After planning our little after-work rendezvous, I go back to the shop and start cooking up a storm in the prep room. We have a lot of confections to replace, and with all the news coverage of our haunted little corner of the world, the summer tourists have come early to the west end of Philadelphia. Sebastian’s exotic British chocolates are a huge success, particularly with the kids, and my Sweet Stix are so popular that Whole Foods wants to start carrying them in their stores in a limited capacity.
It’s all genuinely good news for our business.
I’ve decide to include Sebastian in my extra-curriculum activities. I don’t tell him about all the To the Devil a Daughter stuff because I don’t feel the time is right—and, frankly, I’m terrified he won’t be able to handle it. But he saved me that night on the street, and I feel it’s important I let him into my life a little more.
When a young, college-age girl visits the shop and begs me to make a charm to protect her from being raped a second time while on campus, I ask Sebastian to stay after hours and assist me in creating the crystallized honeycomb talisman. After cracking off the excess honeycomb, the shape reveals itself as a spade.
Sebastian watches me over one shoulder, saying little until he sees it. “Is there some rhyme or reason to the shape?”
“I don’t know. They just come out however they want. I trust the magic to know what it’s doing.” I don’t mention that the spade in the standard French deck symbolizes the medieval pike or halberd, weapons used in medieval society to run evil men through. The magic knows. And the magic does what it wants.
He picks the talisman up and holds it up to the light. “You know you didn’t have to hide any of this from me. I could have helped you. I might be a dodgy witch, but I do have skills.”
“You’re a necromancer. Aren’t your skills mostly…you know…bad?”
“Resurrectionist,” he reminds me. “And even if they are dodgy skills, they’re still skills, witchy.”
I feel so blessed to have someone so sweet and non-judgy like Sebastian on my side. Impulsively, I turn around and throw my arms around my friend, hugging him tight. “Thank you,” I tell him. He could have run away that night and saved himself. He didn’t. He could have left me alone in the streets to fight the Red Walkers on my own. He hadn’t. I haven’t always been kind to him, but all that is going to change.
To my surprise, Sebastian hugs me back. Then, after a moment, he draws back and picks up the talisman again. “Poor lamb,” he says of the girl. “Poor, poor little girl.”
Yeah. That.
I’ve thought about that almost every single night since the incident. With Sister Marie and Xtabay gone, there is going to be a lot more crime on the streets. Many more women hurt and raped and murdered by careless, soulless men. I might have stopped Xtabay from turning the city into a burning hellhole, but—according to Sister Marie, at least—I was the one who corrupted her in the first place. According to Xtabay, I dreamed her to my side.
I wanted to be a good girl. I wanted to be a superhero. But I’ve let a lot of women down. And that isn’t right. I had no business upsetting the balance like that.
“You okay?” Sebastian asks with concern when he senses my sudden change of mood.
I look up and nod and put on a brave face because what else can I do? I can’t tell him it was all my fault. And I have no idea how to make up for what I’ve done. Except, perhaps, to make these small talismans for desperate souls standing on the edge of the abyss.
He gives me a grand smile and says, “You are and will always remain my favorite witch.”
“My favorite witch,” I repeat. “Sounds like a cheesy romantic sitcom.”
And he laughs about that. And I laugh, too.
And, for a little while, all the pain goes away.
Vivian Summers will return in
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About the Author
K.H. KOEHLER is the author of various novels and novellas in the genres of horror, SF, dark fantasy, steampunk and young and new adult. She is the owner of KH Koehler Books and KH Koehler Design, which specializes in graphic design and professional copyediting. Her books are widely available at all major online distributors and her covers have appeared on numerous books in many different genres. Her short work has appeared in various anthologies, and her novel series include The Kaiju Hunter, The Mrs. McGillicuddy Mysteries, Anti-Heroes, Planet of Dinosaurs, The Nick Englebrecht Mysteries, and The Archaeologists. She is the author of multiple Amazon bestsellers, and was one of the founders and chief editors of KHP Publishers, which published genre fiction from 2001 to 2015. She has over fifteen years experience in the publishing industry as a writer, ghostwriter, copyeditor, commercial book cover designer, formatter and marketer. Visit her website at https://khkoehler.net.
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Chapter One
Etienne Lamont had gotten to the scene of the murder before her. That pissed her off somewhat.
As members of the Praetorian Guard, both of them had nationwide jurisdiction, but New York was her city. Her family lived here. She lived ten miles away. And he—well, Et certainly did not come from here. Probably, he didn’t come from anywhere. His arriving first seemed unnatural and ludicrous, not unlike the man himself.
With a sigh, she held up her badge and stated, “Special Agent Ina Green. Praetorian Guard.”
The big, blocky, blue-suited cop guarding the crime scene looked her up and down before smiling crookedly. “Spook Squad?”
She hated that name and thought about giving him a quick history lesson in what the word “spook” had meant historically, then decided against it. She already had a fearsome reputation as a government agent, one of the infamous “men in black” that the police here hated on sight and for no particular reason. She was also a woman. Don’t come in hot, her dad used to say.
Instead, she just smiled and said, “That’s right, Officer…Tanner.” She made a point of reading off the name on his shirt and looking directly into his collar-cam as she spoke. She wasn’t necessarily concerned about what he might do to her, even as a black woman, but she knew camera lights reflected in her pupils, making them shine like tiny, unnatural pinpoints of light.
Officer Tanner grunted nervously and raised the yellow crime-scene tape so she could slip underneath.
“The hell did they dig him up from?” Ina said, tossing her head in Officer Tanner’s direction. That animated her coils of long, rain-flecked hair as she headed down the mirror-slick alley toward her partner. He was crouched like a cartoon villain over the victim. She didn’t speak loudly; she knew Et could hear her just fine even from over a hundred feet away.
“Maybe he’s really a mall cop?” Et said as he stood up.
That made her chuckle.
Et was six feet and one hundred and seventy pounds of pure sarcasm. The girls liked his grey bedroom eyes, perpetually disheveled hair, scruffy chin, and fancy, French-lite accent. The guys loathed him for everything else. He could be a huge asshole at times, but he was also tough as nails and twice as mean as a junkyard dog when cornered. He’d been Ina’s partner for going on two years now, and she didn’t want anyone else having her back.
“Our vic had a bad night,” Et said as she joined him.
She looked down at the body newly exhumed from a nearby Dumpster and shrugged off his poor stand-up timing. “Understatement much?”
Both of them moved aside when the M.E. arrived. Patty, a tall, angular man in a yellow rain slicker, bent over the body and said, “You guys beat me.”
His statement mirrored Ina’s irritation exactly. “I was at my mom’s, having Sunday dinner. Two miles away.”
“How is your mom?” Et asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“Same.” She didn’t elaborate because the call she’d gotten from the general had been a godsend. She’d been well on her
way to an inebriated argument over wedding invitations when it came in. “So how’d you get here, Speedy Gonzales?”
Et nodded toward the renovated Irish tavern across the street. “New bar.”
“Picking up girls? Aren’t you a little old for them?”
“I’m a little old for everyone,” Et answered noncommittally, hands in the pockets of his grey raincoat while he watched Patty work.
“Four hundred thirteen.”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to get it right one of these days.”
“Not tonight,” Et said as Patty rose from his crouch, pulling off blue surgical gloves.
It had started raining again, and Ina wished she’d thought to take a slicker from the back seat of her car the way Patty had instead of being in such a big hurry to look at a dead body in a back alley at eleven o’clock at night. It might have saved her hair from frizzing. Et was getting wet, as well, but Et never seemed to care about such things. “Talk to us, Pats.”
Patty straightened up and pushed the hood off his head so his slightly pointed ears stood out. His white-blond hair was smoothly slicked back in a way that made Ina intensely jealous. It wasn’t fair that the man should be prettier than most women. Then again, she’d heard he was some fancy privileged member of the Seelie Court, so that was to be expected, she supposed. “Hispanic female, approximately sixteen years old—but I won’t be able to confirm that till I get her back to the meat locker. No initial evidence of assault.”
Ina wrinkled her nose at his poor humor. “Excuse me?” She looked down at the girl—or what was left of her, anyway. Her arms, legs, and head were intact, but most of her torso had been ripped wide open and emptied like a bomb had gone off inside her. One of her legs was chewed down to the bone.
“I mean…” Patty leaned down to lift the dead girl’s hand and spread her stiff fingers. No obvious blood under her fingernails. “She didn’t fight. So either someone scavenged the cadaver after the fact—a zombie, a Furry, whatever—or…” He shrugged as he sought the right thing to say. “She didn’t fight.”
“Furry?” Ina said, offended.
Patty grimaced when he recognized the politically incorrect quicksand he’d stepped into “Sorry, Special Agent. Need to get her back to the lab…hey, Martin…!” He raised his hand and motioned to his assistant, suddenly preoccupied.
“You think she let someone do this to her?” Et interrupted.
“I’ll need to do a full exam and tox screen,” Patty said, hurrying along his staff while they loaded the body into his van.
She was a pretty girl. Too young to be on the streets alone. Too young to be dead.
“Hooker or dealer?” Et said, making it sound like some flip of the coin. He glanced around the surrounding brownstones, all owned by slumlord millionaires. Despite his seemingly flippant tone, she knew he was being deadly serious. This being the neighborhood it was, there were only two types of people out after dark—those out to sell illegal product, and those trying to buy it.
Well, okay, and peeps like Et, who were looking to get laid—but he wasn’t even from this neighborhood. Hell, he wasn’t from this country. Or this era.
“If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say hooker, but…” Ina stopped Patty’s people as they were loading the body and leaned over to sniff at the remains. It wasn’t roses, that much was obvious.
“It’s creepy when she does that,” Patty said.
“But she’s very good at it,” Et reminded him.
“It wasn’t a shifter,” Ina said, straightening up.
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. Girl was sick.”
“Really.” That was Patty. “You can tell? Like one of those cancer dogs?”
Ina gave him a cool look. “You’re really cruising for a bruising tonight, Pats.”
“Sorry.” Patty put his hands up defensively.
“A shifter wouldn’t have eaten her,” Ina explained further—mostly to Et. “Shifters are sensitive to sickness, makes them ill.” She looked up. “Wanna canvas the area?”
“I haven’t eaten yet,” Et complained, putting a hand to his stomach.
“It’s gross that your mind went there.”
He shrugged. “You try to work without breakfast.”
“It’s eleven o’clock at night.”
“Supper. Whatever.”
Ina sighed. “Did you pack a lunch?”
“Do I look like I’m five years old?”
“Five hundred and twenty-seven,” she guessed.
“Still wrong.”
“I’ll get it right one of these days.”
Patty grinned as he slammed the doors of the van. “I like how you two bicker like cop buddies in a movie. It’s fun.”
“Bite me,” Ina said, shaking rain off her hair as she walked away.
Patty, eyebrows raised, turning to Et. “Seriously, though, it really is gross your mind went there.”
Et bared his formidable teeth. Patty jumped.
He laughed before following his partner down the alley.
Available to read for free on Amazon Kindle Unlimited:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CWGDBYT
Other Titles by K.H. Koehler
Tooth & Nail
FULL ECLIPSE
MORLOCKS (forthcoming)
The Nick Englebrecht Mysteries
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
THE DEVIL DANCES
DEVIL DOG DAYS
The Mrs. McGillicuddy Mysteries
A CLOCKWORK VAMPIRE
A WEREWOLF IN TIME
THE CLOCKWORK COMPANION
CHIMERA’S WEB (forthcoming)
The Kaiju Hunter Series
RAIJU
TALOS (forthcoming)
The Archaeologists
DINOSAUR VALLEY
TITAN ISLAND (forthcoming)
The Doctor Faust Series
THE DREADFUL DOCTOR FAUST
BRIDE OF DOCTOR FAUST
FOR THE ONE I LOVE
THE DOCTOR FAUST COLLECTIVE
The Anti-Heroes Series
NEW GIRL
BAD BOY
HALF LIFE
POWER PLAY
MAGIC MAN
WITCH WARS
ANTI-HEROES: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
The Planet of Dinosaurs Series
PLANET OF DINOSAURS
SEA OF SERPENTS
VALLEY OF DRAGONS
PLANET OF DINOSAURS: A VICTORIAN DINOSAUR ADVENTURE
Other Books:
THE SENTRY
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
TALES FOR 3 ‘CLOCK IN THE MORNING
SCARABUS: THE TALE OF THE MUMMY
STRANGE ANGELS
BLACK JACK DERRINGER
HE TASTES LIKE SPRING
DALE’S DELICACIES: OLD WORLD RECIPES FOR THE MODERN COOK
All titles available at Amazon.com or visit KH Koehler’s Amazon page at
http://www.amazon.com/author/khkoehler
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To the Devil a Daughter (A Vivian Summers Investigation Book 1) Page 27
