Page 14 of Booked for Murder

A vacation sounded nice. A vacation somewhere far away might prevent me from a head-on collision with disaster. I’d had enough disasters to last me a lifetime.

Oh, well. What was one more?

I sighed. “Beyond work on the renovation project, is there anything I can do?”

“Stay out of trouble,” Beatrice grumbled. “We’ve had enough trouble for this year already, and this mess is only just beginning.”

With nothing else to do, I returned home, grimacing over the cab fare but acknowledging I wouldn’t be able to walk at all tomorrow if I attempted the multi-mile hike. Ajani bannered her tail and greeted me with purrs, the only clue I needed to identify my stray wanted her dinner and possibly another round with the brush. If I provided sustenance to her immediately, she might even forgive me for leaving her alone. I did my duty as her provider, standing on one foot while leaning against my kitchen counter to convince my fluffy goddess she could eat without worry of some predator swooping in and stealing her food.

Like me, my fluffy goddess had issues.

In her case, her issues only manifested when I dared remove her from her second home at the library, where she had many servants to wait on her when it was time for her breakfast, snacks, or dinner.

While I waited for Ajani to finish her meal, I perused the police records I’d pilfered, beginning with the earliest of the exsanguination cases the cops had flagged as a potential connection. One thing caught my attention: I’d been out west in the hospital for the first two instances, which did a damned good job of eliminating me as a suspect.

All of the cases shared alarming similarities, marking the crime as a chain of copycats or a serial killer out for the blood of politicians who’d been a little too open about their general prejudices. The records included their full suspect list, which consisted of all known registered exsanguinators in the country. I grimaced at my real name, although the notations made it clear the police doubted someone in a coma for two of the murders could be responsible. Even after I’d emerged from my coma, I’d gotten a listing as an invalid incapable of committing the crimes.

The invalid part stung, and once I’d disappeared from the west coast, my notation had become missing and presumed dead.

That got a snort out of me. Why would anyone presume I’d kicked the bucket? I flipped through the sheets in search of additional information to find short biographies and timelines of each of the suspects, myself included. According to my short biography, which included my age at presumed death from suicide, I lacked the appropriate magical talents required to create the cranial compound fractures found in all victims, including Senator Godrin. In later notes regarding the cases, particularly flagging the minimal file regarding Senator Godrin, the police weren’t even convinced an exsanguinator had done the deed.

In their opinion, there were too many red flags, the kind that led them to believe someone wanted exsanguinators to take the fall for a crime they may not have committed. While that boded well for me, it didn’t bode well for several of my co-workers, who possessed the type of abilities potentially able to mimic an exsanguinator’s unusual magic. Telekinetic powers, when used correctly, might be able to do the job; they’d be able to use their magic to punch a hole through the skull from the inside, which would allow for a rather impressive spray of blood.

It would take a great deal of finesse, but compared to the power it took to crunch metal, it wouldn’t take as high of a rating for an exsanguinator to create a similar effect.

Mickey might know what combination of abilities it would take to realistically murder someone in such a flamboyant fashion, assuming I could ask him without dropping him into a dead faint at the mention of blood. I sighed, shook my head, and skimmed over the rest of the police records, which told me a whole lot of nothing.

They didn’t know jack shit about the murders beyond eliminating the registered exsanguinators as either incapable, indisposed, or in prison during one or more of the crimes. Of them all, I had the tightest alibi.

Being in a coma or being flagged as dead due to probable suicide helped with that. Really, I thought the probable suicide flag to be a bit much. Just because I couldn’t function as a bodyguard didn’t mean I’d just go off myself. I wrinkled my nose, shook my head, and debated what to do with my copy of the police records.

With a whole lot of nothing to go on beyond the police being aware the probable suspects weren’t suspects at all, there was zero point in keeping files I could retrieve again if needed.

After a few minutes of consideration, only some careful application of fire would do. After I turned the sheets into scrap, I’d turn the fan on over the stove and make use of my incense burner, something the neighbors wouldn’t think twice about when they smelled hints of smoke from my apartment.

Incense soothed me sometimes, and my neighbors looked the other way since I wasn’t lighting up some form of drug or another. It annoyed me they expected me to do just that, as though my inability to walk like them automatically meant I delved into illicit drugs.

Oh, well. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them and would allow me to hide the evidence of my crime, which did involve pilfering a sleazy cop’s login details long enough to pilfer investigative reports. I got out a pair of my long-burning cones, lit the first one up, and began the tedious process of cutting the paper into burnable pieces, lighting an unscented candle, turning on the stovetop’s fan, and destroying the physical proof I’d been naughty at the library.

It took me an hour to get the job done, and my cat didn’t even mind my delay of her second brushing of the day. Once finished, I lit a third cone, turned off the fan, and cleaned the ash away, flushing it down the toilet to further rid myself of any evidence.

If someone like Bradley came to my apartment and checked the stove and candle, I’d be in serious trouble, but they’d have to know what to look for. As long as nobody figured out I’d printed the records and burned them on my stove, I’d be all right.

Mostly. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.

Damn it, my life had become complicated. My brows furrowed, and I considered the police record about my probable suicide. Who had made such an assumption? Why? I’d taken steps to make my new identity as ironclad as I could, considering my circumstances, but I hadn’t thought I’d been so thorough as to disappear to the point I was presumed dead.

My status as presumed dead would complicate things should anyone figure out I’d skipped the whole death part of the equation. No one would question my comatose state; the police record had included references to my medical file. Making certain my ex-boss didn’t realize I was still around and kicking would be my top priority, although I doubted I’d be able to maintain the ruse for long.

The longer he poked his nose around the library, the more his magic would tell him about who frequented the place. My limp would betray me, as he knew which foot I’d mangled during the wreck.

He’d been there. Hell, he was likely the reason I’d survived the crash at all.

Any other day, I would’ve considered quitting, but I couldn’t. If I did, I’d leave my fellow librarians out to dry.

They had book smarts, some magic, and a relentless drive to help the community. I wouldn’t abandon them, not after they’d accepted me for all I was and wasn’t—without having any idea of the truth.

They were a lot of things, but I refused to believe any one of them was capable of a murder as horrific as Godrin’s. But with several years separating the first brutal murder of a politician with a magic eerily like mine, I worried that law enforcement would seek out the easiest to blame rather than the true culprits.