by Faith Hunter
“We need to talk,” Bobby said, staring at the ground between his feet. The adult-sounding words nearly mirrored Soul’s, but his lips were pushed out in something like an obstinate pout.
“Yeah? ’Bout what?” I asked.
“About my dreams. Misha is in trouble.”
I didn’t understand what one had to do with the other, but I asked, “You dream?”
Bobby nodded, eyes on the dirt at my feet. “I dream about stuff that’s gonna happen. And stuff that’s happening now. It started when I was fifteen. People made fun of me, so I stopped telling them.”
I shivered again, this time not even a bit from the cold. “Oh,” I said. Unspoken between us was the fact that I’d left Bethel when he was fifteen. “Ummm. Prophetic dreams? Is that why Misha called you a dowsing rod?”
Bobby shrugged and scuffed his toe in the dirt.
I cocked my head, thinking about the dowsing rod label. I had no evidence, but if Bobby’s dreams were prophetic and if he was dreaming about Misha being in trouble, then at least she was still alive. Though it might have been better if he’d dreamed an address, or, even better, a dream that would have kept Misha from leaving in the first place. Not voicing any of that, I asked, “What do your dreams tell you about her?”
He nodded, then shook his head. “Not much. She’s in the dark. She’s . . . kinda like drunk.”
Drugged, maybe. Since she went to see a vamp, she was likely blood drunk in a vamp’s lair, drained dangerously low of blood and filled with endorphins that gave a false sense of safety, pleasure, and ease to the victim.
“She’s sitting up and she’s trying to fight, but she can’t.”
I didn’t know if he’d understand the word, but I asked, “Is she under compulsion? Is someone trying to get inside her brain to make her do things?”
Bobby shrugged. He’d given me all he knew. “Thanks, Bobby. You did good.” He was beaming when he lifted his head, his mouth pulling his freckled cheeks into apples. I remembered that same happiness from the children’s home, anytime someone gave him praise. It didn’t happen often. “If you think of something else or dream something else, let me know,” I added, and he bobbed his head with determination. “You did good too, little girl,” I said to Charly.
The little girl went still, like, nearly vamp still, for a dozen heartbeats. Then she swiveled in her seat and wound her arms around my neck. I inhaled slowly as she said softly against my collarbone, the breath of her words warm, “Well. I did well.”
I chuckled, remembering English and grammar lessons that were always ongoing in the group home. Obviously, Misha had continued them with her daughter. “Yeah. You did well.” I felt her smile against my throat. And I heard Bobby’s breath hitch just before the smell hit me. Werewolf. Grindylow. And no Rick or Soul with them.
All in one motion I rose and set Charly on Bobby’s lap. Turned and faced the door to the house. The wolf and his rider stood on the stoop, the wolf’s hackles raised, his head and ears low. “Stay put. Keep Charly here. Don’t move,” I said.
It wasn’t smart to challenge a ticked-off werewolf, but it was certain from his body language that he wasn’t gonna back off, and the wolf and I needed to get a few things straight. I stepped away from my charges, meeting and holding his gaze in challenge. The wolf had crystalline eyes that sometimes looked blue and sometimes looked gray, but always looked threatening. Or had since I coldcocked him and broke his jaw the first time I laid eyes on him in human form. I let a taunting grin spread over my face. “You here to even the score, Dog Boy?” I asked.
He growled and rushed me. Beast rose in me and took over.
Everything happened in a single breath. I inhaled and ground the balls of my feet into the grass. As the chilled air flowed into me, the two-hundred-plus pound wolf roared and leaped. Cold air flowed through his white hair, rippling. His mouth opened, lips drawing back to expose killing teeth. I braced, fisted, punched, all my body weight torqueing into the blow.
My fist hit the wolf’s snout in midair. The roar turned to a squealing yelp as I spun to the side and the wolf shot past me to crash into a tree. He fell and lay at the base of the old live oak, leaving the leaves shivering. I exhaled and shook out my fist.
The grindy held on through the leap and the hard stop and turned to me, chittering. I could have sworn it sounded like gratitude. Mighta been. The grindy seemed partial to the wolf, and if he’d bitten me, the grindy would have had no choice but to kill him for transferring the were taint. And then maybe kill me too if I didn’t get to a mercy blade in time for healing. I cocked my head in acknowledgment. All that occurred in a matter of two seconds as the tree still quivered.
Then the pain hit. I shook out my fist and said, “Awwwweeee. That hurt,” like I’d punched a brick wall, not a snout. From the house, I heard laughter.
I looked up and met Rick’s eyes. His laughter died away, but his smile stayed put. “You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to do that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Once, he got pissed at me and peed on my laptop.”
“Ick.” I looked at the unconscious wolf. “I don’t guess this makes us even?”
The smile slid away. “It . . . could be a start.”
I nodded once, a short jut of my chin. “Let me know who else to sock.”
The smile curled back up a bit, and Rick went into the house. The door closing sounded less judgmental than it might have.
“Are you gonna kiss him?” Charly asked.
My mouth opened wide before I closed it in shock. Bobby answered. “They already did. I can tell.”
“How?” Charly asked.
“By the magic that bounces off them.”
Slowly I turned, careful to keep my reactions—all of them—off my face. “You can see emotion, Bobby?”
“Nope. Just magic.” When I looked perplexed, his face scrunched up and he said, “Love is magic. It looks just the same.”
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” I breathed. This explained . . . This explained everything.
I lifted Charly from Bobby’s lap and we followed Rick back into the house. At the door to the breakfast room, everyone stopped talking, leading me to believe that they had been talking about me, but I no longer cared. “Bobby, come here,” I said. “Tell me what Rick looks like.”
Bobby slid into the room, his back against the wall, and studied Rick. “He looks mad at you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I mean, tell me about his magic.” I rocked my body and Charly back and forth, holding her close. She felt cold to me as her arms tightened around my neck.
“He’s all blue with red sparkles,” Bobby said.
I started to smile. Even I couldn’t see much of Rick’s magic except when the full moon pulled at him. “How about Soul? The pretty woman?” I pointed with my chin.
“She’s all black and silver and kinda sparkly.”
“And me?” I asked.
“You’re all yellow and silver and sparkly black.”
“And the humans?” I asked.
Bobby shrugged, lifting his shoulders up to his ears, then dropping them. “They look like me. Normal. No magic.”
My grin spread wide. “Once you see a person’s magic, can you always see it? Can you tell where it is?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. My spirits plummeted. “Not always. But sometimes.”
“Dowsing rod,” I said, my smile drawing back up. Bobby could help us with this case. I pulled him to a chair. “Bobby. It’s a gift. Some people are just too stupid to see gifts like this.”
“Stupider than me?”
“You are not stupid,” I said. “You are gifted.”
He looked at me. “That’s what Misha called it. My gift. She said it made me special in good ways, not bad, retarded ways.”
“That’s a bad word,” Charly whispered into the crook of my neck.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
Soul asked Bobby, “Did your friend Mis
ha have you searching for something? Something magical?”
Bobby’s face scrunched up, his thinking face, remembered from childhood, and I felt my expression soften. “She had me looking for all sorts of things. She said she was training me to use my gift.”
“I’m tired,” Charly breathed against me.
I could smell her exhaustion, feel it in the droop and weight of her limbs. “I’m taking Charly upstairs to rest.”
“It’s time for her pain medicine,” Bobby said. “I’ll get it.”
I went up the stairs, Charly drooping into sleep and barely able to keep her eyes open long enough to take her medicine and eat the saltine crackers Bobby brought with the drugs.
When he felt she was deeply asleep, Bobby went to his room to watch cartoons, and I covered her up with the blanket, pressing it close like swaddling, before I returned to the grown-ups. The men were gone, and Soul was alone in the breakfast room. I didn’t really want to be in the same room with her, but I figured she had heard me coming down the stairs, so I stepped inside and took my usual chair. Soul was studying a series of the Kid’s printouts, while a video ran, over and over, on a laptop screen. It was turned away from my chair, but I could see enough to tell it was a low-light video of vamps running in a group, and they were all like the ones in the woods—insectoid and utterly alien. The creatures were green on a dark background, and they raced like centipedes across the ground, feathery limbs and oddly jointed bodies. I wanted to kill them all.
CHAPTER 10
I Want You to Chill, Babe
Without looking up at me, Soul spoke, and I jumped a little. “Thank you for breaking the wolf’s nose. He’ll heal, but he will surely remember his lesson.”
“You’re welcome. I think.”
Soul smiled, still without looking up. I didn’t want to like her, but she had a really sweet smile, one I didn’t think could be faked. “I’m not sleeping with Rick,” she said, and shifted papers to uncover a buried pile.
“Yeah.” I said shortly. When she didn’t say more I added, “That’s a good way to go furry.”
“We also are not romantically involved.”
“Oh.” Okay. Stupid, but a happy flush coursed through me. “Are you two—you four—staying in Natchez?”
“Yes. Ms. Esmee has provided us rooms. If that makes you uncomfortable, we can, of course, take rooms elsewhere.”
I opened my mouth to ask Why are you staying here? Whose idea was it? Does Rick like me? Check here for yes and here for no. So juvenile. I wanted to ask but didn’t have the social skills to peel away the layers without sounding like a lovesick teenager. I was an idiot for even thinking it. I closed my mouth, the questions unasked, but no way was it coincidence that they were staying here. So I blew out a breath and shrugged instead. Which was even more juvenile. “Um. Stay. That’s fine by me. And all.” I wanted to kick myself.
Soul didn’t react except to say, “PsyLED acquired a few police reports from the local sheriff and the chief of police. Interestingly enough, your young man had already discovered the same information quite independently, and quite a bit sooner than law enforcement.”
My young man had to be Alex, and if he acquired info on his own it was by illegally drilling into information centers, like police networks. So I said nothing. Nada.
Soul passed me a sheet of paper with Alex’s info and handwritten notations on it. “Among Natchez’s missing are twelve witches, gone in the last four months. I understand that you asked Alex to hunt for this information specifically?”
I sat up straight. Twelve out of 114? “Yeah. Something someone said made me curious. Those percentages seem off.” I said. “Witches might make up one percent of the population. Not nearly ten percent.”
“Twelve is a perfect number for a mass working,” Soul said. “One more or less would leave a working unbalanced.”
Another word for a mass working was a circle. For which we were searching and had been since Francis—still caged in the garage—had mentioned one. “Holy moly on a broomstick,” I breathed. “What kind of mass working needs twelve witches?”
She handed me a sheaf of papers. “The kind used for moving hurricanes or shifting weather patterns. The New Orleans coven didn’t have enough members still in town to move Katrina, which is why they could only bring the storm down from a category five to a cat three. If they’d had enough witches working together, they could have moved it—which is much harder—and decreased the storm’s power.” I took the pages and started scanning them. Soul kept talking. “A group of twelve can also make armies sick or affect the impact of political advertising on the masses. Many historians believe that Hitler had several covens of twelve in the early years of his political and military life, which contributed to his success in warfare. Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan each traveled with a coven of twelve. Alexander, Cyrus the Great, Julius Caesar are believed to have had witches at their command. And, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte had a very loyal coven. Such large covens are dangerous. Do you like history?”
It was obvious, even to me, that she was trying to put me at ease by chatting and not meeting my eyes, something my Beast would have appreciated. And it was working. I huffed a breath and forced my shoulders to drop, making myself relax. “It’s okay,” I said. “It was interesting in school, but it was also like eating only the icing instead of the whole cake, you know? No depth. Anyway. Okay. Covens of twelve are powerful. How about making vamps move like insects and heal from silver?”
Soul met my eyes. “I have never heard of such a thing until now.”
I pulled my phone and showed her the photos. “This vamp is dead, but it took way more weaponry than it should have. A bunch more got away, one after being spine shot with silver.”
“Oh, my.” Soul leaned forward in her chair, studying the shots. “Did they move like the ones in this video that Alex sent me?” She spun the small laptop so I could see it full-on.
“Yes. Exactly. Creepy insectoid-snakey-octopuslike.”
Soul asked, “Did you look at their hands and feet? Did you examine them thoroughly? Had there been any physiological changes, like extra digits or formation of carapace? Scales? Anything that might suggest a genetic-level mutation?”
“No, no, and nothing that I saw.” There was a strange look on her face, as if she had seen something recently that prompted the questions, but I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer the answers. “If witches are involved and magic is letting them heal against silver, then maybe the full circle is involved too?” I asked. And maybe Big H, with his mention of magic, knows about it all and has from the beginning, I thought. Except why bring me here and then only toss out clues about it?
“Whoever is directing the circle would need a focus, something to gather and concentrate the spell and the energy of the coven, like a large amulet—a statue, a live oak, anything big enough to hold the power. Something potent that could be driven by the twelve missing witches. Something that has been working for quite some time. Perhaps since Lucas Vazquez de Allyon arrived in Natchez.”
“How about an ugly, corroded metal-and-copper necklace?” I asked, thinking about Big H’s jewelry.
A necklace would be too small,” she said definitively.
I thought about the blood diamond I had put in the safety-deposit box and the amulets in my boot box. The diamond was well protected; the others didn’t feel or smell powerful enough for the changes I’d seen in the vamps. But what did I know? I’d gotten them from de Allyon’s Naturaleza followers before I killed him, so I knew where they’d come from, just not what they did. “Wait here.” I raced up the stairs and brought back one of the pocket-watch amulets for Soul to inspect. “This is the only amulet I’ve seen that has something to do with Lucas Vazquez de Allyon.”
The nonhuman woman held it in both hands and closed her eyes. At one point she cocked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. She opened her eyes and looked at it with surprise. “It smells like old blood and warm, raw meat. But it do
es not feel like a blood-magic amulet. Perhaps a low-level communication charm? A way for two vampires to speak to each other?”
I huffed. So much for that idea.
She held the pocket watch out to me and, reluctantly, I took it, tossing it to the table, where it slid under a sheaf of papers. I wiped my hand on my jeans and noticed Soul doing the same thing on her skirt. I’d smelled something like the scent recently, but I couldn’t place it. “You want some tea?” I asked. When Soul’s eyes lit up with interest, I said, “Jameson has some gunpowder green, a nice little oolong, some jasmine that he says is tasty, and a good strong black, a GFOP golden monkey.” The initials stood for Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, a top grade of tea, and golden monkey was my favorite tea lately. “It’s really good iced, and not bad hot.”
“The golden monkey sounds wonderful. Hot, please.”
“Anticipating your need,” Jameson said, pushing open the door to the coffee and tea bar, “I have brewed a pot for you.” The smell of hot tea wafted through the room, caught on the currents from the house’s air system.
“You are most kind, Jameson,” Soul said.
“He’s a wizard with anything in the kitchen.”
“Miss Jane speaks figuratively,” he said. “I have no magic at all.”
I grinned and accepted a mug of black tea with cream and sugar. Soul took hers black. And I figured we were bonding. Either that or she was casting some sort of spell over me again.
“So,” she said, when Jameson had withdrawn, “someone has possibly forced a coven of twelve, possibly composed of witches who had not previously worked together, so far as we know. An acceptable deduction would be that the resulting magic would be spotty, sketchy, difficult to control.”
