Stray Magic

by Kelly Meding

  “Okay.” I was following her so far, waiting for the punch line.

  “Well, two months later the cemetery received a court order to exhume the body of the eldest and perform an autopsy. It was carried out before the Homme Alpha could intervene, and the autopsy report disappeared. There’s no official indication of what it might have said.”

  “Who got the court order?” Jaxon asked.

  “Raymond Anderson,” Mom said.

  Jaxon and I shared a brief look, the same question in both of our frowns. A werewolf had willingly gone against Pack law in order to find out why his child died. He didn’t believe the carbon monoxide had killed him or her. Something else had potentially caused the death.

  “Well, that adds a new wrinkle to matters,” I said.

  “To a werewolf, Pack law overrides human law,” Tennyson added from the rear. “Raymond Anderson had a very important reason for ordering the autopsy.”

  I didn’t bother telling the vampire I already knew that, instead replying, “He doesn’t believe his children’s deaths were accidental.”

  “Quite likely.”

  “Mom,” I said, “find out everything you can about the Andersons. Any enemies they might have, threats against them, even unpaid parking tickets.”

  “On it, sweetheart,” she replied.

  “If the Pack believed the deaths to be foul play,” Tennyson said, “it’s likely an internal investigation was launched. You should contact the Homme Alpha again.”

  Jaxon snorted. “Yeah, he wasn’t too crazy about talking to us the first time. No way he’ll offer up confidential information about a murder investigation that may or may not exist.”

  “True, but there’s no rule that says we can’t talk to the detectives involved,” I said.

  “Who were probably paid well by the Alpha for their silence.”

  “Maybe, but it’s a lead.” I glared sideways at Jaxon. “Mom, can you—”

  “I’ll put together everything I can and then make a few calls on your behalf,” Mom replied, all business. On my behalf? What was she now, my secretary? “How do I send things from the computer to your phone?”

  I explained the proper commands and heard a pencil scratching across paper as she wrote them down. We were nearing our exit by the time I got her off the phone. The new information tumbled around my head while Jaxon navigated into Bowie, which has one of the strangest residential layouts I’ve ever seen. Each section is lettered, and all street names begin with that letter. We were headed toward P.

  An inquiry to Caine’s office told us he’d taken a half day in order to watch his son’s school play in the afternoon. A call to the school put the play ending with the regular school day, so after Caine did the prerequisite, divorced parent “take my son out for ice cream before handing him back over to his mother for dinner” pattern, he’d head home. If he wasn’t home already.

  Cars were slowly filling driveways of older ranch homes and a few newer prefabs. Most of the houses here were at least fifty years old, and many hadn’t seemed too modernize on the exterior yet. Old aluminum siding, pale colors, even a few flamingos on lawns. It was an amusing mix of eclectic and retro.

  Caine’s house was a brown bungalow tucked between several large oak trees. The driveway was cracking, each line choked with dandelions and grass, his wild lawn barely kept in check with a waist-high linked fence. An oversized Ford pickup truck was parked in the driveway and lights blazed behind curtained windows.

  Jaxon parked on the road, purposely blocking the driveway. The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving the sky burning with golds and reds, without direct sunlight. It was safe to let Tennyson out of the car, but . . .

  “Maybe you should wait here,” I said, leaning over the seat to face him.

  The vampire cocked his head, his face impassive. “Am I intimidating?”

  I swallowed laughter. “No, but you really do scream vampire, with the hair and the pale skin. He may not invite you in.” And by “you” I meant “us,” and he knew it.

  “A wise assessment. I shall remain here.”

  “Thank you.”

  I stretched as I got out, exercising muscles that had atrophied during the two-hour drive. I still felt achy all over, like I was stuck with the remnants of a pesky flu. And that blessed tether to Tennyson followed me everywhere, in my peripheral vision like watery yarn, there then gone again when I tried to look directly at it. Good thing I wasn’t going far.

  I did, however, wish I’d worn different clothes. Even with my black suit jacket on, my jeans and t-shirt were a little casual for a business call. At least Jaxon had on his customary khakis and a dark green polo that set off his blond hair nicely. Made his eyes a little less hazel, more blue. I always loved them like that.

  Gah! I was so not doing that. No warm fuzzies for Jaxon.

  He pulled the screen door so I could knock.

  Note: when searching for a suspect, it’s generally a bad sign when a door that should be secured falls open after slight pressure from your knuckles.

  Our guns were out and pointed to the ground, and I stepped inside first. Slowly. A very short foyer led into an open living area, decorated in Divorce Chic—worn leather sofa, mismatched tables and lamps, takeout boxes and beer bottles decorating all available surfaces. No immediately weird smells. The house was completely silent, save the gentle swishing of our clothes as we split up. Jaxon darted left, toward a kitchen and dining room area.

  I picked the hallway to the right. The first door was a bathroom—empty and a bit ripe. The next door was shut, its painted surface covered in artwork produced by a well-meaning child and taped up by a loving parent. I bypassed it for now and scooted to the open door at the end of the hall, each step as silent as I could manage.

  The vaguest scent of urine and waste stung my nose. Not a good sign. I peeked around the door frame, into the dimly lit room, annoyed that Mr. Caine hadn’t opened his curtains to allow more light.

  At first, I didn’t see him. All I saw was the queen-size bed in the center of the room and what looked like a white canopy—which was stupid. Adult men didn’t string gauzy canopies over their beds. Especially a canopy speckled with dozens of dime-sized black dots.

  My guts twisted, and I nearly dropped my gun. Not dots and not a canopy.

  James Caine was dead. It was obvious when I finally noticed his body curled on the center of the bed. He’d hugged his knees close to his chest and died in the fetal position. His skin had turned a greenish color and was pocked with more bites than I could count. He’d been dead long enough for his bowels to empty.

  Someone was tying up their loose ends.

  With fucking spiders.

  The spiders began moving all at once, as though suddenly aware of a fresh meal nearby. They skittered down their long, intricate threads. My hand throbbed, and I backpedaled right into Jaxon.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Go. Now!” I shoved him back down the hall.

  He stopped short at the front door, and I slammed into him for the second time in half a minute. Two garish, fuzzy-legged spiders the size of a half-dollar were racing back and forth across the front door, weaving a web over its surface. Trapping us. They didn’t attack, just kept at their task.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” I said.

  “Shiloh, get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving you in here.” Sure, I could get through the walls of Caine’s house and avoid more spider bites, but no way in the real, true Hell was I leaving Jaxon inside.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing his wrist and yanking him back the other way. The opposite side of the living room had glass patio doors that appeared to be spider-free. Halfway there, though, a cloud of spiders no larger than honey bees scurried out of the air vent above the patio doors. They swarmed over the glass, leaving trails of milky white string as they went.

  The spiders currently doing their best to block our exits hadn’t attacked directly, but I had no doubt it wa
s coming. Memories of my own bite, of the agony and white fire that had raced up my arm, soured my stomach and left me short of breath.

  Shiloh, you are distressed, Tennyson said.

  I was actually glad to hear his voice in my head, oddly less migraine-inducing than usual. Maybe the wish tether had a few perks, after all. There are spiders in here, and they’re blocking the doors.

  You require an exit.

  Yeah, preferably not facing the street.

  “From the look on your face,” Jaxon said, “is it a fair guess your vampire is coming to our rescue?”

  “Don’t sound so happy about it. Unless you want to be spider food . . .”

  Also: why did everyone keep calling him my vampire?

  Jaxon and I retreated to the center of the living room, back-to-back. The spider army had sent small platoons to each of the windows, as well, and their engineers were busy constructing measures to keep us contained. They still didn’t seem interested in biting, which was hopefully giving Tennyson time to do whatever he was about to do. I’d never had a full-blown panic attack before, but standing in that small house, with every available exit being sealed shut by magically controlled spiders—spiders that had nearly killed me once this week, thank you—the panic was building. My insides felt like mush, my palms were sweating so hard I had trouble keeping a grip on my gun, and I had a very real urge to pee.

  My bitten hand was also throbbing, as though being close to those spiders and their magic was enough to cause me pain again. And their weaving was drastically reducing the amount of light in the house, as the sun had set and we hadn’t flipped on any lamps. I did not want to be trapped in the dark with these things. I also couldn’t bring myself to move.

  “What’s taking him so—” Jaxon started, only to be cut off by a crackling thud against the dining room wall.

  The light fixture tinkled and swayed, and the thud repeated itself. A long, jagged crack appeared in the center of the drywall, and then a third thud sent it exploding toward us in a spray of gray powder, paint chips, and stud splinters. Tennyson burst through with a tire iron in his hands, his dark clothes smothered in debris bits.

  I gaped.

  Jaxon didn’t hesitate, though, grabbing my hand and hauling me into the dining room. Spiders were already scuttling toward the new hole, moving like cockroaches on the scent of food. We burst through the jagged exit and into the cool evening and Caine’s freakishly overgrown backyard. I didn’t have the wits to comment on his need to own a lawn mower. It took everything I had to run around the side of the house, back toward our parked Element.

  The spiders didn’t follow us past the house itself. A cloud of them came over the roof and stopped above the rain gutters. They looked like an oil stain on the old shingles—a venomous, sentient oil stain.

  Once we were safely back inside the car, I sucked in several long, deep breaths to calm my racing heart.

  “Were either of you bitten?” Tennyson asked from the backseat.

  “Not me,” Jaxon said. He was so pale I thought he’d pass out at any moment.

  “No.” I loosened my death grip on my gun and carefully slid it back into its holster. “No, I’m fine.”

  “That was the freakiest . . .” Jaxon trailed off as he lost the words to describe the experience. He didn’t need to, though. I’d shared his terror, and I was certain Tennyson sensed mine.

  “Someone knew we were coming,” I said, trying not to look at the mass of arachnids on the roof of Caine’s house. “Police reports on Fowler’s death would have mentioned a house full of cobwebs and spiders, but it said one bite.”

  “No one but us knew we were coming here,” Jaxon said. “We three at least have been in each others’ sight since we found out about Fowler. Julius is boxed up and in sleep mode.”

  I swallowed, desperate for some moisture in my mouth, and fished out my phone. I hated having doubts about my team members, so I had to put a kibosh on this right now.

  Novak picked up on the second ring. “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “In a helicopter somewhere over Pennsylvania, why?”

  “Kathleen’s with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has she been with you since you left the house?”

  “Yeah . . .” He drew that one out slowly, his way of asking what the hell I was getting at.

  “Just checking.”

  “You’re checking for a blessed reason, Shiloh, what’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you later, just be careful.” He snorted and hung up. I shifted in my seat to more directly face Jaxon as he navigated us away from the house. “Okay, let’s think about this. Fowler and Caine died within hours of each other, so how did this spider wrangler know we’d end up at Caine’s house first?”

  It was the question of the night. Even if I believed one of us was a traitor, we hadn’t been apart long enough to pass such information along to the head honcho.

  “It is possible he or she used the process of elimination,” Tennyson said. “He or she sent the spiders after Fowler first, knew he would be found first, and waited for us to investigate the one not reported dead.”

  “Maybe,” Jaxon said. “That’s also assuming this big bad knows who we’re researching, and that we were even looking for Caine and Fowler.”

  “Which no one else can know,” I said. “K.I.M.’s protected from any sort of outside network hacks and . . .”

  My entire body went cold, and all thought processes seemed to shut down. Except for the name blaring in my head like a neon sign. It was impossible. I was wrong and my suspicions were completely off base, but I had to entertain it. We had so few options right now, I’d rather have a theory shot down than never discussed.

  He had access to K.I.M. and her records on our searches. He’d been kept informed of our investigation. He knew Tennyson was working with us.

  “Shiloh, what is it?” Tennyson asked. He touched my forearm, and his palm was actually warmer than my own skin.

  “Weller,” I said. “Marshal Adam Weller knew.”

  The Element swerved sharply. Jaxon gripped the wheel so hard the leather covering creaked. “That’s a huge leap, Shi,” he said.

  “Is it? He’s on the phone sheet. He was the last person Julius spoke to the day he disappeared. He knows every move we’re making, everything we are researching on K.I.M.’s system. He has resources and access and knowledge.”

  “Motivation?”

  “How should I know?”

  It was Tennyson who answered: “An army of vampires under one’s control makes your jobs as Para-Marshals much simpler. No other agency in the world, shadow or otherwise, could challenge you.”

  I twisted around in my seat to stare at him and saw only sincerity in his eyes. He wasn’t being sarcastic or flip. He was dead—no pun intended—serious. “That is absolutely . . .” I wanted to say insane.

  “Brilliant,” Jaxon said. “Really brilliant, actually, and also kind of nuts.”

  “Yeah, if we’re right. But it doesn’t explain the werewolves.” They were still the wild card in all of this. I understood the uses of a necromancer-controlled vampire Master. I couldn’t fathom the usefulness of infertile, mated pairs of—

  Wait a minute.

  “What are you thinking, Shiloh?” Tennyson asked.

  “I’m thinking about the Andersons, the only werewolves taken who had children.”

  “Their children died.”

  “Yeah, but the dad didn’t seem to buy the carbon monoxide thing. Why else go against Pack law and order your kid’s body exhumed and autopsied?” I followed this train of thought to its logical conclusion. “Could those children have been murdered?”

  “Possibly, but for what purpose?”

  “I don’t know, but it really makes me want to talk to the people involved in the investigation. I can’t imagine going to the Homme Alpha with our questions will do any good.”

  “Especially if he’s involved in covering
up the murders,” Jaxon said.

  “He could also be investigating it privately within the Pack.”

  “Your theories hinge upon circumstances that lack proof,” Tennyson said.

  I scowled. “Yeah, well, we’re working on the proof part.” I started dialing the HQ phone, then stopped. “Crap. We can’t use the Raspberries anymore, not if Weller is involved.” My phone, of course, chose that moment to ring. It was from the house. “Mom?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Shi, are you all right?”

  I had to get my voice under control a little better. “Yeah, I’m fine.” How to tell her what was potentially happening without announcing it for anyone who was spying on us to hear? “I’m glad you called. Do you remember the story you told me about your djinn sister Frieda and the stolen locket?”

  “My sister . . . yes?”

  Good. She got the code. Frieda was actually the name of a summoner who’d bound herself to my father a few years ago. She’d misplaced a family heirloom and been so utterly convinced that her conniving neighbor had turned against her and stolen it, she’d wished for her neighbor to always tell the truth. It hadn’t worked out well for either of them, and it turned out Frieda’s husband had pawned it for gambling money. The moral of the story, as my father had told it, was that sometimes the person who’s stabbing you in the back is the one closest to you.

  “Remember the end of the story?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Sit tight, and we’ll be home in two hours.”

  “All right, hon. See you soon.”

  So it wasn’t the most casual of conversations, but we hadn’t broadcasted anything, and that was useful. I hated that we were two hours away—more if traffic was still bad. Mom was resourceful, though, and she didn’t have the gate lock code to let anyone in, even if Weller was ballsy enough to go after her there.

  “We should swing by Walmart on the way home,” Jaxon said.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “We’re going to need phones. They have prepaids.”

  I eyed my Raspberry and all of its applications sadly—until we figured out whether or not we could trust Weller, it was being replaced by a cheap wannabe. Worth it, of course, to keep my mom safe.