“So from what I can tell, this Agnes lady is only there on vacation,” Milo confirmed as we reached the edge of Willen Cove. Jace had my phone and had texted Gwen with it to find out where she’d last seen Agnes, so we were headed straight there.
“She’s not active on social media, though, so it’s hard to track her too much,” Milo grumbled. “I still haven’t found a picture of her. Once we reach the store Gwen saw her at, if they have security cameras up, I can backtrack until the appropriate time, find out what she looks like, then track her through the city.”
“Or I can ask if the proprietor knows where she went,” I said mildly. “Since she’s a visitor, there’s a good chance she asked for directions or mentioned a hotel.”
“Fine, fine,” Milo rolled his eyes, which I caught in the rearview mirror. “Do that while I check out the security cameras. Old fashioned police work,” he muttered under his breath.
I was a little amused but decided not to point out that the “old fashioned police work” was what most of us non-techno vampires had to rely on and it usually worked pretty well, actually.
I wasn’t as worried about Gwen as she probably was, to be honest. I still remembered that her mother had trusted Agnes, and while Agnes had turned out to betray that trust, there was a reason Jane had trusted her. Agnes didn’t mean to get her killed, and I wondered if she regretted the mistake she made that day. Did she even realize that what she’d said had resulted in Jane’s death? I wasn’t sure, but if Jane had trusted her, I suspected Agnes might not be as dangerous as Gwen thought.
Except that if she saw Gwen, she might start asking her in excitement and might accidentally mention it to someone again, and that was the real danger here. Agnes herself knowing probably wasn’t that big of a deal – whether she might repeat it, an entirely different story.
Which is why I was hoping I could get her to make me a promise that she’d never tell, sealed with dragon magic to make sure the promise was unbreakable.
I pulled into a spot near the grocery store and parked the car. “I’ll be back shortly,” I informed them.
I wasn’t entirely surprised when Jace followed me out, but he kept his distance as if he wasn’t associated with me.
I didn’t even get into the store itself when I took a detour towards the hotel next door, spotting the very person I was looking for sitting in the hotel outside dining area while reading a book.
“Agnes Lette, is that you?”
She put down her book and her eyes widened. “Anthony! I haven’t seen you in ages – you stopped coming back after you graduated, didn’t you?” She motioned me over.
I came to join her at her table, sitting down calmly with a friendly smile on my face. “I came back a few times,” I admitted, “but I don’t guess our paths ever crossed then. So what are you up to lately?” I glanced at the hotel sign deliberately. “Enjoying a vacation at the beach?”
“My grandchildren,” she explained with a proud smile. “My son decided to bring them here after school let out and invited me along for the week. I’m not usually one for beaches but I wouldn’t miss hanging out with my grandchildren. What about you? Do you live in the area?”
“I do.” I decided Port Fylin was “in the area” enough to count. “What do you do these days?”
She looked a little abashed. “Well, nothing much. Roger still likes to go out and do his thing but I like staying at home and joining all the sewing circles and whatnot. Gossiping with my friends. I’m liking being a stereotypical grandmother, I suppose.”
“As long as you enjoy it,” I agreed with an easy smile.
“And you?” She looked at me curiously. “What do you do now?”
“I’m a police superintendent.”
Agnes was clearly surprised by this, but gave me a tentative smile. “I – I see. I suppose in that line of work you see quite a lot of bad things. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be my cup of tea.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “I’ve seen my share of the darker side of humans and supernaturals like.” We were the only ones on the patio, Jace surreptitiously keeping watch out on the street, so I felt free to be a little more straightforward about things. “I’ve seen people die – friends, even.”
A shadow crossed her eyes. “Well, that’s – we all do, in time, I suppose. We lose loved ones. It’s just how things are.”
I nodded slowly. “Especially living amongst humans, their lifespans just aren’t the same.” I deliberately paused. “I haven’t been back lately, but given her age, I’m assuming Jane has passed away from old age. You were always good friends, weren’t you?”
She gave me a half-hearted, almost nervous smile. “Oh, well, yes, sadly, she did. A while back, actually. It was very sad.”
“Were you able to go to the funeral?” I asked innocently. “I mean, since you would have still looked your regular age while she would have gotten much older.”
Reluctantly, she shook her head a bit. “She died not long after you graduated, actually. A year or two, I think? It was a very unfortunate thing.”
“Oh?” I managed a concerned look. “Was she sick? That seems quite sudden.”
“No, she,” Agnes glanced around quickly, and seeing no one nearby, lowered her voice a bit, “she was murdered, actually. It was quite tragic.”
“Murdered!” A suitably shocked expression. “Did they catch the person responsible? The police there were quite good, weren’t they? Unless there wasn’t a lot of evidence, I’d imagine they’d have been able to track the person down.”
Agnes paused to take a long sip of tea. “They did, they went to jail and all. I felt for the family, but they all moved right after that, I never saw them again. Sometimes I’ve wondered what happened to them, but they didn’t seem to want to keep in contact with anyone after they left.”
Another concerned look from me. “But you were always such a good friend, I’m surprised they wouldn’t keep in contact.”
An uncomfortable expression crossed her face. “They, um, weren’t really in the mood to talk to people at home, I suppose. Not after they left. Maybe it reminded them too much of Jane.”
“That’s unfortunate,” I let out a soothing noise. “It’s a pity you didn’t get to see them – you could have maybe helped them deal with the loss. And the kids – well, I suppose they’re quite old now, too. Since they were human like Jane.”
“Oh no,” Agnes automatically corrected me, “they weren’t human, and neither was Jane.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Is that so? I was under the impression they were.”
“No no,” Agnes went on firmly. “The boy, I’m not sure on, but I’m pretty sure the girl was like Jane.” She glanced around furtively again. “A unicorn,” she whispered.
Well, that confirmed it. Agnes was not safe with this secret at all.
“Unicorn?” My tone was calm. “Really? I’d think if that were true, it would be a great secret. No one in town knew – they wouldn’t have risked telling anyone. You couldn’t trust someone with that kind of secret.”
Agnes looked almost affronted. “Well, Jane trusted me with it! And I’d never tell!”
“Really?” I looked her straight in the eyes. “You’re saying you didn’t tell the woman who killed Jane? Or that you didn’t just tell me?”
Agnes stopped, covered her mouth with one hand, and looked at me aghast.
“I already knew what happened to Jane, and why,” I informed her, dropping all pretense of a nice, friendly conversation. “And you’re lucky I knew what she was already. She did trust you with her secret, and you got her killed as a result. Do you intend to get the rest of the family killed, too – if they’re not already dead? Or do you know they’re already dead so it doesn’t matter?”
No need to let her know all my cards.
“But I – I – but – I – ” She couldn’t seem to form a sentence.
“Agnes,” I told her bluntly, “you knew about the woman who killed Jane – and that you were the one who told her, didn’t you?”
She looked miserable, but I wasn’t willing to stop pressing the issue.
“Didn’t you?” I repeated.
Slowly, she nodded. “Not until afterwards!” She quickly defended herself. “I kind of suspected when she was arrested right after Jane’s death but I thought it just had to be a coincidence, but I went to the trial and heard the truth. Jane’s family wouldn’t even look at me, they asked me not to come back to the trial – they actually got it closed off after that so no one could come. And they wouldn’t let me come to the funeral. To them, I was just as much to blame as the people who actually murdered her. But it was an accident!” She insisted. “I didn’t mean to!”
“But all these years later, you’re still repeating that secret to someone else,” I pointed out. “Potentially putting other people in danger. You may have good intentions, Agnes, but you’re too careless with a secret that can cost someone their lives. That has already cost a very good woman her life.”
Agnes’s eyes started to fill up with tears. “I didn’t mean to!” She insisted again.
I had no doubt she meant it, but it still worried me that she’d told me the secret that easily. Who knew if she’d told other people? Despite what Jane originally thought, I didn’t think this woman could really be trusted with such a secret after all.
“Have you told others?” I asked pointedly. “Besides me and the woman who killed her? Has it come up again?”
Agnes’s lip quivered a bit. “No. No. I was going to tell Roger, but then Jane died and I was horrified. I didn’t say anything to him, there didn’t seem to be a reason because Jane was dead by then – and I was afraid he would hate me if he found out my involvement in Jane’s death. I just kept quiet about it. I haven’t even brought it up again since that day – I don’t like to talk about it much, it makes me feel so guilty. Even though I didn’t mean to!”
I hoped she was telling the truth and hadn’t accidentally told someone without realizing like she seemed to have done to me. But clearly it was a sore subject for her, so it made sense that she probably didn’t bring up Jane much.
“Then can you promise me, out loud,” I had no compassion for her tears, drilling into her eyes with a calm but forceful gaze, “that you will never tell anyone else again what Jane was or what her family could be? That you will never again let anyone find out from you about Jane’s secret – and her family’s?” I was deliberately not acknowledging that Gwen was a unicorn or that her brother wasn’t. I didn’t know how much Agnes knew or suspected on that subject but wasn’t about to risk it.
Agnes sat up straighter, wiping at her eyes, and she held up one hand like she was taking an oath. “I, Agnes Lette, swear that I will never repeat the secret that Jane told me about what she was, never let anyone else know what she was or what her family is, um, might be? And will never let anyone else find out Jane’s secret – or her family’s – from me.” She paused, then looked anxious. “Is that – is that good enough? I never meant to say anything, to Marge back then or to you. I never meant to betray Jane’s trust in me. You think promising not to will be enough?”
She didn’t know I’d enhanced her words with dragon magic, making her promise unbreakable. I hoped she would never discover that particular truth, because she might instead think she was actually keeping the secret faithfully like she should have done in the first place.
I gave her a genuine smile. “I think it will be. And I think you’ve remembered now why it’s so important not to ever repeat what Jane told you.”
Agnes fidgeted with her napkin. “I really didn’t mean to,” she murmured. “It was just such a shock and then Marge was there and I was talking to myself and she asked me what was wrong and I just blurted it out. She promised not to say anything to anyone!” She slumped her shoulders a bit. “But…I suppose she lied. And even if I was shocked, I shouldn’t have told her. Not when Jane made a point of telling me secretly.”
Agnes sighed deeply. “I’ve missed Jane, but I felt like it wasn’t really okay for me to talk about her. I made such an awful mistake, and she died because of it.”
I could see the genuine grief and regret in her eyes and realized that she’d never really talked about this with anyone. Not with her husband, Roger, whom she didn’t dare to tell the truth. She’d just kept the secret of the reason for her dear friend’s death and in doing so, hid away the memories of her friend while she was at it.
“Jane cared about you. Enough so that she wanted to share her deepest secret with you.” I actually had known Jane before I even met Gwen – I’d seen her hanging out with Agnes at the corner store, talking and laughing together. Jane had been kind to all the kids who came in and out and clearly cherished her friendship with Agnes. “I’m not saying you didn’t make a mistake, back then or with me,” I told her gently, “but I think she would have been sad that you can’t even talk about her or remember her anymore because of the shadow cast on your relationship at her death. Obviously, never tell anyone again,” I gave her a too-big wink as I put a finger to my lips for a moment, “but you can still remember the person she was and appreciate the friendship you had.”
Agnes took a long time to consider that, silence filling several minutes before she answered. “You think so? You think she’d have forgiven me for what I did?”
Oddly, I felt like I could relate. No, my words to Gwen as a teenager hadn’t killed her, but I could understand the pain of having made a mistake you wished you could take back, something which had cost you an important friendship.
I wasn’t honestly sure about Jane’s forgiveness, though, given that Agnes had immediately told her deepest secret to someone else the moment she learned it, so I worded my answer carefully as I responded.
“I think the greatest thing you can do to honor Jane and the friendship you had with her is to keep her secret safe from now on, regardless of why it might come up or how tempting it might be to say something, but also to remember the good times you had with her. Don’t forget her entirely out of regret – friends deserve to be remembered. Especially friends like her.”
“I would like to remember the good times.” Agnes looked a little wistful. “Did you know that one time she caught a couple of small neighbor kids shoplifting candy? Instead of stopping them, she helped smuggle them out the front door and blatantly told me I hadn’t seen them steal the candy even though we both knew I had.” She smiled fondly at the memory. “Then she paid for the candy herself, but still insisted they never stole anything the whole time I was ringing her up.”
“That sounds like Jane,” I smiled at the picture she painted.
She spent a while reminiscing about Jane until I realized she looked exhausted – perhaps the emotional upheaval – and made my polite goodbyes before returning to my car.
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