Perfect Love

by A.M. Burns

  ***

  Someone stood over my bed. It had to be someone I knew. Otherwise Griff or the magical wards around the house would’ve alerted me. The blinds let in too much light. Someone must have raised them. The sunlight lessened against my eyelids as something passed between me and the window. I could still feel Dusty's comforting warmth next to me. I cracked an eye and the golden light of the sun raged through the window and danced through long blonde hair.

  “Come on Ethan, I know you're awake.” Tiffany's soft but commanding voice tore away any hope of getting back to sleep, like an annoying little sister ripping the blankets off your bed to get you awake.

  “What time is it?” My eyes felt like they were bleeding.

  “Just after ten,” she said, sounding too chipper to live.

  “What happened to don't wake me up until after noon?” I wrapped my arms tightly around Dusty hoping she was just a nightmare that might go away. I could tell from his breathing and how he moved against me he was waking up too.

  “Life changes. Now get out of bed. You have time for a really fast shower. There are donuts on the kitchen table. You need to be in your office in fifteen minutes.” She turned and left as the poorly-thrown pillow hit the wall instead of her head.

  “Sometimes I think an irritating alarm clock would be better to wake up to than little miss cheerful sunshine ass,” Dusty muttered as he rolled over in my arms to face me. “Good morning sexy.” His lips were warm and tender, but his eyes looked almost as bloodshot as mine felt.

  “Love you.” I nestled in against his hard chest.

  “I don't hear the shower yet!” Tiffany shouted up the stairs.

  “I pity her future children,” I mumbled as I struggled to get out of bed.

  Twenty five minutes, many gallons of water, four drops of eye drops, two donuts and one glass of OJ later, I made down the stairs and into my office. Dusty followed just a couple of steps behind, but he needed two more donuts. Due to his faster wer metabolism, he could eat twice as much as me and still maintain his absolutely fabulous body. Tiffany already had a pile of paper on my desk and the door to the reception area hung open.

  “Ethan, here are the latest updates.” She came through the door with another stack of paper. I stifled a groan as I settled into my chair.

  “Shoot.” I muttered, almost in jest. It was just not as easy to get by on four hours of sleep as it used to be.

  “Don't need the paperwork.” She smiled and dropped the handful of papers on the desk before sitting down across from me.

  Dusty came in and sat down next to her, still carrying half of a maple coconut crunch donut. “Looks like you've been busy.”

  “All morning. The lady from the pixie rehab center stopped by a few minutes ago. She said that it didn't look good, but if she can pull him through, she’d let us know.”

  “Him, how the hell can you tell hims from hers with those little bugs?” Dusty asked between bites as another quarter of the donut disappeared.

  “I asked her about that too and she said something about the length of the hair in relationship to the size of the wings or something like that. I think she’s a bit nuts but she says once you get the feel for it, it’s really easy to tell.” Tiffany sounded like she didn't believe the woman. It was something I had never heard of, but then there was a lot about fairy physiology I didn't know.

  “Carmine called and William Cromly managed to get Alexia Rosenbloom out of jail. It seems that her mother wasn’t very happy about the whole incident. She had a major screaming match with William in front of the police station this morning after Alexia was released. Carmine pulled a couple of strings and the mother has been readmitted to Cedar Hill mental hospital for observation, which should keep her away for a few months at least. According to William, Alexia’s relieved and will be settling into the Council safe house this afternoon after he helps her retrieve some of her things.”

  I nodded, trying to appear more interested than sleepy. “Good, see if he...”

  “He will be stopping by here around four with her. He figured there might be more that we can find out now that she’s out of jail.” Tiffany sounded way too smug first thing in my morning.

  “Thanks for setting that up.”

  “No prob. Now before that happens, you have an appointment at one with Reynaldo Reyes. You’re going to go over the scene where he found Magee. I personally doubt there is anything left to find there, but you never know. The address is already in your GPS. It should take you about twenty minutes to get there from your noon appointment.”

  “My noon appointment?”

  “Yep, I started going through Magee's address book and made a couple of appointments over the next couple of days with likely suspects. Since it’s the weekend, I went ahead and scheduled them as I could. The first one is with Brianna and Byron Supunski. They’re over in Irving. Other than Madeline Fort and Barry Crabtree, there were more emails going to Brianna than anyone else. Since you can't interview Barry before nightfall and Madeline is at work until five, you get to start with the Supunskis. There’s a file for them there on the desk. I’ll see what I can do about getting a couple of other interviews later this afternoon. You might want to take the back roads into Irving since the Cowboys are having some kind of exhibition today and traffic around the stadium is really bad.”

  “I suppose that is also in my GPS?”

  “Of course, here’s the file on them.” She handed it to Dusty. “You can read it to him on the way over.” She paused a second then handed him another, much thicker folder. “By the way, since you won't have time to stop by here on the way over to the Reyes residence, here is the file on Reynaldo. It’s fairly interesting overall. He has had several run-ins with the law and sounds like he could be a real handful in the wrong circumstances. I have already tossed your travel bag in the car in case you need anything out of it.”

  Sometimes she was too damned efficient for words. I struggled to find something polite to say and failed. “Thanks Tiff. If you hear from Paul Ramirez and he needs to get a hold of us, let him know where we are and we can try and meet up with him if need be.”

  “Okay. Paul, have you seen pictures of his new baby yet? He’s so cute. One of the ladies with the Council updated the community website the other day with pictures of the little guy.”

  All I could do was shake my head. It was way too early in the day to be discussing cute baby pictures. “Thanks. Anything else we should know before we battle our way into Irving?”

  “Oh we are running low on white sage, so if you could while you are over on that side of town, run by the herb store and grab a couple of ounces.”

  Dusty nodded to her, knowing that I was a bit too sleepy to remember at this point. “Will do, white sage.”

  “Okay then. I guess we should be running along.” I pushed myself into a standing position using the edge of the desk.

  “I'll keep in touch if anything interesting pops up,” Tiffany said as she headed back toward the reception area and her desk.

  Dusty and I used the back door out of the office that went through the kitchen. We paused at the door for a quick kiss. “Looks like it might be another long day.” He chuckled as he opened the screen door out into the yard for me.

  Occasionally, luck happens and even in Dallas traffic you can run early. We were early enough that we picked up the white sage before the appointment with the Supunskis. Either the traffic wasn’t as bad as Tiffany expected or it magically cleared out by the time we got there. I’m not a big sports fan and don’t understand the point of putting a major stadium in the middle of an area where it could and would snarl traffic on not one, but three major freeways. Texas stadium did that regularly for football games, any other ballgame, concert or anything else they could schedule. Traffic backed up for miles and occasionally that back up stretched all the way to downtown Dallas. Most locals organized favorite bypasses around the mess. Based on where in Irving the Supunskis lived, I chose my southern route, which ran
one block from the herb store. We pulled up in front of the Supunskis Las Colinas townhome a couple of minutes before noon.

  On the way over, Dusty scanned the folder and shared the facts he thought were interesting and pertinent. Byron Supunski was a partner in a small software development firm that specialized in musical integration software. Apparently it wasn’t a large market, but the firm held enough of it last year that it was considered one of the top one hundred companies in the Dallas Metropolitan area in terms of growth. He also played guitar for a garage band that played small gigs around town.

  Brianna Supunski had held a number of small odd jobs over her life. She’d been everything from a short order cook to a singing telegram worker and a tarot reader. She was currently on the board of directors for the local New Age community center. The Council had a small file on her as someone to watch out for, but they’d never gotten around to approaching her because they considered any talent she might have was so hidden or insignificant that it was probably of little use. It was rumored that the Council held that view of a lot of people who didn’t come from gifted psi families.

  The Supunskis apparently met about five years ago at a medieval fair near Fort Worth. It’d been a whirlwind romance and they married less than two months after they met. They were very active in the visible metaphysical community. I wondered if they had contacts in the real one. But, if they did, the Council’s file should’ve included both of them, not just Brianna, and it would’ve been much larger. They didn’t have any children, but then they were a later-in-life couple. Records showed two cats and a dog.

  I glanced at my watch, two minutes until noon. “Well we might as well go on up and see what they can tell us.” I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Just then, sounds of chaos exploded from the back yard.

  11

  “Shit, we may be too late!” I slammed the car door shut and took off running toward the sounds. Dusty ran faster than I and cleared the eight-foot privacy fence as I rounded the corner of the garage heading for the gate. I often envied the extras being a werewolf gave him. I dashed down the small stone path leading from the gate into the back yard.

  The Supunski’s house was located on one of the smaller canals of Los Colinas and the back yard opened up onto the canal. My first thought as I rounded the corner was that the yard was nicely manicured and they must have an efficient gardener. Then I noticed Brianna lying in the middle of the yard kicking at an extremely large alligator that had grabbed a mouthful of her bright green dress and was trying to get a hold on her while Byron smacked it with a lawn chair. Dusty straddled the thing trying to get a hand hold so he could turn it over while a large basset hound bayed from the porch making more noise by itself than the rest of them combined.

  I jogged over and pulled out my revolver. “Anyone mind if I just kill it?”

  Dusty gave me an indignant look. “Just shoot the thing already Ethan.”

  “Please shoot it!” Brianna screamed.

  Two slugs through the right eye stopped it cold. Byron put down the chair and headed for Brianna. I offered Dusty a hand up. Before we could turn to introduce ourselves, a dark fog flowed out of the gator’s body. I yanked Dusty to the side away from the body and I saw Byron do the same with Brianna. The fog coalesced into a presence, flowed a bit and then started to become more solid. Tendrils of dark energy emerged and approached each of us as if searching for something.

  I poured energy into my psychic and magical shields while Dusty did the same. I glanced over and saw Bryon making the sign of the pentagram in the air in front of him and Brianna. Energy flared in the fog as the tendrils touched my shields and then quickly retracted. They seemed to push harder against the shield Byron tried to hold as Brianna regained her balance and added her strength to it. The energy could not find a way around the shield, although for a moment, it blocked them from view while it swirled around their shield looking for a hole.

  “What the hell is it?” Dusty asked as we stood there watching it try to find a way to get at the Supunskis.

  “If it were night time, I would think it was an OD from one of the lower planes, probably an air plane, but it is broad daylight and we’re not close enough to the airport.”

  “Ethan,” Dusty growled.

  “Okay, but it’s acting like an air OD looking for a host of to keep it alive in the daylight, but it shouldn’t even be here, unless it was called by someone.” I flipped my smart phone open and checked moon phases and other astrological data. “Three nights ago, that was the last time that everything would have been right to allow something from one of the elemental air planes to make it through to this side. So if it’s an OD, it would’ve spent most of that time trapped in that gator since it was called and it’s just been waiting for the opportunity to strike.”

  “We need to do something to make it go home before it gets to one of the Supunskis and we have another body or two on our hands,” Dusty said as calmly as he could.

  “The Supunskis look safe for the moment, so unless it decides it wants to go after the dog…” Well, about the time I let the words out of my mouth, the fog went after the baying basset hound on the porch. It left the Supunskis in their circle of protection and headed for the only other warm body within easy reach that might be able to host it. That was the big drawback when people who summoned elemental ODs let them out of the summoning circle. They had a tendency to go looking for a host since unlike higher ODs from more material places, elemental ODs have problems holding themselves together without a physical form to inhabit. And right now, it looked like it was going to be the Supunskis’ dog.

  “Badger no, get in the house Badger!” Brianna screamed as the fog around her circle cleared enough that she realized what it was going after. The dog went ballistic, trying to get over the small gate that kept it on the porch. I desperately tried to think of something that’d help, or some way to get the dog away from the fog or the fog away from the dog and just came up blank. The fog hit the house. It spread out for a moment like it had hit a barrier and then it eased through it and engulfed the dog. It only took a moment and the dog went from a raging beast to one just sitting on the porch steps looking out at the world through uncertain eyes. The elemental OD possessed the basset hound.

  “Oh Goddess no, Badger!” Brianna wailed and started to throw herself toward the porch, but Byron grabbed her arm. She shivered in his arms and her hands flew up to cover her mouth.

  Then I realized something, there were shields around the house. Like most Wiccans, they had cast protections around their home. They hadn’t been strong enough to keep the elemental out, but with a bit of help, they might just help contain him so I could dispel him.

  “Byron, sorry to meet under such extreme circumstances,” I said. “I'm E.S. Peters and this is my partner, Dusty Davenport. We’re paranormal investigators. Do I assume correctly that you have cast wards around your home?”

  “Yes Mr. Peters you are correct. We have protections around the house.”

  “And those extend out to the porch where the dog is?”

  “Yes they do. Why?”

  “I have a thought. Dusty if you’d get my travel bag out of the car, we'll see if we can contain this thing.” As Dusty dashed for the front yard, I started to explain the plan to the Supunskis. I started feeling out their shields. They were standard protection wards, very basic. They showed that the Supunskis had promise as magic users, but we’d need the shields to be a lot stronger to hold an elemental. Luckily I wouldn’t have to build them from scratch. I knew we wouldn’t have a long time to get ready. It’d take the elemental a couple of minutes to adjust to the new body. I wish I could’ve just gone in and pulled it out of the dog while it was settling, but there was too big of a chance that it might get away if I did that. This way, it’d be harder to pull it out of the dog, but easier to contain it when we did.

  Dusty returned with my bag. I handed Byron a couple of things and some to Brianna as well, explained what they needed
to do and as they set about their task. I took a moment to scan my phone for the proper banishing to remove the elemental and save the dog. The first thing I pulled up was a bit too complex and involved too many things I didn’t have in my bag. It was a good spell, very focused and in the right setting I’d use it in a heartbeat, but for field work, it wouldn’t do. The next one was wrong due to the phase of the moon. Finally I found what I was looking for. Then I felt the reinforced shielding click in around the house.

  Brianna and Byron returned to our spot just off the porch steps. “Okay, now that it’s contained inside some protection, we can see about sending it back where it came from. Have either one of you had any experience with high magic?”

  “I used to do a bit,” Brianna said. “What is it that we’re dealing with? It looked like some kind of demon.”

  I realized that I’d gone into command mode, simply telling people what to do without explanations. This was as good a time as any to take a moment or two and explain what I perceived was going on. “Okay, I’m pretty sure it is some kind of air elemental that someone summoned to inhabit the alligator and then used the possessed alligator to attack you. When I killed the alligator, the elemental needed something else to possess before the sunlight on this plane killed it. We were both protected as were the two of you. The only one not protected was the dog.”

  “But Badger was inside the house shields,” Brianna protested.

  “Which weren’t designed to keep out a threat the size of an air elemental,” I explained. “You probably noticed that it slowed down a bit and flattened out when it hit your shields. That’s what told me you had some protections around the house. Without a properly cast high-magic circle, the reinforced shield that we just put up will only hold it for a couple of minutes, but I think that’ll be enough time to get the elemental out of the dog and somewhere it will be safe, or banish it back to its plane of origin.” I tried to make it sound a lot simpler than it was going to be. I hoped that either the elemental would be tired from having to switch bodies quickly, or that maybe by making it switch bodies, I had loosened the hold the summoner would have over it enough to get it to go back to its home plane.

  “So what can we do from here? Don't we need to be in the circle to influence the elemental?” Byron asked as he paced at the edge of the shield near the steps.

  “One of the things I remember from what I learned of high magic is that being in the circle with the spirit you summon is bad,” Brianna explained to her husband. “That’s why most high magicians cast two circles when they summon spirits, one for you and one for the spirit. That gives you two layers of protection in case the spirit gets out of control.”

  “That’s one way to do it. Right now, we have the elemental trapped in a single circle. If it gets out, we only have our personal protection to fall back on.” I added.

  “Hey look at this!” Dusty called from where he had wandered over to look at the alligator while I explained things.

  Dusty rolled the alligator over on its back. Along the scales of the abdomen, someone had taken what looked like a Sharpie marker and drawn a complex magical symbol in the center of an intricately-crafted pentagram. Some of it was a bit smudged, probably from the gator moving through the water, weeds and grass in and along the canal. I pulled out my phone, snapped a picture of it and promptly emailed it to Tiffany.

  “If we’re lucky, the name of the elemental’s in there somewhere. If anyone can figure it out quickly, it’s Tiffany,” I explained as I walked back over to my travel bag and pulled out the better digital camera. “Just in case, I want a couple of better shots with this. We might get a lead on who’s doing this.” High magicians tend to have rather large egos. If we’re lucky, mixed in among the lines either in the symbol or in the pentagram itself there might be a signature we could trace back to the mage.

  I snapped a couple of shots from the angles that showed the marks best. I was just putting the camera back in the bag when the dog on the porch began to howl again, not the deep brassy howl it’d used before the elemental chose its body for a vessel, but a higher sound, more eerie. The hairs along the back of my neck stood out. I would’ve been more worried if it were dark. Some elementals can summon others by calling to them, but in the daylight, we should be safe. I still wanted to get rid of it quickly.

  “Okay folks let’s deal with this now before it attracts too much attention to itself,” I said. “We don't need your neighbors complaining about the noise. I think that the circle on the gator was a big part of the binding that’s holding it to this world. We may get lucky and have the spirit want to leave once we remove it from the dog. It’ll be easier to get it out of the dog than it would’ve been if we’d tried to remove it from the gator without killing the host first. Just in case, Dusty prepare a holding bottle for me.”

  I hated imprisoning things like elementals. I have only had to do it once before, I still have the bottle stored in the box of dangerous things that I don't trust in other people's hands. I’d much prefer the thing to return to its plane of origin. There wasn’t much hope in extracting information from an elemental, although they followed directions real well, they tended not to have much in the way of original thoughts and don't notice a whole lot, sort of like drivers talking on cell phones in traffic.

  Speaking of cell phones, mine picked that moment to sound off with Tiffany's distinctive ringtone. “What ‘ya got for me, Tiff?”

  “Not a whole lot. There is nothing extra in the sigil that could be the name of the elemental. So either the summoner didn't know the name and was just calling a random air elemental, or they wanted to leave out the information in the hopes of using the vessel again in the future. The only thing useful in this is that it is supposed to be a Ventus ater elemental, or a dark wind.”

  “Well that’s something. Anything special about what to do or not to do when sending one back to where it came from?”

  “Nope, a basic elemental dispersal should work once you get it out of the host. Oh and I have gone ahead and pushed back your one o'clock to two and you will want to check your schedule on the drive over. The rest of your day is filling up quickly, so don't dawdle too long over this.” She clicked off without saying goodbye. With other people, I might have found it rude, but I’ve known Tiffany for many years and it is just her way. She rarely wastes time on things like goodbyes and she never seems to do it when I have more questions. We’re just in tune like that.

  I turned back to the three people looking at me for the next move as the basset hound continued to howl on the porch. “Okay, we don't have an actual name, which would’ve been nice, but we do know it’s a Ventus ater. Should be a standard banishment, once we get it out of Badger.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Byron asked.

  “I'm going to start with strong-arm authority tactics. If that doesn't work, we'll go back to the basics. Dusty get the blessed salt water ready.” I unstrapped my short sword from the travel bag. “Brianna, you and Byron get the charged salt. When I get Badger out of there you’ll need it to cleanse him.”

  I walked to the edge of circle at the foot of the steps leading to the porch. I touched the tip of the sword to the ground and carefully cut a doorway into the circle. Dusty stood behind me to close the circle once I’d cleared the edge so I would not have to take my attention off Badger. As I stepped across the magical threshold, the dog stopped howling and stared at me. The steps leading up to the porch allowed me to make eye contact with the dog without being in an awkward physical position. There was something akin to fear shining in those big brown puppy-dog eyes. The dog was perfectly still and I was thankful it was a basset hound and not something that could jump like a spaniel.

  I held the sword in front of me in my right hand and dug out my Council credentials with my left. “Ventus ater, by the Treaty of Florisent I command you to vacate the basset hound this instant and return to your plane of origin. Should you fail to comply, I am justly deputized by the Council to enforce
the Treaty by any and all means necessary. Be it known that you have crossed planal boundaries without proper permissions and have answered the summons of a magician without proper rights to call beings from another plane to this one. If you leave now of your own accord, I shall allow you to depart unmolested, but should you choose to attempt to stay, I will be forced to remove you and make no promises about the state you will be in when I am finished with you.”

  With my final words, the basset hound launched itself off the edge of the porch, aiming itself at my sword. There’s no way it could’ve known that Dusty and I played tag on a regular basis with him in wolf form. I’m used to canines leaping at me. One of the games we like to play was me trying to catch him telekinetically. Although Dusty's weight was almost more than I could catch, this little guy was nowhere close to Dusty's wolf size. I caught him easily and held him squirming in my mental grasp. “Look, if you want to do this the hard way we can.”

  Badger whined and then the dark fog began seeping from him. It took longer to leave the dog than to possess it, but before too long, a dark ball of energy floated above him as it hovered in my mental grasp. The ball twisted counterclockwise a couple of times when the sparkling effect of accessing other planes began to cover it. Then it vanished. The nice thing about ODs and getting rid of them was that once they left this plane, they cannot come back without being summoned. It was a bit anticlimactic, but at least it was gone.

  I set Badger on the ground and he ran to Brianna and Byron who hugged him first then began dousing him with salt to clean away any smut the elemental may have left behind. At least I didn't have to remind them.

  Dusty was putting things back in the travel bag when I got there to put the sword back.”Well that went easily enough,” he said taking the sword from me so he could put it back in its straps.

  “Yeah almost too easy, but then a lot of air elementals are pushovers when you really get right down to it. And I think it knew it’d done wrong and wasn’t in the mood for a real fight after being evicted from a great host like the alligator.” I pulled out my cell phone and called Carmine. I explained what happened and she promised to get a cleanup crew over to remove the gator. I could’ve called animal control, but then there would’ve been an official report about an alligator with occult drawings on its belly and eventually some grocery store checkout rack magazine would have a picture on the front cover about devil alligator trying to eat a suburban Dallas housewife.

  By the time I got off the phone with Carmine, the Supunskis finished rubbing charged salt on poor Badger. Dusty hefted the traveling bag over his broad shoulder and we walked over as they were still hugging and petting the dog.

  “I know the timing on this sucks, but could we bother you to get some information about Magee Reyes?” I felt bad intruding on their family bonding with the basset hound, but we needed the information, and based on what Tiffany said about my schedule, it might be a couple of days before we could get back to talk to them again.

  “Of course. Poor Magee. I never thought that the poor girl would commit suicide,” Brianna said giving the dog a final pat and standing up. “Let's go in the house. We’ll more comfortable.”

  “So while we get comfortable, tell me what it would take to study under you two for high magic,” Byron said as he fell into step with Dusty.

  “We’re not taking students right now, but call this number, speak with Carmine. She'll be happy to put you through testing. If you pass the test, she’ll set you up with a teacher,” Dusty replied. I suppressed a chuckle at the thought of the look on Carmine's face when two Wiccans called her to get tested and then trained. She’d know who sent them. But that was okay. It was either payback for something I owed her that I forgot, or something she would do in the future. Karma worked that way.

  “Thanks, I’m always looking to expand my knowledge and I was almost lost out there with what you guys just did. I followed the basic idea, but beyond that...”

  “You have no idea what is out there just waiting for you,” Dusty said as he set the travel bag down beside the couch.

  The living room that Brianna led us into was fairly simple and homey. All the standard items were placed on the wall, but instead of normal themes, she’d chosen a pagan motif that eliminated any doubt about their religious affiliation. Various pictures adorned the wall, mostly of them with friends and family. In several, Brianna wore the same t-shirt that read She Who Shall be Obeyed in bright yellow letters. On wooden shelves, small statues representing an assortment of gods posed in front of pictures that depicted the turning of the year. The furniture was all rustic, but comfortable in dark earth tones that matched well with the plush brown carpet. Byron and Brianna settled into matching recliners across the carved tree trunk coffee table from the couch. Badger followed them and sat down looking up at Brianna until she reached down and lifted him into her lap.

  “I thought the police ruled Magee's death a suicide,” said Byron leaning forward. “What brings the two of you out looking around?”

  “Her husband’s not so sure, so he hired us to look into it for him,” I said. “Compounded with the murder of Barry Crabtree and now the attack on you, I think he may be right.”

  “Now, I'm not one to speak ill of someone, but let me tell you, this is probably the first thing that Reynaldo and I have ever seen eye to eye on,” said Brianna with a near snarl. “That little man is one of the worst excuses for a man I’ve ever met, and trust me, as a high priestess you get to meet a lot of low-class guys.”

  “Brianna,” I started as I pulled out my note pad.

  “Call me Bree please, most everyone does,” she interrupted.

  “Bree, so what kind of problems do you have with Reynaldo?”

  “Please understand that I don't know both sides of the story,” Bree explained. “It just seemed to me that he kept her on a very short leash and tried to promote her being afraid of everything.”

  Byron chimed in with his own assessment. “I think he’s one of those very insecure guys who’s terrified his wife’s going to cheat on him, probably because he’s cheating on her.”

  Bree took over when Byron paused. “He also hated all of us with the get together. I think he was afraid that we’d take her away from him or something like that. It always seemed to me like he tried to promote her playing in the magical world to keep her happy, but when she started getting too serious about things, he’d freak out for a little while and pull her away from things until she whined enough so that he’d let her start coming back around. So over the past few months we’d see her for a while then she’d vanish for a bit and then be back. I suspect he may have been abusive to her too. Sometimes she would show up with extra heavy makeup like she was trying to cover up some bruising or something. She always just said she was clumsy.” Bree finally paused for breath.

  “So were there any signs that she was unhappy?” I took the opportunity to throw out another question.

  “Again, she seemed to always be trying to cover things up. You know how these wannabe Southern belles can be. It’s all a game and they’re the ones who’re living it. But then I’m not the one to ask about how happy they were. Before last night I’d have told you to talk with Barry, but since he’s gone, the next best person to talk to is Maddie. She and Magee were really close. I suspect that if she weren’t married to Reynaldo, she'd have been doing Maddie more often.” Bree almost blushed.

  “More often?” Man, this was getting good. This was exactly the type of information that led to breaking a case like this wide open. Now we had the jealous-lover angle going.

  “Well I know one of the girls, I forget who ‘cause she never came back to get together, but one time during break, one of the girls headed to the bathroom, and when she came back, claimed she caught them in the bathroom kissing. She may have been just trying to stir up drama, but the way the energies around those two were I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  “Do you think Maddie could’ve done something to Magee?” The
jealous-lover angle looked more promising but then I remembered Maddie from last night. I just didn’t think she had the power needed to call the elemental we dispatched, but that didn’t mean she might not have someone do it for her.

  “No, I don't think so, Maddie’s a firm believer in perfect love, perfect trust,” Bree replied. “She’s a vegetarian. She couldn't hurt a fly without worrying about the karma involved.”

  “Yeah, she put the fluff in fluffy bunny,” Byron added with a smile.

  “Can you think of anyone involved in the get togethers that might have the want or ability to kill Magee?”

  “Not really, but then so many people are a bit on the flaky side,” said Bree thoughtfully. “They come for a couple of meetings and then we never see them again, or they show up a couple of times then miss a couple of meetings then show up again. You really can’t count on most of them and I really haven’t bothered to get to know them. Out of the regulars, no one really wanted her dead. Several of us wanted her to grow up a bit. She was real bad about making changes at the last minute and expecting everyone to jump when she wanted you to jump. She may have been the organizer but really.”

  “So how many official members are there for the get together?” I asked

  “We’re approaching two hundred members, the largest group of its kind in the state,” Bree replied. “We’re that large in part due to Magee.”

  “Wow two hundred.” These people would freak if they knew how many people belonged to the Council and most of those people are either some kind of psi or magical creature. But for a Wiccan meeting group, the size was pretty impressive. Sort of like a dwarf with a six inch dick. “And out of that two hundred how many are regulars?”

  Byron and Bree thought for a second before Bree responded.”Oh, probably twenty five or thirty.”

  “Well at least we can be thankful we don't have to interview all two hundred, if we’re lucky.” I really didn’t want this case to stretch on for the days it would take to interview two hundred people, not to mention if the feeling that this case and the wer problem were tied in together, that would mean interviewing more than a few wers as well. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was go home, curl up in the hot tub with Dusty and not get out for a week or more. Yeah, like Tiffany would bring out all my meals to the hot tub.

  “If it’d help, I could put together a list of the people who were regulars,” Bree offered. “That might help cut things down a bit for you.”

  “Ethan,” Dusty said softly and pointed at his watch. My signal we were running out of time. I nodded.

  “Bree, that would be wonderful.” I pulled out two of my cards and handed one to each of them. “If you could either call me at that number or email me the information, that would be great. Tiffany, my secretary, will be happy to take any messages you might have when you call. I really need to get moving so I can make the next interview. I appreciate your time.”

  They both stood after Bree gently pushed Badger into the floor where he landed with a loud thud. “No, no, if you hadn't shown up when you did there’s no telling what might have happened to us. We owe you our lives.”

  “It’s just a good thing that the gator didn’t strike before we got here, or wait until we were gone,” I said. “We like to do our part to keep Dallas clean of unwanted magical menaces.”

  “If you ask me, you guys are doing a great job,” Bree said, smiling warmly and leading us to the front door. “Keep up the good work.”

  As Byron held the door, Bree stopped us. “Boys give me hugs. Stop by anytime. You’re family now.”

  “Thanks Bree,” we both said as she embraced us. “We'll be in touch.”

  “Why don't you stop by the next get together? We're having a service for Magee and Barry next weekend,” She called as we walked out the door.

  “I'll check my schedule.” I waved as we ducked into the car.