Witch Craft

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Fagin gave me a mock salute, and loped back to his car. I watched him leave. “Jackass.”

  Bryson came over to me, looking even more hangdog than usual. “I’m gonna clock off and go get supper, boss. I’m gonna pass out otherwise.”

  “Go,” I said. “We’re done here.”

  I made sure Pete would follow the body to the city morgue and collect trace evidence, and then satisfied that we’d done everything we could for a crime scene that we didn’t even belong at, I signed out and went back to the SCS’s squad room to end another shift no better than when I’d started it.

  Frustration was my life, since I’d been promoted to lieutenant in August and given the task of heading the SCS and all its associated baggage. The city had created the task force because they couldn’t ignore the monsters anymore, not after a Wendigo named Lucas Kennuka had raised a hunger god in the center of the city. Couldn’t ignore Wendigo, couldn’t ignore witches running most of the infrastructure from the shadows, daemons rising in the slums. Couldn’t ignore the were in me—who was already the were face of the department, thanks to a propensity for people trying to kill me, right out where everyone could see.

  And I couldn’t ignore or forget Lucas, who’d stabbed me in the gut with a silver knife while he was possessed by his hunger god, and later had saved my life. I’d let Lucas go when the department wanted to lock him up, and I’d sworn I’d never see or speak to him again.

  It had to be that way, no matter how much I might want it different. Lucas was a fugitive and I was a cop, a cop who was on thin ice as it was with my history.

  I steeled myself as I pulled into the Justice Plaza, the former courthouse that now held the administrative staff and all of the major-crimes task forces—Narcotics, Vice, Special Victims, Fraud, SWAT. The nice, normal folks got sprawling floors of the turn-of-the-century building all to themselves.

  The SCS was in the basement.

  I successfully avoided everyone’s eyes in the lobby, and took the elevator down, watching the storage level and the parking level tick by before the light finally announced “B.” Bowels of Hell: supernatural crimes, occult occurrences, dumping ground for problem cops.

  “Lieutenant Wilder!”

  I flinched. Norris had spotted me. Norris Obermann was the department secretary—or administrative assistant, as he’d be quick to correct you. He was a civilian, old as the hills, and hated everyone. In his spare time, I imagine he hit things with a cane and hollered at kids to get off his lawn.

  “Yes, Norris?” I said, turning around with a brilliant fake smile on my face. Norris was so old-school that he didn’t even know he was supposed to be an asshole to me because I was female. He was simply perplexed at how “nice girls” like Annemarie and me had come to be in a line of work that involved gun toting and arresting people.

  “You have messages,” he said, like that was a grave failing on my part. “I’ve forwarded them to your mailbox. And I tried several times to raise you on your cellular telephone, but you did not answer. Was there a reason for this? Department protocol states—”

  I cut him off. “My phone was silenced.”

  “Department protocol states a ranking officer must be reachable at all times during an assigned shift,” he scolded, crossing his wiry little arms. Norris proper came up to my neck, and his shock of gray hair came up to my chin. His sweater-vest and checkered shirt were, respectively, brown and yellow today, and his tie was green paisley.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have forgotten department protocol while I was dealing with a corpse that had been burned over ninety percent of its flesh.”

  Norris swallowed, two blossoms of color springing to life in his cheeks. He hated any discussion of dead things.

  “You know when you burn a sausage?” I continued, moving in closer. “And then you cut it open and the insides are all … squashy?”

  Norris swayed, swallowing so hard I thought his Adam’s apple would pop out of his skin. “I … yes. I …”

  I dropped him a wink. “Thanks for taking my messages, Norris. You have a nice night.”

  He grabbed his coat and satchel and scurried to the elevator. I smiled for the first time since I’d gotten to the fire scene.

  My messages weren’t anything I didn’t expect—one from the chief of detectives, asking me again for a progress report on my three months of running the SCS, which he’d forget about as soon as he got to the cigar club tonight, one from Pete letting me know that he was going to stop at the trace lab and process the evidence from the body, and one from my cousin Sunny.

  “I’m going to stop by and make dinner for you. Grandma is driving me insane. You better not be working late.” She hung up without a good-bye, but it was all right.

  Sunny lived with my grandmother and viewed any defection to spend time with me as some sort of volley in the territorial war we’d been playing out since I was a teenager. I smiled again when I thought about the old bat sitting alone watching TV and thinking up ways to get back at me. The rift between my grandmother and me is simple—she and Sunny and practically everyone else in my family are witches. I’m not, and a shape-shifter to boot. It makes for awkward family holidays, to say the least.

  I poked at my computer for a few minutes, before the quiet got to me and I went out into the bullpen. Two detectives were working late—Andy Zacharias, a wide-eyed, vacant-brained rookie who had been in uniform until a few months ago, and Hunter Kelly, a washout from Narcotics who had more suspensions than I had pairs of designer shoes.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, passing between the empty desks to the charge board. It was pathetically empty, only three open cases, two of which were simple assaults where one or both of the participants happened to be a witch or a were. Annemarie had made Zacharias write in the fire—his pained scrawl read suspisious death. I rubbed out the s and changed it before moving to an empty slot on the board.

  “Hi, Lieutenant Wilder,” said Zacharias, and then spilled his coffee all over whatever he was writing on.

  Kelly just grunted. If Bryson was burly, Kelly was simply a grizzly bear wearing a cheap suit. He was younger than me by a few years, taller by almost six inches, and wide enough that he overflowed his desk in all of his pro-wrestler glory.

  “Don’t strain yourself,” I told him. The sole reason Kelly was still on the force was the number of busts he pulled in, in a division where force and little else actually got results from time to time. Then, when Internal Affairs had had enough of him, they washed him out to me.

  Kelly gave me the evil eye. I gave it right back, daring him to stand up and finally say something with more than two syllables. I would love for Kelly to take a swing at me so I could get rid of him. Weres are strong, and tough, and I wondered if he knew that I could bounce him off the ceiling.

  Zacharias watched us both like a small child when Mommy and Daddy are fighting. I pointedly turned my back on Kelly and wrote Squad Briefing—10 A.M. Anything before ten was asking Bryson to show up hungover and cranky, and Kelly not to show up at all. My squad. I was so proud.

  Three

  Sunny was in my cottage when the LTD grumbled to a stop in the driveway and I extricated myself from its vast interior like Indiana Jones fleeing the rolling rock ball. Sunny had recently gotten a new car, a bubble-topped hybrid that she adored. Everyone except me had a car that didn’t suck. Especially Fagin. Damn him. If I ever saw that guy again I was going to kick him in the shins, just because.

  I unlocked the front door, stripped off my suit jacket and my shoulder holster, letting it hang from the coat tree with the butt of my new service weapon displayed. In a fit of extreme retail therapy just after my promotion, I had decided that as long as I had a new rank and a new office, I needed a new gun, and traded in my Glock for a Sig Sauer P226. It was very sexy, a TV cop’s gun. I’d never actually had to use it.

  “In the kitchen,” Sunny called. I kicked off the decidedly un-sexy Pradas and padded toward her voice. She was cooking macaroni
and cheese, the sharp tang of the cheddar tickling my nostrils. Sunny was a vegetarian, but she made mac ’n’ cheese like nobody else.

  “Thanks for cooking this …” I started, and then stopped, staring at my cousin.

  Sunny crossed her arms and glared at me. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I managed. Her caramel hair was swept up and off her face, secured with a silver clip. She was wearing makeup—actual makeup—and a green velvet blazer with jeans that would have cost me easily a few days’ pay, plus my lunch money.

  “Is there something going on I don’t know about?” I said, trying to discreetly rub the soot out of my shirt. “Is this an intervention?”

  “Why?” said Sunny, as the oven timer went off. “Have you done something?”

  “What are you wearing?” I demanded. “You look like … well. Normal.”

  Sunny rolled her eyes and pulled out the casserole dish. “Gee. Outpouring of approval. Thanks.”

  Normally given to peasant tops, loose skirts, or T-shirts exhorting me to Visualize World Peace, natural hair and skin that never saw a dab of cosmetics, Sunny looked fantastic. She was prettier than me anyway, but usually I could ignore that by telling myself she looked like the deranged hippie child of Keira Knightley and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing flatware and place mats to apologize. “You look really good. Is that my blazer?”

  “It will be fine,” said Sunny, knowing how jealously I guard most of my vintage finds. “I’m just going to a late movie. Nowhere with a water hazard or messy food.”

  Shock all over again. “You have a date?”

  She nodded, a flush creeping into her cheeks. “Who with?” I demanded.

  Sunny chewed on her lip while I grabbed a soda from the fridge and served myself casserole and salad. “Troy McAllister.”

  I promptly choked on my first bite. “Mac?”

  “Yes,” said Sunny, straightening her spine. “That’s what I said. Troy.”

  Just as I was about to lay into her for forgetting to mention the small fact of dating my old lieutenant from Homicide, my ears picked up a sound outside the back door of the cottage. It wasn’t much of a sound, really, just a sliding of skin along sand. My rental overlooks the beach, and it wouldn’t be the first couple I’d rousted from a blanket and a bottle of wine.

  “Wait here,” I commanded Sunny. “Don’t think we aren’t going to discuss this.”

  She just flapped her hand at me. I ran to the door and grabbed my gun in its holster. Never hurts to be ready.

  I shut the door silently behind me and killed the outside light. I didn’t need it to see, and whoever was down there trespassing didn’t need to see me until I was ready.

  The wind bit into me. It was cold, during the night Gooseflesh blossomed up and down my arms.

  Again, that sound. The hiss of something slick and wet over sand, and along with it this time a low burbling of voices in a language that sounded like rocks scraped by waves.

  I wasn’t dumb enough to call out, not with some of the things I’d encountered during my time in Nocturne City. Blood witches sacrificing to their particular spirits, the daemons who roamed the mists between worlds, Wendigo feeding on the hearts of the living, and enough nasty werewolves to form my own country club.

  The moon was half-full, and it tugged on my mind as I crested the dune and started down the rotten steps to the beach. I was in the shadows, and whatever was down there was exposed. Point to me.

  The Sig was sweaty in my grip, despite the chill, as I scanned the sand, noticing tracks that came out of the water and crossed the tide line.

  They weren’t human tracks. They weren’t like anything I’d seen before.

  Burbling talk came again, and I crept along in the shadow of the dune, lifting my nose to scent the wind. Salt, a lot of it, something rotten from the ocean floor, and that particular singed scent I associated with magick. Not the good happy kind.

  I saw them then—three shapes, hunched and crawling along the sand, their rounded heads gleaming under a half-moon, still damp with salt water. Their flippers were the source of the odd tracks, and the sound, I realized as I watched the closest throw its head back, was laughter.

  They were seals. Sentient, giggling seals. Just when you think life can’t possibly get any stranger …

  A big piece of driftwood was between me and the seals, and I crouched, watching. They didn’t smell right, seals or not, and I wasn’t about to let some weird ritual take place fifty yards from where I slept.

  The trio circled for a moment, and then one of them paused and, with a groan and a shift, shrugged out of its skin. A human form unfolded from the sealskin, a female form with long tangled hair.

  Wind picked up, and I shivered again, realizing my teeth were chattering. The second pair followed their sister, becoming human before my eyes, their skin still gleaming an unearthly deep green. “Holy crap,” I muttered, watching the seal women bury their skins and turn toward the water. Their eyes were inky black with no pupil or iris, like most things that didn’t come from this part of the world, and their hair was long, dreadlocked with seaweed and sea glass.

  The air shifted, and as one they turned and looked in my direction. Lips curled back to show sharp abalone teeth.

  They smell you.

  “Shit,” I said out loud as the three women began to advance, deliberately and with a delicate step, in my direction. The beads and shells in their hair clacked in the breeze.

  I had about three seconds before they found me, and less time than that to make a decision. Every sensible bit of me dictated that I should just hide and hope it wasn’t me they were smelling. But I’m not famous for being sensible about anything, from my shoes to my boyfriends.

  So I stood up, aiming the Sig. “That’s far enough.”

  They hissed at me, and kept coming, the one in front reaching for me with hands that ended in sharp, gleaming obsidian nails.

  Okay, so first instincts aren’t always right. I started backing up, fast, my finger itching to lay on the trigger of my gun. But they hadn’t actually done anything yet except creep me the hell out. I had never killed someone who didn’t have it coming, and I wasn’t about to start now.

  The seal woman screeched something at me that made my ears ring and set my teeth on edge, and then she leapt and sprang, fluid as if she were still in the water.

  I threw myself to one side, landed hard in the sand, lost my gun, grabbed it again, and decided, Hex this right to the seven hells. I ran for the house. Behind me the three seal women gave chase, and I felt cold air on my neck as one set of claws barely missed my skin.

  I cleared the steps two at a time, and saw the lights from the cottage. “Sunny!” I bellowed. “Get your ass out here and help me!”

  There was a sick crack, like an old bone snapping, and pain sank teeth into my leg. I lost my balance and fell, the Sig skittering away across the crushed shell of the drive.

  My foot had gone clean through the rotten steps, and jagged wood drew blood from my ankle that gleamed in the low light.

  Fantastic. Not only had I marked myself as a threat to those things, but I’d put my blood into the wind. Could I be asking Please eat me any louder?

  “Sunny!” I hollered. I’m fine in a close-in fight with just about anything this side of the netherworld, but there was no way in the seven hells I was getting close to those things if I could help it. I needed long-range magick.

  The three stopped at the foot of the dune, and at some signal from their leader all three of them sprang, loping up the sand on all fours like they were still in the deepest ocean.

  “Fuck,” I snarled, low, tugging at my leg. There was a rip, and my suit pants came free. There went three hundred dollars straight down the tubes. My actual leg was another matter, still shackled by rotten wood. The pain caused bright flashbulbs to explode in my vision, but my desire to survive was stronger.

  I resumed yanking, tears springing involuntarily
to my eyes as I felt skin and wood grate, slicked with my blood. I could smell it—heavy, metal, dank with fear. My stomach lurched. I can deal with decomp and stinky gym socks and other weres, but my own blood? Not so much. It’s a thing with me.

  The lead predator was on me, and she landed, spraying sand into my face. Noises like stones in a brook burbled from her mouth. She was laughing at me.

  Just as I started thinking I was Hexed, my skin prickled as the air around me changed, electrified. A small strong hand closed around my shoulder and tugged hard, Sunny’s familiar scent and the sting of her magick wrapping around me.

  She met the seal woman’s eyes, and Sunny’s were snapping with power as she pulled it out of the aether. “Back off of my cousin, bitch.”

  Sunny’s caster was in her other hand, the wooden disc she used to focus her power wreathed in energy. I felt my skin begin to siphon off Sunny’s power, pulling the magick through my body to augment my were DNA to heal me and help me. Being a Path, able to absorb the power of others, the magick I got from the were who turned me—that’s also a Thing with me.

  The pain in my ankle lessened marginally, and I jerked it free with a cracking of wood and a spray of blood. Sunny yanked me over the lip of the dune, and I thought we were home-free as I felt the crunch of the driveway under my butt.

  Then a hand latched around my ankle, digging into the wounds and making me yelp all over again. The seal woman snarled, and even though I didn’t understand any of what she was spouting, I’ve been cursed out enough to know it when I hear it.

  “Let go!” Sunny cried. “I swear to everything Hexed and holy I’ll fry you!”

  I whipped my head to the left. My Sig was still out of reach, but that didn’t mean I was defenseless.

  “Should have listened to her,” I told the seal woman, and flexed my hand. With a sting, my were claws sprouted from my fingers, and I felt my monster explode into the forefront of my mind. I raked my claws across the seal woman’s face, digging deep and leaving bloody furrows from forehead to cheek. Being bloody, terrified, and pissed off is prime time for your were to come out, and I was all of the above.