Witch Craft

by Caitlin Kittredge

  The seal woman squealed and fell backward, clapping her hands over her face. She and her sisters retreated, staying just out of my reach like a pack of hyenas.

  That was exactly what they were—hungry, hunting predators. I rolled over, grabbed my gun, and fired three shots into the air. The seal women fled back down the beach and grabbed up their skins, slipping back to flippered, hunched shapes as they took to the waves and disappeared.

  Sunny helped me up and we hobbled awkwardly back to the cottage, me leaving little dribbles of blood that looked black under the moonlight across the shells.

  “What the hell were they?” I demanded, as if Sunny should know everything just by virtue of being a witch.

  “You’re asking me?” She transferred my weight to the doorjamb and nudged open the front entry, helping me in and dropping me on the sofa. “Lift your leg up,” she ordered. “Don’t bleed everywhere.”

  “You don’t live here anymore,” I reminded her, crabby. “And I’m already healing up, anyway.”

  That was a lie, but by morning I’d be good as new. Between the speedy regeneration given by the bite and the energy I’d Pathed from Sunny, which kicked all of my were side into overdrive, you’d swear nothing had ever happened to me in forty-eight hours. It’s a good thing I don’t scar, because otherwise I’d look like Frankenstein.

  Well, I didn’t scar anymore. The worst of the scars was still there, itching even now against my trapezius muscle on my right shoulder. The bite would never go away. I shoved a finger under my collar and scratched at it, feeling the four round rough patches in my skin.

  Silver also doesn’t go away. I had two of those, one from a daemon armed with silver rounds in his big-ass gun and one from a Wendigo’s silver knife, whom I let too close because I was a big-ass idiot.

  Sunny came back and interrupted my mental catalog of scars. “Here. Towel, bandages, antiseptic.” She’d done this enough times to know what I needed. “You going to be okay?”

  I blinked. “Yeah, sure. I’ve had a lot worse.”

  “Good, because I’m late for my date.”

  I’d forgotten all about that. “You and Troy behave yourselves. No sneaking off to make out.”

  The towel whapped me in the face. “Grow up, Luna.” She flounced out the door, not a hair out of place even after she’d rescued me.

  I cleaned the blood off of myself and bandaged up the cut, which was deep. I felt lucky—an inch lower and it would have punched into my Achilles tendon.

  Maybe it was just a random attack, and maybe I wasn’t as lucky as I thought. Briefly, I scrolled through the list of people who had the juice to send three supernatural hunters after me. It was a short list, these days. Alistair Duncan, a blood witch whom I’d killed, had no more followers who were loyal, and besides, the Big Daddy of Nocturne City’s blood witches owed me a favor. No blood magick user would dare.

  The Warwolves, whose pack counsel I’d sent to Death Row at Los Altos for murder, could care less about me. I was an Insoli, a packless were, and rated next to nothing.

  The Wendigo who had stabbed me was long gone, and had been possessed by a Wendigo hunger spirit when he pigstuck me, anyway. When he’d been himself, he’d saved my life and I’d saved him from the cops. We may not be best friends, but we were even.

  There was one person—if you could call him that—whom I hadn’t heard from lately, who might want something from me. This could just be his sick way of getting my attention, after the last time we’d parted, when I’d ended up owing him a favor.

  “Asmodeus?” I whispered, experimentally. The daemon had a habit of showing up, demanding things, and vanishing again back into whatever world he called his. He was, ostensibly, among the last of his kind. They called him the Wanderer between the worlds, the only daemon to escape being cast out of our dimension by caster witches, with golden eyes that could look into your soul. I’d met him for the first time when an insane blood witch had summoned him, only to have Asmodeus turn. He was inhuman in the coldest, most alien way possible, and he scared the hell out of me.

  Nothing happened, except for the whining of the wind under the eaves. The power flickered as a particularly strong gust rattled my windows, and the waves sent subtle vibrations through the floor as they pounded the beach. I hoisted myself off the sofa and skip-hopped over to the stairs, up to my bedroom.

  At least up there, it was a little less creepy.

  Four

  The day did not dawn bright and early. As I drove across the Siren Bay Bridge toward downtown, it was wrapped in mist, fingerlets of moisture curling across the LTD’s dirty windshield. It was like driving through the netherworld, or what I imagined the netherworld looked like.

  I stopped at Java Jones, the cutesy chain coffee place where all the baristas wore precious yellow aprons and visors with cheap plastic sunglasses wired to them, in a nod to Jones, the fictional founder of the place. His visage graced their logo, a fisherman’s hat and huge shades overshadowing a moustache. He looked like a cartoon Hunter S. Thompson with overtones of seventies porn star.

  After I poured a double mocha into myself, I felt marginally more alive, and even greeted Norris with a smile when I stepped off the elevator. He thrust a sticklike arm at me, pink sheets clutched in his fingers. “Messages.”

  Not Messages, ma’am, or Messages, Lieutenant, or Yo, dude, you got some messages. I accepted the slips from him and leaned on his desk. He completely ignored me, and swiveled back to his workstation with a snap. When Terminators from the future took over, Norris would fit right in.

  “Why didn’t you send these to voice mail, Norris?” I asked, gently as I could.

  “Phones are down. This entire place is going to shit.” Bryson stomped by, pastry crumbs adorning his violet shirt and matching tie.

  “Internet, too,” Annemarie said, following him. “He’s just pissed because he can’t get online and quest for the Holy Grail, or some nonsense.”

  “It’s not the Holy Grail!” Bryson yelled. “For the last time, I’m a paladin and I’m trying to find the cup of rejuvenation! I need it to level up!” He slammed the conference room door after him. Annemarie shook her head and gave me a can you stand him? smile.

  “I guess it’s better than surfing for Japanese porn,” I sighed.

  “Who’s surfing for porn?” Zacharias had a look of absolute terror on his face as he scuttled past us. “It wasn’t me! Kelly must have used my workstation!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Relax, Andy. It was a joke.”

  “Come on, honey,” said Annemarie, taking him by the arm. “Let’s get you some decaf before the meeting starts. You look a little high-strung.”

  She led Zacharias away, and I was left to go into the bullpen and find Kelly. I dropped my shoulder bag in my office on the way, noting the sad blinking light on my modem that told me it was out of service.

  “Electrical surge.”

  I jumped about a foot in the air. “Hex my mother, Kelly! Don’t sneak up on me!”

  His flat ugly face split into a grin. “Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know you spooked so easy.”

  I breathed in, out, trying to get my kill instinct back under control. The were doesn’t have time for figuring out who is behind you; it just wants to gut them from crotch to throat before they do the same to you.

  “Back up,” I told Kelly tightly. He raised his hands and backed away from me. He had gotten behind me, almost touched me, and I hadn’t smelled or heard a thing.

  I filed that one in the mental in-box for later, after I calmed down enough not to tear pieces of Kelly off and throw them across the room.

  “Like I said … there was an electrical surge last night. Knocked out service to the whole Plaza. They don’t know when we’ll be back up.”

  “Be that as it may, there’s still a staff meeting and you’re late for it,” I said, sharply enough to stab something. “Get your ass in the briefing room.”

  “Sure, LT. Whatever you say.” Kelly turned, fluid for
such a big guy, and strolled toward the conference room. I leaned against the door for a second and let my heart drum itself out, sinking back to a normal rhythm. My palms and spine were sweaty, and I felt pain in my jaw and hands from an imminent phase, triggered by my scare.

  Kelly was going to get himself castrated if he didn’t stop testing me. I had no patience for macho assholes who decided to turn their insecurities on me because I was pretty and female. I’d put up with enough of that shit in Homicide. Not in my squad.

  I rubbed my hands over my face, and put a smile on it before I stepped into the briefing room.

  “You get lost, Wilder?” Bryson asked me. “I know it’s confusing, what with the three whole rooms they gave us and all.”

  “Coming from someone who once got lost in his own apartment, David, that’s funny,” I returned. It was a weak rebound, but it got everyone smiling, or, in Pete Anderson’s case, giggling. Pete was still young enough to giggle. I let him.

  Everyone was accounted for—Annemarie sitting just to my right, where she always did, Bryson slouched next to her because he always attached himself to the prettiest woman in the room, at least until she Maced him, Batista and Zacharias sitting like a study in contrasts: All-American Dweeb, meet Latino SWAT Badass. Kelly crouched in a corner, away from the table, rocking back and forth in his chair. He looked like that kid who always sleeps through class, and his posture clearly telegraphed he had far better things to be doing.

  I kicked his chair as I walked to the front of the room. “Listen up.” Kelly jumped, and I was gratified.

  “We have to face facts, guys. Nobody in this city likes the SCS. Nobody thinks we’re effective. Nobody wants us doing our jobs.”

  Batista gave me a thumbs-up. “Way to boost morale, jefe.”

  “If you’ll let me finish? Because of this, we are going to work this case Annemarie got us as hard as we can. Even if it’s not an SCS case, we’re going to make it one. And we’re going to close it, airtight, and we’re going to do it flashy and public. Everyone got me?”

  There was general nodding and muttering around the table. Annemarie swelled up with pride, as much as a tiny 110-pound woman could.

  “Okay,” I said, clapping my hands like a leader would. “What have we got?” I didn’t feel like one. Only with these people did I even get a semblance of respect. Everyone else in the department probably thought I slept my way into the job.

  Annemarie held up a folder. “I did some research on Howard Corley, and I discovered he’s a person of interest.”

  “Oh?” I sat, glad to have all of the eyes off me.

  “Yes, ma’am. He was suspected of dealing with a black-market fence by the name of Milton Manners.”

  Bryson gave a snort.

  “Manners has some small-time convictions for pushing articles without proper provenance, stolen goods, but his real talent is in magickal artifacts and rare tomes of spells.”

  “And you know this how?” Batista asked.

  Annemarie shot him a dirty look. “I have informants the same as you do, Javier. The SCS’s job is to keep tabs on the supernatural community, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. “So you’re thinking that Corley and Manners got into something that was above their pay grade?”

  Annemarie nodded. “And Corley was incinerated for his trouble.”

  I turned on Pete. “Speaking of the crispy Mr. Corley, where are we on the arson investigation?”

  “Chief Egan is keeping me briefed on what they find,” said Pete. He had that expression on his face, cagey and excited, that let me know he wasn’t finished. “But I got to thinking … maybe someone besides Annemarie saw something. Or something saw something, I could say.”

  “You don’t make any gods-damned sense,” Bryson complained.

  Pete rolled his eyes. “I had Traffic pull the footage from the speed camera at the intersection near Corley’s house,” he said, waving a DVD. “It’s worth looking at.”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  Pete booted up the DVD player and TV in the corner and slid the disc home. The screen fizzed, and then, absolutely nothing played. I was looking at gray fog, the same as what had enveloped me during my drive in.

  “Well, this is scintillating,” said Bryson.

  “Is something blocking the camera?” Zacharias asked, his first speech of the meeting. He immediately blushed and slid down in his seat when Pete looked at him.

  “No, no physical obstruction, and furthermore, Traffic’s computers swear the camera was operating normally during the entire five-minute stretch that’s blacked out.”

  “Someone doesn’t want us to see what’s going on at that intersection,” I said softly.

  Pete hit fast-forward and the gray fog slithered away, revealing the edge of Corley’s blazing house.

  “That all happened in under five minutes,” he said. “Fires don’t burn that hot and fast without a hell of a lot of accelerant—which the fire crew found no evidence of.”

  “Could be an incendiary working,” I said, thinking of the magickal car bomb that had nearly killed me while I was in Homicide.

  “Nope,” said Pete. “For that, you need a circle, and a circle around a house that size would take a lot longer than five minutes to cast and set.”

  “Plus, you’d see the remains,” Kelly spoke up, surprising the hell out of me. “The burn mark from where the victim crossed and set the working.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So not a witch’s working, but definitely unnatural in origin.”

  “You got it,” said Pete.

  “Good call, Annemarie,” I told her. She smiled. “We’re all working this unless the world suddenly ends,” I said. “Bryson and Annemarie, we’re going to go check out Manners. Zacharias and Batista, pull everything you can about Corley—financials, permits, everything. Find out who might have wanted to set him on fire. Pete and Kelly … figure out how this fire got started. Go back to the scene.”

  Kelly grunted at Pete, who just gave me a mock salute and headed out the door, his CSU windbreaker flapping. Kelly lumbered after him, once he’d given me the requisite poisonous look.

  I just smiled, because I was starting to feel good about myself for the first time since the promotion. We had a case—a real case, not bullshit—and we were going to crack it fast and I was going to be able to hold my head up again.

  I let myself think that until we got to Milton Manners’s antique shop, downtown.

  The shop, called Echoes of Yesteryear, was nestled into a brick storefront on Main Street, before it turns into Devere, in the tony part of Downtown. “Tony” here meaning, “the part without crackheads sleeping on the sidewalk vents.” It was a cozy block, nevertheless, with window boxes and street lamps that worked and no graffiti on the walls.

  Gentrification was creeping up, slowly but surely, on my city. Highland Park, my old precinct, had been the first to clean up, and the area around Nocturne University was getting pricey and snooty. Even the Devere Diner, my favorite hole-in-the-wall, was getting a face-lift. They’d been closed for renovations for two weeks not so long ago. My stomach rumbled with the want of a bacon cheeseburger, even though it was barely 11 A.M.

  This block of shops and flats was the first volley for Downtown, which was mainly famous for being dirty and housing the city morgue. I’d be sad to see the atmosphere flee in the wake of condo developers and yuppies, truth be told. I came from a broken-down resort town with a population that could fit into one block of Nocturne, and if the city was dirty and dangerous, it was still mine.

  Annemarie led the way into the store, which greeted us with a perfectly retro door chime. Bryson glowered at his surroundings, the mellow woods and delicate glass at odds with his blocky frame.

  “You break it, you buy it,” I whispered to him, and then called aloud, “Hello? Mr. Manners?”

  The shop was silent, and layered with hundreds of years of dust and must. My nose started to twitch and I willed myself not to sneeze. The weak Oc
tober sunlight did little to illuminate shelves stuffed with rare books and floor space crammed with furniture. I wound my way through the mess, looking for anything out of place, anything overtly magickal. There was nothing, just a bunch of low-end antiques. Smart little fence, was Milton Manners.

  “Hello, sir,” Annemarie called in her syrupy accent. She could lay it on thick when she wanted. “We’re here to speak with you about a matter of some importance.”

  There was something in the shop that wasn’t right, even if no contraband was in sight. I walked up to the counter—a repurposed bar from some Art Deco club that went a little bit crazy with the gilt—and checked the antique register. It was locked up tight. “Milton?” I said again, dropping a hand to my waist and unclipping my radio. “Dispatch, this is Seventy-six.”

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” a dispatcher said after a moment.

  “Has there been a silent alarm triggered at Eighteen-ten Main Street today?”

  My radio hissed for a moment and then the dispatcher said, “Negative, Seventy-six. No alarms triggered.”

  “Could have been knocked out in that surge,” Annemarie muttered.

  “Thanks, Dispatch,” I said, shooting Annemarie a glare. I was already jumpy from Kelly. I didn’t need her doomsaying just then.

  Slipping around the counter, I rattled the office door, the pristine frosted glass just as it must have appeared in the 1940s, the gold filigree lettering still reading Manners & Son Fine Antiquities, Office.

  The iron knob turned in my hands, and I drew my weapon, holding it down at my side. Bryson moved in on the right and I gestured at him to open the door and cover me.

  On an internal count of three, Bryson stuck out his hand and shoved the door open. As the space inside opened up, I realized why I was on edge.

  I smelled blood. Dead blood.

  The door banged the wall and I went in, gun first. Milton Manners lay on his stomach, one arm reaching toward a desk that had been ripped apart, as if by gale-force winds. Papers, ledgers, and office supplies were scattered to the four corners of the small room.