Death Rites

by E. A. Copen

  I tried not to let that show as I retorted, “Maybe.”

  Moses put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me toward the car, the move reminding me more of something a concerned friend might do than a cop. “I appreciate your concern, and I acknowledge your expertise, but Knight isn’t so open-minded. Once she’s got it in her head that you’re more a hindrance than helpful, she just won’t let it go. For both our sakes, sit this one out.”

  Knight pulled the phone away from her ear and walked back over to join us. “Got another body.”

  I hesitated, running her words through my brain a second time just to make sure I’d heard what I thought I did. “Another girl crushed to death?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not at liberty to comment on an open investigation. Come on, Moses. Let’s get going.”

  Moses left my side to join his partner.

  This is an opportunity. If I can just get a look at the body, I might be able to speak to her ghost. Ghosts tended to hang out near their bodies, especially in the case of a violent end. If I could talk to her, find some connection, maybe we could stop the killer before he struck again. Not that I could tell Knight that. She was dead set on not taking me with them.

  Wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

  “Take me with you.”

  Knight spun around, her face twisted in disbelief. “Why the hell would I do that? Didn’t I just finish telling you to stay out of this?”

  “I can help.” My feet carried me forward a step. “Come on. You can’t just dismiss me. Not after yesterday. Whether you believe or not, you have to agree. Those girls and any information they have would’ve been gone if I hadn’t burst into that burning building to save your ass. You owe me.”

  Moses tilted his head toward Knight, his mouth open, his expression saying everything he was about to: “He’s right, you know.”

  Knight held up a hand, stopping him from getting the complete phrase out. “If I let you follow me to the crime scene—and I’m not saying I will—do you promise to keep your hands to yourself?”

  I lifted both my hands, showing her both sides, and then shoved them in my pockets.

  She rolled her eyes up to the cloudy sky and let out a breath. “Why me? Okay then, the only reason I’m letting you come is that I know you’ll follow us if I don’t. If you’re going to cause me headaches, at least this way you’ll do it where I can see you.” She pointed an accusing finger at me. “And you stay out of the crime scene itself. I’m limiting you to the main area only, understand?”

  I’d have offered her a salute and an “aye-aye, Captain” if I didn’t think she’d kick my ass across the Mississippi and back. Instead, I drew a big X over my chest and then gave her the old Boy Scout salute.

  She laughed once, raising an eyebrow and letting herself smile. “If you were a Boy Scout, I’m deposed Nigerian royalty. Come on.” She jerked her head back toward the Escalade. Apparently, they were in her car today.

  I cast a quick glance back at my junker pulled up in front of the mansion. It was probably bringing down property values by the minute. There wasn’t anything in there even the most desperate thief would steal, so I let it sit and joined the detectives.

  There wasn’t much conversation to be had once Knight switched on the lights and siren in the dash. Although I wanted to ask where they’d found the body, and to ask if they’d gotten anything useful out of Vesta, I didn’t even try to talk over the noise.

  A few minutes into the drive, I started seeing familiar landmarks. We’d gone east on Saint Charles all the way to Polyhymina Street and turned right onto Race Street. This is Odette’s neighborhood, I thought as we passed the coffee shop she stopped at every morning. I’d planned to stop by her place and let myself in to leave a note since she’d proved difficult to get ahold of. It felt like a coincidence until it didn’t.

  My heart dropped into my stomach as we took a hard left onto Annunciation Street and her apartment complex sprang up on the right. The Escalade slowed, the wheels turning in time with the beat of my pulse.

  No. Not here.

  But there was no mistaking it. The small causeway in front of the complex was littered with police and an ambulance. A group of civilian onlookers stood off to one side, behind a line of police tape. On the uppermost balcony, I spotted more police. Odette’s floor.

  I had the rear door opened and found my feet before the Escalade even pulled to a stop. Knight called my name as I ran for the front door, but it barely registered. I had to get upstairs and check on Odette. Now.

  I took the stairs two at a time, the whole climb a blur. I was sure I knocked aside at least one officer coming down from the scene, but I couldn’t slow my charge to apologize. Even the burning in my lungs and the stitch in my side didn’t slow me down as I jerked open the door to the third floor and frantically ran for apartment fourteen.

  The door stood propped open, blocked by police tape. I didn’t care. I had to get through. My fingers gripped the yellow plastic tape, and I ripped it away, leaving it fluttering in my wake.

  Odette’s apartment was crowded. Cops, CSI, and a bunch of other people with badges on mulled in pairs, speaking in hushed voices. All of them looked up at me as I entered, varying degrees of shock on their faces.

  I was about to ask after Odette in a shaky voice when an invisible wall slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs. The weight settled over my shoulders, forcing me to my knees. My vision swam and my muscles quaked as they grappled with an enemy I couldn’t see, hear, or feel. Something touched my cheek, something hot enough that my skin blistered at the touch. I jerked my head away from the brand with a scream. Unseen hands grabbed my arms, jerking them up and holding them, lifting me from where I’d fallen and suspending me mid-air. The same force, whatever it was, jerked my head backward and held my mouth open to pour invisible hot lead down my throat.

  The cops in the apartment abandoned their posts, approaching cautiously and mumbling questions I couldn’t hear, their faces distorted behind a veil of thin clouds. One reached out to touch my shoulder but quickly jerked his hand back when he hit the wall, shaking steam from his singed skin.

  Somewhere in the middle of all that, my mind finally registered what was happening to me wasn’t physical. No molten rock crawled down my throat, no hands gripped me, and the weight I felt on my shoulders wasn’t truly there. Not on this plane anyway.

  A curse, and a powerful one at that, had gripped me the minute I crossed the threshold and was now working on tearing down my defenses. Once those had burned away, whoever was controlling the curse would have unrestricted access to my mind, giving them control over my body as well. I was under psychic assault, and I was losing ground. I had to ground myself to reality, overload the spell somehow and then detach it from my person quickly.

  Blood. I forced one eye open and saw the bandage on my hand behind the false wall of heat burning through me. It’d do. With a scream, I tore my left hand loose from the invisible hands gripping me and squeezed the skin around the bandage as hard as I could. Undoing what little healing I’d managed in the last twenty-four hours was only slightly less unpleasant than the curse gripping me. It hurt like hell. Every fiber of my brain screamed that I should stop applying pressure before I did permanent damage. I fought against it, squeezing tighter and tighter until blood trickled over my coat and down my arm.

  The first drop splashed to the floor with explosive force. The spell imploded violently, knocking back all the officers in the immediate area and ripping up bits of the floor. A fissure appeared in the wood, traveling all the way from where I knelt to the threshold, which split in two. With one last whoosh of air, the curse lifted and left me panting and bleeding on the floor.

  “What the hell?” one of the cops I didn’t know asked.

  “He’s with me.” Detective Knight’s voice felt distant, though I felt her hand on my shoulder shortly after. “What the hell was that?”

  “Curse,” I panted. “Trap.” Laid specific
ally for me.

  I didn’t tell her that last part because talking in complete sentences was still too hard, but there were no buts about it. A dozen cops had come and gone from the room, maybe more, and not one of them had activated the curse. Only I had sprung it, which meant the magic had been attuned to my DNA. Whoever had cast it had my fucking DNA.

  No time for that. Have to see Odette. I pushed myself up on shaky legs. Knight offered me her hand in support, but I ignored it in favor of staggering forward, toward the bedroom in the back of the apartment. No one moved to stop me.

  Her bedroom carpet was soaked in blood. It squished loudly under my feet as I stepped into the room. The sickly sweet stink of death filled the air and made my stomach do flip-flops.

  She was on the bed, flattened just like Brandi Lavelle.

  I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and turned away, breathing out a sigh of relief. “It’s not her.”

  “Who?” asked Knight from behind me.

  “Odette Hartman. My girlfriend,” I said turning around. “This is her apartment, but that’s not her. It was one of the girls from the fire yesterday. The pre-teen girl. A child.”

  Knight pushed past me, and I was happy letting her go in while I felt my way back to the kitchen to sink down on the linoleum tile. Odette wasn’t in her apartment, but that didn’t mean she was alive, and it sure as hell didn’t mean she wasn’t involved.

  Where the hell are you, Odette?

  Chapter Eleven

  The tile felt warm beneath me, though I knew it must be cool. I was vaguely aware of the police officers all around me, their muffled voices a single sound. Knight and Moses worked to organize the scene while some of the other officers placed yellow plastic markers with numbers around. At some point, someone handed me a tissue and a bottle of water. I realized too late that it was because I’d somehow acquired a nosebleed.

  Detective Knight squatted in front of me as I finished mopping dried blood from my upper lip. Her elbows rested on her knees, the hem of her pants drawn up enough that it showed off the lacy black socks she wore. “You doing okay?”

  I grunted. “Define okay.”

  A little huff escaped her nose, drawing my eyes to her face. Concern etched on her features. “I’m going to need to get a statement.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “How long’s Odette been missing?”

  I shook my head, still not willing to accept she was really missing. Just because she wasn’t home, wasn’t answering her cell, and hadn’t reported to work—a fact Knight had already verified with a phone call—didn’t mean she was missing. Maybe she was out playing hooky at the beach. No way to know.

  But deep down, I knew. Something had happened to Odette. Something bad.

  “Saw her the day before yesterday, before…” I trailed off, not able to associate Odette’s whereabouts with a string of murders just yet. “She spent the night at my place. Everything seemed fine. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Think,” Knight urged. “Even if it’s something small, it could be important.”

  Odette had been her normal, high-maintenance self. There was a time when I never would’ve considered dating someone who liked to dress up and spent hours on hair and makeup, but that was mostly because I considered girls like that out of my league. Hell, Odette was. She was drop-dead gorgeous, wasn’t broke, and somehow didn’t mind that I’d done time, despite her own status. Her girlfriends all thought I was trash, that she deserved better, and maybe they were right. But there was an undeniable spark between us. Even when we fought, it was with plenty of the same fire. If she was gone…

  I swallowed. Stay focused. What was different about the other night? Nothing…and everything.

  “She made me cancel our reservations,” I offered with a shrug. It didn’t seem important, but it was the only thing that was different. “She’d been hounding me for months about this place in the Quarter, Shel. Her best friend’s fiancé got them some reservations at that swanky place, and she wouldn’t shut up about it ever since. I finally scored a table—took me weeks and more cash than I care to recall—only to have me cancel. I’d have been pissed about it, except…”

  Knight’s eyebrows shot up. “Except?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, she sort of made it up to me. Repeatedly. Until dawn.”

  She held up a hand. “Okay, Romeo. I get it. Did she give you a reason for the cancellation?”

  “I didn’t really ask. I’d just had a run-in with an unsatisfied client. A rather painful one. I figured it was because of the bruises.”

  Knight frowned. I figured she’d ask about the dissatisfied customer, but she let it go in favor of another line of questioning. “Who has a key to the apartment?”

  I started to say it was just me and Odette but paused. Obviously, the landlady had a key, and her girlfriend, Tia. I’d also lost my key about a week ago, and she’d replaced it for me, but not without complaining. It had disappeared in my office. Anyone in the city could have a copy of Odette’s key.

  After I’d relayed that to Knight, she shook her head. “About what happened to you before…”

  “The psychic assault?” I couldn’t keep the snarl from creeping into my tone.

  I really hated having magic used on me, curses even more. It was violating, to say the least. Someone had samples of my DNA, someone I couldn’t identify, and that was just downright creepy. It’d have to be a relatively fresh sample, but that didn’t narrow it down any. A particularly savvy wizard might’ve broken into my apartment and found it lying anywhere: on my toothbrush, my favorite coffee cup… I cringed at the other, less savory possibilities of where they might’ve collected it, especially in light of the time I’d spent with Odette recently.

  But explaining any of that to Detective Knight seemed too difficult, especially since she didn’t really believe me about the magic anyway.

  “Only another wizard or a witch could’ve done that, someone way more adept at magic than me.” My eyes traveled to the crack that ran the length of the living room all the way to the threshold. That’s how the magic had escaped the confined space, through the threshold. “I don’t know anyone like that.”

  Knight followed my gaze. “Whoever it is, they’ve got a grudge against you. The body on your doorstep, the next in your girlfriend’s bed? These attacks are clearly aimed at you.” She turned back to me, her lips turned down into an even deeper frown than normal. “In cases like these, my go-to theory is a spurned lover. You and Odette have a complicated relationship?”

  I tipped my head and glared at her. “You have a lot of exes, don’t you, Detective?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve got a lot of faults, but being unfaithful isn’t one of them.”

  “How about some girl who might’ve wanted your attention but got ignored?”

  The laugh escaped my lips before I could stop it, turning into a guffaw that left me teary-eyed. “Oh, that’s good! You’ve seen my place, and by now you’ve sure seen my finances. Yeah, girls are lining up to date broke, ex-con necromancers, right?” I shook my head. “Sorry, Detective, that angle doesn’t work. Something else is going on here.”

  I pushed up on unsteady legs and walked to the threshold where I knelt and examined the place where the curse had escaped. Who had I pissed off recently? Darius and his gang, but they didn’t have a witch in their employ. If they did, he sure as hell wouldn’t have come to me to find his dead mom’s stash. Aside from him, I hadn’t had any clients recently that seemed upset with the service I provided.

  There was Pony Dee, but I hadn’t run back into him until after Brandi’s murder. He had tried to warn me about someone else in his own cryptic way, but if he thought Odette was in trouble, he would’ve said more. Pony was a good soul, way better than I’d ever be. He might’ve been a sexist pig, but that was exactly why he’d never let anything happen to someone like Odette. Pony didn’t approve of my work, b
ut he’d never let something happen to an innocent, not if he could prevent it.

  The only ex that came to mind was Beth Ryder, and as far as I knew, she’d left Louisiana after I pleaded guilty to move back in with her parents in New Hampshire. She had some magical talent, but mostly for charming and healing. Black magic and curses were never her forte. It couldn’t be her.

  Who else did I even know in New Orleans? I had no friends to speak of beyond Odette, and everyone in the magical community had shunned me when I got out of prison. The attacks felt personal, but maybe they weren’t. At least, not at first.

  “This could be a warning,” I mumbled aloud, touching my fingers to the crack in the wood. “Brandi came to me for help. I refused to help her. She was killed on my doorstep, but more than likely it was because she’d come to me for help. That message might not have been for me, but for anyone else who might’ve considered reaching out.”

  “You got any proof to back up this theory?” Moses asked from behind me.

  I shook my head. “Just a feeling.”

  “Then explain why the murderer picked this place,” Knight added. “It can’t be chance.”

  “No.” I spun around. “The second time, the message is meant for me. I’ve been poking around. Whoever’s behind this obviously doesn’t like how close I’ve gotten.”

  Knight crossed her arms and leaned to one side. “Okay then, if that’s the case, why you? Moses and I have been poking around too.”

  “It’s not the same. No offense, but you guys are mundanes, not attuned to magic, and this is a magic crime. People in the magic community like to handle their affairs without outside interference most of the time. Remember how the door in the burning house was locked?”

  Knight uncrossed her arms and shook her head, suddenly more attentive. “I wasn’t exactly conscious. And you never said anything about the door being locked.”

  “Must’ve slipped my mind in between being shot, saving your life, and getting arrested for it.”