CHAPTER THIRTY

The entire council was silent for a beat. It felt like slow motion as I processed what he’d just said. They were trying to get to me through Josie, and I wasn’t having it. For either of us. Blake rose, mouth open, ready to ream Oscar and try to get the cops to take control back. But I wasn’t waiting around for him to save the day.

I stood up too, sending Oscar my best chilling look of death. I could see Blake behind him, trying to get me to shut up even before I said a word. I turned to him and gave him a mental shove in my mind, pleased to see him drop abruptly back into his seat as if I had, in fact, shoved him for real. Then I turned to Oscar.

“I have no idea what you’re trying to do, Mr. Sageblood, but the insinuation that Josie Cook and I are in any way involved in anything as terrible as this is absurd at best. Chief Bell, it’s true that I don’t know all the laws here yet, but I’d like to explore what charges can be brought against Mr. Sageblood for false accusations,” I said, eyes still on Oscar. I took perverse pleasure in the look of absolute rage on his face.

Bell stuttered a little bit as he attempted to answer my question, but Oscar advanced toward me, his finger poking out of his long black sleeve like a skeleton’s. “You disrespectful ... I will see to it that we uncover the truth, no matter who your family is—”

The council erupted as Chief Lavender, who was closest to Oscar, reached out to keep him from coming any closer at the same time Blake and Fiona also jumped to their feet. But I’d had enough of this guy. I closed my eyes and lashed out with my hand in my best body combat block, the full force of my anger and rage behind it. Even though I was nowhere near able to reach Oscar, he tumbled backward like I’d just hit him with a club, nearly flipping over the chair behind him and landing underneath the long table.

I was getting good at this stuff, if I did say so myself.

“That’s enough, all of you!” This time it was Merriweather, who’d been silent this whole time. He and Lavender hauled Oscar to his feet. Oscar shook them off, looked at me and muttered something I couldn’t quite catch, then vanished out of the room.

“Ms. Moonstone is done,” Blake informed the cops. “This was supposed to be a routine statement. You weren’t supposed to allow badgering or other questioning. This isn’t a trial.”

“I’m very sorry,” Chief Bell said. “I wasn’t aware Mr. Sageblood was going to ... go down that path. He is very familiar with how these proceedings work.” He turned to me. “Ms. Moonstone, there are charges you can bring against Mr. Sageblood. Anyone who accuses someone of a crime like genieing without satisfactory evidence could be held to his or her own set of punishments. And for the rest of you,” he said, raising his voice and looking around, “this is a closed-door session. What occurred in here is not to be discussed outside of this room, otherwise it’s a violation of our privacy laws. Is that understood?”

When he was certain everyone had agreed with him in some form or another, he turned back to me. “Well, Ms. Moonstone? Would you like some time to think?”

I nodded. “I would. Thank you.”

“Fine, then. You have my card.” With that, he and his transcriptionist, followed by the other police, vanished from the room.

Fiona rushed over to me. “Violet, we’re leaving.” She motioned to Blake, who nodded, and the next thing I knew the three of us were in Grandma Abby’s living room.

“Jeez,” I said to Fiona. “I hope you check to see if Zoe’s boyfriend is here before you do that. You know he’s a cop and a mortal who knows nothing about this, right?”

“Not my problem,” Fiona said through gritted teeth, then turned on Blake. “What in the name of the Goddess was that?”

“That was Oscar acting out,” Blake said calmly. “Violet, you need to be careful. Oscar was not happy with you.”

“I don’t really care what Oscar was happy with or not,” I said. “He’s trying to bring Josie into this! Why is he doing that?”

Fiona turned to me, disbelief written all over her face. “Is that really all you’re concerned about, Violet?”

“Of course I’m concerned about Josie. She didn’t do anything.”

“And yourself? Do you have no concept about what this could mean for you if someone decides you had a hand in this?”

“I didn’t. And neither did Josie. So they should leave her out of it.”

“She was there,” Fiona said. “Somehow they found out.”

“So what? You were too. Are they going to find that out?”

“Violet,” Blake said through gritted teeth.

“What?” I rounded on him. “It’s true. So Fiona, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I should think that would be obvious,” she said. “I was protecting you. All of us. Like I just told you. It was a mother’s instinct,” she added.

Mother’s instinct. I nodded, a little surprised by the sentiment. I’d expected her response to be related to self-protection, but—if I was so inclined to believe her—it was related to me instead. Me, as her daughter.

She’d wanted to protect me.

I shook the sentimentality off. It sounded great, but at the end of the day somehow Oscar had found a way to throw Josie into it. And I would bet that my mother wouldn’t be as quick to try to block that, unless it also involved me.

“Sure. And you were also trying to protect you,” I said. “And Zoe. We were all there. I get it. It’s fine. But if he has some way of knowing that, we could all get in trouble. Right?”

Blake and Fiona looked at each other.

“Right?” I repeated, more loudly this time.

Blake sighed. “There could be consequences for not reporting it right away, yes. And I have a feeling they’re going to put on the pressure to go in and look around, even if it’s just for show.”

I stalked around the room, trying to make sense of this. “We also did Mazzy a disservice,” I said. “We wasted time that could’ve been spent trying to find who did this. Maybe there was something at the crime scene that would’ve helped, but now it’s lost forever because no one checked it out.”

Fiona’s laugh had sharp edges to it. “This is not one of your mortal television shows, Violet,” she said. “We don’t have DNA labs and forensic scientists. What happened to that girl wasn’t your fault and I won’t let them try to pin it on you, or any of us. That’s exactly what our detractors want!”

“Well, if anyone believes what Oscar said, he just might get that. All he had to do was plant the seed, and he did a great job of that,” I said. “Don’t you think?” I turned to Blake.

He had been leaning against the wall this whole time, arms crossed over his chest. Now he looked at me, and I couldn’t quite read his face. “You shouldn’t have let your emotions get the better of you. It didn’t help and it made it look like you had a temper.”

“A temper? Are you kidding me? That dude was acting like I was on trial or something! You said so yourself. And everyone let him do it. You said this was just a formality. Really, it was an attack. And now Josie is going to get dragged into it.”

“He doesn’t know anything, Violet. What he knows is that Josie works for you, so he latched onto that. Your comment about the lock opened the door.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry I said that my door was locked,” I said, hearing the sarcasm oozing out of my mouth. “Maybe I should offer to tell the story over so everyone feels better about it.”

“You’re impossible,” Fiona said, and with a flick of her wrist, she was gone. I didn’t think the shower of glitter that rained down on me was accidental.

I was left with Blake, who wore an expression that I couldn’t read at all. “So what now? Do I need to warn Josie? Is she going to be in any trouble? Do they really think we conspired to do this?” I couldn’t make any sense of what had happened tonight, or how serious it was.

“He’s reaching. And Josie isn’t stupid, and she has a lot of friends in high places too,” Blake said. “But if I were you I’d watch my back. You made Oscar angry—you made a fool of him—and you never know what he might try.”

With that, he vanished too, leaving me alone.