The Hex Files: Wicked Moon Rising

by Gina LaManna

  If only, I thought wanly. Then I stepped into the hallway and left Willa alone. She was stronger than anyone knew. She’d get through this, and I’d be there when she needed someone to lean on. In the meantime, I would get out there and do what I did best.

  Hunt.

  Chapter 19

  During a brief detour by Matthew’s room, my spirits took a dip for the worse. As I brushed my lips across his forehead, his face unresponsive and his body still as death, I felt a sudden wave of helplessness wash over me. If there was someone running rampant in the borough who could cripple Matthew, we were in deep, deep trouble. Nobody—except maybe Grey—was as indestructible as my vampire.

  “Oh, sorry,” Anita said, looking up after making it halfway across Matthew’s room. “I didn’t see you there.”

  I shoved to my feet. “I was just leaving.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Anita said. “It’s in his best interest to keep him sedated. You know the captain—the second he wakes, I’ll need a stake and garlic to keep him in bed. It’s best he be given time to heal.”

  “No, I know,” I said. “And Kady?”

  Anita’s pale face grew paler. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean? Aren’t you the best nurse this ward has to offer?”

  “Some days it sure doesn’t feel like it,” she said. “Days like this. Days when sometimes, even my best doesn’t feel like it will be enough.”

  “Your best is always enough.” I gripped her wrist, shaken by her trembling fingers. Nothing rattled the stoic nurse after all she’d seen. “I’m going to head out. Alert me the second there’s a change in either Matthew or Kady. I told Willa I’d be here in a flash, but I doubt she’ll call me. She won’t want to impose.”

  “I will.”

  On Anita’s promise, I left the hospital and felt strangely alone once I reached the outdoors. Usually, Matthew and I spent several hours a day working together on one case or another—not every day, but on days when I wore my badge.

  To wear my badge and know Matthew wasn’t around to have my back brought on a whole other layer of nerves. Maybe it was a good thing, I tried to tell myself. Maybe it’d build my confidence in ways I couldn’t if I had Matthew as a crutch.

  I wanted to get started on the interviews with Allie Sparks’s family and friends, but there was one person I needed to see first. While it was a long shot, I treaded over the familiar path back to Willa’s house in search of Juno.

  I found him sitting on the porch alone. Others were around—a few crime scene techs cleaning up shop and dusting for traces of magic and prints. A few poked through the yard, and one or two examined the exterior of the building below the window from which I’d seen the figure in black depart. They wouldn’t find anything, we all knew it. At this point, it was all a formality.

  “Hey,” I said softly as I climbed the porch. “You okay?”

  I noted those same glasses of iced tea were still sitting there, though the ice had long since melted and left the glasses crying with sweat. A glimpse over to the side of the house told me the bright sunflower petals still lay in a muddled mess on the ground. I couldn’t bear to look.

  Juno shrugged. “How can I be okay? Ms. Bloomer was like, the best thing that ever happened to me. Like the mom I didn’t have—but she wasn’t a mom, you know? She was a friend. So happy and nice. We had a good thing going together with our garden. People were buying things from us. Ms. Bloomer was getting healthier. Willa was happier. Why would someone screw that all up?”

  “I don’t know, Juno,” I said. “It sucks. That’s all I know. And I know this is a horrible, awful time, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “The same ones that she did?”

  “Who?”

  “The other detective. She’s sort of intimidating and all, you know. From the NYPD.”

  Watters, I thought unhappily. The lieutenant was already encroaching on my territory without so much as an introduction.

  “Did I say the wrong thing?” Juno looked panicked. “She was a cop, right? She had this weird power suit and a big ol’ badge, and she was very, very bossy.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I just hadn’t realized she was here already.”

  “She wanted to know all sorts of things about Ms. Bloomer. If she had any new friends, or any old ones for that matter, who’d been around lately. If she was acting weird or changing her schedule or any of that.”

  “Was she?”

  “I’ll tell you like I told her,” Juno said. “I didn’t notice a thing different about Ms. Bloomer except that she got healthier and happier every day. Every damn day. That woman was chirpy, and she baked the best dang cinnamon rolls in town. Seriously, Detective. You’ve got to try one.”

  “I will. Once she’s feeling better.”

  “Right,” Juno said. “It’s ridiculous, you know? Why her? Do you have any idea? Nobody would tell me anything.”

  “Well, I don’t know for a fact,” I admitted. “There’s the chance it was retaliation.”

  Juno eyed me with a surprisingly perceptive gaze. “But you don’t really believe that, do you?”

  I hid my startled expression. “I just can’t imagine that’s the reason. I mean, if they wanted to attack people close to Matthew, why wouldn’t they come after me? We haven’t made it a secret that we’re in a relationship with one another. We practically live together.”

  Juno gave an amused snort.

  “What?” I pressed. “You have a theory?”

  “I sure do,” Juno said, looking vaguely amused. “No offense, Detective, but you’re pretty scary.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If I’m doing like the cops do and looking at things from the attacker’s point of view, I’m going to look at you—” Juno raised one hand as if weighing a decision on a scale, and then lifted the other hand—“and I’m going to look at Ms. Bloomer. And, well, I’d attack Ms. Bloomer every time.”

  “Oh?”

  “Dude, Detective. Come on. You wear a Stunner like it’s an accessory and you sort of yell when you talk.”

  “I do not!” I cleared my throat, then lowered my voice. “I don’t do that all the time.”

  “No.” He considered. “But quite a bit of the time. You’d be a lot harder to kill is all I’m saying.”

  “Yes, but Matthew’s even harder to kill than me, and that didn’t stop him from being attacked.”

  “You have a point,” Juno said. “I’m sticking with my answers though. I don’t think Ms. Bloomer had an enemy in the world. It had to be a mistake, or someone else’s fault. I just can’t understand why she’d be a target to anyone.”

  “Thank you,” I said to Juno. “Really. I suspected as much myself, but I just needed to ask—”

  “Ask what?” The interruption came from a clipped, very bossy sounding voice, in Juno’s words. “You wouldn’t be questioning a witness, Detective, would you?”

  I turned, reigning in the sour taste in my mouth as I laid eyes on the person who had to be Lieutenant Sherry Watters of the human NYPD. I remembered Lemont’s words, that she was a powerful conjurer, and bit back my first response. I had to remain professional if I wanted us to get along. And if we wanted to find the killer, we’d have to be civil at the very least.

  “I was just chatting with a friend,” I said. “You must be Lieutenant Watters?”

  “Detective DeMarco,” she confirmed, then extended her hand for a firm shake. “I was informed by Chief Lemont that you are off the case.”

  “I’m off the Sparks case,” I said. “This is another case entirely.”

  “But it’s not a homicide.” Watters gave a thin smile. “There is no body. Yet.”

  I frowned at her. “And there won’t be, either. In case you hadn’t heard, I’m not only a homicide detective. I work across all departments—”

  “Not mine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Not mine,” Lieutenant Watters said again. “You will leave my cases al
one.”

  “Excuse me? I think that’s Chief Newton’s call to make—not yours. This is the Sixth Precinct, after all.”

  “For anything related to the Sparks case—including the werewolf attacks on Captain King and Ms. Bloomer—jurisdiction defaults to Chief Lemont. And he has declared that you must stay away from these cases.”

  “I can’t just let the attacker get away with this.”

  “No, and neither will I.” Watters’s eyes glittered. “I’ll find the vampire who killed the Sparks girl and put a stake through his heart if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “I thought you were under orders to arrest him,” I said. “Our jobs are not to kill. It’s to find justice for the dead.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Watters said, though we both knew otherwise. “It was a figure of speech.”

  “I don’t plan on sitting this one out.”

  “You will, or I’ll have you suspended for disobeying the chain of command. If that doesn’t work, I won’t hesitate to arrest you.”

  “Dude!” Juno jumped to his feet. “You can’t arrest her! She’s one sick cop.”

  “Thanks, Juno,” I said. “But don’t involve yourself in this mess.”

  “Finally, something we agree on.” Watters gave another pained smile. “I imagine you’ll be excusing yourself now? I have to get to the hospital, and I can’t have you lingering around the crime scene and sniffing out Residuals.”

  There weren’t any Residuals to find—I’d looked already. I always looked. But she didn’t need to know that. Instead, I focused a scowl on her. “What business do you have at the hospital?”

  “To interview the poor woman’s daughter. Willa, I believe.”

  “Leave her alone,” I said. “She almost saw her mother die.”

  “You understand that is the nature of the job,” Watters said. “There are few pleasant parts to it. Interviewing close family and friends when they’ve lost loved ones is never a joy, but a necessity.”

  “She hasn’t lost a loved one yet!” I exploded. “Stop talking like Kady’s dead—she’s not. She’ll recover.”

  Watters gave an almost bemused shake of her head, then clucked her tongue. “This is why you have to be separated from the case, Detective. You care too much.”

  I was going to snarl back a retort, but that would only prove her point correct. And the fact of the matter was that I did care—far too much. Personal cases were never a good idea. I knew that—every cop knew it.

  “I’m glad we understand each other,” Watters said as she took a step off the porch. “I hope I won’t see you around, Detective. Though I’ll Comm you the moment I find something.”

  “You do that,” I said bitterly.

  “Sorry, Detective,” Juno said quietly from his perch on the wicker porch chair. “For what it’s worth, she’s gnarly. You’re the real deal, man.”

  “Thanks, Juno,” I said. “But she’s right. I have to get some distance from this case. I’ll see you around. Take care, okay?”

  Juno loped to his feet and threw his gangly arms around me in a surprising burst of affection. “You watch your back, too. If people really are after you and your friends, well, I don’t want to see you dead.”

  With Juno’s sort-of-sweet departing words, I climbed down the front steps and let my feet drag me away from the Bloomer residence. In case she was watching, or had stuck a tail on me, I made my way back to the pizzeria where I found Jack behind the counter.

  He looked up, surprised to see me there. “Where’s Willa? I thought she’d be coming in this afternoon.”

  “Jack—”

  “She wanted to rub her date in my face,” he continued, head down as he rolled and then flipped a pizza crust. “As if I didn’t know what she was doing. The guy who asked her out was a clown. He’d never make her happy.”

  “Jack.” My voice was quieter. “There’s something you need to know.”

  “Oh, shit.” His face fell. “What happened?”

  I explained to Jack while Jimmy, our newest hired hand, took over behind the counter. Though I felt sick to my stomach, I managed to cram a garbage slice of pizza—the most calories possible—down my throat to keep me going. I had a long night ahead of me questioning Sparks’s family and friends, and now I had to do it on the sly. I’d need my wits about me and the energy to keep it all under wraps.

  “I have to get to the hospital,” Jack said. “I can’t sit around here. She needs me.”

  I nodded. “She does. I’ll get Dougie in here to close up shop with Jimmy—go.”

  As Jack grabbed his jacket angrily from the coatrack near the door, I realized I hadn’t looked into a counter-curse to free my furniture yet. What had been a relatively uneventful week had gone down the toilet real quick.

  “You look down, boss,” Jimmy said, as he approached and passed over a Diet Coke. “What’s going on around here?”

  “I wish I knew, Jimmy,” I muttered. “I wish I knew.”

  Chapter 20

  I didn’t get far in my questioning of Sparks’s family and friends. I made it specifically through her immediate family members and her best friend before Watters showed up and pulled a Stunner on me.

  “Leave the Sparks case alone,” Watters said, dragging me outside of Lisa Rupert’s house. She’d caught up to me after I’d managed to dodge her at three other residences. “If I have to tell you one more time, I’m going to pull the trigger first and ask questions later.”

  Lisa Rupert was Allie’s best friend and had no clue why Allie would have been killed. Neither did Allie’s only sister, her mother and father, or her grandmother. Everyone thought Allie was the sweetest thing—and above all, they were proud she’d joined the Sixth Pack. She was the first blooded werewolf in over three generations of the Sparks family.

  “I’m done,” I said. “Get off me.”

  I shook Watters’s arm from mine and stomped away from her. I didn’t look behind me as I stomped toward the Howler, the only bar where I doubted I’d be followed.

  The Howler was unsafe on a good night and dangerous on a bad one. Surely, Lemont would have warned her to stay away. If he hadn’t, Chief Newton most surely should have. The Howler didn’t respond well to outsiders.

  In fact, I was almost certain the patrons wouldn’t respond well to me, either, tonight of all nights. As the informal werewolf bar on the cusp of The Depth, the bargoers tended to dislike cops, vampires, and witches—and not in that order.

  Seeing as I was a cop, a vampire’s girlfriend, and a witch—not in that order—they especially hated me. Still, they were forced to tolerate my presence because I’d never done anything specifically to piss off the wolves. However, I doubted they’d see things that way with the death of Allie Sparks.

  If I was lucky, I’d get away with my life.

  Still, the bar scene was looking like my only chance to get more information on Allie. Watters had all but cut me off at the knees from the outside. Even if she hadn’t, I was running out of interviewees. Allie’s family clearly knew nothing—so if she was involved in something nefarious, it was completely private. And if she wasn’t, that made the attack all the worse. Murdering an innocent was unforgivable.

  With any luck, the rousing tensions of the bar would break a lead free. Maybe prompt a clue as to whether or not one of the wolves had attacked Matthew. I doubted I’d be lucky enough to score a confession, but maybe I could catch wind of someone bragging about their knowledge of the retaliation.

  While I didn’t expect a warm welcome as I entered the bar, I was surprised by the dismayed double take from Liesel, the bartender, as he caught sight of me. He gave me the slightest shake of his head, which I interpreted as a warning to turn around and leave. A warning I blatantly ignored.

  Keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead, I tilted my shoulders back and strode directly toward a seat at the bar. It was completely legal for me to be here. It would be completely illegal for anyone to attack me.

  Especially since I w
as technically off duty. I’d told the chief I was taking personal time, and I didn’t plan to clock any of my hours as official business. I preferred the freedom of doing what I wanted to the overtime pay.

  I slid onto a bar stool and ordered a glass of red wine. Liesel just stared at me as if he hadn’t heard my order. I repeated it slower and waited for him to react.

  “Or don’t you serve witches, now?” I asked. “What’s the matter, Liesel, it’s me.”

  “That’s the problem,” he said, jumping to attention. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve told you twice. A glass of wine.”

  “Don’t play games. You never come here unless you need something.”

  “That’s not true. I had a first date here once.”

  Liesel wasn’t amused. “What’re you doing, Detective? You’re walking a dangerous line.”

  “It’s Dani for now,” I said. “I’m off the clock for a while. I’m sure you know why.”

  Liesel’s eyes flicked downward in all the confirmation I needed.

  “I’m just here to talk and have a relaxing glass of wine. My boyfriend, my best friend’s mom, and even I have been attacked over the last two days. Don’t I deserve it?”

  “You’ve been attacked?”

  “Hadn’t heard about that one, huh?” I asked sarcastically. “Good to know the wolves weren’t responsible for at least one of my problems.”

  “You came here hankering for a fight. I’m not serving you.”

  “I’m not drunk! I haven’t had a drop to drink in days.” I shifted in my seat. “It’s been a busy week at work.”

  “I choose who to serve, and I’m not serving you,” Liesel said. Then he dropped his voice a few notches and leaned forward. “I’m doing it for your own good. I can smell when someone wants a fight.”

  I inched forward too, met him nose to nose. “You’re damn right,” I murmured. “I wouldn’t mind a fight tonight, but that’s what happens when a group of people are trying to steal the lives of everyone you love.”