“You’ve meditated enough under the banyan tree. The Brotherhood thinks you’re dead, you’re off Mr. Gabriel’s radar… Time to put the books away.”
“But—”
“You don’t need to have a big wizard’s duel and attract attention. Steal some county records to match fingerprints, then come back. Wash your hands along the way. I know you’ve been disappointed before, but it’ll be an answer at least. What are you really afraid of?”
“I’ve done this runaround so many times,” she confessed. Seeing Emma’s grave had seemed like the answer, but everything she had learned since made her wonder if this was going to be a taunt like her inheritance. She hadn’t even found documentation of family. How many times could she keep putting her heart on the line? She had felt close before only to be crushed.
Vic reached into his denim jacket pocket and fished out his keys. “Take the Millennium Falcon. I’d go with you if it weren’t for my little bro. You’ll have everything you need to kick supernatural butt in there. I can use Lashawn’s Prius.” He said the brand name like it hurt.
Red blinked at the keys. “The Falcon is your baby.”
“Fix whatever you break,” he said gruffly. “Take the keys before I start missing my gun collection.”
Lips curving into a grateful smile, Red accepted the offering. The dingy green alien on the keychain stared up at her. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t. Pack now and we’ll do breakfast tomorrow. Waffles. Bring Ziploc bags for the buffet, and we can swipe you lunch for the road.”
She hugged him, squeezing her eyes shut on the tears. Hope fluttered in her heart. “Thanks.”
“I’ve trained you to be better than good, and you know it. You’re a damn fine hunter.” Vic patted her shoulder. “You’ve faced Michel de Grammont, angry pixies, and a ghost warlock—all alone in the end. You got this. Promise me you won’t chicken out.”
“I won’t.” Red was less certain than she sounded, but the road was always going to lead back to Oregon. Maybe this time it would lead home.
2
Over thirty hours later, the Millennium Falcon idled on the shoulder of the two-lane road into the small seaside town of Charm.
Red sighed, tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the radio, nerves making her fall out of rhythm. The headlamps illuminated the shifting contours of the dense nighttime fog. Beyond the haze were all the answers she had been seeking for years.
She adjusted her messy bun again, still not used to her natural red tresses disguised with a magical black dye. The potion had tasted funny, but it would last for a few days. She wasn’t sure if Mr. Gabriel or the cops were on the lookout for a mysterious ginger in Charm.
The trip without Vic in the Millennium Falcon was odd. She didn’t begrudge him staying behind since it was for family. It might have been the jitters from the last cup of coffee or the loneliness of the long drive, but she could almost hear what the Constantine brothers would say if they were there.
“Relax your jaw, maybe.” Lashawn would suggest tentatively from the back seat. “You’re going home. That’s a good thing, right?”
Vic would pause his air guitaring to turn down the classic rock on the radio. “Yeah, I’ve never seen anyone look so tense listening to ‘The Boys Are Back in Town.’”
“We can get there before Lili’s Diner closes. I already checked the website.”
Red would then play it off, saying it was late and they could go in the morning. She had been on the road for nine hours after a stopover on the northern Nevada border. It would be logical to sleep off the drive, then hit the breakfast rush. Vic would have seen though her if he were there, knowing how much this meant. He’d let her borrow the van after all.
Ever since she first left Charm, she’d pieced together a strange picture of the small town where she had found the empty grave of Emma Peters. Even after thinking the name for months, it was hard to think of it as possibly being hers. She realized she was grinding her teeth and tried to relax her jaw. It was a suggestion from a fake conversation in her head, but it was excellent advice.
Once the fog thinned, exposing the darkened road, Red started the engine again, forcing herself to obey the speed limit. Time dragged as she ambled down the sleepy country road. Sea salt scented the air as the clouds cleared to reveal a thin moon in a black sky. It wasn’t as peaceful as it seemed. Magic was in the air.
Third eye open, she hunched over the wheel. Her supernatural talent might be weak, but her ability to see mystical energy was stronger than most. She studied the old growth forest. It stretched around the village to the sea, according to the map. An ethereal shimmer wove between the trunks. The very landscape seemed to have a power of its own. Each slow mile brought her closer to the place that might be home. Reaching between the front seats for her purse resting on a closed case, she wasn’t certain if she wanted to call Vic or Basil. Either would have given her perspective.
Police sirens erupted behind the van.
Her blood ran cold as she cursed and parked off the road again. Retrieving her license, registration, and the insurance document that listed her as a secondary driver, she could almost hear the Constantine brothers again.
“Were you speeding? My psycho brother keeps an arsenal in this van!” Lashawn would sputter. “You have two people of color in here, and only one of them is a model minority.”
“Hey, I defy stereotypes.” Vic would retort.
“Let’s hope the cop doesn’t realize that.”
Flipping off the radio, Red shifted out of her imagination and into the mindset to deal with human authorities. Fake Lashawn was right. The utility boxes stacked behind her seat filled with supernatural stuff like alchemist-grade ghostflower oil to kill ghouls wouldn’t attract more than confusion, but the guns and blades mixed in... Rolling down the window, she was ready with the identification and a fake smile. She hoped it looked law abiding.
“Good evening.” She did a double take at the approaching Black officer, wondering if she was still imagining old friends for a second. “Aisha? Detective Callaway?”
“It’s Sheriff now.” Callaway leaned against the door, smiling. Still uniformed, she had switched her hairdo from relaxed waves to natural short twists. That wasn’t the only change. A different ease lay on her shoulders. Life outside Los Angeles seemed to have been treating her well. “Why am I not surprised to see you?”
Red grinned. Some of that Vegas luck must have followed her. A friend on the force would make it easier to get into the records room. Aisha had helped her out of tough spots before, once arriving in a helicopter at the right time. “I heard this town needed a new sheriff, never thought it would be you. You have to know this place’s reputation. I thought you were looking for a quiet spot in the country.”
The cop shrugged with enigmatic smile. “Charm is in the country.”
“Is it quiet, though?”
“Not yet.” She retrieved a small notepad from her breast pocket to jot an address. “You got a taillight out. It’s why I stopped you. Go see Dale, and he’ll sort you out as a favor to me.”
“Thanks.” Red put the paper in her pocket even though Vic had shown her how to make small repairs herself back when they couldn’t afford mechanics. It was still weird reminding herself that she had money now.
The sheriff lifted her eyebrows at the windshield. “That’s an illegally dark tint job.”
Red held her breath. It was a gift from Kristoff Novak after a werewolf shot out the last. Was the feature that distinctive? It could have been in the typically overcast region. Had the van been reported as fleeing from the cemetery and the fresh corpses within?
“Must have made it easier to drive around with Quinn. Now that was an end of an era.” Callaway sighed about the private eye who had been an ally to any that fought the darkness. She’d teamed up with them more than once to take down a baddie.
“Yeah, it was.” In more ways than one, Red stopped herself from adding. He had b
een the lynchpin keeping their crew together in Los Angeles. She’d never realized until he was gone. His trail of good deeds had even stretched here to fight against the Alaric Order.
“It’s nice to see you managed to get out from under Cora Moon’s thumb too. That was a quagmire, even if I was able to spend a few weeks in Key West on my severance check.”
“Considering the rumors about this town, you’ll need another vacation soon.”
“I’m just getting off duty. Tell me what you’re hunting over coffee. We can go to Lili’s Diner. It’s up the road at the crossroads.” Callaway patted the door, turning away. “I’ll lead the way."
“Sure,” Red said, swallowing the apprehension tightening her throat. She wanted to enter the diner alone, but what if she chickened out like Vic told her not too? Meeting Aisha was accountability.
How would she react when she walked into Lili’s Diner? Would it jog long-buried memories or feel like a letdown? Don’t build this up. The evidence was inconclusive on if Charm was her real hometown at all. Waiting for the police car to move ahead of her on the small two-lane road, she followed the headlights.
Strange energy tickled her awareness like a feather on her earlobe. Slowing her speed, she scanned the forested highway with her third eye wide open. A spectral glow filtered from the trees, oak branches obscuring the source from non-magical eyes. It wasn’t an aura but residue left from a spell. It must have been major magic to leave a trace as bright as a lit-up billboard. She rolled down the windows, breathing in a whiff of decay. Long experience told her that the nauseating funk wasn’t a skunk.
Turning on the hazard lights to alert Callaway, she parked the van on the shoulder and moved her purse to open the wooden case, hand carved by Vic’s adopted father. She grabbed her small hunter’s kit from inside and belted the pouches around her waist, then tugged on her leather jacket over her black shirt. The normal part of her road trip was officially over.
Psychically touching the well of magic within her, she tapped into a stream leading to bigger waters—a connection to the universe. Even with her potential partially missing, academy training had increased her control over her power. She refined her witch-o-vision to detect any hint of an aura. Most living sentient creatures had one. Even some of the dead ones, like vampires, did too. It would stand out from the dark of the forest. Nothing hid in the oaks and firs. The sleepy night calls of owls and crickets assured her of the relative peace.
Animals were smarter than humans when it came to the supernatural—they ran.
Red got out of the Millennium Falcon, pocketing the keys before pulling out her snub-nosed revolver from the larger back pocket of her hunter’s kit. It was loaded with silver bullets. Left over from her fight against the Lopes wolf pack, the silver would still give most supernaturals a bad day. She passed between two Douglas firs up an embankment to a break in an old barbwire fence.
The energy felt darker, more unsettling, as she approached the dimming glow. It rubbed against her aura, an unpleasant tactile experience like running nails over a chalkboard. The terrible smell intensified. She covered her nose with a sleeve, stopping at the edge of a small clearing. Unnatural green mist, lazily spiraling like dusty motes in a sunbeam, hovered over ordinary unmarked stones arranged in a ring. The mist waned. If she had shot the shit longer with Callaway, it would have disappeared before she drove by.
The rotten smell was heavier here, but where was the body?
Red tried not to get too close, and not just because of the dark magic pollution. Usually, she and Vic found a monster’s rampage after crime techs scoured the scene. She knew enough from Vic’s tutelage and reruns of the Forensic Files on how to cover her own tracks when they came upon a murder, not do the CSI work herself. She didn’t need to trample the evidence. The murderer could very well be a mortal mage with fingerprints and physical evidence that could be tracked and brought to justice by the human authorities.
She took pictures with her phone, blinking against the bright flash. Flipping through the pictures, she cursed. Moonlight washed out the stones and fallen leaves in the center to a gray monotone to her eye, but the camera picked up rusty blood like a crimson flag. She looked up. The fog was thicker in the canopy. It took a beat for her to see through the mist. Then she wanted to heave.
Strung up between two trees, the bloated nude body had once been a Caucasian male but now the skin was mottled purple. Dried blood streaked from the torn throat. Strange symbols, runes perhaps, were carved deep into the torso, already swelling from decomposition. Mystical energy outlined the dead man, fading as she watched it.
A bright flashlight beamed on the corpse.
Callaway stepped besides her, nose wrinkling. “Lord in Heaven.”
Red holstered the gun in her hunter’s kit. “I don’t think he had anything to do with this.”
“I’ll need a raincheck on that coffee.”
“Looks like the victim has been hanging for a while.” Red regarded the small area under the oaks. If it weren’t for the dead man, it would be serene in the moonlight. The highway could barely be seen below. Private yet a quick getaway back to a vehicle. Was this done by a non-local seeking a spot to do a dark ritual boosted by the mystical energy of the town? “Is this the first?”
“No. We had one in a nearby canyon a few days ago. Not exactly like this, but the symbols…” Callaway holstered her gun. “You’re the supernatural investigator. What do you think?”
Frowning, Red bit her tongue on her defensive knee-jerk clarification. She wasn’t a real investigator. The Brotherhood might have taken back Vic, but they had left her out in the cold even before they thought she died. She hadn’t earned bounties for solving crimes, anyway. Trudy had thrown that blunt fact in Red’s face when she had crossed the line between hunter and assassin and showed how small the step could be. It wasn’t Callaway’s fault for the triggered memory landmine. Dark thoughts of mortality and legacy were easy around the grisly dead, old insecurities and fears closer to the surface.
She deflected. “I probably never finished high school. You’re the one with a criminal science degree. I’m curious to know what you think.”
Callaway’s lips thinned as she examined the victim. “I appreciate your value in my opinion, but we didn’t cover magic at the police academy.”
Red conceded the point and focused on her spirit gaze, stalling to find a shifter paw print or monster claw to pinpoint something other than human. They had both dealt with the aftermath of Nevaeh Morgan—Golden Globe winner and homicidal witch. The simple ritual lacked the earmarks of voodoo, alchemy, and half a dozen other common ceremonial mage traditions. While she wasn’t an expert, she doubted it was Wiccans gone wild either. There was something primal about the ritual, from a time before crystal grids and curse jars.
Fading energy concentrated around the sacrifice. Only a sparkle, like dying embers, showed in the stone circle. It gave her the full-body creeps. She might have been a witch novice, but she was experienced enough as a hunter to know you didn’t poke at strange magics until you neutralized them. “It was a ritual sacrifice. An offering.”
“What did the killer want—the Buffalo Bills to win the Super Bowl?”
Red snorted, having forgotten that Callaway was a football nut. “Plenty of gods will accept death as currency, but they all offer different things—Demeter gives a good harvest, Jizo protects children—there’s a god for everything if you hop through the pantheons. The runes are unfamiliar. They don’t look Norse or Druidic. Whatever the killer wanted, I need a translation.”
“Is the magic active?”
“No, but it’s left a stain. Cold iron will cleanse the area of the bad juju, but the crime scene techs will find the particles.”
“When I bring whoever did this to court, I won’t let the DA make the particles the center of the prosecution’s case. If it’s a whatever, then it doesn’t matter.”
“You’re the sheriff.” Scanning the ground for other footprints, Red st
opped at the north side of the circle. She tugged out a small jar of dark powder from a pouch on her hunter’s kit, then poured it on her palm to blow over the circle.
The dark magic stain oozed toward her.
She stepped back, heart picking up. Visualizing a bright white light inside her, she kicked back against the corruption. She spread the last of the cold iron around the stones, keeping her psychic barriers up until the miasma disappeared. Retreating to the cop, she brushed her leather sleeves, willing away lingering traces of the dark energy. “It’s just a bunch of stones now.”
“I can take over from here.” Callaway didn’t sound put out. Had country life been boring after a career in the urban jungle? She called in the murder, turning away to talk to the police dispatcher.
Shivering in the hanging corpse’s shadow, Red walked along the broken wire fence on the edge of the clearing, failing to find footprints even as she was mindful of her own. Old leaves flattened under her boots, reasonably dry on the top layer even if the mulch was damp below. They were lucky to have found the blood in the circle before the next rain shower washed it away. Red had checked the weather report before she set off from Vegas—all sunny skies for the last four days. Whatever had strung up the poor man, it must have done so during that time.
Undisturbed cobwebs laced a bent fence pole. The old damage wasn’t due to a recent struggling victim to the stone circle from the road. It was a clean scene. Almost tidy. Most dark beings wouldn’t leave a body uncovered yet still hide their tracks. All monsters shared at least one rule—secrecy from humanity. She hoped it was something demonic, harder to defeat but easier to sleep afterward. More likely, the jaded part of her thought, the killer had been a human making a sacrifice to a demon or dark god. Hopefully, the conjuring failed. Demon summoning rarely ended at the water park with fun had by all.
Small Town Witch: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 5) Page 2