Free A Cup Full of Midnight by Jaden Terrell

handed it to her. She used it to wipe her nose, then folded it over and dabbed at her eyes. “Explain it to me.”
    She sucked on a strand of hair, pulled it through her teeth, and carefully arranged it into a long wet curl along her cheek. “First off, the pentagram isn’t satanic. Satan is a Judeo-Christian invention, and people were using pentagrams way before both those religions.”
    “Razor was cut open across a pentagram. It had to mean something.”
    She looked away, chewing at her lower lip.
    I said, “Talk, don’t talk. It’s all the same to me. But no jury will fall for this ‘I didn’t mean it’ crap. You can’t carve a man up like a Halloween pumpkin and not mean it.”
    Her lips trembled, and more tears spilled down her face.
    I said, “The judge won’t care if you cry.”
    A line of snot trickled to her upper lip, and she swiped a sleeve across it, then looked at the tissue in her hand and gave a little laugh. “God, I’m a basket case. I can’t stay here.”
    “Then talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Somebody threaten you?”
    “No.”
    “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
    She tugged at her hair again. Nibbled at a nail. I kept my mouth shut and gave her time to think it through.
    “You going to get me out of here?” she said at last.
    “I’m going to try.”
    “I can’t tell you who was there.”
    “Absinthe, these people are not your friends. You don’t owe them anything.”
    “I can’t tell you,” she said. “Because I don’t know.”
    I frowned. Licked at the small, thin scar on my lower lip. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You said—”
    “I said I killed him.” She rubbed at a fingernail. Flicked away a chip of black polish. “I never said I was there.”

CHAPTER TEN
    M iss Aleta leaned forward with a little gasp. “What are you saying, child?”
    “Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. How did you kill him, if you weren’t there?”
    Absinthe raked one ragged thumbnail across the other, scraping a thin white strip into the dark polish. Then, “Craft,” she said at last. “I killed him with craft.”
    “Witchcraft?”
    She gave a miserable nod.
    “How the hell do you kill someone with witchcraft?”
    “I have spell books. Real ones. They tell you how to bring harm to your enemies, even death. It’s Black Magick. I never thought it would really work.”
    “Then what was the point?”
    She looked down at her lap. “It made me feel better, that’s all. But then it really worked, and when you use bad magick against someone, it comes back to you, only three times worse. It’s called the Rule of Three. Whatever you wish on someone else comes back on you, threefold.”
    “Sounds risky.”
    She waved a hand, indicating her surroundings. “Ya think?”
    “So why do it?”
    “I was pissed at him.”
    “Obviously. About what?”
    “It doesn’t matter. It was stupid. Just some stuff about our coterie.”
    “Coterie. That’s like a coven?”
    “Duh. No. It’s just a group of people who hang together. Some of us are vampires. Like Razor and Barnabus. And some of us are human servants. Only, being a witch, I was special.”
    Miss Aleta leaned forward again. “You said, ‘human servant.’ You’re saying Mr. Parker wasn’t human?”
    I could see her angling, the way defense attorneys do. If she couldn’t get Absinthe off, maybe she could make a case for an insanity plea.
    Absinthe tugged at the thumbnail with her teeth and winced as a bead of blood welled up beneath it. Absently, she licked it with the tip of her tongue, then closed her lips around it and sucked at the wound. I repeated Miss Aleta’s question. Reluctantly, Absinthe removed the thumb from her mouth.
    “He was a vampire,” she said slowly. “I don’t mean he was immortal or anything. All that stuff about vampires being immortal and not being able to go out in daylight . . . that’s just so much crap. A vampire is a person who can feed off of