Witch Craft

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Don’t even start with that,” I said. “You need to be checked, even if you were wearing a vest.” He had to be wearing a vest. I’d seen the shot, and it was true to the chest. Lucas was a cool head and a dead shot. When he aimed to kill, he killed.

  “Wilder?” Bryson and Batista came skidding into the tunnel, closely followed by Kelly, before I could articulate to Fagin that he shouldn’t still be walking around.

  “We heard shots,” said Batista. “Everything good?”

  “Take him upstairs,” I said, shoving Lucas at Bryson. “Kelly, Batista—get Pete down here to process evidence and then get this stone back to the SCS office.”

  “I’ll just go and file my report,” said Fagin, starting to step away. I grabbed him by the lapel of his coat.

  “We are not anywhere close to finished,” I told him. “Get your ass moving.”

  We mounted the stairs, Fagin ahead of me with a pathetic and confused expression on his face. I wasn’t fooled.

  Andy was still standing with Grace Hartley, who favored me with an unbearably obnoxious smile. “Did you find what you were looking for, Miss Wilder?”

  “Yes,” I said with a smile of my own. “No thanks to your hired muscle and his .45. Andy, I thought I told you to arrest her.”

  “Uh … for what?” he called as I marched Fagin across the foyer to the front door.

  “Oh, let’s start with obstruction of justice and take it from there,” I told him.

  Grace was still smiling. “You have nothing to hold me on. Magickal artifacts are not considered contraband under U.S. criminal codes. I’ll be out within the hour.”

  “Believe me, witch,” I said, banging the door open. “You are welcome to go ahead and try my patience again. I am going to hand you your wrinkly ass on a silver platter.”

  I shoved Fagin ahead of me onto the porch and slammed the door, jabbing my finger into his chest. “You have a lot of fucking explaining to do.”

  He shook his head, all of his usual easy arrogance run out of him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luna.”

  “I saw you take that bullet,” I whispered, my hand resting where I was sure the round had gone into him. There was warm skin and muscle under my hand. No vest.

  “You don’t know what you saw,” Fagin said quietly. “It was dark. You were confused.”

  “I reached down and felt your pulse and you had no heartbeat,” I said in the same low tone, only mine had a snarl behind it. “So don’t tell me what I imagined and don’t tell me I was confused. You were dead, Will. Dead and cold on the ground. And yeah, when you got right back up I was admittedly startled, but I know what I saw. You don’t have body armor … What do you have?”

  Fagin turned away from me and paced toward the end of the porch. The sun was bright and crisp, filtered through high clouds like cotton balls, and it turned his hair and his skinny frame into a stark ghost shadow in the shaft of light.

  “You’re not normal,” I whispered, “are you?”

  “No,” Fagin sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not.”

  I came over to him and leaned on the railing, looking out into the wilderness of Grace Hartley’s side yard. A few stubborn sunflowers poked out of the tangle of dead grass and nettles. “Then what are you, Will?”

  He pressed his hands over his face, and leaned on the rail next to me. “I’m cursed.”

  I stared at his profile for a second and then all of the compounded events of the day piled up on me. I started to snicker, and it bubbled into an outright laugh.

  Fagin drew back, wounded. “Well, don’t act so concerned. You’re going to smother me at this rate.”

  “I’m sorry,” I managed, getting myself under control. “It’s just so … melodramatic. I’m cursed. Someone cursed me a few days ago, you know. I wish mine came with fewer dead birds and more awesome superpowers, honestly. I’m thinking I got a raw deal.”

  “Walk with me,” Fagin said. He jumped the steps and started at an easy lope down the sidewalk, polished shoes sending a pile of leaves flying. I jogged to catch up with him and we settled into a pace down the broad street. Bonaventure Drive was stately, shabby elegance in the intricate latticework and stained glass of the houses. The pumpkins and fake foam gravestones in the front yards added a touch of the macabre, like strolling through a disused cemetery.

  “It was 1560,” said Fagin. “England. I was a trader—silk and dye, with the East. I traveled and I saw a lot of strange things.”

  “You expect me to believe you’re over four hundred years old?” I said. “And British?”

  “I fell in with a circle of witches,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “One in particular. Her name was Esme, then. I let myself grow close to her, before I realized how mad she was. The magick she used had corrupted her mind to the point that she saw conspiracies and deception around every corner. When she started to believe I’d strayed from her …” One side of his mouth curved up. “You can probably guess.”

  “She made with the cursing?” I said.

  Fagin nodded. “She and her sisters drugged me and they cursed me to, as she put it with a gleam in her eye, wander the earth, forever and alone.” He stopped walking, looking at a particularly garish Halloween display with an electric skeleton that jiggled and howled when we got close. “I can’t die. Not until I come back to her. She cursed me with a heartstone. The most powerful magick there is.”

  “So some psycho ex-girlfriend cursed you to come back to her four hundred years later? That’s insane, Will. Totally off the reservation.”

  He looked down at me, his eyes in shadow as a cloud passed over the sun. “You think that’s bad? After she cursed me, she turned me over to the Inquisition. I can’t die.” He gave a small shiver, which I don’t think he was even aware of. “Eight years in their dungeons. They tortured me until I begged to die, over and over. And they killed me, over and over. After I escaped, I tried it myself, dozens of times. Each time, I’d wake up and I’d still be here, in this world.”

  Will started walking again. “A few hundred years later, after I got tired of hanging around Lord Byron and the two of us bemoaning our sad lot in life, I decided that I would break the curse. I’ve been waiting since then to find her.”

  I stopped him with a hand on his elbow. “You can’t think Esme is still alive.”

  “A heartstone gave me life,” said Fagin. “You think that Esme couldn’t do the same thing to herself? I’ve chased her across most of the world, and she’s changed her name and her face, I’m sure, but one thing is always the same.”

  “What’s that?” I said. I was still touching him, but Will didn’t pull away.

  “The Maiden,” he said. “That name. It follows her. Esme was the Maiden to her sisters and she’s the Maiden always. This is the closest I’ve ever been.” He turned his hand and gripped my arm in turn. “Luna, I’m begging you, now. Please don’t let her get away from me again.”

  “Breaking the curse,” I said. “What does that entail?”

  Fagin’s lip curled. “I find Esme and I plant a blade in her heart, and a few rounds in her head for good measure. Workings can’t sustain when the witch who cast them is dead. You know that.”

  I let go. “Here’s the deal. I need your help to figure out what these witches are using the heartstone for. When and if we find the Maiden, you can make her lift the curse. But you will not kill her, Will. There is no vigilante justice in my city.”

  He put a finger under my chin. “You’re so very young, Luna. You still think people can be saved. It’s not true. I hope you learn that before it gets you killed.”

  I reared back and slapped him, hard enough to snap his head around. “Hex you,” I said. “You may be older than dirt, but you know shit about me.”

  “I’m going to find her, eventually,” he said, rubbing his jaw.

  “Not in the middle of my case,” I said. “And not with my team and my family in your way.”

  Turning my back
on Fagin, I left him on the sidewalk and stalked back to the Hartley house. I had a scene to process and a case to close, and there was no room in it to think about Will.

  Fifteen

  SCS was buzzing like a shaken hive when I got back, Hartley’s maid sobbing by Annemarie’s desk, Annemarie herself talking intently to two suits from Internal Affairs, Bryson and Batista helping Pete carry in boxes of evidence from the Hartley house, and Zacharias and Kelly sitting with the woman herself, who was handcuffed to a chair at Andy’s desk.

  “Sorry they’re not Tiffany silver,” I said as I passed. “Short notice. You understand.”

  “You go ahead and keep gloating, Lieutenant,” said Hartley. “My lawyer is going to pulverize you. You’ll be working mall security.”

  “I like the mall,” I said. “The gyros at the food court are amazing. And you don’t scare me, so why don’t you hop back on your broom and do a lap?” I rounded on Kelly. “Why isn’t she in a holding cell?”

  “Her lawyer is coming,” he grunted. “It’s fine if she waits here.”

  “Oh really. I’m so glad that I have you to make executive decisions for me, Hunter. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He turned colors, and Grace Hartley snorted. “It’s always so fascinating to see the inner workings of our city’s finest.”

  I pressed my thumb against the bridge of my nose. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing with the heartstone and how you’re setting these fires, and oh, while we’re at it, why you tried to fucking kill me, you crazy old bat.”

  I was yelling and I didn’t particularly care. Grace Hartley leaned back a bit, as if I’d dropped my finger sandwich at her tea party and made a mess on the carpet.

  “You certainly have a thorny set of problems, Miss Wilder,” she murmured. “However, they are not mine and I maintain my innocence of anything except perhaps an unwise purchase of objet d’art for my home.”

  I would have hauled off and smacked her if it wasn’t for Kelly’s and Andy’s eyes on me. The were clawed up in my throat as I chafed under Hartley’s hard granite gaze, wanting to break something, to hurt something.

  “Mom?” A voice broke the battle inside me. I turned and saw a tall teenage girl, willowy like Grace Hartley must have been, once, before she ran to old-woman stockiness, the same eyes and the same blond hair. Huh. Guess it really was natural.

  “Sophia,” said Hartley, extending her free hand. “Come here, my dear. How I hate for you to see me like this.”

  “Mom,” she said again, staring at Andy, Kelly, and me like we were standing around poking Grace with sharp sticks. “What the Hex is going on?”

  “Language, Sophia,” Grace admonished her. “Just because we’re in this situation, there’s no reason to—”

  “Your mother has been arrested,” I said. “She’s going to be held for a bail hearing, and you can see her then. We’re still taking a statement, so I’m going to have to ask you to wait in the visitors’ area.”

  Sophia winced at the word “arrested.” “What’s she done? She has a lawyer. You can’t just keep her here.”

  “Andy,” I sighed. “Can you please take Miss Hartley back to the front until we’re finished with her mother?”

  “Sure thing, ma’am,” he said, jumping up and managing to knock over his desk chair. Sophia followed him to the front with a hangdog look on her face.

  “It will be all right, dear,” Grace called after her. “I’ll be out of here in two shakes.”

  “Yeah, don’t bet on that,” Kelly said dourly.

  Grace Hartley sneered. “You have quite the brain trust here, Miss Wilder. Especially this one. He stinks of the blood.”

  “You shut up, lady,” Kelly warned, and I saw a flash of life in his dull-edged face.

  I held up my hand. “Is Lucas Kennuka in the holding cells?”

  “Who?” Kelly said.

  “The guy that shot at Agent Fagin and me.”

  Kelly nodded. “Took him over holding myself. Him and the bitch.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And which bitch would that be?”

  “The were hellcat Bryson and Batista found hiding in one of the upstairs bedrooms. This one has all kinds of freaks on her payroll.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Hartley snarled.

  “I’m not the one in handcuffs, lady. I’ll talk all I want.”

  “Shut up, the both of you,” I said. “You’re giving me a headache.” I left them and headed for the holding cells, two floors up. So Bryson and Batista had found Talon.

  Good. I was looking forward to talking with her. Right after I figured out what to do about Lucas.

  The cells had old-style prison bars, controlled by an antique switch system and a single guard. He waved me through after I dropped anything that could be used as a weapon in the basket at his desk.

  I stepped through the outer gate as the buzzer rang off the whitewashed brick walls. Most of the Justice Plaza had been reclaimed into sleek, boring modern office space, but not here. Here it was all hard time like a Johnny Cash song, scuffed linoleum floors and windows barred with mesh that cut the sun into diamonds against the wall.

  Lucas was in the last cell, sitting still as a dead man on his unmade cot. Only his fingers moved, the black nails tapping against the knuckles of his opposite hand like a bird’s heartbeat. Talon, the were, was in the cell across from him, pacing back and forth. She flipped me off when I looked at her.

  “Your parents must be so proud,” I said.

  “What brings you down this way with the rest of the bad seeds, Luna?” Lucas whispered to me. His voice was like steam in cold morning air. It was one of the things I’d liked about him, before I’d found out what he had inside him. Before the hunger god riding his spirit made him stab me and leave me for dead.

  “Grace Hartley?” I asked him. “Really? You went from a heavy for weres to a purse holder for blood witches—that’s slumming, even for you.”

  He let out a laugh. “Grace Hartley isn’t a blood witch. You’re getting blind, Luna.”

  I stepped closer to the bars. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Lucas?”

  Lucas flowed to his feet, coming to the bars and wrapping his hands around them, leaving maybe a foot between us. I shivered. His body gave off cold, a notch more chill than the air around it. “Think about it, Luna. The thing you wanted most in the world, just lying there in front of you? The bad guys all locked up tight? Grace Hartley uses magick, but you and I both know she’s not operating with blood witch workings. And she’s not in charge.”

  “Then who is?” I demanded. Lucas shook his head and paced away from me. I grabbed the bars in turn. “Gods damn you, Lucas, tell me! I saved you from going to prison once. You owe me.”

  He stood still again, staring at the wall. Ignoring me. I lowered my voice. “After this …” I pulled my shirt aside to showcase the long sliver of scar. “It’s the least you could do.”

  Lucas shook his head. “You do know how to work a person’s conscience, Lieutenant.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  He came back to me, scratching the back of his head. “Hartley is who I dealt with, but she has a lot of meetings I wasn’t allowed into and she is not calling the shots. You can tell by the fear that crawls into her whenever you bring up payment, or what exactly these people are up to and what magick they’re using.”

  He sat himself on the cot again and crossed his arms, tapping his toes to the beat of an invisible melody. “That’s all I know. Debt is paid. How much longer am I going to have to pretend that this cell can hold me?”

  “As long as it takes,” I snapped. “You shot at me, Lucas.”

  His mouth quirked. “Some women I’ve known would consider that foreplay.”

  “You’re a little twisted,” I informed him. “Possessed or not.”

  He flinched. “I was always sorry about that.”

  “Oh, save it,” I said. “Possession is an excuse that can only take
you so far.”

  “I’m not who you think I am,” Lucas murmured. “And I’m not going to cry and plead for you to see that I’m a changed man, but …” He gave me a slow smile. “Someday, I’d like the chance to show you.”

  I caught a flash of fang, and backed up from his cell fast. “Just keep it in your pants, cannibal boy, all right?”

  “Will do,” said Lucas. “Might want to say something to her, though.”

  Before I could ask him what the Hex he was talking about, I felt a skinny arm slide across my throat and jerk my head against the bars hard enough to shake stars loose over my vision.

  “I’ve got you now,” Talon hissed in my ear. Her free hand searched my waist and armpit for a gun.

  “I left it outside the cell block,” I said. “Sorry to put a crimp in your daring escape plan.”

  She let out a snarl and squeezed harder. Blackness started to creep around the edges of my eyesight. You can lose consciousness in as little as thirty seconds in a properly applied sleeper hold. Faster if you struggle. I went limp, bargaining for air in the thin space left to my throat between her arm and the cell bars.

  “Whatever you think you’re doing, Talon, it’s not working out.” Stupid. I was so stupid. The first rule of containment—don’t turn yourself into a hostage. I’d let Lucas distract me and now I was the key to Talon’s cell.

  “You get me out of here,” she hissed, “or I swear to all the gods I will paint you with your own blood.” Her other hand abandoned its search and came up to dig claws into my carotid artery.

  “You dumb bitch,” I said. “What were you in for before this little turn of events, a class-D felony? You just made the A-team, baby. Hard time for assaulting a cop. They’re gonna love your pretty face at Mountain Valley Correctional.”

  “Hey!” Talon bellowed toward the cell guard. “I got your girl down here! You open up or she’s going to puff up like a blowfish when I wring her Hexed neck!”

  “Not the most eloquent threat I’ve ever heard,” I croaked. My vision was spinning. I clawed at Talon’s arm, but she was strong as I was, and she held on tight.