Circle of Nine: Circle of Nine Trilogy 1 by Josephine Pennicott

nervy, chewing on her lip and thinking before she answered anything. She was, as he had expected, the arty student type. It wasn’t the most earth-shattering of deductions on his part — after all, she was still wearing her paint-splattered work clothes. But he’d had acquaintance with her type many times before. A steady stream of artists and writers had been moving to the mountains from the cities for years now. They were all cast from pretty much the same mould as far as he was concerned — Bohemian, vague, and probably stoned half the time. Trying to pin the arties down to exact dates and times was a nightmare. Inwardly he gave thanks that she was not a suspect. He would hate to see her on the witness stand.
    She didn’t really resemble her mad old aunt, however, and yet there was something about the way she would look at you, her dark eyes appearing to glow golden. As if she could see right through you.
    ‘So how’s it been going, Emma?’ he enquired breezily, attempting to put her at ease. ‘Settling into life in the sticks all right?’
    ‘Yes, thank you, Inspector.’
    Her tone was lifeless, flat. He wondered if she ate properly. She seemed slightly backward. Bloody eccentrics. Her clothes were all black. Even her socks. All the occult paraphernalia that the police had uncovered in the house, all that weirdo artwork. How any rational adult could run around practising spells and doing God-knows-what in the nude was beyond his reasoning.
    His kids loved her aunt’s book, but there was no accounting for taste. Children love anything bizarre. He wondered if the niece shared her aunt’s interest in witchcraft and naked angels. She looked normal enough, despite her obvious vagueness, but he rather doubted she was a normal young woman by his yardstick. After all, eccentricity and madness tend to run in families.
    He leaned forward to address her. ‘I wanted to ask you if you’ve noticed anything unusual here? I know you weren’t close to your aunt in recent years, but is there anything that you might have observed that is, well, out of character for Johanna? Anything at all. Don’t worry if it seems small or insignificant.’
    Emma looked right through him. Colours vibrated out from his body — surprisingly vivid colours, a beautiful rose-pink shade. She was becoming entranced just watching it. His thoughts became her thoughts too easily. The shining had returned. He was worried about the case. He was concerned about her, living alone. The case bothered him. Too many detectives from Sydney, and experts from the UK patronising him and disparaging his methods. For all their expertise there had been no real progress. It was a messy, open-ended case, the kind he hated with a passion. He worried about his job too much. The worry would eventually kill him. He would die of a disease that he would never trace back to his continual stress and worry from his job.
    He was a kind man. A good man. Colours flowed in green and pink arcs as he drank from his cup of tea. Breaking the spell after a few protracted moments, Emma found her voice.
    ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. There’s been nothing out of the ordinary.’
    Richard’s brow furrowed as he left Emma’s tangled driveway. His instincts had alerted him she was withholding information. A gut feeling told him she was in danger. Throughout their short, strained conversation he had been trying to pin down the enigmatic shadow that occasionally passed over her face. Where had he seen that expression before? He was half-way back to the police station before he realised. He’d seen it on the face of the young constable who had first sighted the desecrated body of Johanna. It was fear that danced so elusively over the girl’s pale features, a mask of pure fear.

CHAPTER TEN
    I sat on the couch staring straight ahead, listening to his car back out of the driveway. I had spent his entire visit in a kind of trance, my attention entirely preoccupied with concepts far more