My stomach dropped. “How so?”
She tapped the side of her head and grinned at me. “Dryad. There are no thoughts in here for you to read or intentions for the fates to read. I’m less an alive being like you and more just a force of nature.”
Welp, that was just about the worst thing she could have said.
Paul bristled behind me. “So, you don’t have a psychic signature?”
Crap! I’d planted the seed, but she’d cultivated it into a mighty weeping willow. Except I knew shecouldn’tbe the killer because I could see her emotions as bright as day now that I’d adjusted to the way she expressed herself. How was I supposed to explain that without ruining everything?
“Not as you would consider it, no. That’s one of the many reasons I earned my nickname. It’s cute, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t use the word cute, no,” I said quickly, trying to figure out how to get us out of the conversation so I could nip Paul’s discovery in the bud. If he thought she’d killed his family members, I had no doubt he would attack her if push came to shove. “If you’d be willing to help point us in the right direction, I’d be most grateful. Consider it a favor to my mother.”
“I suppose I could possibly be amenable to helping a fellow rare magical person in need. There aren’t many of us left, are there? My kind destroyed by poisons in the air, ground, and water, while yours have historically been enslaved, controlled, or killed to help powerful humans increase their grip on the world.”
“I’d be most grateful.”
“I’m sure you would. But first, a test of loyalty. There are some tasks I have at hand that would benefit from the insight of an oracle.”
Fuck, here we go.
“For fuck’s sake!” Paul snapped. “We don’t have time for that. If you don’t want to help us, I’m sure my money will find someone who will.”
I grimaced, but inside, I was delighted. That wasexactlywhat a rich, spoiled brat would say while trying to orchestrate a hit on his rivals. Who knew Paul could improv too! He was full of all sorts of surprises.
Certainly kept things interesting.
“Excuse me, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a minute to confer with my client, I assure you he does not mean any slight.”
Thankfully, the woman’s amusement shined even brighter, although I didn’t miss the rise in malevolence. It wasn’t anything outright, meaning we weren’t at risk for a direct attack (yet), but it was there.
“By all means. Take him aside and explain to him I’m not a member of his staff or one of his little friends that he can order about just because he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
“Right! Of course! Just a couple of minutes!”
I started to haul Paul toward the front door so we could make a quick getaway, but two larger men stood on either side of it, their beefy arms crossed over their chests.
Right. There would be no easy exit. Not exactly a surprise, but I had to try.
“We’ll just go this way,” I said with a smile before ducking through a doorway on the opposite side.
I kept walking, looking this way and that for a possible exit, but the place had been designed to only have the one egress.Terrible fire hazard.Somehow, I don’t think they care about fire codes.So, with no way to get out of there fast, I settled on a side room that looked like a reading area.
“We have to get out of here,” I whispered exactly as heatedly as I meant to. “That woman didn’t kill your brother.”
“How could you possibly know that? She has no psychic signature. That’s why you couldn’t sense her around us and didn’t know she was the Whisper.”
From the moment she’d revealed herself as a dryad, I’d known it was going to throw a wrench in things. God, I needed to spin a convincing story about why that didn’t matter.
This was the trouble with lying. Although I was good at it, one untruth begot another until eventually I had to keep track of a whole novella of alternative facts.
“She does,” I muttered. “It’s extremely weak and took me a second to get a read on, but it’s there.”
“Come on, all the legends say their minds and souls are different from ours, which is why they’re exempt from a lot of our own laws. Everyone knows you can’t read the thoughts of dryads, selkies, Leshy, and even dragons when they existed.”
He was making good points, sure, but they weren’t irrefutable. In fact, I was sure I could normally bounce them off without so much as batting an eye. But I was flustered. Between trying to juggle lies I’d told the many denizens of the bazaar, to the Whisper, and Paul himself, I was feeling more than a bit frayed around the edges.
“Look, I just know, okay?”