She finally smiled. “Yes.” She kissed him. “Yes, yes, yes.”
I slipped out of my seat silently and backed away. It would take them a minute to gather the necessary people and work out the details. If they had a quick ceremony, I’d stand with Tamara as one of her bridesmaids—if she’d still have me after all this—but for now I let them have their moment without a crowd.
John, who’d attended the wedding as a guest but had been hanging out with the cops investigating the case since the disturbance, met my eye and waved me over to join him. My legs were numb from sitting in the folding seat too long, and between that and the heels, they wobbled under me as I walked. Or at least that was what I told myself. I really didn’t want to think I was simply that weak from the fading already.
I smoothed my dress as I crossed the empty dance floor—which was pretty pointless as the dress was well and truly ruined. Between throwing myself to the ground and then crawling to the gazebo, the dress had more than one grass stain on the maroon fabric. Fussing with the fabric did give me something to focus on besides the questions John would inevitably ask. But all too soon I’d crossed the garden and reached the friend I feared I was losing.
He led me to a table and gestured for me to take a seat. I did, but immediately regretted doing so when John didn’t sit but instead loomed over me, his arms crossed over his chest.
“So what exactly happened? Was this about a case you’re working?”
No one had actually questioned me yet. There were a lot of witnesses, many of them cops, and I’d been with the group comforting the bride, so I hadn’t been singled out to report on what I’d seen. John knew a little bit more about me than most though. He didn’t know I was fae, but he knew my propensity for attracting trouble. Particularly fae-related trouble.
“You’re assuming they were targeting me.”
He lifted one bushy eyebrow that used to be red but was now salted with white. Yeah, he was making that assumption. And so was I.
I sighed, debating what to tell him. He was a homicide detective, so this wasn’t his case. Even if it was, the suspects were fae and he wasn’t equipped to trace and arrest them. Still, while I might have preferred to hash out the details with Falin—he was a resource even if things were awkward between us—I could use any help I could get.
“The two wedding crashers were bogeymen. That’s what set off the screaming fits—they can’t hide their nature from kids. I think one of them might have been a hobgoblin, which can’t be a coincidence as yesterday I got a tip that a hobgoblin might be dealing Glitter.”
I expected some sort of response, even if it was a grunt approving my supposition or maybe a skeptical crinkle of his brows, but John gave me nothing. His expression froze as he thought, sharing nothing. After an agonizing stretch of seconds, he pulled out the chair beside me and sat.
“Tell me what you know.”
I didn’t know much, and some of what I did know I couldn’t share, but I described both my short exchange with the bartender at the Bloom as well as what I’d observed today at the wedding. John didn’t question how I’d seen through the faes’ glamour and I didn’t offer any explanation.
“Why can’t you stay out of these kinds of cases, Alex?”
My shoulders fell, heavy with the weight of his disapproval. “I don’t go out looking for them, but I can’t drop this case, John. I can’t.” Not if I wanted to track down the alchemist. He had to be stopped, and not just so I could retain a semblance of freedom. He had a lot of deaths on his hands. Plus he had to be held accountable for wrecking my best friend’s wedding.
John ran a hand down his face, his thumb and forefinger pulling the skin around his eyes taut for a moment before dropping to the tabletop. “Why the hell not, Alex? Until the dart they shot at you can be found, we have no idea if they intended to kill you or capture you, but this looked a little more serious than just a warning. I mean, where do bogeymen even come from? Did they crawl out of a nightmare?”