Bad Witch: A Snarky Paranormal Detective Story (A Cat McKenzie Novel Book 2)

by Lauren Dawes

  The gale intensified, filling my ears with white noise that roared like a beast.

  “Kailon!” I screamed, scrambling out from under the table. I wish I hadn’t because a piece of broken window frame slammed into my stomach, doubling me over. I clutched at my middle, sucking in gulps of air. From my prone position, I peered through the howling wind to find Kseniya gasping for air and clutching at her throat. Pitiful mewling sounds escaped her as Kailon ruthlessly teased all the oxygen from her body, slowly suffocating her.

  “Kailon!”

  Shuffling forward, I tried to grab his arm, but he shrugged me off, shoving me back to the floor. Glass bit into the palm of my hand, but I had bigger things to worry about.

  I held Reaver to his throat. He turned to me then with his serpentine eyes slitted and hissed.

  “We had an agreement!” I screamed, forcing myself closer to him. The wind lashed at me, snapping against my face like the end of a whip. “We had an agreement!” I repeated. “And the fae always honor their agreements.”

  I saw the moment he faltered. I felt the moment he faltered. The wind that had been screaming around us before was now barely buffering me. Kailon hissed at me again before releasing his hold on the witch. The tornado disappeared, leaving papers, wood, and bits of glass littering the floor. Kseniya curled into a ball at his feet, clutching at her throat and trying to drag air back into her body.

  Keeping one eye on Perry and the other on the witch, I pulled out the cuffs from my back pocket. Laying Reaver down beside me, I rolled the witch over onto her front and pulled her arms back, her hands resting at the base of her spine.

  I secured one cuff on her wrist and was about to secure the other when Kailon shoved me out of the way. I tumbled backward, hitting the wall this time. Fuck, I was going to be black and blue after tonight. I wrenched my head around in time to see Kailon snap the other cuff around Kseniya’s wrist, flip her over, then wrap his hands around her throat.

  I opened my mouth to remind him of our deal again, but this time, he turned to me and said in an ophidian hiss, “There isss no more deal, Catherine Ellen McKenzie.”

  “This isn’t what the fae do. You’re breaking your word. The queen will kill you for this. You’re in the human world.”

  “But you’re the only witnessssss. All you have to do is ssstay quiet about it. Report that you were the one to kill her when ssshe resssisted arressst.”

  I looked down at the cuffs that stopped all her magic abilities. With them on, she was as helpless as a human. “That story won’t fly if she’s cuffed like that.”

  Kailon growled at me. “You’re making thisss harder than it hasss to be.”

  I wrestled with the idea that maybe he was right. Kseniya had violently killed seven witches and who knew how many more. She had tried to murder Sawyer and me in a flood. She’d sent a zombie cyclops after me, and a gremlin to squash my car. The bitch had stolen my necklace—maybe I could just let this happen and nobody would know.

  But I would know.

  And if I let a monster kill a woman, and I was complicit, what would that make me?

  Wrapping my hand around Reaver’s hilt, I stood and pressed the sword to Kailon’s throat. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I won’t let you kill her. I won’t let you take her into Wonderland to kill her. She’s still a human being, and she will be tried for the murders of Sara Fitzpatrick, Sharyn Wyatt, Samantha Giles, Rose Sanchez, and Amy Elliot… Chernov … fuck, whatever her name really is.”

  “What about Moira Whitethorn and Baba Yaga? Don’t they dessssserve justice?”

  “Wonderland is out of our jurisdiction. You said it yourself. If Kseniya had been caught in there, you would have all the rights to deal with her as you wanted. But she’s here, in the human realm, and as such, she will be tried in the human realm. These are the rules, Kailon. Now, unwrap your hands from her throat, or I’ll arrest you for interfering with an investigation and conspiracy to commit murder.”

  We stared at each other for a long while, each wondering who would break first. I had no intention of backing down from this. I was not the monster Smith thought I was. I was human, and no matter how deep I sank into the supernatural world, I always would be human.

  Slowly, the fae unwrapped his fingers from the witch’s throat, but his eyes remained slitted.

  “You’ve made a dangerousss enemy, Cat McKenzie.” His voice was like razor blades.

  “Yeah, well, so have you, Kailon Perry. Now get out of here before I let Reaver have a taste.” The wind picked up, and I pushed the sword in a little harder, dimpling his skin. With a roll of my eyes, I added, “Without the theatrics, please. It’s been a long-ass week.”

  The air grew still immediately. The fae stepped back, threw one final dirty look over his shoulder, and disappeared.

  Kseniya’s brown eyes rolled in my direction.

  “Just because I saved you from him, doesn’t mean you’re really saved. You’ve been a bad witch, and it’s time to be punished.”

  I read her the Miranda rights, then got her up on her feet. Sawyer groaned as he came around, pulling himself up into a sitting position. Touching the side of his head, he grimaced, then looked from me to Kseniya then back.

  “What did I miss?”

  I waved my hand through the air like a debutant. “Oh, you know, the usual… fae versus witch. I hid under a table, took on Kailon, made him my enemy, then arrested Kseniya here.”

  “You made an enemy out of Kailon?” he replied. “How is that… no, don’t answer that.”

  I grinned. “Now that you’re not sleeping on the job, would you mind calling in the cavalry?”

  Sawyer pulled the phone from his pocket and began dialing, cradling his head as he spoke.

  I turned to Kseniya. “I believe you have something of mine.” Reaching into her shirt, I pulled out my necklace. The stone heated in my palm, a sense of calm rippling over me. Undoing the clasp at the back, I returned it to my neck, letting it settle between my collarbones.

  “You’ll regret—” the witch started, but I stopped her with a hand in the face.

  “Your plans for mass genocide were thwarted by a chick with teal hair and a sass mouth. Get over it, babe.”

  Eighteen

  “And that’s how my knee got fixed,” I told Joanna Wong on Friday afternoon at our therapy appointment. “Who knew gnomes did more than decorate your garden?”

  “Fascinating,” she replied, not bothering to make notes about that. “And how are you feeling about everything now? I know it’s only been a couple of weeks since you’ve had such a huge change in your life, but how are you adjusting?”

  I looked down at the throw pillow in my lap. It was a new one. The word ‘breathe’ had been cross-stitched into it. “New pillow,” I commented.

  Yup, I was totally stalling on this.

  “Yes. Do you like it?”

  I nodded, tracing my finger on the big ‘B.’ I did as the pillow suggested and took in a deep breath then let it out. “I’m worried.”

  “About what?”

  I looked up into her dark, almond-shaped eyes. “Losing myself.”

  Setting aside her notepad, she recrossed her legs and gave me her full attention. “In what way?”

  I didn’t want to admit that all of Smith’s jibes had finally landed on their intended targets, but I was beginning to think he was right. I did prefer working with the supes, even if my initial fears should’ve made me run in the opposite direction.

  “I’m afraid I’m losing my humanity.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, I guess I’m concerned that I prefer to hang around with supes now. I’m never going to go back into the department.”

  “Why not?”

  “Firstly, they don’t want me. They’re still attached to this stupid idea that I let my first partner die… on purpose. Which is ridiculous because there’s no way I would let someone die for shit and giggles.”


  “We’ve discussed this before, though, Cat. Your partner’s death, including your inability to save him, stems back to your mother’s, then your father’s deaths. They were mysterious, and you had nobody to blame for them. When the supernaturals came out, they were as good a target as any because they were scary and one hundred percent capable of doing it. When your partner died, you froze because you felt just as powerless then as you did when your parents died.”

  I knew all this.

  I’d come to terms with these facts.

  “The other thing is, I don’t want to go back. I love working with Sawyer. I love the team. Although it’s small and terribly under-resourced, I feel like we make a difference.”

  “And you do. I see the news articles all the time, where you and your partner are named in them. You’re doing good work. You want to know what I think?”

  “God, yes, that’s what I pay you for.”

  “I think you haven’t really come to terms with these changes yet. Now, just hear me out. You started a new career, and the whole idea in your head of catching bad guys was taken away when your partner died and you were reassigned. I know you see PIG as some sort of punishment, but I think it’s a way for you to grow as a person as well as professionally.”

  I grunted. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her, it was just that I wasn’t ready to believe her. I was unhewn clay, not ready for the potter’s wheel just yet.

  “Cat, I want you to acknowledge this, okay?” Joanna pressed. “This is important. The other sessions you’ve come to, you’ve been cagey with me, which I understand. I’ve asked you to spill some of your darkest thoughts to me, but you know next to nothing about me. But I’d like to think that I’ve gained some of your trust and you’re ready to start opening up to me more?”

  I glanced back at the pillow then set it aside. “Okay, you want some dark thoughts? Here’s my biggest one right now. Whose side am I on?”

  “In what regard?”

  “I mean, am I human or am I…” I paused. I wasn’t a supe, but there were so many things about my life that were unexplained. The fact that my parents were part of a secret organization that hunted down and killed supernaturals before supernaturals were even known to be real. The fact I had a necklace that was a conduit for power. The fact I could step foot into Wonderland and not keel over a second later.

  “Or?” Joanna prodded in that gentle, softly spoken voice of hers.

  “Or am I one of the monsters?” I whispered.

  “What makes you think you’re one of the monsters?”

  “One of the guys at work, Smith, he keeps calling me a traitor to humanity because I work with supes.”

  “And what do you think about him calling you that?”

  Shifting in my seat, I curled my legs up under me. “What do I think? I think he’s a jackass, but I also think… that maybe… he’s right?”

  She nodded and picked up her pen to make a few notes. “In your mind, is being a monster a good or bad thing?”

  “Bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the way they’re always portrayed. The bad guys always lose. The good guys always win.”

  “Is it always about winning or losing, though?”

  I shook my head. “Yes. No. Fuck, I don’t know.” Sucking in a breath, I let it out, then looked Joanna in the eyes. “Yesterday morning, I had to decide between an easy choice and a hard choice.”

  “What were these choices you had to make?”

  “I could either let someone kill another in retribution, or I could choose to bring this person who killed so many to justice in the human courts.”

  “Who wanted to kill whom?”

  I smiled, thinking that Sawyer would approve of Joanna’s grammatical prowess. “A fae seeking revenge for the death of his niece and a witch who, oddly enough, was also seeking revenge for the deaths of her entire family.”

  “What we have here is the perfect example of two wrongs don’t make a right, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.”

  She smiled a little. “And what was your choice?”

  “I chose to let the justice system do what it was designed to do… punish the guilty, free the innocent.”

  “In your heart of hearts, do you feel like that was the right thing to do?”

  “Absolutely. But now I have a very angry fae gunning for me.”

  Her eyes widened. “You think he would do you harm?”

  “Oh, absolutely. He’s like a dog with a bone. I took it from him, and he’s going to want his chew toy back.”

  Joanna tapped her pen against her knee. “This is quite serious.”

  If only she knew who the fae was. I was sure I could get Joanna to swear then. “Yeah, and it brings me back to whether I did the right thing.”

  “If you hadn’t done what you had, a woman would’ve been killed without a fair trial, without judgment.”

  “Yeah.”

  But Kseniya was as guilty as they came. She’d confessed to everything. She was going to jail for a very long time, but Kailon Perry wasn’t, and he knew exactly where I lived.

  I shut the apartment door behind me. What I’d spoken about to Joanna during the session was cutting laps in my head. I’d have to be on my guard all the time from now on. Dropping my keys onto the kitchen counter, I started down the hall to my room to get changed.

  “Cat?” Sawyer called from the living room. “Can you come in here for a second?”

  Heaving a sigh, I backtracked through the kitchen and found him sitting on the couch dressed in sweats and that stupid body-hugging Under Armour shirt again. Seriously, why did he have to look so good? His hair was carelessly tousled, the stubble on his jaw delicious. But it was his eyes that seemed to hold me in place—those gray eyes that swallowed me whole. Now that I knew what was under all those clothes and the ferocity in his eyes, I was damn well powerless to resist.

  “Cat,” he growled.

  “Yeah?”

  His eyes darkened, flashes of lightning arcing through his irises. “Don’t look at me like that.” His tone was harsh, his words like a slap in the face.

  “Okay.” I waited for him to say something more, but he just sat there with his jaw tight and his brows drawn low as if he was irritated by something. “Look, if you have nothing else to say to me, I’m going to take a shower. Therapy left me feeling icky.”

  I turned, took one step, then was tugged to a stop. The heat from Sawyer’s body was at my back, causing me to shiver.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured into my ear. “I didn’t mean to bark at you like that, but I’m riding a pretty thin edge right now.”

  Turning to face him, his eyes swirled with shadows. I couldn’t help but note how my breathing had suddenly become erratic. “When was the last time you fed?”

  He inhaled sharply, taking a step closer. “Wednesday morning.”

  Wednesday? That was with me. “You haven’t fed since then? Why the hell not?” My gaze drifted down his neck. His pulse was throbbing against his skin like it was a little animal wanting to get out.

  He shook his head, a feral, hungry look in his eyes. “I don’t want to feed off someone else. I only want you, Cat.”

  I swallowed. “I thought it was a one-and-done thing?” My question was raspy—needy—but I didn’t care.

  He flexed his hips into me, his erection thick and long on my stomach. He was hard. For me. I looked down and swallowed, licking my lips even though I shouldn’t be encouraging this.

  “How? I mean, I know how, but how is this possible? You’re aren’t supposed to be able to get it up for me again.”

  He smiled faintly. “Such a way with words.” Pushing some hair behind my ear, he lingered there for a moment, his fingertips soft against my neck. “I don’t know. It’s never happened before. The only thing I can think of is because it’s you.”

  I snorted, then clapped my hands over my mouth. “I’m not a special cupcake.”

  “You are to me,
Cat.” He stepped away, taking with him the warmth of his nearness, his whisky and chocolate scent. “But I understand if you don’t want to go there again with me. We have a good thing going. Sex would only ruin it.”

  I wanted to reach for him, but I stayed where I was. I could have more of Sawyer, and he could have more of me, but was that the best thing for our professional relationship?

  Deep down in my heart, I knew it wasn’t.

  He looked at me intently. “I guess I just wanted you to know.”

  Sawyer was waiting for me to answer, but my answer wasn’t going to be the one he wanted to hear. Sawyer had lived for over one-hundred-and-fifty years. One-hundred-and-fifty years of sleeping with a different woman every night. One-hundred-and-fifty years of longing to be with just one woman.

  And it turned out, I was that woman. I just had no idea how it had happened.

  “Sawyer,” I began, his name a broken whisper on my lips.

  He shook his head. “Cat, you don’t have to say anything. I understand.”

  “No, you don’t,” I replied. “I want you. Call me crazy, but I want you so badly, but what will it mean? Will we be fuck-buddies, or is this a relationship? If it’s a relationship, what happens when it goes south, or I get jealous because you’re unconsciously feeding off women, or, or—”

  Sawyer touched his finger to my mouth, silencing me for the first time ever in our working relationship. “It’s okay.” Leaning forward, he kissed the side of my mouth then grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door. “Don’t wait up for me, okay?”

  And with a sad smile that hit me right in the heart, he left the apartment in search of a random woman to have emotionless sex with.

  Need to find out more about Cat & Sawyer?

  You can pre-order “Bad Fae” - book #3 in the Cat McKenzie series right now!

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of “Bad Fae.”

  A rookie cop. A team of supernatural detectives. Warring fae queens out for blood.