Hex Appeal

by P. N. Elrod

  “It’s murder,” I said flatly. Greg’s ability to blithely reduce these young women to objects—to corpses—without value chilled me, even though I knew that he was right, from the standpoint of legalities. “They still feel everything he does to them. How can it be anything but murder?”

  He cast me a sideways look, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just talking about—”

  “The law,” I said. “Yes, I know. But these girls never got any law on their side, did they? Nobody was ever caught and punished, and now to say that he can just do it all over again…”

  “Maybe it’s not the same guy at all. Maybe it’s a, a groupie or something.”

  That was yet another sickening thought, but I doubted it; there had been too close a similarity in the small details of the crime scene. That wasn’t the work of a copycat unless the copycat had been given access to all of the police’s data.

  We’d strayed pretty far from the otherwise pleasant talk about potato chips and ranch dip, and I already missed the comfort of that, even if it was false. As if he sensed that, Greg started a running monologue about the neighborhoods we were passing—it was entertaining, if still a bit morbid, since he’d only been around here on official business, and business was apparently pretty good. By the time the GPS’s stern feminine voice announced we’d arrived at our destination, he’d given me a whole new appreciation for the ghosts that haunted even this relatively benign section of Austin.

  The second dump site was an empty, overgrown field, which in this time of year meant lots of dry, tangled weeds grown up to about knee height. It was dark, and the streetlights only cast a vague suggestion in the lot’s direction. We parked down the street in front of a small bodega that advertised homemade tacos and tortillas, and Greg turned off the engine.

  “That’s it,” he said, and nodded toward the vacant lot. “The body was found there almost exactly twenty-four hours after the first victim was discovered. Forensics were pretty much a dead end; vacant lots are hell for working any trace evidence, and there was nothing of any use on the body itself.”

  “Did you work the case?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Before my time,” he said. “I joined about seven months ago. I read up on it since Prieto told me what was going on.” He settled back in his seat with a sigh and unbuckled the safety belt. “Better get comfortable. We may be here a while.”

  “Shouldn’t we check the lot first?” I asked. “Just to make sure it hasn’t already happened?”

  Greg stared out the windshield for a moment, unmoving, and then said, “Yeah, I guess that’s probably a good idea. Want to go with me?”

  “I’ll wait here.” I was happy to let him go tramping off in the dark. I had my cell phone out, just in case, but Greg’s expedition—aided by a flashlight—was evidently unsuccessful. As he came back, I got the cheerful chime for a text message, which almost startled me into dropping the phone.

  Andy had texted me, which was odd; I didn’t think he was comfortable enough with the technology to actually type out messages. But it came from his number, and read, KEEP DOORS LOCKED WILL BE HOME BY 8 AM.

  Well, technically, I wasn’t breaking the rules. I had the car doors locked though I thumbed the control to let Greg back in. He took his seat, stowed the flashlight again, and said, “Nothing out there but the usual trash, condoms and crack vials.”

  That was a relief, but it also made it that much more imperative we stay awake and alert. I broke out the water first, then the chips and dip. Greg didn’t say much for a while, and I was okay with that. I was busy worrying about where Andy was, and what he was doing. Surely, it was a lot more dangerous than this.

  “Can I call you Holly?” Greg suddenly asked, as I scraped up the last of the ranch dip onto a scrap of chip from the bottom of the bag. “Sorry, that was sudden, wasn’t it? Calling you Miss Caldwell all night just seems awkward. Like I’m back in school.”

  “Holly’s fine,” I assured him.

  “I was just wondering how you got into all this. Not this, meaning the stakeout, but—”

  “The witch business?” I smiled a little. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a thing like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  I shrugged. “I was studying for a degree in chemistry when I discovered that I had kind of a gift—I could combine chemicals, and they didn’t exactly follow the normal rules of engagement that they did for other people. My professor finally said that I had an unusual talent and gave me the name of a counselor who could tell me something about it. It wasn’t that I started out to be one. It just happened.”

  “Sounds like what I do,” Greg said, in the same quiet tone as before. “It just kind of happened.”

  “So what got you into forensics?” I asked.

  Oddly enough, he smiled a little, as if I’d said something funny. “Oh, I’ve always been interested in stuff like that,” he said. “You know, true crime. I read a lot of books, watched a lot of movies. Looked glamorous the way they show it on the screen. In real life, though, it’s boring. Lots of waiting around for results. Lots of painstaking tests. And not nearly as many pretty girls hanging around the crime scenes as you’d think.”

  That was almost certainly true. Most detectives I’d ever worked with, male or female, were grim, tired, and not exactly model material. “Still. With all the glamorous forensics dramas on TV, I imagine it helps you out with meeting people.”

  This time, he laughed outright, and it had a funny, tinfoil edge to it. “Oh yeah,” he said. “It helps. The problem is, they never hang around. I mean, I’m really just a glorified lab monkey. They’re looking for some kind of super secret agent with cool toys.” He shifted in his seat and turned his head to look at me. I waited for him to say something—anything—but he just stared for so long that I began to feel a little uncomfortable.

  Then Greg said, “Hey, check the alley on your side.”

  I whipped my head around so fast I nearly pulled a muscle. Beside the bodega was a standard industrial-type alley, wide enough to drive a garbage truck through, with room for big rusted Dumpsters. I caught sight of a shadow ducking between the containers. “Homeless, maybe?” I said. My throat had gone suddenly dry, and I took another pull from my water bottle to combat it. “Did you get a good look?”

  “Not really. Could be a vagrant, a mugger … could be our killer checking out the area.” Greg reached down for the flashlight. I reached out and put my hand over his, and he quickly pulled back.

  “I think we should wait,” I said. “Either way, it’s not safe going in there after him. Chances are it’s nobody we need to worry about, right?”

  “Right,” he said. “Sorry if I freaked you out.”

  “You didn’t,” I said, but it was a lie. I’d felt goose bumps shiver all over me, just for a moment, but now rational thought was coming back. The only real danger we were facing at the moment was a dire lack of snack food and a growing bladder problem. The bodega was open all night, and I’d seen a few people come and go; they’d probably let us use the restroom if it was an emergency. Greg had some kind of credentials as a law enforcement officer, anyway. Surely that counted toward bathroom privileges.

  Greg seemed content to let the silence lie. He turned on the car radio to an oldies station, and for the rest of the long night, we found neutral, pleasant things to chat about while taking turns visiting the bodega’s narrow, not-terribly-sanity facilities.

  * * *

  We passed the night without incident. The sun came up, and the vacant lot we’d staked out still looked empty. No sign of a body.

  Greg got out and walked the lot, just in case, but came back with a discouraged look on his face. “Nothing,” he said as he started the car. “He’s hit somewhere else, or he took the night off. Sorry, Holly, I guess this one’s a bust. Time for bed.”

  I caught myself yawning. Even though I’d dozed a bit while Greg kept watch, I felt achy and light-he
aded from the lack of real sleep and unpleasantly buzzed from all the coffees. “I can’t sleep,” I mumbled, and yawned again, popping my jaw in the process. “Got to shower and go to work.”

  “You’re kidding. You’ll be dead on your feet.”

  “Aren’t you going in?”

  “Not me,” Greg said. “I have the day off. If you’re smart, you’ll call in sick. C’mon, is the world really gonna stop turning if you don’t turn in some spreadsheet nobody really reads?”

  I almost laughed; he was quoting me almost verbatim about my own day job. And he had a point, really. I was so exhausted that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t fall asleep on my keyboard, even if I could make it in to the office. Maybe calling in a sick day wasn’t a bad idea after all.

  “Huh,” Greg said. “I guess your boyfriend’s home.”

  I opened my eyes—when had I closed them?—and saw that I’d dropped off again during the ride; he’d pulled the sedan up in the driveway of my house, and Andy stood on the porch, arms folded. He looked tense and a little bit dangerous, and I realized that unlike his note to me, I’d totally forgotten to write a note for him. It had never occurred to me that I might not be back first.

  “He doesn’t look happy,” Greg said.

  “He’s not,” I said. I gathered up my empty snack bag and water bottles, and opened the door. “Thanks, Greg. I appreciate you giving your time to do this even if it didn’t work out.”

  “I’m in forensics,” he said. “We’re used to null results. The ones where you actually find the killer—those are pretty rare. Well, anyway, I’m happy to have gotten to know you a little. Hope to see you again, sometime.”

  I nodded and watched him back up and drive away. He didn’t look nearly as tired as I felt.

  Andy did. He stayed where he was, standing on the porch with his arms folded, as I walked up the steps toward him. “Friend of yours?”

  “His name’s Greg,” I said. “He’s a forensic tech. Prieto arranged for us to cover one of the dump sites last night, just in case the killer was following the same pattern.”

  “Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “You’d be right about that since nothing happened.” I covered a yawn. “I’m sorry, honey. I should have told you, but I forgot, then you were gone. Did you find out anything?”

  “Not as much as I’d hoped,” he said. He opened the door for me and stepped aside to let me go first—unconscious chivalry, something ingrained in him so deeply, I doubted he even knew he was doing it. “It wasn’t safe for you to be out there on your own.”

  “Wasn’t safe for me? Andy, you didn’t even tell me where you’d gone! And you know I don’t like it when we’re apart.”

  He locked the door behind us. “Don’t you even tell me to be careful. I fought a zombie war, in case you forget. I’m not made from spun sugar.”

  “It’s not that,” I said softly. “But what if—what if the longer we’re apart, the thinner the connection between us? I can’t help but think that it’s dangerous for you to be out there without me. Not physically dangerous. Magically dangerous.”

  He was already shaking his head. “You need to stop worrying.”

  “I know, but I just don’t understand how you’re still here. Still … alive. It defies all the laws of magic I understand, and it scares me that you could just be … gone one of these days.”

  That made him look at me, and some of the tension eased out of his face. He reached out and took me in his arms—not holding me close, just … holding. “Sweetness,” he said softly, “I thought you’d guessed by now that there’s only one person in this life who can undo what brought me back. You.”

  “Me?”

  “You stop loving me, and that connection will spin right out of my control,” he said. “The dark will have me. It’s always there, waiting, but you keep me here. The minute you don’t want me, the minute you turn your back on me, that’s the minute I start to die again.” He sounded casual, but there was something serious about the expression in his face, the tightness around his eyes and mouth.

  He was afraid of that, at least a little.

  “Never happen,” I said. I felt crazily better, and this time, I almost laughed. “Never, ever, ever happen, Andrew. Thank God. If that’s all we have to worry about, we’ve got nothing at all to worry about.”

  He kissed my fingers, and that was the end of that, at least from my perspective. My heart felt warm and peaceful, but when I looked over, I saw that he still had that drawn, tight expression. What he’d just said had eased my mind, but it hadn’t eased his. I didn’t know why, or how to fix it. Sometimes, there were black chasms of misunderstandings between us; we came from different eras, different beliefs, different lives. And I wondered if, way down, he might not believe that I really did love him, all evidence to the contrary.

  “I think I’m going to call in sick,” I told him, and that got a smile, a slow and very wicked one.

  “Works better if somebody calls in for you,” he said. “Being all concerned. Which I am.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a—”

  It was too late. Andy picked up the phone and dialed; he knew my work number by heart. Ten seconds later, he must have gotten an answer. “Yes, ma’am, I’m calling for Holly Anne Caldwell … no, I know she’s not there, ma’am, she’s here with me. Yes, she’s sick. Got some terrible fever. I’m putting her to bed right away. I figure it’s contagious, too, she’s coming out in red spots. May need a doctor. Me? I’m her minister. Reverend Toland.” He fended off my attempts to get the phone away from him; when he was really trying, butter wouldn’t melt in Andy Toland’s mouth, and he sounded utterly convincing. “Yes ma’am, thank you, I’ll let her know. Hope she’s better tomorrow. Thanks.”

  He hung up and spread his hands in a gesture that made me smack him on the arm. “Seriously! They’re going to send me a fruit basket now! You couldn’t just tell them I had a cold?”

  “Had to make sure they let you off, didn’t I? Now, you need to do what I said. Go right on to bed.”

  I was still caught between outrage and delight, and delight finally won. “All right,” I said. “You want to come with me?”

  He gave me a crooked smile, and said, “Ma’am, I am a minister, you heard me say it on the phone. I minister to your needs just as often as I can, but I promise, not today. You crawl in and sleep, and I’m going to go talk to those two resurrection witches you said weren’t telling you the truth.”

  That drove away the cobwebs for a moment. “Andy—”

  He kissed me—sweet and light and undemanding, this time. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll get you up for lunch. Then we’ll see what we do about making up for lost time between the two of us.”

  He was right, I did need the rest; I was asleep practically from the moment my head hit the pillow.

  * * *

  When lunchtime came, I woke up to Andy’s kissing me awake, and the delicious warmth of that gave way to a rumble of real hunger as he stepped back and put a bed tray over my lap. “There,” he said. “Grilled ham and cheese sandwich, just like we used to make it back in Amarillo, when the streets were paved with cow chips. Only difference is I used presliced bread instead of having to hack it off the loaf.”

  He plunked himself down on the other side of the bed as I dug into the meal; when Andy cooked, it was always with a down-home enthusiasm that denied the existence of cholesterol, and damn, it was great. I tried not to think about the calories, which was actually a lot easier than normal since I’d skipped two meals in a row.

  “Did you eat?” I asked after I’d swallowed the last delicious, buttery piece of the sandwich. He picked up the remote control and flipped on the television mounted on the wall across from the bed.

  “Yep,” he said. “Ate, cleaned up the kitchen, waited until I was sure you’d had at least six full hours. How you feeling?”

  “Great,” I said. “You’re not seriously going to watch TV now.”

  He’d tuned it to
a show that featured drunk people wandering around screaming at each other. Reality television. “Can’t help it,” he said. “Don’t really want to watch it, but I still do. Don’t seem right, people putting their personal business out like this, for everybody to gawk over. In—” He caught himself, and grinned. “I was about to say in my day, but that’d make me feel about two hundred years older than I actually am in body. But in my day, folks kept their private lives private.”

  “I guess it’s a different way of looking at things,” I said. “Maybe as connected as everybody is now, there’s no way to keep your business all that private anymore. And not as much need.”

  He put the remote aside, moved the remains of the lunch tray, and kissed the side of my neck. It felt warm, comfortable, and seductive at the same time. “I have no mind to share any of you with an audience, Holly Anne. I want to keep you all to myself.”

  I knew that we ought to be talking about the case, or about what we were going to do to find the killer, but as his arm went around my shoulders, as I curled into his warm body, I felt no real desire to spoil this. We need this, I thought. We need this time.

  Because there would never be enough time. I knew that. All lovers faced a ticking clock, but ours was loud, and close, and inevitable, and we both knew it. Andy was strong, but his strength couldn’t hold, it couldn’t.

  “Hey,” he said, and tilted my chin up to meet my eyes. He had deep, richly brown eyes, full of secrets. Full of warmth, too. “You’re thinking too dark, you know that? Leave it out there.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I keep thinking about those girls. We failed last night. We didn’t get him. You really didn’t find anything, either?”

  “We really going to talk about this now?”

  I nodded silently, and he sighed and settled back against the pillows, staring at the flickering TV screen again. “I had some knowledge of someone who’d hired an avatar witch. Not through the network.”