The headache just starting in my temples pulsed harder. “We should talk to someone at his company.”
“I’ve been working on setting that up, but it’s a long shot, since it was rented under the table. The Magister probably never even knew about it. But it can’t hurt to try to get his records.”
Great. Yet another thing he hadn’t deigned to mention.
And getting the Magister’s business records? Fat chance.
“So how was she changed? Witchcraft?”
“That’s what we figure.”
“To pull something like that off…I mean, that’s complex magic, Costa.”
He pushed up from the bed and stalked across the room to the small mini-fridge in the corner. “I know.” He grabbed a paper sack from the top of the fridge and tossed the bag, revealing a small bottle of whiskey. Quirking his eyebrow, he held it up. An offer.
I shook my head and he shrugged. Grabbing a plastic hotel-provided cup, he said, “It either has to be a Covenant witch behind this, or one of the stronger underground anti-Covenant groups.” He poured a couple of shots into the plastic cup, sans ice. “At this point, I’m not sure which would be worse.” He downed the whiskey in one quick motion.
My stomach dropped. A witch strong enough, clever enough, to twist an otherworlder’s powers. Not only strong enough, but willing to do so for money. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe such a person.
“Right now, we’re operating under the official assumption that this is the work of an underground group, perhaps led by an excommunicated Covenant member.
It’s more likely than an individual. A coven of witches with enough power to pull this off isn’t a stretch.” I nodded. “And if they were led by a person with Covenant training…”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t even know that they excommunicated members. I mean, I’d heard that they don’t always accept every Covenant family member, but not about that.”
“It’s rare.” He poured another double shot and grimaced. “They may not allow a Covenant family member to join for a few reasons; the most common, as you probably know, is a lack of power. They blame it on diluted bloodlines, but it happens in the pure families as well. Genetics always tosses one out there with a weak magical capacity. But excommunication is different.” He tossed back the shots and let out a small cough. “They excommunicate for crimes against the Covenant, ones that aren’t severe enough for execution.” I raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
He twisted the lid back onto the whiskey bottle and set it on the fridge. “I don’t know, really. I could hazard some guesses, though. Stealing, putting the Covenant in a bad public light for not following their rules. They’re very twitchy about outsiders getting into their business, so I don’t know for sure.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’ve known this all along and you didn’t share it with me. What happened to giving me all the case information, Costa?”
“I did it for your own good. You were already under enough pressure with Elaine.” He glanced wistfully at the bottle on top of the fridge.
“Another fucking lie. You didn’t tell me because you didn’t trust me. You proved that when you accused me of going after the head of security. What the hell do you have against succubi?”
His eyes seemed darker than normal, and it was almost as if the whites of his eyes had disappeared. I tried to clear my vision. His eyes were normal again. A trick of the light? No. That was what Natalie had meant by their eyes taking the characteristics of true salamanders. I stared back, unflinching.
“It’s personal.” He looked at the floor, and his jaw muscle clenched. “Let’s just say I don’t place a lot of trust in succubi.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds before turning his gaze back to me. “I won’t lie to you again.” My stomach wound itself into a tight knot. He either told me the truth or he didn’t. Forcing him to tell me everything he knew wasn’t something I could do, and badgering him the whole night for his life story was hardly a productive way to spend my time. For whatever reason, he didn’t trust succubi. I’d bet my salary that one had broken his heart way back when, and apparently the man couldn’t let it go. “Is that everything you know?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better not be lying to me.” I got up from the chair. “You know, there is at least one very powerful Covenant member in town this week. Viktor Koslov.”
“The council member?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Something to check out, maybe—very quietly. But I don’t see a council member being involved in a crime like this.”
I brushed a chunk of hair from my eyes. “Why not?”
“Well, for one, they tend to be from old, very wealthy families. That would remove the money motivation, and I’m not sure why else someone would be selling succubi.
Killing, sure, if they hated the species or women in general.
But selling them?” He shrugged.
I frowned. “I can’t really think of another motive offhand, either, but I don’t think we can write him off.” He nodded and reached into a laptop bag that was propped at the edge of the bed. “Here.” He gave me a stack of folders as thick as my fist. “Copies of our full files.” I reached out and grasped the folders, but he didn’t release them. I met his hard gaze and blinked.
“We will find her, Marisol.”
I took a deep breath and tried to clear my thoughts.
“Okay. So where is Wendy?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Pardon?”
“We sent a sample of her DNA, in addition to some personal objects, back to my partner.” My mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t aware psychometrists could do that. I thought they just got images, pictures from objects. Most generally unrelated to crimes. Well, I’ve heard of them getting crime-related images off murder weapons and such, but not random items.”
“That’s true, but my partner has better luck getting useful information from objects than your average psychometrist. She saw Wendy’s death from her hair sample. The other objects only gave her old memories, unrelated.”
I took a step toward him. “Did she get a look at the killer?”
“Not really. She got a flash of an arm, some sort of sleeve tattoo, but she couldn’t see any details. Wendy was… Well, she’d already been beaten pretty severely at the point where the vision started.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat and kept my eyes on his chest. “Tell me everything she saw.”
“Beatrice could barely see through her eyes; everything was blurred. Not just the normal blurring because of the psychometry, but—”
“Yeah, I get it.” Her eyes were probably swollen, maybe injured.
“There were two men in the room, Beatrice is certain of that much. One with the tattoos down his arm, and the other she never saw. But while the tattooed man held Wendy, the other man did something to her neck. It was painful, Bea said. And she thinks that’s what killed her.” He reached out and pushed my hair behind my shoulder.
Then, letting his arm fall slowly, slid his hand from my shoulder to my elbow.
“A vampire? Could it have been a vampire at her neck?”
“She couldn’t be sure. But yes, that’s possible.”
“We need to find Wendy’s body.”
The unbearable silence of my empty townhouse threatened to suffocate me, so I spread Costa’s files across my kitchen table as soon as I got home and started to go through them. I grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and a couple of pieces of toast and called it dinner, eating and drinking while I read the files. But the words on the pages only seemed to confirm what Costa had told me.
The OWEA knew exactly jack about these kidnappings.
Oh, they’d managed to track down other possible victims—succubi from Los Angeles to New York to Denver, one in Anchorage, even—but they seemed to have almost nothing else to go on. The women disappeared from their homes, their jobs, their schools. Most were young—under thirty. Th
at made sense. Top dollar would be paid for the young ones.
I massaged my neck and tried to think. The asshole selling the succubi was smart. He seemed to leave no trail.
And he was getting braver. For the last two years he’d been taking women, but no more than one per month. The last three—including one in Anchorage, one in Phoenix, one in Chicago—had been taken within three weeks of each other. Had he streamlined his process to change them? If so, he might plan on selling Elaine and moving her out of the city faster.
I looked through the city list again, memorizing it.
Memorizing the girls’ names.
I filled my glass with ginger ale, deciding I might as well give myself a fighting chance at some sleep. A brief worry flitted into my mind while I watched the bubbles fizz over the ice. I was a succubus, too. But no. I was too old. And I was a cop. No way would they be stupid enough to come for me. And whoever was behind this wasn’t an idiot.
It almost had to be a witch. Nothing else could hope to bend powers like that. Hell, if Costa didn’t have the succubus they’d rescued, I would have said it was impossible even for a witch. I tried to wrap my mind around a power twisting like that, and I wondered if they only warped the conscious part of the succubus powers, or if they warped the unconscious part, too.
I spun around slowly in my chair and tried to imagine a nonsuccubus with succubus powers, ignoring the sidelong look one of the uniforms gave me. One chuckled, and I resisted the urge to make a rude gesture toward him the next time I spun his direction.
I’d almost never tapped into my conscious powers—
the ability to pull energy from others and thrall. In fact, I’d never taken power from someone before. The risk was too great, and it connected the succubus to the person she took the power from. That was risky in all but the most solid relationships. I’d played a bit with thralling when I was younger, but my attempts were meager. Succubi who didn’t pull power from a mate didn’t have much juice.
I stopped turning in my chair long enough to take a quick sip of ginger ale, then resumed my slow spin.
But what about my unconscious powers? Those I used on an almost daily basis—mostly to get information from suspects. But they also impacted every situation I ran across that involved other people. I couldn’t be separated from the aura that differentiated me from the average sexy woman, giving me that touch of other. It was built into me, into my very DNA.
Could the witch actually be messing with that part of the succubus power as well?
I stopped spinning, an abrupt wave of nausea washing over me. Even the idea of taking the powers of another person was sickening. Might as well take their skin and wear it like some sort of creepy serial killer. Only not as obvious, and infinitely more difficult to trace.
How could such a witch be tracked down? The Covenant wouldn’t give us any information about members without an ironclad warrant, and no way would a judge give us one that would encompass the entire organization’s roster. Chances were the witch wasn’t Covenant, anyway. They monitored their members too closely.
I swallowed the last of my ginger ale and tossed the can into the trash bin next to my desk.
A group of witches made sense. They would have more power than a single witch, and if they were led by some sort of twisted magical genius...
I frowned. Grabbing my bag, a feeling of dread and dismay overwhelmed me. Was it possible? I took out the single file remaining in my bag. Astrid’s case.
An otherworlder had been burned by either a witch or a salamander or a firebird—but most likely a group of witches. How likely was it that more than one powerful witch, or group of them, was running around Chicago?
Could the cases be connected?
Costa looked little worse for wear the next morning, and in fact, appeared annoyingly well rested. He sat across from me in the booth of my favorite breakfast place and flashed me a hesitant smile before nodding at the waitress when she asked if he wanted coffee.
“My, aren’t we perky,” I muttered bitterly.
That got me a real smile, which I promptly glared at.
“Not much rest, huh?”
I shrugged and he nodded. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have expected you to.”
The waitress delivered my hot water and an array of teas, along with Costa’s coffee.
“What can I get y’all?” she asked.
“Fruit and yogurt. Oatmeal,” I said.
“Give me your ham and cheese omelet.” Costa gave the waitress his menu and took a sip of his coffee.
“So,” I said, plopping an Earl Grey tea bag into the hot water. “I have a theory.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows rose.
I pulled my tea bag in and out of the hot water. “Well, not exactly a theory; let’s call it a loose idea.” He snorted. “Okay, what is it?”
“Astrid and I have a case—well, it’s really her and Claude’s case, but he’s out of town so I’ve been helping her.” How to explain it? The theory had sounded so reasonable to my muddled brain the night before, and it still made sense. But getting it out in a way that didn’t sound nuts was difficult. “Remains have been found, but they’re so badly burned they required Astrid’s skill as a sensitive to even be able to identify them as otherworlder.
The person who was burning them seems to have done a marvelous job. If they hadn’t been interrupted, the body probably wouldn’t have been identifiable as human within a few more minutes.”
His grip tightened around his coffee cup ever so slightly. “Yes, I remember the case. And?”
“And after consulting a witch, we’ve narrowed down the species that could do that sort of thing—there aren’t many.”
I took a sip of my tea and watched him over the rim.
He was tense, almost imperceptibly, but it was there. Were there other things he wasn’t telling me? Did this fit some theory he already had, some evidence he’d already found?
“We’ve narrowed it down to a very powerful witch, a salamander, or a group of less-powerful witches. A firebird or shaman is also a possibility, but they’re a little less likely. The scene was too neat for a firebird, and our witch source thinks that a shaman probably wouldn’t be strong enough.”
His jaw clenched tightly but he kept his expression only vaguely interested.
I watched him closely. “A powerful witch is unlikely, and salamanders aren’t uncommon. She thinks it’s likely a group of witches. Maybe the same group that’s kidnapping these succubi.”
A hint of amusement touched his features. “Your witch hasn’t met that many shamans, apparently.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve met a few through cases I’ve worked on. They can be pretty damn powerful. But no Covenant witch is going to want to admit how powerful they can be. It’s a matter of pride.” He rubbed his face. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how the cases could be related. Just because the same group or person might— might—be capable of both crimes doesn’t connect them. It’s a huge reach.” We fell into silence for a few minutes. He ignored my glares, and I tried to think through my theory. It fit. Sure, it wasn’t ironclad, but that didn’t mean we shouldn’t explore it. Finally, the waitress broke our standoff as she delivered his omelet and my healthier meal.
I tried to drop the subject, but it pressed against my mind, my tongue. And Costa seemed to be enjoying his omelet far too much for how angry I was. “What do you mean, that’s a huge reach?” I hissed. “When the list of potential suspects is so small, and both crimes are happening in my city at the same time, that’s a good reason to think they might be connected.” I scooped up a bite of fruit and glared. Granted, there was only a small chance that the crimes were connected, but even a small chance was too enticing to ignore when we had so few leads. Besides, that didn’t make the theory a huge reach.
A stretch, sure. But he was making it sound like I was grasping at straws.
“I mean that it’s a reach. Sorry, Marisol, but it is.” He took a sip of his
coffee and then looked down at his omelet.
I didn’t reply, and instead ate my oatmeal on autopilot while trying to think. This wasn’t a silly lead—and if it was a reach, it wasn’t an outlandish one. Heck, we didn’t have any other great leads to follow.
“You don’t want to follow up on this because you really don’t see a possible connection, or because it might get one of your buddies in trouble?” I asked. I knew Costa couldn’t be directly involved, the dates just didn’t line up.
He wasn’t in Chicago in time to have burned our victim in the alley.
He let out a short laugh. “Yes, because all salamanders know each other. Just like you know all the other succubi.” I waved my hand. “Point taken. Okay, if you don’t think there’s a connection, maybe you could still help me out.”
“Do tell.”
“How difficult would this be for a salamander?
Burning a body—bones and teeth and all—in a couple of hours.”
He leaned back in the booth and sipped his coffee.
“Not easy. I’m not sure I could do it, and I’m no slouch in the fire production department,” he said, voice matter of fact. No arrogance touched his tone. Interesting.
“Salamanders are like most oh-dubs. They vary in power and ability. Me, for example…”
“What about you?”
“I’m pretty strong in the fire creation area—probably ninety-fifth percentile, if one measured such things. But I have very low resistance to fire.”
I raised an eyebrow at that and took a sip of my tea.
“Oh, I’m not saying I’m quite as susceptible as a human, but I’m pretty weak compared to other salamanders.” He leaned forward and stared at me with his dark and intense gaze. “If you light me on fire…”
My breath caught in my throat. Realizing I was leaning toward him, I grimaced and moved back. “So you burn.”
“Yes, which is depressing for someone so good at making fire.” Amusement traced his expression and I barely refrained from rolling my eyes at him like Elaine had done to me so much lately.
“Sorry that your pyromaniacism is so limited.” The mock sadness that touched his expression made me grin. I finished my breakfast and drank the rest of my tea.
Succubus Lost (Files from the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency, #2) Page 6
