It’s just too much. The murders and then the house and talking to Ed.
“If I could, I would, but I can’t. Not this. Ask me anything else, but not this,” she said.
He turned back to look at her. His eyes were tired and he rubbed them wearily. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll come up with Plan B.”
She wanted to get up and run out of his office, but she stayed seated, her guilt vying with her fear. “You can’t send someone else. If this is a dark coven using real black magic, they’ll eat anybody you send alive. These people don’t play by the same rules, don’t even live by the same code. They don’t view life and death the same as everyone else does. They willingly sacrifice their weaker children just to gain more power. You’ve seen what they’re capable of. You know I’m right.”
“Maybe we can find someone with experience.”
“Where? Whoever you send would have to have spent time in a group like this before and gotten out alive. That doesn’t happen.”
“We can train someone.”
“How? Because I won’t do it. I won’t teach someone to do the things I’ve seen… and… done.” She barely managed to say it, her voice a strangled whisper even to her. “I won’t spread that evil.”
“You wouldn’t be spreading it. You’d be helping to stop it.”
She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. If I taught someone, and they got out alive, they might not be able to walk away.”
But you could, a voice seemed to whisper inside her head. But she wasn’t at all sure that was true. Just because she had managed to turn her back once didn’t mean she’d be able to again.
She got to her feet. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Why don’t you head home and get some sleep? It’s been a rough day for everyone. Tomorrow should give us all a little more perspective.”
She staggered out the door and made it outside to her car in a fog. She couldn’t go back, no matter how many people might die. She started to drive home, but images from the day kept flooding her mind until she knew she couldn’t be in her home alone. Not yet.
She turned the car toward her adoptive parents’ home and prayed that the fears that haunted her would go away, that the uncertainty would cease. Maybe it was all a nightmare. She’d had enough of those, though, to recognize that this was no nightmare. It was living, breathing reality.
It’s finally caught up with me, she thought as she pulled up in front of her parents’ house.
Her father greeted her with surprise and concern in his lively blue eyes. “Did you get caught up in the witch mess?” he asked after he had closed the door and followed her into the living room, which they had long ago nicknamed the “talking room” because no matter what you had to say it was safe to say it in that room.
“How did you hear about that?” she asked, sinking into her favorite brown leather chair and pulling the purple throw pillow she had made in high school onto her lap. The room was the only one in the house that didn’t have a television set. Instead, a large fish tank dominated one wall. She had spent hours staring at it as a child, struggling to find inner peace and marveling at the beauty in the world even as she fought to express herself to parents who desperately wanted to understand her even when they couldn’t.
“I may not be a detective, but I still hear things,” he said, running a hand through his close-cropped white hair. “Besides, it’s been all over the news for hours, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.”
“Oh, Dad, it’s awful,” she said, pouring out the story of the day’s events while staring at the fish as they swam round and round. When she told him about what she had done at the house, she half expected him to chastise her. Instead, he just listened quietly, never judging, always trying to understand. It was one of the traits that made him so good at his job. He was easy to talk to.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said at last.
“Me too.”
“Me three,” her mom said from the doorway.
The phone rang and her mother moved to get it. She returned with the cordless and handed it to Samantha. “It’s Ed.”
“Did you turn off your cell phone?” Ed asked.
She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at it. “No. I think the battery died.”
“Then grab a charger and head over to the Hotel Salvo, room 415. We’re just getting Katie settled in here and I’d like you to help me give the place a good going-over before I leave her here for the night.”
“You’re going to leave officers with her, right?”
“Yes, but I’d feel better if you’d just come over.”
Samantha agreed. She hugged her parents and then made her way to the hotel. It was older and had seen better days but was a definite step up from many of the places she had seen the police put witnesses before. Ed met her in the lobby and escorted her to the stairwell. They began climbing.
“How are you?” she asked.
“They asked you to go undercover, didn’t they?” he said, ignoring her question.
“How did you know?”
“Detective, remember?”
“Yes, Captain Roberts asked.”
“And you told him no.”
“Of course.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I can’t.”
“You’ll excuse me, but girls are getting sacrificed. I’m going to need a little more than ‘I can’t’ to make sense of this.”
She grabbed his arm, forcing him to turn and look at her. “I can’t. It would mean doing things… things I swore I’d never do again. I promised God.”
“Yes, and you also promised the people of this city to keep them safe.”
“I can’t act against my beliefs,” she said.
“No one’s asking you to stop believing in God or to think of yourself as a witch. They’re just asking you to be a police officer. Do your job. Save lives. Bring killers to justice.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“These aren’t the kind of people you can just bring to justice like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “This is going to get bloody and they won’t be taken alive.”
“We can’t just do nothing.”
“We’re not doing nothing.”
“Yeah, but if the captain wants you to go undercover, I think you should.”
“It’s not your decision,” she hissed.
“Look, police officers helped you. You have a responsibility to do the same.”
“Is that why you called me out here? To lecture me?” she demanded. “You have a lot of nerve. You can’t even tell me that we’re okay when I tell you about the hell I lived through as a kid and now you just expect me to jump back into it because you think it’s a good idea?”
And there it was, an undercurrent of power crackling through her and around her. She had learned to block it out, but sometimes she couldn’t, and as she grew angrier and angrier, the sense of power grew.
“No, I called you here because I wanted you to check out the room, maybe do something special to it.”
“Like magic? I’m out of here,” she said, turning and starting back down the stairs.
She was outside and unlocking her car door when he caught up with her. He looked even more tired and disheveled than he had sitting with her on the curb outside the last crime scene. He had lost his tie and jacket at some point and she could see the sweat stains on his shirt. His eyes were desperate when he looked at her and a flickering streetlight cast intermittent shadows over his face that made them look more sunken than usual. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s a lot to take in, you know? I’m not sure how you expected me to respond, but I’m scared and I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“All of it, okay? I joked about the supernatural because it got your goat, but I never actually believed in it. How am I supposed to save people and do my job? What happened in that basement… I was powerless. But you weren
’t. You have the ability to do something about all this and that shield you wear means you also have the responsibility to do something. For heaven’s sake, you need to at least help me protect Katie.”
She couldn’t fault his logic, but he didn’t know the risks, didn’t know how much she could lose. He didn’t know how addictive the power was.
“Look, I’ll come inside and check everything out, but I won’t be doing any magic.”
He nodded and she turned once more to follow him. Once they got upstairs Samantha found Katie pacing in what served as the living room/office area of the suite, threatening to wear a hole in the already thin burgundy carpet. Two officers were sitting on the couch working out what to order for dinner and Ed joined them. Katie rushed over to Samantha, her eyes wide. “What happened after we left? No one will tell me anything.”
“It’s a long story,” Samantha said, really not wanting to get into it with her.
“What do you want on your hot dog?” one of the officers called over.
“Nothing. I want it plain,” Katie said.
“Real purist, huh? How about to drink? Soda, water, beer?”
Katie wrinkled her nose. “I’m too young for beer and besides I don’t drink anyway. I’ll take water.”
Katie grabbed Samantha and dragged her toward the bedroom. Once inside, Katie sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded Samantha solemnly. “How screwed am I?” she asked.
“Pretty,” Samantha admitted.
Katie sighed. “I’m a good person, you know. I can’t believe… They put my picture on television. That’s what one of the guys said. What if my parents see it?”
“Where do your parents live?”
“Colorado. We moved two years ago, but I came back for college.”
“So you’re a local girl.”
“Yup. My old high school’s actually just two blocks from here. I should have stayed in Colorado.”
Samantha didn’t say anything. Katie sighed and took off her rings and her necklace and put them on the end table. Then she took off her earrings and tossed them down. A chill settled over Samantha as she looked at them. They were clip-ons, not pierced. And Katie didn’t drink.
Samantha looked at her sharply. “Katie, are you a virgin?”
The other girl turned scarlet. “Yeah. Why?”
Samantha shot to her feet. They had been wrong. Katie wasn’t just meant to be the fall guy.
Suddenly the lights went out and the room was plunged into darkness.
7
“What’s happening?” Katie cried out.
“They’re coming for you,” Samantha hissed.
Lights streamed through the windows from outside, illuminating the room and casting menacing shadows, which Samantha kept scanning warily. A sound was beginning to fill the room, like the rushing of wind.
Katie was going to be the next sacrifice.
“Katie, why don’t you have pierced ears?” Samantha demanded.
“I was always too afraid when I was little—what is that sound?”
Samantha yanked her badge off her belt and threw Katie into a wall.
“What are you—”
Before the girl could finish asking her question, Samantha grabbed her ear and in one swift motion punched through it with the pin on the back of her badge. Katie screamed in pain and a few drops of blood bubbled to the surface. The pin on the badge was blunter than was ideal for such a task, but hurting Katie was the least of Samantha’s worries. She grabbed Katie’s other ear and punched it as well for good measure.
And then the roaring around them stopped. The silence was so profound that Katie’s breathing sounded painfully loud in the stillness.
“Why did you do that?”
“I just saved you from being the next blood sacrifice,” Samantha said. She grabbed Katie’s wrist. “We have to go now.”
Katie pulled back. “Why? If you just saved me, wouldn’t it be safer here?”
“Oh, Katie, they’re going to kill you anyway. At least this way they can’t use you.”
She heard the girl whimper in fear, but she stopped fighting and went with Samantha into the other room.
In the living room, Ed and the two other officers had their guns drawn and were warily checking doors and windows.
“They’ve found us,” Samantha said.
“Tell us what to do,” Ed said.
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
A minute later they hit the lobby and began moving quickly across it. Half a dozen people looked up, their eyes tracking them. Samantha could feel the weight of their stares even as the hair on the back of her neck rose.
“Katie, keep your head down,” she hissed.
“Trouble?” Ed asked.
Before she could answer, the man standing near the elevator pointed and shouted, “Witch! That’s the witch who killed those people!”
Curses followed his announcement, echoing between the other civilians and Samantha’s fellow officers. For one moment it was as though time froze and she could see everyone’s faces clearly. The hate on the denouncer’s face, the naked fear in Ed’s eyes, and the shock in Katie’s expression.
And then the bellman lunged toward them. He nailed one officer on the jaw, shoved another, and was reaching for Katie’s arm when Ed threw him to the ground and whipped out his handcuffs. The other spectators surged forward, coming right at them and standing between them and an exit.
“Divert!” one of the officers shouted, drawing his gun.
Samantha grabbed Katie’s arm and lurched sideways into an empty room set up with buffet tables, ready for serving breakfast in a few hours. A shot was fired and she winced, hoping no one had been hit. Ed was the last into the room and he slammed the door shut, propping a chair under the doorknob.
Samantha moved to help him secure the door as another officer called for backup. Fists banged on the other side of the door.
“Give us the witch!” she heard one enraged man shout.
“She has to pay,” a woman chorused.
“What the hell?” Ed marveled. “They’ve all gone mad.”
“We can’t stay here,” Samantha said.
“The room isn’t secure,” Ed agreed.
A sudden rush of wind lifted her hair and she spun around in fear. A sliding glass door onto a patio had been opened.
And Katie was gone.
“Katie!” she yelled, running forward.
“Did someone get her?” one of the other officers shouted.
“Couldn’t have,” Ed responded. “We would have heard something.”
Samantha touched the door and in her panic reached out with her thoughts… and felt the memory of Katie opening it.
“She ran,” she said quietly.
The other officers except for Ed ran out, shouting for Katie.
“Where would she have gone?” Ed asked.
“Somewhere familiar, somewhere she can hide… Her old high school,” Samantha said. “She said it was two blocks from here.”
“That would be Eastside. Let’s go.”
She grabbed his arm. “Ed, this is going to get ugly. You’re not going to want to be there.”
“Uglier than the house? Uglier than that mob trying to break down the door? Forget it. We’re partners and if you’re going, I’m going.”
She nodded. The crack of splintering wood echoed through the room and she realized that with the crowd so frenzied it wasn’t safe for him to stay. They ducked out the sliding glass door, and a moment later they were racing down the street, heading for the high school.
“How would she get in?” Samantha asked as they arrived at the fenced-in school, shut tight for the night.
“Girl like her, I’m sure she could find a way. Probably knew it back then. You and I will just have to hop the fence,” he said, giving her a boost.
When they were both inside the perimeter, they moved slowly, their eyes sweeping the grounds as they approached the building. Around back they found a door tha
t was slightly ajar. Ed drew his gun and they went in.
Samantha looked up and down the deserted hallways but saw no signs of movement.
“Do you think she’s here?” Ed whispered, the sound magnified by the emptiness around them.
She nodded.
“Much as I don’t like it, we’ll cover more ground if we split up.”
“I’ll take this way,” she said, gesturing to the right.
He stared hard at her. “You got a feeling?”
She hunched her shoulders. “No,” she lied.
“Okay.”
He started off to the left, calling Katie’s name. She watched as he entered and then exited the first room he came across before she turned and headed to the right. Her footsteps sounded as loud as gunshots as she walked, sparing only cursory glances at the rooms she passed. She came to an intersection in the hallway and turned to the left.
Katie’s essence lingered in the air almost like perfume, guiding Samantha. She’d worked for years not to notice the impressions people left behind them when they passed through places. Now she was grateful she hadn’t lost the skill entirely. The closer she got to Katie, the more her own fear increased.
A ripple like a shock wave suddenly passed through her, forcing a gasp through her clenched teeth. Someone else had entered the building.
She began to run, praying as she did so. At the end of the corridor she took a left and then plunged into the open room on her right.
Moonlight streamed through the large windows, painting everything in a silvery sheen. Lab desks sat silent, and jars of preserved frogs and fetal pigs awaiting dissection sat on the counter that ran along the wall next to her. Katie was at the far end, on her knees, a piece of chalk clutched in her hands as she finished drawing around herself.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Samantha demanded.
“It’s a protection circle,” Katie said between sobs. “They’re coming for me and I need to be safe.”
“Idiot. You think some chalk on the ground is going to protect you from anything?” Samantha hissed.
“But—it’s a circle, and I’m going to ask the goddess to bless it.”
The Thirteenth Sacrifice Page 8
