by Faith Hunter
“Ingram,” he murmured in his almost-a-whisper way. And as usual, that was all the greeting I got. He dove right into business. “Update. I understand you have spoken with the family.”
“I have food in my car if you want. And while someone stopped using the inside coffeemaker due to death and decay, there’s coffee in the percolator on the camp stove outside,” I said, knowing he had to have seen the command center, as I scratched a note on the pad and passed it to him. It read, Security system. Family upstairs. Meaning they could listen in.
He paused the barest moment and gave me a single downward bob of his head, a gesture just like his sister used, economical and yet graceful. Jane Yellowrock was the most wild, untamed, yet decisive person I had ever met. She was the definition of scary. Her brother fell into a similar category, but while Jane trembled on the edge of violence at all times, FireWind was more constrained, reserved, a targeted weapon, which was scary all on its own. “I’d like something to eat,” he said. “Seven hours in the car, a discussion with the DOD and a para-hating, right-wing governor, and an interview with the local FBI senior special agent has left me unpleasantly hungry.”
I wasn’t sure how one could be pleasantly hungry, but I closed my laptop and led the way outside to the camp stove.
The security lights were on at the barn and close to the house. Occam loped in from the shadows and joined us as we poured coffee. T. Laine appeared from the back of the house, where the portable null room was sitting, hopefully stopping the working on the contents. Astrid and Etain followed her halfway, but stopped when they saw us, their eyes on FireWind. They turned and walked away from the big boss. He had that effect on people, drawing eyes everywhere he went, but making people pause and reconsider any possible interaction.
FireWind had golden skin, peculiar yellow eyes, and long straight black hair, currently in a single braid down his back. At six-three or more and very slender, he was gorgeous, according to the others in the unit, but not my type. Nothing like Occam. “My car for debrief?” I asked when we were all in hearing distance.
“Yes,” FireWind said. “Flights would have taken me until midnight to get here from New Orleans, so I rented a car and drove. The only rental was an older Honda Fit, which will not fit us all. It barely fit me.”
“Yeah, well, the first person to spill something in my car has to detail it.” I looked at the big boss. “You too.”
He gave me a small smile. Some time ago, FireWind figured out that he terrified me, and that my way of dealing with terrifying men was to attack first, not back down, and refuse to apologize later. He put up with my insecurities and my social awkwardness, which I appreciated, albeit wordlessly.
As T. Laine filled the night air with a sotto voce update, we trooped through the dark to my car. FireWind reached for the driver’s door, his body language saying that position of power was his by right. As he opened it, I swooped in front of him and inside, said, “Why, thank you,” and pulled the door shut. My boss blinked and tried to regroup. I lifted the potted tree from the passenger seat and placed it on the dash. FireWind walked around the car, took the now-empty passenger front seat, and closed his door. T. Laine was trying to hide a smile. Occam looked cat-complacent as he joined her in the backseat.
Silence settled in the enclosed space. FireWind’s eyes rested on the tree in its pot, but he didn’t comment on it. Occam extended a box of donuts toward us, but FireWind shook his head. “Ingram, I understand you might have some protein bars? Something you made?”
I dug in the side pocket of the car and handed him the zipped plastic bag. Inside were the rest of the commercial salmon jerky and my homemade bars, two made with dried fish flakes, cornmeal, and dried fruit, one made with peanut butter, oats, and powdered milk, one made of nuts, seeds, honey, dried fruit, and salt. He broke all the bars and the jerky in half and offered them to us. It was a formal gesture, like breaking bread at a peace treaty or something. I should have felt bad about beating him to the driver’s seat, but I didn’t. It was my car, after all, and just because he was a man didn’t mean he got to take over my stuff. I took half of the peanut butter bar. T. Laine made a face and shook her head. Occam accepted a fish-flake bar and a salmon jerky strip. We all watched FireWind as he sniffed the ones he had left.
“This one”—he held up half a cornmeal bar—“is like something the Tsalagi would prepare in autumn. Traveling food. Dried fish and cornmeal and dried berries. Every clan and every family had its own recipe.” He bit in and tasted, chewing slowly. “I like the taste of sweet and salt together.” He inclined his head at me.
I inclined mine back and said to FireWind, “We have a lot to tell you, and I know you stopped at the police department on the way in, but for everyone here, I recently finished a prelim question and answer with the mother and the two sisters. Heirs to Stella’s land, personal properties, and liquid assets are the three of them and Catriona Doyle, who Stella knew for only a year. Catriona is a very weak witch, a musician in the band, and her sister is the stronger witch, Etain Doyle, currently allied with the North Nashville coven.”
“Yes,” FireWind said, licking his knuckle to get a salmon crumb, an unexpectedly inelegant gesture, but one that made me like him more. “Money, power, and passion, the roots of all murder. I spent an hour watching Catriona’s interrogation through an observation glass and she keeps her secrets well, though I gathered that there was something more than friendship between Catriona and her employer. I am currently assuming that they were lovers, not something she needs to hide in this day and age, but not a relationship that Stella’s more right-wing fans are likely to approve.”
Surprise flashed through me. Stella and Catriona were lovers? The odd comments by her mother and sisters suddenly made sense. I was an idiot for not understanding them, but homosexuality was severely punished in the church. It wasn’t the kind of relationship that was easy for me to recognize, falling into the unfamiliar.
He tilted his head, musing, “The Tsalagi have never understood the white man’s needs to regulate sexuality. My impression was a gut reaction and is perhaps incorrect. We’ll need Dyson and Racer to sit down with her.” He wanted Catriona truth-read by the unit’s empath and the unit’s probie truth-senser together. It would be impossible to hide anything from them working as a team.
FireWind met my gaze. “Thank you for sharing your food. It will hold me until we leave here for the night.”
“My pleasure.” And it was. FireWind was overbearing and aloof, a reserved man who was still deeply affected by mores, tribal culture, outdated social standings, and the way the law was interpreted and enforced during the long years of his personal and law enforcement life. Most of the time, I didn’t like him. But then he’d do something charming and my perceptions flipped. Besides. I liked feeding people. It made me happy.
He continued, “Catriona is a complicated woman. She, her sister, and her child are here in the States on visas from Ireland. Catriona keeps secrets. She is grieving her friend and perhaps lover. And because we have not completely ruled out death magics, she will be charged with multiple counts of premeditated murder by magical means in the morning, and likely Etain as accomplice.” He stared at the potted tree and added, “Unless we have found highly exculpatory evidence, or unless the sheriff and I provide means forcing Smythe to postpone bringing charges.”
“Smythe is an ass,” T. Laine said.
“True,” FireWind said. “However, can you absolutely, conclusively prove that this working is not from a death-witch curse, and that Catriona is not a death witch?”
“Not yet.”
“Then we must let it play out until we can prove or disprove those things,” FireWind said.
“I’d like to observe when Tandy or Margot talks to Catriona,” T. Laine said. “I want to say that she isn’t a death witch and these magics are not death magics, but there aren’t any studies on death witches, and we don’t ev
en know what death and decay is.” T. Laine’s face pulled into a peeved expression. “In the distant past, all witches were burned at the stake by humans, but death witches were put down with extreme prejudice by whatever coven was capable of it. More recently they’ve been immediately placed into null room prisons for the good of the people around them.”
“Not always,” FireWind murmured, a small smile on his face.
“Whatever,” T. Laine said. “So we have no studies and no cases where death-magic energies were read by witches or a psy-meter. What we know from oral histories is that death witches lose control of their magics and end up killing their families. Sometimes their entire towns. From what I’ve observed, Etain’s a vanilla witch. Her magics are ordinary and controlled. She isn’t capable of a magic working as complicated and original as this one, and Astrid says Catriona has less magic than Etain. No. Not death witches.”
“Original?” FireWind said, picking out one word from T. Laine’s comments. He hesitated, seeming to choose his words. “It was my understanding that most workings were built upon others already in use. Even the unusual ones you used recently were built upon older, existent workings.”
“Yes. Workings are almost always based on previous workings, even inside the strongest covens,” T. Laine said. “What I meant was, it’s supposed to be impossible to control or contain death workings. And while I’ve seen plenty of triggers, I’ve never heard of a trigger being used for a curse and I’ve never seen or heard of a trigger like this one. Triggers are for simple workings, very simple, like turning on your lawn-watering system. Not for big magic. This trigger? It’s complicated, a complete mystery to the coven and to me. Maybe the Doyle sisters brought it from Ireland, but I’d be surprised.” She described the trigger to FireWind. “The amulet was liquid based and its residue smells like licorice, aniseed, and strong spirits.”
FireWind turned in his seat and looked out the windows. Occam turned to FireWind, who held up a finger. I understood nothing about the exchange except that something was up. FireWind said softly, “Absinthe?”
I checked the term absinthe on my cell and discovered that it was a grain alcohol made by macerating herbs and spices: fennel, anise, and wormwood, among others. Until recently, it was completely banned in the U.S. and most of Europe, but the herbs made it sound like a medicinal, like something Daddy would rub on a workhorse.
T. Laine lifted her brows, thinking. “Absinthe. Could be, but it’s hard to find in this country even now.”
“Is it legal in Ireland?” he asked, stretching his body to look out the windshield and above the car.
I tapped on my tablet, searching. “Yes,” I said, and read the names of several shops that carried it in Ireland. “The reviews are mixed as to its taste and efficacy.”
“It isn’t likely that anyone devised a working elsewhere and then refined and used it here,” FireWind mused. “The Irish covens are quite straitlaced and tend to oversee their younger members with an iron fist.” He sat back in the seat, one knee up over the console, invading my space. There was nothing unkind or deliberately baiting about it, but simply because he was so tall and his legs so long. Unlike his usual office attire of black dress pants and white dress shirt, he was wearing black denim and a white button-down shirt with a lariat tie. A silver clip with a tiny yellow stone held the tie together.
I had an insane desire to ask him if he got animal hair on his clothing when he shifted into an animal form, but I swallowed it back. I was developing a big mouth, and while it could have gotten me a backhanded slap in the church, here it could result in professional difficulties that could impact my career.
My brain froze. I have a career.
“Ingram?” FireWind was talking to me.
Distracted, I had missed something. I moved my eyes to him, aware that they were too wide, too large. I have a career. “Huh?”
“Do you have something to add?”
“No. Not a thing.”
He looked amused. “Would you be so kind as to introduce me to the Ragel family?”
“Huh?”
“The Ragel family. The victim’s family. Kent is busy. You’ve met them. I would like an introduction.” He was laughing inside. I could practically see it leaking out of his pores.
“Sure.”
“Now,” FireWind said to Occam.
Occam turned in his seat, opened the door, and leaped out. A drone veered away and Occam raced into the dark, following its trajectory.
The drone had been hovering over the car. Someone was watching, perhaps listening to us. And FireWind and Occam had known.
FireWind exited on the other side and said softly, “Well. That was interesting.”
“Yeah. Fu—freaking press,” T. Laine said.
The big boss smiled at her quickly recalibrated speech.
* * *
* * *
Inside, I took FireWind on a tour of the house’s main level. When he motioned to the basement stairs, I said, “If you want, but there’s a few things you need to know. You’ll need to sit in the null room for a while after you get done, and right now it’s full of dead body stink. You’ll have to dress out and we’re out of unis. The basement should be T. Laine’s to explain. And you might want to talk to the family first?” At the last moment I made that one a question, hoping that it changed my suggestions—orders?—into something less dictatorial. He really did bring out the elder-churchwoman-bossy in me.
He tilted his head and his eyes down to me in the formal way that did such a good job of keeping people at a distance. His braid slid over one shoulder to rest across his chest. “As you wish. I informed Kent that I brought a box of blue unis.”
“Oh. That’s good.” Of course he had been contact with T. Laine. And had brought unis.
Together we trooped up the back stairs and I gave him a tour of the second level. The master suite was empty and had been tidied by someone, likely the family, especially the huge closet, its door partially open to show the bare floor. I peeked in and there was nothing pink hanging or shelved. I had looked online and discovered thousands of photos of Stella Mae Ragel onstage. She never wore pink. Someone had removed pink clothing from Stella’s closet. I murmured all this, and FireWind made a hmmming sound.
We pulled on nitrile gloves and rummaged through the closet, opening drawers, and I found three photo albums and a bunch of loose printed photos, which FireWind estimated were ten years old. We took them in as evidence, placing them in oversized evidence bags he carried in one pocket, just in case something from Stella’s past was important to the case. I started the chain of custody forms for things we would remove from the house.
Together we walked around the bedroom, being nosy, the way special agents were supposed to be. There was a tall vase on the bedside table, with a pretty fuchsia bow tied through its two handles. It was maybe eighteen inches tall and it looked old, one of those antiques rich people collect for flowers and display. The vase had a teal bottom that got lighter near the top, the color at the rim a bright pink that nearly matched the bow. A yellow sunflower and green leaves were molded on the front, and a small card was folded at the base. FireWind said softly, “Roseville, the sunflower pattern.”
I raised my brows in question. “You don’t look like the kinda man who’d know about pottery. Antiques, yes, because you’re so old, but not fancy pottery.” As soon as the words left my mouth I was horrified.
He looked amused and then his face softened. He said, “My wife and I visited San Francisco once. She had a particular liking for Weller and Roseville pottery, which she discovered in a storefront near the bay. She spent many hours there, talking to the owner, learning the different styles and patterns, and when we left, I bought her a small tea set to take with us. She adored the green magnolia pattern and the apple blossom pattern.” His forehead creased and he said, “I believe that I still have the tea set somewhere, i
n storage.”
I opened the tiny card and on the inside were three words and a date. “‘I love you,’” I read aloud, “and this is dated three months ago.”
“Bag it,” FireWind said, meaning take it into evidence. He shifted the photo albums to his other arm. “Come. Let’s see what the rest of the floor shows us.”
We went on, glancing into the rooms, following the soft sound of voices into a gathering/media room. This room was furnished with leather-upholstered recliners and sofas arranged to view the oversized movie screen, and two square tables with chairs for playing cards or eating. There were black end tables, a kitchenette and minibar with a full-sized fridge, a two-burner stove, a microwave, and a large selection of liquors on shelves. As we pulled off our gloves, I knocked on the door and the occupants turned, going silent. “May we come in?” I asked.
“Is that the FBI agent who took Catriona?” Tondra asked, her face taking on a pugnacious appearance.
Without stepping inside, he displayed his ID. “I am Ayatas FireWind, PsyLED, regional director in charge of the eastern seaboard, not FBI.” He smiled and his entire face transformed into something peaceful and kind and understanding. It ratcheted up his gorgeous factor about six notches and was not a look he shared with his team. The unfamiliar expression faded into compassion. “I have always been a great fan of Stella’s work and music, from the time she released her first single, ‘Show Me Every Day.’ The guitar licks were unique, the harmonics were utterly bewitching, and the first time I heard her voice I was captivated. Please allow me to express my deepest condolences on your loss.” He bowed slightly. FireWind was either a class-A actor or he really felt everything he was saying.
“He’s here to help,” I said.
“If you’r’un wanting to help”—Tondra lowered the footrest of her recliner—“then you can get Catriona outta jail. She did not do this.”