Black Hat, White Witch

by Edwards, Hailey

  “Talk to me about the phone calls.” I accepted the bulky file from him. “You heard from the killer this morning?”

  “The lead team did, yes.” Clay shifted his weight on the bed, much to the unhappiness of its springs. “He dialed up Marty at eight this morning, same time as usual, and gave him the coordinates for the herd.”

  The herd.

  A shiver tripped down my spine at the familiar nickname for the Silver Stag victims.

  “That’s new.” I skimmed the first page. A more in-depth read would have to wait. “The Silver Stag left his victims where they fell. He lost interest after he killed them. They ceased to exist for him.”

  I had met cold eyes in the mirror every morning back then, but his had been arctic. Barren. Empty.

  “The copycat is making a production of their deaths.” I reached the first picture and fully grasped how much I had changed since leaving Black Hat. “He’s arranging the bodies.” I flipped to the next. “This scene is staged.” And then the next. “He cares more about the death than the hunt.”

  “That’s what our profiler says too.” Asa leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What else?”

  “I’m not sure this is a copycat.” I smoothed a thumb over the last photo. “What made the director so sure?”

  “We’ll have to fly to Asheville if you want to see for yourself.”

  The last thing I wanted to see was another set of victims like the previous ones. Those still haunted me.

  “All right.” I shut the file. “Pick me up in an hour.” I got to my feet. “I’ll read on the plane.”

  Memorization was a cornerstone of teaching for witches. A dud spell often equaled a dead witch. I was a dab hand at cramming relevant information into my brain, where it lingered until my head hit the pillow.

  Smoothie in hand, I exited the hotel, got in my car, and drove home.

  Only when I sat in the safety of my own driveway did I check the cup for my initial.

  There was no R to be found.

  Now I had proof of shenanigans, but what did it mean? And why did it make me want to pay him back? With interest?

  7

  The bulk of my prep work was done as far as Colby was concerned, for which I was grateful. I kept her six months’ worth of pollen in the pantry, along with enough sugar to put the whole town in a sugar coma. I wasn’t a fan of her mixing sugar water herself, so I filled a bathtub with scalding water and created a huge batch in there. After sterilizing it. Magically. Colby might be a moth, but she had standards.

  The go bag I kept ready would do me in a pinch, but it had become a comfort object of sorts. I decided to leave it and pack a suitcase for a week. I refused to be apart from Colby longer than that. If I had to drop in to grab fresh clothes and a hug, then go, I was fine with that.

  “The wards are dialed up to the max.” I checked to be sure I had everything. “There’s food in the pantry. Sugar water’s in the tub. There are snacks in the cabinet.” I opened my arms and let her fly to me. “Be a good girl, and don’t spend the next seven days with your nose pressed to the screen. Get some fresh air.”

  Left to her own devices, she might never take off her headset or vacate her custom chair.

  “I will,” she said dutifully, but I don’t think either of us believed her.

  After she fluttered off with an extra shake in her butt I didn’t trust, I wheeled my suitcase onto the porch.

  I didn’t have to wait long for Clay and Asa to arrive in a different, but identical, SUV.

  The rear passenger door swung open before the vehicle stopped rolling, and Clay popped out with a bounce in his step and a swing in his chin-length red hair.

  “There she is,” he boomed, slapping his hands together. “Good to have you back, partner.” He winced. “I mean, former partner and current teammate.” He eyed my bag. “Still packing light, huh? Good deal.”

  Less luggage gave him more room to play Tetris with his wig boxes.

  “You’re good to go?” He jerked his chin toward the house. “I don’t want to rush you.”

  But he ought to, given the stakes of the game I was once again playing.

  “Colby is set.” I lifted my bag. “Can you open the back?”

  Asa, who had been sitting behind the wheel seconds earlier, opened it for me. “I’ll take it.”

  “Okay.” I handed it over, not caring who hefted it in there. The spell kit was what mattered, and I was wearing it. “Thanks.”

  When I stepped back, I bumped into Clay, who locked gazes with Asa over my head. He waited until the daemon was in the SUV, with the doors shut, to frown down at me. There was nothing he could say that Asa wouldn’t overhear, which meant he kept his mouth shut, but his eyes said plenty.

  Granted, I didn’t have the metric Clay did, but I wasn’t the only one noticing Asa’s peculiar behavior.

  Ever the gentleman, Clay escorted me to the front passenger side and opened the door. I hopped in with a reassuring smile for him. He was such a softy and fretted worse than a mother hen for those he loved.

  Pretty sure he broke speed records climbing in behind me, the angle better to keep an eye on Asa.

  To keep tensions to a minimum until we found our equilibrium as a unit, I settled in to read the files. We had a long drive and a longer flight ahead of us. I wanted to be current when we hit the ground. I was in this now, fully committed, and—with Colby safe at home—I could throw myself headlong into the case.

  As much as I wished Megara was wrong about how the hunt got my blood pumping, I couldn’t deny part of me had missed this camaraderie with those who understood, or at least appreciated, my struggle. The life I built for Colby and me was uncomplicated, downright wholesome, and everything my battered soul had craved for so long. But this…this felt right too.

  Maybe I was wrong.

  Maybe black and white weren’t the only options.

  Maybe, just maybe, gray areas did exist for people like me.

  * * *

  We touched down in Asheville, claimed our new company ride, and drove to the scene of the crime.

  Case details churned through my head, mixing with memories of the Silver Stag Slayings.

  I had yet to see the bodies, but I already didn’t like this.

  “Hold on.” Asa took a narrow road that led straight up, forcing our SUV to work for it. “Almost there.”

  The oh crap handle was cutting grooves into my palm by the time we leveled off, high above the trees.

  Four identical black SUVs crowded a patch of raw earth exposed from a clearcutting in progress.

  “We’ve got company.” Clay whistled from the back. “Four teams.” He leaned forward. “Plus us.”

  That was excessive, even by Black Hat standards. Yet it sent relief cascading through me. The director was in a bind if he was allocating these types of resources to a single case. That made my reclassification less a personal matter and more a professional decision. That I could handle better than the alternative.

  “Marty’s been lead on this, but that changes now that you’re here.” Clay clasped my shoulder. “We’re about to relieve him of his command.” He squeezed. “Just like old times.”

  Not half as excited as him to butt heads with former coworkers, I cringed from his enthusiasm. “He’s going to love that.”

  Marty Talbot hated me. He used to call me the director’s pet. I had been more like a caged animal.

  He probably threw an office party the day I vanished and invited all his favorite haters to attend.

  Asa wedged the SUV in the only open space available, and we piled out into the muck to wade in.

  The woods began again less than a dozen yards from our makeshift parking lot, the trees mostly pines. It was beautiful up here, peaceful, and part of me understood why the killer had chosen it as his hunting ground.

  That predatory sense was the reason why I was here, just as much as my experience with the Silver Stag.

  Four or five agents had gathered around a sm
all stream. The rest stood as far away as they could get.

  “Clay.” One of the queasier agents, a warg from the looks of him, had spotted a lifeline. “Good to see you, man.”

  “Hey, Billy.” He shook hands with him. “How’d you end up here?”

  “I go where I’m told.” He jerked his chin toward a man standing near the water. “You know how it is.”

  “I do.” He waved to one of what must be the senior agents. “We better get in there.”

  While I had been kept isolated from other agents, for the most part, Clay had been a Black Hat forever. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. He was a walking Bureau roster, which came in handy.

  “Sure thing.” He leaned around Clay to better see me. “I’m Billy Kidd, by the way.”

  “Rue Hollis.” I declined the hand he offered me. “The bodies are over there?”

  “Yeah.” To save face, he raked that same hand through his hair. “It’s brutal.”

  “I can handle it.”

  Eager as a puppy to please, he kept chatting. “What do you think they’ll call this guy?”

  “Copycat.” I watched his face fall. “He doesn’t deserve more recognition than that.”

  No serial killers deserved glorified monikers that praised and popularized their depravity.

  Clay hung back to check on the other guys, who were all green around the gills, but Asa followed me.

  “You two didn’t exchange pleasantries.” I cut him a look. “You’re not a team player?”

  “The others are afraid of me,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s easier if they pretend they can’t see me.”

  “Those sweet, sweet children,” I crooned in my best wicked witch voice. “Raised to believe if they ignore the monster under their bed, it won’t get them.” I smiled at him. “I don’t care if their eyes are shut when I grab their ankles, do you?”

  Lumping us together smoothed a subtle tension from his shoulders I hadn’t noticed he carried until now.

  “I thought you were dead.” My old nemesis swept his gaze over me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, Marty.” I kept a pleasant expression on my face. “I’m working this case.”

  “I thought the only way out of Black Hat was in a pine box.”

  “That’s what you get for thinking,” I said sweetly. “Do you mind? I’m here to do a job.”

  The other senior agents struck me as vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to them. They took their cues from Marty and gave me dead-eye stares that dared me to get in their way.

  Asa they ignored as if he weren’t standing at my elbow, which blew my mind.

  Just because I was a girl, I was less scary? Really? I mean, I wasn’t all that scary now, but I used to be.

  “Báthory,” one of the guys breathed as his eyes rounded to the size of softballs.

  The others flinched at the name and took a healthy step back, reminding me of the good old days when I struck terror into the hearts of my coworkers. Except those days weren’t all that great. It felt that way at the time, but the true high came from using black magic. I had to admit, I didn’t miss people being afraid of me.

  Much.

  “I would prefer you never speak that name within my hearing again,” I said coolly. “Step aside, please.”

  Between Mr. Big Mouth blabbing my surname, and the bomb Clay would drop on their heads about who was now in charge, I doubted we’d hear another peep from the agents for the duration of the case. They would open the emails from us as lead team, file their paperwork to look good for the director, but sit in their hotel rooms watching porn or sports, eating pizza, and waiting for their free ride to be over.

  The agents scattered before I got within touching distance, and I got my first look at the crime scene.

  A narrow but deep creek ran through its center, and the victims had been posed on a rocky outcropping. I was glad for Clay’s suggestion I pack waders. They had saved me on the muddy hike down and would keep me dry while I conducted my examination.

  The single similarity, as far as I could tell, between this killer and the Silver Stag was right in front of me.

  The Stag had chosen fae girls between the ages of ten and eighteen, with healthy amounts of magic. The transformative spell was easier for him to cast and more likely to stick that way. He preferred his victims on four legs rather than two, and he had a thing for deer. Each time he completed a herd of four, he let them go. That is to say, he unpenned them. Then he hunted them down with a crossbow.

  The Stag had been a black witch, but he practiced a type of magic even my ancestors found distasteful.

  Rather than eating hearts to increase his power, he consumed souls.

  To transform the girls, he drew their essence to the surface and fashioned the shape he wanted from it. The end result was a silvery-white spectral animal of his choosing. And when he pierced its heart with a silver-tipped arrow, the spirit parted from the flesh, allowing him to inhale it using a thrice-cursed spell.

  These girls were still deer, their fur still white, and magic had frozen a tableau straight out of a painting.

  A Spring Creek, the artist might name it, to highlight the vitality of the flowers on the shore and the rush of water that lent the arrangement a sense of movement. Even their eyes gleamed, bright and alert.

  There were no wounds, defensive or otherwise, on the deer. They appeared well-fed, with sleek coats. It occurred to me he might have brushed them postmortem. He had taken care of the herd, but I wasn’t as convinced he had hunted them. In addition to the cleanliness of their fur, no mud caked their hooves. The creek explained how the killer washed them but not how he got them here.

  The average whitetail doe weighed about a hundred pounds, and that was the nearest comparison here.

  “The killer had to lift each deer individually and pose them,” I murmured. “That was after the hunt.”

  “Yes,” Asa said, startling me.

  Lost in deciphering the grim scene, I hadn’t noticed him follow me into the creek. “He’s strong.”

  Even if he carried them in versus flushed them out, what he had done required great physical strength.

  “Powerful too.” I curled my fingers into my palm to keep from touching the nearest lifelike deer to taste the dark magic trapped like dander in her fur. “The MO is different, flashier—the copycat wants us to find his work and admire it—but the manner of death…” I could see why they wanted my opinion. “These girls were transformed using the same magic, if not the same spell the Silver Stag used, and their souls were consumed as well.”

  Four girls had been taken, according to the report, but I only counted three deer.

  “Where’s number four?” I raised my voice to include Asa. “The file didn’t indicate one was missing.”

  “You won’t get a word out of Agent Montenegro.” Billy had worked up the nerve to approach me without Clay. “He’s the strong, silent type.”

  Asa wasn’t the only one who got protective of his teammates. “What does that make you?”

  “The opposite?” He ruffled his short hair. “I heard you ask about the fourth girl.”

  Most everyone here came with supernatural hearing, so it came as no surprise they were listening in.

  Still annoyed for the slight to Asa, I stared a hole through the warg. “And?”

  “Her remains were found in a meat processing plant down the road.” He swallowed hard. “Ma’am.”

  “That’s not part of his ritual.” I would have remembered that gory detail. “This is the first time.”

  And the killer was male, that much I could tell from his magical signature.

  “This is a heavily hunted area,” Kidd ventured. “A hunter might have just taken a statue.”

  “They’re not statues.” I smoothed the bite in my voice. “They’re victims. Not lawn art.”

  “Cut him some slack.” Clay’s wide hands landed on my shoulders. “He’s still learning to cope.”

>   Humor did it for some people. Dissociation worked for others. This guy had chosen door number two.

  As young as he looked, he had been with Black Hat longer than Asa’s seven years to not be the newbie.

  “If you figure it out,” I told Kidd, “you let me know.”

  The agent, braver with Clay present, spilled the rest of the details.

  “The owner came in to work this morning and found a mound of ground meat left half in the grinder. He was pissed off thinking his son got drunk and went hunting with his ‘crazy ass wife.’ But when he started cleaning up the mess, he noticed bone showing through. He went to scoop it in the trash and ended up palming a human skull packed in ground meat like one of those giant burgers with melting cheese centers.”

  “The killer involved humans.” A story like that would grow legs. “That explains the number of agents.”

  The director wanted this killer stopped before he made a public exhibition of his art.

  “He’s escalating,” Clay agreed. “The director won’t let this stand.”

  “He consumes their souls.” Asa watched water run over his boots. “Do you think he’s eating their flesh too?”

  “I doubt it.” I studied the deer again. “There’s no artistry in how those remains were found.”

  Steaks cut with the precision of a master butcher then wrapped in paper and tied with twine. I could see that. Neat stacks in the fridge, fresh and ready for pickup, a name in bold, black marker. That fit the theme too.

  With a slap on the back, Clay sent the agent away. “Black witches don’t practice both disciplines, right?”

  “You’re either cridhe or anam.” A heart eater or a soul eater. “Eat the heart at its freshest and most powerful, and the soul ascends before you contain it. Consume the entire soul, and the heart is cold when you’re done. Most, if not all, of its magic has dissipated by then.” Aware it cast a spotlight on me, I told them the rest. “That’s not to say a witch can’t supplement his or her diet for a power boost outside their norm. Some do, some don’t. Some flip back and forth, like vegetarians to veganism.”

  “I never thought I would hear eating hearts compared to eating hearts of romaine.”