“The order of events?” I echo.
“You say you saw blood and followed your familiar back to a body. One could rearrange that timeline to suggest you came from the body to your room, then discovered your familiar dragged evidence back to your doorstep, so you returned and reported the incident to make yourself look innocent.”
I can’t seem to take a full breath of air, and I feel myself paling.
“Are you suggesting I killed this woman?” I whisper, horrified.
I thought this was just some routine questioning.
Officer Howahkan shakes his head. “As a homicide investigator, I have to cast doubt on every single person and look at the evidence from all angles. Unfortunately, your memory loss doesn’t help clear you.”
“I didn’t choose to erase these memories,” I say hotly. “I don’t get that luxury, something you’d know if you pulled any of my files from Peel Academy or from Henbane Coven.
“You want my alibi?” I fish my planner out of my bag. “Here, you can look at this.” I plop the thing on the table.
Officer Howahkan slides it over to his side, and after a moment, he thumbs through it.
He stops on a particular day and studies the notes I have written down.
“There’s nothing here that covers the time of the murders,” he says.
“I have other planners,” I respond. I usually have several going at once. This is just my most functional one. “I don’t have them with me, but I could bring them here if you need them.”
My nerves fray as it settles in: I’m a suspect in a murder investigation.
The officer slides the planner aside. “Let’s move away from Miss Evensen’s case for a moment, shall we?”
I exhale, then nod.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve seen one of these murdered witches, is it?” he says.
I tilt my head a little as Officer Howahkan flips through the papers on his clipboard and taps something he sees. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He grabs a pen and again taps the sheet of paper he’s looking at. “I see here that you were interviewed at the scene of one of the other murders.”
My breath catches as I remember there was something with Sybil. I have a murky memory of crime scene tape and the forest around Henbane, but as I reach for more, I…I think I might’ve seen something, but maybe my mind is just making that up? I can’t be certain.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I—” The spells on the room won’t allow me to say I don’t remember because, technically, I do have a little memory. “I think there was something in the woods behind Henbane—I remember the yellow tape—but there’s really not anything else.”
“So this memory is gone too?” His gaze is steady on me, steady and accusing. “That seems awfully convenient.”
“No,” I respond, “considering we’re talking about clearing my name, I’d say it’s rather inconvenient.”
Officer Howahkan’s eyes continue to linger on me for a beat too long before his attention returns to his papers. “It says here that you and a woman named Sybil Andalucia were jogging on a trail that bisected the crime scene. One of my colleagues stopped and questioned you.”
I’m at the mercy of those notes; I have no recollection of the incident.
I lift a shoulder. “My friend and I sometimes go for a morning run.” When we’re feeling particularly empowered—or self-punishing. “But I don’t remember that one in particular.”
“Hmm,” he replies. “Seems as though you were in the wrong place at the wrong time on two different occasions,” he says.
A sick feeling churns in my stomach at the underlying insinuation—that maybe this was no coincidence at all.
This is just what investigators do, I try to tell myself. They press at cracks, knowing only the suspicious break.
Except memory loss makes me particularly brittle, guilty or not.
For a moment, I peer into the dark spots of my own mind, questioning myself. I cannot know what I have forgotten.
Officer Howahkan must sense the direction of my thoughts because he sets his clipboard aside and leans forward, folding his hands in front of him. “Ms. Bowers, I am going to ask you a hypothetical question. This is not an accusation; I am just curious: Could it be possible you were involved with these deaths and simply don’t remember?”
The mere thought makes the room tilt. I feel light-headed and queasy with unease.
I shake my head, forcing down my rising panic. “That’s not who I am,” I say hoarsely.