Magic Can Be Murder by Vivian Vande Velde

Well, then, it was to be serious questioning and not flirting. All in all, that was a relief.
    "So," Galvin said, "Brinna. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"
    "Didn't I tell you everything before?" Nola asked, hoping to delay, hoping to learn something.
    "Did you?" Galvin put his foot up on the bench next to her and leaned in, giving him the advantage of nearness to go with his previous advantage of height.
    "Yes," Nola said. The table was already pressing into her back, and she couldn't retreat any further. "I caught just the merest glimpse of the man, and I'm not—"
    Galvin interrupted. "What are you afraid of?"
    Nola shrugged to indicate she didn't know what he was talking about.
    "We won't let harm come to you."
    It was the way he included Sergeant Halig—or perhaps by "we" he meant Lord Pendaran—that finally satisfied her that his interest in her was to learn more about the killing. She nodded, for Brinna would acknowledge what he had said.
We won't let harm come to you.
He probably meant that they would protect her from the culprit if she incriminated someone. But in truth, he and Halig and Pendaran and people like them were the biggest threat to her and her mother.
    "Start at the beginning."
    Because she didn't know exactly what Brinna had seen, what she had said, Nola countered with, "I was born."
    Finally he looked exasperated with her. "Had a bad morning at the market, did you?"
    She smiled innocently.
    "Couldn't find a thing to buy?"
    Nola worked to keep her face blank.
Fool!
she called herself. Of course Halig would have noticed that she'd returned from shopping without anything, without even the basket she had left with. That would be what he had told Galvin, and now that they were here in the kitchen, Galvin could see for himself.
    She said, "People kept crowding me and pushing me and wanting to know all about last night and asking me the same questions over and over, and I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't breathe." It was how she sometimes felt when she became convinced people suspected her of being a witch. "I panicked. I dropped my basket and ran home."
    "All right," he said.
Did
he believe her? He had a tendency to say everything so mildly that she couldn't tell if he was thinking
The poor thing!
or
Liar! She
was more inclined to believe the first, but she told herself that was just foolish wishful thinking. And then he spoiled everything by asking, "Are you afraid of Alan?"
    Alan?
He was suspicious of
Alan?
    "Oh, for goodness' sake!" she blurted out in exasperation. Too many years of being afraid, of seeing justice gone awry, of having to hide because she was a witch while she saw dishonest folk get richer and richer—all this caught up with her. "That's just like someone in authority: arrogant, corrupt, a bully, and first chance you get, jumping to the wrong conclusion."
    His eyes widened in surprise. A bit-too-innocent surprise, she thought, a moment before he spoke. "You
are
perceptive to see all that on such short acquaintance. I usually try to hide at least some of my worst qualities so people don't guess what I truly am till I've said at least five or six sentences."
    Nola,
she told herself,
if you don't force this man into
being your enemy, you'll be luckier than you deserve.
By trying to hide her fear, she was being so surly she was forcing a confrontation. Still, she couldn't resist finishing, "And too clever for your own good."
    "
Can
someone be too clever for his own good?"
    Oh, yes,
she could have said. But she estimated she had already said far too much. She was fortunate that so far he seemed more amused than annoyed.
That,
she could thank Brinna's good looks for. If a plain girl acted this way, he wouldn't have taken it. She looked down at her hands in her lap.
    Galvin sighed. "You were in the kitchen...," he prompted.
    She nodded. "Scrubbing the floor. Cleaning up after supper." She remembered the crock of beans she had seen. "I was preparing for the next day's