Ashes and Arsenic

by SM Reine

  Aniruddha pulled himself to his feet, and I managed to resist punching his stupid fucking face again. It was tempting. The only thing that stopped me was remembering the security cameras in the room.

  Fritz was going to have a field day when he got a report on my conduct in his absence.

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with Aniruddha?” Actually, on second thought… “What’s wrong with you, Suzy? Why am I the one getting punched? That dickbag was on you.”

  She tried to hit me again. I managed to evade it the second time. “And it didn’t occur to you that I might be okay with that?”

  Aniruddha wiped the blood off his upper lip and inspected it on his hand. “Look, Agent Hawke, if you don’t report this, I won’t either.”

  I barked out a laugh. “What?” Had I gone crazy? Why was everyone acting like I was the problem?

  “Aniruddha and I are dating,” Suzy said.

  I laughed again.

  Then I stopped laughing because Suzy looked dead serious.

  “You and Aniruddha are…” No, I wasn’t going to finish that sentence. “He stalks you.”

  “I do not,” Aniruddha protested.

  “You’re not helping, Agent Banerji. Get out.” Suzy jerked her thumb at the door. Nice way to treat an alleged boyfriend.

  To be fair, that was exactly how I would have expected Suzy to treat a boyfriend.

  The fact that he obeyed her made it worse.

  Suzy and Aniruddha?

  I gaped at his back until the door swung shut behind him. Then I gaped at Suzy for a while. “How long?” I asked.

  “Six months,” she said.

  “Six months? And you didn’t tell me?” An even better question was, how hadn’t I noticed? Investigating was my job. I shared a desk with the damn woman.

  “Seeing as how you just punched Aniruddha, it seems like great judgment on my part.” She folded her arms. “He’s right, though. You can’t report this. I don’t want anyone knowing that I’m hooking up with a coworker.”

  “That’s against several OPA rules,” I said.

  “Fuck the rules. Do you care about those? I don’t.” Suzy shoved the case file into my chest and dragged me toward the door. “Don’t tell anyone. I already get harassed at the office, and the only way I can blow it off is that most guys think I’m too hard to get. If they learn what’s going on, I start getting a reputation, and my job becomes much harder.”

  I stopped walking when I realized Suzy was trying to make me leave the morgue. She was tough, but not tough enough to make me move when I didn’t want to. “That’s the problem? You don’t want guys around the office thinking you put out? Jesus, Suze. You know I wouldn’t talk about that shit. But Aniruddha’s harassed you. I can’t believe you’d even talk to him, much less—”

  “It’s cute,” Suzy said.

  Pretty sure I’d never heard her use that word before, except maybe when she was mocking me. “What? You think being stalked is cute?”

  “No. This is cute.” She pointed at me. “The jealousy. It’s rich coming from you.”

  Okay, so she was mocking me.

  “I’m not jealous,” I said.

  “Oh. You’re not? Then what is this, Hawke?”

  “There’s a difference between being worried about you and being jealous, Takeuchi.”

  “I don’t have to explain anything.” She jabbed a finger on the folder. “We have investigating to do. Bodies on the ground, money missing.”

  “Agents to fraternize with,” I said.

  Suzy stormed into the lobby. I was two steps behind her.

  “I’m going to visit the bank again,” she said. “Alone.”

  She exited the building and I let her.

  “Yeah, all right,” I said to the door swinging shut in her wake. “Catch you later.” She was already gone and couldn’t hear me.

  At least I didn’t have to find a way to shake her off before meeting Domingo.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DOMINGO MET ME AT my apartment and we drove to the fifth point on the star together. The location was on the proverbial and literal wrong side of the train tracks; I had to park my car outside a rail yard in order to get close to the coordinates on my GPS.

  There was nothing obviously witchy going on at the yard, so we hung out in the car for a while, AC blowing full blast, and watched the trains. Quiet, staticky music played from my radio as we sat in silence.

  In the silence, I had nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and think.

  I thought about Ahmed and Susana. I thought about casting spells using rowan ash and arsenic. I also thought about the witch with the skinny jeans who’d blown up Domingo’s house, wondering if she’d been the one to poison the dead witches. Everything added up to powerful magic. Maybe even more power than my brother had.

  But my thoughts kept wandering away from the case back to Suzy.

  Aniruddha? Seriously? What was she even thinking?

  “I don’t know, Cèsar,” Domingo said after a long time. “Doesn’t look like anything’s happening.”

  I snapped out of my thoughts. “Yeah, I’d expect coven warfare to be a lot more obvious.” There wasn’t even anyone out on the street at the moment.

  Domingo got out of the car, fanning himself with his baseball cap. He squinted around the sun-bright street. “The Half Moon Bay Coven is rich. They’ve got sticks up their asses. We’re not going to find them here.”

  I got out too, leaning my elbow on the open car door. The heat was coming off of my sedan’s hood in ripples. “It might not be the high priestess herself. Powerful people usually hire others to get their hands dirty. They’ll be here, though.”

  “Whatever you say.” Domingo jammed the cap onto his head.

  The fact that he wasn’t arguing with me was worrying.

  He hadn’t talked much on the car ride, either.

  Was his skin paling? Was he sweating too much, even for this heat? Was I imagining the tremor in his hands?

  “You all right, Domingo?” I asked. “You’re not looking good.”

  That got his hackles up. “Try having two of your coven mates die and see how you feel.”

  I lifted my hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, fine. Let’s do a walk around here before we leave.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.” The fight was gone from him again.

  We headed around the rail yard. I kept my senses open for any indication of magic—not that it’d be real hard to notice the sneezing fit.

  It was quiet on the street. We were passed by several graffitied semi trucks, but there weren’t a lot of people on the sidewalks. Aside from the heat, there just wasn’t much in the area. A gas station selling diesel for more than three bucks a gallon, a pay-by-the-week motel hidden behind a warehouse, a couple small manufacturing plants.

  I was working on the assumption that whatever the coven had done would be somewhere within a one-mile radius. The pentagram was too perfect on the other points to be outside that. But Domingo and I didn’t see anything on foot that the scryers wouldn’t have been able to see in their mirrors and smoke.

  Domingo was quiet as we walked all the way to a trailer park five blocks down, and then turned to head back to the rail yard. We stuck to the shade under the buildings, but those blocks were still long and miserable.

  “What are we even looking for?” He sounded too tired to be irate.

  I showed him the map on my phone. “Some kind of ritual, I’m betting. Could be a murder, could be an explosion…”

  “An explosion? Like my house?”

  “Maybe. Whatever happened, it involves rowan ash and arsenic.” I just didn’t know how they fit together.

  He wiped his forehead off with the hat and chucked it into a dumpster down the alley. I wasn’t taking the heat well, but Domingo was worse. He was completely drenched in sweat. “Let’s get out of here. This is a dead end.”

  I’d never seen him give up so easily before. Couldn’t really blame him.

/>   We returned to the rail yard and I tossed my keys to my brother. “My car needs gas. Fill it up at the station, buy some drinks. I’m going to walk around for a while longer.”

  “Yeah, all right.” Domingo slipped into the driver’s seat.

  I waited until he pulled away, then started looking for a way into the rail yard.

  The fence was about ten feet tall and topped with barbed wire, the kind that said Union Pacific was happy to shred attempted trespassers. I spotted three clusters of security cameras on my not-so-casual stroll around the perimeter. There were probably more I wasn’t seeing.

  It was midday anyway. Lots of guys humping the cars, working machinery, looking around.

  Probably not a good time for me to break in, even if the fence hadn’t been so vicious.

  The FBI badge would work as an all-access pass, at least for a few minutes. But I didn’t want to pull it out yet. I wasn’t on this part of the investigation in an official capacity. All it would take was one asshole calling to verify my badge number and the OPA would know exactly what I was up to.

  One asshole verifying my badge number…or one OPA agent who was stalking me.

  A black SUV pulled up alongside me once I started my second lap around the rail yard’s fence.

  The engine cut out. The door swung open. An agent in all her five feet of rage dropped to the pavement.

  “Suzy? What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She slid a pair of sunglasses on, slammed the SUV door behind her. “Oh, here?” Suzy feigned surprise at the nearby rail yard. “It’s funny how I ended up here. I got pinged by the scrying team just about—oh, half an hour ago now. They were just starting a second sweep of this area. Hadn’t found anything the first time, so why not look again? And I bet you can guess what they found.”

  “The best goddamn gas station hot dogs in Los Angeles,” I said.

  She jabbed me in the chest. “You. I started asking myself why you’d head down to this neck of the woods when we’ve already got people searching. You must have known something. But when I checked the case file, you hadn’t added any notes. You haven’t added any notes since early this morning after leaving the bank.”

  “I’m bad at keeping up on paperwork,” I said.

  “Who’s the guy that’s been walking around with you?” Suzy asked.

  Shit. Nothing got past the scrying team.

  “My brother,” I said. “Domingo. I’ve been hanging out with Domingo.”

  “You’re bringing your brother on an investigation?”

  “He’s a witch, Suze,” I said. “He’s into the community around here. I thought he might have useful insight.” I stepped away from the fence and into the shadow of a brick warehouse on the corner. It wasn’t much cooler out of direct sunlight. At least it didn’t feel like my shoes were going to melt.

  Suzy followed me. She wasn’t going to let the conversation drop. “Domingo’s involved in this, isn’t he?”

  “He’s got insights,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “If he’s only got insights, then why aren’t you including those in your notes? Why aren’t you writing any notes at all?”

  “Chill out. You’re just in a mood because I punched your new boy toy.”

  She pushed me. I wasn’t ready for it. I lost my footing, stumbled back. My heel caught on the stairs leading to the front door of the warehouse. I landed on my knees, scraping my shin on the concrete.

  And I sneezed.

  “Fuck,” I groaned, scrubbing my sleeve over my nose.

  Second time I sneezed, it wasn’t because of magic. It was because I’d kicked up dust when I landed.

  Wait, not dust. My palms were covered in gray powder that smudged when I wiped them.

  That was ash.

  I looked up at the warehouse.

  What had been an ordinary-looking brick box a few minutes earlier was now a burned-out husk. The windows were shattered. The frames were black, crumbling, splintered. There was no front door. A thin trail of smoke spiraled out of the top floor as though it were still burning.

  “Jesus,” I said. “What was that?”

  Suzy’s arms were folded. She looked unimpressed. “What?”

  I waved a hand at the building. “How’d that happen so fast?”

  “How did what happen?

  “Don’t you see? It’s all burned up, but it was fine a second ago.”

  Now she looked more worried than annoyed. “I didn’t push you that hard. Are you okay?”

  I stood up, dusted off my knees, stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  As soon as I got off of those stairs, I sneezed again. My vision blurred for a heartbeat. Once it cleared again, I saw the same thing I’d been seeing earlier—an undamaged warehouse standing on the corner of 85th and Blankenship.

  Well, I was officially impressed.

  “It’s an illusion,” I said. “Get on the stairs.”

  Suzy stepped up where I’d been standing. I could tell the instant that the magic allowed her to see the reality of the building. Her eyes went wide. “I can’t feel it at all,” Suzy said, resting her hand on the building. “This is some advanced magic.”

  More than that, it was the fifth point of our pentagram.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WE ENTERED THE BUILDING with our guns drawn.

  The windows were caked with ash, permitting barely any light into the room. Not that there was much for us to see. The concrete floor was empty aside from a few crates. Brick walled us in on three sides. The fourth side was a big garage door. Aside from that, there was a loft, a couple catwalks, and lots of dust.

  I pinched some of the ash on the windowsill, rubbed it between my first finger and thumb. It sprinkled onto the floor like dandruff.

  “Bet you anything that this place belongs to our murderer,” I said.

  “Brilliantly deduced, Sherlock,” Suzy said flatly. “How could you tell? Was it all the ash? Maybe the huge magical circle hiding the building’s true appearance from passersby?”

  Yeah, it was going to be one of those days.

  I decided not to answer her.

  Our scuffing footsteps echoed throughout the warehouse. I stopped by one of the crates, nudged the lid off with the muzzle of my Desert Eagle. The crate was empty aside from the dark stains splattering its inner walls. I really hoped that wasn’t blood. On the off chance that it was, I was grateful to have grabbed the Desert Eagle out of my work desk before leaving. Didn’t want to be the one staining crates next.

  “I’ve been reading about arsenic poisoning,” Suzy said. “It used to be the way women killed men they didn’t like. At least, that’s what the books say. Sounds like sexist bullshit to me. Some kind of femme fatale trope gone wild.”

  “It’s true, though,” I said. “Couple hundred years ago, you couldn’t divorce deadbeat spouses. And everybody had arsenic to kill rats. So you’ve got a drunk husband and a rat problem, and…you can guess how that went.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t read Agatha Christie.”

  “I’m too busy having a life to read books,” Suzy said.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”

  “Agatha Christie isn’t relevant anyway. We’re not looking for reasons any random person might be murdered by arsenic. Ahmed MacFarlane wasn’t a deadbeat husband. I’m trying to figure out any spells that use rowan ash and arsenic.”

  “No luck?” I asked.

  “Not yet, but I haven’t had a lot of time to research. I had to chase some asshole to a crime scene.”

  “Good thing you did, too. I’d hate to be alone.” I took my phone out to check the map. There was no reception. “Wonder what’s supposed to be in this warehouse.”

  She grabbed a piece of metal off the ground. “With these screws? I think furniture must have been stored here.”

  “Evil furniture?”

  “No, IKEA warehouses their furniture in-store,” Suzy said.
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br />   But there definitely was a sense of evil around the building. Like the warehouse had witnessed something heinous, and all that misery lingered.

  The stairs up to the loft groaned dangerously under my weight. They were a grid of metal, scorched black by flames, and some of the supports were half-melted. I held my breath on the way up. They didn’t collapse, though. I got to the loft safely to find the fire that I’d seen from outside.

  Someone had built a small fire inside a metal basin. The smoke smelled like the rowan ash. Gray flakes spurted from the coals, fluttered through the air. That basin was surrounded by a chalk circle and a dozen candles.

  A bloody knife skewered an altar just a few inches away.

  The whole place might as well have been labeled “horrible gruesome murder scene” with neon lights.

  Suzy stepped around me to examine the circle. She was careful not to pass the chalk line. “Nasty. See those runes?” Someone had burned marks all around the rim of the metal basin.

  “What are those?” I asked. “I don’t recognize them.”

  “Me neither. That’s worrying.”

  While she studied the circle, I did a quick sweep of the loft. There was an empty office in the corner, a few more broken windows, a desk with only three legs upturned by the edge of the catwalk.

  “This circle is active,” Suzy called to me.

  I holstered my gun and returned to her side. “Is it responsible for the illusory magic hiding the warehouse?”

  “No. Something else must be doing that. This spell looks like it’s still waiting for a few key ingredients.” She showed me her cell phone. She’d taken pictures of a beach with a similar circle. Bloody knife, a small fire, twelve candles. Instead of a chalk line, it had a circle of small rocks demarcating its boundaries. “This is where our two witches were killed.”

  “So when you say ‘key ingredients,’ you mean—”

  “A sacrifice,” Suzy said. “I’m calling this in. Get backup to join us before the witches responsible show up again.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with her. This was too big for me to keep it from the OPA, even for Domingo’s sake.

  “Tell dispatch to send a Union unit first. This scene is hot.” I checked my cell phone. Still no reception. “If they argue about the extra kopides, tell them it’s on my orders.” Right now, my command was almost as good as Fritz’s—with everyone except Suzy, anyway.