Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (33 page)

Of the moment on stage when Declan burned and burned and burned.

Of how he touched me earlier, so tenderly, and took away the brand my brother—one of the most powerful wizards in existence—couldn’t do anything with.

And I realize he’s probably right. He could have killed me without any kind of repercussions. That he didn’t makes it better somehow, and also worse.

“Get out,” I tell him.

“Not until you let me explain.” He doesn’t move from his spot by the window.

If he explains any more my brain is going to spontaneously combust. “Contrary to recent actions, I’m pretty good at figuring things out all on my own.”

“You’re not thinking straight right now. Which is understandable, but you need to let me take care of—”

A blast of magic—of overwhelming power—wells up inside of me, then slams across the room to strike the wall inches from where he’s standing. He doesn’t flinch, but the look in his eyes turns wary, like he’s just now clueing in to what he’s dealing with. “You may be older than I am. You may be stronger than I am. But you don’t have the right to tell me how I’m thinking or what I’m thinking or if I’m clear or not. Not after everything that you’ve done.”

I realize I’m speaking through clenched teeth and pause, force myself to take a few deep, calming breaths. “Now I would like you to go. I’m not angry. I’m not even that upset. I’m more than happy to talk with you more tomorrow or whenever you’d like, but I can’t do any more tonight. I’m exhausted and I. Need. You. To. Leave.”

At first it seems like he’s going to argue with me. But as he looks me over with blank eyes, something shifts in his expression—and the room. He turns, walks toward my bedroom door. Then stops before he’s halfway across
the room. Without looking at me, he says, “I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”

It’s a heartfelt apology from a man who rarely, if ever, apologizes. But I’m not ready to accept it. “I have evidence to the contrary.”

He does look at me then, his lips twisting into that half smirk I first saw all those years ago. “You’re tougher than you look.”

I lift my chin in blatant challenge, unwilling—unable—to give an inch. “I’ve had to be.”

“No doubt. Good night, Xandra.” Though he’s halfway across the room, I feel his hand stroke my cheek, his fingers brush against my lips. And then, from one second to the next, he quite simply disappears.

For long seconds, my brain goggles at how he does that, but in the end, I let it go. Power is power is power, and I have more than enough to think about without worrying how Declan does what he does.

Instead, I focus on everything he told me—and everything he didn’t. For all his talk of our souls being connected—which seems to fit even though it sounds like crazy talk at the same time—there seems to be a lot of death wrapped up in all of this. Not to mention the stink of black magic.

Not just from the warlock who is even now killing women who look like me, but from this whole thing. People aren’t just born like this. Obviously, or Declan would have been connected to someone else long before I was ever conceived. And I don’t believe I was born connected to Declan either.

My hand creeps up to play with my mark from Isis. She gave me this when I was born, as a symbol of the enormous power with which she had gifted me. Sometime after that, sometime after I was touched by the goddess, is when our souls were connected.

But how?

Why?

By whom?

And another question I am beginning to believe is the most important one of them all. Is whoever did this also somehow connected to the brutal deaths of Amy, Lina and the woman last night?

“I
’m not sure what happened last night, but keeping up with your social calendar is getting to be a little too challenging for me, Xandra. Not to mention seriously freaking me out. You need to get the hell up. Now.”

I open bleary eyes to see Lily standing over my bed, her face concerned and more than a little exasperated. “Who’s been calling?” I mumble as I rub my hands over my eyes. I swear, it feels like I just went to sleep.

“Who hasn’t been calling? Your mom, Salima, Declan. Your brother wants me to tell you he has lunch with his fiancée’s parents and that you are not to leave the house until he gets back. And”—she pauses, pretends to think for a second—“oh, yeah. A
cop
is here to see you. Says his name is Nate and that you’ll know what he wants. What the hell happened last night, Xandra?”

I don’t answer her as my stomach sinks down to somewhere around the vicinity of my knees. Either I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I’d hoped to be at the Capitol or there’s been some kind of break in the case that’s led Nate straight to my doorstep. Either way, I’m pretty sure it’s not a good thing that he’s here at—I glance at my alarm clock—ten thirty in the morning on New Year’s Day.

“Can you stall him?” I ask hoarsely. Not forever. Just until I get my head on straight. Which, come to think of it, might be forever after all.

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Lily asks with a frown. “But he’s getting impatient, so I suggest you brush your teeth at world-record-setting pace.” With that, she flounces back out of the room.

For long seconds I don’t move, just sit there trying to clear the last of the cobwebs from my brain. Considering I hadn’t had so much as a glass of champagne last night, it’s much harder than it should be.

Voices drift down the hall to me. Though I can’t make out the words, I can hear the impatience in Nate’s tone, the barely concealed panic in Lily’s. That panic is what finally galvanizes me. I stumble out of bed and to the bathroom.

It isn’t the world’s fastest toothbrushing and grooming session, but in less than ten minutes I’m walking toward the living room on unsteady feet. Again, I didn’t drink last night, but it sure feels like I did. I’m shaky, queasy. Not to mention having the mother of all headaches. I swear, if this nightmare doesn’t end soon, I’m not going to be able to function.

Nate, who’s been sitting on my couch—an untouched cup of coffee on the table in front of him—leaps to his feet at my appearance. He’s across the room in seconds, his face concerned as he wraps an arm around me and guides me to the nearest chair.

Maybe I’m not under arrest after all.

“You look like hell,” he bluntly tells me when we’re both seated.

“I went to bed four hours ago. What do you expect?”

“What’d you do last night?” His eyes search mine. But Lily chooses that moment to bring me a cup of coffee—thank the goddess—and I use that as a chance to glance away. I’m a lousy liar on the best of days, and that’s without looking straight into the guy’s eyes while I do it.

“Oh, you know me. Party, party, party,” I tell him blithely.

“I didn’t think you’d be in much of a party mood after discovering Jacqueline French on the Capitol grounds.” He takes a blasé sip of his own coffee as he drops the bombshell, but every muscle in his body is tensed for a fight. Or my flight, I’m not sure which.

But I’m not running from this, not this time. No matter how much I want to. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There are cameras, Xandra. I saw you.”

I close my eyes, barely resist the urge to bang my head against the table. Of course there were cameras! Why hadn’t I thought of that? Not that there was much I could have done about that fact, but surely Declan or Donovan could have done something to—

Nate shifts forward in his seat, avidly cataloging each and every emotion flitting across my face. And that’s when I know—I’m not sure how, but I do—that he’s just fishing. Declan or my brother must have taken care of the cameras after all. “Saw me what?” I take a sip of my own coffee, try not to choke on it. But my throat is so tight that I can barely get the hot liquid down.

“Saw you on the grounds, with the body. And that cop, who had no business letting you through.”

Okay, so maybe he’s not fishing after all. Still, it’s too late to do anything but brazen this out. “What cop?”

Nate sighs in exasperation. “Is this really how we’re going to play it? I’m not here to arrest you, Xandra. I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

He snorts. “Baby, if I had to point to one person I’ve met in my entire career as a cop who was over her head in a situation that could get her killed, I would pick you. Now, I don’t know why you’re turning up at my murder scenes or why the victims are all marked with your very distinctive tattoo, but they are. Which says to me either you’re involved—which my gut tells me you aren’t—or
there’s a sociopath out there who wants you to be. And frankly, that scares the hell out of me.”

His eyes are sincere when he leans forward and takes my hand. “I don’t want to show up at one of these scenes and find you lying there Xandra. I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

His concern touches me. It’s different from Donovan’s protectiveness or Declan’s enraged determination, but it feels good nonetheless. Another homicide detective would probably have hauled me to jail already and the fact that Nate trusts me enough to look beyond the surface clues tells me he’s a better friend than I ever imagined. And a better homicide detective. Because, no matter how good of friends we are, I know if he really believed I was guilty that nothing would stop him from taking me in. Surely I owe him some kind of explanation to justify his faith in me.

The fleeting thought that he’s playing me runs through my mind, that this is just another interrogation technique, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. I need to tell him some part of the truth—I just wish I knew how much or how little I could say.

“I don’t know why this is happening.” I start with absolute truth. “I don’t know who is doing this or why he’s branding women with my tattoo. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that the victims look like me or—”

“It’s not a coincidence.”

“Okay. Then I don’t know why he’s choosing women who look like me.”

“Do you have any old boyfriends that things ended badly with?” Nate asks, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pen and a small pad of paper.

“No.”

“Any old boyfriends who seemed a little bit weird or whose behavior was outside the norm?”

Immediately I think of Declan, but I don’t think his “outside the norm” is quite what Nate is talking about.

I clear my throat. “No.”

He raises a brow, like he knows there’s something I’m not telling him. But he chooses not to pursue it, because his next question is “Any stalkers? Any man who threatened you, wanted more than you could give him?”

“No one.” I shake my head. “Seriously, Nate, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt me the way those women have been hurt.”

He doesn’t answer, just moves on to the next question—which totally takes me by surprise. “How well do you know Ryder Chumomisto? I know you said he dated your sister, but how well did
you
know him?”

“Ryder?” I’m prepared for questions about Declan, but Ryder? “I don’t know. We were friends, I guess. Or we were. Before the other day, I hadn’t seen him since he and my sister broke up.”

“Why did they break up?”

“The usual. They grew apart, wanted different things.” Hannah is as white a witch as they come and Ryder, like Declan, always treaded a little too close to the darkness for her. I’m not sure what it says about me that Declan’s darkness doesn’t bother me the same way. My only problem with it is I know it hides a side of him he doesn’t want me to see, a past hurt so great that it shifted his path forever.

“Ryder’s a good guy. He wouldn’t do this.”

“I thought you didn’t have any idea who the killer was.”

“I don’t. But Ryder?” I shake my head. I can’t get my head around even the suggestion of it. “He’s one of the good guys, who genuinely likes women. I never once even saw him raise his voice to my sister.”

The sound Nate makes doesn’t sound very convinced. “What about Declan Chumomisto?”

Immediately, a wall goes up between us. I don’t know if he senses it, but I can feel it. My magic seeking to distance me—not just from Nate, but from the question itself. “It’s not Declan.”

Nate’s eyes narrow, but his voice sounds the same as always when he says, “Why don’t you let me worry about who it is or isn’t?”

“Because you’re wasting time, going in the wrong direction.”

He ignores this. “How well do you know Declan? As well as you know his brother?”

I don’t know how to answer that. I think of everything Declan did to me last night and want to tell Nate that I know him very well. But though he healed me—not to mention gave me the most intense orgasm of my life on the heels of one of the worst experiences of my life—I know very little about him that isn’t common knowledge. Or common lore.

Twice he’s come into my life and turned it upside down and still I know less about him than a common acquaintance would, while he seems to know nearly everything about me. It’s just one more example of the power imbalance between us and it grates. Hard.

“I didn’t realize that was a difficult question.” Nate’s wry tone jerks my attention back to him.

“It’s not that. I just don’t know how to answer. I met him eight years ago and we spent an evening together. But I hadn’t seen or talked to him again until the other night.”

“Yet you left the police station with him. Even knowing that someone had just killed a woman he is connected to, a woman who looks an awful lot like you, you walked away from certain safety and got into a car with him?”

Put like that, it sounds ridiculous. No wonder Nate is looking at me like I’m crazy—and like he doesn’t believe a word I’ve just told him.

“It was a really intense night.”

“For most people finding a dead body is.”

“I meant the night eight years ago, when I first met him.” The words are out before I register that I’m going to say them. I wonder what he would say if I told him I’d found a dead body that night too? Declan would probably find himself in jail before he could say “Hocus Pocus.”

“What are you hiding?” Nate demands.

“About Declan? Nothing.”

“About yourself. I’ve been doing this job for over a decade, Xandra. I know when a witness is lying to me.”