Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies

by Annie Bellett

  Alek laid Dorrie on the exam table while Vivian pulled on gloves. She glanced at me.

  “She’s really dead?” she asked.

  I didn’t blame her for double-checking after what happened last time.

  “Yeah,” I said. I wanted to say something about the Lansing family, the horror of it all bubbling up inside me, but Alek touched my arm gently and gave me a tiny shake of his head.

  Fine. I’d let Vivian do her thing, but I wasn’t thrilled with his decisions and I glared at him to let him know that. The sadness that flickered in his eyes before his stony mask came down made me feel slightly guilty. But only slightly.

  “Oh, Dorrie,” Vivian murmured as she began feeling over the body.

  “Did you know her?” Alek asked.

  “Yes. I do not run with the pack or live at the Den, but I still attended barbeques. Wulf was a very accepting and open alpha. Those of us who chose to live our lives without being officially in the pack were still always welcome.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes blinked rapidly for a moment, as though she were fighting tears. When she looked up at Alek, her cheeks were damp.

  “Her neck is broken, but that wouldn’t have killed her, not like this. And what is this blood? Did she get a piece of her killer?” Vivian asked.

  “What killed her then?” Alek said, ignoring her questions.

  Vivian shook her head and got out the scalpels. I excused myself and slipped out of the exam room. I’d seen enough internal organs for the day. Or maybe the year.

  I read old National Geographics in the semi-dark waiting room, turning on only a single small desk lamp at the receptionist’s, Christie’s, desk. Outside headlights came and went and I heard occasional murmurs through the exam room door. An hour passed, maybe a bit more.

  Alek opened the door and caught my attention with a small wave. I rose and moved toward him. He stayed in the doorway for a moment, just staring down at me. Then he glanced over his shoulder and moved aside. Vivian had draped Dorrie’s body with a blue hospital sheet, like they give you in exam rooms to pretend to cover yourself with. I realized Alek had been hiding whatever was under the sheet from my gaze until the body was covered. Annoyingly protective of my sensibilities, as though he understood I was reaching my limit for the night. Yet that little gesture gave me the serious warm and fuzzies.

  Fuck. I still had it bad for this guy.

  “Well,” I said, not moving.

  “She was poisoned,” Vivian said. She stripped her gloves off and tossed them into the trash, then rubbed at the lines forming on her forehead. She looked like she wanted to go drink half a bottle of whiskey and cry for days. I didn’t blame her.

  “Poisoned? How is that possible?” Shifters healed too fast for poisons to work well on them, plus they could just purge their systems by shifting and letting the whole magical place where the alternate body lived do the work. Maybe I’d missed something during my discussions on the subject with Harper.

  “The poison isn’t something I’ve ever seen,” Vivian said.

  “Nor I,” Alek added, his own forehead creasing. Tension rolled off him like a scent, a tangible presence that tickled my nose and raised goosebumps on my arms. “The poison incapacitated her, put her out instantly so she couldn’t shift to purge it. Then it traveled to her heart and ate its way through the organ, destroying it. It damaged her brain and a lot of other organs as well.”

  “That’s fucking just great,” I said. “How did they get it into her?”

  “Broke her neck first—I found where it started to heal. Injected her in the chest, I think, while she was incapacitated, waited for the poison to kill her, broke her neck again.” Vivian squeezed her eyes shut and leaned against the counter. She looked almost childlike huddled against the tall counters, but the pain in her face was old and very adult.

  “So, someone managed to hold down a wolf, break her neck, then inject her with this new super poison that eats heart muscle, then waited…” I paused. “Wait. What do you mean, waited?”

  “The poison would take time. Many hours, a day or more if the shifter was particularly strong. Even without being able to shift, her body would have been trying to heal the damage the poison was doing as it worked. It just does too much damage and eventually destroys the heart,” Vivan said. “I just hope they injected it close to her heart, so it would work more quickly, so she would suffer less.”

  “This is not good,” I said, mostly to myself. Someone was responsible for this, or more likely, some ones, because one person would have to be crazy powerful to subdue a wolf, poison her, then pull off abducting and killing a family. Especially in this small town. People would notice.

  How the hell hadn’t anyone noticed? The town was full of strangers at the moment, that was true. But still, the Lansings ran the damn store. They were fixtures. Jed was always in and out of the deli, recommending cuts of meat. Emmaline often worked the registers, chatting with people about their day. Jamie liked to sit on the mechanical horse outside and show people the gaps in his mouth from the teeth he’d lost. Why had no one reported them missing?

  “Reported who missing?” Vivian said and I realized I’d spoken the last part of my thoughts aloud.

  “Jade,” Alek said, his tone a warning.

  Well, fuck him. Vivian was already elbow deep in this. He could deal.

  “The Lansing family,” I said.

  “They aren’t missing,” Vivian said, her eyes wide with alarm. “They are at Jed’s sister’s cabin by Bear Lake. Aren’t they?”

  I guess that made sense then. They’d gone on vacation, but not gotten very far. I just shook my head, looking up at Alek.

  “Vivian,” he said, his voice terribly soft. “This stays here. You must not speak of what you’ve heard or seen tonight. Not until I can investigate. Something awful is happening here, things that could threaten the pack and the Peace. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “I trust you, Justice,” she said.

  I turned away so my face wouldn’t betray my disgust with her compliance. It wasn’t fair for me to feel this way. Alek was a Justice. The Council of Nine were like gods to the shifters. She would trust him to handle these terrible crimes just like I guess I would trust the State Police or the FBI to solve a murder.

  That thought was slim comfort. I didn’t think I’d trust them, either.

  Only yourself, my evil brain whispered. Trust only yourself.

  Fuck that. Look where that had gotten me. Great.

  I walked out the back door and breathed in the cool night air, trying to clear my senses of death, my head of its confusion. Alek joined me and stood silently beside me.

  “I’m pissed at you,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “Please, Jade. Trust me on this?”

  “For now,” I said. “But we need to talk. Like really talk.”

  “So talk.”

  “No,” I said. He laughed and it made me want to punch him. Or kiss him. I had missed that deep, full-bodied laugh of his.

  “If I talk to you now, I’ll just end up punching you or saying stupid shit I regret. I’m too mad. So I’m going to walk home and you can come find me tomorrow. Call me if you figure out anything else.” Or if anyone else dies, but I didn’t add that last part aloud. It would have felt too much like a prediction.

  I didn’t wait to see his expression or his response; I just started walking, afraid if I waited, if he said something, somehow the right thing like he usually did, I wouldn’t be able to hang onto the burning anger inside of me.

  He didn’t come after me or call out, just let me walk away. I guess some things don’t change.

  My store, Pwned Comics and Games, is sandwiched in a rectangular building between two other shops. On one side is my friend Ciaran’s pawn shop, a place full of crazy art, antique everything, and a few small, actually magical items. Ciaran is a leprechaun and has a serious case of desire for shinies. He also makes a mean cup of tea.

  On the other side of my shop is Br
ie’s Bakery. Brie is some kind of magic user, though I’d never asked her what exactly. It isn’t the kind of thing that comes up in small talk, even in a town as full of supernaturals as Wylde is.

  My guess was that she’s some kind of hearth witch; her magic seemed centered on hearth and home and making people feel good through excellent cooking. I could sense a touch of magic in every bite of every baked good I’d ever eaten from her bakery, but it was the kind of magic you don’t mind. Little things, touches of charms to make you feel good, to improve taste and flakiness. Her baking was literally magical.

  I hadn’t told my friends that, of course. I figured they knew Brie wasn’t fully human, since shifters have a good nose for such things, but her secrets, like mine, were her own.

  I left Harper in charge of the shop on Friday morning and ducked next door to the bakery to pick up honey scones and two tall teas to go. Ezee was due any minute to take me over to the college and sneak me into the indoor pool there so I could keep working on my training. With the students still gone, the college was almost deserted, and the time of year too late for many people to be using the pool, indoor or not.

  The bakery had a decent crowd for a Friday morning. I recognized a couple of locals, but the others were likely visiting wolves. Even predators appreciate a perfect croissant. Brie was behind the counter handling orders herself this morning, a tall woman with fire-engine-red hair in thick curls piled on her head that would make for great Disney’s Brave cosplay, and an apron that said “Save the unicorns” on it. I greeted Brie with a wave and got into line.

  A stocky woman about my height, with reddish-brown hair in a pony tail and a flannel shirt on, was ahead of me, speaking her order in an impatient, brusque tone that annoyed me. Brie was handling her fine, however, so I just glared at the back of the stranger’s head and stuck my tongue out a little. I know Brie caught that, because she smiled extra-wide as she handed the woman her order.

  The stranger turned quickly and nearly collided with me.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a tone that said I was the one at fault. Her eyes were dark blue and there was something sharp and almost feral about her face.

  I stepped back and started to murmur some meaningless apology when I caught the glint of silver around her neck. Her shirt was partially unbuttoned and a silver feather hung there on a chain. A necklace almost identical to Alek’s.

  Not that there aren’t tons of feather necklaces in the world. But something about her reaction to me looking at it confirmed it. Her eyes widened and she sniffed at me.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “You from the rez?”

  Yeah, because all us Indians live on reservations. Right.

  “Um, excuse me?” I said, dropping any pretense of being polite. “Do I know you?”

  “Apparently you do,” she said, her already thin lips turning into a white line as she mashed them together.

  “I’m just here for delicious baked goods, lady,” I said.

  She looked me up and down, as though measuring me for my coffin, and leaned in, sniffing at me in a prolonged, obvious way. I became aware of everyone in the bakery now watching us, the strangers and the locals all taking in this woman acting weird toward the comic book lady.

  “We’ll see,” she said. Then she stepped around me and walked out of the bakery.

  The tension slid out the door with her and the people parked around the tiny café tables went back to their conversations.

  “Lot of strangers in town,” Brie said with a smile as she readied my order.

  “Yeah, guess so.” I wondered if she knew about Justices and the Council. I had a feeling she did.

  “Be safe,” she said as I juggled my order and my change.

  Yeah, she knew. I got that feeling.

  So, two Justices in town. I wondered if Alek knew about her. The questions I had for him were piling up. There was a shitstorm building out there with this Peace, these wolves. I felt it in my bones. For a moment I wanted to jam it all into the not-my-problem file, stick my head in the sand and pretend the only thing I needed to worry about was Samir and training to be strong enough to kick his ass back to the Stone Age whenever he finally showed his face.

  I couldn’t solve everyone’s problems. I couldn’t even solve my own. So I watched down the street for a moment in the direction the female Justice had gone, pushed away the thought of the Lansing family buried somewhere out there among rocks and silence, said fuck it in my head, and climbed into Ezee’s car when he pulled up. Time to eat honey scones and then practice breathing underwater.

  Everything else would just have to wait.

  This was my third session in the pool. The first time had been a total fail, with some hilarious in retrospect almost-suffocation. Nothing like trying to figure out a water-breathing spell and accidentally making it so you can’t breathe air normally anymore.

  I was better now. Magic for sorcerers is something we are, not just something we do. Unlike a witch or warlock or other human spell-user, we own the raw power—we are the raw power. Which meant if I could conceive of it and channel enough power into it, whatever it was, I could make it happen.

  The mental game was the issue. We’re raised with laws. Laws of physics. Laws of nature. Laws about how we can move, what we can do, say, act. Some of these things are flimsy, like human laws about not killing or cheating on your wife or whatever. Some things, like the law of gravity, are pretty strong and without some kind of other force acting on them can’t be broken by just anyone.

  I can break the rules, but only if I can convince myself I can and summon enough power to do so. That’s where my upbringing as a teen with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons had come in handy. As I came into my power, my adoptive family had used the only things available to make sense of what I could do, the only real manual we knew of that talked about magic. DnD is fake, of course. It’s a game, like many I love and play. In the hands of most people, the spells contained in it are useless. You got to have magic to make magic.

  I am magic. It’s like an extra muscle only I, and others like me, are born with. The more I work with it, use it, the stronger I become.

  Which is why I was spending my Friday morning sitting at the bottom of the Juniper College pool, my hair tucked uncomfortably into a swim cap, breathing chlorinated water like it was air, and practicing turning the top of the pool into ice lances and melting them again. Keeping the water-breathing spell and the ice spells going at the same time felt good—a challenge, but not as bad as it had been last week. I was making progress. How this would help against Samir, I had no idea, but I figured the more power I used, the more control I developed, the better.

  The trick hadn’t been figuring out how to breathe in water. That proved pretty simple, just an act of channeling the power into my lungs, bringing my will in line with the magic. It’s magic, after all. It’s supposed to do crazy shit without scientific, detailed explanations. No, the real issue had been convincing my body that breathing in water wasn’t the worst idea ever. Biological conditioning of tens of thousands of years of evolution said that human lungs breathing in water was a terrible idea. Once I convinced my body that it wasn’t going to die horribly, once I forced myself to take that first awful, scary, wet breath, it got a lot easier.

  Morpheus was totally right. There is no spoon.

  I was feeling pleased with myself until a twelve-foot white tiger dropped into the pool. He splashed heavily into the water and swam down, staring at me with open eyes and his nostrils pinched shut like a seal’s. I would have freaked out more, but I recognized Alek’s tiger form.

  With as much dignity as I could summon while sitting at the bottom of a pool in a swimsuit and cap, I let myself rise to the surface, clearing the water from my lungs before I transitioned out of the spell and back to breathing air. Reluctantly I let go of my magic and climbed out onto the side of the pool.

  Tiger-Alek leapt out of the water and shook himself before shifting in less than a blink bac
k to his human form. He wasn’t even damp, his blond hair loose and fluffy, his black sweater and cargo pants clean and dry.

  “I could have accidentally speared you with ice,” I said, glaring to make sure he knew I was still mad.

  “I’d live,” he said with a shrug.

  “Ezee still out there? He just let you in, didn’t he?” I grabbed my towel from off the bleachers and wrapped it around myself, aware of how nearly naked I was.

  “Yes,” Alek said. “He wisely did not argue.”

  He’s a shifter, I wanted to say. He wouldn’t argue with a Justice anyway. Those words sounded petty to me, and I held them back. Looking around, I noticed a silvery shimmer on the walls. Alek was shielding the room, so at least Ezee wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on whatever we said to each other. Small blessings.

  I pulled on a green thermal long-sleeved teeshirt over my damp suit and then struggled into my jeans. I didn’t want to talk to Alek without a proper amount of clothing on. I couldn’t trust my hormones around him and we really needed to figure shit out before we just jumped back into bed.

  If we jumped into bed again. My libido was making a lot of assumptions.

  “Is Wolf here?” Alek asked, moving over to sit beside me on the bleachers.

  He was talking about my spirit protector, one of the Undying, a guardian of the old gods. I had named her Wolf when I was four after she showed up and carried me to safety out of a mineshaft where my cousins had abandoned me.

  “She’s around,” I said. She was usually around, though I couldn’t see her at the moment. In the days following the disaster at Three Feathers, I’d worried that Wolf would abandon me, but she hadn’t. As I’d lain in bed despondent and unhappy, she’d crashed on the floor, a huge black presence that occasionally sighed and looked at me with eyes full of stars. She’d disappeared about an hour before Harper showed up, gave me the pep talk, and dragged me out of bed. I hadn’t asked Harper, but I had a feeling that Wolf might have fetched her.