by C. M. Cevis
13
NICK STROLLED INTO THE ALLEY street behind a row of businesses and slipped past the officers and under the crime scene tape. His steps were slow not because he wasn’t concerned with what had happened, but because he wasn’t certain his eyes were fully open. It was five a.m., and the sun was still just changing the color of the sky, not high enough to beat down—yet. He was coherent enough to realize that he was only about six blocks from Willow’s club but filed that away for more thought when he was more awake.
“Morning, Pat,” Nick said as he approached.
“Morning, Nick.” He said, standing from over the body. He took a good look at him, and concern creased his face. “You all right?”
“Yeah, I just didn’t intend on being out of bed this early again. You’d think I’d have learned by now, hm?” he replied with a chuckle.
“Sorry about that,” Nina said, walking up on the two men and handing them both a cup of coffee.
“What are you doing here, Cap?” Nick asked, though he was glad to see her and the coffee that she’d brought along.
“If this is body number four, I figured I ought to be aware of it.”
Nick nodded, and then turned his attention back to the man of the hour. “Well?” he asked Patrick.
“If you want my professional opinion, this is indeed victim number four. The body is slashed, though it’s a fatal neck wound this time, and the victim’s blood has been drained elsewhere. Anything more will have to wait until I can get her back,” he said.
Nick and Nina nodded in unison.
“That’s not a lot to go off of,” Nina said to Nick.
He sighed and shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He hesitated, and Nina seemed to sense it and looked to him expectantly. “Willow said that if she could get to a fresh scene, she might be able to tell us something.”
Nina gave him an incredulous look. “I know she impressed just about everyone there, but do you really believe what she said about being a real clairvoyant?”
“Whatever she said to you made you go pale, and you had to leave the room,” Nick said, the words tumbling out before he’d remembered he didn’t really want to bring that up.
Nina froze and then looked away as her face flushed. That was something that he’d never seen her do.
“Fine. Call her” was all that she said before turning and walking back toward the barricade.
Nick pulled the phone from his pocket and began dialing, an apology for waking her up already forming in his mind.
“Good morning, Detective.” She almost purred it, and Nick felt a shiver up his back. He ignored it.
“There’s a fresh scene about six blocks from the club…” he started.
“I’ll be there in a few,” she replied, ending the call before he could even get around to the apology about how early it was, even though she had sounded like she’d been up for hours.
“Well okay then,” he said to no one, and he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
~ ~
WILLOW JOGGED UP TO THE scene exactly eight minutes later. She was in workout gear, having just gotten back from the gym and on the way to the shower in the club when she’d gotten the call. Instead, she’d turned on her heel and made her run a little longer by jogging over to the scene. It wasn’t hard to find—she simply followed sirens.
Nick’s eyes were on her, and she didn’t like the way that he was looking at her. “What?” she snapped.
Both Nina and Nick seemed taken aback.
“You don’t seem… okay,” Nick said slowly.
Willow closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the bombardment of whispers all around her and working to push them away.
“I’m sorry. There’s a lot going on here, and it’s all talking to me at once. It’s a bit overwhelming sometimes, and I get a little snippy.” Willow nodded her head in the direction of the body, though it wasn’t visible from where they stood. She could feel it. “The victim is down that way?”
Nick and Nina exchanged another look.
“How did you know that?” Nina asked.
Willow closed her eyes and rolled her neck before answering. “Strong emotional situations have a tendency to yell at me instead of whispering to me. Situations that are violent or recent are usually strongest. This one feels like it is both.” She winced against a violent emotion no one else could feel. The noise and chaos buffeted her, and she wanted to flee. Neither of the officers would understand what she was feeling. The upcoming full moon definitely made the chaos harder to block out.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Nick asked, his voice sounding distant.
Willow opened her eyes and brushed a hand across her sweaty forehead--not a result of her recent workout. Sometimes she regretted being as powerful as she was.
“Yes. I need to touch the body. And I need anyone down there by it to move away.”
Nick hesitated, then moved off. Willow could hear him asking the forensic people to the area for a few minutes. When he reappeared, he nodded to Nina, who escorted Willow down to the body.
“Don’t freak out,” she said softly to both Nina and Nick. She squatted down and gently touched her palm to the victim’s chest.
The traumatic events that led to the woman being dumped there flashed across Willow’s vision as her body bucked involuntarily. It didn’t take long, it never did, but the hell this woman had been put through marched its way through Willows senses, culminating with the ripped throat that had mercifully ended her life. She felt the tears in her skin as she was ripped open, and blood blocked her airways, causing her to cough. It spilled down her face and chest in a hot rush, and her vision returned to normal as the trauma faded, blood dripping from her lips. She was on all fours, panting. Her chest burned, and she was shaking.
The feeling of fabric against her skin sent her nervous system into a fight or flight meltdown, and she turned, baring her teeth in a feral snarl, weak but ready to defend herself. It took her a moment to recognize Nick holding his hands up, concern naked on his face. The jacket he had placed around her shoulders warmed her, and she did her best to dial her defenses back a bit
Nick knelt beside her. “Don’t say anything now. Let me get you out of here,” his voice said softly in her ear.
~ ~
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, WILLOW SAT in Nick’s office nursing a giant cup of tea that someone had happened to have. Coffee wouldn’t have helped. Nick and Nina both came to check on her periodically, and she assured both of them that she was fine, she just needed some time to calm her body down. Eventually the shaking stopped, and Willow felt more herself. The next time Nick came to check on her, she gave him a nod, and he left briefly, returning with Nina.
Nina closed the door closed securely behind her and came to sit beside Willow as Nick leaned against the corner of his desk.
“We need to know what happened,” Nina said, as if she was suddenly being careful.
“Right. The victim—” Willow started, but Nick stopped her.
“Not that, not yet. What happened to you?”
“Your eyes went white, and you were violently jerking and shaking. And just before you stopped, your throat split open, Willow. It split like someone had cut it, like the victim’s, and you bled down the front of your body, coughing up blood. When it stopped, there was no cut, but there was still the blood.” Nina looked haunted.
Willow nodded, looking down at her tea. “When a scene is fresh and violent, like this one was, sometimes I get more than just a normal vision. I can see what they saw, but I can also feel what they felt. And if it was traumatic enough, I experience a bit of it. That’s what that was—I experienced her getting her throat cut and choking on her blood. I haven’t ever actually gotten close to dying from something like this, but I can lose blood, like I did earlier. There have been times where I’ve lost enough blood to pass out, and I need a hospital, but that was when I was younger and weaker.” She exhaled. “That was a long time ago,” she said softly.
“If you’d told me what this clairvoyance shit does, I wouldn’t have asked you to come out this morning,” Nick said.
Willow smiled. His concern was sweet. “I know you wouldn’t have. That’s why I didn’t tell you.” She turned and looked at Nina as well. “I’m a big girl. I know what I can take and what I can’t. If me losing a little bit of blood means that we catch this person before he kills someone else, then it’s worth it.”
“He?” Nina asked. Willow nodded.
“Yes, he. I can tell you about the places that he took her to drain her—the ones that she saw, at least. She was in and out of consciousness, and all of it wasn’t clear. But I’ll give you what I can.”
“That’s more than enough,” Nick said.
“If you find the scene and take me there, I should be able to tell you if it’s the right place,” she offered.
Nina can Nick exchanged yet another look. It was starting to annoy Willow. Or the blood loss was making her grumpy.
“Are you sure about that? This morning took a lot out of you,” Nick said.
“I’m sure. I’ve got my big girl panties on, I promise,” she said, pushing her irritation side and grinning. “Now let me tell you what I saw.”
14
ALEX HAD BEEN WAITING IN the small café for about an hour, not that he minded. He had reading to catch up on, and it was pleasantly warm and sunny. He wasn’t sure why Nick wanted to meet. He’d called that morning, only saying that he had some questions, and the rest “I’ll tell you when I get there.” In the meantime, Alex had eaten a scone and refilled his chosen cuppa twice.
“Sorry about the wait,” Nick said, walking up to the table and taking a seat across from Alex with a friendly smile.
“No problem. I had some things I’d been procrastinating to keep me busy,” Alex said, marking his place in his book before slipping it into his bag. “Do I get to know what this sudden meeting is about now?”
Nick nodded, then hesitated. “Yesterday, another murder victim was found. While I do want you to take a look at this one as well, that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.”
Alex sat forward, both alarmed and intrigued at the concern on Nick’s face. “All right, spill it.”
“Willow said seeing a body site could tell her more about what happened. The dump site for the body was only a few blocks from Willow’s club, and we’re pretty desperate for more information, so I called her.”
Nick paused, and Alex frowned. A scene that fresh had to have been hard on Willow. But of course Nick hadn’t known what would happen.
Nick stared at his hands. “Willow came, and we took her down to the body, like she asked.” He glanced up, and his eyes were dark. “Alex, as soon as she came into contact with that body, her eyes rolled back into her head. He body jerked around like it was being abused by something unseen, and then… her throat just ripped open on its own. Her blood spilled all down the front of her, and she started choking it up.” He shook his head and went back to studying his hands. “Just as fast, it was all over. The wound in her neck closed. The only evidence that it had ever been was the blood everywhere, and she was shaking like a damn leaf.” With a sigh of frustration, Nick rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell happened, or if I did the right thing by having her come down there. I have no idea.”
Alex squeezed Nick’s shoulder and let the man compose himself. Then his lips spread in a small smile. “When Willow and I were kids, we used to run through the surrounding neighborhoods, exploring. We called it spelunking, like we were exploring caves, looking for treasure, when what we were really doing was breaking into abandoned houses and seeing if anything fun was left behind.”
Alex paused, smile growing as he remembered Willow as a little girl. Her hair had been hip length, and her grandmother had insisted on pulling it up into these two high, bouncy ponytails that she then braided. Willow sometimes whipped Alex with them by mistake. Those braids rarely made it through the day in tact, but her grandmother never seemed upset about it. She said the two of them were going to play a big part in each other’s lives, so it was all right for them to be friends, even if that meant raising hell.
“We found one house that had been recently occupied. All we knew was that no one lived there now. So Willow stood on my shoulders so that she could climb in through a window, and she unlocked the back door for me. The house wasn’t cleaned out, but the furniture was gone. We played around on the first floor for a bit, and then wandered upstairs to the bedrooms. In the last room, a small stuffed bunny sat propped in the corner. Willow thought it was adorable. She wanted to take it home and clean it up, since it looked like someone had spilled jam all over it.”
Nick winced, anticipating what came next.
“As soon as she touched the bunny, she started convulsing. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and blood began pouring from her mouth. By the time she came back to herself, the entire front of her dress was soaked, and she was terrified. She threw the bunny and ran screaming out of the house. I chased after her and found her collapsed in the field behind the house in tears.” He shook his head. These were painful memories. “It took me almost an hour to calm her down enough to convince her that we needed to go home and tell her grandmother what had happened.”
Alex met Nick’s wide eyes with his own. “The family that had lived there was gone because the father had murdered his wife and daughter in a psychotic episode. He’d been arrested and was in jail awaiting trial when we broke into the house. He’d stabbed his daughter twenty-eight times. The bunny belonged to her. Willow, in effect, experienced the daughter’s stabbing.”
“Jesus,” Nick breathed.
“Asking her to come out to that scene put her into a situation was probably as powerful as it could get. It was fresh, and it was violent. That’s why the injuries actually manifested on her body. She can tell you what that victim felt just before she died, because she felt it too.”
Nick looked back down at his hands, frowning. “I feel awful being the one to asked her to do something that caused such emotional and physical pain, but she said she wanted to do it. I don’t want to put her though something like that again.”
Part of Alex thought that it was interesting that Nick seemed to care about someone he didn’t really know that well. But that was what made him a good cop, wasn’t it? He cared.
“If Willow says she can handle it, she can. No one knows her limits better than she does. Trust her, and trust that if she can’t take it, she’ll tell you,” Alex said firmly.
Nick sighed heavily but nodded. “Right.” His eyes grew distant, then refocused on Alex. “Does she have other abilities? Other than the clairvoyance?”
Alex smiled, and picked up his bag, slinging it over his shoulder as he stood. “See you later, Nick.”
That wasn’t his business to tell. Nick grinned and shook his head.
“See you later, Alex.”
~ ~
NICK ARRIVED BACK AT THE precinct to find Willow in a small interrogation room with one of the sketch artists. She had moved her chair over so that she could see what was being drawn and looked to be showing the officer where to add details to what she was describing.
“She showed up about thirty minutes ago and said that she had something that would help if it could be drawn somehow. I put her in there with Officer Gregs,” Nina said, joining Nick in the observation window in the hallway outside of the room.
“Am I the only one who feels bad about what we put her through yesterday?” Nick asked.
Nina shook her head. “Not in the least. I feel like shit about it. The first thing she said when she walked into my office was that she was okay.” Nina snorted. “It’s like she knows that I feel bad about it.”
“I talked to Alex, since they grew up together. He said that he was with her when she had her first vision. It was a violent one, like the one yesterday, but she was only a kid back then, and the whole thing freaked her the hell out. But he said she knows her lim
its, and that if she says that she can handle it, she can.” Nick shrugged, still watching Willow direct Officer Gregs.
“If she’s the real deal, she might be the reason we catch this guy,” Nina said.
“You don’t think she is?” Nick asked in disbelief.
“My dad used to always tell me that there was no such thing as magic. The older I get, the more I see that my father was wrong about a lot of things that he told me. I’m hoping that this is something else that he was wrong about.”
A knock on the observation window made both of them jump. Willow stood at the window, motioning for them to come in.
“I thought this was a one-way window,” Nick said to Nina. They watched Willow move to the door and open it, then stick her head into the hallway.
“I’m a little hyper sensitive after yesterday, so I can feel you two standing here. It’ll wear off in a day or so.” She motioned again for them to come. “Come see what Officer Gregs has drawn.”
Nick and Nina followed her back into the room.
“That’s where she was when she died,” Willow said as Gregs turned the sketch pad around to reveal a rather detailed drawing of what looked to be the inside of a building. “Maybe send it to the other precincts, see if someone knows where that is? If we can go there, I might be able to see more.”
Nick was damn impressed. She was just as gung-ho as she had been before the body yesterday. The trauma hadn’t diminished her desire to help.
“Gregs, get some copies made, would you?” Nina asked. Gregs nodded his agreement and got up to leave the room.
“I had a dream last night that gave me more,” Willow explained.
“A dream?” Nina asked.
Willow nodded. “Sometimes the really powerful visions stick around for a while and give me more information in bits and pieces. Honestly, I’m convinced it’s a failsafe in my power, making sure I don’t get overwhelmed. But I can’t prove it.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I saw the shadowy figure of a man, the man who killed the victim. He had other people at his back—not physically, but figuratively, like maybe they’re controlling him. Pulling his strings. If I’m right, we’re looking for more than one killer. We can’t leave the people orchestrating this out there.”
