Circle of Blood: A Witch Hunt Novel

by Debbie Viguié

  Ed looked at her, clearly startled, and she turned away to answer the phone. She could tell by the caller ID that it was George at the coroner’s office.

  “Do you know the cause of death?” she asked with no greeting.

  “Hello to you too,” an older male voice said. “No. There’s no easily discernible cause. I’ll be running a tox screen.”

  “If you don’t have anything, why are you calling?”

  “Wanted to let you know that the pentagram was drawn in nail polish.”

  “Not blood?”

  “Nope. Looks like it was applied several hours after she was dead.”

  “Thanks, George,” she said, and hung up.

  “What is it?” Ed asked.

  “Pentagram was drawn in nail polish, not blood.”

  “I think we need to go back to the apartment and do some color checks to see if it might have belonged to her or Katie,” Ed said, steering into the right-hand lane and preparing to turn.

  “Agreed.”

  • • •

  It felt morbid, going through a dead girl’s bathroom, looking for her makeup. Three flavored lip glosses, a pale pink blush, and a bottle of clear nail polish turned up in the third drawer Samantha checked. That was it. No eye shadow, no mascara, no liners, not even any powder. The nail polish bottle was nearly full. The blush looked like it had been used only a couple of times.

  Samantha searched the other drawers, but she knew she wouldn’t find anything else. It fit with the picture of Camille that she had been forming.

  Camille’s bathroom was the one shared with guests. Katie had the master bedroom with her own bathroom, which Ed was searching. Samantha exited Camille’s bathroom and headed for Katie’s room.

  Katie was sitting on the couch in the living room, arms folded across her chest, clearly upset that as soon as forensics finished their job she was going to be locked out of her apartment for the next couple of days to preserve the scene.

  A couple of days on a friend’s couch won’t hurt her, but a couple of days in prison might, Samantha thought.

  Samantha walked into Katie’s bathroom just as Ed was whistling and bending over the trash can.

  “Look what we have here,” he said.

  “Red nail polish.” Samantha confirmed it as he used tongs to pull the bottle out of the trash can and deposit it in an evidence bag. They returned to the living room and Ed held the bag high.

  “Care to explain?” he asked.

  “Duh. It’s nail polish,” Katie said.

  “Why did you throw it away?”

  “What? I didn’t throw it away.”

  “Then why was it in your trash?” Samantha asked.

  “It . . . I don’t know,” Katie said.

  “Did you put it in there, or drop it accidentally, after painting the pentagram on Camille’s forehead?” Ed asked.

  “What? That was blood, and I didn’t do it!”

  “It was nail polish, not blood, and you need to start talking to us before this gets any worse for you,” Samantha said.

  “Worse for me?” Katie squeaked, her eyes widening in fear. “But—but I didn’t do anything.”

  “So who are you covering up for?” Ed demanded.

  “I . . . uh—no one. No one!”

  “Who are you protecting?”

  “I’m not protecting anyone!” Katie said, beginning to sob.

  But she was. The question was, who would someone like Katie protect? She seemed more the kind to be loyal to herself first. What would someone have to do to gain her loyalty? What would someone have to be?

  Samantha stared hard at Katie. The girl was scared and she was hiding something. “Tell us about your boyfriend,” Samantha said suddenly.

  “Kyle?” Katie asked, blinking at her in confusion. “Why do you want to know about Kyle?”

  “Is he the kind of guy that likes pentagrams a little too much?” Ed asked, gesturing first to Katie’s necklace and then mimicking drawing a pentagram on his forehead.

  “What? No. He’s, like, a normal guy. Anyways, he’s not even my boyfriend. We broke up, like, six months ago.”

  And yet on some level she still thinks of him as her boyfriend, Samantha thought.

  “I mean, he and Camille never even met.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Ed asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any enemies?” Samantha asked.

  Katie went pale. “I hope not,” she whispered. There was fear in her eyes, a fear that was much deeper, much more primal than her fear of the detectives.

  Ed’s cell phone rang. After a few seconds he moved several feet away. Samantha turned her attention back to Katie. She wanted to know what the girl was hiding from her, what she was afraid of.

  You could make her tell you. It would be easy, a voice whispered in her head.

  She set her jaw and tried to ignore the promptings, the urges. A spell of revelation perhaps . . . Samantha shook her head fiercely. She didn’t do that anymore, not for years. She took a deep breath, struggling to control herself. It had to be because of the nightmare. Every time she had a nightmare she had to remind herself that she wasn’t that person anymore. No spells. But convincing Katie to trust her would be so very easy.

  Samantha squatted down slowly, bringing herself to eye level with the girl. She tilted her head slightly and waited for Katie to meet her eyes.

  “Look at me, Katie,” she said, dropping her voice into its lowest range. “You’re going to trust me. You’re going to tell me—”

  A hand descended on her shoulder and Samantha gasped and nearly fell backward onto her rump. She caught herself with a hand on the floor and took several quick breaths. Guilt rose up in her at what she had been about to do.

  She glanced up and saw Ed looking at her with raised eyebrows.

  “What?” she snapped, more forcefully than she meant to.

  “We need to go. Now.”

  She stood up.

  “Don’t leave town,” Ed said to Katie. She nodded, eyes wide, still looking at Samantha.

  “Joe,” Ed said, turning to one of the officers still on the scene, “make sure you drive her to her friend’s house, see that she gets settled, and get all the contact info for her and her friend.”

  Joe nodded his understanding. Ed turned and headed out of the apartment, Samantha trailing behind him. As soon as they were in his car, he turned to her. “What was that? Trying to hypnotize her? Watching too much television again?”

  “Yes, that was it exactly,” she said, letting sarcasm drip from her voice. “I was just trying to calm her down and get a better look at her eyes when I asked her questions.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I didn’t have long enough,” she said. Thank God, she added silently. “Where are we going?”

  “Across town. St. Vincent’s Cathedral.”

  “Can’t they put someone else on it?”

  “No, we’re the go-to guys for this one.”

  “Let me guess,” she said with a sigh. “Local color?”

  “Worse. There’s a dead nun with a pentagram on her forehead.”