by Amir Lane
“So which one are you?” Dick asked, clearly trying to keep down a laugh.
“I'm mostly a diviner. Most people fall into two categories, but we try to keep it simple. Then you have your psychics, which are your Normals who pretend to be Seers. Some of them are good enough to fool other Normals, but witches can usually spot other witches. Magic has—”
“How can you tell?”
“I was literally just getting to that. Magic has a sort of… thing to it that you can pick up on if you know what you’re looking for. It feels like a sort of static, I guess.”
“So if our killer or our victims are witches, you’ll be able to tell.”
Lindy nodded. She paused, letting the waitress take their menus and orders.
“I should be able to. With the vics, it might be hard. I’ll basically be looking for residual shit.”
It was all basic information, things that even a Normal with the most rudimentary knowledge of witchcraft would be aware of. She was hardly giving away any family secrets.
Dick mulled her words over, looking down at the open file in his hands. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. She took the opportunity to give her shoulders a slow roll, listening in satisfaction to the joints clicking.
“I think I can figure out what those other two are, but what the hell is an animal witch?”
“That one’s a bit complicated,” she admitted. “Some animals have magic of their own.”
“So the animals are witches.”
“Well… Technically, yeah. But most animals can’t actually do any magic on their own.”
“Why not?”
Lindy decided that if he interrupted her one more time, she was going to kick him. This was getting ridiculous.
“I don’t know, no opposable thumbs? Anyway, so the animal will attach to a human.”
“Who is also a witch.”
Okay, next time, she was going to kick him for sure.
“Not always. Animal witches aren’t super common around here, but they’re everywhere in some places.”
Dick flipped through his phone.
“I think one of the victims had a parrot. Could that be one of those witch animal… things?”
“A Familiar. It could be. It could just be a pet parrot. I’d need to–”
“See it. Yeah. I’m starting to get the idea,” he said dryly. She was going to say ask around, but whatever. He sighed and rubbed his face before looking down at his watch. “I’m going to make those calls about getting to the crime scenes. The first one’s been cleared, so we’ll have to go through the owner for that.”
Lindy rolled her shoulders again and rubbed the back of her neck. The stiffness was starting to become painful from so many hours hunched over the desk.
“Hopefully, your friend holds off on any more murders until we can get to them. If we’re lucky, you’re right, and he won’t kill until he can call you at work.”
She looked down at her cell phone, silent and unmoving on the table, and held back a grimace. She got the feeling that they weren’t going to be that lucky.
8
They were not that lucky.
Lindy was leaving the precinct when her cell phone started ringing. Unknown Caller flashed across the screen. Her skin felt tight. She answered anyway.
“Dietelinde.”
Her stomach lurched, and her skin crawled at the way he said her name. It was almost a purr, something that was probably supposed to be sexy. She felt an urge to double over and retch. Sexy was the opposite of what it was. But that may have been more from the knowledge of who was calling — and why — than from the actual sound.
“I’m still not liking that I don’t have a name for you.”
She had to get back into operator mode. She almost forgot what it was like.
After almost a week of doing nothing but looking at crime scene photos, she didn’t want to look at any more. Especially not any new ones. But if he was calling her and not 9-1-1, then maybe no-one knew about it yet.
“Can you tell me why you’re calling?” she asked, not giving him a chance to respond to her first statement.
“I’m pretty sure you know by now why I’m calling.”
“And I’m pretty sure you know by now that I need details. That’s why you call me, isn’t it? Because you want someone to know what you’re doing.”
“Not just anyone. You. I want you to know what I’m doing.”
Lindy sat on the precinct steps. She should have run inside, shouted at someone to get off their ass and trace the call. They probably wouldn’t be able to. The calls were never long enough for that. But, fuck, she should have done something. Maybe Dick would know what to do, but he’d left a good half an hour earlier. She was alone on this.
“Why?” It came out softer than she intended. “Why am I so important to you?”
“Because you see everything, Dietelinde. You know everything.”
If nothing else, she wished he would just stop saying her name like that. She never liked the long form to begin with, but he was making her hate it.
“Just tell me who you killed and where so I can send a unit.”
This was the kind of phone etiquette that would have gotten her in shit. But this wasn’t a work call. And now that she thought about it, she wasn’t being recorded. All the things she could say to this lunatic flashed through her mind. She could scream and berate and hurl the abuse that she was usually on the receiving end of at him. It would be such a relief to do it, too. But she bit her tongue, knowing that it might set him off. The last thing she needed to do was make things worse.
“You should know, shouldn’t you?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said through clenched teeth.
How many fucking times did she have to say that? She couldn’t sit anymore, not while she was talking to this asshole. She pushed herself to her feet and started pacing with no regard for the people around her. Not that there were many people around. The shift change had only come and gone, and there wasn’t anyone else lingering but the people on smoke break.
“Where’s the fun if I tell you?”
Fun?
Fun?
Lindy pulled her phone from her ear and made a smashing motion against the nearest wall, keeping her phone a few inches from it. As much as she wanted to end this call in the most violent way possible, she couldn’t afford to replace it right now. The curious glances she received didn’t go entirely unnoticed, but she didn’t care. She held the device back to her ear, bracing herself against the wall.
“Can you at least give me a hint?”
“I only give you hints when you’re working. If I’m not mistaken, you just got off. And you aren’t doing your actual job.”
Even as he spoke, an exhale left her lungs. She didn’t need him to tell her anything. Something in his words had triggered something at the back of her mind, giving her an image of train tracks. There was only one set of tracks in Lorelle. The houses behind it were in rough shape, even rougher than the Morrighan House. Which, granted, was more old than rough, but that was beside the point. She almost couldn’t imagine anyone living in any of them. She closed her eyes, and one house stood out in particular.
“Fine,” she said. “Have it your way.”
“That’s it?”
He sounded surprised, and she wondered if she should have pressed more.
“Look, we’ve played this game enough times that I know you won’t tell me anything else. Frankly, I’m tired. And like you said, I’m off. You want to report a crime, call 9-1-1.”
“You are 9-1-1.”
“Not today I’m not. You said it yourself. Not sure if you noticed, but this is my cell number.”
Speaking of which, how had he gotten it? The list of people who had it wasn’t short, per se, but nobody on it was the type to just hand out phone numbers without permission. But it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that it could happen. Given that he kept managing to reach her at work where the calls went to wh
oever had an open line, though, she suspected that it was more likely a trick of magic. Spells were like apps that way; whatever you needed to do, there was one for that.
Some days, she really fucking hated magic.
“If that’s how you’re going to play it…” he said, sounding almost uncertain.
Good. She’d shaken him.
“Hey, you’re the one who’s playing games here, not me. You won’t even tell me what I can call you. Don’t you get tired of not having a name?”
There was a slight hitch in breath on the other end of the phone, barely audible over surrounding noise. It was more of a reaction than she’d gotten out of him so far. Something about that clicked with him. Something about not having a name? Maybe it was nothing, but she wished that this call was being recorded so she could go over the transcript later. She hadn’t realized how much she relied on that.
“You still there?” she asked.
“Yeah. You can call me A.”
Lindy raised an eyebrow. Was this guy serious?
“A?” she repeated.
“You heard me. I’ll talk to you later, Dietelinde.”
The call ended, and Lindy was left shouting into dead airspace. That was just fucking great.
There wasn’t anything to do now but call Dick. He was as enthusiastic as she expected him to be about it — which was to say, not enthusiastic at all. Not that she could blame him; if she was home and he called her about this asshole, she wouldn’t be thrilled about it either.
“And you’re sure about this?” he asked with about as much inflection as unflavoured oatmeal would have if oatmeal could speak.
“Do you really think I’d be calling you if I wasn’t sure?” Actually, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to hear the answer to that. “I’m sure.”
“But he didn’t say anything about train tracks. How can you be sure?”
“The same way I’m sure that squirrel is going to get run over. Oh, God, that’s gross.”
She had to look away. The poor thing kept getting flattened with every car that went by. Not just gross, it was depressing.
“Fine,” he sighed. Lindy could almost hear him rubbing his face. “I’ll come pick you up in twenty. Are you still at the precinct, or…?”
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Great.”
And again, the line went dead without another word.
“Goodbye to you too.”
9
Lindy discovered very quickly that listening to a crime being committed was very different from seeing the aftermath. She’d seen photos, and she was sure it couldn’t possibly be worse than some of the calls she’d had to take. Kidnapping, murder, rape. She’d handled it all.
Dick had warned her that a new crime scene with a fresh victim wouldn’t be pretty. It wasn’t like she had expected it to be. And at first, she had no problem. There was no bad smell, nothing to suggest death. But she could feel it, the same way she could feel the magic that had seeped into the walls over the years. It would probably fade with time, but there was no mistaking it; this house belonged to a witch.
She let her feet guide her, moving more on the sort of autopilot instinct that was always there, muscle memory of a place she’d never been. She could hear Dick following her, a little bit too closely, but she ignored him. He was probably trying to make sure she didn’t mess up the crime scene, if there really was one here.
The house, like the rest in this neighbourhood, was in pretty shoddy condition. It was hard to tell when the last bit of maintenance had been done, assuming there had even been any since it had been built. The floorboards creaked beneath her weight. When she looked up at the ceiling, she saw water damage and cracks in the ceiling. Yellow paint that might have originally been white was chipping off the walls. Even the furniture looked like it needed replacing. It was so dated and so tacky that she almost wanted to laugh. There was no way a real person lived here. Had lived here.
“Are you getting anything?” Dick asked.
“A lot of magic, but I can’t tell what kind yet.”
“That’s great. I meant are you getting anything about a murder.”
Lindy scowled back at him. Her feet moved without conscious thought as if she was walking on a tightrope. She’d read something somewhere about how ants would walk along any drawn line or something. She couldn’t quite remember any details or if it was even actually about ants, but that was how she felt. As if someone had drawn a line through the house and she was compelled to follow it.
The patio door was wide open. Lindy put her hand on the door frame, pausing. Glancing back, she noticed an upturned chair.
“Someone was in a hurry,” she mused, more to herself than anyone else.
Whatever was on the other side of this door, she had to see it through.
The house might have been in shambles, but the garden… The garden was spectacular. She’d grown up in a neighbourhood where people got their gardens done professionally, easily spending thousands of dollars a season on them. But she’d never seen anything like this. Even flowers that were out of season, flowers that she didn’t think could grow in Canada were in full bloom. She felt like she’d just walked into a flower shop or a magazine spread.
Behind her, Dick whistled.
When she could finally tear her eyes from the colourful array, it didn’t take her long to spot the body. She let out a shaky breath and stepped closer.
“Shit… Lindy, wait. You don’t have to be here for this. Go inside. I’ll call it in.”
She tuned him out and kept moving forward. The body didn’t move. Why should it? The man was dead. There was a black hole in the middle of his forehead. Blood had run down his face and pooled behind his skull. His eyes, the kind of grey that came from Lenna and Dieter’s cigarettes, stared up at her, hollow and empty. She couldn’t look away.
Lindy wasn’t in the garden anymore. She was inside, running through the house as someone chased her. She tripped over the chair. The rough floor scraped her hands, but she didn’t have time to feel the sting. The patio door was only feet away. If she could make it, she could lose him in the garden. The door was stiff, and it took her a few tries to open it. Pain flared through her shoulder as an old injury screamed in protest. She managed to pull it open. Her attacker was closing in. The garden was right in front of her, but she couldn’t bear to crush the flowers she’d all but literally put her soul into. She spun around in the thin hope that maybe she could find another way out and the even thinner hope that maybe the person chasing her had changed his mind. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. The attacker was only feet away from her, but she couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t see anyone. There was someone there, she just couldn’t see them. He raised a gun, said something she couldn’t hear. And then the gun went off.
“Lindy?”
A hand settled on her shoulder, jerking her out of the trance. The accidental scrying. She didn’t even realize that she’d lashed out in panic until Dick pulled his hand away and swore loudly. He tipped his head back, covering his nose. The heel of her hand stung.
“Jesus, Lindy! What the Hell is wrong with you?” he asked, his voice muffled.
“Sorry, sorry. You scared me.”
“I scared you? You’re the one who started screaming like a fucking maniac.”
Lindy apologized again and pressed her palm to her chest as if it would stop her heart from racing. It was pounding right in her throat. And there were people who did the whole scrying thing for fun.
“So are you going to explain what the fuck that was all about? Or is that just a thing you do?”
“Can you give me a second?” she snapped.
She rested her sweaty palms on her knees, trying to even her breathing. She kept running the images through her mind so she didn’t forget them. The images she got from scrying were rarely ones that she remembered. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to remember them. But this, she clung to. The feeling of being chased, the fear, it
made her nauseous.
Dick sighed loudly and stepped in to rub her back in small circles.
“Easy does it,” he said, actually sympathetic. “First one’s always the worst. You get used to it.”
“It’s not the— the that.” She motioned to the body still lying on the patio. “It was… I saw it. When I looked at him. He was trying to run away. But he— the flowers. I didn’t want to— He didn’t want to ruin them.”
“When you say you saw it… did you see the perp’s face?”
Lindy shook her head. Oh, crap, that was a bad idea. The motion made her head spin.
“He was right there, but I just— I couldn’t. He’s blocking me, even from scrying.”
“Scrying?”
She waved her hand dismissively. She was so not in the mood to explain right now.
“This guy, he’s definitely a witch. Green thumb of magic proportions.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. Only thing nice about this place. Is our perp also a— a witch?”
If Dick’s tone of voice was any indication, it was almost painful to ask.
“I still can’t tell.” The admission made her want to scream. “And I probably won’t be able to unless I’m in a room with him.”
“But he’s using magic to… hide?”
“He’s got to be.”
“But he might not be a witch.”
Lindy shrugged.
“Fuck this. Look, I don’t know how much else you can do here. Crime scene guys’ll be here any minute now. Go home before you puke all over my scene.”
She wanted to protest, but bile burned the back of her throat.
“Yeah,” she said, inching back towards the house. “I’ll just call someone to come pick me up.”
Lenna was able to give her a ride home. There were dark shadows under her eyes, a product of her recent online courses. She didn’t complain, and she gave no indication that she was going out of her way. As soon as they got home, though, she took off up the stairs, Aldo at her heels, to get some sleep.