Perfect Love

by A.M. Burns

7

  Dusty remained silent most of the way home. He held my hand and leaned across the gap in the seats to lay his head on my shoulder as I drove. That told me something distressed him about our talk with Coyote. He’d say something when he was ready, and if he wasn’t ready by bedtime, I’d tackle the issue when we were warm, safe and sound in our bed. Dusty is normally a quiet guy, taking listening concepts to new heights. He rarely participated in group conversations unless he could add something useful, but he could recite what had been said word for word. That was one of the many things I liked about him.

  The lights in the office blazed brightly. I pulled down the little driveway that led to the garage in back and both Tiffany’s and Tech's cars were still there. It was a safe assumption that if the lights were still on, they were still at work. I hoped they’d found something interesting in the computer. With the developments at Coyote's, I didn’t want the Magee Reyes case to drag out too long. I needed to devote more of my time to locating the invading wer before more of the pack suffered.

  As soon as we closed the back door and stood safely in the shadows of the mud room, Dusty threw his arms around me and locked his lips to mine. A slight taste of rare steak and onions still rested on his tongue. His scent smelled more musky than normal, almost like it was the night of a full moon. I could feel his heart racing as he clung to me and I ran my hand through his short red hair, trying to soothe him a bit. He seemed reluctant to release my mouth, so I relied on my hands to communicate for me, moving them across his back. His muscles felt extremely tight, almost like he fought to keep his wolf down.

  “Hey guys you’re home,” said Tech, strolling into the doorway that led to the kitchen. He stopped short. “Ah…sorry,” he muttered when he saw us. He turned and retreated, his face nearly as red as his goatee.

  Dusty sighed, as our lips parted. “I want to change out of these clothes,” he said softly with a final squeeze. I caught his arm before he stepped past me.

  “Dusty are you okay?” There were shadows in his green eyes.

  “Later, work first.” His lips brushed my cheek before he disappeared up the back stairs to our apartment. I paused for a second in the shadows of the mud room. It’d been a long time since I’d seen Dusty this upset. Something definitely bothered him and now we were going to be too busy for me to find out what.

  “Ethan?” Tiffany called out from the kitchen.

  “Yeah Tiff,” I said as I started toward her. As I stepped into the kitchen, the door of the fridge hid most of her body.

  “So what’s up at Coyote's?” she asked, holding a couple of Cokes as she straightened. She smiled, closed the door and before I could answer, stepped toward me. “You guys startled Tech,” she whispered with a light chuckle.

  “Sorry about that,” I replied in the same low tone. Tech’s a nice guy, but not as worldly as he would like others to think. We found out a couple of weeks ago that Dusty and I were the first gay couple he’d ever met. Since we aren’t prone to public displays of affection, this must’ve been the first time he’d seen us kiss.

  “Coyote is concerned that we have an outside wer trying to take over his territory.” I held up the file he had given us. “A couple of his folks have been killed recently. He wants us to look into it.”

  We started down the short hallway toward the main office area, but the lack of regular clicks on the hardwood floor caused me to glance down. Tiffany had discarded her customary high heels and walked in just her hose. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen Tiffany without her shoes and wondered just how much real work she and Tech were getting done over pizza.

  “Wow and it’s not something that the pack can deal with?”

  “It sounds like they have been and haven't gotten much accomplished. He’s scared enough that Sam’s guarding the private dining room,” I replied, opening the door to the reception room.

  “Damn. Sam? He must be scared. Was she doing the all-back number like she was the last time I saw her?” Tiffany's eyes lit up for a second. Now Tiffany is one of those women who weren’t afraid to admit when another woman is good looking, and she’s even been known to munch a rug now and then. Since we ate at Coyote's Place fairly regularly she was familiar with Sam. I’d known for a couple of months that she and most other people who were into women thought Sam was hot.

  I grinned at her. “Yep, complete with the cowboy hat and duster.”

  She whistled.”Damn. I just wish it wasn’t easier to get a guard at Buckingham Palace to laugh than that woman to talk. She takes the strong silent type to the extreme.” She set the Cokes on her desk, one in front of Tech who sat on the far side of the very clean desk with his laptop and the other in front of her monitor. Between the two computers sat Magee Reyes' laptop, linked to the small hub that ran to the office network.

  “Sorry about the mudroom Tech.” I set Coyote's file down next to the laptops.

  “No worries, dude. Your house. Just surprised me. I didn't mean to intrude.” I wasn’t used to a tongue-tied Tech. It was almost funny. His round face still blushed as he pushed his small glasses up the bridge of his delicate nose. He looked just adorkable.

  Tech was on the Council’s payroll as the local office’s resident computer and network person. He was only a very minor psi, but when it came to computers, it was like he was in telepathic contact with them. From what I’d seen of him, he was a really nice guy, but the Council must not have much for him to do since every time Tiffany called him for a bit of tech help, he showed up within minutes. In itself, that can be a magical feat in Dallas traffic. He’d made some major enhancements to the office system, increasing operating speed and adding a couple of interesting programs which made it easier for Tiffany, Dusty and I to collaborate on cases when we weren’t in the office at the same time. He also helped Tiffany make our website even more modern and fresh looking.

  “Okay, well what have you found in Magee Reyes' computer?” I changed subjects while shooting Tiffany a look that told her the Coyote information was closed for now. I wouldn’t betray Coyote's trust that his issues would be kept from the Council. Tech was a nice guy, but he wasn’t on my payroll and hadn’t signed confidentiality agreements with us, so he wasn’t privileged to everything said in my office. One day soon, I’d have to get an agreement binding him. If he kept working on my systems, he might stumble onto something that he, or worse yet the Council, didn't need to know. That’s not to say that I keep a lot of secrets from the Council, but there are one of two that they don't need to know. I’ve adopted a don't-ask-don't-tell attitude about most things where the Council’s concerned. If it was something not detrimental to the Council, the Council didn’t have to know about it.

  “I’m amazed at the level of security she has on the system,” he said, turning the screen toward me. “It took me a couple of minutes, but I managed to get into the system. She kept notes on everything and everyone.”

  Different screens appeared on the display.

  “It looks like a lot of what she was telling her people was just stuff she pulled off the net. Looks to me like some of the stuff’s from fictional works. She’s actually trying to make some of the potions from “Harry Potter.” The display showed a screen with various icons from the adventures of the boy wizard. There were notes from various things where she’d been trying to find real-world equivalents to the ingredients. I really couldn’t see where java moss was an equivalent to gillyweed, but then I’d never tried and hoped I never would.

  “There’s also the proper dimensions for wands and a list of pseudo Latin words that might be useful in magic.” More screens scrolled in front of my eyes. I shook my head feeling sorry for the poor obviously-deluded woman who’d contrived such tripe.

  “Okay, so let's move on to something about the people.” It was getting late and Tech would show me every odd thing he’d found from strange pictures to funny sayings and weird spells along the way to the important parts.

  “Alright, the people.” He pulled up the a
ddress book. “Her address book is fairly large, but she was nice enough to color code it for us. The women she used to work the streets with are all in pink, the illicit substance folks are in blue, the witches are in green and family is brown.”

  “Work the streets?” I was almost afraid to ask.

  “It seems she used to be a lady of ill repute back before Mr. Reyes came along and rescued her from herself. Her journal entries from back then make for some interesting reading, as do the notes on the address book entries of the women and men she used to work with.” Tech looked like he might have downloaded some of that information for later use.

  “It sounds like we might want to send some of this information to the police anonymously,” said Dusty, as he walked through the door looking much more comfortable. He’d changed into a pair of tight dark green running shorts and a matching tank top. This told me, we probably weren’t going anywhere else tonight. He draped himself over my shoulder, staring at the display.

  “Well if she weren’t already dead, I’d say some of this info could get her killed if it leaked into the right hands,” said Tiffany. “As it is, anyone who found out might think she was killed because of the information being leaked to the wrong person. There’s enough intel in these files to get a good portion of the Dallas mundane underworld put away for a long time. Unfortunately, it also increases our suspect list.”

  I shook my head. “I don't think so. If there’s a connection to Barry Crabtree's death, our best bet’s still the Wiccans on the list.”

  “Just in case,” Tiffany said. “I’m running her list through the databases at the Council, the police department, FBI, CIA and Homeland Security.”

  “When did we get access to Homeland Security?” Dusty asked before I could.

  “Tech set it up this afternoon,” Tiffany replied, sounding proud of him. “One of his friends knew of a back door we can use. We have routed it through several other systems so that even if they find the back door, they won't find us.”

  “Okay, so while we wait for the cross reference to come back, is there anything else in there that might be of use?” I knelt down in front of the desk, leaning over it was getting a bit much and to pull a chair from across the waiting room was more than I wanted to do. Dusty followed my move and kept his warmth at my back and his head on my shoulder.

  “Starting with the emails,” said Tiffany, taking over from Tech. “It looks like she was prone to starting fights with people. Fortunately for us, she kept everything anyone sent to her and it’s just a matter of going through and sorting it. Luckily she kept the email as sorted as her address book, so it is all here in neat little folders, and when she was fighting with someone, they got a subfolder in the main folder.”

  “Any recent fights? That's where we should start.”

  “The most recent fight and several fights over the past couple of months were with Barry Crabtree,” Tiffany continued. “They seem to have a pattern of fight and make up and it looks like she started most of the fights over basic misunderstandings. The real big one before this also involved Madeline Fort. I’m not sure why Magee got involved in that one. It lasted several weeks with almost a hundred emails going out between the three of them, all because Barry said in one email to Magee that he thought Maddie was cute. Magee forwarded it to Maddie. Then Maddie replied back to both of them. Then Barry exploded saying it was said in confidence to Magee, and back and forth it went. Several times, Barry tried to stop the whole thing and Magee kept it going, even to the point of misreading her own post. The woman was a real piece of work. The last round seems to be over something that was said to Maddie that got passed around to several people before it finally stopped. The last email on that one seems to have come through on the day that Magee died.” Tiffany paused to take a long drink from her coke.

  “So Magee was one of those witches who liked to stir the cauldron,” I said. I could just imagine the anger of the people involved as she screwed with them, either out of spite or boredom. Having met her spirit, I’d bet out of spite.

  “There were also a couple of interesting emails from screen name D M N F R N D, aka Lenny Pentelli,” Tiffany continued. “It seems they began corresponding about two months ago, slowly at first, then over the past few weeks, they exchanged a couple of emails a day. He’s been sending her different spells to try. He even sent her a spell to summon a demon.”

  Tiffany paused ominously. Her college drama classes that helped her develop a fondness for hanging out with gay men had also given her a sense of the dramatic that she liked to use from time to time. “Fortunately, it didn't work. I looked the spell over and there were a couple of things wrong with it. It wouldn’t have worked in any way, shape or form. I have the computer trying to cross reference it to see where it came from.”

  “Good, I was going to ask you to do a check on Lenny,” I said. “We met him tonight at the meeting. He claims to be a high magician. I thought you could ask around and see if any of your contacts know anything about him. He has a crazy girl friend, Katie, but I didn't get a last name.”

  Tiffany's fingers flew across the keyboard. “There are a couple of Katies in her witch file, I'll see if I can narrow it down.”

  “Good. Anything else we should know about that might help out?” I wanted to shift, my knees were getting tired. I glanced at the clock on the wall behind Tiffany. It was approaching one a.m. I hadn’t realized we spent that much time out at Coyote's Place. No wonder my knees were hurting and I was tired.

  “Just this.” Tech pulled another file up on the display. The document was titled “Perfect Love.” Two fairies danced within a garland of little yellow flowers along the top, joining two little silver Celtic knot hearts that decorated the upper corners of the title page. I scanned the twenty-page document, a manifesto on how Magee was going to join the pagan community together under her leadership. Little happy faces filled the spaces of the Os and the dots of the Is. What I read was enough to worry me. Was this the writing of a woman who was afraid to leave her own home? Could she have really thought that she could organize the pagan community? She wasn’t just after the Wiccans. She wanted everyone she could find under her thumb, and her entire plan was under the name of “Perfect Love.” The other part of her plan was to stamp out all the left-handed-path people she could find. She thought that all the people who practiced black magic, voodoo, and other non-white forms of magic were evil, or left-hand path. She believed she could either turn them from their path by explaining to them what was wrong with their path or she could just smother them with love. If her ghost form was any indication of her true form, her tits weren't big enough to smother someone with love. Gods, what an awful way to go. She had a bigger ego than some of the people who worked for the Council. “Could you print this out for me and leave it on my desk?”

  “Already done,” Tiffany replied with her normal competency. I really don't know what I’d do without that woman. The Yule and birthday bonuses I give her aren’t nearly enough for all the work she does. “From what we’ve been able to tell, she came up with the idea some time ago, but several members of her group have really been pushing her lately to get it moving. Madeline, Brianna Supunski and Lenny are among her strongest supporters there. Barry seemed to think it was silly.”

  “From what I saw of Brianna Supunski tonight I can see where she’d be behind something like that,” I said. “So how long before the database searches are done?”

  Tech spoke up. “Due to the vast amount of data in her computer and the computers we are searching, I would say we still have a couple of hours.”

  “Tell ‘ya what, then,” I suggested. “Why don't you guys go ahead and hit the road. We'll hit the bed, and when we all get down here in the morning, we’ll have some numbers to crunch.” I stood up, pulling Dusty with me. He wrapped his arms around me, still pressed to my back. He really needed comfort tonight.

  I pulled the check from Coyote out of his file. “Tiffany if you could drop this in the night drop
at the bank on your way past that would be great.”

  Her eyes widened when she saw the amount. “Sure, no problem.” She grabbed a deposit slip from her desk drawer and filled it out.

  “Okay. You guys go have a good rest of the night. We're going to relax a bit. If we're not up in the morning when you get here, give us until ten or so. If we're still not up, come check on us.” I ran my hand down Dusty's arm, into his hand and turned and led him out of the room.

  “Bed?” I asked, as we walked hand in hand down the hall way toward the stairs.

  “Hot tub,” he replied. “I turned it on after changing clothes. I could really use a good soak for a few minutes, if you're not too tired.” There was no teasing in his eyes. He just wanted to relax, but if I was lucky, after we relaxed and talked there might be a bit more energy left for other things.

  “You know I can never turn down the hot tub.”