She opened her eyes and let out a long breath, but that was all. She was very weak. I wasn’t sure how long it had been sinceshe ingested the poison, but the fact that she was a wolf shifter was probably the only thing keeping her alive.
“I’ll need you to drink this antidote, love. Can you do that?” His voice carried that gentle vibration that always eased a room—the subtle hum of resonance magic. Even I felt my pulse slow. It was one of the things that made him such a great healer.
She tried to reach for the vial, too weak to hold it. “Shh,” Elwood murmured. “You’ll be fine. Let me.”
He tipped the potion to her lips, patient as always. “That’s it, good girl. Let your wolf fight it off.”
Color began to seep back into her cheeks.
Elwood rose and glanced at Lily, who slumped in the booth, trying to look small. He shook his head and then looked at me. “Have you called Grady?”
He glanced over at Lily, who was still trying hard to act like she was the victim here. “Have you called Grady?”
“No, I was worried about Paula. Besides, she isn’t going anywhere.”
I pulled out my phone and called Grady. Elwood was sitting next to Paula, talking to her as she slowly came back to herself. I took a seat next to Declan where I could keep an eye on Lily.
“I can’t believe she tried to poison me. And what kind of witch am I? I’m supposed to have an affinity with food, but shouldn’t I have picked up her anger every time I drank one of her coffees? You don’t jump from liking someone to wanting to murder them overnight.” Declan shook his head sadly. “I didn’t even know when someone hated me enough to be planning to kill me with… wait for it… food.”
I brushed a kiss across his lips. “You are a wonderful, adorable, smart, new witch. You can’t know everything right away. Cut yourself a break.”
“You saved me, so I think you’re a pretty darn good one.” Paula still sounded weak, but at least she was talking nowinstead of mumbling about clouds, so the antidote must be working.
“That wasn’t witchcraft, but thank you.” He reached over and patted her on the forearm. “But why did you want me to meet you here?”
Paula looked up and glared at Lily. “I came over to confront Lily about what I found in the cloud.”
Uh oh, we were back in the clouds again. Looked like she needed a little more time for the antidote to work. “Maybe you should wait until Grady gets here. You don’t want to tell it all twice.”
“I don’t need to tell you. I’ll show you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, but she fumbled it. Luckily, Elwood was pretty quick for his age, and he managed to catch it before it hit the floor. “Sorry, I’m still a little woozy.”
“You almost died,” Declan said. “I’m sure it will take you some time to fully recover.”
Elwood handed the phone back to her. “He’s right. It won’t take you as long as it would’ve taken a non-shifter, but you should expect to feel a little off for at least a couple of days.”
She nodded and typed in her phone’s password. “Here, I downloaded the video footage from the night Winston was killed.”
Declan brightened. “So you were right. He had saved the footage to the cloud.”
So that’s what Paula had been mumbling about, not actual clouds butthecloud. Thank goodness I didn’t say anything out loud about it. Elwood liked to give me a hard enough time about my resistance to tech without him knowing I’d thought she’d been hallucinating about floating in the clouds.
“Whatever she’s going to show is fake,” Lily cried out. “I know cause I saw it. Jim showed it to me, but that doesn’t matter. It’s all fake. It’s all fake.”
“We’ll let the experts determine that,” Grady said from the doorway. “But I think I would like to see what she has.”
I grinned at the big man. “Hey, Grady, I think Declan and Paula solved the case for you.”
Declan gasped. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You did, though,” Paula said. “If you hadn’t come over and talked to me, I would’ve taken Jim’s tools and left. I never would have even thought about the cameras, and then I wouldn’t have found this?—”
She pressed play on the video, and we all watched as Winston stood in the middle of the old Kooky Nook. There was no sound, but he was talking to someone with that condescending look he often got when he thought he was talking to someone beneath him.
Lily stepped into the frame then, with a look of pleading on her face. Winston sneered at her, and we watched as the veneer of quirky coffee shop owner fell away and was replaced by pure rage.
Then the look changed from condescension to something that looked more like fear as Lily rushed him and shoved the crystal point right through his heart.
We all turned as one and stared at Lily, who was sitting there crying.
