Waking the Witch

by Kelley Armstrong

"What?" Kennedy said.

  "Your car. Is it fixed?"

  "No, but even if it doesn't get repaired, I can rent one, so if you're suggesting I'm lacking transportation--"

  "Let me take another shot at it. If I can't fix your car in one hour, I'll leave."

  He eyed me. He hated reducing this to a wager, but I hadn't made much headway the last time. Finally he tossed me the keys.

  "SHE NEEDS THE oil topped off," I said an hour later as the car purred beside me. "And the driver's side rear tire is a little low. Otherwise, you're good to go. And, apparently, I'm good to stay--on the case."

  "Hold on."

  He took the car for a spin around the lot. And I do mean a spin, driving like he was on a race circuit. I was impressed. I could say I was surprised, too, but I'd seen the modifications he'd had done. Michael Kennedy might act like a guy who'd never take a hairpin curve at sixty miles an hour, but his car said otherwise.

  He stopped beside me and rolled down the window. "Funny, seems you had a lot more trouble with it earlier."

  "Yes. I was faking you out. I'm psychic. I knew you were Claire's cop brother and I knew I'd need to make this bet to stay on the case. Impressing a hot guy is great, but keeping a case I really want is much better motivation."

  He opened his mouth, closed it, frowning, as he replayed what I just said. He busied himself adjusting the mirror, then cleared his throat.

  "I don't like this, Ms. Levine. Solving my sister's murder is not--"

  "--a game to you. I know. And it's not to me either. It's a job. Yes, I'm young. No, I don't have your experience. But solving this will go a long way toward cementing my reputation, so I'm not going to screw it up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have leads to pursue, as I'm sure you do. Let's just try not to trip over each other chasing them."

  I MADE IT to the sidewalk when my phone chirped, telling me I had a text.

  It was from Adam. He'd sent it while I'd been busy with Kennedy's car.

  No call. No txt. U alive?

  I sent a text. Sry. Working.

  The reply came back before I could even close my phone.

  Can I help? Rsrch? Bkgrd chk?

  I could use him for background checks on Bruyn, Kennedy, and Cody Radu, but I reminded myself that I had an official partner on this--Jesse. If I needed help, I should go to him. Better yet, I should do it myself when I got to the motel.

  So I sent another text. I'm good. Will call l8r.

  One word: ok. I closed the phone and headed back to the diner. I had no idea what kind of reception I'd get there. Probably be kicked out on my ass. But I needed information, and this was the best place to get it.

  Turned out Bruyn had already called Lorraine to spread the word that he'd appreciate any help folks could give me and Kennedy, citing my line about the girls deserving the best investigation possible.

  That was all the encouragement the diner patrons needed. This was the kind of town where detectives and private investigators are mythical beings found only on a TV screen. I haven't been cooler since my senior year, when I showed up at school on my motorcycle.

  I regaled my new friends with tales of the dangerous and adventurous life of a PI. Yep, I lied. I've learned that no one's particularly impressed with my stories of long, treacherous days spent navigating the deadly waters of the Internet, conducting background searches.

  Once I figured I'd done my duty, I demonstrated a real-life application of those cool PI skills by questioning the patrons about the murders. I asked about the victims, but their answers boiled down to this: They didn't know Claire, and the other two had been addicted to everything, good for nothing.

  "Now, just a second," Lorraine said after her customers had fallen silent. "Ginny could be decent enough if you got her alone. She was just weak, doing whatever Brandi wanted. It was like that from the time they were kids."

  "Maybe so," Jacob said. "But let's face it--those girls ended up right where everyone expected them to, as much as we might have wished otherwise. If Chief Bruyn wasn't exactly twisting himself in knots to solve the murders, that's why."

  "Oh, that's not why," Lorraine muttered.

  "Is it something to do with Paula Thompson?" I said. "I got the feeling there was bad blood between her and Bruyn."

  Lorraine shook her head, unwilling to answer. Jacob didn't share her qualms. "Paula worked for him," he said. "Until she got tired of running and quit."

  "Running?"

  "Around and around the desk. Chief Bruyn had a thing for her. But Paula? She runs fast."

  A chorus of laughter from everyone within hearing distance.

  "Paula's a smart cookie," Lorraine said. "After she had Ginny, she got a lot more careful about men."

  "Another lesson Ginny never learned," Jacob said.

  Lots of solemn nods on that one.

  "You mean Ginny's boyfriend, right?" I said. "A local guy?"

  "Cody Radu," Jacob said.

  Mutters circled the room. Even Lorraine didn't jump in to his defense.

  Jacob was the first to speak. "Cody's a rich brat who thinks he's a lot smarter, a lot better looking, and a lot richer than he is. Big fish, small pond. His daddy's a developer. Cody works for him. Not exactly the Vanderbilts, but around here, they're high society, which is why they stay."

  "So it was rumored Cody was seeing Ginny?"

  Lorraine snorted and muttered, "No rumor about it. He was and everyone knew it."

  "Did Ginny threaten to tell his wife?"

  Jacob shook his head. "Tiffany Radu knew all about Ginny. She married the local rich boy and isn't about to let him go, no matter what."

  Which sounded like a motive for murder, if that rich boy decided he wanted to permanently relocate to greener pastures.

  "Cody likes to wallow in the mud," Jacob said. "Tiffany's happy to let him, as long as he keeps the muck out of her pretty little life."

  Lorraine shushed him, but only halfheartedly.

  "Are we talking more muck than trashy girlfriends?" I asked.

  "Sure are," Jacob said. "Dope, parties, hookers. Hell, I've even heard he runs a white slavery ring out of Seattle."

  "Okay, that's enough," Lorraine said. She looked at me. "Folks around here don't have a lot of time for Cody Radu, but all that is just rumor."

  "Like hell," Jacob said. "Chief Bruyn's been investigating him for years. Everyone knows he's up to a shitload of crap, but the cop can't pin a thing on him. That's how he figures Ginny and Brandi got killed. Maybe even Claire Kennedy."

  "Blackmail or extortion," I said. "They threatened to give Bruyn the proof he needed."

  "You got it. The way those girls were killed? Wasn't about sex. Wasn't about rage. It was execution, pure and simple."

  eight

  Next stop: the commune.

  Before leaving the diner, I'd grilled Lorraine and her patrons on the local cult / commune. They were very reluctant to talk about it, wanting to leave the group in peace. Yeah, right. Show me a town where no one jumps at the chance to gossip about the local religious sect, and I'll show you a town full of deaf-mutes.

  The guy who ran the place was Alastair Koppel, a former Columbus resident who'd gone off to college and never came back. Or, at least, not until he wanted an isolated place to start a cult of nubile young women. According to the diner folk, he had at least a dozen of them living up there. Just him and the girls baking cookies.

  Yep, cookies. That's apparently how they made their living. Like a cross between Moonies and Girl Scouts, I imagined, hanging out at airports, giving away world peace with every box of thin mints purchased.

  The cult was on a farm. Otherwise, it wasn't what I had in mind at all. No guard dogs. No security cameras. No booby traps. Not even an eight-foot fence to hide the orgies. Very disappointing.

  As I was pulling off my helmet, an unearthly screech shattered the silence. The frantic clucking that followed didn't promise anything nearly as nefarious, but I was an optimist.

  I followed the sound to th
e first building past the gate: a chicken coop. Outside it, a blond ponytailed woman was hacking the head off a chicken, the last victim still twitching, headless, by her feet.

  I looked around for signs that I'd interrupted an animal sacrifice in progress. Unless cooking pots were the latest rage in occult rites, though, I was out of luck.

  I waited until she was done decapitating the chicken before saying, "Got tired of the early morning wake-up calls?"

  She turned. She was about my age, but with an air that said she hadn't acted my age in a long time. Tall, lanky, and beautiful in a way that could make her a model if she deigned to wear makeup, but with an expression that said "fat chance" to that. She wiped her bloodied hands on her apron and gave me the kind of assessment I haven't had since Paige brought me before the Coven. Considering how that turned out, this was not a good sign.

  "Savannah Levine," I said, extending a hand.

  She held her bloodied hands palms up. "You might not want to do that."

  "I'm washable," I said.

  She shook my hand.

  I pointed at the dead chicken. "Did he crow at dawn one too many times?"

  "No, she didn't crow at all. They're laying hens that reached the end of their laying days." The woman pointed at the pot. "Soup time."

  Nice retirement package. I looked down at the headless chicken, now lying motionless on its side.

  "Lorraine at the diner said to ask for Megan," I said. "I'm guessing that's you." If this wasn't the woman in charge, I'd hate to be the one who tried to order her around.

  "I am. You're here about the opening?"

  "No, I'm investigating Claire Kennedy's death."

  I braced myself for the stiffening back, the hardening face, but she actually seemed to relax.

  "Well, then, you've come to the right place," she said. "Claire died here. The victim of an unspeakable sex act gone horribly awry. Isn't that what you heard?"

  "Nope."

  "Then it must be the satanic ritual. We ran out of babies, so we used her. Now we're down to these ladies." She held up a chicken. "Sure you don't want to apply for that opening?"

  "The unspeakable sex acts might change my mind, but for now I'm happy with my current employment. The story I heard was that Claire wanted out, so Alastair killed her and dumped her body in town."

  "Boring."

  "I thought so, too."

  She laid the chickens on an old wooden table. "Really, we don't need to kill anyone who wants to leave. The brainwashing works just fine. If that fails, there are always drugs. And, of course, chaining the girls to their beds drastically cuts back on the runaway rate."

  She started plucking the first chicken. "Yes, Claire was one of ours. She joined two weeks before she was killed. We didn't know her well, but we'd like her killer caught, particularly since he seems to have a fondness for young women, and we don't like foxes in our hen house."

  "Understandable. Now, there were two other--"

  "Ginny and Brandi. I saw them in town a few times." She registered her opinion in a single lip curl. "I wouldn't let them stay here if they asked, and they didn't ask. This is a place for women who want to straighten out their lives, and those girls liked theirs just fine."

  "So they never had any contact with Alastair?"

  "Outside of participating in a few bouts of wild group sex?" Megan set down the chicken. "Let's get this out of the way now. Yes, we have one man and a houseful of young women, but it's not what everyone thinks."

  "No orgies? Damn. There goes my application."

  She smiled. "Sorry to disappoint, but Alastair has realized there's another advantage to having a house filled with young women. A far more profitable one."

  My brows shot up.

  She laughed. "You have a dirty mind, you know that? What we sell here, as you may have heard, is cookies."

  She motioned me away from the stink of the coop and I smelled something far sweeter wafting from an open side door up at the house.

  "Ever heard of Taste of Heaven cookies?" Megan asked.

  "Sorry. I bake my own." Close enough.

  "I guarantee they aren't as good as ours. We aren't talking Mr. Christie or even Mrs. Fields. These are top-end gourmet cookies, twelve dollars a dozen, made from farm fresh eggs and butter." She pointed to the chickens, then to a barn. "Fair-trade dark and milk chocolate. Microfarm macadamia nuts from Hawaii and pecans from Georgia. Organic, kosher, nut-free, you want it, we offer it. Even in today's economy, we can't keep up with the orders."

  "Comfort food is recession-proof."

  "So we're hoping." She walked back and picked the last few feathers from the chicken carcass. "If you're looking for lost and vulnerable souls brainwashed into slavery, you've come to the wrong place. Yes, we have a few recovering addicts and abuse victims. Alastair was a group home counselor, and he's a licensed therapist. What you'll mostly find here, though, is young women overdosed on dreams. Like me. Fast-tracked through an MBA from Columbia, got a Wall Street job, nearly killed myself with uppers so I could make money that I didn't have time to spend."

  "So you traded in your BlackBerry for ..." I waved at the dead chickens.

  "A life of eviscerating poultry?" A sardonic smile. "Not what you'd choose, I suspect. And not what any of the girls here would choose, which is why you don't see them helping me. I spent summers on my grandparents' farm. Mucking out cow barns might not be every MBA's dream job, but after a year on Wall Street, it started looking damned attractive."

  "The simpler life," I said, trying to sound as if I understood the appeal. "Between the MBA and the farm experience, you must be a valuable part of the, uh, group here."

  "I am. And I'm well compensated for it, too." She started plucking the other chicken. "But if I wanted to leave tomorrow, I could. No one would stop me. No one would stop any of the girls. Unhappy workers aren't productive, and we always have an applicant pool lined up to get in. Even if you wanted to join, you'd only get on the waiting list. We've filled Claire's spot already. Alastair is in a therapy session with the new girl right now."

  "Can I speak to him when he's done?"

  "Sorry. He's tied up until dinner."

  Convenient. "Can I make an appointment?"

  "You can try, but he's very busy."

  "And the girls? Can I speak to any of them?"

  "If you come back after dinner. We're running a business here."

  I didn't push; didn't say I'd be back later either. As reassuring as her earlier spiel had been, it sounded like just that--public relations lines. By dinner, she'd have had time to tell the girls exactly what to say. That wouldn't do.

  nine

  Megan watched until I walked out the gate. Then I rolled my bike behind some trees, cast a blur spell, and slipped around the side of the house, following my nose to an open door around the rear. As I approached, I rubbed the back of my neck. A headache was settling in. I don't get them often, but my motorcycle helmet was new and sat different from my last one.

  Once out of sight of the chicken coop, I ended the spell, walked to the screen door, and rapped. A dark-haired girl, no more than eighteen, glanced up, startled. I waved my PI license. She opened the door.

  I introduced myself and added that Megan said I could speak to the girls, which was technically true. That put her at ease. She gave me her name--Deirdre--and a cookie-chocolate-chunk, still warm from the oven. After one bite I declared it delicious and offered to buy a box. She got one off a shelf and set it on the counter.

  As the cookies cooled, we stepped outside and chatted, long enough for me to realize this was the girl I wanted to talk to, someone who liked a bit of gossip and wasn't quite smart enough to know when to keep her mouth shut.

  "I was hoping to talk to Alastair," I said. "But Megan says he's in a session. She really didn't seem to want me talking to him." I nibbled the cookie. "Seems suspicious ..."

  Deirdre laughed. "No. She just doesn't want you talking to Alastair."

  "So Megan and Alastair a
re ... a couple."

  "Sometimes. When there's not a new girl sharing his bed."

  "Is that a requirement? For new girls?"

  "Oh, no. Some girls do, some don't. It's up to them. He's a nice guy. Not bad looking ... for his age."

  "And there aren't many guys up here to choose from."

  She grinned. "Exactly."

  Compulsory orgies are all well and fine, but it'd be a lot easier to sleep at night if you told yourself the girls were coming to you of their own free will. Easier on the ego, too.

  "And Megan fills the void between girls," I said. "So how did she feel about Claire coming along, shoving her aside?"

  "I can't say for sure that Claire was sleeping with him, but Megan figured it was only a matter of time." She leaned over. "Let's just say we're all really happy that the new girl isn't exactly gorgeous. When Megan's not getting any, we all pay the price."

  "And Claire was one of those times."

  "Oh, yeah. Alastair liked Claire. She wasn't as pretty as Megan, but she was just as smart, without the bitch-itude. Claire and Alastair had private sessions all the time. It was supposedly therapy but ..." She waggled her brows. "It was a lot of sessions and--"

  "Deirdre?" Megan called from the kitchen. "Where are you? These cookies are still baking on this hot sheet. I've told you to take them off--"

  I backed up, but not fast enough to get around the corner. Megan glared at me as Deirdre slipped inside. I caught the screen door and followed her in.

  "Sorry," I said, lifting my half-eaten cookie. "I smelled them and couldn't resist. I was just buying a box." I waved at the one on the counter.

  Megan handed me the box and pointed at the door. I pulled a twenty from my pocket. She shook her head and kept pointing.

  "Now, let's grab a couple of cookies while they're warm ..." a man's voice said.

  Megan moved in for the block, swinging the kitchen door partially closed. I caught only a glimpse of a man with silvery hair and an angular, patrician face. I got a better look at the girl walking beside him. She was, as Deirdre put it, not gorgeous. Her broad face and pug nose would have been framed better by a short, bouncy haircut. Long, straight dirty-blond hair didn't help. Neither did her frown as she looked at me, squinting slightly, like she'd left her glasses at home.

  "I'm--" I began.

  "We'll bring cookies for you and Amy into the dining room, Alastair," Megan said. "Deirdre has spilled some sugar and I don't want it tracked all over the house."