by Liz Schulte
JESSICA
We were standing on a street in the middle of a city, but it could have been any city. Tall buildings and sidewalks were pretty much all I could see.
“Let’s see if we can find a newspaper,” I said.
Selene and I started toward the nearest intersection, looking for anything that would tell us where we were. “Everything looks familiar,” she said. “I just can’t quite place it.”
When we finally hit the next street her eyes lit. “We’re on Rush.” Her eyebrows shot upward. “We’re in Chicago.”
I wrote down Chicago and the name of the street we appeared on. “Next,” I said.
“Since we might be popping up in people’s homes, we should do something about you.” She hovered a hand over my head and closed her eyes until my entire body felt tingly. “There.”
I looked down at my tingling arm. It looked normal enough. “What did you do?”
“Made you invisible.”
Selene could be invisible or not as she chose; it was an elf quality and as a half elf she sort of got the best of both worlds. “Ready?”
I nodded and we transported to the next location and then next and the next and the next. Two hours and thirty-seven locations later we finally went back to New Haven. I collapsed onto the couch (which was back in its spot on top of the rug), completely dizzy from all the teleporting. It definitely wasn’t meant for a human equilibrium. The room felt like a tilt-a-whirl.
“Where have you been?” Katrina asked.
“Where haven’t we?” Selene said. “This is bigger than we thought. We were in Chicago, New York, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Atlanta, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix—retty much if there’s a city in the U.S., we were there today. We gave up at thirty-seven. Jessica couldn’t take any more transporting and the spell was losing its juice. The evidence is clear enough, though. We obviously have a problem.”
“Someone died in each of those places?”
Selene shrugged. “I don’t know. The same energy was lingering in each of those spots. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
“As soon as my head stops spinning, I’ll make the Internet my bitch,” I said, throwing an arm over my eyes. “Have I mentioned I hate transporting?”
“Once or twice,” Selene said and I could hear the smile in her voice.
“It’s even truer now.”
“How many times did Jessica puke?” Katrina asked with a giggle. “Wait, I don’t want to know. Ew.”
Selene laughed. “I should probably get back to Cheney and Bella. Let me know what you find out and if you need me again.”
I waved the hand covering my eyes. “Bye.”
After about twenty minutes, I could finally open my eyes and sit up without wanting to lose my lunch.
“Donavan came by,” Katrina said as I sat up. “While you were gone. I caught him poking around outside.”
I nodded. “Did you chase him off with a broom?”
“That was the backup plan. Instead, I just talked to him.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “I think I’ve already told him too much, Kat. He doesn’t believe so I thought we’d be safe, but he’s too curious. Plus it will put him at risk.”
“I know,” she said. “But I don’t think he’s going to let this go. I think he’s starting to smell a story here.”
“What do you want to do about it?” I couldn’t stop him from being curious. I was the one who walked into his life and got him involved. It wasn’t his fault. Plus I wasn’t completely sure I wanted him to mind his own business. It had been sort of fun, in a frustrating way, having him around today.
“We could do a memory charm.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. Everything you’ve casted lately has come out too strong. You’d probably completely obliterate his limbic system.”
“I wouldn’t do it on purpose.”
“Kat!”
“Fine.” She held up her hands. “But you need to devise a new plan then, or I will have to do something.”
“Just don’t do anything right now. I’ll figure something out when we’re done. Besides, I think we’re finished with the magic stuff, so if he comes back we can let him in. All he’ll see is clever Internet research.”
“I thought you might say that. He’s outside looking through our dumpster.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“He says it’s public property.”
“Where did you throw away the bags of misfit hair accessories?”
She smiled. “I didn’t. I sent them back from where they came. I don’t know where that is. I might have buried some colony of brownies or fairies, but they stole them in the first place. Or, who knows, maybe the dryer actually does eat socks.”
I texted Frost and Leslie again. If we were right about the scope of this, we’d need all hands on deck. I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ll get him.” I stuck my head out of the steel door. “What are you doing?”
His head popped up from the dumpster. “You’re obviously hiding something. If you won’t let me in, then I will have to figure it out.”
“By looking through the trash? You know that dumpster isn’t just ours, right?” I said.
“So you admit you are hiding something?” “No. I admit I have a headache and want to take a nap, but find it impossible to do with you out here making me feel guilty for teasing you. Come inside if you must. We have nothing to hide.”
He walked past me with as much dignity as a man who was just caught dumpster diving could manage. Katrina smiled and waved at him from the couch, where she flipped through a fashion magazine.
“Nice to see you again, Donavan,” she said.
He scanned the room, taking in everything, only there wasn’t much to see. We had an older-but-nice rug, a comfortable leather couch that had been in my apartment, a dorm-sized refrigerator, and a metal desk with all of our business binders neatly organized. Really, it looked like an employee breakroom you might find anywhere.
His eyes stopped on the green purse on the table. “May I?” he asked.
I nodded and he picked it up, searching it thoroughly inside and out. When he was satisfied, he sat it back down.
“Have you found anything?”
“I’m about to start researching similar crimes on the Internet. I know it’s a long shot, but I thought maybe it could work. I just had to try to get rid of this headache first.”
He took off his winter apparel and tossed it in the corner, which given the smell was probably for the best. His hair stood up in spots, which made it hard not to smile at him even if he was pushy and suspicious. “I really don’t see how that will do any good.”
“Don’t you want to know if there is more?”
He shook his head. “Those sort of details won’t be reported.”
“Surely we can pick out similar crimes.”
“How? Rhonda and Emaleigh were nothing alike.”
I sighed. Any strangulation or suicide in the places I went today would be enough proof for me, but how could I convince him? “Let’s just see if I can find anything.”
“It’s not likely unless you have access to ViCAP. You don’t, do you?”
“I don’t,” I said. “I have something better than that.” I smirked at him.
He rolled his eyes. “Magic?”
“Nope. A can-do personality.”
He shook his head as I opened my laptop. I googled each location in conjunction with strangulation, starting with Chicago. An article dated a year earlier stated a homeless man had been found strangled on Rush Street in Chicago. They made no mention of the cut, but I was willing to bet money it was there. Each location was the same—a murder or a “suicide” that fit the bill. The victims were a variety of ages and ethnicities and genders. It was no wonder the police hadn’t put them together. The weirdest thing was the span of time the killings covered, however. They went back thirty years and were spread across the country in the most haphazard pattern. There didn’t seem to be a logical thread to the whole
thing.
“See, you can’t prove any of these are connected,” he said, running his hand through his hair, making it stand up even more.
“They are,” I told him.
“That’s not an answer,” he said. “How did you get those locations? How do you know they are? This one is from twenty-five years ago. Was he the first? Where is your information coming from? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m telling you what I know. We did some scrying, nothing anyone couldn’t have done.”
Katrina nodded. “All you need is a focused energy, a crystal, a map, and a sensitive nature.”
Donavan’s brows pulled together in a straight line. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true,” I said. “I don’t know if the one from twenty-five years ago was the first, but I don’t think so.”
Selene and I had quit before we made it to the end. We probably should have pushed through. The first crime was always the most telling, but my brain would have exploded or I would have been useless for the rest of the day had I kept going.
“Where did you get the locations?” he asked again, softer and more seriously.
I looked over to Katrina, but she was gone.
His eyes followed mine. “It’s just you. Tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Scrying. That’s your story. Are you involved in this in some way?”
I took a deep breath. “No. Today is the first I heard of any of this. I’m sorry if you don’t believe me or in what we do.”
He leaned back against the couch and stared into nothing. “My brain says it isn’t possible and you’re conning me.”
I nodded, pressing my lips together.
“But if that’s the case, you’re the best con artist I’ve ever met because you have no tells. So either you believe what you’re saying is true or…”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Or it is true.”
I smiled gently. “But it isn’t possible.”
“Exactly. Now you see my dilemma.”
“It’s not easy to take things on faith, especially for a person like you.”
“Like me?”
“You want evidence. You want something you can examine and see the whole picture or pieces that can be put together. That isn’t what this is and no matter how much you might try, I’m afraid it will never be that. My world simply doesn’t stop where science ends. It’s wider than that.”
“Your world?”
I considered my words carefully. “The spiritual world.”
“You’re sort of crazy, aren’t you?”
I smiled. “I thought that was pretty obvious. We run a new age magic shop.”
“I thought that was a gimmick for the tourists, like you were a good business person, not a believer.”
I shook my head. “It’s a way of life.”
“When you say you cast spells, you actually mean you cast spells. It’s not figurative.”
I patted his knee. “I’m not sure there is any other way to mean that.”
If possible Donavan looked even more confused than he had before. He didn’t say anything for such a long time I worried Katrina had been listening and did the memory charm anyway, but finally he spoke. “If you’re right about all of this, then we have a serial killer. That isn’t just small town news, it’s national news.”
I shook my head. “You can’t report this. Probably not ever.”
“Sure, we need better sources. I can’t run the story based on ‘local psychic says,’ but I can call the police departments in each city and ask about the cuts. If each victim has one, we can link the crimes. Breaking this would be huge for my newspaper.”
It would also let the killer know we were onto him and could make him do something outside of his regular pattern, which was a chance I couldn’t take. As it was, it appeared he killed one to three people each year, which could very well mean he was already done for the year. It also spoke to me of a feeding pattern of some sort. If we (the coven) could even track it down, the last thing we needed was a bunch more innocents to get in the way. I wouldn’t be responsible for any more deaths. “I can’t let you do that.”
Donovan gave me a strange look, leaning away. “I wasn’t asking your permission. If we had—or have—a serial killer in town, people have the right to know. I’m not going to keep it from them.”
“You could be endangering lives,” I tried one more time.
“So could not knowing.” He reached for my list, but I grabbed it first.
“No.” I stood up. Katrina poked her head into the room, chewing worriedly on her bottom lip. I really didn’t want to mess with his memory, but what choice was he leaving us? He couldn’t report this, especially before we knew what we were dealing with.
He stood too, not noticing Kat, and held his hands up in the air, though his spine was stiff with anger. “That’s fine. I remember most of them anyway.”
I nodded and Katrina did the charm. Bright white sparks burst in front of his eyes, which immediately glazed over and went completely blank. “I’m sorry,” I said under my breath, taking him by the arm to steady him.
Kat rushed over. “I know you were trying, but…”
I shook my head. It wasn’t fair. We obviously didn’t belong in the Abyss, but we didn’t belong here either. In order to protect innocents, we also had to hide what we were from them. “Help me get his coat on. We can take him back to the paper before he comes to.” If he came to.
“I didn’t put full power into it. It shouldn’t do any lasting damage,” she said, but it wasn’t as comforting as she meant it to be. None of us had any business casting spells on people when we couldn’t determine what the effects would be, just like I had no business casting that dark magic spell that landed us all in this position.
We struggled his sleeves over his limp arms, pulled the hat down over his head, stuffed his hands into his gloves, and then wrapped the scarf around his neck. He stood motionless and staring throughout it all. We took turns getting ourselves ready to brave the cold, then got under each of his arms and walked him across the street through the wind and the snow. I reached out to open the door, but it was locked.
“I got it,” Kat said, unlocking the door in a moment. We took Donovan to his office and removed his winter stuff. “Should we leave him in the chair?” she asked.
I spotted a couch piled with old newspapers and a few books. “Let’s do the couch. If he remembers anything, maybe he’ll think it was a dream.” I rushed over and cleared it off then helped Katrina lie him down, but when I tried to stand up I snagged on something. I pulled harder, finally breaking free with a snap.
“Come on, Jess. We’ve got to go. His eyes are moving.”
I scanned the floor for what had caught me, but I didn’t see anything. Maybe our coats caught together or something. I didn’t wear jewelry or anything else that could hook on him. I let Kat pull me out of the room, then we nearly ran out the front door and she locked it behind us.
Back in Enchantment, we finally stopped to breathe. She looked as guilty as I felt. “I didn’t want to do that,” she said.
“Me either.” I took a deep breath. “We have to be more careful when it comes to regular people.”
She nodded.
“Which memories did you try to erase?”
“Just the ones that have to do with today. I really tried not to make it too strong.”
“Okay. It will be okay.” I took a deep breath. The one thing that would make all of this worthwhile would be finding the killer and putting a stop to him once and for all. “Let’s find this guy.”
“You keep calling whatever this thing is a him. Couldn’t it be a girl?”
“Sure,” I nodded. I hadn’t really thought much about it. “Strangulation just seems like a more masculine way to kill someone. But it could be a woman. So let’s narrow it down. Based on the energy we saw, what isn’t it?”
“Definitely not fae
or vampire. Fae energy is more colorful and vampires always leave behind traces of red. Really it’s the white light that confuses me most. Normally white is something good. Not that good beings can’t do bad things, but they don’t tend to feed on others.”
“But there was darkness that surrounded the light and almost extinguished it,” I said. “Maybe it’s something in the process of changing.”
11
FROST
I opened my car door, sank into the seat, and started the engine to warm myself up. I leaned against the headrest. It would be so nice to leave and not look back—and I might have, had I not left Leslie in that house with the other coven. I massaged my temples. I couldn’t tell if they were all dark witches or not, but I really didn’t see what that mattered. I already had a coven. If I was the betting sort though, I’d say Alexis definitely leaned that way, but maybe not Aisha. But then again, I didn’t know if that even made sense.
I flipped on my windshield wipers, but they wouldn’t move under the weight of the snow piled on my windshield. I fished around in my backseat until I scrounged up an ice scraper. When I finished clearing the glass, I climbed back into the driver’s seat, shifted the car into four wheel drive and slowly climbed up the invisible driveway until I was parked in front of the house. I was prepared to run back down to close the gate, but it was already shutting behind me. I grabbed Leslie and my bags from the backseat and our cellphones.
I stomped up the steps, knocking snow off of my boots as I went. Inside, I checked that Leslie was okay and held up her phone before sitting it on the table by the door. She nodded and didn’t look distressed as she spoke to the other coven members. I climbed the stairs like I was going to meet my doom because that’s how it felt. I left Leslie’s bag in the hallway outside my mother’s room and took mine with me into the baby room. The door closed softly behind me, and I didn’t bother to turn on the lights.
I leaned against the wall and slid down it until I could press my face into my knees and block out the rest of the world. I took off my gloves and threw them across the room, then wound my fingers into my hair and pulled. The external pain helped with some of the internal chaos of warring thoughts and memories. When my thoughts were a bit quieter, I sat up and dug some pain relievers out of my bag. All of this was giving me a migraine. I popped two pills without a glass of water, shifted to lying on my back, and stared up at the stars rotating around the ceiling.