Free half-lich 02 - void weaver by katerina martinez

frazzled, her cheeks a little too sunken.
    “What can I get you?” the waitress asked.
    “Just a cup of coffee,” she said.
    “I’ll have a sealed bottle of mineral water,” Cameron said.
    The waitress glanced at him, cocked an eyebrow, and wrote down the order before leaving.
    “Sealed mineral water?” Alice asked. “What are you, a Victoria’s Secret model?”
    “If you ask for water at a diner, they give you tap water,” Cameron said. If you ask for a bottle of water, what they give you is a bottle they’ve already used themselves and refilled with tap water. If you ask for a sealed bottle, you get what you pay for.”
    “So it’s a cheap thing?”
    “No, it’s… complicated. Can we just focus on what we came here for? What’s the game plan?”
    Alice looked around. Besides the man at the bar and the waitress, there wasn’t exactly anyone around to talk to. “When the waitress comes around again, we’ll ask her if she knows what happened.”
    “She’s probably been asked that question a hundred times in the past week.”
    “Probably, but right now we have nothing else to go on.” Alice lowered her voice. “Unless you’ve got some fancy magic I don’t know about.”
    “If the trail weren’t a week old, I may have been able to do something.”
    “So then we settle for some good old fashioned police investigation.”
    “Police? We aren’t cops.”
    “I was, or did you forget?”
    The waitress returned after a few short minutes with a cup of coffee and a bottle of sealed mineral water. Johnny Cash was still singing out of the juke, and two more customers had walked into the diner.
    “Miss,” Alice said just as the waitress was about to leave. “I was wondering if I could—”
    “Ask me about the girl who was killed?” the waitress said.
    “Yeah, I’d like to ask you about what happened that night.”
    “You a cop?”
    Alice’s eyes flashed over at Cameron, and then settled back on the waitress. “I’m… a private investigator. I’ve been hired to work the case, seeing as the police haven’t gotten any leads.”
    The waitress sighed, expelling all of the air out of her lungs and sagging like a limp plastic bag. “Look,” she said, “I’ve already been over this with the cops, the news, and just about everyone else in the damn neighborhood. What else do you want to me to tell you?”
    “I know you’ve been through a lot—what happened here was terrible—but I just want to know what happened… I’m working for a client.”
    “Who’s your client?”
    “I can’t say.”
    “Is it a friend of Raegan’s?”
    “Raegan? Who is Raegan?”
    “That’s the girl who was here the night it all happened? Hasn’t been to work since? Don’t you private investigator types watch the news?”
    “I… do…”
    “Listen, I’ve got a shift to run and I’m tired of answering questions. Go find help someplace else.”
    The waitress turned around and left, crossing the length of the diner to serve the newcomers. Alice watched, lost in thought, chastising herself for not having done a little more research before rolling up to the diner. Raegan , she thought, here on the night Helena died, and hasn’t been to work since. Maybe she knows something.
    “What are you thinking?” Cameron asked.
    “I’m thinking we need to know more about this girl.”
    Cameron pulled his phone out of his pocket and did a quick online search, but found relatively little on the girl. There was mention of the girl in one of the articles he found online; a brief note that mentioned a girl named Raegan Theroux who had been working the night shift prior to the discovery of Helena’s body. She was not considered a suspect, but was questioned as a person of interest about five days ago. The lack of information certainly struck Alice as odd.
    “So they talked to her,” Alice said. “Which means she’s alive.”
    Only it was entirely possible Nyx had taken the body over as she had done to Helena. If this