But the new VanMarche barely even spared me a glance, choosing to direct his ire at his brother. “Right, because I want to hear the pitch of some two-bit Madam Cleo.”
Madam Cleo!
Madam Cleo!!!
He had no way of knowing I was a little bit of a fraud!
Besides, even if I wasn’t clairvoyant, Iwasan oracle with the gift of sight. Although, that sight was something most people never even thought about.
Apparently, it was time for yet another attitude adjustment.
I dropped my voice low and stared at him with all the intensity I could muster, letting my deadpan fully take over.
“Careful of the helping hands you refuse. Biting hands willing to feed you is not the way to assume your father’s position. Times like these require tact, and being decidedly unpleasant will not help dissuade people from whispering about the son who was all too happy to rush into the role of his murdered father and sibling.”
Nowhe looked at me, the fire in his eyes matching the boiling, turbulent bright orange around him.
“What did you say?”
“I think you know exactly what I said, but I will reiterate. You are the eldest son of a powerful shifter family whose alpha and alpha-heir were taken out in a single event that could be easily interpreted as being pulled off by an insider.
“Who stands to gain the most? When it comes time for the police to list out their prime suspects, where do you think your name will be on it? I ask you this not to threaten you, but to enlighten you that your demeanor does you no favors in the situation you find yourself in. Especially since you’ve been gunning to replace your deceased brother as the heir for quite a long time.”
It was a leap in logic, but the faint drags of desperation for approval I could see all around him, combined with his personality, made me confident in the claim.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“The same way I know that there were only seven psychic signatures in this room and only seven dead. An impossibility.”
Technically, it was emotional signatures, but they didn’t need to know that part. I had to shift the narrative a little, otherwise the whole jig would be up. Besides, it wasn’t like saying psychic signature instead of emotional signature would come back to bite me.
“What does that mean?” Paul asked, since Chris was apparently shocked into silence.
In for a penny, in for a pound.My heart thundered. This was no longer a bit to uphold my mother’s legacy. No, I was encountering something I never knew existed, and I would be damned if I let that mystery go on to hurt others. It almost felt like my responsibility as an empath to figure out what was going on with an assassin who didn’t have any emotions at all.
“It means that whoever did this has zero psychic signature, so you’re going to need someone who can read every suspect’s energy to figure out exactly who it is and who it can’t be.”
Chapter 7
Paul
Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (Or an Assassin)
“A psychic,really? That’s so unlike you.”
If it was anyone else, I probably would have bristled at that, but I was just glad Jackson was sober enough to answer a video call. While it was only just evening on a weekday, that had never really stopped my youngest brother before. And admittedly, he now had a very good reason to get wasted.
“I needed to be sure of a few things.”
“Like what? You’re telling me this Gen-Z-looking chick was able to do that?”
He didn’t say it with derision, more curiosity, but I didn’t appreciate him talking about Cherry that way. Sure, I had been skeptical about it myself, but after seeing her abilities at work several times, she had more than earned my trust.
And that certainly wasn’t easy to do.
Ultimately, Cherry wasn’t just charming, she was also quite keen. Sure, she expressed it far differently than most people I knew, but that didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. I would do well to remember that. We hadn’t even talked about money beyond me paying the higher deposit, and she was already going beyond the scope of what I’d expected.
“Her name is Miss Donmoue, and you will address her as such,” I said quickly.