“You’re thinking she overheard the conversation we were having and knows we know about her controlling you and getting between you and Wyatt,” Alex said quietly.
“It makes sense,” Victoria commented. “Something made her leave.”
They were all silent until the bag emptied, but as Elspeth pulled it from her teeth, Julianna asked, “You don’t think Dad knows what she did, do you?”
“No way,” Victoria said at once. “But I do wonder what she told him about what was going on when Elspeth was missing.”
“Hmm,” Elspeth murmured. She wondered about that herself.
“You don’t think she’s the one behind the attacks, do you?” Alex asked suddenly, and when everyone turned to peer at her blankly, she said, “Well, the attacks started the night your mother got here, and they’re pretty weak attempts. I mean, neither attack would have killed you. And it was the perfect excuse for her to track you and even get guards put on you so that if you escape her, she can track you through us. All she has to do now is call Mortimer to find out where you are. Right?”
Elspeth stared at her silently. The suggestion wasn’t actually that crazy. If her mother would get between her and her life mate to maintain her control over her, who was to say she wouldn’t feign attacks on her to regain that control? Except—“The stabbing was a mortal with a mental illness, and the tip that came in about him was two or three days old when I went to check him out. Mother and the girls weren’t here two days earlier.”
“Then maybe that wasn’t part of it,” Sam suggested. “Maybe it just gave her the idea and she arranged the second attempt to give her ammunition to convince you to return to England, where you’d be safer.”
“Oh come on,” Victoria said with a frown. “I know Mother is . . .” She shrugged helplessly, and then said, “But having you attacked and hurt that badly? I don’t think so. There are just lines you don’t cross.”
“And getting between me and my life mate isn’t crossing those lines?” Elspeth asked dryly, and then added, “I’m not sure she has any limits. Mother tried to make me bite Wyatt for blood at Meredith’s when we had dinner there. She controlled him to get him on the porch, and then tried to make me bite him.”
“What?” Julianna asked, obviously shocked.
Elspeth nodded, but then said, “Still, I don’t think she was behind my being pushed into traffic. G.G. said it was a man.”
“She could have controlled someone and made them push you,” Sam pointed out.
Elspeth shook her head. “She wasn’t there. She was back at the house with Meredith and the girls.”
“With Meredith,” Julianna corrected her, and then explained, “She sent Victoria and me upstairs with our chicken after you and Wyatt left, and she stayed downstairs with Meredith alone for a while.”
Elspeth stiffened. “How long?”
Julianna and Victoria looked at each other and then Victoria shrugged and said, “An hour. Maybe more.”
“That’s long enough for her to have got downtown and back,” Wyatt pointed out quietly. He took the empty bag she held, walked over to throw it out in the garbage next to the refrigerator, and then retrieved another bag of blood before returning.
“But we were inside The Night Club for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe even half an hour, and I was in there alone for five or ten minutes before that,” she pointed out as he walked back. “It would have taken her at least an hour and a half to get there, make someone push me, and get back. I don’t think it was her.”
“Okay.” Wyatt nodded and held out the bag to her.
“Thank you,” Elspeth murmured, taking the blood bag.
“You’re welcome,” Wyatt assured her and then said, “If it’s not your mother then we need a pen and some paper. Do you have any?”
“In that drawer next to the sink,” Elspeth told him, gesturing with the blood bag. “Why?”
“Because,” he said, opening the drawer and retrieving the items. “You can write down the names of every mortal you know in Toronto while you feed on the blood.”
“There’s no need for a pen and pad, then,” Elspeth assured him with amusement as he set both before her. “It’s a short list.”
“How short?” he asked.
Elspeth picked up the pen, quickly wrote two names and handed it to him.
“Wyatt, G.G., and Meredith,” he read and then lowered the pad to stare at her. “That’s it?”
“I’ve only been here six weeks,” she pointed out defensively. “And most of that time I’ve either been unpacking, working, or visiting with your grandmother. It’s not like I’ve been joining social clubs or visiting the bar scene or anything. Not that I would anyway.”
“Why do you want to know what mortals she knows?” Sam asked curiously.
“Because if it’s not Martine, then it’s a mortal. As Elspeth pointed out to me earlier, an immortal would know pushing her into traffic wouldn’t kill her.”
“Oh!” Alex said with surprise, and then grinned and congratulated her, “Good one, Elspeth. None of the Enforcers picked up on that. Not even Mortimer.”
“If you’re looking for a mortal who might want to kill her, you might consider Violet and Oscar,” Victoria suggested solemnly.
Elspeth’s eyes widened in surprise. “You read their minds and got that they want to kill me?”
“No,” Victoria wrinkled her nose. “I would never willingly put myself in his perverted mind. But while Violet seems all-right-ish, Oscar’s creepy and I wouldn’t put it past him to push you into traffic if you rebuffed one of his pervy advances.”
“What about that woman who was originally in the downstairs apartment?” Julianna asked. “You got her arrested. Maybe she got out on bail and wants revenge.”
Elspeth shook her head. “Madeleine-Nina wasn’t going to be let out on bail. They said she had already proven herself a flight risk,” she assured them. “As for Oscar and Violet, I’d only ever met them a couple times in passing before the night we had dinner together. Besides, Wyatt sent them both home in a taxi before we left for The Night Club, and I’m quite sure G.G. would have mentioned if the pusher was a geriatric who shuffled off like Oscar would.”
“He said they ran off,” Wyatt announced.
“Oh,” Victoria said with disappointment.
“But you didn’t list Oscar and Violet, or even Madeleine when you listed the mortals you know,” Julianna pointed out. “Maybe there are other mortals you’re not thinking of.”
“Julianna’s right.” Wyatt sat down at the table next to her, drew the pad in front of him, and then picked up the pen. “So maybe we should go through this logically.”
“What does that mean?” Alex asked.
“Go through it day by day,” Wyatt explained, and then asked Elspeth, “You flew here, right?”
She nodded.
“Did you take a taxi from the airport to here?” he asked.
Elspeth shook her head. “I rented a car. I knew I’d need a vehicle to get around until I bought myself one.”
“So you talked to someone at the car rental agency,” Sam said in an ah-ha! voice.
“I did,” Elspeth admitted and Wyatt scribbled car rental agent on the pad. “But it was a woman, and G.G. said a guy pushed me into traffic.”
“Yeah,” Wyatt agreed, and then gestured to the blood bag she still held. “Get busy with that and we’ll ask yes and no questions until you’re done.”
Elspeth grimaced, but popped the bag to her fangs.
“Okay, the car rental person is out,” Wyatt said, crossing out the entry. “So you drove the rental here, met my grandmother, got your keys, and came up to your apartment?”
Elspeth nodded.
“And then what did you do?” Wyatt asked, turning the pen in his hands.
“She went food shopping,” Alex answered for her, obviously reading her thoughts now. “Write down grocery cashier, Wyatt.”