Anna was a fire witch. Her family had been delighted when she saved my life by channeling the fire goddess. She’d burned through a room of werewolves turning them into ash, but she’d only been able to do it because she was in love with me, a fact she’d never be able to share with them. After it was over and she’d told me how she felt, we’d spent some time apart. I tried to believe I was following her request for space, for privacy, but I knew it was more than that. Things were going to be awkward between us, and I was dreading it.
“Good morning,” Anna’s voice said in my ear. My stomach constricted around itself for a second. “Good morning,” she said again.
“Hey, Anna, it’s me.” I finally squeaked out. I took a minute to clear my throat. “It’s Mallory.”
“I know your voice.” Her tone was as stable as it’d ever been. Anna was a fashion model, tall and beautiful, skilled at smiling through the pain.
“Can you meet me? Maybe for coffee at Sunshine’s?”
“Sure!” I could hear a real smile in her voice. “What’s up?”
“It’s for work; I’ve got this thing. Twenty minutes?”
The other side of the phone was quiet for a minute. When she spoke again the smile was gone. “Uh, yeah. Work stuff. Okay. Twenty minutes, see you then.”
She hung up the phone without waiting for me to say goodbye. I looked at the phone realizing how she’d interpreted the words and how it had made her feel.
“Mal?” Danny asked. I put the phone down.
“We’re on, but I…” I hesitated. “Can I talk to her alone? We have some things from the summer…”
“Not a problem.” He waved me off. Danny had found me in Anna’s arms after she’d saved me. He’d been the only one to notice her eyes were red, the red of a fire witch controlled by her goddess. “I’ll stay at the counter. You can tell me what she says. We’re supposed to see the clinic manager, Packman, at ten o’clock, so don’t talk too much.”
Danny left me alone with my thoughts on our drive to Sunshine’s. The coffee shop was a supernatural hangout decorated with a thousand different sun emblems. There were smiling sun clocks, artistic sun wall hangings, and Dali-esque paintings of melting suns. I’d seen patrons tack something up to the wall where it would remain until someone liked it enough to take it or hated it enough to hand it over to Mel, the tough looking barista.
Sunshine’s main counter ran along the bright orange-yellow walls for half the length of the room. Behind it was a mass of mismatched couches and easy chairs that looked like a half a dozen living rooms had magically lost their walls. Anna was sitting on a battered green couch, looking enviously at the graffiti- covered yellow couch occupied by a young couple. The graffiti was magical, charms designed to make you feel calm. Whatever the couple was talking about the charms were working hard to make sure they didn’t worry too much. I grabbed a coffee and dropped Danny off at the counter. I heard him delightedly order one of the enormous cinnamon rolls as I walked back.
Anna stood up when she saw me coming. She was nearly six feet tall with flowing red hair; it was odd to see her model perfect pose ruined by fidgeting. I set my coffee down to give her a hug. It was a bit of a cop out, before she’d told me how she felt we’d kissed on the cheek to greet each other. I took a green easy chair that barely matched the couch, and she went back to where she had been.
“I didn’t know we still hugged,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“Because, well, because you know.” She nibbled at her lower lip. “Damn I wish we could have the couch.”
“We don’t need it.” I wasn’t sure who I was reassuring, her or me. Her eyes caught something and lit up.
“You’re wearing the necklace. I didn’t think you would.” My hand went to the pendent resting on my chest. She’d made the necklace for me, shaping the metal with mating fire. It was a clue I hadn’t picked up on. I could have used it to call to her when I needed her; instead, I saw it as something pretty to wear.
“Why shouldn’t I? One of my best friends made it for me.”
“Thanks, Mal.” The file rested on the coffee table between us. “What kind of a case is this? Should I have skipped breakfast?” My last few cases had involved dead bodies. Anna had heard enough to be nervous.
“Arson, there are some symbols left behind; do you recognize them?” I opened the file for her, letting my eyes linger on Danny. I wondered if he could hear us, even though he was easily twenty feet away.
“Uh, yeah.” Her eyes were wide.
“What do they say?”
“Um, well, huh, about that.”
“Something tells me that’s not what they say,” I joked.
“The thing is, Mal, how many secrets do you want to know? ’Cause this language isn’t something we share with other people.”
“So only a fire witch would know what it says?”
“Only a fire witch, and that witch would know not to leave this where someone could see it, which is why what it says doesn’t make any sense.”
“I think you know you can trust me with a secret or two.” I tried to sound light, to ease her mood.
“No, this is serious. You need to find who wrote this.”
“Why?”
“Because all it says, over and over again, is ‘help me.’ ”
****
We left the coffee shop with more questions than answers and a mug of the best espresso in the house to go. I’d hugged Anna goodbye, which was probably more hugging than usual, but not enough to make her feel any better. The words burned into the concrete had spooked her. We were ten minutes away before I realized I hadn’t told Danny yet. I apologized, but he cut me off.
“I heard.”
“But you were on the other side of the shop; how did you do that?”
“How did you stop that zombie a while back? How did you help that woman die on Saturday night?” he countered, avoiding my questions. He kept on avoiding them until we arrived in the office of Dr. Sandy Packman, Dean of the College of Medicine and director of the Giving Tree Clinic. There was a copy of the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree, on display behind his desk. Danny asked him about it.
“It’s where we got the name for the clinic. The tree takes care of the little boy from birth to death; the same way we covered patients from cradle to grave.”
“Don’t most clinics specialize?” I asked.
“We tried to, but our patients couldn’t afford to go anywhere else, and how do you tell a mother you can’t treat her baby because you’re not a pediatrician? How do you treat an STD but not a broken arm? Eventually we had to cover everything.”
“Must have been nice for the staff, gives them lots of experience,” Danny said.
“Tons.” The doctor smiled. “My students graduate with more experience than most interns and a handful of residents. It’s a wonderful program. The clinic helps a desperately underserved population, and the students get some great experience, everyone wins.”
“So why would someone set it on fire?” I asked. Danny gave me a look to tell me I shouldn’t have asked. I wondered how much longer it would be until I learned all the rules to interviewing someone.
“You have to understand the population we serve. There are homeless, and people with mental health issues that could let a perceived slight get out of hand.”
“But very few homeless are witches,” Danny said, taking the interview back over. He was right; witches might be persecuted, but we took care of our own. Covens worked hard to help people who needed them. Phoebe’s church sponsored a shelter for runaways and took up collections for abused women. Anna’s people—the fire witches—handled everything privately, never letting the world see there was a problem.
“True; but we also work with drug addicts, and you have to admit there are more than a few witches in that category. Then twice a month, we do health checks for professionals, and you might have a witch there.” “Professionals” was a nice way of saying prostitutes. Afte
r the Morality War, laws had turned the oldest profession into the profession with rigid health codes and heavy fines for anyone without a license. Elemental witches, who channeled air, fire, water, or earth, might be a professional, but it was much more likely that one of the life force witches, sex or spirit, would end up in the profession. I didn’t think the third type of life force witch, death witches, had much of a history with prostitution, but then I was the only death witch anyone had seen for years, so it was possible.
“What if we discount witches; who else might have a problem with the clinic, no matter how small?” Danny asked.
“Oh then you get a much wider group. We have parents who don’t think we should bring undesirables onto campus where their precious darlings go to class. Then there are administrators who think the clinic takes donations away from their pet projects. Also, students who didn’t make the clinic program who are jealous, but none of them would burn down a building.”
“Then who do you think it was?” I asked. This time Danny didn’t glare at me. I considered it a victory.
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a bunch of paper rubber-banded together. “I think it was one of the God freaks.” He threw the paper on to his desk where it landed with a thump.
“God Freaks?”
“Devout followers of the Prince of Peace who have no problem murdering doctors who provide abortions. They’re known for blowing up clinics.”
“You provide abortions?” Danny asked.
“If someone asks. We dispense birth control pills too. It’s part of medicine. Do you ever work with the FBI?” We nodded. “Great, then you can get the rest of the threat letters from them.”
“The rest?” It slipped out before I could stop it.
“I send them over once a month; these are from September.” We all stared at the two inch pile on his desk. I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to track down and interview all of the people who had written. Even if one of them had done it, we would have to interview another sixty or seventy others to find out. I swallowed hard against the idea of how much time that would take.
“Can you tell us about the employee who died in the fire?” I asked, desperate for some other lead.
“Dara, Dara Robertson. I don’t know much; she was new.” He leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a minute. “If you want to find out about Dara, you’ll need to talk to our office manager, Penny. She knows all the details about everybody.”
“Would she know your patients as well?” I asked.
“Everybody. Penny’s a people person. In fact, you probably should have started with her instead of me. Sorry.” He spread his hands wide to apologize.
“Don’t be. You’ve been very helpful,” Danny said, but we still had him set up a meeting with Penny before we left.
Parking on the campus was insane, so we left the car where it was and walked to the clinic site. I suspected there wouldn’t be much to see, but it was where Penny had agreed to meet us when Dr. Packman called her. When we asked him for a description, he had smiled and said, “the redhead, you’ll know her when you see her.” It was annoyingly vague, but when we arrived in front of the charred remains of the clinic, I saw he was right. Penny wasn’t the kind of woman you would miss. She was big, standing at least five feet ten inches, but also wide, thick like a country farm wife. On top of her head was a huge pile of bright brassy red hair.
“Penny?” I called as the two of us walked up. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Her skin touched mine with the faintest tickle of magic. “Spirit witch?”
“Momma always did say I shined like a bright copper penny, and that was before the hair.” She patted the bouffant. “It comes from a bottle,” she added in a stage whisper. “But to answer your question, really, no. I might be able to tell who’s having a good day from who’s having a bad one, but I think the title spirit witch is a bit high an’ mighty.”
“You can sense emotions; that makes you a spirit witch.”
“Maybe between the three a’ us, but nowhere else. People would think I was puttin’ on airs fit to beat Moses. Now, what do you think of our little clinic?” She stepped back and spread her arms in a sweeping gesture as if she had revealed a painting instead of the blackened wood bones of the building and the waterlogged debris between them.
“Dr. Packman tells us it was important to the community,” Danny said diplomatically, while I could only gape.
“It was. But it ain’t like this. What do you say we get away from this view?” She led us down a pathway to a separate college building. “So did Sandy give you the whole Giving Tree speech, or keep it simple?”
“I think we may have gotten the speech,” I said.
“I swear that man has more bullshit than a rodeo ring.” She shook her head. “He shows up when it suits him, doesn’t stay long, and then brags on an’ on about the work he does. He doesn’t have any idea what it’s really like.”
“What’s it really like?” I asked.
“Like screaming babies all night long, like addicts who lose it in the waiting room and threaten you, and like telling someone they’re going to die ’cause they ain’t got insurance. Ol’ Sandy Packman, he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the root of our trouble.” We walked up the pathway to a concrete building, and she pulled open the glass double doors. I wondered if I should prompt her, but she went on. “Sandy has some bad habits, some nasty habits, if you catch my meaning. Now I do my best to stay out of people’s bizness but sometimes I wondered…”
“Could you be more specific? I can think of a lot of nasty habits,” Danny asked.
“Wait’ll we get inside.” We were walking down a maze of empty-looking cubicles. Finally, at the back, there was a doorway, and we entered a conference room. Boxes of paperwork that smelled faintly of smoke were stacked along one wall. “This is all we have left of the patient records. The paper ones anyway, the electronic stuff has a backup service. We could have those records back before supper, if we had a computer.” She shook her head.
“Dr. Packman’s habit?” I prompted.
“Professionals. We do health checks on the first and the fifteenth. We’re the fastest and the cheapest in the city. Most of them pay in cash and don’t want to waste time, so we get pretty busy with it. But not so busy that I don’t notice Sandy showing up and checking this one or that one, made me wonder if they weren’t picking up some quick cash in the exam room while they waited for the test results to get back.”
“What can you tell us about Dara Robertson?” I asked, eager to get away from the sordid gossip.
“Now that one was a complete mystery. She was from out west, Montana or some such. Showed up one day and asked for a job. We didn’t have anything open for a few weeks, but she kept callin’, and so I found her a place. You know how I can tell about good days and bad? That one was always in the bad column, no matter what. She’d been here near three months an’ I ain’t seen her crack a smile once.”
“Did you have any idea what was wrong?” Danny asked.
“Nope, she kept quiet. The only thing she was willing to talk about at all was religion. Went on and on; give her ten minutes, and she’d have you half converted.”
“Which religion?”
“Christian? She wasn’t really specific past that.” Her voice was so angry, I half-expected her to spit when she said it. “My kin are pretty god-fearin’, but I do not believe in covering your face in ashes. I was after her and after her to keep it out of the office. We had words, and I’m not ashamed to say so. You take a job as a pharmacist you dispense drugs, not gospel. Especially not to the patients.”
“Did she work with a lot of patients?” I asked.
“She filled prescriptions for us; some weekends she was the only one around. That’s why”—her voice caught—“well, that’s why she was there when it burned down.”
“Would any of the patients have any reason to be upset with her?”
“Maybe. If she got a hold of a girl at the right instant, coming from the right procedure, you know? That could turn a woman to do something like what was done.”
“Did you know the patients as well as you know the staff?” Danny asked. She chuckled a bit under her breath. “Of course, stupid question. Any patients you might suspect this of? Any fire witches?”
“Can I take the second first? Fire witches are easy. We’ve only ever seen one or two. Seems like their kind has enough money not to bother with our clinic.”
“Who were the two you saw?”
“A student, first name of Ted something, he was sweet on one of our doctors-to-be and a professional; she worked at Fairy Tails. Everyone from there came here. They made a party of it, first here, then dinner and drinks.” She rolled her eyes. “Must be nice to have that kind of money.”
“Have you seen either of them lately?” Danny steered her back to the question.
“The professional was here for her health check last month, but hasn’t been back for this month’s yet. Ted’s spending the semester in Europe. Tell you the truth, it makes the lady doctor-to-be happy all day when he sends a postcard.”
“Would you suspect either of them?” Danny asked, trying to steer away from gossip once again.
“Nope. Not on your life. Some of the others from Fairy Tails maybe, but not her, she was a sweetie. And Ted? Never.” It sounded like she was going to go on, but Danny cut her off.
“What about other patients?”
“Two or three of the homeless were schizo, so they could’ve. But really, that’s it. People loved us; they needed us. The college has given us this space to refit. As soon as it even resembles an office, I promise you we’ll have a line out the door. Take away the clinic, but you don’t take away the need.”
“Anyone else? Protesters maybe?” I asked.
“We had protesters here every once in a while, but I didn’t worry too much about them. If they aren’t serious enough to protest in the summer heat, I figure they aren’t serious enough to blow a place up.”
Fire in Her Blood Page 3