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I pulled the blanket further over me. It was just the cold.
“Your uncle tells me Nigel Everhart maimed you with a fire wand.” Mallory looked me up and down.
I twitched. “You’ve already spoken to Keith?”
Mallory tilted her head forward, resting her chin on her chest. “Let’s put it this way, I put him in my interrogation room with one of my detectives and as far as I know, he’s still monologuing now.” She lifted her eyes to look at me. “And I get the distinct feeling that you’re the only one who will be, well… the least biased.”
High praise indeed.
“Were you hurt?” she asked.
I waved my hand. “I’m healed.”
“Were you hurt?”
Was this what having a mother felt like?
“A fireball hit me,” I said. “I’m not pressing charges.”
That wouldn’t exactly help the undercover Arrowood-Everhart investigation.
Mallory sat up and leaned forward on her knees. “I’m relieved to hear that, but it isn’t much consolation. Maeve, I truly fear that Ray’s death may have sparked something. The last thing we need is another full-blown war between your families. We’ve got Keith, Wendy, and Nigel in custody overnight, but that’s only a temporary solution.”
My brain felt like it had turned to sludge in my head.
The drama followed by Mallory’s concerns had me wanting to tuck my head under this blanket and block it all out.
But she was right, and I couldn’t deny it.
Keith had always been a loose cannon, trying to incite problems with the Everharts since his teens. But he had stood mostly alone in his determination to be proactive in antagonising them. With Wendy wanting revenge, he finally had someone who would see his visions through.
“Dusk hasn’t forgotten the last time the Arrowoods and Everharts tried to exterminate each other,” Mallory said. “We still have a section in the police handbook about how to deal with you both, for Pisces’ sake.”
“It won’t be like last time.”
Not that I had been alive to remember it, but the last war between the Arrowoods and Everharts would never be forgotten. My great-grandparents, and the long-gone generations of the Everharts, had decided to end the feud once and for all, by slaying each other at every opportunity.
Innocent locals had gotten embroiled in some of the worst attacks. Caught in spell bombs and splash back from potion battles, the residents of Dusk had put their foot down before too long. The main offenders were jailed for years, and when they were finally released, they were shunned by their neighbours.
The truce had been forged not long after, and while both families had come close to breaching it at times, it had held. So far.
I was the one who had gotten hurt and if escalating that would throw gasoline onto the fire, there was no way I would even step foot into the police station.
“You can’t promise me that, and I wouldn’t ask you to,” Mallory said. “But I do need you to promise me that you try and calm things down on your end.”
I ran my hands over my face, massaging my jaw with my thumbs. A tightness enveloped my chest. What I wouldn’t have done to fall into the ocean again and turn into a mermaid…
I had barely returned to Dusk for a few days and already I needed to solve a murder and stop the feud from escalating. A longing grew in my belly to disappear under the waves.
“They don’t listen to me,” I said. “Not about the feud.”
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t tried.
“All I’m asking is that you give it your best shot,” Mallory said. “I can see you don’t want a war any more than the rest of us.”
The feeling inside me popped and flooded my veins, leaving an icy trail in its wake.
This was all too much. I had to get out of here.
