by L. J. Red
BLOOD MAGIC
STARLIGHT WITCHES
By L.J. Red
Blood Magic
Copyright © 2019 by L.J. Red
First Electronic Publication: September 2019
L.J. Red
www.ljred.com
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission by the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not the be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organization is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
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Chapter 1
“That bastard.” Mrs. Anderson’s long blonde hair was drawn back in a neat chignon, better for me to see her disgusted expression as she stared down at the photograph in her hands. “That fucking bastard,” she said, and her manicured fingers trembled on the glossy paper.
I flicked my gaze down to the photograph. Oh yeah, the money shot. Wow, Mr Anderson had a good ass for a man his age. My eyes shifted to the ring on her finger. I was guessing she wouldn’t be Mrs. Anderson much longer but Ms. whatever her maiden name was.
“This isn’t the first time,” she said, looking up at me, her eyes starting to sheen with tears.
I shrugged. You’d be amazed by how many cheating husbands or cheating wives I had tracked down over the past couple of years since I became a private investigator. I’d had naive dreams that I would be saving lives or making a real difference in the city, but it was shit like this that kept the lights on. “Yeah,” I sighed, “it’s a real tragedy.” She looked up at me, a frown appearing between her eyes. Oops, had I let the sarcasm bleed through into my voice? “This concludes our business,” I said straightening and tapping my fingernails on the table impatiently.
I wanted to get paid, I had bills to pay. Plus, the night’s usual crowd would be turning up at the bar soon enough, and Joe didn’t like it when I did business at night. He was stood behind the bar now, leaning on the bar top and leafing through a newspaper. Joe had a face like a leather boot and a personality like a kick in the face but he ran his bar with a ruthless equality. Anyone was welcome provided they paid their tab and covered any damages after the fight, and boy, were there fights.
The door to the bar opened, noise from the street outside spilling into the room. Always put the client’s back to the entrance. I was snug in the corner with sightlines to the front and back of the bar. I’d made the mistake of sitting with my back to the door only once, but it had been costly. I still had the scar along my side to show for it.
I glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see a familiar face, but it wasn’t Michelle, just a group of young men, young magicals, I corrected myself. Pyromancers. I could smell the smoke from here. Joe wouldn’t like that, I thought, glancing at the bar. He was never happy when pyros came in. Not that he had anything against the fire starters, you understand, but because alcohol and naked flame equalled damages—expensive damages—and the bar had only just been repaired from the last fight.
Joe’s bar, being deep in the magical district of Seattle, was a witch-friendly bar, open to humans like me or the pyros in the corner. People with one foot in the half world and one foot in the real one. The supernaturals of Seattle, shapeshifters and the like, would occasionally turn up as well. I couldn’t blame them. It was rare to find a place like this, somewhere where you could be accepted, or at least ignored, to have your drink in peace no matter what you were. Provided you didn’t set fire to the merchandise of course, Joe was still watching the pyros suspiciously, brows lowered over dark eyes.
“But you didn’t use magic.” A voice cut through my thoughts. I dragged my attention back to Mrs. Anderson. Oh shit, here we go.
“You paid me to do a job for you,” I said, hoping to head her off. “You wanted to know if your husband was cheating on you with his secretary. He wasn’t. He’s cheating on you with the pool boy and there’s your proof.” I flicked the edge of the photograph she was still holding.
She flushed and flattened it on the table, smoothing her hand out and fixing a glare on me. The tears in her eyes had completely disappeared. Shit, don’t piss off the client, Tiana, I thought to myself.
She gave me an obvious once-over, taking in the fading bruise on my jaw from a particularly perky poltergeist; my hair, already frizzing out of its ponytail; the black choker around my neck; my worn leather jacket and threadbare shirt. All of it a world apart from her perfectly coiffed hair, pantsuit and pearls.
“You’re a magical investigator,” she said. “What’s the point of hiring a magical investigator if all you do is take a bunch of photographs? I could have hired any old investigator to do that.”
“Yeah,” I said angrily, leaning forward. “Sure, and pay double. Lady, you know why you came to me and it wasn’t for the magic. It was because my rates are dirt cheap and you fucking know it. You mundanes don’t want anything to do with us magicals unless we can do something for you, and once we’ve done it you stiff us on the check. Are you seriously gonna go there with me?”
“I don’t see why I should be paying for something you didn’t do,” she said.
“I got your proof; that was what you hired me to do.” This was why I asked for half payment upfront and half on completion. Maybe I needed to start asking for the whole thing upfront from now on.
She started packing her things into her bag, reaching for the photos. I slammed my hand down on top of them before she could take them away. “You don’t want to do this, lady. Trust me.”
“I’ve paid you half. That should be enough. You should be grateful you’re getting anything from me.”
Oh, she didn’t. Anger curled through my veins and I gripped her tighter, my hands going cold. Her eyes widened, a flicker of fear passing behind them. “Yeah,” I growled threateningly. “You really wanna piss me off
? Tell you what, how about we do this. You walk out of here still owing me and maybe I send a nice little poltergeist to fuck up your fancy house while you and husband dearest are working your way through the divorce; how’s that? You want to be woken every night by a screaming ghoul?”
I gripped her tighter, feeling the bones shift under her skin, and all around us the air chilled as I pushed aside the veil and reached into the half world.
Chapter 2
The room around me turned hazy as my senses attuned not to the real, physical world that mundane, non-magical humans moved in but the half world—the world of spirits, magic, and power. I reached out with my senses, spreading long, trailing fingers of power into the space around me, searching for the dead.
Spirits were tricky things. Sometimes they enjoyed the company of magicals, particularly ones like me who had an affinity for dead things, but other times they avoided me like the plague. Maybe I reminded them of the life they had lost, maybe I was just enough of a bitch that even the spirits didn’t want to spend any time with me. Either way, I was lucky tonight. There were a couple of regulars hanging out at the bar, nothing strong enough for a good haunting, but hopefully enough to spook Mrs. Anderson into paying me what she owed.
I beckoned one spirit forward, teasing, coaxing, beckoning with the edge of my thoughts until I felt it press close to the two of us, the chill in the air dropping to freezing, sinking, familiar, into my bones, and through the connection of our hands, into Mrs. Anderson.
I stared at her, knowing my eyes had gone cold and the pits of my pupils black and merciless.
Through the half world, her outline was blurry and strange, wavering as if through a heat haze.
“You might want to rethink your last statement,” I said, and even to myself my voice sounded echoey and hollow. I could feel her hand trembling under mine, brittle boned and fragile. I could sense the age in her limbs, the slow, gentle fall towards her death.
She tugged her hand from mine abruptly and the connection snapped. I felt like I had been plunged in cold water and I stifled a gasp at the unexpected break.
The half world billowed around me. The spirit by my side suddenly seemed brighter, sharper, and closer to me now that my connection to a living human had been broken, and it took me a slight amount of effort to shove my awareness of it into the back of my mind and pull myself out of the half world and into the real world. I refocused on Mrs. Anderson, who was, thank God, getting her handbag back out and pulling crisp notes from the stack in her purse.
“Here,” she said, throwing them on the table. “Don’t bother me again.”
“Whatever, lady,” I said. “You came to me.” I grabbed the money and tucked it into my pocket, I made myself act casual, leaning back into a loose sprawl. I could still feel the chill running down the back of my shoulders.
I stared at her back as she rushed out, jerking away from the pyros, already playing with flames between their fingers at the bar.
I sighed and ran my hand through my frizzy hair, catching tangles. I hadn’t got any sleep last night. I had been up, waiting for that fucking money shot, until three in the morning. I stood and made my way over to the bar.
“Joe,” I greeted.
He grunted at me. I slid onto a barstool and propped my chin in my hand.
“That my rent I saw?” Joe said out of the corner of his mouth.
I twisted my lip. “Yeah, I guess so.” I lived above the bar. It was an arrangement that worked pretty well for me. Joe let me use the bar for meetings occasionally and it gave me a neutral place for clients to find me since my office was basically my living room, and some clients you didn’t want to invite into your living room.
I kept back a little for groceries and handed the rest over to Joe. “I know, I know. It’s not enough. I’ve got another case coming through soon,” I lied.
He was distracted enough by the pyros that he just sent me a half-hearted glare. “I’m not running a charity here,” he growled. I just smiled brightly at him, refusing to be cowed.
“You’re the best, Joe.” I eyed the bottles behind Joe’s head. “Whiskey,” I said, “neat.”
“You gonna owe me for the drink too?”
I peeled off a note from my groceries stash. What? It was going in my body, it counted as food. Drink. Whatever.
“That woman didn’t look happy with you, she gonna cause trouble? Cause I shouldn’t really be letting you do business in the bar, we aren’t—”
“Zoned for that,” I finished. “Don’t give me grief, Joe. I don’t need it today, all right?” We went through this drama every couple of months, but he hadn’t kicked me out yet.
The door to the bar banged and I jerked my head to look but nobody came in. A shiver ran down my spine and I frowned, feeling the veil that separated the half world and the real ripple softly like a breeze through silk. My little trick with Mrs. Anderson had stirred up more than I anticipated. It made sense, I realized. Halloween, also known as All Hallows’ Eve—the one night when the veil was thinner than usual—was fast approaching, and I was a fucking idiot for poking the bear. I could feel the spirit I had called still lingering around me, but I ignored it. The best approach with spirits was to pretend like you couldn’t see them, and in return they mostly pretended they couldn’t see you.
Mostly being the operative word. There were some spirits, poltergeists for example, that loved to fuck with the living. Ghostly apparitions, screaming nightmares, and a nice fat check for me. Or at least, in theory. Cases had dried up lately, even the mundane ones. Apparently, everyone in Seattle had decided to try being nice to each other. Fuckers. I needed a new case, or else Joe’s thinly stretched patience with me would snap and I would be out on my ear.
Joe had never told me why he decided to open a magical bar deep in the magical district of Seattle when he himself didn’t have a lick of magic. Maybe he’d moved here, taken one look at the neighborhood, and decided that welcoming his locals was a sound business decision. Maybe he’d been here first and just rolled with it as the magical started turning up. Whatever it was, he had been here as long as I could remember and was enough of a fixture that nobody bothered to threaten him or make too much trouble. A good thing too. We all needed a neutral place to drink and to exchange photos of cheating husbands.
I slowly sipped my drink, time ticking away as the pyros on the end of the bar grew rowdier. I wanted to go up to my apartment but Michelle had said she would meet me here. It wasn’t like her to be late.
“You heard from Michelle?” I asked.
“She’s paid up for the month,” Joe said, “unlike you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, if you can get me an office job at Washington U then I’m sure I’d pay up too, but nobody wants ghosts hanging around the coffee room.” I had tried the whole mundane job, mundane life thing. It hadn’t worked out. “She called me, said she wanted to meet this afternoon, but…” I glanced up at the clock; it was getting on for eleven. The afternoon was well and truly over. “She’s not usually late,” I said.
Joe shrugged. “I ain’t her keeper.”
I finished my drink and asked for another. Time slipped by. I was feeling a pleasant buzz through my limbs. I’d forgotten to eat dinner again. Shit.
The pyros on the end of the bar suddenly let loose a tiny fireball that fizzed and spun before burning itself out against the ceiling. Joe’s expression darkened. “Hey,” he shouted. “None of that in here.” He pointed at the door. “Take it outside.”
I nursed my drink as Joe walked down to their side of the bar and got into a low rumbling argument punctuated by the occasional flicker of fire. I kept half an eye on the altercation in case I needed to intervene. Joe’s was my home. I had as much a stake in it as Joe and I didn’t want it to burn down.
Joe came up to my end again, the pyros looking slightly subdued. “I got another of those calls for you,” Joe said as I signaled for a top-up.
“Calls?”
“Yeah, from the vamp—�
�
“Nope, don’t even tell me,” I cut him off, raising a hand. “I don’t wanna know.”
“You should get your own phone.”
“I have my own phone,” I said, pulling it free from my pocket, my fingers feeling a little thick. The whiskey was starting to make itself known. I dropped my phone onto the bar. Luckily, the screen was already cracked. “I already blocked him. Them,” I corrected, quickly.
“I don’t want vamps coming around here,” Joe said.
“Neither do I,” I said flatly.
Joe eyed my phone. “They’re persistent,” he said. “I’ll give them that.”
“I don’t gotta give them anything,” I growled under my breath. I felt Joe’s eyes on me but I didn’t look up from my drink. I had never told him exactly what had gone down between me and the vampires of Seattle, but none of it was exactly top secret, and there had been enough splashed across the news headlines five years ago that he could probably put together a fairly accurate picture.
The voice of the newsreader crackled across the room as the pyros on the other side of the bar grappled over the remote, flicking channels from sports to adverts and back to a news station.
“—young man found murdered,” the voice was saying. A picture flashed up on the screen of a young man, fresh-faced and freckled. The kind of kid that wouldn’t know how to break a rule if it cracked right in front of him. “—body was found drained of blood—”
A chill ran down my spine. “Turn this shit off,” I snapped at the pyros. They were still messing around over the remote, not paying any attention to the newsreader. One of them, clearly the ringleader in the little troop, laughed at me. “Oh yeah? What you gonna do?” He clicked his fingers and flames appeared at his fingertips.
“I thought I told you to take that shit outside,” Joe growled threateningly.
The pyro glanced at him and I saw his eyes go hazy for a moment as he dipped into the half world long enough to see that Joe was a mundane. He smirked. “Chill out, grandpa, we’re just having some fun.” He turned to look at me, his eyes still half-lidded, and blanched, his face going pasty white and the flames at his fingers flaring suddenly in shock—dangerously close to the shots lined up in front of his friends.