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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HARPER PRESUMED THAT SHE WOULD be the one to see what was on Calloway’s drive, and I didn’t argue with her. It didn’t matter who read it, as long as Axel King didn’t figure out what we were reading.

When we got back to the hotel, I fetched Ghaliya’s laptop from her room, plus my tablet, and took them both to Ghaliya, who was sitting at the locals’ table in the bar, with Olivia beside her, knitting something pink and delicate.

“Can you dump the contents of the thumb drive into my tablet, so it looks like Harper is reading a book?” I asked Ghaliya. “Then give it to Harper to read. I have to get lunch ready.”

“I’ll come and help you,” Olivia said, putting away her knitting.

Trevalyan, Wim and Ben were already in the kitchen. They’d consulted the menu I had taped to the back of the dining room swing door and were prepping vegetables.

“The beets are off.” Wim wrinkled his nose.

“They look fine.” I was reluctant to throw out good vegetables. I’d had to toss too much food already and the waste was distressing.

“Trust me, dear,” Olivia said. “If Wim says they’re no good, they’re no good.”

I sighed. “Out they go then. Let’s get this meal done. I want to find out what Harper has learned.”

Lunch proceeded without a hitch, after that. I had been planning to serve borscht, cabbage rolls, potato perogies and ham, with a light gravy, fried onions and sour cream and other traditional fixings. The loss of the beets had me pivoting. I made a fast and easy potato and leek soup and added the chopped ham to half of it for the omnivores. I warmed up pre-made garlic bread. Lots of it.

While we were eating, Harper couldn’t speak about what she had discovered so far, with King sitting only two tables away. I found myself gobbling my food, anxious to gather around the locals’ table on the other side of the hotel to hear what she had learned. I wasn’t the only one bolting their meal.

Little was left of either soup or the bread, afterward. We raced through the cleanup in near silence and headed into the bar.

Ghaliya was back in her seat, her closed laptop before her. Broch was beside her. I turned to smile at Hirom, who was back behind the bar. He lifted his hand in a little acknowledgement.

Harper had settled on the window seat to read while we did the clean-up. She had her back to the wall, and her bootheels dug into the cushions in front of her. The tablet was on her knees. The midday sun streamed through the frosted windows, bathing her and the window seat in bright spring sunshine.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Maybe. Let me finish,” Harper said curtly.

I sucked in my impatience. I went over to the bar and asked Hirom to pour a round of drinks for everyone at the table, then waited there until the tray was loaded and carried it back to the table.

Olivia was knitting again.

I handed out the drinks, and returned the tray to Hirom, then settled in to try to enjoy my cider.

The conversation around the table was desultory. I think we were all willing Harper to hurry up.

I leaned toward Broch. “Did King’s group say anything interesting this morning?”

“They’re growing impatient. They want King to move on. They’re still not saying it to his face, though.” He shook his head. “He’s a remarkable leader. Eight days, and they still haven’t openly challenged King about why they’re sitting around a hotel. That shows a huge amount of respect and trust.”

“Did King have anything to say about talking to me last night?”

“Not a word. But he’s drinking straight water this morning.” Broch smiled. “And he’s not talking much, either.”

“He’s thinking again,” Ben said.

“We’re giving him too much to think about, is the problem,” Trevalyan added.

“If Harper finds anything interesting, it might be enough to get him off our backs,” I said. “Another line of enquiry.”

“Anything that gets them out of here is fine by me,” Trevalyan said. “May Day is too close.”

It took another hour before Harper was ready to talk to us. She swiped and tapped and frowned, sometimes turning the tablet to read in landscape.

While everyone else got to sit at the table, I took care of things. The daily grocery delivery arrived, and I went out to haul cartons of groceries out of the truck, and pay off the driver, an unpleasant man called Leo Davis, who would only continue to deliver to us here in Haigton if I sweetened the pot. A lot .

One day, we would have to find an alternative. After Beltane, I promised myself, as I carried the boxes one at a time into the kitchen and put away the groceries. I didn’t dare leave them until I started dinner, not with food going off in an hour or two. I put the fresh stuff on the wooden shelves in the cold room and the two fridges beside it and filled in the empty spots on the shelves with replacement cans.

Ben found me there. “Harper’s done. She’s waiting for you.”

I raised my brow. “She’s waiting for me ?”

“Mmm.” His slow smile said he understood my skepticism.

I headed for the bar.

Harper was at the table. They’d found a chair and moved everyone around to fit her in. The tablet was in front of her. Everyone watched me approach and take a seat. They had been waiting for me.

Then everyone’s gaze switched to Harper.

She cleared her throat. “Seems Calloway didn’t hate me, after all.” She touched the tablet. “He was trying to warn me.”

Olivia leaned forward, crushing her knitting, in order to look at Harper. “Given what you did to him, dear, that seems…extraordinary. Can you explain why he didn’t hate you?”

“Oh, he did hate me for a while.” She touched the tablet again. “His diary is in here. I did a search and found mentions of me. About six years after…after our run-in, another hunter clued him in about me. Calloway spent pages being all mournful about how my parents were killed by a rogue vampire.”

Broch’s gaze dropped to the tabletop. He sighed.

“Seems that convinced Calloway that I was just like him.” Harper rolled her eyes.

Only, it did make them the same. Could Harper not see that?

“How dare he,” Trevalyan drawled.

Harper shot Trevalyan a glare that would have withered weeds. He just smiled back at her.

“Continue, please,” Ben said, with false patience.

Harper said, “Figuring out we were virtual kin took all the anger out of him. But he didn’t have a career to go back to. All he had was hunting, so he decided to make something of that. And he started learning the trade. Paid his dues and earned the forgiveness of Riley Connors and her people.” Harper’s mouth twisted cynically. “Softies,” she added.

“What was he trying to warn you about?” I asked.

“That’s where it gets hazy,” Harper said. “There are a bunch of documents I can’t make sense of. Business documents, contracts, incorporations, agendas, share certificates…there are screens’ worth of them. But none of it makes any sense to me.”

“Let me look at it,” Broch said. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Knock yourself out. It gave me a headache.” Harper shoved the tablet across the table toward Broch.

“If you can’t make sense of it, then how did you know Calloway was trying to warn you?” Ben asked, which saved me from asking the same thing.

Harper sat back. “Silly fool wrote it in his diary.” She raised her chin and looked up in the air, recalling. “‘ Harper might be the one person to believe me. She has to know about this before it’s too late. Orpheus will end all of us .”

She glanced around the table. “That’s it. It was his bloody diary. He didn’t spell it out. He already knew who Orpheus was and why I had to know about him.”

I looked at Broch. “Does the name mean anything to you?”

“I’ve never met anyone called Orpheus or heard of anyone else who has. It’s a rare name.”

“I can ask Riley if she has. She needs to know there’s an Orpheus out there who can end all of us.”

“You believe him?” Harper asked. “The man was paranoid.”

“He went out of his way to put proof into the hands of other hunters,” I said. “Maybe he was seeing threats where none existed, but as a fellow hunter, isn’t it your professional responsibility to at least consider his evidence and act as if he was of sound mind, instead of condemning him to Lalaland out of hand?”

Harper stared at me. Her face was rigid and expressionless. Then she cleared her throat. “Aaanywaaay…. That’s the most I could get out of Calloway’s ram—” She grimaced. “That’s everything I found. None of it says why Calloway was murdered.”

“That’s because you want to believe he was delusional, Harper, dear,” Olivia said. “It’s clear to me that the obvious suspect is this Orpheus. He must have learned Calloway was looking for you. Perhaps when Calloway unwisely shouted your name in the diner. That would have forced Orpheus’ hand. He acted immediately.”

Harper blinked. “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“That puts your paranoia theory in a different light, doesn’t it?” Trevalyan added.

“It’s even worse than that,” Broch said softly.

Harper nodded, her gaze unfocused. “If Orpheus killed Calloway to shut him up, he’ll come looking for me, next.”

“Perhaps he has been looking for you all along,” I said. “But Haigton Crossing isn’t on the maps, and the locals forget where the place is. The town has been protecting you all along.”

Harper crossed her arms. “Let him come. I’m more than ready. That is, if he exists.”

“It doesn’t matter if Calloway was delusional, or if he had uncovered a grand plot,” Broch said. He leaned forward and slid toward me the teeny thumb drive. “That is exactly what Agent King needs. A suspect who isn’t Harper.”

I picked up the thumb drive. “And how am I supposed to explain how we got this? There’s a thing called chain of evidence. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, Broch.”

“Tell him the truth,” Broch said. “He knows you got the hotel name out of him. If he isn’t expecting something like this, he’s being paid too much.”

I got up and walked over to King’s table. It didn’t surprise me to see him watching me as I crossed the floor. He didn’t smile at me when I stopped beside his chair. Everyone else at the table stopped talking.

I put the thumb drive on the table beside King’s glass of water. “We found that in the room Calloway died in. His diary is on there, along with a lot of documents that he considered to be evidence that someone called Orpheus was a threat.” I was struck by a good idea. “Check the CCTV footage at the hotel. You’ll see we were there this morning.”

“I already know you were there,” King replied. “We’ve studied the footage.” He looked at the thumb drive. “We turned that room upside down. Where was it?”

Tell the truth .

“Calloway stashed it behind the thermostat cover,” I said.

King made a sound that I interpreted as one of satisfaction. He picked up the thumb drive and closed his fist around it. “Thanks, Ms. Crackstone. We’ll take it from here.”

I walked back to the locals’ table and gripped the back of my chair. I didn’t sit down. Everyone looked at me.

“He was expecting us to check the room. He was waiting to see if we found something they didn’t. We did exactly what he wanted us to do.”

Harper glowered. “Fuck,” she said softly.

In this, I agreed with her one hundred percent. I didn’t like being played. Had King given up the hotel name voluntarily, knowing I would look there? Or had the hex worked, and only afterward he decided to use his indiscretion to further the case?

“It doesn’t matter if he outsmarted you,” Broch said. “He got what he needed out of it and so did we. Harper is in the clear.”

I glanced at my watch. “Damn,” I said. “I’m about to be late for a meeting.” I had three minutes to get upstairs, fight with Ghaliya’s laptop and see Jasper’s face on the screen for the first time since we’d signed the divorce papers.

Jasper was in California, but he was still screwing with my life and making me miserable. It seemed I was surrounded by manipulative men.

I took a glass of whisky with me. I was going to need it.