His smile came back. “It’s a pleasant smell.”
“Well, thank you then.”
Declan only smiled. “What do I smell like?”
“Like a guy.”
“That has a much higher risk of being an insult than ‘bittersweet.’”
Laughing, I found his gaze. “Like men’s cologne. Almost like sage, but with something else too. Rosemary, maybe?”
“Sage and rosemary. I’ll take it.”
I laughed, and his smile widened. He stepped in front of me and held the door open to the restaurant. “After you.”
* * *
“So what is it that you want from me exactly?” Guinevere asked in a thick English accent on the other end of the table, gaze on the wine in her glass as she swirled it around, inhaling deeply.
“Advice,” I said. “Answers? None of this makes any sense to us. We’d like someone with more knowledge on Witches to lend it.”
Her crystal blue eyes met mine. She gave a smile. “Advice on what, darling? Answers to what questions? All you’ve done is tell me things. You haven’taskedanything.”
“Who’s capable of pulling off a shooting like that?” Declan asked. “Who has enoughpowerto cast that many spells at once?”
“Any Witch who has enough drive. I could.” She gestured to me. “You could. Quite literally, anyone who has control could stack a handful of spells on top of each other. None of them are incredibly intricate. All they’d need was a sample of your DNA. A cup you’ve drunk from, a few pieces of hair from your shower drain, a used cotton swab—hell—even a condom full of cum.”
For such a classy lady, hearing that last phrase come out of her mouth was a bit jarring.
And she really was classy.
Her hair was about the same color as mine—natural, Irish red—but combed so neatly around her ovular face that it looked like she’d just walked off Riawood Boulevard. Describing her skin as creamy couldn’t be more accurate. It was as smooth as the liquid in a “Got Milk” commercial. Her lips were long and wide, painted in a timeless shade of red that matched her scarlet dress perfectly. She wore thin wings of black above her eyes, truly giving the illusion that she’d stepped straight out of the year 1950.
Although, the lip fillers, rock hard, massive breasts, and stiletto fingernails was a quick reminder that she was very much an essence of our time.
“Such a silly thing, really.” She lifted her napkin from the table and wiped her red lipstick from the rim of the cup. “People forget that they leave traces of themselves everywhere. What you wipe your arse with could get you hexed. Piss off a Witch, all they need is your rubbish bin to cast something foul on you.”
Yuck. A good point, but yuck.
“The question isn’t really a matter of who could’ve done it but who you pissed off. So, Declan, why would a determined Witch want you dead?”
“Beats the hell outta me,” he said. “I’m not involved with any covens. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a Witch aside from Brooke.”
“Have you not considered a Witch for hire?” she asked. “Most of us will do just about anything if the price is right. My line is murder and anything that has to do with children, but the hexes I’ve done in the last six months bought me a Porsche just last week.”
And there I’d been working for the Chambers.
“Anyone else angry with you?” she asked.
“Not that I can think of, no.” Declan rubbed his scruffy jaw. “But if it was a Witch, why not kill me some other way? Don’t you all use more magical methods of murder?”
“If we don’t want to get caught, we go for a human method. Your clientele is made up of cheap bikers. Once the authorities got involved, they would’ve thought it was a gun fight in your parking lot gone wrong. If I were trying to kill you, I would’ve done the same thing.”
At least she was smart. But damn it.
“Covering energy signatures is no easy task,” I said. “Wouldn’t they have to be powerful to pull that off?”
“Darling, I have personally covered the energy signatures of dozens of the strongest creatures this world has ever seen.” She sipped her wine. “If you’ve been at this for any length of time, if you’ve been studying your craft well enough, it’s an hour’s job and two thousand pounds worth of ingredients. No. They wouldn’t have to be incredibly powerful, only well-seasoned. If you knew what you were doing, you could do the same thing.”