“Seriously,” Fancy Pants stood beside me on the other side. “Who are you talking to? ’Cause acting crazy is not going to get you out of here. Just ask us. We’ve all tried it. Nobody cares if you’re nuts.”
I looked down at Edna, who grinned up at me as Alan appeared in the anteroom, looking paler than usual. “Bree, they’re moving up the trial again. This is impossible! How are they making this happen?”
“The shadow world,” I answered without hesitation, the certainty coming from the middle of my bones. Crash could have handled the regular police without an issue. I was sure of it. Hell, I’d bet that Corb and Eammon could have gotten me out of trouble with the human authorities. But we weren’t dealing with them, were we? “Same way you got everything in the divorce and landed me with our combined debt. The corrupt system never bothered you much when you were a beneficiary of it.”
Alan glared at me. “That was necessary. There are times when the law is wrong and needs to be massaged into place.”
I pointed a finger at him, my handcuffs clinking. “And I’d bet you anything that they—those people in the other room—feel the same way you did. So all your high and mighty ‘this isn’t right’ bullshit is just for show.”
Which was beside the point. Officer Burke was on house arrest, no doubt to keep her from helping me. So this thing went even deeper than I’d first thought. How had they known there was a connection between us?
Talk about getting ducked sideways and upside down.
I looked back at Edna, who had an impressive swat for a dead person, and let out a sigh. “You got any ideas on how to get out of here?”
Fancy Pants ignored me this time, just muttering “Nuts, she’s a fruit loop.”
“You need someone to break you out. Maybe that hotsy-totsy, yummy lawyer of yours? He’s got muscles for days, and I’d put money on him being fae, if I were a betting kind of woman.” Edna sighed. “I did so love me a fae lover once in a while. Very flexy in the sack, all bendy and full of tingly magic in all the right places.”
I started to giggle. I shouldn’t have laughed. I was for all intents and purposes on death row, about to be executed for a crime I hadn’t committed.
The giddiness of the unexpected laughter mixed with adrenaline made me feel like I was full of helium and about to float away. Maybe it would have turned into full-blown meltdown laughter, only the door opened and Officer Cuffs walked in with a cell phone, holding it out to me as though he couldn’t believe what he was doing and didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Here. You have two minutes.” Officer Cuffs growled, his eyes sweeping over the other women in the cell with me. Fancy Pants cringed back, but Edna and the gal on the floor did not.
I took the phone and dialed the first number I could think of, which was Corb’s. Hopefully he could put his council connections to good use. He picked up on the second ring.
“Who is this?” he growled, obviously not recognizing the number.
“Corb, it’s me. I need you to get Roderick and send him down here. They’re framing me for Alan’s murder. Something hinky is going on, and the council might be able to help. There’s no way the human police are doing this alone. I—”
“They won’t help. I already tried,” he said. “Hold tight. We’re working another angle. They’re not going to win, Bree. Trust me. Okay? Look for Kink, just wait for her.”
And then he hung up on me, which was just as well, seeing as Officer Cuffs was trying to tug the phone away.
“That was not two minutes,” Fancy Pants said, no longer cowering. “I timed it.” She tapped her very expensive gold watch.
She’d just got done calling me crazy, so I hadn’t expected her to stand up for me. Then, as he jerked the phone away from me anyway, it hit me—we were all locked in here together, being treated like shit, and it had formed a weird kind of sisterhood. Even if one of us was dead, and one of us was about to be dead, we were tied together in this place of in-between. In between life and death, in between the outside world and being locked up . . . almost like a fae in between.
I blew out a breath as the officer stormed off, slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed through the room, and I stepped away from the bars, my cuffs clinking.
Corb thought he had a loophole? If there was one, why hadn’t Crash thought of it? Of the two of them, I had more faith in Crash despite our rocky whatever-the-hell-was-going-on-between-us situation. Corb was young, and he cared too much about earning the praise of his superiors and the council. It had driven him to lie about things he really shouldn’t have.
Then again, Crash had been less than forthcoming too.
Jaysus on high, maybe I liked liars? I wrinkled up my nose and pursed my lips. I was going to have to dissect that at a later date, when my head wasn’t on the chopping block.
The creak of the outer door turned all our heads. A new guy swept into the room, his hair smoothed back in a swooshing pompadour style that made me think he was going to whip out a bright red cape and flap it at an oncoming bull. Hell, he was lean and lanky enough that he could have pulled it off.
He drew close enough that I could have reached through the bars to shake hands with him. A bright citrusy cologne drifted into the cell, not the kind of scent I’d have paired with a guy like him. His dark eyes narrowed on me, and his mouth thinned even as his nostrils flared. Like he really didn’t like what he was looking at. Or maybe he could smell the poo?
“I am the district prosecutor. Mr. Langley. What did Corb Walker mean when he said, ‘look for Kink’?” When he spoke, his mouth barely moved, almost as if he were a ventriloquist. It was all kinds of weird, and a warning shot down my spine that this one was trouble. “Is this some sort of sex cult you’re involved in? Is that why you killed your ex-husband? Did he discover your depraved ways?”
He tucked his hands behind him and stepped back as if he thought my supposed depravity might be contagious.
So the phone was tapped, no surprise there.
“Are you afraid of me?” I’d purposefully answered his question with a question, something Alan had hated—mostly because it worked so well with men who had outsized egos.
Speaking of, Alan swooped in beside me. “Yes, keep him on his toes. Don’t give him anything.”
I wanted to point out to Alan that it didn’t really matter what I said. They fully intended to string me up for his murder and gawd only knew what other charges they’d trump up along the way.
Mr. Langley shook his head. “You are not in a position to be asking questions. I would think you’d want to answer them and gain some—”
I raised my cuffed hands, palms facing him, effectively shutting him up. And put on my I-used-to-be-married-to-a-lawyer-and-helped-him-in-his-office persona. “Let’s be straight with each other, Mr. Langley. You and your boys are back there spreading Alan’s blood all over my things to make a case against me that is not real. You and I both know that. Whatever your reason for wanting me dead, you’re so committed to it that you’ve bumped up the trial to—” I waited for Alan to whisper the new date in my ear, “—tomorrow at nine in the morning.”
Mr. Langley paled. “You can’t know that. Only I know that.”