by Amir Lane
Bad Omen
Morrighan House Witches Book Two
Amir Lane
Bad Omen
Copyright © 2017 by Amir Lane
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events, places, or characters is completely coincidental.
Cover by Natasha Snow
www.natashasnow.com
Lindy Lindemann always thought she would like to work in a library. Instead, she’s a police dispatcher using her abilities as a precognizant to help the people who call her and feed information to the police when she can. One by one, the high-ranking witches in the city start being picked off, and after every murder, a man identifying himself only as A calls to let her know it’s him.
With the police quickly running out of leads, Lindy is brought in to work with the lead detective, Dick Hobard. Lindy discovers that these killings are connected to the murder of a family that happened over ten years ago. The only problem? The person that Lindy suspects is Staff Sergeant Siobhan Cockburn, the one who brought her into this in the first place.
Now, Lindy not only has to stop A from killing anyone else, but also prove that Cockburn isn’t what she appears before A adds them both to his list.
This book can be read alone but is recommended to be read after Shadow Maker.
62,000 words
Created with Vellum
Contents
Also by Amir Lane
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
Epilogue
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Also by Amir Lane
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Also by Amir Lane
Morrighan House Witches
Rise (Coming Soon)
Shadow Maker
Bad Omen
Panthera Onca (Coming Soon)
Short Stories
Cold
Scrap Metal and Circuitry
The Violinist
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To my favourite English teachers,
Dan Cockburn and Siobhan Mulroy.
I promise, this isn’t what it looks like.
1
Dietelinde Lindemann always thought she would like to work in a library. It would be quiet, probably slow enough that she could read sometimes, and she would have access to all the books she wanted. It was the perfect job for her.
Dietlinde Lindemann did not work in a library.
“Nine-one-one, what’s the location of your emergency?”
“My name is Annalise,” a woman whispered. “I think someone is in my house.”
Lindy nodded, even though Annalise couldn’t see her. People always answered the question they expected instead of the one she actually asked.
“Where are you?”
Her fingers drummed against the keyboard.
“I’m in my house.”
Oh, for the love of—!
“What’s your address?”
Annalise rattled off her address, postal code included. Lindy typed each letter as it was spoken into the text box. The dedicated dispatcher would put the word out to the emergency services so that as soon as they knew which one was needed, they could get moving. A message flashed up: police were on their way, paramedics were on standby.
“Is it safe for you to talk?”
Even as Lindy said the words, calm and even, she got a flash of information that made her question moot.
“I think so. I’m upstairs.”
“I’m sending some officers to your house. I’ll stay on the line until they arrive. Is there anyone else with you?” Lindy asked.
“No.”
“Good. Just stay calm. Someone will be there soon.”
But she knew they wouldn’t arrive on time. She could never say how she knew these things, but she knew. Calling it a gift felt too cheesy. It was more like insight on crack. The intruder was going to go upstairs, and the cops would be too late.
“Is there a closet or something you can hide in? One that doesn’t lock from the outside?”
“A clos– oh, yes. Should I–? Hide?”
“Yes. And please, don’t make any noise if you can help it.”
Lindy could hear Annalise complying. Through the phone, her breaths became short and anxious as heavy footsteps got closer. Lindy’s hand moved without her conscious knowledge, a black pen scribbling on a legal pad while the other stayed on the keyboard.
“Hang tight, help is on the way.”
She looked over her computer, the transcript of the conversation appearing at the bottom of the screen. The officers were a good ten minutes away from the house, courtesy of a head-on collision that left the direct route blocked, and the intruder was in the room. Lindy could hear them throwing drawers open and swearing. She could only hope they found what they were looking for and left.
Annalise let out a muffled whimper.
The next few minutes took an hour to happen. Lindy waited for screaming to start. There was nothing besides something invisible dragging her hand across the paper. One, two, five minutes went by. A door slammed shut, and Annalise choked on a sob.
“He’s gone. Tha-ank God, he’s gone.”
“Please stay inside until the police arrive.”
There was still something… wrong about this whole situation. It was right there, just at the edge of Lindy’s mind, but every time she tried to focus on it, it disappeared. There was a heavy weight in the pit of Lindy’s stomach, she just couldn’t figure out why. Annalise was safe. The intruder had left. The danger was gone. There was nothing left to worry about.
“W-Will you still stay on?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
As they waited, Annalise’s breathing evened out. She was even able to give a description of the intruder. It was vague, mostly just height, but it was a start. Truth be told, the guy was probably never going to be caught. If nobody was hurt, it would get pushed lower on the Lorelle Police Department’s priority list. She’d seen it happen before. Hopefully, it was a one-off thing, and this guy wouldn’t try another house where someone would get hurt.
The doorbell rang once, then twice. Annalise sighed in relief, but the weight shifted in Lindy’s stomach. The doorbell rang again, followed by a muffled shout Lindy couldn’t make out. Footsteps echoed through the phone and the lock on the door was opened.
Something was wrong.
On the screen, the squad car was still at least two minutes away.
Something was wrong.
“No, wait–!”
The warning came too late. Lindy heard a shrill scream, a gunshot, and the line going fuzzy.
Lindy swallowed back bile. She hung her headset around her neck with shaky hands. After a moment, Call Disc
onnected flashed across the screen in red. Her entire body felt hot, her skin too tight around her muscles. She wanted to scream or vomit or both. She did neither. Instead, she stared vacantly at the screen.
“You okay?” Crystal asked from the half-cubicle beside her.
Lindy shook her head. A hand settled on her shoulder with a gentle squeeze.
“You did everything you could.” A pause, and then, “What’s that?”
Crystal nodded towards the pen sketch.
People saw her sketches with photographic detail like this, and they stopped believing Lindy when she said that she couldn’t draw. They especially didn’t believe that even though her hand had made the lines, it wasn’t actually her drawing. Or maybe they just didn’t understand. Divination wasn’t as straightforward as people liked to think. Even she had a hard time wrapping her head around it sometimes.
Lindy looked the sketch over. It was a police badge with a series of small crosses where the numbers should have been.
She flipped to a clean page without answering, and Crystal didn’t press. She didn’t want anyone else seeing it. Not until she knew what the fuck it meant.
Lindy’s phone flashed, and she put the headset back on. It never felt right, having to move on so quickly, but that was the job. There was no time to dwell.
“Nine-one-one, what’s the location of your emergency?”
“I knew I would get you.”
Lindy paused, reading the words on-screen to make sure she hadn’t misheard. The voice was deep, unaccented, and entirely unfamiliar.
“I’m sorry?”
“Did you know I would call?”
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
If this was a prank…
“You don’t know me, Dietlinde Lindemann. But you will.”
Lindy nudged Crystal’s arm, frowning, and motioned for her to read the transcript.
“What the fuck?” Crystal mouthed.
“If you don’t have an emergency—”
“Let me ask you something, Dietelinde. Does it ever get to you, listening to people dying every day? Is that why you’re on all those pills? I guess it’s easier to drug yourself than to talk about it.”
The mention of her prescriptions had her eyes widening in alarm. It wasn’t a total secret, but it wasn’t exactly common knowledge, either. Crystal was already on her way toward their supervisor’s office. It was good to know it wasn’t just setting red flags off for Lindy.
“How do you know about that?” she asked, trying to keep the tone conversational.
There was nothing in her training on this. Her chest was so tight, it might have actually been pushing her heart up into her throat. She texted her twin brother, Dieter with one hand, tapping her pen against the notepad with the other.
She wondered how much trouble she would be in if she just ran out of here. It took everything she had not to. If this asshole had been in front of her, she would have just punched him and been done with it. Not being able to do anything was the worst part.
Crystal returned with Kevin, their supervisor. Lindy let him scroll through the conversation. His expression was hard.
“Goodbye, Dietlinde. We’ll talk again soon.”
The line went dead. If Lindy’s hands had been shaking before, they were trembling now. Was she seriously sweating?
“Did you put a trace on this?” Kevin asked.
“No. It was a payphone number.”
Could this have anything to do with the murder she’d just heard? That was too much of a coincidence, right?
“Go take a break,” Kevin said. “Call your brother or something.”
Lindy nodded and all but bolted out of her chair and down the hall. The phone was already dialling.
“Hey,” Dieter said after the second ring.
“I need a favour.”
There was a moment of hesitation before Dieter spoke again. When did Lindy ever ask for favours?
“What do you need?”
“I need you to check the call centre, see if there’s anyone being sketchy.”
Lindy hated the Shadows, the stupid spirits that basically haunted him, more than anything else in the world but… they had their uses. Scoping the landscape was one of them. In the year or so since he’d unintentionally become a fucking Necromancer, he’d gotten pretty good at making them work for him.
“Lindy, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just— Paranoid, that’s all. Humour me, would you?”
“Okay, they’re looking. If they see anything, I’ll let you know,” Dieter said. “Maybe you should go home.”
Lindy sighed and rubbed her eyes.
“I’ll be fine. Look, I need to get back. I’ll call you when I get off.”
They said their goodbyes, and Dieter hung up. Lindy didn’t go back to work right away. She was still reeling from the conversation with the nameless man. Why hadn’t she seen anything about him? Her Second Sight wasn’t perfect, but she should have been able to see this. The only people she couldn’t see were Sensitives and Necromancers — the people who saw spirits and the people who controlled them — but they were far from common. It was possible, but too much of a coincidence.
When Lindy settled back at her desk, Crystal was on a call. They were kept busy until their shifts ended. It was one of those days. Kevin called her to his office, looking more grave than usual.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m fine. I just needed some air.”
Kevin nodded.
“Good. Anything else?”
While she’d never mentioned any precognitive abilities she may or may not have had to Kevin, he’d picked up on her stellar instinct. She suspected he knew exactly what it was, but neither of them brought it up.
She handed him her legal pad, each page labelled with the call number. Any official notes were in the system, but the less concrete things were in here. Hunches, she called them. The page with the badge was tucked into the bottom of her purse.
“Good, good. Let me know if you hear from this caller again.”
Lindy promised she would and left. She couldn’t reach her car fast enough. Right now, this was the last place she wanted to be.
2
Lindy sat in the driveway when she got home, listening to the radio. She didn’t usually drive these days, only taking her car when she was working a shorter shift or running errands. With the killer headache she had, she probably shouldn’t have been driving today. But the noise that would come from crowded buses wouldn’t help, so she took the car. The tank needed filling anyway. She’d swapped her contacts for glasses to at least keep her eyes from drying out as much, but the dull ache behind them persisted.
The song ended, and Lindy turned the car off. She still wasn’t ready to go inside the house yet. As much as she enjoyed her work, as good as she was at it, it drained the hell out of her. Human beings weren’t meant to work the long and erratic hours that she did, or listen to people get fucking shot. That was part of the job, though, so she lived with it. She gave herself another minute to compose herself before she undid her seatbelt and slid out of the blue smart car.
Lindy’s boots echoed across the pavement as she made her way up the driveway, her keys jingling in her hands. From the corner of her eyes, she could see that the Morrighan House sign had been knocked over, but she really could not bring herself to care right now. Somebody else could straighten it up. The black BMW parked on the street alerted her to the company inside, and a quick glance at her phone told her it was approaching 7 AM. It made her want to cry a little bit. She let herself into the house as quietly as physically possible.
The first time Lindy had walked into the living room to find Selima Hammoudi and Yasir Alzubaidi praying had been somewhat jarring, mostly because she wasn’t used to them being here. While she was used to working with the lawyers when she had to testify and seeing them in witch circles, them dating her brother and hanging out here had taken some getting used to. In hindsight,
the praying shouldn’t have surprised her; Muslim Awliya were still Muslim. There wasn’t a deity out there that could get her out of bed at seven in the frigging morning to pray but if they were up for it, more power to them. Lindy wrestled her boots off while she waited for them to finish. Her socks slipped off and stuck inside them. There were pink spots on her ankles where her skin was starting to blister.
Lindy leaned back against the wall and let her eyelids drop. There was no way she could get up the stairs without disrupting them. She didn’t know what the policy was on getting distracted during a prayer, but she wasn’t going to make it harder than it had to be for them. As her mind settled, her breathing evened out, and she couldn’t help but wonder if Muslims ever fell asleep while praying. Was that an awful thing to wonder? God knew she’d fallen asleep during that part of church enough times, on the few occasions that their one Catholic nanny had bothered to take them. She hadn’t gone in years. She was a Hellenic Polytheist, which was a fancy way of saying she took The Illiad way too seriously. It had a built-in explanation for her visions, and monotheisms had never made any sense to her. How did it make any sense that one thing was responsible for everything? It didn’t, that was how. Not that she was going to tell the Muslim witches that. To each their own.
“Lindy? Lindy, are you awake?”
Yasir’s soft voice lilted with an Arabic accent pulled her from the brink of sleep. The last thing she needed to do was fall asleep on her feet again. Last time, she’d fallen over and broken a lamp. Not an expensive one, but still.