by D. N. Hoxa
“Okay. Okay, you’ll get your favor. Now tell me.” Finn wasn’t a very patient man, either.
“I caught one of the werewolves last night, except it wasn’t a werewolf. I believe it’s a witch, possibly a Bloodie, strong enough to transform its entire body,” I said in a breath.
“A Blood witch turned to werewolf?” Finn said.
The smile I could hear in his voice told me he didn’t believe me.
“Yep. The ECU took over the case personally—whatever that means, and they kicked me out.”
A second of silence. “That’s it?”
Surprised, I shook my head. “What do you mean, that’s it? It’s much more than you knew, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got to give me something to go on with, Bone. How did you catch it? Of all creatures, why do you think it’s a witch? Where is he now?” Finn said.
“I was in Delaware when they attacked William Peterson’s house. Call it a lucky coincidence. I spoke to the beast for a few minutes. It spoke the same way we do, not like a werewolf does. Its eyes were green, and he was shorter than you guys, but stronger in build. It was a beast, not a cross between man and wolf. A wolf standing on two feet, if you will.”
“Tell me exactly what it said,” he said in a rush. The sound of fast footsteps echoed in the background as he no doubt walked from one corner of his office to the other like he usually did when he was focused.
“It said it wasn’t going to stop. It said it had killed before and that it was going to do it again.”
“And?”
“And nothing. The ECU assholes came in, guns blazing, and kicked me out. You’ve got friends in high places. Ask questions.” I was already running out of patience. “Now, can we get to my favor?”
“You’re killing me, Bone,” Finn said reluctantly, but I ignored him.
“I need someone found. A Bone witch. Eli Bender. He used to be an investigator.”
“Can’t you find him yourself?” Finn asked as if what I was asking was beneath him. I rolled my eyes.
“Just find him for me, Finn. I’ll be waiting.” I hung up before I could say something I might regret. He was going to drag the conversation on because he thought I was holding something back about the beast. He was right, but that didn’t mean I was willing to share my theory—which may or may not be stupid as fuck—with anyone. Not yet, at least.
Having nothing better to do, I lowered the seat of my car and closed my eyes. Julian’s face was right in front of my eyes as if it was the first in my line of thoughts, waiting to be picked up. Heat crawled up to my cheeks, and my stomach tied in knots. I wondered where he was and what he was doing. I wondered if he thought about me, or if he even remembered me. He was a Prince and probably had a lot of stuff to do anyway.
I wondered if he was there with me, would he believe me, or would he think I was crazy and that I should walk away from it, like Amelia did?
I wondered if I would ever see him again. The loud ringing of my phone was like a warning that I was about to enter dangerous territory. I opened the text I’d received from Finn with shaking fingers. It was an address right there in Bloomsburg, just like I suspected. I didn’t bother to type a reply. We were now even.
With my heart racing, I turned Turtle’s engine on. Eli Bender, here I come.
***
Turns out, Bloomsburg is much bigger than I thought, and it took me more than two hours to find the address Finn texted me. It didn’t cross my mind that he’d gotten it wrong because this was Finn we were talking about, but when I pulled over in front of the house, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
To say that the building was old would be a very big understatement. The house was barely standing, its faded green walls so dirty, I doubted they’d ever been repainted. The front yard was pretty small. No driveway, no grass—not even bushes—just dirt. The window shutters had been reinforced with iron rods, probably to keep them in place. Newspapers in front of the door and three pairs of old shoes on the porch. Everything about that place screamed abandoned. My heart sank. I’d gone all that way for nothing?
Cursing under my breath, I got out of the car. Since I was there, I might as well go and check if I could find something to tell me where to look next because I wasn’t about to give up.
The street was empty, and the houses around were not too much better off. They were old but maintained. Alive, when the one I was walking to looked dead. The closer I got, the more I expected some sort of a heavy smell to hit my nostrils. It just looked like that kind of a place, but I could smell nothing. The porch wood creaked when I stepped on it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it broke, but before it could, I slammed my fist on the door three times.
“Useless,” I mumbled at myself and began to look around the porch. Maybe I could find something that belonged to Bender. A finding spell had helped me find Julian just a few months ago. Now, I had my fairy magic, too. I grabbed one of the rolled newspapers to see the date when something behind the door moved.
I stopped breathing.
“Get lost!”
The newspaper fell from my hands. Was it just my imagination, or had somebody spoken?
“I’m looking for Eli Bender,” I called. It was worth a try. If I’d imagined it, nobody was there to laugh at me.
“I said, get lost!”
Definitely not my imagination. I slammed both my fists on the door again. “My name is Winter Wayne. I’m Adeline Wayne’s daughter.” He was a Bone witch, so he probably knew my family. Since he’d investigated the case, he’d worked for the coven leaders. “I’m here to ask you about what happened ten years ago before the coven broke apart.” I spoke in a rush as if afraid the man would tell me to get lost again.
“I don’t care. Leave, or I’ll make you leave.” The voice was much clearer now. The man was right behind the door.
“You should know that I can be pretty annoying when I want something. And right now, I really want to talk to you.” He could throw me out as many times as he wanted—I’d still go back. This guy, if he even was Eli Bender, was my only chance. If he didn’t tell me anything, I was screwed. Stealing files from the ECU archives was not something I even wanted to think about because all things considered, I still valued my life.
“Are you Eli Bender?” I asked when a minute passed by and the man said nothing.
“Look, that case was closed a long time ago for a reason. There’s nothing you can ask me that I can answer. Just leave. There isn’t anything here for you,” the man said.
“Why don’t you tell me that to my face?” Call me old-fashioned, but I believed a lot more could be accomplished through a conversation if the people having it could see each other. Body language says a lot more than words can.
The silence rang in my ears. I bit my tongue to keep from saying something else. He was thinking about it, and I didn’t want to ruin it by saying something stupid just because I was impatient.
It felt like a lifetime passed before the lock of the door began to turn. A sigh of relief escaped my lips. I stepped back and prepared my nicest smile. I needed to be on my best behavior if I wanted to convince Eli Bender to help me.
The witch looked nothing like I’d pictured him. He was young. Probably in his forties. He was tall, his pitch-black hair reaching all the way down to his jawline. His brown eyes were small but very intense. Had it not been for the overgrown beard and the shirt full of holes and stains, he would have probably been handsome.
When he saw my face, his eyes grew wide, and he took half a step back. Shit. What the hell was wrong with me? How could I constantly forget that I was a fairy and people could see it?
“I can explain,” I said, but the man had already reached for the pocket of his dirty jeans and pulled out a small gun. I stepped back and raised my arms. “Look, I’m a Bone witch, too. I just look like a fairy. Please, just let me explain.”
“You’ve got three seconds to disappear. If you ever come back here again—”
“I swear to you, I’m a
Bone witch. My mother was Adeline Wayne and my aunt—”
“Lying piece of fairy filth,” the man hissed and raised his arm, his gun pointed at my face.
The thing was small, but it would still fire a bullet, and at that distance, it would make a dead mess out of me. Instinct took over. My beads were in front of his face just as he began to chant.
“Stop it, or you’re dead.” I wasn’t kidding.
The witch pulled his finger from the trigger. He looked at the beads in front of him like they were made of pure wonder. The next time he looked at me, it didn’t seem like he still wanted me to disappear off the face of the earth. He wasn’t disgusted.
“Where did you get these?” he finally whispered, lowering his arm.
“I inherited them when my mother died,” I said without hesitation. “I am who I say I am, I promise. My aunt Amelia told me about you. That’s why I’m here.”
He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have.”
“Look, I wouldn’t be here if I had any other choice. I really do need your help.”
To my surprise, the man began to laugh. The smell of alcohol hit me hard and I almost flinched. He turned around and walked inside the house, leaving the door open. To me, that equaled an invitation, so I let myself in and closed the door behind me.
The house was dark. All the windows were shut, and only a small lamp in the corner of the living room was on. A look around, and I was pretty sure the room would be in a much better condition if the house really were abandoned. Stacks of newspapers and books were all over the floor, ashtrays full of cigarette butts everywhere. The table in front of the brown sofa stood on three legs, one of them broken. Bottles of alcohol, most empty, but two still half full, stood around the dirty grey recliner where Bender was already sitting. He was still laughing when he took one of the bottles and drank three gulps of vodka as if it were water.
“What the hell happened to you?” I couldn’t help but ask. The man looked miserable.
“What’s going to happen to you if you don’t get on your way and never think about this again,” Bender said, then drank some more vodka.
“You do realize it’s not even eleven a.m., right?” All the windows were closed so it was possible he had lost track of time.
“Not time to be drinking like the a.m.,” Bender said. “But here you have it. Everything you need to know about the case. It will drive you insane before you realize it. If you start running now, I won’t hold it against you.”
He was the incarnation of depression, and in there, in the dark, his eyes told you that his soul was barely alive. “If you help me, I can help you.” God knew he needed it. A lot more than I did, apparently.
“Nobody can help me.” He grabbed the pack of cheap cigarettes from the three-legged table and lit one. The dirt under his long fingernails brought goose bumps to my arms. No matter what he said, this man needed some serious help.
“Look, why don’t we just go grab a bite somewhere close and talk? I’ve got something you’ll want to hear.” I doubted he ate well if he was drinking vodka in the morning, though he didn’t look too thin.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Bender said. “But you can sit down if you want, tell me why you look like one of those things.”
“Fairies aren’t things. They’re beings, just like you,” I snapped back.
Bender raised his thick black brows as if he really was surprised.
“Is this why Adeline left us?”
His question was a slap to my face. “Yep.” No point in lying now. My mother was dead. The coven didn’t even exist. But I was still there. I refused to hide because what I was wasn’t my choice—or my fault. “Like I said before, I’m here about the murders that happened ten years ago and everything else that led to the coven breaking apart. My aunt Amelia told me that you were one of the investigators.”
“So was James Olsen. He’s dead now.” Bender dragged the smoke from the cigarette like it was the oxygen he needed to breathe. It looked like he loved it so much, he wanted to eat it.
“But you’re not. All the files with the investigation details are in the ECU archives, far away from my reach. You’re the only one who can help me.” I hated to stand and look down at him like that, but there was no way in hell I was sitting on that sofa. I was willing to bet all I had that he’d never cleaned it. I wasn’t a clean freak but that was too much, even for me.
“It’s been five years since they shut everything down. What makes you think I remember anything anymore?”
Was he kidding? I waved around at the room. “Didn’t you just say that the case did this to you?” I’d watched enough movies to know what obsession looked like, and this guy right here was very obsessed. That meant he remembered, and he remembered details. I just hoped to God I was right.
“I don’t get it,” Bender said and drank from his bottle of vodka again. I’d hate to see what his liver looked like if he drank that way every day. “You’re a fairy. Why do you even care?”
“Because I’m a Bone witch, too. I think I know who killed those people.”
Bender froze for a second. Suddenly, his eyes caught fire, but the moment didn’t last. “Bone witches killed those people. Greedy fucking bastards killed those people. End of story.”
“Not even close.” I walked closer so I could see him better. “It wasn’t Bone witches who did it. Everybody thought so because it made perfect sense at the time. A seat at the leadership table was open, and everybody wanted in. It was perfectly reasonable to think that somebody was killing those kids for revenge, or because they wanted to scare the leaders into submission.”
“That is the only reasonable explanation,” Bender insisted, but he didn’t look so lost anymore. A spark of interest had grabbed hold of him, and he no longer even looked at his vodka or his cigarette.
“Think about it. If someone was doing all the killing, how come nobody filled in the seat? If it had been a Bone family, they would have made themselves known. They would have demanded to be accepted into the leadership. Instead, nobody ever came forward with any request. Am I right?” I was making assumptions here, but Amelia would have told me if something like that had happened or if somebody had even been a suspect.
Bender thought about it for a second. “The leaders made it clear that they wouldn’t accept anyone that wasn’t a Wayne into their midst. This was revenge,” he finally said.
“But everybody would have known that they’d agree to anything when it came to their children. The leaders broke apart an entire coven for them. If the killers were Bones, all they would have had to do was come forward and ask for the seat.” Maybe I was coming off as too excited, but I really was. The way this looked in my mind, it made perfect sense. Those beasts, whoever they were, had hit the Bone coven at exactly the right time, and the entire world had placed the blame on someone else without hesitation.
“You’re trying to tell me that someone outside the coven did this?” he whispered, shaking his head. “Do you think I haven’t thought of that a million times by now? I think about it every day. It simply isn’t possible. No outsider could have gotten to those kids without being seen, not through all the spells and all the witches. It just doesn’t work that way. Someone on the inside did it, someone who knew how the coven operated to the last detail.”
It was natural that he thought that because he’d never seen what I’d seen. He’d never looked into those green eyes of the beasts, and he’d never been clawed by one of them.
“Then how come you never found them?” I wasn’t trying to be smart or anything. Just stating the obvious. “You were on the inside, too. You knew everyone. You probably watched everyone. How could a member of your own coven do something like this right under everyone’s noses without getting caught?”
Bender sighed. I thought he was going to reach for his vodka again, but he surprised me.
“If I’d known, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
As he said the words, he looked in pain. I felt b
ad for the witch. He’d wasted his entire life and was continuing to do so. Just another reason for me to keep at this until I got to the bottom of it. Those beasts had hurt too many people already. They needed to be stopped.
“I have some information that’s going to give you a whole other perspective on this case, but before I tell you, you have to promise me that you’re going to agree to help me. I need access to everything you know, without exception.”
Bender smiled. “A promise?”
I nodded. “Yes, a promise.”
“How old are you, Winter Wayne?” That was the second time I was being asked that today. I did not like it.
“Old enough,” I said, a bit offended.
“If you’re as naive as to trust a stranger over a promise, you’re definitely not old enough.”
I grinned. “Oh, you got it all wrong. I don’t trust anyone. I trust myself, and these little babies.” My beads were already flying in front of his face. “I need your promise for the information you’re going to give me, but when it comes to betrayal, everyone’s a suspect.” I’d learned that the hard way.
Bender didn’t seem convinced. “In that case, I promise I’ll tell you everything I know,” he said.
“First.”
His brows shot up. “Second.”
“No, no, I insist. You go first.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
I laughed. “Why would I bother?”
Bender shrugged. “I’ve seen witches do stupider things for no reason.”
He did have a point. Maybe I could give him something to keep him going. “I’ll tell you one thing.”
Just when I thought I’d figured the guy out, he went and smiled. It was such a cute smile, even though his black beard made it look like he had something all over his teeth.
“I’m listening.”
“The Green coven is being attacked. Same MO, same targets. And I believe it’s the same bad guys.” Maybe that was saying too much because none of the Green witches had been found dead yet, but my gut was telling me that if nobody did anything, that fate was inevitable.
Bender sat back on his recliner. “When?” he breathed.
