Witch Craft

by Caitlin Kittredge

  A nurse busted in, like there was some kind of alarm attached to pigheaded patients. “Miss Wilder! You can’t be out of bed yet. You’re still heavily sedated.”

  “Sounds like a party,” I mumbled. Grabbing up my clothes, I turned on Fagin. “Get out, unless you want to see my sooty naked body.”

  “That supposed to be some kind of incentive to leave?” Fagin said, that smart-ass, incredulous lilt to his voice.

  I threw a shoe at him. “Out!”

  “Fine. Hexed temperamental woman.” He threw me a wink and ambled out.

  The nurse remained, glowering at me. “Miss Wilder …”

  “Lady, I’m leaving. If you want to try to stop me, I swear to everything Hexed and holy that I will stab you with this IV, because I am in that rotten of a mood.” My morphine hangover wasn’t doing anything to improve my outlook, and combined with the pain it made for a potent Bitch Cocktail.

  Her face curled like a sour pug dog. “Fine. The hospital is not responsible.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be sure to sue you if I drop dead,” I told her. She huffed and moved to leave.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry—well, not really—but the man who came in with me, the burn victim. Is he … ?”

  “He’s been taken to ICU,” said the nurse brusquely. “His condition is critical.” She swung her broad hips around and waddled out, leaving me with a stone of anger in my stomach.

  “All that, and you couldn’t even fucking fight,” I told Nick, or the spirits, whichever.

  I caught a look in the mirror opposite the bed after I tore the gown off and winced. I had bruises the color of grape Kool-Aid all over my side and back, and red blisters and scorching everywhere else. The ends of my hair were singed and my face was crimson, like I’d overdosed on a sunlamp. Gorgeous.

  I managed my lingerie with minor aches, my bra lumpy over the elastic bandages holding my ribs in place, but getting into my shirt defeated me. I rooted around in the closet and found an oversized hoodie sweatshirt, managing to slide it on with minimal agony. I banged open the door and found Fagin dozing against the opposite wall.

  “Let’s get back to the SCS,” I said shortly. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Fagin reached out to steady me, and I caught the flutter again, my magick reacting to something in him. This time it wasn’t a spark; it was like someone had clubbed me in the knees. I lost my balance and fell on my ass, sprawled in the hallway as nurses and patients and for all I know the gods themselves looked on.

  I glowered at his hand when he offered it. “What the Hex are you?”

  Fagin spread his hands. “I don’t understand.”

  Scrambling up hurt a lot, and I hissed between clenched teeth, “I touched you and I felt something. I Path magick from witches—it’s my pack talent.” Not technically true: I was born of the Serpent Eye pack, who had no unique talent. But Fagin didn’t need to know that being a Path was my own personal freak show. “I Pathed something from you,” I continued. “So I’ll ask you once more, nicely, before I get pissed—what are you?”

  Fagin crossed his arms. “I’m a man, Luna. That’s all, and that’s all I’ve ever been. Maybe I have an ambient talent, but I’m pretty happy being an ATF agent. And I do my job with such flair, it would be selfish to have two natural talents on top of my good looks and charm.”

  Liar. Liars always protest too much.

  “Maybe your special snowflake talent is broken,” said Fagin. “Get a fairy godmother in to service it is my advice.”

  I’d been wrong—liar and jackass.

  “Whatever you are, I’ve had enough of you,” I said, his arrogance pushing me into a growl. I turned and limped away, with as much dignity as I could muster.

  “Hey,” Fagin called. “What about the SCS?”

  “I changed my mind,” I snapped. “I’m going home. Alone.”

  Riding in a cab with cracked ribs is no picnic, but I made it home and to my front door, fumbling with keys and bag.

  As my door key slid home, I noticed scratches around the lock, small enough to be almost invisible. It could be tarnish, but it wasn’t. I ran my finger over the rough spots on the latch plate. I’d made enough of them honing my own skills at the academy.

  Someone had picked my fucking lock.

  My bag hit the ground and my Sig came out, down and away from my body. I twisted the key with my free hand and shoved the door inward.

  I’d had enough unsavory types, both human and worse, break in over the years to expect the worst, but something whispered at the back of my brain that this wasn’t something from the netherworld. Did daemons pick locks? Did selkies have to skulk around?

  “I’m armed!” I called before I shoved the door open with my shoulder and went in.

  It felt so wrong to be making a dynamic entry into my own cottage. And it had happened too many times already. “Anyone in here, get the fuck out now! I’m not in the mood!”

  Nothing appeared. No one jumped on me from the shadows; nothing exploded. There was only the faintest scent of another person, faded and long gone. I felt my heart beating along all of my bruises. The barrel of the Sig dipped, and I slid it back into its holster with a sigh. Whoever had broken in, they weren’t here now.

  The front room was in shadow and I twitched the curtains aside to let in the afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t even sunset yet, and I felt like I’d crammed a hundred years into the day. I flopped onto the sofa and shut my gritty eyes, tilting my head back to the ceiling.

  When I lowered my chin, I saw it. It was nailed to the wall in the center of a symbol opposite the sofa. Dead, and had been for some time, judging by the entrails from its split stomach and the bulge in its small black eyes.

  I stared, for a full five seconds, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. Then I rocketed off the sofa and called Bryson, and my cousin.

  While I waited for them to show up I grabbed my pocket camera and snapped pictures of the symbol, which dripped black down my walls. I knew things that had black blood, and feared the worst, but a sniff test confirmed it was paint. Thank the gods for small favors.

  Sunny’s hybrid skidded to a stop in the drive, closely followed by Bryson’s grimy Taurus. She jumped out and ran inside, stopping short when she saw the thing on my wall. “Oh, gods. What is that?”

  Bryson ambled in at a more leisurely pace, making a face like he’d just stepped in roadkill. “Hex. Is that a sparrow?”

  “Was,” I corrected. “It’s a pretty fucking ex-sparrow now.”

  Sunny grabbed my arm. “Who would do this to you?”

  “The same person who tried to kill me on the beach, and who’s been following me,” I muttered. “What I need to know is, what are they doing in my house?”

  Bryson walked around and examined the sign from all angles, shaking his head. “This is some freaky crap, Wilder. No lie.”

  The symbol wasn’t like the blood witch sigils or the daemonic summon marks, but it was unsettling nonetheless, a square made out of glyphs that described eyes, and thorns, and bleeding hearts. The dead bird in the center pushed it from Disturbing to Oh, Dear God, What Is That?

  “Is it vaudaun?” I asked Sunny. “Some weird animal sacrifice?”

  “No,” said Sunny. “A vaudaun priest would use a veve, the signature of his patron spirit, and this is something else. I’ve never seen it before. But …” She stretched out her hand and almost touched the symbol, then curled her fist and drew it away. “It’s meticulous. Correct. The symbol is built for power.”

  Bryson looked at her askance. “It’s, you know, safe to be standing here all near it and shit, right?”

  “David, don’t be an idiot,” I said. “If they were after anyone, they were after me, not some burned-out detective with low blood sugar.”

  “I never thought I’d be saying this, but Bryson may be right,” Sunny said. “Luna, whoever put this here—they were trying to curse you.”

  “Trying?” Prickles of nerve ran up and down my back, the
baser instincts of my monster putting me on high alert.

  “Yes … the spell didn’t take,” she said. “Like I said, the symbol is a perfect curse, but there’s no magick charge behind it. The working is incomplete. They called the corners and used a psychopomp—a harbinger of death—with that poor sparrow.” She rubbed her arms. “You’re damn lucky whoever did this wasn’t a witch. I suggest you get what you need for evidence and then let me wash it off, before it has a chance to do anything to you.”

  I looked over the eyes, huge and unblinking writ in the stark black against my wall. My landlord was going to have a fit. I’d already paid to patch bullet holes, sand blood out of the hardwood floors, replace a wall cracked from Lucas, possessed, tossing me into it, and a thousand other small mistakes from my own hand, when the phase got the better of me.

  “I’ll document it,” I said, “and then I need some sleep, because this day has been, to put it mildly, insanely craptastic.”

  “Heard about you and the fire brigade,” Bryson said. He was keeping his distance from the grisly offering on my wall, practically in the kitchen. “You’re still crazy, Wilder.”

  I felt Sunny’s gaze latch onto me. “What about a fire?”

  “Nothing,” I said, shooting Bryson a shut up look that could have drawn blood. My cousin likes to pretend my job is all kittens and rainbows.

  “Fine, I’ll just get it from Troy later on,” she said sweetly. “David, be a dear and grab the bucket and cleanser from under the sink, please?”

  Bryson meekly did as she asked, and when water rushed into the sink I spoke to Sunny, low. “Should I be worried? Could it work next time?”

  She spread her hands. “Someone wants you dead, Luna. If they come back with a friend who can pull down power …”

  I sighed. “I’m not taking leave from the force. I’m in enough hot water with the commissioner as it is.”

  “Then at least find another place to stay until you figure out who is doing this and why,” Sunny said. “You can come to Grandma’s.”

  “Oh yeah,” I snorted. “Me and Grandma, under the same roof. That’ll be a laugh and a half.” The last time I’d lived with my grandmother, I’d been young enough to still hide pot under my mattress, which she promptly found and evicted me for. That, and there was the werewolf thing, which to a prissy witch like her was as bad as coming home engaged to an unemployed drummer named Snake.

  “Well, there’s nowhere else you can go,” Sunny said, folding her arms. “Troy lives in a one-bedroom condo and Dmitri is gone.”

  She just had to bring up the ex-boyfriend, the werewolf whom I’d told good-bye a few months before I got promoted. It wasn’t a clean break; it was one of the messy ones, with deep wounds and recriminations on both sides.

  I put the image of Dmitri’s eyes—green when he was human, black when he let the daemon blood that rode his monster’s back control him—out of my head. Hopefully, after almost six months, for good.

  “That’s none of your—you’ve seen where Mac lives?”

  “What, you thought he curled up under his desk at night?” Sunny smirked.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, mimicking her posture. “It takes a lot more than eviscerated fowl to chase me out of my own home.”

  Bryson plopped a bucket full of sudsy water down at Sunny’s feet. “I’ll make sure Batista, Hunter, and I take shifts tonight watching your place, Wilder.”

  “Make sure Zacharias helps, too,” I said absently. “He needs the time in the field.”

  “Hell, Raggedy Andy is about as useful as a rubber gun loaded with Jell-O bullets,” Bryson sniffed. “We’ll take care of it.”

  I wasn’t 100-percent sure that Kelly would raise a finger if I were being ritualistically murdered, but I smiled gamely at Bryson. “I appreciate it, David.”

  “Don’t take it all personal,” he grumbled. “I’d do anything not to push paper in Homicide again.”

  Sunny found a rag to go with the bucket and started washing the symbol off the wall, until it was a faint shadow. I had a feeling I’d seen the eyes somewhere before, much larger and much more faded. I blinked to clear my vision and went over to the window that looked down on the beach, turning my back on the grisly scene until Sunny had scrubbed the wall and Bryson had put the sparrow into a trash bag and tossed it into the outside can. “I’ll make a report,” he said when he came back in, washing his hands at the sink with the concentration of someone who’s just been licked by a leper. “And you sit tight tonight.”

  “I’m not a victim,” I reminded him, testy.

  “Someone broke into your house, Wilder, and scribbled freak hoodoo all over your walls. That makes you the victim of something.”

  Bryson was more right than he knew, though I didn’t reply to him, didn’t dignify his “victim” designation with a comment. I hated that label, had hated it ever since I’d been attacked and bitten by the were who made me, fifteen years past. Victim was stationary, broken, hollow. The bite had gotten me up and out of my dead-ended life, and put me on the path to today. So it was a bad name for me.

  I wasn’t broken yet.

  Nine

  I was in my office by 7 A.M., because sleep was an elusive monster. When I did pass out, my subconscious decided that Luna’s Past Mistakes were prime fodder for nightmares and I was treated to a parade of everyone who’d ever harmed me, so it seemed—Joshua Mackelroy, Alistair Duncan, the man I’d shot my first year as a detective, and Lucas, his eyes as he stabbed me and left me for dead. His skin on mine as he kissed me …

  At least he didn’t stab me in the back. Then my life really would be a sad country song.

  Batista rolled in a few minutes after me, bags under his eyes, his normally granite-hard face drawn. “Luna, you mind if I clock out and sleep for a few hours? I’ve been up since two on your protective detail and Marisol is fit to be tied that I had to go out in the middle of the night. You’d be doing me a solid.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, waving him away. “Hey, what did we find out about Corley and Manners?”

  “Ask Andy,” Batista said, masking a yawn with his broad hand. “He’s been working at it like a grad student on speed. He’s got spreadsheets.”

  “Thanks,” I said, hiding my own yawn inside a large swallow from a very large mocha. If I couldn’t be doped up, I might as well be caffeinated. My ribs still groaned every time I tried to draw breath.

  Zacharias flew in like a skinny omen of ill fate, throwing down his briefcase and an onion bagel with lox. My nose twitched and my stomach followed. I took half of Andy’s bagel and bit down, chewing and swallowing before my body could tell me different.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” Zacharias said meekly.

  “Gods, Andy.” I finished my half of the bagel. “It’s okay to get pissed with me, you know.”

  He cocked his head. “I don’t understand, ma’am.”

  “I just stole your food without asking, Zacharias. It’s all right to relax that rod in your butt a centimeter once in a while.”

  He dropped his eyes to the floor and gave me a jerky nod. “Okay, Lieutenant.”

  “Good. Now, what did you find out about Corley?”

  Zacharias looked like he would piss his pants with relief at the change of subject. “Corley was an established antique dealer as well as manager of a high-end auction house here in town. His financials are clean, as are his backers.”

  “Backers?” Another swig of coffee.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Andy …”

  “I mean Lieutenant. Sorry. He had three investors in his business as of six months ago. He expanded into import/export, and the licensing fees alone will kill you.”

  A sheet listing out the backers and their invested amounts appeared in my free hand, detailed in meticulous columns. OCD—not just for weird old men anymore.

  The first two names meant nothing to me, but the third jumped. “Grace Hartley?”

  Zacharias perked. “Yes. Does that
mean something to you, ma’am?”

  “It might,” I said, folding the paper into quarters and shoving it into my back pocket.

  “You need an address, ma’am?” Andy asked, sitting down at his computer like an eager student.

  “Taken care of,” I said, as the elevator dinged. I expected Kelly or Annemarie, the only two members of the squad who kept remotely punctual hours, but instead it was Bryson, leading a tall, dark, and handsome stranger with a pink visitor pass dangling from his chest.

  “Well, crap,” I said, setting down my coffee on Andy’s desk and hurrying to intercept them before Bryson opened his big yap.

  “David. Don’t you turn into a pumpkin if you rise before nine A.M.?”

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” he greeted me, his jaw twitching. I dropped my smile at his cue. Bryson slid his eyes toward the visitor, and I recognized him, in tight shot, close as I’d be to my TV screen at home.

  Brad Morgan had come to my squad room.

  “Mr. Morgan.” I pasted a wide bullshit smile onto my face, the same one he gave me every night at five and eleven from the nightly news. “Welcome. I was so sorry to hear about the loss of the community center.”

  “It was a terrible blow,” he said, extending a hand with nails buffed and shined. When I shook, his grip was firm, with just a tad too much pressure. Letting me know I wasn’t as strong as he was.

  Fine, he could go ahead and think that. “What can the SCS do for you today, Mr. Morgan?”

  He jerked his thumb at Bryson. “I heard about what happened to Nick Alaqui, my supervisor at the center, and I took the liberty of calling the chief of detectives. We golf. At any rate, he referred me to Mr. Bryson and I called him at home early this morning.”

  “Early,” Bryson echoed, pulling a face behind Morgan’s back. The circles under his eyes stood out even more against his four-hours-sleep sallow skin.

  I sort of felt bad for him. Sort of. But more than that, I felt rising irritation with Brad Morgan. “Well, sir, I appreciate you coming in. Is there something specific you were hoping to accomplish?” Just keep smiling and wait for the inevitable shit to hit the fan.