“Can’t. Babysitter is waiting on me. She’s already worked four hours overtime tonight, and the feral kitten also known as my son gets rebellious if I don’t tuck him in myself.” She took the final turn onto Liam’s street and slowed down as she searched for a parking spot. “Just text me to keep me up to date on any significant developments. We can regroup in the morning to discuss our next steps.”
“Works for me.”
Gabby parked in a spot across the street from the bookstore and cut the engine, then handed Liam his keys. “That was fun. Almost like old times. Only you came out a little less black and blue than you used to.”
He snorted. “I didn’t get beat up that often.”
Gabby grinned. “Or maybe you just don’t remember. You did get conked on the head quite a few times.”
Kat poked her head between the front seats. “What’re you talking about? Was Liam up to no good even when he wore the badge?”
“I’m not ‘up to no good’ now,” Liam protested, annoyed at the implication that his service record was anything but pristine. “I’m acting in a perfectly moral fashion, thank you very much.”
“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that, Mr. Moral.” Gabby opened her door. “Anyway. It was nice to meet you, Ms. King.”
“You too, Ms. Cortez.”
Gabby hopped out of the Wrangler, but before she closed the door, she leaned back in and said, “Hey, Liam, you and Ms. King want to catch dinner at my place sometime? It’s been a long while since we had a good meal and a casual chat. I’d love to catch up with you.”
Liam floundered, his buried memories of the past beating at the bars of their mental prison. “I…uh…”
“We’d love to,” Kat answered for him. “After this murder mess is all cleaned up, of course.”
“Great. Then I’ll see you guys tomorrow to get started on that cleanup.” With that, Gabby closed the door and jogged down the street, where a blue Honda Civic awaited.
Liam groaned. “Kat…”
She flicked his shoulder. “You were going to say no. I could tell.”
“It was my right to say no.”
“Just because something is a right, that doesn’t necessarily make exercising it the right decision.”
“And how come you get to decide what’s right for me, huh?” he snapped, uncomfortable at the thought of sitting at Gabby’s familiar table, in that familiar house, surrounded by photos that stoked the memories of a life he no longer lived.
“Because,” Kat said, a sharp edge to her tone, “I’m the one who’s had to hold your hand through alcohol withdrawal over the last few weeks. And you put yourself into a position to go through that suffering because you were too afraid to face your past. I know that past still hurts you, Liam, but you can’t spend the rest of your life pretending it never happened.
“You can’t keep pushing away all your friends and acquaintances just because they remind you of painful things. If you do…” She sighed. “You’re going to end up right back where you started, lounging on the couch with a bottle in your hand.”
Liam dropped his gaze to the floor, his mind split between indignation and embarrassment.
The former because Kat had only been in his life for a month—she had minimal justification for criticizing his behavior, as she knew very little of what he’d gone through three years ago.
The latter because she was correct—Liam had stewed in alcoholic self-pity long enough, and if he didn’t push through his struggles to interact with the people from his past, he was bound to fall back into his bad habits.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right. We’ll go to dinner at Gabby’s. But if I can’t handle it…”
“Then we’ll leave.” Kat rested her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “I’m not saying you should push yourself overboard and drown. I’m just saying you should push yourself as far as you can go. Because the more steps you take forward, the further you’ll get from that empty life you dwelled in for so long.”
Liam closed his eyes for a moment and quelled the storm of memories brewing in his head. “You’re right. Thanks for the nudge.”
Kat gave him a sad smile. “I wish I’d been around to give it to you sooner.”
“Yeah, me too.”
7
Kat
Kat opened the front door of the bookstore to reveal Yun on the stoop, her arms laden with takeout bags from a Thai place near her café.
Yun hopped across the threshold, shivering from the frigid air, and said, “You guys better have a damn good reason for making me drag myself out of bed this late and shell out thirty bucks for food. I’m supposed to have an early start tomorrow. I’ve got to get the café reno finished by the end of the week.”
“Sorry to pull you away from your project,” Kat replied, closing and locking the door. “But we’ve got a big problem we’re working to resolve, and we’d feel more comfortable if we had a third person to watch our backs.”
As they tromped upstairs, Kat told Yun a condensed version of everything that had happened since Liam accepted the Cunningham job.
“Crap,” Yun hissed. “I heard a few whispers about the murders when I was closing up shop, but I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”
“I have a feeling it’s going to become an even bigger deal before all is said and done.”
In the kitchen, Liam sat hunched over the table, papers strewn everywhere. He’d been furiously drawing up variations of scrying spells with all manner of safeguards to ensure that their attempt to trace the blood couldn’t possibly end in the same sort of failure they’d experienced at Cunningham’s office.
Yun set the takeout bags on the counter. “You want to eat before or after?”
Liam paused his scribbling and glanced at the bags. “Before. Never hurts to top up your energy before performing spellwork.”
Yun raised an eyebrow. “You sure? Because I distinctly remember you upchucking one time when you were casting that—”
Liam cleared his throat, depriving Kat of what she was sure would’ve been an amusing anecdote. “I won’t be casting this spell. Kat will. And her body’s a lot more resilient than mine.”
“Oh? You’re taking off the training wheels already?” Yun grabbed some plates from the cabinet and handed them to Kat, who gathered up Liam’s drawings and put them in a neat pile before she set the table. “I thought you wanted Kat’s magic tutelage to take the slow and steady path.”
Kat snorted. Yun had offered to be Kat’s sparring partner on more than one occasion, but Liam had vetoed the idea because, he claimed, “He didn’t want Kat’s unstable magic to lash out uncontrollably and hurt you.”
Given that Kat and Yun were both nonhuman though, with hardy bodies and fast healing, Kat thought it was more likely that Liam’s real concern lay in the condition of his house. The makeshift basement training room had been heavily warded to protect the structure against force, fire, and water damage, but Kat could pack one hell of a punch when she put her mind to it.
“I do want to take it slow and steady,” Liam said, “but there are extenuating circumstances here.”
Kat leaned toward Yun. “He doesn’t have enough energy to cast the spell.”
“Ah.” Yun tugged several paper towels off the roll and placed them on the table. “So it’s a matter of necessity?”
Liam threw up one hand, annoyed. “Yes, yes, I’m an idiot for letting my energy store wither away while I drowned myself in shitty beer for three years. I know. Lay off it, will you?”
Yun spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “He’s a little testy tonight, isn’t he?”
“We almost got caught breaking into the crime scene,” Kat murmured. “I think it rattled him a bit.”
“What happened?” She handed Kat a glass and grabbed two more, sliding one across the table to Liam. “Did he trip and fall on his face?”
Kat’s cheeks grew warm. “Actually, it was my fault. Apparently, my magic doesn’t work right with standard veil spells. A detective at the scene sensed me through the veil.”
“Magic can be a tricky bitch,” Yun said. “But I’m sure you’ll get the hang of yours eventually.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.” Kat meandered over to the fridge and withdrew a pitcher of tea. “But I still have a long way to go.”
As they stuffed their mouths with pad woon sen and garlic fried rice, Liam gave a stern lecture about the safety measures they were going to utilize for the new scrying spell. Then he held up his final rendition of the spell, pointing to all the parts that Kat needed to memorize before she attempted the casting.
Kat snatched the paper and recited bits and pieces of the incantation, Liam correcting her pronunciation whenever she erred.
“And what about me?” Yun asked once Kat felt she had everything down pat. “What’s my role in all this?”
“You’re our backup in case something goes sideways,” Liam answered. “If anything tries to attack us, fry it with a lightning bolt. If anything catches fire, put it out with the extinguisher. If anything else happens, I leave it up to your judgment to make the right call.”
Yun gulped down the last of her tea and smacked the glass against the tabletop. “So if everything goes well, I just get to sit there and do nothing?”
“Yup.”
“Works for me.” She pushed her chair back and clapped her hands. “Let’s get this over with. I’m missing my beauty sleep.”
Downstairs, Liam shoved the warped basement door open with his shoulder, and a puff of dust preceded them into the home gym slash magic laboratory.
A square section of the floor had been converted to a chalkboard-like surface for practicing spells that involved drawing magic arrays. Liam dropped to his knees next to that spot, grabbed a piece of chalk off a nearby table, and expertly drew an array that included the new elements he’d added to the scrying spell.
Next, he shuffled into the narrow supply closet and yanked a rectangular mirror with a makeshift stand glued to the back out of a pile of junk. He placed the mirror in the exact center of the array, then took out the three vials of blood-soaked debris he’d gathered at the murder scene.
A few minutes of research had told him that the bloody fabric would likely work best for scrying. So he tapped the bottom of the corresponding vial to coax out a few pieces of fabric and piled them up inside a tiny diamond shape drawn along the interior border of the chalk array.
Plugging the vial with the stopper again, Liam said to Kat, “All you have to do is sit in front of the array here”—he pointed to a straight line that bisected the array along its diameter—“and place your fingers just inside the array on either side of that central line. As you speak the incantation, funnel your energy into the blood sample. Once the spell activates, it’ll automatically follow the instructions in the array and throw up a visual of all the places where the matching spiritual signature currently exists. It should look like a collage of sorts.”
“A murder collage,” said Yun, who’d situated herself in the corner, as far from the magic array as she could get without leaving the room.
Kat wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “Okay, I think I got it.”
“Then we can begin.”
Kat sat cross-legged in front of the array and removed her glasses, setting them aside so they wouldn’t slip down her nose and distract her. She reached out with both hands, but she hesitated before placing her fingers in the position Liam had specified. After the dismal performance of her veil, she was concerned that the quirks of her nonhuman magic would extend to spells like this as well, and something might go catastrophically wrong.
Thankfully, just before Liam opened his mouth to ask her what was up, the voice of reason popped into her head. It reminded her that, in the past, the most common result of a spellcasting mishap on her part had simply been the failure of the spell to work at all. If she screwed up this scrying spell, there was a good chance that absolutely nothing would happen.
Kat inhaled deeply, placed her fingers inside the array, and called up her magic using a small pinch of anger—anger at whoever had murdered the Avery family in such a gruesome fashion, leaving behind a crime scene so gory that Kat, even after her experiences with Advent 9, had nearly lost her chicken dinner.
With that spark of magic burning bright, she set her gaze upon the scraps of bloody fabric and began the incantation.
Green energy wafted out of her fingertips about halfway through, and she directed them toward the scraps of fabric. When they made contact, it took her a moment to differentiate between the fabric itself and the blood, as touching things with her magic instead of her skin left a unique sensory impression on her mind. But once she managed to do so, it was relatively easy to envelop the blood with her energy.
Using the connection between her soul and the blood, she finished off the incantation and directed its effects into the selected medium.
The green glow of her energy around the blood extended to the mirror. Hazy images flickered across the reflective surface for the better part of a minute, until roughly half of them resolved into clear pictures of various places in the city.
One of the pictures, however, was pitch black. Kat shuddered as she realized it was probably the view from the inside of a freezer at the morgue.
Unfortunately, most of the other images were no less macabre: The kitchen and living room of the Avery house. A pile of bloodstained paper booties and latex gloves. Evidence bags filled with bloody items. And so on.
The only image that didn’t fit the morbid theme showed another suburban street, with the focal point a white two-story house on what a sign declared was the corner of Braxton Street and Ripley Road. In that otherwise clear image, a dark, blurry figure was creeping around the side of the house.
Behind Kat, Liam swore. “That’s Griffin’s End, a majority shifter neighborhood. The perp’s planning more murders tonight.”
Yun sprang out of her corner and bent toward the mirror. “Bastard’s already at the house. They could break in any minute. Do you know who lives there?”
“No, but Gabby will.” Liam tugged out his phone and dialed Cortez. When she picked up, Liam hurriedly explained what was happening and provided her with the house number and street name.
After he hung up, he said, “A family of four lives there. Ada and Patrick Wilson, and their two kids, a pair of identical twin girls, age eight. Gabby’s calling to warn them now, but since we don’t know what this perp is capable of…”
“We should get over there ASAP,” Yun finished.
“And call the cops,” Kat said. At their uncomfortable looks, she added, “Remember, we don’t know if there’s more than one person committing the murders, and we don’t know how strong the involved magician is. If we go it alone, we might get overpowered.”
“You’re right.” Liam sighed. “We can’t risk letting those responsible escape.”
“Then call in the cavalry,” Yun said, pointing at Liam’s phone. “And Kat…” She glanced at the mirror again. The dark figure appeared to be looking for a window through which to enter the house. “Drop that scrying spell and prepare for battle. If push comes to shove, you wreck that motherfucker.”
Kat did as she was told, and the mirror went blank. “Liam, do you have enough power to cast a teleportation spell for three people?”
“Yes, I do,” he said with a hint of irritation as he dialed Franc’s number, “though it’ll probably knock me on my ass for a minute.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
He raised the phone to his ear. “If we’re about to throw down with a powerful magic user or a hardy sup, I won’t be of much help given my energy limitations. So I’ll play chauffeur. You save your strength for the fight.”
Franc answered, and Liam described the situation to her
in less than fifteen words, hung up, and said, “The cops will be there in five minutes. Let’s make sure no one dies before then.”
Tucking his phone away, he lifted both arms. Kat grabbed hold of one, Yun the other, and Liam screwed his eyes shut, picturing their destination.
He whispered the incantation for the teleportation spell, and Kat was accosted by the uncomfortable pressure of distorting spacetime that she remembered so well from her days on the run. She shut her eyes too, as the view of the room dissolved into nothing but indefinite shapes and smears of color.
Then the pressure intensified to the point where it felt, for a split second, as if Kat’s body would pop like a balloon. But it wasn’t Kat that popped. It was the bubble of spacetime around her. The field that Liam had erected to carry them off through the ether collapsed, and the damp warmth of the bookstore’s basement gave way to the frigid air of a winter night.
Kat opened her eyes. The teleportation spell had dropped them off right next to the street signs on the corner, and the house lay behind them. All three of them spun around just as a scream erupted from inside, and a jolt of adrenaline shocked Kat’s legs into a hard sprint.
She barreled across the frosted grass of the front yard, funneling energy from her soul throughout her entire body to boost her strength more and more with each stride. Jumping the porch steps, she grabbed hold of the storm door and ripped it clean off its hinges, tossing it aside, and kicked the front door in.
The latch tore free, and the door swung inward, slamming into the wall of the foyer so hard it didn’t rebound. Its absence unveiled the unfolding horror inside the house.
Luther Cunningham, drenched in half-dried blood from his last murders, held a middle-aged black man by the throat. He was mechanically stabbing the man’s abdomen with a steak knife, again and again, like a glitching robot stuck on repeat.
The victim was choking and gurgling, blood pouring out of his mouth, while he fruitlessly kicked at Cunningham’s legs. Each blow from his foot—a foot graced with a shifter’s strength—broke one or more of Cunningham’s bones, but the ad man didn’t seem to notice the damage.
Ask and Answer Page 8