Grendel was perfectly happy not to be top dog, so long as he knew who was. That reminded me of the vampires’ pack mentality and I felt myself scowling again.

Quinton put the truck back in gear and pulled into traffic. We hadn’t even discussed where we were going: We were just driving.

“So what is it you’re thinking?” he asked.

“That I caused Simondson’s death.”

“What? I’m sorry you think so, but that’s a load of crap.”

“Maybe, but it’s still what I’m thinking.”

“You are not responsible for the death of anyone who ever touched you or knew you. People die. You aren’t responsible for your dad’s death, or that cousin you mentioned, or your ex-boyfriend who called up and put the current game in motion—”

“Cary did not start this. He’s not even involved.”

“Except to call you and say cryptic things.”

I stared at him. “Are you jealous of a dead man?”

“No, and that’s not the topic. The problem is you sound as if you’re blaming yourself for this guy’s death.”

“I am.”

“Don’t. You didn’t do it.”

“But he wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t been involved with me.”

Quinton made an impatient noise. “He wasn’t involved with you. You were investigating him and he went off the deep end and beat you.”

“But he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been . . . bespelled and coerced by Alice and Wygan.”

“I don’t necessarily believe that.”

“I saw a loop of memory. I saw Goodall break the spell.”

“But can you be sure the spell compelled Simondson against his will?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t think you can. You don’t know what that spell did, only that there was one. And are you certain that any spell could compel a man into an action that is totally against his nature and inclination?”

“I’ve pushed on people myself, compelled them to answer questions and even pushed them into actions—”

“That they already had reason to do, or words they were already thinking, or ideas they had already formulated.”

And I suddenly wasn’t so sure of my guilt or of the things I’d done. What had I done?

“This guy wasn’t the nicest, straightest shooter to begin with, you know. What were you investigating him for again?”

“Fraud—which is not a violent crime.”

“Was that all he did?”

I had to think back a bit to remember—two years had passed since then, after all. It hadn’t been a major case in my mind at the time. Not like a pretrial investigation for a murder case or a rape.

Todd Simondson had embezzled from his dead wife’s estate, stealing from his stepdaughter’s inheritance. He’d done it for years after his wife died—longer than he’d had any legal right to be administrating her estate—by intimidating and manipulating his stepdaughter so she never challenged him. He hadn’t been a nice man; he’d been vain and greedy and emotionally abusive, for certain. But off the top of my head, I couldn’t remember if my client had ever said he’d struck her. She’d implied that he’d hastened her mother’s death, but there’d been no evidence of foul play; the woman had died in the hospital of a blood disease. The sort that creates bruises and freakish bleeding. I creased my brow as I thought harder, wondering if some of the bruises might have had some help in getting there. Simondson had certainly kept his stepdaughter quiet for a while and perhaps his methods crossed over into the physical. Maybe he hadn’t been entirely against solving his problems with women in a violent way.

If Wygan, through Alice, had led Simondson to believe that I and my investigation were a physical threat to him, that I was dangerous, that it was all right to fix the problem by putting me in the hospital . . . maybe he hadn’t been disinclined to do violence and the spell upon him had only encouraged him to go too far once he started. Most people, no matter how pissed off, wouldn’t have slammed an antique elevator’s security gate on another person’s neck. Especially after they’d beaten that same person’s head against a wall first. He hadn’t seemed like a violent guy when I’d approached him, but I hadn’t been looking into his proclivities in that direction; I’d just been looking at his creative financing.

I still had some doubt. I didn’t want to think that I’d been the cause of his death—no matter how deserving—or of anyone else’s. Even if it might be true once in a while, I didn’t think I could live with myself if I thought I had the literal touch of death.

“So, you don’t think it’s my fault, even though Wygan and his crew killed Simondson,” I said.

“Did they?”

I nodded. “Yeah. The bit of memory I got to see definitely showed me Wygan and Goodall were involved. I don’t think Goodall was in at the beginning—he wasn’t even around that I know of—but he’s playing on Wygan’s team now. And there’s something really weird about him....”

“Aside from the vampire thing?”

“Well, he’s not a vampire, at least not any type I recognize. But he’s something close. And there is something very odd about his energy. I think,” I added, considering the way I’d seen Goodall rip into the web of magic on Simondson, “that he’s got some kind of power. I’m not sure what he is or what the magic does, but I saw him touch the spell and most people can’t even see them. But I don’t think he cast it in the first place. . . . I don’t see how that works, timing-wise, since I never met him before a few weeks ago. If he’d been in the mix then, I’d have expected to at least stumble across him back when—”

“You were killed.”

I took a couple of deep breaths before I nodded. “Yeah.” Now I was confused. I wished I knew more about the spell that had been on Simondson and what Goodall had done to remove it. It had hurt and that didn’t seem to be true for most spell-destruction. At least it had never seemed to be the case when I dismantled a spell, but I rarely had anything to do with spells cast on people, so I wasn’t sure. I needed to talk to Mara; she could tell me more about the spells and maybe what Goodall was.

But that wasn’t going to solve the question of my guilt in Simondson’s death. And regardless of that, it was still Goodall who’d been the direct cause. I wanted to get my hands on Goodall and Wygan, not just because of what they were doing to me but also for what they’d done to Simondson and my father. And wherever I found one of them, I was pretty sure the other would be nearby.

“Umm . . . why do I think you’re planning something dangerous?” Quinton asked.

“Because you’ve gotten used to the face I make when I’m pissed off. I have to go after Wygan and Goodall. The sooner the better. They might not know I’ve gotten ahold of Simondson, and the faster I move, the less time they have to guess what I’ll do.”

Quinton pursed his lips, but didn’t say anything about how stupid I might be or what the risk was. That was one of the things I loved in him: He didn’t lecture me or tell me not to dive into things. If he had information or questions, he spoke up. Otherwise he let me do what I had to.

“You want me with you?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s strictly my gig. I wouldn’t mind having you nearby, but the Danzigers’ is close enough and we need to go there anyway.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. We need to drop off the pets before I go do something stupid.”