Dix didn’t care what she had to do to get ahead. Loyalty meant nothing to her. If she needed or wanted something from someone, she’d suck up to them like a whore on her knees until she got what she wanted. Even if there had been enough detectives in the department to partner up, she’d still work solo. Nobody wanted to get stuck with her. Especially Ray, especially tonight.
They picked up their car in the parking garage. It was a pre-Magicfall blue-and-white, but the engine had been replaced with a magical construct. It still operated the same way, but was dead quiet and required no fuel.
Ray got behind the wheel and backed out. As they pulled onto the street, he flipped on the light bar on top of the roof. Sharon turned to face him.
“So, who called in the murder?”
“Someone stumbled on the scene.”
“Hmmm.”
Ray grimaced. “I know the witness. She didn’t call in her own crime.”
“Are you sure?”
He wasn’t sure of much anymore, Kayla least of all. But she wouldn’t commit murder and call it in. She knew protocols and investigations. She’d know reporting the crime made her a suspect. She wouldn’t be that stupid.
“I’m sure,” he said with finality.
Sharon nodded. After a moment she spoke again. “I’ll take the case.”
“I told you it’s mine.”
She waved dismissively. “You have a conflict of interest, knowing the discovery witness.”
He cast her a sideways look. “Not a problem.”
“Brass might not see it that way.”
Was that a threat? If so, she didn’t know shit about him because she’d only succeeded in pissing him off more than he already was.
“Shove off, Dix. It’s my damned case, and I’ll thank you to keep your hands to yourself.”
“Touchy.”
Ray gritted his teeth but didn’t reply. His silence didn’t deter his companion.
“What’s the deal? I just offered you a gift. Why aren’t you grabbing it with both hands?”
“Maybe I don’t need or want your gifts.” He lifted his hands and made air quotes around the last word.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you don’t give gifts. Everything you do is with an eye toward what you can get out of it,” Ray said baldly.
“Nothing wrong with ambition.”
“You leave too many bodies in your wake. I’m not interested in being one of them.”
“I’m a woman in a job that favors men. If I don’t look after myself, who will?”
“So why do you want this case?”
She shrugged. “No particular reason.”
Ray cast a sidelong look her. “Right.”
Dix smiled in an entirely unfriendly way. “The way you came out of your office like your ass was on fire, I knew it had to be juicy. And juicy cases get a detective noticed by people who count. Word is they’re thinking of opening a new division, and I plan to head it up. I’ve got a good record and I’ve passed all the tests, but a little attention on me would seal the deal.”
Ray had heard the rumors of a new division, too. Whatever was in the works was top secret, but word was the mayor, city council, and the union were all a hundred percent behind it. Which meant it was going to be a serious clusterfuck. Dix was welcome to it. Thank God he wouldn’t have to work under her.
“Sorry to disappoint, but you’re wrong about the case. Far as I know, it’s your basic run-of-the-mill homicide.”
“All the same, I want to see for myself,” she said with an arch tone that said she didn’t believe a word he said.
“Suit yourself. Just stay the hell out my way.”
RAY AND DIX WERE stationed out of the temporary headquarters building at the old Portland campus of Linfield College. It wasn’t far from Keller Fountain Park. He shot over to Burnside and up to Southwest 3rd, passing Nellie’s on the way.
They ran into the thick bank of fog a couple blocks past the defunct Highway 405. Ray slowed, biting back frustration. The thick soup would add a good ten minutes or more to his travel time. Ten minutes or more for Kayla to disappear.
He reached for the shield button on the dash, but Dix beat him to it. A wave of spiderwebbing lavender magic rippled across the exterior of the car and expanded, forming a cocoon about three feet away. It would protect them from attacks and accidents. Ray sped up. He felt Dix’s eyes on him.
“Like I said . . . juicy,” she said smugly.
He cast an annoyed look at her. Her eyes opened wider in feigned innocence.
“What? It’s obvious you’re in a hurry to get on scene. You don’t have to be a detective to see that. So, what makes this case so special?”
“You’ve got something in your teeth,” he told her.
She reached into her purse for a tissue, scrubbing at her teeth with it. “Is it gone?”
Since she’d never had anything in her teeth, the nonexistent bit of lettuce was gone.
“Sure,” Ray said with barely a glance at her.
She made a sound and rubbed at her teeth again, using the tissue to polish each one individually. He shook his head. Women. At least she’d shut up.
He made himself slow down again when they deflected off something. He caught a glimpse of fur and gray skin as he veered up onto the sidewalk and bounced off the stump of a parking meter.
“Jesus Christ! Watch where you’re going!” Dix shrieked as her head knocked against her window. She braced her hands on the dash. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Ray didn’t bother telling her about the creature he’d run into. Luckily the shield had been up. The damned things were beyond expensive and had to be recharged after eight hours of use, but damn, they were worth every penny the department had spent. He only wished the brass would budget in personal shields.
He backed up and then turned to get back onto the road. He slowed a little—but only to make sure he didn’t miss the turn onto 3rd Street, then he sped up again.
He went back to the last time he’d talked to Kayla. Talked. He’d ranted and shouted like a madman. He wasn’t proud of it. His shock and panic at her announcement had driven him to say unforgivable things. Loudly and with a lot of swearing. He’d beaten her with his words. It hadn’t made him feel better then, and the memory disgusted him now. A man didn’t lose himself like that. In the end he’d told her he never wanted to see her again, and until her call today, she’d given him exactly what he asked for.
Except he didn’t want that. Did he? Just thinking about that day cut him to the bone, the betrayal and hurt just as potent now as then. He’d been lying to himself that he’d gotten past her. His teeth clenched, his jaw knotting. If he wanted answers, he’d have to control his anger. And once he got the answers, what then? Would he walk away? Put her in the rearview forever?
He didn’t know. What he did know is that he wanted to see her now, which meant arriving before she ghosted away.
The hazmat team had already deployed by the time he pulled up. Ray shut off the car, leaving the red-and-blue emergency lights flashing. He stepped out, turning to look for Kayla, but the fog barely let him see Dix on the other side of the vehicle.
He walked to the back of the open hazmat van to see if they’d seen her. He found Zach Logan, a technomage.
“Hey, Logan. What do you have for me?” Ray offered his hand.
The other man turned. A couple inches taller than Ray, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, he looked like a surfer. A clip held his long blond hair away from his face. He shook Ray’s hand.
“Hey, Ray. Definitely got magic here. A decently powerful spell was cast. Left behind a hell of a residue.” He pointed at the flecks of dust floating in the air. “That’s everywhere. Seems benign, but I w
on’t know for sure until I can examine the scene. Techs are putting up the fog-killers. Should be ready to go soon. One other thing. The casting wasn’t technomagic. I can clean it up, but a witch would be able to tell us more.”
Witches weren’t allowed on the force. They were barely tolerated in the city. Ray had argued in the past for having one on staff for just this sort of event, but he was always shot down. Too risky. The unofficial motto in any copshop was: the only good witch was a dead witch. All the same, a murder that involved a major magic spell cast in downtown would certainly get brass approval to bring in a consulting witch.
“Let’s see what the scene can tell us first,” Ray said. “Have you seen the witness who called it in?”
Logan hadn’t been around before Magicfall. He’d never met Kayla. The technomage shook his head, and at that moment, the fog-killers kicked on. In moments, the park cleared.
Ray quickly took in the scene. The white dust lay in a thin veil over everything, except where footsteps had scuffed it. The water from one of the broad fallways had somehow been diverted. In its place hung three bodies—three non-human bodies—surrounded by intricate ritual markings.
“Thought you said this was a homicide?” Dix demanded, hands on her hips as she looked over the park.
“That’s right.”
“Then where’s the body? The human body,” she added. “Because those things sure as hell aren’t any of our business,” she declared, hooking her thumb at the dead creatures.
“This crime isn’t any of your business either way,” Ray said caustically.
“It isn’t any of your business either. We’re wasting our time. Let Logan and his team figure out what happened.”
“Go ahead and leave,” Ray said. “Nobody wants you here.”
She whipped around, shooting him a venomous look. “Fuck off, Garza.”
“Sorry it’s not juicy enough for you.” He looked at Logan. “I’m going to find my witness. Let me know when I can go down there.” He tipped his head toward the fountain.
The technomage’s brow furrowed. He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “She’s a bitch, but she’s right. Animal control is supposed to handle this sort of thing.”
“Not today.”
Ray turned and crossed the street blindly, heading for Keller Auditorium. He’d start looking for Kayla there. He narrowly avoided running into one of the pillars out front. He stepped around it.
“Kayla?”
He heard a sound suspiciously like a sigh. “Here.”
She stepped out of the fog, putting her within arm’s reach. It was all he could do to not snatch her arm so she couldn’t run off.
He drank her in. She looked much the same as she did when he’d followed her the first time. Jeans, tee shirt, a light jacket. She’d drawn her hair up in a messy ponytail. Dirt smudged her cheeks and forehead. A small scrape marred her chin. His gaze locked with hers. Shadows moved inside her eyes. Secrets.
Swallowing a wash of feeling he didn’t want to examine too closely, Ray hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and thrust out his chin.
“You told me this was a murder,” he said, his lip curling.
She blinked at him, scowling, then looked toward the fountain. “There were three bodies.”
“Non-human.”
Her head jerked back. Her eyes widened. “So what? They’re still people.”
He shook his head, falling back on department policy. “We don’t have the manpower to watch out for witchkin. They can police themselves.”
“You don’t think they deserve justice?”
“I think this is a magical crime, and without a human involved, it falls out of my jurisdiction.”
“That’s bullshit.”
The accusation and condemnation in her voice put his hackles up. “We don’t have a choice. There are only so many of us to go around, and we can’t spend time on cases that fall outside our mission.”
“Your mission?”
“To protect and to serve. Humans.”
“But the city is far more than humans now. You don’t think they deserve to be protected? Or are they just disposable?” Color climbed into her cheeks, and her eyes snapped fire.
“They have to take care of themselves, unless and until they harm a human. Then we step in.”
It was a cold, hard truth. It didn’t sit well with Ray, either, but he understood it. After the Magicfall when beings called the Guardians unleashed a tsunami of wild magic on the world in order to stop human encroachment and give strength to the magical denizens of the world, the world had turned inside out. Life as everyone knew it ended.
Whatever the wild magic touched it changed. Enchanted forests, glass mountains, endless fields of tornados, fathomless depths, and more suddenly erupted. Worse were the mutations. Humans who’d been touched by magic had changed into creatures of myth and fairytale, some more bizarre than others. Ray had developed witch powers, turning him witchkin, a fact he’d sell his soul to change. Humans hated all witchkin—those tainted by magic—except for the technomages who protected the city. The resentment, suspicion, and hate ran deep. Even in Portland, the proud home of all things weird, witchkin weren’t welcome.
Kayla shook her head and muttered something.
“What did you say?”
She leveled her gaze at him. “I said, good thing I got out when I did. How can you stomach that crap?”
Ray jerked like she’d struck him. Fury ignited. “Maybe if you hadn’t left, things might be different, so you can take your holier-than-thou attitude and shove it up your ass sideways.”
Her lips tightened, and her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t reply. That only pissed him off more. Why couldn’t she just speak her damned mind for once?
“Why did you even call me anyway?”
“Because there was a ritual murder, and I thought we used to be friends!” The angry words exploded.
“Friends? Are you kidding me? You walked out on me, and I haven’t heard a word from you since? Does that sound like friendship?” He leaned in. “If that’s you being my friend, then no thanks. Next time, call somebody else. We were never friends.”
She recoiled, staring at him wide-eyed and wounded. Instantly he felt a pang of regret. Then an indifferent mask fell across her expression. Or maybe it wasn’t a mask. Maybe that was the real her and her initial reaction had been the fake. He despised himself for wondering, for caring that he might have hurt her.
“I take it you don’t want to hear what happened, then?” Her voice had turned distant and cold.
“Wrong.” He fished a notebook out of his pocket. That magic spell would require investigation. “Walk me through what happened.”
She glared, but then folded her arms and told her story. He took down notes, not asking any questions until the end. She had cop recall and gave him all the salient points.
“So, you didn’t feel any ill effects from the powder?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t see who cast the spell?”
“No. Just that there wasn’t a witch circle.”
He nodded. “Did you see any signs of anybody else in the area?”
She shook her head. “Nobody. Human or otherwise,” she added acidly.
His jaw hardened. “Did you find that odd? It’s downtown Portland. It’s never deserted.”
She shrugged. “It’s foggy. Could be a ton of people around for all I know.”
“You didn’t see any people at all?” He checked his watch. “It’s barely two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“People?” she echoed. “Are you referring to just humans or all people?”
He made a growling sound. “Dammit, Kayla. You know what I mean.”
Her chin lifted. “I don’t think I do. I me
an, you don’t even have a homicide here, what with three bodies that don’t qualify under police policy.”
“It’s not police policy. It’s guidance handed down by the mayor and the city council.”
“How can you follow it? You know witchkin aren’t animals. They are people, just like us.”
“Not just like us,” he said, though his heart wasn’t in the argument. He might not like magic—in fact he hated it with every fiber of his being—but that didn’t mean the witchkin weren’t people. Their magic wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was a damned curse.
The look Kayla turned on him dripped disgust. “I never thought I’d hear something as shitty as that from you.”
“Yeah? Well I never thought you’d bail on the job. Or leave me high and dry without a partner. I guess we’re both disappointed. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
Satisfaction burned through him when he saw her flinch. At least it was some goddamned reaction.
“Are we done?” she asked coldly.
“I want hazmat to check you out,” he said, snapping his notebook shut. “See if there’s any evidence of the spell or its effects on you.”
“This isn’t mage magic. The hazmat technomage isn’t going to be able to tell anything,” she said in a flat voice that lacked any emotion.
She was right. His stomach tightened in unexpected concern. What was the powder she’d absorbed doing to her even now, standing here in front of him while he just watched? His concern irritated him.
God but he was mind-fucked when it came to Kayla. Partners on the force shared a deep relationship based on a level of trust that most marriages didn’t achieve. Partners served as lifelines, confessors, moral supports, and they were always there to wade through the deep shit with you and make sure you got out alive.
Ray had depended on her. Trusted her with everything. He hadn’t trusted anybody since. He doubted he ever would. If his partner of three years could abandon him so easily, then anybody could betray him. Never again. Especially now that he had a secret that, if exposed, would mean losing his job, his friends, his family, and everything else he cared about.
The Witchkin Murders Page 3