Ashes and Arsenic

by SM Reine

  There was no point in reading my brother’s dossier. I already knew everything about him. I set that aside and hauled out one of The Half Moon Bay Coven’s folders.

  A quick skim showed me that the files were arranged in historical order. Old stuff in front, new stuff in back. I grabbed the newest papers and checked the member listing. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find—maybe some kind of smoking gun that would tell me, “Here is the reason that Lenox is trying to set fire to Los Angeles.”

  “‘High priestess Lenox Pryce took charge in 1988,’” I said under my breath, reading it off the page. “‘High priest Scott Whyte took charge in…’ Huh.” He’d only been high priest for a year. More interestingly, I recognized his name.

  I patted down my pockets, searching for my Steno pad. I hadn’t been keeping many notes for the case, but I’d written some things down while I was at Domingo’s house.

  The notebook was in my back pocket, wrinkled with sweat. I peeled it open and found the most recent page.

  The two last lines I’d written were blurry from moisture, but I could still read them. I’d jotted down the name of Domingo’s mechanic, Emcee. And then I’d also written down Scott Whyte’s name. He was the licensed marriage and family therapist that Domingo had been meeting with.

  I’d assumed that Domingo was seeing a therapist with Sofia. Instead, he’d been in touch with the high priest of the Half Moon Bay Coven.

  He hadn’t mentioned that to me.

  I flipped through the files on the coven to see who had been high priest before Scott Whyte. It said, “Jeremiah Killick,” who had apparently been married to Lenox—now divorced.

  Killick had an impressive number of pages dedicated to his history. Several crimes had been attributed to his name. Human sacrifice, blood rites, thievery.

  Nice guy.

  The Half Moon Bay Coven had reported those things to the OPA, trying to distance themselves from their former high priest’s activities. It probably explained why Lenox was so careful to remain in compliance, too. She didn’t want to get arrested for crimes her ex-husband had committed.

  I flipped to Killick’s dossier. Even though his name didn’t ring any bells, I recognized the picture of the high priest.

  It was Gareth Milbourne.

  “No fucking way,” I said out loud.

  “What?” Suzy asked.

  My thoughts raced through both times that I had seen Gareth—or Killick, as the case seemed to be.

  When we’d first arrived at the bank after the robbery, there had been no employees on site other than the manager. Nobody who could tell us that Gareth Milbourne wasn’t really Gareth Milbourne. And the security guards had been missing the second time I’d gone to the bank, too.

  “We’ve got a problem,” I said.

  Suzy protested as I headed to the meeting room, leaving her behind at the desk.

  Aniruddha and Lenox were still talking by the doorway.

  I handed Killick’s dossier to Aniruddha. “What’s this?” he asked, sounding exhausted. And then he read it and his eyes widened.

  “Will this be another accusation?” Lenox asked, sneering at me. “Are you going to claim that I’m the one murdering witches yet again? You should know that one of my women turned up dead at the warehouse tonight. You met her in my hotel room—Hetty Meadowgrass.” She lightly slapped Aniruddha’s arm. “Tell Agent Hawke. We brought the body with us.”

  If Hetty Meadowgrass had died at the warehouse that night, then the second attack on the bank hadn’t just been intended to lure us away from the OPA offices. We’d been looking at the bank instead of the other potential points on the pentagram.

  Another sacrifice. The pentagram was finished.

  “Jeremiah Killick,” I said to Lenox. “Why do you have him working at the First Bank of the Sierras if he’s a known murderer?”

  Lenox looked to Aniruddha, as if searching for confirmation that I was joking. When he just gaped at her, she said, “Jeremiah never had anything to do with my business interests.”

  Thump.

  A distant explosion.

  It took a second for the concussion to hit us, the way that thunder takes time to hit after the flash of lightning. The floor trembled under my feet. One of the bookshelves toppled over, spilling paperwork and pens everywhere.

  Someone by the windows screamed.

  I rushed toward the sound. Agent Bryce wasn’t hurt—she was just pale with shock, hands shaking as she stared out the window.

  The night was on fire.

  Pillars of flame gushed through the sky, splashing orange on the clouds and casting the world in false daylight. It looked a lot like the miniature pillars of fire still smoldering inside the circle on our lawn—but it had been multiplied in size a thousand times to tower over the entire city.

  Still trembling, Agent Bryce showed me the picture she was holding. “We matched the bronzed statue from processing to that artifact.” She pointed to the lawn. “The witches stole a bigger version of the one on our lawn.”

  No shit.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MY TEAM BLAZED THROUGH Los Angeles in black SUVs with sirens screaming.

  There’s no point pretending to be covert when you’ve got pillars of flame consuming the sky. Our PR department was going to have a hell of a time explaining this one away.

  The blaze of flames turned night to daylight. The column was almost as thick as a house near the center, splitting into tentacles at cloud level. Chatter on the radio said that they had diverted air traffic, and good thing, too—those flames could have burned anything out of the sky. I’d have been worried about the freaking space station if it passed overhead.

  My knuckles were white on the steering wheel as I ripped through freeway traffic. I squealed around a cluster of cars that had stopped in the middle of the lane, swerved across a median, raced to catch up with another SUV’s taillights.

  As we approached the pillar of flame, the car seemed to get hotter and hotter. Between the summer heat, that fire, and the close quarters, it had to be getting close to a hundred degrees in the SUV. The air conditioning couldn’t put a dent in it.

  “The helicopters have placed it almost directly to our east.” That came from Agent Bryce in the passenger’s seat. Suzy had been too weak to get up from her desk—and she’d tried, trust me. So Agent Bryce was working at the dashboard computer, nailing down coordinates.

  But she wasn’t talking to me. She didn’t need to. I could see the map on the dash, too.

  She was communicating with Aniruddha in the lead vehicle. It was bad enough having to hit the road with Agent Bryce. Even worse to go with fucking Aniruddha. I’d rather have faced an entire coven of bloodthirsty maniacs on my own.

  Bryce pointed at the next exit. “Here!”

  I had to cut across four lanes of traffic to make it in time.

  The primary column erupted from a small theater set among restaurants that looked like they hadn’t passed a health inspection in decades. The roof’s debris were scattered over the pavement.

  The Union had arrived before us and were evacuating the block. Didn’t look like there were many people to remove. Most people weren’t stupid enough to stick around when fire rained upon Los Angeles.

  I parked behind Aniruddha, ripped the sunglasses off of the visor, and jumped out. Agent Bryce was only steps behind me.

  Just standing on the street outside the theater made my arm hairs curl from the heat. It was a hundred times bigger, hotter, and louder than the firestorm made at the OPA offices. I had to put on the sunglasses to be able to look at it sideways. Felt like a tool wearing those at night.

  “Keep your head down,” Aniruddha barked at me.

  I couldn’t help but glance up once he said that. There were helicopters above—looked like we had news choppers playing keep-away with the flaming tentacles. Those pilots had serious gonads.

  Alfredo, one of the Union kopides, emerged from the front door of the theater. The black uniform clu
ng to him with sweat.

  “Any sign of Killick?” I shouted over the roar of the flames.

  “I couldn’t get close enough to tell,” he said. “The whole stage is burning. We need witches to dismantle this before we can move in safely.”

  “On it,” said Agent Bryce. Her arms were wrapped around a steel case from the SUV. It was a ritual-in-a-box—everything we needed to cast another containment circle.

  This was part of life with the Magical Violations Department. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d gotten too close to a deadly spell for comfort. I’d dodged curses that could flay the skin from a man’s bones. Once, I’d even managed to dismantle a spell that was set to blow up half of Los Angeles. The other agents had bought me drinks every week at our favorite bar for weeks after that.

  Going after spells like this never stopped being terrifying. It never got easy.

  It also usually never involved risk of getting barbecued while the whole city watched.

  “We’ll make sure nobody enters or escapes while you work,” Alfredo said. “Good luck.”

  I jammed the Bluetooth earpiece into place. “If you hear horrible screams, it’s probably because we’ve died a fiery death. Bring marshmallows.”

  Agent Bryce laughed weakly. Aniruddha just looked ill.

  We headed inside.

  The theater was one big room, no lobby in the front. As soon as we passed the tiny ticket booth by the entrance, we were in the audience. The padding on the seats was gray with ash, the paint on the walls was peeling, and the whole stage was on fire. It seared my eyes through the sunglasses. Couldn’t look directly at it.

  No wonder Alfredo had looked so dazed. There was no way we’d be able to get any closer to the center of the flames. Not without protective suits. We were witches, not fucking fire salamanders.

  Aniruddha was thinking the same thing. He backed away. “We’ve got to cast the containment spell on the sidewalk outside.”

  “While the news choppers film?” I asked. “Are you fucking stupid?”

  “I have something,” Agent Bryce said. “Wait—I can fix this, just give me a second…”

  She set the case down, opened it up, extracted a couple of charms. Calling them “charms” was generous. They were rubber balloons, like the kind you get at birthday parties, inflated to the point of straining.

  Agent Bryce lobbed one at me. It struck the center of my chest and exploded.

  “Hey!”

  Magic gushed out of the balloon, carried by the oils inside. It stunk like amaranth and betony mixed with horse shit—pretty foul.

  But by the time I stopped sneezing into my sleeve, I felt cool. Like I’d jumped into a pool of water fully clothed.

  Bryce threw the second one at Aniruddha, then used the third on herself. “They’re protective charms,” she explained. “I picked them up from the supply room before we left. It won’t keep us from catching fire, but it should make it easier to approach the flames.”

  She was a beautiful genius. I would have kissed her if she hadn’t looked like my ex-girlfriend’s stepmother.

  The charms hadn’t just cooled me down a few degrees. It had altered my vision, dimming the room to a comfortable level.

  Now I could see the statue at the center of the flames. The ugly bronzing had been stripped from the statue, exposing its stone innards. It was shaped like a crouching fat man with a hanging belly. Horns erupted from his hair and curved around his jowls.

  The horns weren’t his only prominent feature, though. He was hung like a sperm whale. Must have been an idol for a specific god. A god who was insecure about his manliness.

  I’d have to show pictures to Suzy if I survived the theater. She’d get a good laugh out of it.

  I jumped over the railing alongside the seats and landed in front of the stage.

  Agent Bryce tossed the spell box down to me, then took the long way down, winding through the seats to reach the floor. By the time she and Aniruddha reached me, I’d already placed the first of the crystals in a crescent on the floor below the stage.

  We’d have to get up on stage, behind the fire, in order to complete the circle.

  “Thumb wrestle?” I suggested to Aniruddha.

  “I’m not going back there.” Despite the charm, he was swimming in his own sweat. I didn’t think it was just the heat. Aniruddha had worked up a nervous sweat. Could definitely see why Suzy would find that attractive.

  I wasn’t going to make Agent Bryce get up on the stage.

  That left me.

  Tucking the other crystals under my arm, I climbed up the stairs, sticking to the edge of the wings.

  My Bluetooth headset crackled when I got close to the fire. The magic was too strong for me to get a signal and kept me from talking to the Union.

  It was interfering with my ability to breathe, too. Had to finish the circle and get out before my unfortunate allergy got too bad.

  The first position for the crystals I carried was easy to reach. I placed a crystal and candle at four o’clock and moved on.

  The second position was harder. I had to get all the way behind the flames.

  I edged along the wings, staying as far from the fire as possible. The position gave me a really good view of the hole in the roof. It was kind of pretty, looking up at that. The fire was white-blue at the center, touched with orange around the edges. With the way it moved, it looked like something organic.

  “Stop right there, Agent Hawke.”

  The voice came from behind me.

  Shit.

  I’d let myself get distracted and hadn’t even searched the wings.

  Lifting my hands, I turned slowly to see Jeremiah Killick—formerly known as Gareth Milbourne—aiming a gun at me.

  He was in pretty rough shape. His pinstriped suit was drenched in blood and ash. He’d obviously visited the scene of the last sacrifice before heading this way.

  But he wasn’t working alone. Two other witches emerged from the darkness behind him. One of them was part of Lenox’s attack witch team—an older woman who was still wearing the bells that marked her as a member of the Half Moon Bay Coven.

  The other witch was the red-haired guy named Murray, the one who worked for Domingo. He’d probably done the most recent sacrifices. He was still holding a knife covered in drying blood.

  Killick extended out a hand toward me. “I’ll take that crystal!”

  And give up our only chance to contain the fire? Not a chance in hell.

  I edged away from the wings, trying to place myself so I could signal to Agent Bryce.

  Killick shot the stage between my feet. The crack of the gunshot was loud, but not so loud anyone would be able to hear it over the fire.

  “Don’t move!” he yelled, aiming the gun at my face again.

  I froze.

  Murray took the crystal from my hands, and I let him.

  “Trigger it, Linda!” Killick barked.

  The older woman opened her hands to the fire. She spoke a quick mantra, a few short words that I couldn’t hear over the flames.

  The pillar twisted, spiraled, narrowed.

  All those different columns shrank and withdrew into the theater. Killick grabbed me by the collar and dragged me away from the fire so that they wouldn’t touch me.

  One by one, the pillars folded inward, forming arcing lines that reminded me of a rose. A deadly, flaming rose of death. Once the points touched at the center, a single pillar exploded from the statue—this time aiming straight down into the stage. It punched through the wood and into the basement.

  “What’s it doing?” I asked.

  “It’s searching for blood,” Killick shouted over the roaring of the flames as they swirled. The fire was getting louder as the spell advanced. “Five deaths to find the book!”

  I had to yell back at him to even hear myself. “What book?”

  “You should know, Agent Hawke! It’s your blood!”

  Killick sounded insane.

  Any spell that invo
lved my blood couldn’t be good, though.

  The pillar of flame melted the earth below the basement into a hot slurry. It was widening, turning half the theater into a crater.

  Inside all of that fire, the statue’s eyes opened.

  I know that sounds fucking crazy. I doubted my sanity when I saw it, and I was the one looking at the goddamn thing. Stone doesn’t move. It doesn’t peel its eyelids open, turn its head, and focus on one of the witches desperately attempting to contain it.

  But that’s what it looked like to me.

  Since I was already taking a fast trip down crazy lane, it wasn’t that much more of a stretch to think that the statue recognized me. I felt like I recognized it, too. We were separated by petals of fire, yet connected at our cores, and it electrified my whole body to see it.

  Something about that statue spoke to a power dormant inside of me, evoking a kind of magic I’d never felt before.

  Then the fire stopped moving.

  The column of flames wasn’t dancing anymore, wasn’t growing or melting or anything else. The roar had gone silent. It was frozen like a photograph.

  The gaping crater underneath the statue was bright and wide open, waiting for Killick to act.

  The high priest nudged me. “Go to the statue.”

  It wasn’t like I could argue with him at gunpoint.

  I walked up to the edge of the newly formed crater. It was hot, almost too hot, even with Bryce’s charm protecting me.

  The magical fire connected the belly of the well-endowed statue to a point in the earth fifty feet under the theater’s basement. It seemed small now that I was looking at it from above.

  “Agent Hawke!”

  That was Aniruddha’s voice.

  I could see the other agents around the edge of the fire now that it had stopped moving. In front of the stage, Aniruddha and Agent Bryce had set up an altar using the spell-in-a-box case. Magic haloed both of them in white light.

  They would have been ready to close the containment circle…if Murray hadn’t taken the final crystal from me.

  Killick lifted the gun enough that they’d be able to see it. “If you move, I’ll kill him!”