Donovan limped along beside me in support, which supported Will’s lies about why Donovan hadn’t been with the search party. He’d told the chief Donovan had slipped on some ice and messed up his knee. She hadn’t questioned why Donovan hadn’t called in himself about the injury, which had given Donovan a sleepless night spent thinking his boss was building a case to fire him.
Lelo’s poultice had done its work, at least, and the venom was out of his system, but she couldn’t do anything for the gash across the back of his thigh. With it positioned so high on his leg, it made walking nearly impossible, but he powered through it to be with me today.
“We don’t have to tell her that you knew,” I said as we made our way up the short path from the sidewalk. “I don’t want to put your job at risk. I can say I just told you yesterday.”
“Thanks, but like I said the last four times you offered, if we’re telling her the truth, then we’re telling her the full truth. If we try to convince her I didn’t know after what happened at the McAvell farm, she’ll probably fire me, anyway, for being the world’s shittiest detective,” he said wryly.
Donovan was far more confident about the outcome of this whole thing than I was. While he assumed the best, I was still more than halfway convinced I’d end the day in another psych hospital. I never would have believed I’d take the risk of telling someone again until I’d met Donovan. That had been scary enough, even knowing he cared about me. After him, telling my friends had been easier, but while Bev Cornell was a regular customer at A Likely Story, she and I weren’t exactly friends. At the end of the day, she was still the chief of police and I was the hapless psychic who kept stumbling into her cases.
We’d timed our arrival carefully. I’d wanted to get it done and over with as early as possible, but Donovan suggested we wait until the morning chaos had passed and she’d had time to catch up on any emails or pressing business that had come up since she’d left the office. The snowstorm two days ago had turned the roads into slushy messes and caused more than a few accidents, not to mention the confusion and questions about Landon DeVor, all of which she had to deal with in one way or another, while also being down one of her two detectives.
So we’d waited until just after her lunch hour, when she’d hopefully be about as relaxed as she’d get.
The receptionist at the front desk, an older woman named Ruth who looked like she’d bake apple pies and knit doilies for fun but in reality was the reason I kept so many gory horror books on the shelf, greeted us with her usual cheerful smile when we walked in. She just waved us on in, then went back to her computer.
Last time I’d been here, I’d been escorted by two officers after being brought in for questioning. I knew at least one ghost haunted the place, but with any luck, he wouldn’t wander past the file room he’d been in last time. Maybe that had been his old office before he’d died? Donovan had told me his name, or at least who he thought it was, but I’d promptly forgotten it. Either way, he was kind of a dick and the last thing I needed right now.
The door to Donovan and Will’s office was open as we passed, and I caught a glimpse of Will inside at his computer. He glanced up but didn’t greet us, obviously still mad. I’d have to talk to him soon, too. I owed him that.
Then we were at the chief’s office, and I was officially out of excuses and distractions. The door stood open and Chief Cornell sat at her desk, flipping through some papers. She glanced up at our approach and raised one dark, perfectly shaped brow when she saw us standing there.
“Come in and close the door,” she said, neatly stacking the papers and slipping them into a desk drawer. The only other thing on her desk was her computer, everything else organized and put away. Two chairs sat across from her, old wood and leather, smaller versions of the chair she sat in.
Donovan gave my hand a quick squeeze, closing the door behind us. I sat in one chair and he stood beside me, his hand in mine. With his injury, sitting was nearly impossible.
I expected her to start questioning us, but she just sat and waited, hands folded and resting on her desk.
Now that we were actually here, I had no idea where to start. I’d rehearsed what I wanted to say, revising and editing it in my head almost nonstop since I’d decided to come clean, but every single word of it disappeared, along with the English language itself, apparently. I floundered, opening then closing my mouth like a complete idiot.
What the hell was wrong with me? I’d agreed to this. Donovan’s job could very well be on the line, along with my own freedom, and all I could do was sit and stare? I’d told Donovan. I’d told Raina and Camille and Will. What had I said to them? Why couldn’t I remember what I’d planned?
The longer I sat there, the more my brain froze up and the more awkward the silence became. Donovan, bless him, caught on fairly quickly that I was struggling and gave the chief a small smile.
“We wanted to talk to y—”
“I’m a psychic!”
The words exploded out of me before I could stop them, fueled by pure panic, cutting Donovan off. I slapped a hand over my mouth, but it was far too late to take back the words. They landed like a bomb in the small office, blowing apart my decades-old web of lies in just four syllables.
Donovan and Cornell both turned to me. Donovan looked surprised and more sympathetic than I deserved, but her face remained completely blank, her thoughts carefully guarded.
“You’re psychic,” she repeated without inflection. I had no idea if she believed me, if she thought I was a lunatic, or if maybe she just thought she’d misheard me. If I hadn’t been in the early stages of a panic attack, I might have been impressed by her poker face. Instead, I was just terrified. The truth was out there now, though, and I had to follow through.
“Y-yes, ma’am.”
“Is there a particular reason you’re choosing to share this information?”
That… wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. Her complete calm smoothed the sharpest edges of my panic, allowing me to battle it back without slicing myself to ribbons.
“I should have told you before, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was crazy,” I admitted. “I… I’m telling you now because I helped find Landon DeVor. With the way he suddenly reappeared, I thought you might be a little suspicious and I didn’t want anyone getting into any kind of trouble because of me.”
Cornell was silent, her dark eyes flitting over to Donovan for a moment before coming back to me. “You found him, like you found Andre Marcel, Zofia Kostek, and Nina Martingale?”
Would hearing those names ever hurt any less? At least Mrs. Kostek’s death had been painless and her passing easy, with her hoping to be reunited with her husband. Andre and Nina had both passed on, but their memory would haunt me until my own dying day.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Well, kind of.”
“Explain.”
