“Why’s that?” Danny asked, looking closely at the machine.
“We hold small group classes with three or four people. When Christine stopped coming, Rina stopped coming. That left only two people. It’s not surprising or anything; Rina had a thing for Christine but it’s still sad.”
“Sad?” I hoped she’d give me more about Rina and Christine. Most murders were committed by someone the victim knew. My victim had two boyfriends, but they both had alibis. A girlfriend would be a strong suspect.
“Well the other women didn’t do anything wrong and now their class is canceled. I’d call it sad, wouldn’t you? Consistency is the key to any exercise program and here at—”
“You said Rina had a thing for Christine. Could you tell us a little more about that?” Danny broke into her speech. She crossed her arms over her chest, unknowingly putting herself into a defensive posture.
“Oh it’s only gossip, stupid gossip. Rina wasn’t, I mean she didn’t…she didn’t really fit in. Everyone here starts off with two private lessons, more if they don’t understand the equipment. Rina rushed through her privates, desperate to join the Saturday class. I’m sure it was the cost; private lessons cost a bit more than a group class or the timing, but gossip around the studio started, and you know how it is.”
“So Rina and Christine were friends?” I fished for something more in her very polite summary.
“No, not friends.” Her eyes darted around the room, making sure there was no one to hear her. “Rina liked Christine, sort of like a crush. We were all taking bets on how it would end. Christine didn’t suffer fools. Everyone expected there to be a big fight but…”
She stopped, moving her hand to her mouth as if she had an itch on her upper lip. I’d seen it before; Ximena was either about to lie or tell us something she wasn’t comfortable with at all.
“We have private changing rooms but a shared jacuzzi. I found the two of them in there once. It’s clothing optional so I can’t be positive something was going on but the way it looked…”
“You think they were lovers?”
“No.” She shook her head empathic. “I think Rina wanted them to be and Christine didn’t say no that time. She apologized to me later, said she let Rina’s compliments go to her head and she should have known better. She made it sound like Rina said things or you know, offered a lot but things never happened before that day and they wouldn’t happen again.”
“Christine wasn’t into women?” I asked.
“Oh I wouldn’t say that.” Her hand practically covered her mouth completely now. Whatever came next she really didn’t want to say. “It’s…Christine already had a boyfriend…and…well, I mean…she never said anything but…I got the impression starting something with Rina would be trouble for her, a hassle, even if it was a little fun.”
“A little fun?” Danny asked casually.
“If you saw the two of them kissing…yeah, fun.” Ximena turned away, then looked back at me starting the sales speech again. “Have you ever considered working out?”
****
“Possibilities,” I said, as we got our lunch back at the squad room. “Boyfriend one, the one who could be part of organized crime, finds out about boyfriend two and kills her.”
“Or has her killed,” Danny said.
“Possibility two: Boyfriend two finds out about boyfriend one, goes nuts, kills her by mistake. Possibility three: would-be girlfriend gets angry and kills her in a fit of rage.”
“And don’t forget option four: none of them matter, and she was the victim of random violence.”
“I don’t like that option.”
“Neither do I. It’s the hardest to solve, but it’s out there, so we have to consider it.”
“Fine,” I groused. “The FBI files stop after her Pilates class, so we’re on our own after twelve-thirty that day. We can see if she went to the usual places or we can backtrack and see if there’s something in the FBI report we missed.”
I knew which chore I wanted; going back over old ground didn’t appeal to me at all. Giving Danny a choice was a way to be polite.
“I’ll call the restaurant she usually had lunch at and see if anyone remembers anything from that day. You talk to our friendly FBI agent.”
I stifled a groan. In the future I wouldn’t be so polite.
****
I checked the clock and called Mark. Even if his date went extraordinarily well he should be up and moving around in his basement bedroom. I half hoped a woman would answer the phone but it was just him, my thoughts of romance dying an early death.
“You awake yet?” I said instead of hello. If the only way to make this task any better was to taunt Mark, I was willing to do that.
“I’m talking, aren’t I?” he growled.
“Oh good, so what does UWF mean?”
“Unidentified white female.” He sighed loudly in my ear, clearly feeling put upon.
“And the notation that she stopped en route, how much time does that imply?” Christine stopped “en route” for gas that morning. In my head she’d run into someone long enough to make a connection, the kind of connection that got a woman killed.
“En route means she didn’t get out of the car, like going through a drive through.”
“Or having someone pump your gas for you,” I groused. So much for chance encounters at the gas station saving the day.
“Anything else?”
“Why did they stop at twelve thirty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess for me, please?” Sure, I was being annoying, but annoying Mark was fun.
“I’ll bet there’s only two teams assigned to the senator. They followed her in case she was dropping something off for him or meeting someone about him or whatever. When the primary target starts moving though, they’re needed back on him.”
“Primary target? Like in a spy movie?”
“Did you call for anything specific or can I go back to sleep?”
“You know it’s after one; you should be awake and seizing the day,” I pointed out. “I’ll bet you have plenty of work catch up on after you stayed out all night.”
“I—” he started but then he stopped and I knew I’d hit pay dirt.
“You didn’t stay out all night? You took her home right away? Now aren’t you glad I forced you to buy furniture?”
“No, that’s not it—”
“Crash and burn, bad date? Too bad Phoebe’s seeing someone new. You two were cute together.”
“The date went fine, okay not fine but good enough, and Phoebe and I are still friends, which is all we ever were—”
I interrupted him with a snort. Phoebe told me some of the juicier details of her time with Mark. If that was what it meant to be friends I couldn’t fathom what it took to get you to dating.
“Do you need anything more about the file?” he asked, exasperated.
A grin spread out over my face. I didn’t usually get the best of Mark. “Not really, there’s a woman at her gym that might be a suspect, but it’s pretty thin. If your file had someone else we’d follow up on that.”
“Look in the back, attached to the folder; if they knew someone or described someone there’s an index in the back.”
I grabbed at the folder on my desk, sending at least half a dozen other folders flying. I knew Mark could hear the noise but he didn’t call me on it.
“Hey, you know something Abby said last night might help—”
“Who’s Abby?” I interrupted, trying to balance the phone in the crook of my ear while I squatted pulling in papers from everywhere.
“My date, from last night.”
“Abby? Sounds a bit young for you, don’t you think?”
“You’re all young for me,” he said, dryly. “She said sometimes women like to take risks, to feel danger. Maybe that’s what your victim did. She took a little risk and it turned out bad.”
“Maybe.” I leaned back on my heels, my fingertips hitting the edge
of a folder. I got it only to watch everything inside fall out onto the floor. “But she wanted me to stop someone and that feels like more than a quick fling.”
“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “But maybe what she wanted you to do has nothing to do with her death.”
“Can you look into the other surveillance reports for me? See if there’s anything else there? A nice easy-to-track drug habit, gang membership, anything.”
“I’ll check but I think you’re on your own with this one. Have fun.”
I thanked him for his help with as much sarcasm as I could muster and went back to my stack of papers. Danny was still on the phone with the restaurant so I didn’t have to admit the report held an entire page of descriptions I hadn’t seen.
I cursed Reilly, Raya, and everything else in my personal life for distracting me while I sifted through forms. Teasing Mark over his date was one thing, childish and silly, but it didn’t take away my concentration. I sighed, looking at the autopsy report in front of me, suddenly realizing something else I’d missed.
“Trevor,” I whispered, reading the sentence “cellular dehydration inconsistent with cause of death: drowning.” What he said at the party, about how witches killed people came back to me, choking on their own water, their own fluid? It was something like that.
I called E at work, then texted her. Danny got off the phone and I tried to explain it to him but didn’t have much success. The comment bugged me, it was important. If Christine had been killed by a witch we’d have a much better chance of finding her killer. If. It was a pretty big if.
“Mohahan didn’t call it a witch,” Danny said. “And he would have, he’s done that before.”
“I know, but what if he’d never seen this kind of death? What if this isn’t something most witches do, only witches who are fighting a war or—” The phone rang interrupting me but before I answered Danny looked at me.
“There aren’t any wars going on.”
I nodded to tell him I knew and then turned my attention to the phone.
“Mal, what’s the emergency?” E sounded brusque, like I’d caught her in the middle of something.
“I need to get in touch with Trevor about a case. Do you have his number?”
“Yeah, hold on, let me play with my cell phone.” The line went quiet and then there was a series of beeps. I could hear E cursing in the background. Finally, she came back on, read me the first three numbers, paused checking the phone, and read the next three, another pause and I had the whole number.
I thanked her and she didn’t ask for any other details, just told me I was welcome and said goodbye. Sure, she was a fire marshal now but that military structure hadn’t left her. How many other witches were out there right now who had the same training, the same experiences? Really, I swallowed hard at the thought, how many were out there with the same ability to kill with a thought?
I got Trevor on the third ring. It took him a second to recognize me but when he did I could tell he smiled.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you again.”
“I need your help on a case. Any chance you’re by a computer?”
He laughed. “The broken-down-old-soldiers home doesn’t have one, at least one for residents if you catch my drift.”
“We have…a…one of those?” I gulped.
“No, baby, I’m back in DC at good old Walter Reed. I was only down for the party. So maybe there’s a computer here but I can’t use it.”
“Right, okay I’m going to read something to you. Can you tell me what it sounds like?”
“I can try,” he said, eagerly.
“It’s an autopsy report.”
“What kind of death?”
“Murder.”
“Oh good, those are the best kind.”
“Right, sure they are.” I took a deep breath and started reading. He stopped me after the second sentence.
“Water elemental.”
“What’s that?” I asked completely clueless.
“A guardian of the water, a spirit that protects waterways and rivers. Maybe a naiad, or I guess the water is salty enough there it could’ve been an oceanid.”
“That’s it? Those are my only options?”
“Nope, those are the ones that come to mind. Could’ve been a fosse-grim or a nixie but those are pretty rare.”
More than rare, I’d never heard of them. “What about a water witch?”
“Oh sure, yeah, Daniel could do that if you got him mad enough. If your victim made Dani mad enough any water witch could do it.”
I thought about what Christine had done with the samples. Would that be enough to make the water goddess angry?
“Hey wait, it wasn’t him, right? Daniel’s not a suspect, is he?”
“I hope not.”
****
I got Danny on the phone with Trevor, who agreed to let Dr. Mohahan call him about the results. We really didn’t need the coroner to proclaim it a death by witchcraft to move forward but it would help when things got to court. We had the two of them talking, Trevor clearly more excited than the good doctor, and then started making calls. The afternoon slipped by and our big break started to feel like a big bust. No one, not in Christine’s family, not among her coworkers, or even her boyfriends, was a water witch. None of them were witches of any kind.
We closed the day sure we’d start tomorrow by knocking on the doors of all the supernatural hangouts in town looking for the other possibilities, nixies and naiads, a whole list of obscure mythological and supernatural creatures. I hoped I’d have time to read up on them tonight in case I met one in the morning.
Chapter 15
I ended up at Jakob’s place. It felt cavernous without him in it. The house and I were still strangers trying to get to know each other and I took tentative steps as I walked the back hallways toward the library. Jakob’s library stacked books in sweeping circular rows from the floor to the high ceiling.
Tucked farther back, there was no natural light here, only safe fluorescents that wouldn’t harm antique bindings. A humidity and temperature control on the wall read seventy-four degrees and fifty-five percent, overkill for the new stuff, but the perfect conditions for all the old volumes.
The books were organized by a system I’d never seen in any other library. Topics seemed to be grouped together, but with no markings on the binding I couldn’t be sure. After a few minutes of searching, I realized the room had been organized decades ago when Jakob was raising Ronnie.
Books on magic, sex, and violence were all on high shelves, while adventures, philosophy, and religion sat within the reach of a ten-year-old boy. Triumphant in my knowledge, I climbed the small ladder and started grabbing volumes. Back on the ground I snuggled into one of the leather library chairs that smelled enough like Jakob’s cologne to make me smile and read.
By eleven I considered myself if not an expert, at least more informed than most people about the ways of water spirits. I rattled off facts in my head as I fell asleep. Naiads died when the body of water they protected dried up. Fosse-Grim were similar; take them away from their water and they became maudlin, stopped making music, and eventually could die. Nixies seemed toughest of all. Nothing in the books mentioned them dying. The authors concentrated on how they could shapeshift in an effort to lure people to drown. I shivered, tucked myself into Jakob’s bed a little farther, and hoped he’d get home soon.
I was dreaming again, this time a calm dream, a dream of the ocean waves under the full moon, pleasant, peaceful, warm. Warm? Why was the beach at night warm? I turned around and saw it: fire light. Firelight everywhere, the beach ended in woods that were ablaze. Closer to me there was a campfire and next to it, Reilly, the guy who interrupted my coffee at Sunshine’s.
“Where are we?” I asked, sure this wasn’t really a dream.
“California.”
“Pretty far from Baton Rouge. How’d we get here?”
“Anywhere there’s a fire, Raya’s there, which means you can be ther
e too.”
I studied him silently, the way the forest fire lit him from behind and the campfire in the front, like he was speaking for them, like he was part of the fires.
“Wildfires are pretty common here, so you don’t have to feel guilty this one was started for your benefit.” He hesitated, looking into the fire for a second. “Actually, about that, there’s no people for you to take tonight, that’s not something I do. I hope that’s okay.”
“It is. I don’t like doing it.” I sat down next to the fire and realized that was a lie. “I mean, I like the magic, I love the magic, I just don’t love the result.”
“I’m right there with you. I love the way the magic feels inside me, the way it’s so pure. It’s better than sex, it lasts longer than any drug I’ve tried, and it’s natural, a good high…” His voice trailed off as we both thought about the rush. “But I don’t like the idea of hurting people, so the animals in the woods will have to be enough for tonight.”
He said it and suddenly I felt them, not a lot of animals, not a slaughter but enough for the magic to drown out the sound of the waves behind me. I didn’t lose myself in it, but the buzz was there.
“Your eyes are gone, can I?” I didn’t know what he was asking. Before I could find out he was next to me, looking deeply into my eyes, seeing the solid white opal eyes of a death witch, probably for the first time.
“So beautiful,” he whispered. “I can see why She wants you.”
“She’s got prettier people don’t you think?” Anna was a model. I knew how I compared to her.
He laughed, and again I was struck by how real it sounded, how honest. “Maybe prettier, but not as powerful, not as strong, and strength is beauty. You’re unique, Mallory, rare. That makes you all the more wonderful.”
“You sound like Jakob,” I mumbled, distracted by my magic. He hadn’t moved away from me. When I turned toward the death that called me he was even closer. Close enough to kiss.
“Who’s Jakob?”
“My boyfriend.”
“Oh, right, the vampire. He must be awfully cold.”
“Yeah, I guess he is.” I wasn’t really paying attention to our conversation; I was paying attention to his hand which had somehow wrapped around my waist. Dreams were funny that way; things happened too quickly. Like I was suddenly wearing a bikini. When did that happen?
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