How to be Death (42 page)

“The hands don’t work.”

Runt and I looked at each other, not sure what the hell Freezay was talking about.

“The hands?” Runt asked.

“Whoever killed Coy was left-handed,” he said. “We noticed that when we turned her over.”

I nodded, vaguely remembering Freezay pointing this out when we’d first examined Coy’s body.

“But Constance’s wounds were different. They weren’t made by a serrated knife like the one which beheaded Coy—
and
they were inflicted by someone who was ambidextrous,” Freezay said. “The killing cut—the one made to the jugular—was done by someone who was left-handed, while the shallower, nonlethal ones were all done with the right hand.”

“Horace is left-handed,” I reminded everyone. “Maybe he killed the three of them after all.”

Freezay stared at me.

“What?” I asked, feeling like a bug under a microscope as he continued to stare at me.

“Of course! Horace
is
left-handed! You’re a genius, Calliope,” Freezay said, shaking his head in wonder. “It makes perfect sense.”

“What makes perfect sense?” I asked, but Freezay was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to answer me. I looked over at Runt, but the hellhound pup didn’t have a clue what Freezay was going on about either.

“Okay,” Freezay said, grinning sheepishly at the two of us. “Not my best work by far. I missed a few things here and there, but in the end, the solution to the puzzle becomes clear.”

“You know who did it?” Runt asked.

“I know who did it and I know why—and just thank God we’ll never have to go to trial because there isn’t a shred of evidence that isn’t purely circumstantial,” Freezay added mysteriously. “Now, we have one hour to put forth our hypothesis and catch a murderer before magic returns to our world and our window closes forever. Are you guys up for a little fun?”

I looked at Runt and knew she was thinking exactly the same thing I was:
Bring it
on!

jarvis glanced worriedly
at the clock on the mantel, wringing his hands like a little old lady. I understood his nervousness: It was eleven twenty-one, and we now had less than forty minutes to solve three murders and one count of grand theft larceny before all our suspects magicked themselves out of our jurisdiction and the Death book was lost to me for the next 365 days. Add to that, we were still missing Donald Ali, Horace, and Kali—and I could empathize with Jarvis’s paranoia; it was a whole lot of pressure for one ex-faun to bear.

Freezay was a statue, leaning against the mantel, arms crossed over his chest, eyes giving nothing away. He’d personally corralled Erlik, Fabian Lazarev, and Yum Cimil, forcing the three reluctant men into the drawing room, where they were now sitting on the love seat (Lazarev and Yum Cimil) and an armchair (Erlik).

Lazarev still looked shell-shocked, his handsome face drawn and sallow. He kept glaring in my direction with blatant hostility, occasionally transferring the bad vibes over to Daniel, who was standing next to me by the far wall. Yum Cimil was quiet as usual, his elderly countenance and silence lending him an air of annoyed disdain. He definitely wasn’t happy about being included in this crazy circus, but Freezay and Jarvis had assured him that he didn’t have a choice.

Erlik relaxed in his armchair, his thick legs stretched out in front of him. When he felt my eyes alighting upon him, he yawned, wanting me to know he could care less about the situation or what I thought.

Alameda Jones and Oggie were huddled together on the couch, his arm draped protectively around her shoulder, her head butting up against his chest as he stroked her hair. Her face was streaked with dried tears, her gaze fixed on Naapi, who sat in an armchair by the fireplace, hands in his lap, eyes downcast. I wasn’t sure what her intent was, why she was staring so openly at her old lover, but it was unsettling the way her eyes never left his person.

I wasn’t the only one aware of Alameda’s staring problem; Anjea had noticed it, too. Searching me out, Anjea raised both eyebrows, then looked in the younger woman’s direction, her gaze speaking volumes. I nodded and shrugged, feeling strange about having simpatico with the spooky woman from Australia.

Though she’d been MIA ever since dinner, Runt and I had been given the task of finding her and inviting her back to the drawing room with us. To our surprise, we’d discovered her waiting for us out by the pool, her bare legs dangling in the chlorinated water while her owl nestled sleepily against her shoulder.

“Took you long enough,” she’d said when we got there. “Been waiting here fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes earlier, we’d been with Freezay, making our final plans and divvying up the different guests we were going to have to strong-arm into attending the climax of our investigation. What was so crazy was that the swimming pool was the first spot we’d chosen to look for Anjea—how she could’ve known our plans literally before we did was eerily disconcerting.

“Sorry,” I’d said, not really knowing why I was apologizing.

She’d gotten up and sighed, the owl still nestling in the crook of her neck.

“Death is on the loose and it won’t stop with those three,” she said, staring directly into my eyes. “I like you, so I tell you as I see it. Best beware and keep your spirit guide close.”

As she spoke the words “spirit guide,” she looked down at Runt—and I was unexpectedly overcome with the shivers, my body going all cold and achy. My first thought was:
Someone just walked over my grave
. But when I reached down to scratch the sweet spot behind Runt’s ears, the shivers disappeared.

“No more words,” the older woman had continued, taking my arm, her slender frame light as a bird skeleton as she guided me back to the main house.

We hadn’t spoke again, Anjea fending off my conversational advances with a wave of her hand, but when we’d finally arrived in the drawing room, she’d stopped me in my tracks to whisper something into my ear.

“Remember. It’s all yours for the taking. Just make sure it’s what you really want.”

Not waiting for an answer, she’d squeezed my arm, then let me go, striding over to the far corner of the room and sitting down cross-legged on the floor by the sideboard, her back tall as she pressed it against the wall, the owl still sound asleep on her shoulder.

I thought it was fascinating that she and I were the only ones curious enough about Alameda’s cuckolded relationship to watch her like a hawk. Everyone else was too busy wondering why Freezay had called him or her here, and if it meant that the murderer was about to be exposed.

Uriah Drood was the first to question Freezay’s motives. He’d chosen not to take one of the seats, but to stand by the sideboard only a few feet from where Anjea was sitting. I think he’d picked the spot because it was as far from me as he could possibly get and still be in the same room. He was wary of even looking in my direction, probably worried I’d get trigger-happy with the soda water on the sideboard and douse him with it.

“I hope you’ve called us all here for good reason,” Drood said, resembling a beauty pageant winner the way he was holding his hand on his hip, all his weight resting on his back leg.

Morrigan seconded the query.

“This is ridiculous. You should’ve had this sorted out hours ago so we could all go home—not that I’m not out of here the moment the clock chimes midnight.”

The aggressive redhead stood behind the armchair her girlfriend was sitting in, her fingers tightly gripping the chair back, while Caoimhe leaned forward, just out of her reach. Both women looked pale and worn out and I wondered if they’d been fighting.

Everyone in the room had been beaten down by the events of the past twenty-four hours. If, unlike me, they’d been able to get some sleep, well, it hadn’t helped. Only Uriah Drood looked rested, his blubbery body resplendent in a freshly pressed blue and white seersucker suit. I was usually a fan of the summery material, but I was afraid Drood had put me off the fabric indefinitely.

Freezay looked like a wild man, his blond hair sticking up in a coxcomb on top of his head, his green eyes on fire with manic-y exhaustion. He reached up, as if to take a hold of his bowler hat, but when his fingers got to his head, they realized the hat was no longer there and had to settle for running themselves through his thick blond mop instead.

“I’ve done a thorough investigation—as thorough as I could manage without magic or the ability to quantify forensic evidence in a timely fashion—and I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a murderer among us—”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Erlik said, leaning forward in his chair and resting an elbow on his knee. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

Freezay paused, and I got the impression he was working very hard to hold his tongue. Finally, his anger under control, he began again.

“Now, as I was saying,” he continued, “I think it’s best to explore exactly
why
these murders occurred and how they were perpetrated underneath our very noses.”

“Go on,” Naapi said, looking up for the first time, dark smudges of exhaustion underneath his eyes. “I, for one, would like to understand why all this has happened.”

I remembered him asking Jarvis earlier in the night if we
thought his announcement during dinner had caused any of the mayhem. The dark smudges must’ve been as much from guilt as they were from heartache.

I glanced at Jarvis and he nodded, letting me know he remembered the same exchange.

“Well, it’s all very simple,” Freezay began. “The book,
How to Be Death: A Fully Annotated Guide
, was returned to Calliope Reaper-Jones yesterday night here at the Haunted Hearts Castle. It had been in Heaven since her father’s untimely passing, but with the advent of All Hallows’ Eve, the time had come for Death to possess it again.”

“It’s true,” Jarvis said, everyone turning to look at him now. “The book is not just legend. I was a witness to the exchange myself, here in the library more than twenty-four hours ago.”

Having said his piece, he closed his mouth and let Freezay continue.

“It was the coveting of this book—this rare and precious piece of Death Arcana—by a number of formidable opponents that lay the groundwork for the commission of these three murders.”

“Don’t beat around the bush, man,” Erlik growled, glowering at Freezay. “Who did it?”

But Freezay wasn’t going to be bullied. He was enjoying the spotlight, stretching out the explanation for as long as he could.

“First, you have to understand that the book isn’t precisely what it’s supposed to be,” Freezay said, ignoring Erlik’s outburst. “Isn’t that right, Daniel?”

All eyes shot over to Daniel, including my own—this was a development I hadn’t expected. I had no idea where Freezay was going with this, which meant I had now bought a ticket for the same roller-coaster ride as everyone else.

“That’s right,” Daniel said, his face serious. “I don’t know how you guessed it, Detective, but Heaven and the Board of Death, in tandem with myself, made the decision to replace the original copy of
How to Be Death
with a cleverly forged reproduction after we were informed that an attempt would be made to steal the book during the Death Dinner.”

Shock, and then suspicion, filled the room, but before anyone could comment, the door that led to the corridor burst open and Kali and Horace barreled in, a cowering Donald Ali between them.

“Ah,” Freezay said, rubbing his palms together excitedly. “So, the guest of honor has finally arrived!”

“It was an accident!” Donald Ali bawled, his nose a bloodied, swollen mess. “A horrible, horrible accident!”

Well, now I know who attacked me in the secret passage,
I thought, staring at Donald Ali’s miserable face as he sat on the edge of the armchair Kali and Horace had deposited him in, his arms wrapped around himself as he rocked back and forth, misery exuding from every pore.

“Please, you have to believe me,” he wailed. “My intentions were never to harm her, but then the book was gone and we argued and I just saw red. The poker was there and I … I…”

He stopped, unable to go on, his lower lip trembling as he tried to hold back the tears threatening to escape and trickle down his cheeks.