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“Don’t look so worried, you’re not in trouble,” Mallory said as I sat down. “You did a great thing today. Without you, that poor girl would certainly have died.”
My efforts wouldn’t have been for much if I couldn’t find out who had tried to kill her.
“Are you going to question me?” I asked.
Mallory waved a hand in the air. “No need. We know what happened.”
I cocked my head. They what?
“You know who did it?” I asked.
Mallory swivelled her laptop around to face me. On the screen was a CCTV image of Jeannie and her friend chatting at the café table. They didn’t have their milkshakes yet.
But as I looked closer, I spied them, almost finished, on the counter. The server had his back turned to them, shaking a can of whipped cream.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. But then I spotted the shadow.
A figure lurked outside the window, their face obscured by a hoodie and their hand outstretched toward the glass.
“Who is that?” I squinted, leaning in further to the screen.
“Jeannie Gallagher’s ex-boyfriend, Steven Simms.” Mallory pressed the space button and the image sprang to life.
Nothing moved much except for a small bunch of pixels that floated through the air toward the milkshakes.
“What is that?” I asked.
Mallory held up an evidence bag which encapsulated an almost empty vial.
“An aconite poison, as suspected,” Mallory said. “We haven’t tested it yet, but we’ve got Steven’s confession.”
“He already confessed?” I asked.
Wow, they had worked fast. If they had approached Tyler’s case as a murder, they might have solved it already.
“Mr. Simms has the talent of telekinesis.” Mallory put the vial back on her desk. “He used it to spike Jeannie’s drink with the potion, after what he described as a difficult breakup.”
“Let me guess. He didn’t want it, but she did?”
“Bingo.” Mallory took her laptop back and closed it. “This act alone is abhorrent enough that he might see attempted murder charges, but it speaks to a bigger problem.”
“Where he got the potion?”
In London, when detectives asked that question, they would already have a list of suspect gangs who could have supplied it.
On Dusk, where would Mallory even begin?
“Exactly,” Mallory said, placing her fingertips on her desk. “We might have an illicit substances smuggler here on Dusk, and that’s just the best-case scenario. The worst is that someone is making and selling illegal potions and spells.”
My blood ran cold. Wendy.
At the time she had exploded a hole in the living room wall, I hadn’t thought too much about it. But to my knowledge, our alchemy room didn’t have the stock to produce the firepower she had exhibited that day.
A litany of curse words streamed through my consciousness.
Did Wendy have connections with whoever had made the potion that nearly killed Jeannie?
“I asked you here to provide a statement so we can solidify our case against Simms. But few people on Dusk could identify aconite poisoning so quickly. I need you to keep an eye out for more occurrences like this, although hopefully nowhere near as deadly. It seems you know what to look for.”
