Page 20 of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1)

Winter had managed to emerge while Nathan, Jim, and Sasha were tracking down and killing the succubus in Minneapolis.

Even small town Crofton, Nebraska, was chilly with the promise of snow.

Nathan felt the cold deeper in his bones than he could remember over recent years, as if there was something particularly sharp in the air around him.

The local general store was almost colder than the weather outside.

Nathan kept the collar of his jacket turned up despite being a good distance from the freezer section.

The pretty brunette behind the flower counter seemed oblivious to the chill in the store, completely at ease as she smiled shyly at Nathan and batted her eyes.

“So, I hear some pretty crazy stuff went down the other day. You working when it happened?” Nathan asked with a warm smile.

Crofton had recently had a string of outbursts from otherwise law-abiding citizens. What had started as rambunctious teenagers and a small crime wave had turned into several attempted rapes and two murders all in a matter of days.

The town’s most recent death had happened right where Nathan was standing.

“Well…actually…” the girl spoke in a hushed voice, her dark brown eyes darting from side to side. “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

The nametag 'Becca' stared back at Nathan as the girl leaned forward. She was average in build but cute for a recent high school graduate. When she leaned her upper body further onto the glass counter, the curves of her bust line were hard to ignore.

Nathan knew better than to stare, but the reflection in the glass worked well in his favor. “Must have been scary.” he said. “You, just trying to do your job, which you work so hard at, and then some guy comes in waving a gun around.”

There was the slightest blush creeping into the girl’s cheeks. “He's the last guy you would have expected it from, either. In fact…no, I…I really shouldn’t say anything.” She stood back up and crossed her arms over her chest.

Nathan was losing her. He tried to think of something else but, before he could say anything, a familiar voice interrupted them.

“Hitting on the help again, honey ?”

Nathan tensed at the endearment, and tensed further when Sasha slipped up behind him and hooked an arm snugly around his waist.

“Were you two talking about the whole murder thing? Crazy, right?” Sasha said. His attention was focused on the girl behind the counter, who dropped her arms and stared at them.

Sasha’s proximity and the overly bright and energetic tone to his voice had Nathan momentarily stunned.

“We were on our way here when we first heard about it,” Sasha said, squeezing Nathan closer against him. “Almost turned right around. But I hate to be bullied out of something I've been looking forward to. We'd been trying to find time for a little getaway for ages. Right, Nate?”

“Uh…”

“So…you two…?” Becca pointed back and forth between them. The blush had crept down her neck and a mischievous smile was tugging at her lips.

“Uh, we’re not…” Nathan tried to say, while trying to push Sasha away from him.

Sasha ignored Nathan’s vain attempts to outdo his strength. "It just gives me the creeps,” he said. “Some armed robber coming in and getting gunned down. We deal with that enough in the city, thank you."

Becca leaned forward over the counter again, inhibitions somehow banished with Sasha’s arrival.

“Well, to tell you the truth, he wasn't gunned down," she said.

"It was way creepier than you’d think. Mrs. Barnes was in here before the guy showed up, and she was buying like everything in the store.

She was here at my counter having me wrap up all the roses when he came in.

That's Mr. Jonas from the bank. Nicest guy in the world.

Wife, kids. He comes in trying to steal all this stuff Mrs. Barnes is buying, right?

Came right up to the flower counter too, and she just..

.I don't know, flipped out. Even with Mr. Jonas swinging that gun around, it was like she didn't even care.

She tackled him to the ground and knocked the gun right out of his hand. "

"So this Mrs. Barnes picked up the gun and shot him?" Nathan asked.

Becca shook her head. "That's the really gross part. He was on the ground and she just...dug her stiletto heel right into his forehead. Awful .” She shuddered.

“Looked like a gunshot when it was done, but.

..I saw it happen. She didn't even clean all the gore off of her ugly green heel when they were wheeling him away on a stretcher.

It was like she was proud of it or something.

I tell you, I almost quit right then, but I need the money for college.

I can't wait to get out of this town. I bet you guys have it way better in the city.

" She looked at them as a pair just as adoringly as she had looked at Nathan solo.

Nathan would have expected more wariness out of a teenage girl from a small town, especially with the way Sasha was hanging all over him. He didn't understand this new breed of teenage girl at all.

“Personally, I'd take Manolos over a pair of green pumps," Sasha said, "but even I wouldn’t kill for something like flowers and a few groceries. And I’ve been known to get pretty vicious during a sale. Embarrasses the hell out of my Nate here.”

My Nate? And what the hell are Manolos?

"Anyway, thanks for the story," Sasha said, tugging on Nathan's arm. "I think we're just going to get what we need and make scarce. You be careful now."

Sasha pulled Nathan along with him toward the back of the store. By the time they were nearing the end of the produce aisle, Nathan’s reflexes finally caught up to him. He pushed Sasha away and gave the redhead a glare he hoped conveyed his anger.

“What?” Sasha shrugged, as if he couldn’t think of anything wrong with what he had done. “You were flirting with her.”

“Uh, yeah . It’s kind of what I do when there's a pretty girl around,” Nathan said.

Sasha leaned back against one of the refrigerator doors. His red hair was doubled behind him in the reflection like someone had colored out of the lines with a Crayola red crayon. “Nathan,” he said, somewhat patronizing. “Flirting isn’t always the best way to get information out of a pretty girl.”

“Hn. Always worked for me,” Nathan grumbled.

“I’m telling you. Sometimes a girl would rather think she is the last thing on your mind. I’ve gotten more propositions by acting practically uninterested in women than I ever have by flirting directly.”

“Oh yeah? And how’s your luck pretending to have a boyfriend ?” Nathan snapped.

“Well…it worked, didn’t it?” Sasha smiled, but the expression wavered as he pushed away from the refrigerator door. “Look, I'm sorry. Really. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t mean to send any mixed signals here.”

“Heh. Right.” Nathan laughed, albeit a little bitterly. “Your signals are never mixed. Just obvious and more obvious.” But, as angry as Nathan wanted to be, Sasha's sheepish expression made him feel like the guilty one.

“Hey, did you guys find anything?” came the sudden arrival of Jim, appearing from around the corner of the aisle.

Sasha cast Nathan another apologetic look before answering. “More odd behavior to back our dark fae theory, but no real leads,” he said. “You?”

“Same.” Jim looked tired, like he was sleeping as poorly as Nathan was lately. “We need to get a look at what was going on in here before the murder happened so we can get a better idea of suspicious characters.”

“Well, they got cameras,” Nathan said, pointing to a dusty black dome on the ceiling.

“Good call,” Sasha said. "Come on." He motioned them toward the 'Employees Only' door in the corner. The acting manager wasn’t much older than sixteen, a freckled and gangly blonde mulling about the aisles with disinterest. Even though there were three of them, he didn’t notice when Nathan and the others snuck into the back room.

“Wait, won’t any surveillance tapes be at the police station?” Jim whispered.

“Small town like this, they probably watched the tapes here and left them to be catalogued later,” Sasha said. “Which hopefully means they were forgotten.”

It took only a moment to find the tiny surveillance office, setup with an old television and VCR, and, just as Sasha had predicted, as if a police officer had recently gone through the tapes only to leave them behind.

A live feed of the store was displayed on a separate monitor. They kept a close eye on that other screen for the manager as they popped in the first tape from the date of the murder.

Sasha fast-forwarded to around the time the incident had been reported.

There was nothing strange about the store or its occupants at first but, eventually, there was clear footage of the woman Becca had called Mrs. Barnes when she entered the store.

She was an older woman, finely dressed, and seemed perfectly normal.

The change in her to go from casually shopping to a frenzied spree happened suddenly, as if a switch had flipped in her brain.

“Hang on,” Jim said, pausing the tape to rewind it. “Did you see the woman who went past her?”

He played the tape again from the moment before Mrs. Barnes started shoveling things into her cart. There was another woman with her back to the camera who walked down the same aisle as Mrs. Barnes just before she changed.

“She touched her on the shoulder,” Jim pointed out, pausing the tape again.

“That has to be who we’re looking for. Maybe that woman touched Mr. Jonas outside the market before he came in too.

Look,” he said, and let the tape resume.

“She leaves after that. Are there any tapes from outside the store?”

Sasha shuffled through a few of the tapes beside him. “Doesn’t look like it. But I think you might have something with this. Power by touch is pretty common for fae. We need to find a clearer shot of this woman from the front.”