“Is that who I think it is?” I gesture an eyebrow toward the bedroom door.
He smirks. “Who else could it be?”
“Someone you met in the woods and charmed out of their pants.”
His laugh is deep and rich. “No. There are only two people in the world I want to charm out of their pants.”
My brows inch up a little farther. “Both Patrick and Eva are here?”
He nods. “Just Eva right now. We broke the bargain, then sealed it with a kiss. Patrick left earlier this morning for work.”
“You’ve been ‘breaking the bargain’ for…” I look at my watch. “A day and a half.”
His smirk grows more pronounced. “Mm-hmm.”
I don’t know what to say, so I mouth,daaaamn.
Eva appears a moment later, looking remarkably put together for someone who’s spent the past thirty hours or so in bed with two satyrs. In fact, her color is back. Her red hair shines like silk, and her emerald eyes twinkle. She adjusts her navy wrap dress as she clicks across the room to us on a pair of stunning Louboutin pumps. She kisses River on the cheek.
“Hi Sophia,” she says shyly.
“Hi.” I glance between them both. There’s obvious affection on River’s face, and I’ve never seen Eva happier. “So now that the bargain is broken, can you finally tell me what you saw that day?”
Eva nods, growing serious. “I used my luck to clear the area around River’s restaurant so that I could speak to him without anyone seeing us. It wasn’t hard because so many people were distracted with the graduation. Still, to be safe, we met behind his restaurant. All I wanted was to steal a kiss and tell him I was letting myself into his house to get the coat I forgot the night before. But then we heard the shot and the scream.”
River strokes a hand down the back of her head. “I ran around the building and saw a man on the walkway with a bloody hole in his chest. I immediately rushed to him, knelt down, and put pressure on the wound.”
“Is that when you moved the gun?”
“I don’t remember any gun,” River says bitterly.
“And I don’t either,” Eva adds.
They look at each other as if they’ve just put it all together.
“But Godmother says your prints were on the murder weapon.”
River nods. “She told me that, and I assumed I must have moved it without even thinking when I knelt down. But I don’t remember that, Sophia. I never consciously saw a gun until Godmother and her team arrived. I was too focused on the bleeding human in front of me.”
A dark pit forms in my stomach. We all know River was framed, but by whom? “The gun was there,” I confirm, remembering it clearly a foot or two from River’s knee. “Eva, did you see anyone ditch the gun?”
She shakes her head. “When I came around the corner, all I saw was River and the victim, but that’s what’s weird about the whole thing. I was using my luck to clear the area. So both the victim and the murderer must have been immune to it.”
“River, were Adam’s teeth blue?”
River snorts. “I don’t think I ever saw his teeth, to be honest.”
“You think he was on blue iron?” Eva asks.
“Must have been if he resisted your luck, right?” I cross my arms against a growing sense of dread. None of this is adding up. If the murderer left the gun near the body, where did they go so quickly?
Eva nods. “I did notice one other thing, but it’s not infallible.”
“I’ll take anything you’ve got at this point.”
“Isensedsomeone.”
“Hmm?”
