Page 28 of Veiled Justice (The Other Detective #1)

Emotionally wrung out, I all-but crawled out of Krieg’s car.

Loki sat quietly on my shoulder as I walked up the stairs to my flat, for once not offering any backchat.

Instead, he pressed himself close to my neck and his warm, soft body offered surprising comfort as my chaotic thoughts swirled in a torrent of panic in my brain.

Krieg knew what I was.

I knew what Krieg was.

He could have held his knowledge about me over me for years; he could have easily used it to bribe a Connection officer – and I would have let him do it.

I would have hated myself but I’d do anything to keep Mum from the chopping block.

Yet Krieg had told me about himself and levelled the playing field. Why?

He barely knew me; sure, there was chemistry between us but you didn’t risk your life and crown for a little sizzle between the sheets. I was missing something and I didn’t like it one bit. I needed to find out about the story about the witch and potion – the one he wasn’t telling me yet.

I unlocked the door to my flat, flipped on the light and went in. Then I pulled out my phone and rang Kass. Her voice was groggy when she answered and I realised it was late. ‘Sorry,’ I said before she could speak. ‘Didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘S’okay,’ she murmured through a yawn, but I could hear pain in her voice. Kassandra had fibromyalgia and today obviously hadn’t been a good day for her.

‘Flare up?’ I asked.

She sighed. ‘Yeah. Some. It’s fine. What do you need? ’Cos I know you’re not ringing in the middle of the night to arrange a movie marathon.’

‘Did you manage to get anywhere on the Imbarum thing?’

‘Sorry, no, but I’m still working on it. It’s highly illegal. Someone mentioned that they’d seen paperwork from a company requesting a review of its status – apparently they want to use it for medical purposes – but it was knocked back.’

‘The company?’

‘My source didn’t know. It was a while ago. I’m trying to dig it out.’

‘How did the company get around the blood-magic aspect?’

‘They claimed they had an alternative brewing method.’ Kass’s voice was thick with suspicion. She didn’t believe it and neither did I.

‘If you could dig it up that would be amazing.’ I paused. ‘I’m calling because Krieg made a comment about a witch and a potion. Do you know anything about that?’

She huffed a laugh. ‘Sweetheart, you need to be more specific.’

‘Ogres don’t like potions,’ I pointed out. ‘They think using them is cheating. You heal naturally or you die, right? So what potion could Krieg possibly want from a witch? What am I missing?’

There was a long silence. ‘There’s only one I can think of,’ she said finally.

‘What is it?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Krieg’s single and getting a lot of pressure to mate. He needs a High Queen to his High King.’

I refused to name the emotion that I felt at the thought of him mating with someone else. ‘Right,’ I said instead.

‘A soulmate potion,’ Kass suggested. I froze. ‘To help him find his mate,’ she continued.

My mind was careening into the impossible. I tried to keep my voice even. ‘That makes sense. Thanks, Kass. Go back to sleep.’

‘Movie night soon?’ she asked, yawning again.

‘That would be good,’ I said vaguely, my mind buzzing.

After we rang off, I slowly set down the phone.

Krieg had recently moved his place of business from the Home Counties to Chester.

He had met me on a flimsy excuse during a recent case, popping up on my doorstep to confirm that his ogres hadn’t been involved in a murder.

He’d helped me with that case by threatening some thugs on my behalf and giving me a dose of the rare ORAL potion, which let me stay in the Other realm with full access to my magic.

He’d been protective; not only that, he’d met my mum and gone out of his way to charm her.

And he’d recently worn a red bow tie that matched the colour of my dress to a high-society event, something Ava had told me was a big deal.

I licked my lips and tried to come up with any conclusion other than …

Krieg thought I was his mate.

My mind shied away. Nope. I wasn’t an ogre and he wouldn’t want a human by his side. And yet, he’d told me his secret.

I blew out a long steady breath. Whatever he was thinking, there was no denying the attraction between us, but pheromones didn’t make a happily-ever-after.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Krieg had needed a different potion from a witch.

Maybe his mate was someone else, someone linked to me?

The thought that it could be my mum made my eyes widen in horror.

I couldn’t deal with this right now so I shoved all Krieg-related thoughts into a box in my mind and locked them away. Later: I’d deal with them later. Preferably never.

I pulled out my laptop and made notes about the who, how, why, what, where and when of the murder scene.

The human memory is fallible and soon my recollections would start to blur around the edges, warping to protect me from the full horror of what I’d seen and done.

I knew from experience that when I next woke up, I wouldn't remember the scene with the clarity I needed.

When I was sure I’d noted down everything I could recall, I poured myself a shot of tequila and knocked it back without salt or lemon. I didn’t want a decent drink; I just wanted the burn and the blurring edge it would give me.

When I went into my bathroom for some much-needed cleaning up, I froze as I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror.

I had torn my beautiful red gown without hesitation, ripping strips of the material until it was in tatters.

I looked like Cinderella after the bell had tolled twelve.

Hell, I looked worse than Cinderella; rather than being covered in rags and mud, I was covered in rags and blood.

I swallowed hard. It was rare for me to get my hands dirty trying to save someone because I usually arrived when a death had been verified and the corpse was cooling. It was rare to see a victim still alive. And rarer still to dive into their mind and be with them almost at the moment of death.

I thought about Alice’s parents; I couldn’t pass the death message, not looking like this.

I peeled off the red velvet dress with quiet regret. Just once in my life, I’d had five minutes in which I’d truly embraced my femininity; now the destroyed dress was pooled on the floor like the blood that had soaked into the ground around poor Alice Rose.

I turned the shower to hot and let the water pound me. My stomach lurched when dark liquid sluiced off of me. Mud, I lied to myself, but it was no good: I knew better.

I watched dry-eyed as Alice’s blood slid down the drain. I would find her killer and I would bring them to justice – one way or another.