Deadly Spells

by Jaye Wells

“How did you get away from the dog?”

  Beside me, I felt Morales look at me, too, as if he’d been wondering the same thing. I looked Gardner in the eye. “I punched him, sir.”

  Morales’s hand came up to cover a sudden cough. Gardner looked intently up at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “Go on. What about the man in here?”

  “He had skin as black as the barrel of your gun,” Morales said. “His two front teeth were gold with a big gap between them.”

  Something in her gaze changed and her posture became more alert. Before she could speak, Mez joined our party. “The med wizes think Harry was dosed with a potion, too,” I said. “His injuries were severe, but when they checked his pupils they were dilated and the irises were pale blue.”

  “Shit,” Morales said. “Let’s hope they can do something to override the magic. We need him conscious.”

  Gardner sighed again. “How did the other perp manage to escape?”

  I looked her in the eye. “I believe he had a potion capsule hidden in his mouth.”

  “Wait,” Gardner asked, “he just disappeared?”

  “Gone.” I snapped my fingers.

  “You’re serious?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately yes.”

  “I’ve heard of such potions existing, but never seen one in action,” Mez said.

  I shook my head. “Me either.”

  “Hmm. I’ll do some digging and see if I can find anything on how they’re made. May not lead to the perp, but it wouldn’t be a bad weapon to add to our arsenal.”

  The sound of a new car arriving outside carried into the trailer. A moment later a door slammed and a man’s raised voice echoed. That was all the warning we got before the thin metal door flew open and Captain Eldritch barreled inside. He looked around long enough to take in the blood and the three of us staring at him. His angry gaze zeroed in on Gardner. “Did we or did we not have a conversation this morning?”

  She frowned. “We did.”

  “Then do you want to explain to me why you went behind my back?”

  “Prospero and Morales were here to question Harry Bane on an unrelated matter when they discovered he was in danger.”

  Eldritch’s face morphed from annoyance to confusion. “I don’t give two shits about Harry Fucking Bane. He’s not my problem anymore.” His gaze zeroed in on my face. “No thanks to you.”

  My stomach dipped. “What?”

  “Explain yourself,” Gardner said.

  He crossed his arms. “About an hour ago, I got a call from the chief. Seems the mayor had a little chat this morning with Prospero here about the murder of Charles Parsons.”

  Morales and Gardner both shot me accusing glances. “That’s not exactly true,” I said. “I ran into Volos when I was dropping Baba somewhere. He asked me about Charm’s murder and I told him the BPD was handling it. That’s all.” Okay, I’d skipped a couple of steps, but the gist was true.

  Judging by the sneer twitching under Eldritch’s mustache, he wasn’t buying my story. “Regardless, Mayor Volos convinced the chief it was in our best interest to hand over the case to the MEA.”

  Gardner made a derisive snort. “Thanks for letting us know in such a professional manner, Eldritch.”

  He paused. “Wait—you really didn’t know?”

  After Gardner shook her head, Eldritch started to chuckle. She pursed her lips. “Since this is our case, I guess that means you can go now.”

  He held up a hand. “Not so fast. We need to have a discussion about a field trip to Babylon General last night.” Eldritch crossed his arms and shot Morales a look that dared him to lie. “You know anything about that?”

  Morales smirked at Eldritch. “Sir, things were kind of confusing last night. What with your lead detective calling us in for a consult because he doesn’t know enough about his own beat to identify a major player in the dirty magic trade and then telling us to keep our hands off his case.” He shrugged. “You can’t blame us for being confused.”

  “Prospero?” Eldritch said. This was where things were going to get really tricky. Technically, I was still an employee of the BPD. They’d loaned me to the MEA, which paid for my overtime, but the city of Babylon paid my salary. That meant the man staring me down was still my boss. However, Gardner was also my boss, so admitting to interviewing Duffy’s witness would throw her under the bus. Basically, I was screwed no matter who I pissed off.

  “Sir, I—”

  “Prospero and Morales went to the hospital on my orders,” Gardner cut in. “We were going to write up their findings and share them with Duffy as soon as possible.”

  The relief I felt over the first part of her statement was ruined by the lie in the second half. With these two I often felt like a marionette whose arms were being yanked in opposite directions by two puppeteers.

  Eldritch looked unconvinced. “For the record, if I ever catch one of your people interfering with one of our investigations, I’ll charge you with obstruction.” He rounded on me. “And you, Detective, will find yourself out of a job.”

  “Sir,” Morales said, “Duffy himself didn’t believe the witness was reliable. Our conversation with him supported that position.”

  Eldritch cocked his chin. “Well, we’ll just have to take your word for it, since Mr. Schmidt is dead.”

  Frost crept along the back of my neck and down my arms. “What? He was fine when we left him.”

  “Damnedest thing.” He shook his head. “The officer guarding the room said that after two unnamed cops”—he shot us a weighted look—“stopped by claiming Duffy asked them to interview the witness, no one went in or out except hospital staff.”

  “He was pretty sickly,” Morales said. “What was the cause of death?”

  Eldritch looked at all of us with a deadpan expression. “Knife through the eye socket.”

  “What?” Gardner’s expression went pale. “You’re sure? What kind of knife?”

  Eldritch frowned. “Forensics said it was some sort of South American model.”

  “Shit,” Gardner said. “A façon?”

  The captain nodded. “What do you know?”

  “It’s classic A Morte.” Her tone was heavy and her complexion was milky green, as if it couldn’t decide whether she was scared or nauseated.

  “The Brazilian cartel?” Morales asked.

  “A Morte’s wizard assassins use what they call O olho de Deus—the Eye of God. It’s sort of a cartel calling card.” Gardner turned toward Morales and me. “When you said Harry’s attacker had black skin I started to suspect, but this cinches it. There’s a hit man they call Pantera.”

  “Panther,” Morales translated, looking at me. “What was it Hot Pocket said about the cat?”

  “Wait.” Eldritch held up a hand. “Who’s Hot Pocket?”

  “Duffy’s witness,” Morales said. When Eldritch opened his mouth to ask the inevitable question, it was Morales’s turn to hold up a hand. “You really don’t want to know, sir.”

  The same feeling I’d felt when the dogcatchers walked out with the half-dead rottweiler rose in my throat. Pity? Yes, that was it. Hot Pocket hadn’t been a paragon of humanity, but, like the dogs, he’d been caught in the crossfire of someone else’s war. The irony was that his murder should have made his dreams of fame a reality—it at least warranted a couple of inches in the newspaper (“Homeless Man Murdered in Coven-Related Violence”). But with a new mayor in office and a coven war brewing, I doubted it would even get a couple of lines of coverage.

  I cleared my throat and rejoined the conversation. “Hot Pocket said a large black cat was at the church last night.”

  Morales shot an inquiring look at Gardner. “Ring any bells?”

  Gardner’s already pale face went ashen. “What the fuck is he doing in Babylon?”

  “Who?” Eldritch demanded in an exasperated tone.

  Gardner grabbed her purse and grabbed her cell. “I need to make a couple of calls.” She started for the door.

/>   Eldritch stepped in her path. “Now, hold on just a damned minute—”

  She pushed him out of the way. “Meet me back at the gym,” she said to Morales and me.

  “What about Harry?” Morales called.

  “We need extra detail on him—including someone in his room.” With that, she ran out the door. “Call Shadi and tell her to head over there.”

  “What the fuck was that about?” Eldritch threw up his hands.

  Morales’s expression was uncharacteristically grave. “Gardner’s had several run-ins with A Morte in the past. If she’s right and the man who beat Harry is one of their hit men, we’re looking at problems way worse than a coven war.”

  Eldritch’s confrontational expression fell. “I’ll get those extra bodies on Bane, but we’re already getting more calls about coven violence than usual. Besides, the BPD isn’t at the MEA’s beck and call.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “And, Prospero?” he said. I raised my brows. “Remember where you came from. I could put you back there in a heartbeat.”

  My skin suddenly felt too heavy.

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Morales said, “Detective Prospero was following orders from her superiors. Just like you’re following your orders by surrendering the case. You don’t like what she’s being asked to do—take it up with Gardner.” With that, Morales pushed me ahead of him. “Let’s go.”

  My mouth hung open all the way through the trailer, past Eldritch’s rage-red face, and out the door. It wasn’t until the door closed behind us that I recovered my wits. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “I’m gonna pay for that later.”

  “Nah. He’s just blustering to save his ego.” He put an arm around my shoulder. “Hot Pocket died under the watch of a BPD officer. An officer who let us past him without verifying we should even be there. If Eldritch raises a stink, he’d have to expose his own cop’s incompetence first.”

  Even though he’d just ensured I was safe from repercussions, the increasingly nasty tone of this investigation left a bad taste in my mouth. Political maneuvering was the thing I hated most about my job, and it was becoming more and more necessary to keep my ass out of a sling.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now we head to the gym and hope that whatever Gardner’s finding out from her sources isn’t bad news.”

  Chapter Ten

  On the way back to the gym, Morales called Shadi and sent her to the hospital to watch Harry. He promised one of us would be there in a few hours to relieve her. Until Harry was conscious and we got his statement, the task force members would take shifts watching him twenty-four seven.

  Mez had been confused after Gardner stormed past him at the junkyard without a word, but we’d filled him in. Now he was in his car following us back to the office.

  After he hung up, Morales settled back into his seat with a sigh. “What a fucking day, huh?”

  I nodded. “Doesn’t sound like it’s going to get better, either.”

  “What’s the real story with Volos?” he asked, his tone tight.

  “I was telling the truth. Baba is volunteering at the community center. I went to drop her off this morning and there he was. We didn’t talk long because he had some reporter with him. But she’s the one who told him about Charm—not me. He asked me a couple of questions, but I told him it wasn’t our case.” I hadn’t mentioned that the man who’d just gotten us the case also had put me in Grace Cho’s crosshairs. Part of me wanted to call him and thank him for strong-arming Eldritch, but the other half wanted to punch him for interfering in my life—again.

  “Why do you think he called the chief, then?”

  I shook my head and sighed. “I gave up trying to understand Volos’s motivations for anything a long time ago.”

  “Still.” Morales looked at me with a raised brow. “In this case, his maneuverings appear to be in our favor.”

  I snorted. “Sure, if you consider having to track down a dangerous cartel assassin a favor.”

  He nodded absently, his eyes on the road. “You ever hear the story on Gardner’s past with A Morte?” He asked the question casually, leaving himself wiggle room to say it was her story to tell in case I hadn’t heard.

  “About her team getting ambushed?” I nodded. She’d also intimated that one of the undercover officers lost in the massacre had been her lover.

  “It was all the talk in the MEA for weeks after it happened.” He shook his head in disgust. “People were placing bets on whether she’d even have a job to come back to after her leave of absence.”

  “From what she said it didn’t sound like it was her fault.”

  “Didn’t matter.” He shrugged. “Someone higher up needed to assign blame to someone’s name. Since it was her team and her undercover guy who got made by the cartel, she was the obvious choice.”

  “But she’s running this task force now.”

  “It was touch and go for a while,” he said. “For a couple of years she got assigned to some real shit details. But then someone decided there needed to be a task force in Babylon. None of the usual suspects would go near the job.” He glanced at me. I just nodded, because I believed it. Babylon had a reputation for being a city without a future. I could see it being a real dead-end assignment for any ambitious MEA agents looking to rise in the ranks. “So they had no choice but to give it to Gardner, but they made no bones about the post being provisional. If we don’t close cases, they’ll close us down.”

  I crossed my arms and looked out the window at the passing landscape. A man limped down the sidewalk with a trash bag over one shoulder clasped in a palsied hand. His skin was green, like Hot Pocket’s had been. I tore my gaze from the depressing scene and rubbed my eyes. I wished I could say Hot Pocket’s death was a rare occurrence in the Cauldron, but, sadly, powerless addicts like him were discarded like trash daily. “I got the impression Gardner saw this assignment as her way of making good.”

  He nodded. “But now that A Morte’s in the mix things are going to get tricky. It’s bound to dredge up a lot of shit for her.”

  We were driving through Votary territory. Buildings were covered in graffiti of alchemical symbols—mostly griffins and winged serpents hatching from eggs. But here and there I also spotted a circle with an arrow jutting from it. The paint looked fresh, with trails dripping from it like blood. I pointed the image out to Morales. “That’s not good.”

  “It looks like the male symbol.”

  I nodded. “Also Mars, which is ruled by masculine energy.”

  “Mars was the god of war, right?” He spoke it as a question, but his tone told me it was rhetorical. “Christ, I hope Gardner’s intel on A Morte helps us find this guy fast.”

  A block or so later, we passed a corner store where three thugs in black hoodies slouched against the stoop waiting for their next customer. Seeing them reminded me of the guy who’d gotten away. Yet another confusing angle to the case. Why would a Votary wizard be hanging out with an A Morte shaman?

  I cleared my throat, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk, as if Pantera himself might suddenly appear. “What happens if we don’t find him?”

  He was silent so long that I looked over. Finally, he said, “Best we don’t even entertain that as an option.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Gardner stood in front of a large whiteboard inside the boxing ring. In her hands she held a thick file folder. The whole team was there, except Shadi, who was already at the hospital keeping an eye on Harry.

  “The Brazilian cartel calls themselves A Morte,” Gardner was saying. “It means ‘the death’ in Portuguese. No one knows the leader of the entire operation, but the players the MEA does know about are mostly powerful shamans who capitalize on the black-market demand for regulated rain-forest ingredients in dirty magic potions.”

  The government had cracked down on imports of herbs and plants from the rain forests back in the 1990s. They claimed the regulations were meant to control the quality of ingredients used in
sanctioned clean magic labs as well as to prevent dirty magic practitioners from getting their hands on them, but the hefty tariffs on those items also helped fill Uncle Sam’s coffers.

  “After magic pushed out cocaine and heroin as America’s favorite addiction, A Morte began supplying to dirty covens along the East Coast of the US,” Gardner continued. “In addition to selling hard-to-get ingredients for a premium, they also dabble in human trafficking to supply workers for the sex magic covens.”

  She removed a picture from her file folder and tacked it to the board. “This is Hector Souza.”

  The picture was grainy, but there was no mistaking the man’s pitch-black skin. “That’s him,” I said, “the guy from the junkyard.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Gardner said. “Like I said, they call him Pantera. He’s an Amazonian shaman who specializes in shape-shifting potions.”

  I glanced at Morales. “A big black cat.” His expression tightened as the meaning of my comment hit home.

  “Explain,” Mez said.

  “Duffy’s witness from Charm’s murder said he watched a big black cat walk into the church, but a man walked out.”

  Gardner nodded and crossed her arms. The move made the tiger-eye cabochon ring on the middle finger of her left hand wink in the light. She’d once told me she bought it after her team was killed and never took it off. Tiger eye was the stone of truth and logic and she wore it on her Saturn finger, which governed responsibility and security. “When he’s in his human form, his skin stays pitch black—a side effect of using the potions for so long.”

  “Have you had any experience with this guy, sir?” Mez asked carefully.

  “If you’re asking if he was involved in murdering my old team, the answer is no. But he does work for the same asshole who issued the kill order on them.”

  The mood in the room shifted. Up until that point, we’d all been tiptoeing around the tragedy in her past. But having her bring it up seemed to ramp up the tension. As if she’d summoned a ghost into the room.

  She cleared her throat. “From what I understand, he’s sort of a specialist for the cartel. They bring him in to help establish new territories. Once he gets a foothold, the cartel brings in someone else to run the operation.”