Null Witch: Secondhand Magic #1

by Lori Drake

  “That would be… unfortunate,” John said, choosing his words carefully. “Come on.” He started forward, a hand at my back gently pushing me to come with him.

  I dug my heels in, brushing him off. “She said to wait,” I protested. “I don’t want to be rude. She might know something important and doesn’t even know it.”

  John paused, turning back toward me and offering a hand. His eyes met mine. “Trust me.”

  I nodded, placed my hand in his, and walked with him to the porch, where the others who had come outside had already gone back in. No sense in standing around in the cold when you don’t have to, right? We went up the steps into the house. John closed the door, then stood there just inside, keeping our filthy shoes on the rug so as to not track ice and mud onto the carpet. I felt more than a little self-conscious as I glanced around the living room, its shabby but spotlessly clean interior speaking volumes about the family that lived there. The television was on, and those who had gone back inside were settling around the room either on the couch, the floor, or at the dining table where a card game had clearly been interrupted by our arrival.

  No one spoke to us, or even acknowledged we’d entered until the matronly woman returned from settling Luke somewhere or another. She eyed us upon finding us inside rather than outside where we’d been bidden wait, her eyes dropping briefly before she flashed me a look of obvious disapproval. I hadn’t realized I was still holding John’s hand until then. I let go and stuffed my hand in my pocket, clearing my throat.

  “I’m—” I began, but got no farther.

  “Marie, this is Emily Davenport. She’d like to ask some questions about Luke. May we come in?” John was polite, formal. It seemed to soothe the woman’s ruffled feathers a bit, because she gave her shawl a twitch and nodded before snapping something quietly in that language I didn’t understand, brown eyes flashing toward the couch as she spoke. The youngest youth lounging there climbed to his feet and headed off down the hallway Marie had come from, while she headed for the kitchen.

  We joined her after taking off our shoes, leaving them with the others inside the door. There’s something awkward about being barefoot in a stranger’s house. It’s like making yourself at home prematurely, you know? And it’s not like Marie had rolled out the red carpet and welcomed us with open arms. By the time we joined her she had gone back to work, rolling tamales in the kitchen. A kitchen which smelled heavenly, by the way. If I were a less polite person I would have considered inviting myself to dinner.

  While John leaned against the counter like he belonged there, I headed over to the little table where Marie was working and pulled out a chair, settling into it. She glanced up at me briefly but didn’t initiate conversation. That left it to me.

  “I wanted to ask about the circumstances around Luke’s… accident. What happened?” Might as well get to the point.

  She didn’t answer right away. I could tell from her posture, the way she kept her eyes down, kept resolutely filling the corn husks and rolling them with measured, deliberate movements, that it was a difficult topic. Finally, she looked up again, glancing over at John before settling her dark brown eyes upon me.

  “He is a teenager, that’s what happened,” she said, her tone frank.

  “Could you be more, uh, specific? Did you see what happened?”

  “No, I was not there. I would have stopped him.” She was getting a little defensive, which was not my intention.

  “Of course, I didn’t mean to imply…” I winced. Really, I didn’t have the sort of interview technique that Escobar did. “Did anyone witness it? Where did it happen?”

  “At the Thirsty Coyote. He was playing cards, probably cheating. There was a fight and by the end he was… like that.”

  Unfamiliar with the Thirsty Coyote, I glanced over at John and lifted a brow. He inclined his head and took out a cell phone, fiddling with it while I turned my attention back to Marie. “When was this?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “Exactly?”

  The woman paused, thinking for a moment. “Yes. Fourteen days, exactly.”

  I did some quick mental math. It would have been a day after Christina, and with William and Tori also being within forty-eight hours of one another… it very well could be related. I could hear John speaking on the other side of the kitchen, into his phone. His voice was low enough that I couldn’t really make it out though.

  “Do you know anyone who was there that night? Were any of them… gifted, like your family?”

  Her hands stilled, and she looked across the table at me again with acute perception. “Why do you have so many questions about this?” She hadn’t answered the question, and I wondered why.

  However, she’d asked a good question in return, and I wasn’t sure how to answer it. I hesitated a moment before giving her pretty much the same line Escobar had given me. “Because I’d like to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else.” It was no less true for being recycled.

  Marie watched me for a few long seconds, those dark eyes weighing and measuring before she seemed to reach some decision, nodding to herself. “His girlfriend, Joanna Strand. She has been… not quite right in the head since it happened. Claims that a giant snake climbed out of his mouth and slithered off with Luke’s magic in its belly.”

  It was a stomach-churning image but actually bore some resemblance—in my mind at least— to the magical rope I had seen over Gabriel. It wasn’t coming out of his mouth, but it was kind of serpentine, and if the girl had become unhinged… she could be describing what I had seen.

  Marie wasn’t able to give me any more information, but she did press a dozen tamales wrapped in foil into my hands before she let us go. I held them in the crook of my arm as we made our way back to the truck, filling John in on what he’d missed while he was on the phone.

  “That’s very interesting,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “The Thirsty Coyote is closed today, but I know where Joanna Strand’s family lives if you want to pay them a visit.”

  I thought about it while we climbed into the truck, balancing the tamales on my leg while I fastened my seat belt.

  The truck’s engine roared to life, but John let it idle, looking over at me, patiently waiting.

  “We still don’t have any evidence that ties Luke to the others,” I said, “aside from the second-hand ravings of a theoretically insane girlfriend. But today’s probably not a good—”

  A sudden knock on my window caused me to jump nearly out of my skin. My head whipped around, looking over to see one of the youths from the house standing beside the truck, waving a hand at me.

  I rolled down the window, and he handed me a dirty envelope.

  “The night Luke burned out, he had this,” he said. “I don’t know where he got it, but I hid it because I knew it wasn’t his, and Mom would be pissed. Seemed like he’d been through enough, you know? Anyway… I don’t want it. It’s bad luck.” He turned and walked away before I could get a word in edgewise.

  “Uh, thanks!” I called after him. Curiosity getting the better of me, I opened the envelope before rolling up the window. Inside was seven hundred twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents.

  Chapter 27

  “Are you sure you don’t want some of these tamales?” It had been a quiet, thoughtful trip back down the road to John’s house, where we climbed out of the truck but lingered outside behind the vehicles. Luke’s mysterious cash was stashed in my coat pocket, and his mother’s tamales were tucked in the crook of my arm.

  John smiled and shook his head. “No thanks, but Marie makes good tamales. I think you’ll enjoy them. If there’s anything else I can do to help, let me know.”

  I nodded, fishing my keys out of my pocket and giving them a toss in my hand, listening to them jingle. “Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it. Maybe it goes without saying, but our meeting with Kass and my powers… That’s between us, right?”

  He nodded, his expression earnest. “Of course. Call me if y
ou’d like to see her again. I know she can be… intense.”

  The offer reminded me of the strange Irish woman’s intimation that I wasn’t the first needful person John had brought her. “What did you mean when you said that running into burning buildings was kind of your thing?”

  There was a brief blink. It was clearly not a question he was expecting, but he laughed a moment later, displaying even white teeth as he grinned. “I’m a firefighter.”

  There were so many jokes to be made there, I just couldn’t make up my mind. All of them were very inappropriate, considering I barely knew the man. In the end, I laughed along with him and then said goodbye.

  On the way back to town, I dialed Escobar. Hands-free, of course.

  I received a suspiciously formal answer. “Escobar.”

  “Hey, it’s Emily. Is this a bad time?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think we’ve got another victim. Er, not fresh, but from the day after Christina.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Luke. Shit, I didn’t get a last name. Sorry. I can get it. But there’s a witness who may or may not be crazy, and the kid had a suspicious amount of cash on him when it happened. May or may not be related.”

  “Okay, sounds good. I’ll come by and you can brief me.”

  “Er, I’m not home…”

  “See you soon.”

  He hung up before I could say anything else, and when the phone rang again almost immediately I didn’t even check the caller ID before I picked up. “You really need to work on your people skills.”

  “Emily? Emily! Help!” The voice on the other end was hushed but frantic.

  “Dan?” I glanced at my phone to be sure.

  “He’s here! He’s at the door!”

  “Already? I just got off the phone with him…”

  “You invited him over? What the fuck!”

  “Wait, who is at the door?” I was starting to get the feeling that we weren’t talking about the same person.

  “Joseph!” he exclaimed. Yup, definitely not talking about the same person.

  “Oh. Well, pretend you’re not there.”

  “I already answered the door. He knows I’m here.” The words were punctuated by a pounding on said door that was loud enough that I could hear it through the phone.

  “Call the cops?”

  “That’s not going to make him any less pissed. Are you almost home?”

  I rubbed my temples. “No, I’m twenty minutes out, minimum. Ask what he wants.”

  I heard Dan shout it through the door. There was a reply, but it was indistinct over the phone. I thought Dan might repeat it for me, but instead he shouted back, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, go away!”

  There was more pounding, and then I heard Dan shout shrilly, “I’m calling the cops!” If he didn’t, the old lady downstairs might. By the time Dan got his own place, I was going to have to move.

  “Dan, Escobar is on his way over. Just hang tight and one of us will be there soon. Okay? Don’t open the door. Call the cops if you don’t feel safe.”

  By the time I got there, Escobar’s car was in the parking lot, and there wasn’t anyone in cuffs on the stairs, so I took that as a good sign. I parked and hurried upstairs, where I had to knock to be let in since the keyless deadbolt had been thrown. Inside, Dan and Escobar were waiting.

  “Where’d Joseph go?” I asked, awkwardly juggling the wrapped tamales as I shed my coat.

  “He took off. I guess he didn’t want to get arrested,” Dan said, eyeing my package. So to speak. “What’s that?”

  “Tamales. Hungry?”

  After I threw the tamales into the oven, we convened at the table to go over what I’d learned today and how that might fit into the case. While we talked, I opened up the case files that Escobar had brought with him and went through them again. Something was nagging me about them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “If Luke really was one of our victims, we have a big problem on our hands,” Escobar said. I grimaced and nodded.

  Dan gave us both a clueless look. “Why?”

  “Because the Thirsty Coyote is on Pueblo lands. It’s outside my jurisdiction,” Escobar said.

  I sighed, knowing full well how difficult tribal police could be to deal with.

  “So, you’ll have to work with who? That Payne guy?” Dan asked, glancing between us.

  This time I answered. “No, even worse. The tribal police.”

  Escobar rubbed his face, clearly not looking forward to this. “Not just that, but because of the serial nature of the crime, the FBI is probably going to want to get involved.”

  Even Dan knew enough to groan about that. He was fiddling with a paper clip from one of the files, bending it into a springy shape to play with. “So, we can just not report it, right? Until we know for sure they’re related?”

  I sighed. “They’re related. Even second-hand, Joanna’s testimony is pretty telling.”

  “A giant snake?” Dan said, clearly skeptical.

  “She’s been traumatized, Daniel.”

  “Well,” Escobar interjected before we could settle into a proper argument. “I’m bound by regulations to notify the tribal police. They probably don’t even have an inkling that the kid’s attack was an attack. If it was.”

  My head was starting to swim, and I pressed my thumb and fingertips to my temples as if it might keep my brain from moving around too much. “Well, maybe if we talk to the girlfriend, we can get a direction out of her that the snake—I mean the magic—went. We know what direction it was headed during Gabriel’s attack, and we know where William and Tori were attacked—or at least an approximation. They couldn’t have gotten far from where they were found.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t triangulate magic like you can a cell signal,” Dan said, always willing to rain on my parade.

  “I know, but even a general direction could be helpful.”

  “Assuming they’re always in the same place when they’re casting the spell.”

  We went back and forth a bit longer until Escobar cleared his throat to get our attention. Poor guy, he deserved a ref’s whistle for Christmas. Maybe a canonization for saintly patience. “I think we’re getting a little off-track.”

  With a shrug and a tiny scowl, I went back to looking through the file folder, paging through bank records, looking for any out-of-the-ordinary transactions. There weren’t any. The kitchen timer’s shrill beep came as a relief, and I flipped the folder closed with a sigh before going to retrieve our dinner from the oven.

  “So, what did Joseph want?” I asked, grabbing a potholder and opening the oven.

  “He thinks I took some money from Christina.”

  “Did you?”

  “God! Of course not! I didn’t even know she was missing any.” Dan huffed, apparently both outraged and morally offended. I glanced over at him in time to see the mangled paper clip launch and sail across the table in my direction, but it fell short, landing on the kitchen tile with a quiet tinkle. Barrington ran over to investigate.

  “Emily, didn’t you say the kid on the Pueblo had a mysterious lump of cash?” Escobar asked.

  “Yeah, but that would be awfully coincidental, wouldn’t it? If he just happened to steal the money and then got targeted with the same magic-stealing spell? And just because they’re both Indians doesn’t mean they know each other.” I turned off the oven and gingerly opened the foil wrapping, trying to avoid getting burned by the steam that poured out.

  Dan straightened in his seat. “Unless the cash actually has something to do with it.”

  When I turned to grab paper plates from a drawer, I saw him move in the direction of the front door, and when I came out of the kitchen with the tamales, paper plates, and plastic cutlery, he was rooting through my coat pockets.

  “Left side,” I offered helpfully, setting everything down on the table while Dan located the dirty envelope and brought it over. Ignoring the food, he dumped it ou
t on the table in a shower of cash, some of the change hitting at just the right angle to go rolling until it fetched up against something else littering the table.

  Escobar ignored the food, though he accepted a plate and fork with an automatic murmur of thanks. He was watching Dan, lips pressed together and forehead wrinkled. “That’s evidence, be careful.”

  Dan was not being careful. Once he’d dumped out the cash, pawed through it, staring at it intently before proceeding to pick it up one bill or coin at a time for closer inspection. Escobar reached over and carefully plucked the envelope out of the way, barely touching the edges of it. Fingerprinting cash is an exercise in futility, but the envelope might prove useful.

  “What am I missing?” Escobar asked me, close to frowning by this point. He didn’t like being left in the dark.

  I could empathize. I had no more clue what Dan was up to than he did and spread my hands helplessly.

  “Witches need foci for remote spellcasting,” Dan said. “If the money does link Luke and Christina, one of the bills or coins could be spelled.”

  “I didn’t notice any lingering magic when I counted it,” I said.

  “No offense, sis, but I trust my eyes more than yours.”

  Offense definitely taken. I crossed my arms. “Luke and Christina burned out almost two weeks ago. Even I know a focus spell wouldn’t last that long without maintenance.”

  When it became clear that Dan wasn’t about to give up until he’d thoroughly and obsessively inspected every piece of currency littering the table, I served myself a couple of tamales and started eating without him. Escobar followed suit, murmuring in approval at the first taste. I agreed with him. Marie’s tamales were excellent.

  “Yeah, there’s nothing here,” Dan said after a few minutes. He shoved the money back into the envelope and grabbed some food for himself.

  I didn’t even say I told you so.

  About halfway through my second tamale, my eyes fell on the folder of bank statements I’d pushed aside minutes earlier. A few of them were sticking out haphazardly, all with the stylized southwestern logo of Del Norte Credit Union.