The Death Thief

Strings

With his breakfast stowed away, we hopped into Everett's truck and made our way to the police station, which was a few blocks from the town center. The only other vehicle in the small parking lot was a police car which a couple officers were taking out on patrol. Inside another officer manned a reception desk. He gave us a nod and a good morning, but didn't bother to ask why I was accompanying the sheriff. He let us on our way as we headed to the back, where the station's sole interrogation room sat.

"Markers are in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. We don't have an eraser, you'll have to use tissues." He took a seat at the small metal table in the middle of the room and broke out the styrofoam box that held the remainder of his breakfast.

"Okay," I said, more to myself than him. "Where to begin?" I withdrew a few markers from the drawer and chose a black one to write down all the pertinent names around the board. Calista, Matias, Bungee, Antonov, Desrosiers, and Gregory.

"You going to throw your name up there?" asked Everett before shoving a forkful of biscuit into his mouth.

"W-why? Do you still think I'm the killer?" I turned to him, biting my lower lip.

"I already told you that I don't think it's you. However," he said, stabbing his fork at me to punctuate his point, "you are involved. If you want to map this out right, you need all the pieces."

"Okay," I said with a nod. I returned to the board and added my name to the circle I'd created. A small shiver tickled the back of my neck as I considered the implications of my name sitting next to a potential killer, but that association wasn't going to be demolished until I figured out who really was to blame.

"Now for their connections." I took a step back, drinking in the board while I retrieved a red marker from the table. "First, the obvious ones. Lady Derosiers is dam to Matias." I drew a line between their two names and then stepped back again. "Calista was being pursued by Lord Antonov. Bungee and myself found Calista's dead body."

"What about Gregory? How is he related to anyone, other than being a Body like Calista?" Everett, his breakfast now finished save for the danish, leaned back in his chair as his eyes traced the red lines.

"Well," I said in a low mumble, "that's where the conjecture comes in." I returned to the table, this time pulling out a blue marker. "You see Calista and Gregory were meeting in secret." I drew a dashed blue line between the two.

"I didn't know that," said Everett with a stern bend of his brow. Though this was a serious issue with no room for amusement, a small smile tickled the corners of my mouth, delighted I proved useful. "Do you know why they were meeting?"

"The guys think they were in love," I said with a shrug, "but Calista claims she was simply confiding in a friend. She needed someone to talk to about the fact she was in love with Matias." I drew another dashed line, this time between Calista and Matias.

"You can erase that line," said Everett as he reached up for a tissue from atop the filing cabinet.

"But, I believe her when she says she loved Matias," I protested. Still he wiped the line away.

"I don't need to believe her," he said, grabbing the red marker from the table. "I know she and Matias are in love." He then drew a solid line between the two names.

I wanted to question the reason for his certainty on the matter, but considering how unconcerned Calista was about sharing the information after her conversion, I assumed it was starting to become a well known secret. I also didn't want to break my train of thought. Everett's one simple interjection was already enough to derail some of the theories building up in my head, I didn't need them to slip further away from my grip.

"Calista's time was running out on her contract," I continued.

"She only had a couple weeks left," added the sheriff as he took a seat atop the table. "She was about to be put on the streets."

"But Antonov wanted to make her his bride and she wanted to be a vampire. She couldn't, however, pursue that because she loved Matias." I tapped the marker against my chin, the names swirling around in my head as I grasped at the strings connecting them. "But Matias belongs to Derosiers. She's jealous and won't allow him feeders. She'd have compelled him to not take any."

"So who then, would Calista go to once her contract was up?" asked Everett in a flat, knowing tone.

"Antonov would take her, but he'd also expect things from her that she wouldn't be willing to perform. Derosiers takes female feeders, but Calista hates her, she'd never be her feeder and if Derosiers knew about the two of them, she'd likely not want to take Calista either. Which leaves Kyra."

"It's not her," said Everett with a sigh. "That door's been closed for awhile and I doubt it will be opening again anytime soon."

"Then...who could she go to," I said, a growl rolling through my words. "She...she just...Matias can't be an option, certainly Derosiers has compelled him to never take any feeders. Especially female ones."

My knuckles turned white as I gripped the blue marker in my hand. These had to be all the people involved. I refused to believe there was another person in that town gallivanting around with a deep, dark secret that pushed him or her into killing Calista. I also refused to believe, no matter how melodramatic she may be at times, that Calista had that much drama attached to her. She had enough would-be lovers running around, there couldn't possibly be another person so emotionally possessed by her to want her dead.

I gritted my teeth and pinched my lips as I turned to the floor. One way or another, I was still missing something. Something that was probably sitting right in front of my face.

"Blood links," Everett said with a sigh. "Sure are powerful things, you know. It's Matias's blood link with Bernadette that would prevent him from following his heart. It's amazing how strong blood magic can be. I guess that's why they're so damn hard to break."

With a single word, Everett brought the walls crashing down around me. I looked up at him with eyes wide and mouth agape. He looked back at me with a half smile and a raised brow. I didn't know how he knew for certain this was the case, but I couldn't have known. Still I should have made a guess as to what was really happening behind the scenes.

"Calista was going to be with Matias," I said, needing verbal confirmation that I made the right deduction. "Matias was going to break his link with Lady Derosiers."