Fire in Her Blood

by Rachel Graves

  “Mors,” I said not bothering to check the number.

  “I have someone who needs to talk to you,” Mark replied.

  “Please tell me it’s not more vampire politics.” I didn’t want another scene like the one in Jakob’s office or the one in the hospital. I was hoping for a nice murder case, not another bucket of trouble.

  “No FBI politics, someone needs to talk to you, but he won’t come into the main office, can you come here?”

  If I had a car, sure no problem. Hell, I was going to need to get a car. “Hang on,” I told Mark. To Danny I asked, “How hard would it be for me to take an unmarked car out for the night?”

  “Not hard, just go sign the form.”

  I nodded and moved my hand.

  “You should let Jakob buy you a car,” Mark said. I hadn’t counted on vampire hearing.

  “I prefer to maintain a hint of independence, thank you,” I replied crisply.

  “And begging rides from everyone makes you independent how?”

  I deliberately ignored him, mostly because he was right. “I can meet with your guy now or later, when is good?”

  “Half an hour, at my place.”

  “See you then,” I said before I hung up.

  “What do you think the FBI wants with you?” Danny asked.

  “I have no idea, hopefully it’s nothing special.” The last time I’d worked with the FBI had been the werewolf case. I didn’t really blame the Bureau for how it turned out, but I wasn’t anxious to be put on loan to them again.

  “It didn’t sound like they wanted me to come along…” Danny let his voice trail off.

  “And it doesn’t sound like you’re volunteering to go either.”

  “There’s something I want to talk to the lieutenant about.”

  “Do I need to be here for that?”

  “Naaaa, it’s probably nothing, head home from your secret interview. You can keep the car overnight, you know.”

  “Thanks,” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  Danny was right, getting the car was easy enough. Sign on the line, provide my I.D., and I suddenly possessed a gold four door. I called Jakob on my way to Mark’s, looking forward to my time after work.

  “Are we doing something tonight?” I asked.

  “If you’d like to but I’m fairly busy with this…”

  “This what?” I asked with a perky voice. “What is this project that’s keeping you so busy?”

  “It’s nothing important,” he lied smoothly.

  “And yet, you’ve been busy with it for the last few nights.”

  “There’s only so much time between when I wake up and when I need to be at work. What would you like to do this evening?”

  “Nothing, I was actually calling to tell you I was in the mood to spend the night alone.”

  “But you couldn’t resist the opportunity to goad me?” he asked, his voice light.

  “When you say it like that, it doesn’t seem all that nice.” I laughed.

  We were still laughing about it when I pulled up to Mark’s completely boring cape cod. In the fading afternoon sunlight, it was just another small frame house in a development full of them. The heavy curtains blocked the internal sun shutters from view. There was no reason his neighbors would guess he was vampire, but then I doubted any of them had met him. Mark wasn’t the most social being in the world.

  I let myself in through the unlocked front door. He hadn’t bothered to install the usual vampire double doors, and he left the front door open, confident he could deal with anything that came through. I found him upstairs in what would have been the master bedroom but was his office. He slept in the basement.

  “So who am I meeting?” I asked, leaning against the door frame.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t a simple answer to that.” He turned away from his computer and looked at me. “You worked an arson case this morning, right?”

  “Yup, used to be a trashy bar now it’s a smoldering heap. Why does that matter to the FBI?”

  “Because it wasn’t any trashy bar, it was the trashy bar a white supremacist group called the New Klan hung out at. They’re half organized crime and half biker gang, suspected of transporting drugs across state lines, theft, and kidnapping.”

  “Sounds like great guys, I’m sorry they lost their play house,” I said sarcastically.

  “You should be. We had an undercover guy working at the bar, the only contact for the guy we have in deep cover inside the gang.”

  “Please tell me your guy wasn’t Meat.” I’d taken statement after statement about the man, and no one had a good thing to say about him. He’d been rude, generally mean, and he delighted in denying alcohol to people he called ‘wimps.’ What made someone a wimp? From what I could gather anything and everything or maybe just that the person was in front of Meat at the wrong minute. He was a total and complete asshole in every way, but for a bar full of scum being an asshole was a good way to make friends.

  “One of the best undercover agents we had,” Mark nodded. “The main office is looking for a way to put pressure on your investigation without outing our other guy.”

  “Pressure, great idea, because in a case where every lead turns into a nightmare of paperwork and gives us nothing to go on, pressure would really help.” I didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “We’ve got a dead agent, Mal. Not to mention an investigation that’s a lot more important than a few fires,” Mark said, a little annoyed.

  “Fine, your case wins. But why does Meat’s counterpart want to talk to me?”

  “He watched him die,” Mark said simply.

  “He’s a witness? An actual witness, like he saw our fire witch? Jesus, why didn’t you say so? I’ll take the pressure if it means I get a witness.”

  “Well then you’ll be delighted to know we had the bar rigged with cameras. We’ve got your boy on tape.”

  “Seriously? Mark, I could kiss you.”

  “Thanks but if word got back to Jakob that would be bad for my health.” He stopped talking and nodded downstairs.

  I looked at him blankly.

  “He’s here. Look I don’t even know this guy’s name. I can get you a print out of the person who was talking to Meat when he went up in flames, but the tape is pretty uneventful. He’s talking to this kid, then his legs are on fire.” I heard the front door open.

  “You coming downstairs?” I asked.

  “No, deep cover means none of us see this guy. It’s safer for him that way. Let him leave first, hang out for a bit until he gets out of here.”

  “Very cloak and dagger, huh?”

  “His life depends on it,” Mark said grimly.

  Navigating the stairs in the dark wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. Thankfully my eyes adjusted to the darkness on my way down. By the time I got there, I could make out the silhouette of the man standing in the living room. He was big, with a beer gut that weighed nearly as much as I did and a stringy pony tail hanging down. He looked like a biker and not an FBI agent, but I guess that was the point.

  “I’m Detective Mors, I hear you were at my arson.”

  “Me and half the crew, the place went up like someone was playing with it, like the fire wasn’t sure it wanted to burn anything.”

  “Did you see anything I need to know about?”

  “Nothing, some piece of shit kid giving Meat a hard time, then suddenly his legs were on fire.” He paused, then added as an afterthought, “Meat was on fire not the kid.”

  “You think the kid did it?”

  “Hell no, he was another useless P-O-S who hung out at the bar hoping to score some beer. The power wasn’t even coming from him. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. If it turns out it was someone in the crew, someone hired a fire witch or is one and they found out about Meat, I need to know about it right away.”

  “I don’t think this has anything to do with your investigation,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.r />
  “Well thinking isn’t good enough, all right? Because these guys are bad news in a lot of ways. They trade people like you for a six pack.”

  He was upset, hostile even, but I wasn’t going to bite. I knew better than to think any of them had even met someone like me, let alone traded me off for beverages. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to know if this is a one-off or part of something, and if it’s part of something is there anything that leads back to the crew.” He kept saying crew as if it was a secret pass phrase. I did my best not to let it bother me.

  “It’s the third arson we have, one at a clinic, one at a high school, and now this one. I don’t think your guys have anything to do with high school or a college clinic so—” He cut me off.

  “Fuck, not the tree clinic?”

  “Yes, the Giving Tree Clinic, why?”

  “One of the guys, Willy, has a bug up his ass about that place. He’s this little runt who never was anything and isn’t going to be, but he’s pissed about the clinic and how they kill white babies. High schools we’ve got nothing on but that place…” He kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. He’d shaken something loose from my memory. A little runt who was nothing, a nothing, the words brought me back to the dean’s office. She’d called Chris a nothing.

  “This kid Meat was talking to, any chance he was a vampire?” I asked, interrupting him in the middle of some diatribe.

  “Shit, I don’t know. He wasn’t sucking blood out of someone at the time.”

  “But did he feel magical? Did he have fangs?” The thoughts were going through my mind like quicksilver. Chris, who got his health card at the Giving Tree Clinic, Chris who might live with Vianne where I’d seen a fire jump like it shouldn’t, Chris who didn’t have a problem dating a fire witch and Chris who went to that school and changed in the locker room that had burned, they were all the same Chris that was attacking people at Fairy Tails, the same Chris that was at the bar.

  “You’re wasting your time. The kid was a total loser. Another few minutes and Meat would have taken him outside and beat him to death. And I already told you the fire didn’t come from the kid.” Even in the dark, his look was enough to make me question my growing idea. E had already told me vampires couldn’t be fire witches, and nothing said Chris was one. But it still couldn’t be a coincidence that he was connected to all three arson locations. “Look, I’m going to follow up with Willy, the guy who has a thing about the clinic. You find anything, you need to get something to me, leave a message with Zollern.”

  He was out of the house before I could say another word, and I raced up the dark stairs to ask Mark for the picture.

  “Sorry Mal, it’ll take at least a day for me to get a release to give it to you.”

  “Just let me see it, please,” I begged, losing all thoughts of self-esteem. That picture would solve a lot of doubts in my head. If it was Chris at the bar, I could bring him in and find out how he was suddenly a fire witch when E said he couldn’t be.

  “Sorry, not happening.” Mark shook his head. “You’re also not going to see the body. When I tell you this case is important, I mean really important. I give you the picture, and you bring someone in based on it, word could get back to the gang. You touch the body and ask the wrong question, same problem. We’ve already lost one guy. I’m not going to risk losing the other one.”

  “Oh come one, he’s not even a nice guy…” I pleaded, but the no nonsense look in Mark’s eyes stopped me. “Fine.”

  I leaned against his office door and looked at him. He looked back, casually relaxed in his desk chair. We sat there for a few minutes, me hoping he’d break and him staring. Finally I gave up. “I hate the way vampires can stare for hours.”

  “Well if that’s your only problem with us,” he began but I surprised him.

  “Actually, can I ask you something I can’t ask Jakob?”

  “There’s something you can’t ask Jakob?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow. That’s surprising. Okay, what’s the question?” he asked.

  “I met this vampire who’s obnoxious—”

  “More obnoxious than me?” he interrupted.

  “Yes,” I said making my feelings on how obnoxious he was plain in my voice.

  “Even more surprising, okay go on.” He made a shooing motion with his hands and I rolled my eyes.

  “Anyway, he got attacked by another vampire—”

  “That’s no big deal—happens more than you think.”

  “Quit interrupting me!” I shouted.

  “Sorry.” He looked vaguely remorseful, so I went on

  “He asked Jakob for vengeance—”

  “Right that’s—” He caught my angry look. “Sorry, not interrupting, go on.”

  “And Jakob offered to be his second. Then when we talked about it, Jakob said he’d finish the job if this guy couldn’t.”

  “Is that the question?”

  “I’m going to smack you if you keep that up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The question is, is that normal? For Jakob to put himself on the line for some guy he doesn’t really know?”

  “I can talk now?” he asked.

  I nodded with what I hoped was an exasperated expression. “Yes.”

  I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “You can’t keep from interrupting me, and I get a one word answer? Yes, because why?”

  “It’s his town. He makes up the rules; he enforces them. I’m betting the second vampire did something to piss him off somewhere along the way. He could have waited until they finished their business and then killed him—”

  “Her,” I said, enjoying the chance to interrupt him.

  “Her, but instead Jakob can handle her before she becomes a bigger problem.”

  “And this is all pretty normal?”

  “Hmmm, normal? Not really, but typical. Normally when two vampires fight one of them doesn’t live to ask for help to go after the other again.”

  “Help but not permission.”

  “We don’t need permission to kill each other, but if I was a ton weaker than the guy in charge and he happened to show up, I might ask. I wouldn’t go out of my way or anything, but I’d ask.”

  “Is Jakob going to be okay?” I asked the question I really wanted answered.

  “He’ll be fine.” Mark smiled, but he stopped when he saw my face. “I promise, fine. There are a handful of people in this town who would give him trouble and only one that would give him serious trouble. If it was any of them, he would’ve called me.”

  “But they wouldn’t make trouble for him because…”

  “Because they’re scared, and it’s easier to follow his rules than find out who’s better.”

  “So you’re a whole society ruled by fear and violence?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Fascinating,” I pronounced.

  “Glad we can amuse you. Anything I should find out from Jakob when I ask him about this?”

  “Nope, just make sure he doesn’t think I’m checking up on him.”

  “Even though you are…”

  “Even though I am.”

  I said my goodbyes and drove home in the unmarked car. It was nice enough that I began to wonder if there were any like it on Jakob’s list of cars to go check out. I hated the idea of giving up on the Jeep, but if I had to have something else, this car would do. I wasn’t really concentrating on cars though. I was working on the puzzle of how Chris-the-loser became Chris-the-fire-witch-vampire, and how Kelly, who was a fire witch and supposedly always at his side, fit into this. A morbid thought occurred to me, that Chris had drank her dry, somehow taking her magic for his own. I dismissed the disturbing image as soon as it came up. If that worked, I would have heard of it. No, Kelly was probably very much alive somewhere, just probably so high she couldn’t see straight.

  My shower helped me think straight. The water poured over my head taking all the images down the drain. There went
Chris and his miraculous transformation, bubbling behind them was my burn, and the message I hadn’t yet delivered to Aunt Jo. I left the shower with my hair wrapped in a towel and a list of things to do. Call Anna, get Aunt Jo’s number, and deliver the message was at the top. I was trying to remember where I’d left the phone when it conveniently started ringing.

  “I have a brilliant idea,” Isaura said when I finally found the phone between the couch cushions.

  “Hi Isa,” I replied.

  “Ask me about my brilliant idea,” she commanded.

  “What’s your brilliant idea?” I said happy to play along.

  “I’m going to have a Samhain party so all of you can see how cool Ben is.”

  “I’ve met him, Isa, remember? We work together.”

  “Right but you’ve never seen him outside of work. I’m sure he’s different outside of work.”

  “Okay.” I used Phoebe’s trick and made the word five syllables. “One problem, you live in a shoebox of an apartment with Lord of the Rings posters on the walls.”

  “Ben likes Lord of the Rings,” she said with a dramatic sigh

  “That’s good because he’ll be practically on top of your model of Isengaurd all night if you invite more than five people.”

  “Fine. Where do you suggest I have it? And no bars, I want someplace where people can sit and chat about the holiday and family and what they want out of life…”

  “Couldn’t you ask him about all of that without a party?”

  “Yeah but that would be so…awkward, forced. The party is a much better idea. Except not a party, a gathering, definitely not a shindig.”

  “Is it sad that I know you’re quoting a tv show?”

  “No, it proves you’re my friend.”

  “I guess I’ll bring the brie,” I said with a smile on my face.

  “Nope, it’s a Samhain gathering; you’ll bring a dish to remember your ancestors.” Her voice was smug.

  “Uh, Isa, I have no ancestors. I had a mom who was mostly dying. Pretty much the only food in the house was what I could microwave. So unless you want a plate of Hotpockets…”