Read Online A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder by Victoria Laurie - Free Book Online Page A

conversation. If you feel you need to be represented by counsel, fine. But one way or another I’m going to get to the bottom of this, and you can either cooperate now, or I’ll build my case around the two of you.”
    â€œI’ll call someone,” Gilley said, heading off toward the spare bedroom, and I knew he meant he’d be calling an attorney.
    I began to tremble. This had all gotten way out of hand so fast. I mean, I’d been worried about Oruç’s dagger being on display, but even I’d figured we’d have at least twenty-four hours to get it back before the worst happened. And the exhibit had been blocked off as we were being led from it by museum security—probably to prevent any further scenes like the one we were involved in. I’d figured that they’d keep the exhibit closed at least until morning and we’d have a chance to work the back channels to get the dagger out of there.
    What I still couldn’t understand was how the dagger had overcome all those magnets. Even with the amount of fear that’d been generated after the lights went out to fuel either Oruç or his demon, the lights had still been turned off and all the batteries drained
before
anyone had gone crazy with fear. So how had that anomaly happened, and why hadn’t anything like it happened when we had the dagger hidden in my office safe with just a few magnets to surround it? At the museum, none of the spikes had been touching the dagger, but it’d been surrounded by half a dozen ofthem only inches away. The whole room was decorated with magnets, in fact, and that kind of electromagnetic field should’ve kept even a demon as powerful as Oruç’s quiet.
    And then I thought of something even scarier. What if Oruç’s dagger had been stolen by a fan of the show? No one but myself, Gilley, Heath, Gopher, and a dear friend in San Francisco really understood the magnitude of danger the dagger represented. If some brazen fan had decided that the dagger was a collector’s item worth stealing, then we had a gigantic problem on our hands. “Detective,” I said as Heath took her card, “I’m sure by now you’ve heard that the dagger is a very dangerous relic—”
    She smirked at me. “Obviously,” she said. “It played a major part in a murder tonight, Mrs. Whitefeather.”
    She had no idea how right she was, but I didn’t want to fill her in any more than I had to about how we came into possession of Oruç’s dagger. It’d probably come out anyway, but for now, I figured Detective Olivera was on a need-to-know basis. “It goes beyond that,” I told her. “The dagger isn’t just some antique knife. There is a very powerful—very dangerous—set of forces that’re associated with it, and in the wrong hands, they could become a
serious
problem.”
    She cocked her head again. “You don’t think murder is a serious problem?”
    â€œOf course I do!” I snapped. “And please don’t think I’m not every bit as concerned as you are. But, ma’am, that dagger
is
evil. It needs to be locked away in a safe,lined with enough magnets to choke a whale.” I was beginning to regret very much the fact that we hadn’t at some point thought to take the dagger, wrap it in magnets, throw it down a deep hole, and cover it in concrete. In hindsight, simply leaving it in my safe seemed like the stupidest thing I’d ever done. There was no help for it now, but I silently vowed that once I got the dagger back, I was gonna bury that thing in a dry well and pour enough concrete over the top to seal it up for all time.
    â€œYou keep talking about this dagger like it’s got a life of its own,” the detective said. “Come down to the station and explain that to me.”
    I sighed. Why were cops always so skeptical of the supernatural? I’d had my fair share of