~~

Trinity

~~

That right there, that response was exactly what I was expecting. She hadn't seen the show at all. She had not left the amphitheater at the same time or just before the others because she hadn't been there at all. She was merely pretending that she had.

The surprised and shocked looks on everyone's faces told me that there were shocked to hear those words come out of Hibiscus's mouth. Reece was looking at me with a look of curiosity, it was like he was trying to figure out how I knew to ask that question at all. The others were looking at Hibiscus with horror filled eyes. It was like they couldn't believe what she had just told them.

"H...H..H..Hibiscus?" Aunt Glory's voice was trembling now, but it wasn't from fear. No, Aunt Glory's voice was trembling from shock. "Hibiscus, what are you saying?"

"What? I only agreed with your niece about the show. You do marvelous work, Glory." Hibiscus beamed a radiant smile at the woman who was supposed to be her best friend.

"B..but Trinity was lying to you. There were no animals in my show."

"Oh, well shame on her, lying is very bad." She looked at me reproachfully as if I had been the one in the wrong. "You're not a nice person if you lie to people you just met."

"Really? And what does that say about you then, huh?" I asked her with my arms crossed over my chest. "Since you've been lying to us from the beginning.

"I've not been lying." She batted her eyes and gave me an innocent look.

"Really? So, you were at the show tonight?" Athair mòr asked her with a frown on his face.

"Of course I was. Where else would I have been? Everyone was at the show." She was putting on an air of confusion. "When the show started, I saw that Glory was standing on top of a floating star made of pure light. There were giant people created with her magic and I saw that the show was filled with lots of love and emotion. And then.. and then.. then.. I..I..-" I saw that Hibiscus was giving Aunt Glory a confused look. "I don't remember what happened next. Why can't I remember?"

"Oh Bissy?" Aunt Glory took her hand and held it tightly as she tried to sooth her friend. "I think you might have been controlled by someone."

"Controlled? What are you talking about, Glory? I don't remember anything like that ever happening to me." Hibiscus was shaking her head gently from side to side. "Wouldn't I know it if I had been controlled?"

"No, the others didn't know it." Aunt Glory was speaking to her in a soothing way. "The others had all been completely unaware that it had happened to them until after it was all over. I am sure that you couldn't have known."

"R..r..really?" Hibiscus started to tremble even more. "I was being controlled by someone? B..but why? What did they make me do?"

"From the looks of it, they made you kill Frida." Reece dropped that bomb on Hibiscus, and I watched as she crumpled in on herself. I had to wonder though, was it real? I hadn't met Hibiscus before. I didn't know how she usually acted or what she usually looked like. For that matter, it was hard for me to know for certain what exactly was happening with her. Not to mention, I had never interviewed any of the others that had been controlled, so I didn't exactly have anything to base my suspicions on.

I was going to hold onto my reservations about Hibiscus though. Until I got to the bottom of this she was still on my radar. She might be able to slide past the others, but she wasn't going to slide past me.

"OK, Hibiscus, you say that you remember the beginning of the light show, and what you said adds up. Can you tell me what the next thing that you remember is? Was there anyone around you that was acting funny? Did you see anyone or anything that you didn't recognize? Anything at all that was out of the ordinary that you might be able to remember?"

I was still pressing her like she was a suspect, and I could tell that it was making Aunt Glory angry. She wanted me to let Hibiscus be so that she could cope and recover. That would all come in time, though. I still had questions to ask her and I didn't mind playing the bad cop if I had to. Someone had to do it.

"Trinity, I don't-."

"No, there was no one out of the ordinary. I didn't sense or see anything." Hibiscus was shaking her head as she answered me. She had interrupted Aunt Glory who seemed like she was about to tell me to stop with the interrogation.

"Nothing? Absolutely nothing at all?" I asked her with a raised brow. I didn't believe that there was absolutely nothing that she had seen or heard. "Think really hard for me." I asked her with a firm tone in my voice. Aunt Glory's frown that she was giving me deepened, but she didn't say anything as she looked from where I was standing to Hibiscus's chair.

"No, I really don't think-." She was about to deny it again but then she stopped. "Wait, there was something. There was a man dressed all in black. I thought that was weird, given that it was the light festival after all. He was standing near the back of the row I was in at the amphitheater. I didn't see his face that well, but I know that I hadn't ever seen him before."

"Can you describe the man? What his clothes looked like and what his hair, eyes, and face looked like?"

"I can try." She nodded.

"Can I get a pen and some paper?" I asked Aunt Glory before Hibiscus started the description. They were given to me immediately, magically of course, so I then motioned to Hibiscus to continue.

"OK, well, I saw that his hair was a shiny, silver color that was shimmering every time one of Glory's lights glinted off of it. His eyes were in a shadow, but they looked to be silver as well. He was pale, so pale that his black clothes made his skin look pure white."

"That's good so far." I encouraged her to continue as I wrote the coloring down on the paper. "Can you tell me if he had a narrow face or wide face?" I asked this question and when I got the answer that I needed I moved on, drawing what she told me. Piece by piece I added the features to the face that I was drawing. It wasn't as good as Juniper's would have been if she drew it, but I have to say that I think it turned out to be just what we needed.

When I showed the picture to Hibiscus she gasped.

"That's him." And I could tell from the look on their faces that Aunt Glory and Athair mòr knew who that man was. So, that should make it easy to find and identify him.