SOMETHING WICKED

by Mitchell, Liza

  “Hmm.” She sighed. “I’m not sure I’m convinced yet.” Cara pushed off the desk and stood, letting his cock fall out of her. She smirked and walked to her dress, bending over to pick it up.

  He stood in the middle of the darkened room, dismissed, with his pants around his ankles and his dick swinging in the breeze. “You need more convincing?” he asked incredulously, quickly dressing as Cara did the same.

  She shrugged, but her eyes sparkled. “I’m a hard sell. And you seem willing to work for it.” She gestured to her open back.

  He cleared the space between them in two long strides and grabbed the zipper, closing it for her. “You have my cum trailing down your legs. Tomorrow you will have bruises on your hips from my hands. Your cunt will ache for days because of my cock. I won’t need to convince you. You’ll be hungry for more.”

  She turned to face him. “Who won the last game of chicken we played?” She raised an eyebrow and kissed him. “I’m ready to go home.”

  “Cara, you can’t. It’s still a crime scene.” Malcolm his heart sinking.

  “I meant your home,” she said, taking his hand and walking toward the door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MALCOLM

  The next morning, Malcolm looked over his computer and gazed at Cara. She’d planted herself on a chair in his office and hadn’t moved for hours. She was bent over a book with a small coffee cup balanced her knee. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder and hid her face as she picked up the cup, took a sip, and turned the page. She was breaking so many of his rules; she was loitering in his office, her shoes were on his furniture, and Malcolm was sure her coffee was damaging the book somehow. But he couldn’t bring himself to scold her. All of this should add up to an explosion from him, but she was so content, and he didn’t want to disturb her.

  Despite Cara’s peaceful appearance, her presence there was an act of protest. Last night, after they’d climbed into the back seat of their car, she had asked Malcolm about his conversation with Brooks. The chief refused to talk to him, regardless of how deep his pockets were. Brooks seemed overwhelmed by the disappearances and murders, crimes a career in a sleepy tourist town definitely had not prepared him for. The officer was playing by the rules and refused to share any information about the ongoing cases. Although, Chief Brooks relaxed a bit when Malcolm accepted his invitation to meet his new wife.

  Claudia was warm and bubbly, and an administrator at Lakeview General. When she’d learned about Cara’s missing sister and Malcolm’s interest with the case, she offered to show him the gardens around the house. During their walk, Claudia nonchalantly mentioned that the medical examiner for Lakeview County was completely in over his head with the murders and had requested help from another county. Meanwhile, the bodies were housed at Lakeview General while the medical examiner waited for help. She made a point of stressing just how understaffed and underfunded that hospital was. Malcolm heard her subtext loud and clear: the bodies were alone, for now.

  Malcolm relayed all of this to Cara on the drive home, and she’d insisted that they go to the hospital immediately. He’d flatly refused; it was idiotic to try to traipse into a hospital basement at ten o’clock at night in their formalwear. It didn’t matter how understaffed Lakeview General was, they would draw attention to themselves. He had already decided to wait until the following day to make any sort of move. Cara had decided to give him the silent treatment. She’d stalked inside and gone to her own room without so much as a glance his way. Then, at six o’clock in the morning, she appeared at his office door, helped herself to coffee, and set up camp.

  He’d spent the whole morning on the phone researching shift changes, finding hospital blueprints, and trying to create a solid plan. Unfortunately, it looked like they would have to rely heavily on other people’s ignorance and apathy.

  At two o’clock, Malcolm walked over to Cara. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, let’s go,” she answered briskly. She’d warmed up to him throughout the day, and he didn’t hear any bitterness in her voice.

  Malcolm’s hand itched to touch hers as they walked to his BMW.

  “No driver today? We have to settle for your fancy sports car?” Cara teased.

  “Nope,” he answered playfully. “We’re slumming it in a sedan.”

  Cara laughed and gave him a brilliant smile. He felt his stomach tighten; he wanted her more than anything. He’d never considered taking a mate before, and the woman he’d chosen was so damn complex. She was a witch who never practiced. She wasn’t human but detested other non-humans. She refused to be his mate but flirted and fucked him freely. On top of all of this, her missing sister cast a shadow over the whole predicament. He wanted to find Brianna to help Cara, but selfishly, he also wanted to be the hero and gain Cara’s trust.

  He opened Cara’s door and waited for her to climb in and fasten her seat belt before he closed it again. He walked around the M760i—it really was just a sedan… with a V12 engine—and climbed into the driver’s seat. His car was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself that didn’t benefit the whole pack. He’d bought his first car for two hundred dollars in the 1920s. This car had cost close to one hundred times that. Some wolves had a problem with it, but he didn’t care; he was the Alpha, and those who complained hadn’t spent the last hundred years amassing a fortune and ensuring the pack’s financial security.

  He started the engine, and the car came to life and purred quietly. One would never guess it had a six-hundred-horsepower engine and went from zero to sixty in three point four seconds. Cara didn’t seem to know much about cars, but he could tell she appreciated the BMW’s power. The last time they’d been in this car together, the night her sister disappeared, she’d tensed and relaxed as he shifted gears. He’d purposefully pushed the engine, watching her reaction to the intense vibrations. Malcolm smirked; he would love to do that again with her.

  They arrived at the hospital and Malcolm parked the car. He could hear Cara’s heart pounding. He inhaled deeply and smelled her nervousness. “Everything will be fine,” he said. “Did you memorize the blueprints?”

  She nodded stiffly.

  Damn, she must be very nervous if she was actually speechless. Malcolm reassured her, “Then walk with confidence, act like you belong, and no one will question you.”

  He led her to the front doors, and Cara’s demeanor changed the instant they crossed the threshold. She lifted her head, pulled her shoulders back, and walked purposefully past the information desk. The two of them passed the main set of elevators, turned down a hallway, and found the freight elevator designated for deliveries and employees.

  Cara hit the down arrow and smiled at him. The doors opened almost immediately and revealed a dietary aid with a cart full of trays. She froze, but he discreetly pushed her forward and smiled warmly at the aid. Cara remained rigid the entire ride, and he wished he could do something to bring back her confidence, but he refrained from touching her and drawing attention to themselves.

  They exited the elevator and turned left, heading toward the morgue. Malcolm listened for the aid and her cart as they walked away to make sure she’d gone in the opposite direction, toward the kitchen.

  Through his research, he’s learned that Lakeview General’s security system was about fifty years old. So, basically, there was none. Every door they passed through was unlocked, and they didn’t need a passcode or name badge to get to the morgue.

  His confidence grew; they had no problem navigating every turn on their way to the back of the hospital, and every person they passed either didn’t acknowledge them or barely nodded as they walked by. Apathy and ignorance. Malcolm turned the final corner. This was a dead end, and the only rooms in this hall were the morgue and the medical examiner’s office. He stopped short, throwing out his arm out in front of Cara, preventing her from moving forward. Someone was closing the door to the morgue and looking directly at them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CARA

  Cara stopped,
suddenly overcome by panic. They had a plan in place to handle any sort of confrontation, and the most important thing was to remain calm and act as entitled as possible—her words, not Malcolm’s. But staying calm was almost impossible for her, though it had become easier in the last few days. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and waited for Malcolm to make the first move.

  “Claudia,” he said, striding toward her, hand outstretched.

  Claudia? Chief Brooks’s wife? What the fuck was she doing here? She’d given Malcolm the information about the bodies; could she have been trying to set Malcolm up? How could she possibly benefit from setting up a local businessman? A wolf. A scapegoat.

  Cara’s mind spiraled out of control. Meanwhile, Malcolm smiled warmly at Claudia. She didn’t seem surprised or upset to see the two of them in this restricted hallway.

  “I see you took my advice,” she said smoothly, not moving from the doorway.

  “We needed to find out what the police are keeping from the public.” Malcolm glided toward Claudia. Cara tried her best to mirror his confidence and followed a few steps behind him.

  “Well, might as well come in since you made it this far.” She stepped aside and let them pass.

  Cara looked at Malcolm. This whole situation made no sense. She was willing to believe that Claudia would try to help him out in hopes of angling for a donation to the hospital. But she couldn’t figure out why the administrator would wait for them—because that’s exactly what she seemed to be doing when they’d arrived. And Cara could not shake the feeling of familiarity.

  Claudia was tall and lean with lingerie-model blond wavy hair. Her make-up was pristine, and she was dressed in an impeccably tailored pantsuit and black pumps. Everything about Claudia said “thirty-year-old board member” except her face, which was webbed with the deep wrinkles of a woman in her sixties. Perhaps they had met when her mother or grandmother had been in the hospital? Both of them battled with cancer and were in and out of Lakeview General.

  Cara tore her eyes away from the woman as she approached the coolers. Claudia opened one door and slid out a tray that held one of the women. Cara staggered, suddenly overwhelmed by the whole situation. She’d come here to look at a dead fucking body. What the hell was she thinking? She was no detective. And while she would do anything to find Brianna, was this really the answer?

  Malcolm approached the first body as Claudia pulled out another tray, and Cara continued to panic. He looked at Cara and motioned for her to come over. Her feet were glued to the ground.

  “Cara, you need to see this.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t want to. That could be Brianna tomorrow, and maybe I don’t want to know what’s happened to her. Maybe I don’t want that seared into my head. This was wrong, Malcolm; I should have just let Ransom handle this.”

  “Cara, they have witch’s marks.”

  “What? Where?” She practically ran over to the bodies. Sure enough, each woman had a small scar that looked like veins or splintered lightning bolts. Cara’s own scar lay on the side of her neck. She usually hid it with makeup or her hair. Cara’s, like all witches’, was a soft pinkish red, and these women’s were deep purple and blue. She knew exactly what that meant.

  “Malcolm, we need to go.” She grabbed his arm.

  But Malcolm was looking at Claudia. “The police don’t want people to know they’re witches?” he asked. The woman shook her head. “Of course, because then the public wouldn’t care if it was two creatures that had been killed, not a soccer mom and a school teacher.”

  “I think that’s part of it,” Claudia answered.

  “Then why do you care?” Malcolm started to follow Cara to the door, mostly because Cara was practically dragging him away from the bodies.

  “Because they were part of my coven. And three witches have gone missing.”

  Fuck. Cara dropped Malcolm’s arm and looked at Claudia. This was a goddamn mess. “Then maybe you should be with your coven,” Cara spat. She turned to Malcolm. “We need to go. Now.”

  Cara didn’t even wait for him to follow her; she marched out of the morgue and headed to the elevators. She pulled out her cell phone and started to call her sisters, but there was no reception in the hospital’s basement. Son of a bitch. She needed Eileen and Grace. Cara slowed to listen more carefully at the sound of footsteps behind her. Not the sharp click-clacking of heel. Definitely Malcolm. Cara stopped, giving Malcolm the opportunity to catch up with her.

  “What is going on?” he snapped.

  “I’m not talking now.” She shot him a pointed glance as her voice bounced off the walls in the cavernous hallway.

  She walked as fast as she could out of the hospital and toward the car. Cara didn’t wait for Malcolm to open her door. Instead, as soon as she heard the locks click, she tore the door open, threw herself inside, slammed the door, and called Eileen.

  “Eileen. Go to the house, we need to talk. I just saw the bodies. I’m calling Grace.” She felt almost hysterical. She hung up on Eileen without giving her sister a chance to speak, then immediately called Grace and repeated the same one-sided conversation.

  She knew Malcolm was staring at her, and she tried to calm down. She felt his hand on the back of her neck. His grip was firm, dragging her back to earth. Grounding her. Calming her mind almost instantly. She turned to face him, and he pressed his forehead against hers.

  “What did you see in there?” he asked.

  “Malcolm. Their witch’s marks were purple, not red. Did you notice?”

  “Why does the color matter?”

  “They only darken after death if you’re killed by magic.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CARA

  When they pulled down her quiet residential street, Eileen was already waiting for her on the front stoop with Cain. There were no police cars or officers left at their house, but the front door was still neatly sealed by crime scene tape.

  Her sister shot up when Cara got out of the car. “What the hell is going on? You can’t call me like that and then not answer your phone for the next twenty minutes!”

  “Don’t do this in the front yard. Let’s go around back. Grace should be here soon.” The words hadn’t even left her lips when a black SUV parked along the curb and Grace tumbled from the passenger seat.

  “What the fuck, Cara? Are you trying to win the Oscar for best dramatic suspense phone call? Would it have killed you to answer two questions before hanging up on me?” Grace marched across the yard while Heath, one of her wolves, hung back and stood on the sidewalk.

  “Enough! Let’s go to the grove.” That shut Grace right the fuck up. Cara took Malcolm’s hand and walked to the backyard, to the sacred grove of trees planted by her ancestors. She hadn’t stepped foot in that circle in almost fifteen years, but they needed privacy, and her sisters needed power.

  She stopped just outside the tree line and waited for her sisters to catch up to her. She squeezed Malcolm’s hand. “You can’t come in here. Only LeFay witches can enter the grove.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he growled.

  “Commiserate with Health and Cain about what a pain in the ass LeFay women are.” She smiled as her sisters approached.

  The other wolves seemed to know to stop at the tree line, and Cara turned to follow Grace and Eileen into the sacred circle. They arranged themselves on the ground, and Eileen broke the silence.

  “Cara, what’s going on?” Her heavily lined eyes normally looked sharp and feline, but they were soft and concerned darting around Cara’s face.

  “Malcolm has been helping me look for Bri. He even hired some sort of private eye. Last night he learned from Chief Brooks’s wife, who is an administrator a Lakeview General, where the bodies of the other kidnapped women were being stored. We went to look at the bodies today. Their witch’s marks were purple.” Cara’s statement hung in the air. Neither of her sisters moved.

  Grace finally asked, “I’ve never seen a purple mark. What
does that mean?”

  Cara’s mouth fell open. “You don’t know? What about you, Eileen?” The other woman shook her head. “It means magic killed them. It means that some witches are not only brainwashing humans to commit midnight assaults, but they’re also killing other witches.”

  “How do you know about the marks? I’ve never heard about that.” Eileen’s brow knit together, and she leaned forward.

  “Mom taught me. How are we going to figure out who’s behind this? I don’t understand what a witch could gain from this?”

  “Why would Mom teach you something that Grace and I have never heard of?” Cara ground her teeth and took a deep breath. Witches had kidnapped Brianna, and Eileen was hung up on this fucking detail.

  “Because Grandmother’s mark changed colors, and I asked her!”

  “What are you talking about? She died of breast cancer, not magic.” Eileen spoke slowly and calmly like she was trying to talk someone off of a cliff.

  “I’m not talking about this. I brought you here because you two need to figure out some way to find Brianna before it’s too late.” Cara was shaking. She’d already said way more than she ever wanted to, and she needed to keep them focused on Brianna.

  “Cara,” Eileen continued with her therapist voice, “we have already done everything we can do for Brianna. Why do you think Grandmother’s mark changed color? And why would Mom tell you that it meant she’d been killed by magic?”

  Cara’s eyes bounced between Eileen and Grace. Both of them stared at her like she was hysterical. She probably was. She’d never had a good control over her anxiety, but that didn’t mean she was wrong. And they clearly didn’t fucking believe her. “Because we killed her.”

  Eileen shook her head. “What are you talking about?”