Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [67]
“Sunflower is not available,” she said in that same tone. I got the feeling I ranked about one notch above a telemarketer.
“What, are her lips sewn shut?” I mentally slapped myself in the head as soon as the comeback was out. Pissing off my grandmother wouldn’t get Sunny on the line.
“She’s at the grocery store,” said Rhoda. “Perhaps I can help you, since I know you only call when you want something?”
“Actually, if I had a choice, I wouldn’t call you at all,” I said cheerily. “I have better things to do, like poke myself in the eye with a stick.” Suck on that, you hag.
“Very well,” said Rhoda. “I’ll refrain from telling Sunflower you called in this state. It would only upset her.”
I’d like to say I had a good-cop brainwave at that point, but really I was just angry and looking for a little payback. “Wait a minute,” I said. “If you’re so smart, then yeah, you can help me. What’s the deal with the Skull of Mathias?”
She wouldn’t know. Rhoda prided herself on her complete disassociation with dark magick. She was a snob that way, the same way that made her treat her non-witch relatives like shit.
A long silence stretched and I grinned. She’d have to admit she was at a loss, and then my day would get better. I might even go have a cheeseburger for lunch. Gods knew I deserved one.
“The Skull is fiction,” said my grandmother. She sounded subdued, almost wary, like I’d just told her I knew she was really a man. Not that she is. That I know of. “It is reputed to be the head of the first blood witch, Mathias, who was given his power from a daemon. His skull was inscribed with every incantation and working he learned. Daemon magick, unrefined.”
“That sounds about right,” I said.
“But of course it doesn’t really exist. A caster witch would have known that.” She was back to the arrogance again, and I clicked the phone shut gently. I knew at least one caster witch who believed the Skull was real enough to use it to kill, and another one who would tell me all about it, whether she liked it or not.
CHAPTER 20
Shelby had been moved to a private room on a higher floor of the hospital, one that had been redecorated in this decade. Flowers and balloons filled the place with cloying smells, and I sneezed. She looked up from her magazine and gave me a cautious smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I slid one of the plastic visitor chairs to the side of her bed and straddled it backward. “You can tell me about the Skull of Matthias.”
Shelby shrugged. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Come on, Shelby.” I tapped my fingers on her bedrail, and saw her follow my every move. She was nervous as a virgin bride. “I let you get away with that poor-little-innocent-me crap before, because at the time, you told me what I needed—that your family stole something from the Blackburns. Now I know what, and I need you to tell me the particulars.”
“I don’t know!” Shelby exploded. “Nobody tells me anything, they just expect me to shut up and be a good daughter! You think they trust me? Get real, Luna.”
She had a point, and my bullshit meter wasn’t pinging off the charts like the last conversation we’d had. Besides, I felt sort of sorry for Shelby—we’d had parallel lives, both of them crappy.
“So I take it you have a lead?” she asked me, breathing deeply and getting back under control.
“Yeah,” I said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“You think someone in my family killed Vincent Blackburn,” she said. I tried not to show I was startled. Poker face, Luna.
“Well… yes. I do. Your family or someone very close to them.”
Shelby moved her bed into the sitting position and regarded me with those cold blue eyes, the same expression I’d seen on Seamus on her. “Then you have an obligation to pursue your lead. But don’t ever ask me to help you convict a member of my own family, Luna. I won’t do it.”
“They’re killers,” I said, getting angry, thinking back to see if I had ever held any such loyalty to my grandmother and my parents. Never had. “How can you protect them?”
“They’re my family,” said Shelby.