I stared at her. “But it’s not your body. Don’t you think the person it belonged to would rather you weren’t walking around in it?”
Tiffany’s frown deepened, but she didn’t turn toward me. Instead she kept her gaze locked on the table as she shrugged, the movement stunted. “Gauhter never actually returned any of the bodies. I was just making the best out of a bad situation. People respect me in this body. No one whistles when I walk by, or tries to grab my ass. Instead they duck their heads and get out of my way.”
“They fear you,” I said.
She shrugged again. “But I feel safe in this skin. I can intimidate whoever I need. I can walk down the sidewalk without worrying about who else is on the street. I can—”
“Pee standing up?” Briar offered.
“Probably not,” I said. “That body is dead, I doubt she pees.”
Tiffany looked up long enough to shoot us both a glare.
“Hmmm. True,” Briar said, as if she hadn’t noticed the change in our interviewee. “But we are getting off topic. Do you know the name of the person whose corpse you’re wearing?”
Tiffany shook her head, but she didn’t look concerned about not knowing the name of the man whose body she wore. From what she’d said, I could guess she’d been a victim long before Gauhter found her, but her admission that she’d been willing to work with Gauhter in order to keep a murdered body made me feel far less sympathetic toward her than I normally would have. Hopefully we’d be able to identify the body by other means, like fingerprints or a missing-person file.
“Did you know many of the other people who had their bodies switched?” Briar asked.
“Yeah, most.”
“Two girls, their bodies at least, with Gauhter’s history no telling who was inside. They were found in and around a car belonging to a boy named Remy.” Briar described what the two girls from this morning’s wreck had looked like before their swapped souls had been collected. “Did you know them?”
Tiffany nodded. “Only by first names. James and Becky. They’re dead?”
They’d been dead before the car crash, but now they weren’t walking around anymore. At Briar’s nod, Tiffany sagged. She might have been working with Gauhter, but she was clearly sad to hear about the passing of her companions.
“I knew it was bad news when they didn’t check in. The newer bodies don’t seem to have an issue, but the older ones, our reflexes aren’t always right. Driving a car is . . . hard.” She stared at the table, falling into a long silence.
“Tell us about Gauhter,” Briar prompted.
Tiffany grimaced. “That’s a really broad question.”
“Okay, tell us where to find him,” Briar said, impatience making her voice sharp.
Tiffany shrugged again.
I could practically hear Briar’s teeth grinding. “You were picking up a book for Gauhter when we found you. Where were you supposed to take it?”
Another shrug, but there was a hint of the cockiness that had been present when the interview first started. She was playing us.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
“Okay, this is getting us nowhere.” Briar turned to face me. “Craft, remove Tiffany from that body.”
I blinked at her, too stunned to reply.
“You can’t do that,” Tiffany sputtered, trying again to stand, to fight her cuffs.
“I can’t. She can.” Briar nodded at me.
Tiffany scanned my face again, and her jaw fell open. True fear showed in her eyes. “You’re the lady on the news.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be a lot more cooperative outside that body,” Briar said, invading Tiffany’s personal space again. “So unless you want to lose that tank of a corpse you’re wearing, I suggest you pony up some real answers.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Tiffany said, her tone a panicked whine, which sounded odd in the deep male tones.
“Then you better give us something useful,” Briar said, tapping her fingers on the tabletop, the staccato beat impossibly loud as Tiffany looked between the two of us.
I was fairly certain Briar was using me as an idle threat, but I wasn’t sure what she’d do if Tiffany called her bluff. While Tiffany’s body was dead, and it was true that I’d pulled ghosts out in self-defense and by accident in previous encounters, I wasn’t comfortable ejecting Tiffany from her body just because she wasn’t cooperating. That definitely felt like a moral gray area.
Tiffany looked from Briar to me. She didn’t bother looking to Falin. He’d been a silent shadow behind me, making it clear he wasn’t going to help her. An incredulous look passed over her features and she glanced down at the lie detector charm still sitting on the table. It hadn’t changed colors when she’d spoken last, which was apparently a good reason to repeat herself.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” Tiffany gave what might have been intended as an apologetic smile. It came off smug. She was going to call Briar’s bluff.
This was going to suck.
Briar turned to me again. “Alex?”
Crap.
“Can I speak with you a moment?” I asked Briar, which made her scowl at me.
“Just a moment,” she told Tiffany, and then she stood, motioning Falin and me to the corner of the room. As she turned, she snatched the lie detector from the table.
As soon as all three of us had reached the corner, Briar activated a privacy bubble. “What’s the problem, Craft?”
“For starters, we never discussed me popping her out of that body, and for another, I think it’s a terrible idea.”
“I’m with Alex on this,” Falin said, nodding. “This interview will be much more difficult if most of us can’t see or hear the person we are interrogating.”
“Well, obviously we wouldn’t want Tiffany out of the body permanently. We just need to scare her into cooperating.”
I frowned at her. “Briar, I can’t put her back. If I were to eject her—and that’s a big if because with her being neither a threat nor willing, that feels a lot like, well, I guess it can’t be murder as she’s already dead, but assault at the very least—so if I were to eject her, she’s out for good.”
“Okay, okay. Keep her inside her stolen body, which, by the way, makes ejecting her a way of reclaiming stolen property. Maybe even recovery of a kidnapped person.”
“Definitely a gray area,” Falin said, and I nodded.
“How good an actress are you, Craft? Because I’m about to look very stern and I need to you to walk out of this corner looking resigned to get her out of that body.”
“But we just said—” I started.
Briar cut me off. “I said acting, Craft. It’s a bluff, but it has to be a good one, so do the creepy wind-from-nowhere and possessed-glowing-eye thing.”
So push the bluff to the furthest possible point. I glanced at Falin.
“What do you think?”
He didn’t speak as he considered it. After a moment he said, “This interview turned to threats quick, and she already called your bluff once. If she does it again, you’re out of cards.”
“But you’ve been hanging back,” Briar said, a small smile spreading over her face. “Are you waiting to play good cop?”
He answered with a small twitch of his eyebrow. Briar turned back to me.