Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

“Why don’t I just arrest her now and save a step?”

Serena quirked an eyebrow at him. “Are suspended officers allowed to make arrests?” she inquired, the picture of innocence.

“I know for damn sure we’re not allowed to sneak them in to see inmates in correctional facilities,” he shot back.

“She can go in as a member of Jason’s legal team,” Selena said.

Garrett turned to look at her in disbelief. “No one would buy that.”

Selena shrugged again, that irresistible lift of her shoulders. “Try it.”

Garrett shook his head. “This is crazy—”

“Tanith is your best chance of getting in to see Jason Moncrief,” Selena said.

Garrett looked to Tanith now, who sat watchful as a cat in the window seat. “You mean he’ll confirm this attorney story because you know him already.”

Selena sat wearily back against the medieval chair. “Detective Garrett, you do not seem the sort to resist a golden opportunity. Why are you resisting this one?”

He stared across the long oak table toward Tanith, who said nothing. “Because I don’t like gift horses. Because I don’t trust her.”

Tanith’s face blazed with fury, but Selena spoke calmly. “But you are not a stupid man.” She found Garrett’s eyes and held them with her clear blue ones. “You know what is at stake, and you will take this chance, because it must be done. And we have no more time to debate.”

Tanith was like a statue in his passenger seat as Garrett drove the circular driveway out toward the street.

The calls had been made and astoundingly Jason had given consent to the visit. But just as the Explorer reached the front gates, Garrett saw something that changed everything.

A large dark man in overalls and a straw gardening hat stood beside the garden wall, with shears, trimming the roses that rambled over the stonework.

Garrett’s eyes widened in recognition.

It was the Dragon Man.

Garrett struggled not to show his shock. He drove past the gardener, out the gates and onto the street, his mind going a million miles a minute.

Is this all an act? All of it? They’re all in it, working together?

Waves of paranoia broke over him.

He drove ahead in silence, waiting until he had turned the corner onto another quiet street, before he hit the child lock so that Tanith couldn’t get out, and jerked the Explorer to a halt by the curb. He reached out across the console and grabbed her. She instantly turned into a wild animal, her body writhing as she fought him. He took both her wrists and pinned her against the seat.

“I saw him. The Dragon Man. He works for you.”

“He works for Selena,” she blazed. “Of course he does. What were we going to do, put him back on the street?” She jerked her arms away from him, rubbed her wrists. “He needs a stable environment. He’s healing. He even talks a little now, real sentences.” She stopped, looked at Garrett, read his face. “What—you think this was all a setup? He’s in on everything with us? We’re a coven? A cult?”

Hearing her say it, he felt the same sense of absurdity he’d experienced when Malloy voiced a similar theory. “It makes more sense than anything else you’ve been trying to make me believe.”

She laughed. “Oh, now we’re forcing you. You have a mind, Garrett; you have instincts, you have experience, you have a consciousness. Why don’t you use them? What do you believe?”

“I don’t believe, I know. You lied about not knowing Jason Moncrief. That’s why he consented to the interview.”

“I don’t know him,” she retorted. “He did come into the shop.”

Garrett stared at her. She shrugged, agitated.

“He didn’t buy the books. He bought a wand. Cherrywood, with a quartz crystal at the top. And a censer. Not the Crowley books—I wouldn’t have sold those to him. Those he must have taken.”

Garrett was deeply skeptical. “Why would you hide that?”

She shook her head wearily. “What was I supposed to say, that I know he isn’t the killer because I did meet him? Because I would have known if he were buying any of those things with the intention to kill? Would you have believed me for the slightest second?”

Not a chance, Garrett thought. And I don’t believe you now.

He fixed her with his gaze. “I saw your file.”

“I gathered,” she said shortly. She stared straight ahead through the windshield, struggling with herself. “You heard Selena. People who feel powerless will seek power wherever they can. I have a—talent. I read people. I dream things. I see enough that people will pay for what I can tell them, and there was a time I was desperate enough to take them for all they had.”

She finally looked at him, and for a moment he was unable to look away. “I’m not proud of it,” she said, and her voice was bitter. “It was the first control I’d had in my life and it was addictive. In a way, I was looking for revenge.” She didn’t say revenge for what.

“I played around with darker and darker things. I…” She stopped, swallowed. “It did make me crazy for a while. I was going down a completely destructive path. And then Selena found me. She taught me how to use what power I have to help, when I can. I owe her everything.” The look on her face was stark.

Garrett was unnerved to find himself wanting to believe her, on the verge of believing her. And then he remembered.

He took her hand back, this time turning it over and pushing her sleeve up to reveal the old scars: parallel vertical lines on her wrist, the shiny traces of random knife marks and gouges.

She stiffened, but didn’t pull her hand away. Her face was pale and her eyes distant. “Yes, I was trying to cut the demons out of me.”

“There were demons inside you,” he said flatly.

“Yes,” she answered defiantly. “I summoned them. They came. They wait in darkness, watching… hoping for an invitation. And time after time, we invite them in. It doesn’t take much, to fall out of the light.”

She is crazy, Garrett thought. But that’s not what he felt. Hadn’t he seen exactly that, on the streets, over and over again? An invitation to the dark, and a swift fall out of the light?

She bit her lip, looked out the passenger window. “So I know what path Jason has taken. And I know he hasn’t gone as far down it as you think he has. He can still be saved.” She hesitated. “You can call it schizophrenia if you want, or drug-related psychosis.” Then she turned to him and looked him full in the eyes. “But what if I looked crazy because seeing demons makes you look crazy?”

Garrett had no way to answer this. But finally he sat back in his seat, turned the key in the engine, and drove.

As they walked through the triple-thick glass doors into Suffolk County jail, Garrett felt Tanith stiffen beside him, the same kind of tensing he was used to seeing in ex-cons who had to cross the threshold. He was none too easy himself with the idea of escorting a wanted fugitive into a maximum security facility. Then he saw her take a breath and her face smoothed out to perfect neutrality.

They stopped at the security check-in at the outer control desk, where Garrett sweated bullets as he presented his badge. The desk officer nodded briefly to Garrett and checked off their names on the approved visitor list without questioning them.

In the visitor processing area, under the gaze of surveillance cameras, one of the corrections officers instructed them to remove their belts, shoes, jackets, cell phones, and keys and place them on the table. Wordlessly, without looking at each other, but with excruciating awareness of each other’s presence, Tanith and Garrett stripped themselves of the objects, emptied their pockets, and stood waiting while the officer examined their property.