The Witchkin Murders

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  She returned to the stairwell and went downstairs and outside into the balmy night. Clouds obscured the stars. It was going to rain soon.

  “Text Zach,” she told Ray. “You’ll want him for this.”

  He frowned but did as told. Asking why would only waste time.

  “Where exactly are we going?” he asked.

  Kayla shook her head. “I don’t want to color your perceptions. You should see it cold. After that I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  He lifted on brow. “Everything?”

  Her flush indicated she took his meaning. “There’s no point. I left and talking about it won’t change anything.”

  “No? It will tell me why my partner left me high and dry. Why she left a job she loved more than anything else in the world. Why she’s never talked to me since until tonight.”

  Dammit! He hadn’t meant to say anything, but the scene with Landon had cut too close to home, and his emotions were already running too close to the surface.

  She flinched from the bitterness in his voice. “I haven’t talked to you because you made it clear you didn’t want anything to do with me,” she said tautly. “I distinctly remember. You said, and I quote: ‘If you go, then you’re dead to me. I don’t ever want to hear from you or see you again.’”

  Ray grimaced. He didn’t doubt he’d said something of the sort. He didn’t remember it, but he’d been spewing all kinds of things in an effort to hurt her when he’d realized that she wasn’t going to change her mind. He’d been so pissed off, so confused. He’d hit back at her with every weapon in his arsenal, blasting her with a verbal barrage of hatefulness and spite. Anything to not have to feel the awful sense of betrayal.

  “We’re talking now. Why don’t you tell me why you left?”

  He hadn’t realized how much the not knowing had continued to fester inside him, growing like an untreated ulcer. How could it hurt more now than it had then? But back then, there was still hope she’d change her mind; hope that she’d care enough about him, about the job, to return. Now he knew better. Whatever ties they’d shared hadn’t mattered to her at all.

  She slashed a look at him. “It doesn’t matter. All that does matter is I had my reasons, and those reasons haven’t changed.”

  Ray swore and spit into the bushes, jamming his hands into his pants pockets. If he didn’t keep them bound in some fashion, he’d strangle her.

  A few minutes of tense silence later, Logan came out one of the back entrances of the house and joined them in the circular courtyard.

  He frowned at Kayla. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine,” she replied, averting her gaze.

  “Find anything?” Ray asked. Logan didn’t answer for a moment, his gaze lingering on Kayla.

  Ray ground his teeth, his inner King Kong starting to pound his chest.

  “You’re right. There’s no active magic suppression. In fact, the place throbs with magical energy.”

  “Security spells? Maybe convenience spells?” Ray asked.

  Logan shrugged. “Could be either, could be both, could be something else altogether. All I know is the magic here is powerful, and it’s definitely witch magic.”

  “I’ll show you why,” Kayla said and took off again. Landon overtook her. He whispered rapidly to her.

  She shook her head, speaking in a normal voice. “Not my secret to keep. I’m going to bet Grandmother and Aunt Margaret will forgive me if it helps to find them. Alistair would rather see them die than let the cat out of the bag. I’ve got news for him: the tabby’s going free.”

  Instead of entering the house, she strode out through the rose garden. The center held one those meditation labyrinths, the path outlined with river rock and paved with white sand, all leading to a teak gazebo in the center. Clematis and roses climbed over the structure, turning it into a fragrant bower.

  Kayla went to the entrance of the labyrinth and stopped. She broke a twig from the gnarled tree growing beside the opening and drew a set of marks into the sand with it. She stripped the leaves off the wood and sprinkled them over the marks she’d drawn. An amber glow lit the symbols, and then traveled to the rocks lining the path and outlined them in golden light.

  Ray stared, startled by the flashy show of magic. “What’s this?”

  “You’ll see,” Kayla said. “Follow me and stay on the path.”

  With that, she walked the maze, winding back and forth. Landon trailed her, and then Ray followed by Logan.

  They all climbed the three steps into the gazebo. The interior stood empty without a stick of furniture. A round wood panel polished to a warm sheen had been inlaid into the center of the floor. Kayla stepped into the middle of it, and the panel sank down. As she dropped, steps made of iron coiled down from the lip of the hole, until a spiral stairway offered them all a path to whatever lay below.

  They descended into a small room with walls constructed of gray cinder block and solid steel doors on facing walls. Kayla waited tightlipped and shoulders hunched. Landon stood a few feet away, watching her. He gave Ray a wary look as Ray came to join them.

  “Impressive bit of magic,” Logan said as he stepped off the round wood panel. A few seconds later the stairs retracted and the panel rose into the air, fitting itself tightly back into its bezel.

  “What is this place?” Ray asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  With that, she pressed a hand against the center of the left side door. It had no handle, Ray realized. More amber light outlined Kayla’s fingers. She pushed and the door swung open, revealing a corridor made of the same industrial cinder block.

  They followed it for about fifty feet. Back under the house, if Ray had to guess. At that point, the corridor turned and they faced another steel door. Kayla opened it and stepped back to let the others go inside.

  The floor lit with pearl light as Ray stepped across the threshold. Ahead, he saw an arched opening about twenty feet wide. The top rose into a sharp point. The black shadows beyond gave no hint at what lay beyond.

  Two slender columns of dark green rose on either side. As he drew closer, he realized that the columns were actually carved to look like trees with winter-bare limbs.

  “That’s petrified wood,” Landon said. “From Hampton Butte near Bend. The only complete trees that have ever been found there.”

  “What’s inside?” Ray asked.

  “The scene of the crime,” Kayla said. She gave Ray a thin smile. “Go in. It should be safe enough.”

  “There’s a lot of magic here,” Logan said, stepping closer to the opening. “Witch magic. Something else, too. Don’t recognize it, though.”

  “Is it active?”

  “Hard to say. Doesn’t feel like it, but since I haven’t encountered it before, I’m just talking out my ass. I could try clearing it, but without some idea of what it is, I could easily end up blowing us to smithereens.”

  Ray wasn’t willing to bet their lives on Kayla’s feeble assurance that they should be safe. “Can you shield us?”

  Logan nodded and stepped back. He held his hands out to the sides, palms down. Blue sparks danced across the walls, ceiling, and floor, gathering around him and piling up around his legs. Soon he stood waist deep in the flecks of magic. More gathered until the glowing mound was about six feet in diameter and a good four feet deep.

  Logan swept his hands down into the pile of magic, turning his palms up and keeping them submerged. The air shuddered and shook in Ray’s lungs. He held his breath, making himself stand still though every instinct told him to run like hell.

  His own magic danced eagerly just under his skin, answering not to the build of Logan’s magic, but the siren song of whatever lay beyond the archway. He clamped down on the restless power. The last thing he needed was to lose what little control
he had over it. He knew from experience it could be bad—devastating even.

  A little over two years ago, he’d come down with a very bad case of the flu. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it had quickly morphed into full-blown pneumonia. Luckily he lived alone, because as he sank into fever-induced delirium, he’d drawn on his power to fight demons that existed only in his crazed mind.

  When he’d eventually come back to reality, he’d destroyed his house. Not by tearing it down, but by cutting through walls with whips of magic, or filling one bedroom with boiling mud. He’d managed to install a forest of eight-inch razor-edged spikes on the floor of his kitchen and on the walls of both showers. He couldn’t begin to account for some of what he’d found. In the end, he’d packed up everything he could salvage and had moved into an abandoned place miles away, then returned and torched the place, once again using his magic to keep the fire from traveling anywhere else.

  Logan had been murmuring and now thrust his hands up in the air as if he was throwing confetti. It looked like it. Blue flecks erupted upward and swirled near the ceiling in a widening spiral. After a moment, the flecks fell like snow, gathering around each of them and smoothing out into a thin blue shield.

  “Pretty,” Ray said.

  Landon held out his arm and studied it. Kayla shuddered, her elbows clamped tight against her body, her hands knotted together across her stomach. She radiated tension. Ray frowned. Why? Was she afraid of magic? Was that why she’d left the department?

  Priorities, Ray, he reminded himself. You’ve been beating yourself over the head with the mystery of Kayla since the moment she quit. Now is not the time to play the mental masturbation game. Focus on doing your job. She’s back in your life. You can tackle all those questions later.

  She was back in his life. The phrase echoed through his skull, and he realized that no matter how angry at her he was, no matter how much he resented her leaving, no matter how betrayed he still felt, the relief of seeing her again had loosened a noose around his throat he hadn’t even realized was there. He felt as though he could really breathe again for the first time in four years.

  He looked at her again. Later, he promised himself. I’ll get to the bottom of it later.

  Nodding at Logan, he stepped between the two trees and into the room on the other side. Instantly the floor lit. He stopped dead. A giant circle of opal or abalone had been inlaid into the dark stone floor. Within its circumference, each point of a five-rayed star touched the slope of the circle. Inside that was a triangle, and at the center of that, a small solid circle the size of a silver dollar.

  “Jesus,” Logan said, having stopped beside him.

  Ray glanced over his shoulder at Kayla and Landon who stood braced as if against a coming storm.

  Dozens of questions cascaded through his mind. He settled for: “Why do the Runyons keep a secret casting floor?”

  The answer seemed obvious, but he wanted to hear it from Kayla.

  “Witchcraft runs in the family,” she said, her gaze dropping.

  “Your grandmother?”

  “And my aunt,” she confirmed.

  “What about your father?”

  “No. He’s completely human.” She grimaced. “Or as human as any psychopath can be.”

  Ray wondered how Runyon felt about that. Theresa Runyon held the family purse strings, and she and her daughter were witches to boot. Could Alistair have wanted to get rid of them to take control of the family coffers? It was a definite possibility.

  That’s when his brain finally pieced together the puzzle.

  Kayla had to be a witch.

  It was the only thing that made sense. Ray couldn’t imagine anything else that would make her leave the job. Not the way she loved it. Magicfall must have transformed her the same way it had Ray. But instead of trying to hide her disability like he had, she’d chosen to leave before anybody found out.

  It fit.

  Ray’s anger and resentment flared wildly as it occurred to him what a waste the last four years had been. Kayla had never needed to walk away. He’d have helped her; they’d have helped each other. If only she’d just fucking talked to him!

  Then reason asserted itself. Would he have voluntarily told her about becoming a witch? He didn’t know. He might not have taken the risk. But she hadn’t even tried to stay, to hide what she was and do the job. She’d chosen to leave and give up everything. To leave him.

  It had probably been hard on her, and his bitter words at the end hadn’t made her trust him. Even though she should have trusted him already. Still, he could see where she’d been coming from. He still couldn’t entirely forgive her for just walking out, but at least now he knew why.

  Now to figure out what to do about it. Did he tell her he was okay with her being a witch? Reveal that he was too? If he wanted to keep her in his life, then he had no choice; he had to tell her. But that was for later. Now was for tracking down the kidnappers.

  Ray walked around the casting floor. He could feel magic pulsing like a heartbeat through the room. Many spells had been cast here, soaking into the walls and saturating the air.

  Colorful tapestries hung at intervals, with shelves of various arcane implements and supplies spaced between. He saw a rainbow of candles, several hundred kinds of crystals in every color under the sun, plastic tubs neatly labeled and stacked on shelves. Sheaves of twigs and branches from all sorts of trees and bushes filled the small army of tall ceramic jars running down the wall on his right. Glass containers and canisters of herbs, dried flowers, seeds, nuts, and fruits lined the long shelves just above the branches.

  Something caught his attention. He wasn’t quite sure what. It was more something he sensed than anything concrete, like a breath of cold air in a hot room, or a flicker of shadow in the corner of his eye.

  “What level could your grandmother and aunt craft? Do you know?” he asked Kayla as he continued to scan the room, looking for what was setting off his radar.

  “Grandmother is the center—powerful enough to hold her own coven. My aunt was in the star. She might have reached the triangle by now, I don’t know. The time I had anything to do with this”—her gesture encompassed the room—”I was seventeen. Things probably have changed a lot since then.”

  Ray did the math. Kayla was almost twenty-nine, so twelve years.

  “Your grandmother had a coven?”

  Kayla shrugged. “Other witches came to the house. I don’t know if they just worked together or if they formed an actual coven.”

  “They weren’t,” Landon said, breaking his tense silence. “My mother complained about it. She would tell Grandmother that they should perform a coven ceremony. All Grandmother would say was that they couldn’t afford it, and there was no room anyway.”

  Ray nodded, noting down the information, adding question marks to “no room” and “couldn’t afford it.”

  “Did they take part in the Witchwar?”

  “I don’t know,” Kayla said. “Landon?”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it.

  “It’ll be okay,” Kayla said, turning to face him. “We have to know. The kidnapper could have taken them for revenge.”

  He looked past her at Ray and then back to Kayla, clearly torn.

  “If you want to find them, you need to tell us the whole truth,” Ray said.

  That seemed to break the dam.

  “They didn’t have a choice,” he said abruptly. “Someone came to see Grandmother back then. I was helping her with her roses.” He stopped.

  “Who came to see her?” Kayla prompted.

  “It was an angel. An honest-to-God angel. He had white wings edged in blue. He came down out of the sky and handed Grandmother a rolled-up piece of paper. Then he just flew away. Never said a word. Grandmother read the message, and her hands started
shaking. She looked like she was going to pass out.

  “I asked her what was wrong, and all she said was that sometimes a person has to make a hard choice. Then she went in the house. After that, she and mom packed up and left without saying anything to anybody. They didn’t come back until the war ended.”

  He looked at Kayla. “I was stuck alone with Uncle Alistair. I thought they were dead, and then they came home. Now they’re gone again.” He swallowed, and his tough-guy exterior cracked. His chin trembled. “We had a fight. I told her I hate her. I told my mother I wished she was dead, leaving me alone with Uncle Alistair. Now—” His voice cracked.

  Kayla pulled him into a tight hug, and to Ray’s surprise, the kid let her.

  “She knows that you love her,” she said. “Kids and parents fight all the time, but parents know you don’t really mean the things you say.”

  He pulled back. “You did. You hate Uncle Alistair. Everybody knows it.”

  “I’m a special case, and he deserves it. Aunt Margaret is nothing like my father, and she does know you love her,” Kayla said stoutly.

  “Ray.”

  Logan had been prowling around the other side of the spell circle and now beckoned for Ray to join him.

  “Look,” he said. The technomage pointed to a mark on the floor. It was coarse and angular and appeared to be written in blood.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  Logan shook his head. “It’s not the only one, either.” He pointed to several marks, all different, but with the same rough-hewn quality. “I don’t think the witches made these.”

  “Why not?” Ray asked, examining each of them and snapping pictures on his phone.

  “A witch would have used the spell circle. Plus, I’m no expert, but I don’t recognize any of the symbols.”

  “Who would?” Ray asked.

  “Not a clue. Maybe check Nuketown. See if any of the witches there will talk to you. They’d at least be able to say whether the symbols are witchy or not.”