Page 5 of Booked for Murder

For some unfathomable reason, Bradley Hampton had opted to pay a visit to the crime scene. Ah. Wait. No, he had a perfectly good reason to be at the crime scene.

Senator Godrin had been one of my ex-boss’s friends, a rather close one, if I remembered correctly.

I wondered how much of my dislike for Godrin stemmed from how much my former boss had liked the man despite his political tendencies, which screwed people like me over on a good day.

Ugh.

From my vantage at the corner, I witnessed the cops let him through the cordon as though he belonged there. That told me a different story, one where he’d been requested to show up, likely to use his magic to discern the truth of the crime.

Unlike me, who could exsanguinate someone with frightening speed, he could see the truth of the past along with a bunch of other clever tricks making him ideal for law enforcement. The cops loved him, because when he witnessed the truth of the past, he couldn’t breathe a word of a lie, either.

He could omit. He could dodge. He couldn’t lie.

That put him in a rather precarious position, and it made him one of the few adepts unlikely to commit an actual crime, as he’d be forced to speak the truth should he examine the scene of the crime. If they brought in someone with the right abilities, his use of magic could be verified.

In good news, Bradley wouldn’t find any links to me in the murder. In bad news, he’d catch glimpses of my presence, as frequent visitors left imprints for his magic to find. What would his magic tell him? Would he recognize the woman I’d become as the woman I’d once been?

He didn’t like losing something he’d paid for, and my contract had cost him a pretty penny, paid out to my parents so they could enjoy the rest of their lives and have a retirement. It’d done more than just give them money. Part of the payment had been a house, a nice one they could enjoy for the rest of their lives, free of all debts except their property taxes, and Bradley had made an account to cover those for seventy-five years.

Huh. I’d been worth a lot to the man, and most days, I had no idea why.

I supposed his life and security were worth a lot to him.

I considered the problem of him recognizing me, and after some debate, decided he had a rat’s chance in hell of figuring out who I was if he did catch an image of me going up the stairs each day to work.

Months and some magic had grown my hair out far beyond what he’d ever seen me wear, as I’d kept it short so it wouldn’t interfere with my work. Before the accident, I’d had perfect eyesight. Head trauma had resulted in a loss of vision. My brightly colored, oversized glasses served as the only disguise I’d needed.

The Janette I’d been before the crash wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing anything someone might view as fun or tacky.

My glasses redefined fun and tacky, and I loved them.

Not only did I love my glasses, they also added to the librarian look I enjoyed cultivating. I regarded my clothes with a sigh, which followed the bright and bordering on tacky look I’d adopted since moving back out east.

My parents wouldn’t recognize me. As a child, I’d favored black, gray, and brown. As an adult determined to never bring shame to the body I guarded, I’d gone for exclusively black and white. What self-respecting bodyguard would wear purple?

Not me.

Nobody would recognize me.

“Janette, I talked to the boss.” Meridian dodged people loitering for a look at the bloodstains and the body. “He says you can go home if you want; they’re not going to let the staff come back today. They’re bringing in adepts to try to figure out who would want Senator Godrin dead and why.”

I could think of a list half a mile long without putting in any real effort. Who didn’t want the bastard to kick the bucket, excepting people like my ex-boss? If I’d been given half a chance, a decent alibi, and an excuse, I might’ve done the job.

He wanted people like my parents studied and experimented on to make them more pure. Given his way, he’d eliminate anyone with a moderate rating. He liked calling people like my parents mutts—and he hated people like me even more, those who rose to a higher station thanks to a lucky roll of the genetic dice.

Really, he hated anyone who wasn’t just like him, boasting a perfect 90.0% rating.

I beat him in the magic department, and how dare a daughter of mutts beat him?

I wouldn’t miss Senator Godrin. In person, Godrin had treated me like a boot scraping, but that was how adepts treated bodyguards like me. Most bodyguards lacked my rating, and Bradley went out of the way to avoid telling people about the nature of our contract.

He’d liked the comfort of having a for life bodyguard. Nobody expected a woman to match with the men in the field, and I did. Thanks to my magic, I could oxygenate my blood at my whim, allowing me to push the limits. Before the accident, I’d been able to sprint an entire mile without slowing.

It took the equivalent of a flick of my wrist to help my lungs maximize oxygenation. I could control blood flow to keep my body performing at its peak. Oxygenated blood minimized muscle fatigue, and I had developed a stronger cardiovascular system experimenting on myself.

I figured I had at least an entire quart more of blood than other women my build and physical fitness. The extra veins and blood capacity had led to a larger-than-normal heart, too. My doctors had noticed that, but as the enlargement didn’t equate to undesirable swelling, they’d written it off as a fluke.

I couldn’t fix my busted ankle and foot. I couldn’t do a lot of things anymore, but once upon a time, I’d been a living work of art.