Page 21 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga #1)

“On our one-year anniversary, we were walking back from dinner, and she saw a parlor open late—she wanted to do something grand to commemorate it. I declined—I thought maybe we shouldn’t celebrate with something that could very easily outlast our relationship.

” She sighed deeply, losing some of her fire and frustration.

“We’d fought that night.” Then, with even more resignation, she added, “We fought a lot of nights.”

“About what?” Avery urged.

“Her hours, me not taking her seriously enough, what my tone meant, why she rolled her eyes at me—at the end, it would be easier to name what we didn’t fight about.”

Avery gave a slow, understanding nod. “Did you end it? Or did she?”

Rachel tucked wisps of hair behind her ear self-consciously.

“I did. Three weeks ago. I just…got so tired of fighting.” She inhaled deeply, settling back into the chair with a sigh.

She had a pensive look, as though considering a question, and so Avery let the silence hang until she finally asked it. “What does it mean? Rockit iss…sooz?”

“Rache ist sü?. It’s German. Revenge is sweet.”

Rachel’s pretty face soured with a scoff.

“Of course.” She began smoothing the tassels on the decorative pillow again.

“I’m the one who didn’t want to keep screaming at each other every other night, so that makes me the bad guy.

I’m the villain, and she gets to lash out.

She erases every good memory and plays the victim to feed her ridiculously overdramatic narrative! ”

Something shifted in Avery, and for the first time, Saga heard a palpable edge in her tone. “Miss Walker, your former companion died under mysterious circumstances. Regardless of what you thought she might have been playing, in the end, she was a victim.”

It took a moment for the weight of those words and their implications to sink in.

“Wait…” Rachel started, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “You don’t think I had anything to do with that, do you?”

“Do you have any idea why Valentina might have been driving around Knightsbridge at three a.m. that Monday?” Avery asked, cool and level.

“N-no.” Rachel shook her head. “I think her last patient lived near there—or maybe it was Westminster. Somewhere posh. They were old money. And a lot of it. But she wouldn’t have had a reason to be around there anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Mrs. Goff had finally passed away. Val called me about a week ago to ask if she could stay in the apartment for a few days until she figured out her next move.”

Saga perked up suddenly at the familiar name. “Eira Goff?”

Rachel startled and gaped at her, having indeed forgotten the other woman’s presence in her home.

Saga didn’t begrudge her this. Having personally experienced Avery’s gaze, she was rather aware it gave the illusion you were the only two people in the world, let alone the room.

She swallowed, worried that blurting out Eira’s name might have ruined the rapport Avery had begun to build with her suspect.

Rachel stumbled, but thankfully continued. “Y-yes. Val had been with the family for several years. Before we started dating. She hadn’t been full-time with them then, though.”

“And where were you on Monday morning?” Avery’s warm voice pulled her back into the illusion of intimacy.

“Asleep. In Chelsea. When Val called, I went to stay with my mother as a courtesy so she’d have the apartment to herself. I didn’t want to see her, I was worried it would start another fight.”

“Can your mother verify that?”

“Yes!” Rachel covered her mouth with her fingers timidly, then held up both hands to amend the abrupt statement. “Well, mostly…until about nine p.m., anyway. She tucks in pretty early. I went to bed at midnight.”

Saga quirked an eyebrow, then circled the note she’d just written. Possible window of opportunity.

“So that was the last time you spoke? About the apartment?”

Rachel faltered, her eyes averting. “Um, well, I guess she also drunk-dialed me around eleven?”

The moment of silence that fell between them was noticeable. Heavy.

“She’d been drinking?” It was a simple prompt, giving no judgment or reaction to this new information about their more recent contact.

Rachel squirmed all the same, acutely aware she should have mentioned this interaction earlier. “I assumed she was? She seemed disoriented. She was slurring and kept repeating things.”

“What kind of things?”

Rachel’s eyes unfocused, trying to piece together the conversation from memory.

“What kind of things, Rachel?” Avery repeated softly, but deliberately. There was a resonance in the way she spoke the woman’s name that caught her attention.

“A bunch of things!” The words blurted out quickly like she hadn’t been able to control them.

She cleared her throat and continued, a little more measured.

“Weird, out-of-place things. Asking when I was coming home, how my mom was, telling me about this movie she wanted me to see—even though we did see it. Last year. Some horrible slasher film she’d dragged me to—I still have nightmares about it…

” Her voice trailed off as she met Avery’s eyes once more and she realized she was getting off-topic.

“She had to check that she locked the door. The door had to be locked. Something was out there. Was I safe? Did I have my keys, because she didn’t want to lock me out.

Then it would sort of repeat all over again?

I don’t know, maybe she’d taken something. ”

“Was that like her? To use recreational substances?”

Rachel shook her head. “Not when we were together, but… It wasn’t unusual for her to use a bottle as a therapist, so it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility.”

Saga’s nose scrunched, betraying her own opinions toward Rachel’s attitude, but Avery’s face remained placid.

“Do you mind if my associate and I look around?”

Rachel shook her head. “Go ahead… All of her stuff should still be here.”

Avery stood, smoothing down her vest. She caught Saga’s eye and cocked her head toward the hallway, indicating for her to follow.

As Saga joined her, that strange sense of something feeling wrong that struck her as she entered began to settle somewhere between her stomach and sternum. It was hard and uncomfortable.

“I don’t suppose,” Avery began so quietly that Saga had to practically lean against her in order to hear her. “You could illuminate me on what exactly a ‘drunk dial’ is?”

A stifled snicker escaped Saga, but when she met Avery’s eyes, her smile faded.

“Oh, you’re serious.” She had definitely been in a different country—clearly there was some sort of language breakdown with colloquialisms. “It’s when you call someone while inebriated…

Usually it’s someone you shouldn’t be calling, like an ex-girlfriend, for instance. ”

Avery’s eyes slid darkly back toward the living room but she didn’t move. “So she did see the victim that night. She called upon her.”

Saga blinked, unsure of how she’d miscommunicated. “No, they just talked on the telephone. But you should probably follow up on that, make sure it actually happened.”

Thoughtful, the taller woman mouthed “telephone” as she worked through something in her head.

Saga thought she heard the faint whisper of the words, “Greek” and “voice”. She attempted to lip-read further, but lingered on the shape of Avery’s mouth, and how soft and flawless her lips looked from this short distance.

“Fascinating…” Avery remarked quietly to herself, and her attention came back to sharpen on Saga.

This noticeable shift made Saga jolt back to the present, and she fumbled for something to say that wouldn’t betray her thoughts. “That’s a thing cops can actually do, right? It’s not just a TV show thing, checking phone records?”

“I will look into it,” Avery answered enigmatically before walking farther down the hall. “How do you know Eira Goff?”

“She was my grandmother’s best friend. Like sisters since college. I guess you could say she was like a second grandmother to me.”

“Could these deaths be in any way connected?”

Saga blinked. “What? No, why?”

“Maybe someone wasn’t particularly pleased with the care of their elderly relative,” Avery echoed Saga’s own theory back to her.

“Yeah, but that was before I knew who her last patient was.”

“Does that change things?”

“Well, yeah. Plus Eira’s only child is Elis, and he doesn’t really strike me as the maliciously complicated murderer type, and Carys…

” Saga mulled over all the stories she’d heard secondhand through both Eira and Saoirse about Crazy Cousin Carys.

“Carys wouldn’t care enough to get revenge on someone who wronged Eira. ”

“So you believe Eira’s death was purely natural causes.”

Again, Saga’s face must have betrayed her thoughts in regards to the absurdity of it all.

“It’s a connection, Saga, and one that we would be fools to ignore completely, regardless how absurd it may seem. Do you think Eira’s death was purely from natural causes?”

“I mean, she had heart problems, and it was a heart attack, so…” Yet doubt had been sown in her thoughts. “It would be worth looking into, I guess?”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“At the wedding.” That, Saga didn’t even have to think about—though it was difficult to recall any details about that day but her own humiliation.

Avery sounded acutely attentive as she closely examined the bookshelf in the hallway. Her fingers ran over the volumes, pushing some in, pulling others out. “When was that?”

“About three months ago. She had an attack a few weeks after and kept to her home under doctor’s orders.”

“Who was getting married?”

A familiar pang in Saga’s chest. Ah, there it was. She’d almost thought it was gone the other day. “Nobody.” Her throat felt tight. “As it turns out.”

Avery turned back to look at her, clearly catching the shift in her tone but not understanding it, and Saga didn’t allow her focus to waver.