“Finally,” I muttered, taking the chair facing the desk.
Clem closed the door and sat down wearily.
“I appreciate your concern, but—”
I snorted. The man appreciated nothing about me, but that wasn’t the point now.
I tapped his notepad. “Just take my statement already.”
He kept his hands folded. “I believe I have all the information I need.”
“Claudette is dead, and you’re refusing to hear a witness?”
“A witness?” he asked in the same bored, disbelieving tone he’d used when I was six.
A rock? Uh, nice,I remembered him saying. Or,A drawing, for me? Thanks,he’d said before turning his full attention back to my sister — and leaving the drawing behind, forgotten, when he’d left.
For years, I’d secretly loved Clement. Only now did I recognize it for what it was: my first toxic relationship.
“Yes. A witness,” I growled.
“You witnessed the murder?”
“No. I witnessed Henrik. He was at the château in the middle of the night. Is that when the murder occurred?”
“What would he have been doing in the château?” Clem asked. “He lives in the caretaker’s cottage, correct?”
I nearly smacked my hand on his desk. “He was reading in the drawing room. I saw him.”
“You saw him,” he said flatly.
I barely bit back a scream. “You don’t believe me?”
“Well, it is quite the coincidence — you wander off to lunch with your friends, come back, and suddenly the vampire has an alibi.”
If my heart were a castle tower, it would have wobbled, then crumbled into ruins. The man I’d secretly loved for years thought I wasn’t trustworthy?
If I ever needed evidence of my own poor judgment, there it was.
I trust you,Roux’s words echoed in my mind, offering some comfort. A lot more than Clement’s hard expression, that was for sure.
“I left because you didn’t call me in for questioning,” I snipped. “You didn’t even think to ask.”
He jutted his jaw, clearly impatient to get on with his day, his week, his life. A life I had never really factored into and never would.
“Claudette was killed by a vampire,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“How do you know?” I demanded.
He gave me a hard look. “I’ll spare you the crime scene photos, shall I?” He touched the veins of his wrist. “She had puncture marks here…”
His voice cracked a little, reminding me he cared about Claudette too.
He motioned to the other wrist, then his neck. “And here, and here.”
The taste of bile filled my mouth.
Finally, he drew a finger across his neck. “Then she was slashed, here. Which ought to have left a bloodbath, but she was sucked dry by then.”
