Free Something Wicked by Evelyn Vaughn

Prescott had actually asked that. I had to have imagined it. And yet when my gaze found my aunt’s, in the gallery, her wide eyes showed similar shock.

    No, I wanted to scream. You don’t understand. Diana was everything I had left!

    But I could barely draw enough breath to stutter, “I don’t know, but—”

    “Your Honor,” continued Prescott, as if I hadn’t spoken, “the greatest weakness in this case—and it has many—comes down to motive. My client had no reason to know Diana Trillo, much less to kill her, while the only so-called eyewitness, her own sister, stands to gain a great deal from her death—”

    How did I gain anything but misery?

    “Objection!” insisted Jennings. “Your Honor!”

    “—just as Victor’s twin, his identical twin, stands to profit equally from his brother’s ruin. The fact that the witch’s sister—”

    Lady help me, I thought—and my breath returned with a whoosh. “Her name’s Diana! Stop calling her ‘the witch!’”

    Prescott smiled, as if to say that I’d admitted there was something wrong with being a witch. “Judge, add the fact that the witness and the defendant’s brother are well acquainted—”

    “Objection!”

    “But we aren’t!” I protested. “We barely even—”

    The judge’s gavel interrupted me, and Prescott, and Jennings, and even the people in the courtroom, who had burst into excited murmurings. Reporters scribbled frantically. Ben, who’d stood toward the end of Prescott’s rant, was pulled slowly back down by his concerned grandmother.

    Victor looked stunned, hurt, outraged. It was as fake to me as if he had another neon sign over his head that read, Acting.

    “Enough!” insisted the judge. “Don’t make me clear this courtroom. Counselors, approach the bench.”

    The bailiff helped me down from the witness box. Aunt Maria met me with a hug, just as she’d met me at the emergency room over two weeks earlier. And I felt no less in shock now than I had then.

    Me and Ben? Conspire to kill my sister and frame his brother for it? And people called a belief in magic crazy!

    Jennings and Prescott were arguing animatedly with each other, falling silent only as the judge spoke sternly to both of them.

    I looked across the gallery and found Ben Fisher watching me. He still looked as stunned as I felt. He shook his head, as if to say, I didn’t know….

    Somehow I managed to nod. I believed him.

    Then Prescott returned to the defendant’s table, and Jennings came back to his. The judge pounded his gavel once more, to get everyone’s attention.

    Jennings said softly to us, “I’m sorry. I tried.”

    What? Still numb, I couldn’t begin to process what he meant until the judge began to speak.

    “It is the finding of the court, based upon the facts presented, that there is not enough evidence at this time to warrant a trial of Victor Fisher for the death of Diana Trillo. The district attorney’s office is welcome to refile charges if and when more evidence comes to light at a later date. Until then, Victor Fisher is free to go.”

    And that was it. It was over.

    As abrupt as the strike of a gavel.

    The courtroom erupted into chaos, but the judge was leaving, so he didn’t bother to stop it. Me, I barely heard anything at that point. How could this happen? As inconceivable as it was to live in a world without Diana, it was even more incomprehensible to live in a world where her killer could so easily go free.

    Aunt Maria asked Mr. Jennings the questions I couldn’t—what about the fingerprint? What about the eyewitness testimony? But apparently there’d been a technicality with how the print was recovered, and now my testimony left too much room for reasonable doubt. Jennings tried to be encouraging. Because this hadn’t been a trial, double jeopardy wouldn’t apply if we found more admissible evidence. But his glumness contradicted his encouragement.

    What were the chances that more evidence would show