Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series)

by Maria Schneider

  I looked at Lynx. His hearing was good enough to pick up the conversation.

  Lynx shrugged. “I’m on the clock. You want me to pack clothes for the dime or inspect dead bodies, it’s all the same to me.”

  My wardrobe was nothing special, but comparing it to a dead body earned him my best scowl. “Yeah, he’s good. Where is it?”

  White Feather rattled off the address. “Near as we can tell, the robbery occurred at noon. I’ll wait for you here, but hurry. And bring a witching fork. That bubble trick doesn’t work all that well without a focal point.”

  The only good news was that I didn’t have to pack the willow sticks. A quarter of my lab was already in his car.

  Chapter 8

  Lynx took my car, and I drove White Feather’s. The Prius had a GPS. Lynx didn’t need one, because the kid had walked, run and lived just about everywhere in Santa Fe, but he followed me anyway. The GPS led us perilously close to the jewelry store we had left a couple of hours ago to a house near the Santa Fe River Park, off Alameda.

  The location was further than most people would want to walk to visit the plaza, but the park was a long, straight patch of trees running east-west and led there eventually. There were many nearby galleries, churches and eateries reachable on foot. The house in question was adobe, but the older houses in Santa Fe were all adobe. New buildings were required to be, thus only a few houses before the law took effect were made of other materials.

  River Park was dormant now, with packed dirt and bare trees hoping for snow. The brush was all yellows and browns; Mother Earth was quiet, resting.

  White Feather waited on the porch. It was decorated with colorful pots; a ceramic goat, sheep and a dragon. The cement was swept clean, but bits of earth clung to the corners and a light dusting of desert sand weighed on the ceramics.

  Lynx beat me to the landing because I was hunting for willow sticks in the very overstuffed car. There were only five or so left in my stash. Rather than re-use them, I either burned them or buried them securely under sand and stone in my backyard. If White Feather kept finding dead bodies, I’d need to harvest more willow.

  Lynx crouched by the steps, inspecting the area with all his senses. With as many police as had probably been through here, sorting auras and smells wasn’t going to be easy.

  When he finished, I followed.

  White Feather gave my fingers a squeeze. “Work fast. Gordon is pushing the timing to remove the body. Don’t get your aura or fingerprints on the body.”

  “As if I want to touch it,” I muttered, following Lynx through the plain, but heavy wooden door. Lynx hovered just inside, staring and breathing slowly. The place reeked of bodily functions, but this time...I sniffed. “Blood?”

  White Feather indicated the female sprawled on the living room carpet. “This one has the same under-the-skin hemorrhaging, but worse. Blood leaked from her nose and eyes and even her skin hemorrhaged.”

  Tiny blood droplets oozed from her arms as if she had rammed up against the smallest holes on a cheese grater, leaving pricks across her skin. Her mouth gaped opened in a silent scream. Thankfully her badly dyed hair covered most of her face.

  The living room was quite modern with a big screen tv, leather recliners, and a nice fireplace. An incredibly detailed backdrop of the eastern mountains along Santa Fe was painted across one open wall. Anyone watching tv would have the illusion that the Sangre de Cristo mountains were hovering outside a large picture window.

  The only glaring clutter in the room was the body.

  Lynx floated across the room, careful where he put his feet. “She was leaking stuff from the door on in. Probably dead before she was dragged inside.” He leaned over, edged closer, and then finally crouched down.

  I got busy with the witching fork.

  Lynx said, “Same smell as the other place. Stronger. It smells like a ballpoint pen, you know, when you bust one open. Or paint, but not that exactly.” He finally crouched and pointed to her arm. “It’s really strong here.” Her arm was bright red from burst capillaries all down her forearm. Pricks of blood oozed through the skin across the lower part of her arm and hand. The pink on the back of her hand formed a pattern of bloody fingers reaching across the tops of each of her own fingers.

  I rolled the willow fork through the air above the pattern, returned to the entryway and started the hunt.

  Lynx and White Feather paced me as I worked my way through the house. White Feather had the bubble spell ready. We didn’t pick up any extra twitching until we were in the back of the house in the kitchen.

  Several of the drawers and one window caused the enhanced fork to vibrate.

  White Feather pointed to a crack and a very small triangular piece of glass missing at the base of the window.

  I stared at the hole. “Very small. Like the gap under the door at the jewelry store.”

  “What is it that gets in?” White Feather wondered.

  “And why?” I shook my head. “What was taken?”

  “Money, jewelry. The owners run a new bakery off the plaza, Cloud Puff or something like that. The couple usually deposits the money from each day directly in the bank, but Sunday the banks are closed so they bring it here and put it in a safe.”

  “Sweet Puffs? I ate there this morning! It’s right near Mat’s place.”

  “That’s the place. The safe was accessed as though the perps had the combination. On Monday the bakery closes at three. Either the husband or wife comes home, retrieves the weekend money and then both days are banked. Apparently someone caught on to the routine. Whoever it was counted on them being busy at work through lunchtime. The bakery has only been open for about a month.”

  His phone rang, interrupting the conversation.

  Lynx and I continued scanning the place. There was the faintest of twinges near the back door, but I couldn’t be certain. “Lynx, give this spot a once over, would you? I want to recheck the living room.”

  White Feather snapped his phone shut. “They’ve got a name for the body. Donna Alderno was reported missing last night. Didn’t return from her jog.”

  “Let me guess. She runs along Santa Fe River Park.”

  He nodded. “She waited tables from seven-thirty until two at Mangiano on Sunday. She left work, changed clothes at home, went jogging and never came back. Twenty-four years old, lived with her parents. Even though she wasn’t missing long enough for the police to do much, the parents filed a missing person’s report.”

  I hovered over the dead girl. “Out to jog and disappears. She ends up dead during a robbery the next day. If the robbery was today, she didn’t need to disappear yesterday. Something doesn’t fit here.” Donna’s hair was shoulder-length and dark brown except for the reddish-purple dye job along the top. She wore loose sweatpants and a short sleeved shirt. “It’s cool out for short sleeves, but maybe not if you’re jogging. Sun is still out at two, three, even four.” Her arm, especially the right one, was flecked with blood. The pattern on her lower arm from where I stood looked almost like... “A snake?” I blinked and it was gone, but the swirls on her upper arm didn’t lose the pattern. The capillaries formed a picture. “A rose on her upper arm? Or a bruise from being hit?”

  White Feather’s phone vibrated again. He glanced at it and then said, “Gordon’s team is on its way back. Time to go. Lynx?”

  Lynx had already appeared on silent feet.

  “Her arm is a mess of bloody marks, but the lower part almost resembles a snake. Only it has an arm and finger looking digits on the end.”

  Lynx snapped his fingers. “Tattoo ink. That’s what the smell is!”

  White Feather had the front door opened. He herded us out, all three of us craning our necks to take a last look. “Tattoo?” I echoed.

  “Yeah, and I think that thing on her lower arm is a lizard, not a snake.”

  Lynx didn’t have tattoos. With his ability to shift back and forth, a tattoo might not even take. I wasn’t dumb enough to ask how he knew so much abo
ut tattoo ink, but I substituted, “Since when do you hang out in tattoo parlors?”

  He headed for my car. “I don’t. But that stuff still smells for days after people get a tat. Stinks.”

  “Is the smell here the same as whatever you smelled in the jewelry gallery?”

  “Could be, but there’s magic all over everything. It’s way stronger here, and there’s fresh blood mixed in, but it’s...like her blood isn’t pure. And she’s dead so the blood smells different anyway. I don’t know what that is. But that ink smell is definitely tat ink. It stinks all along the trail like she walked the whole way bleeding. Thing is, the trail doesn’t smell only human even though it has her smell. Maybe she carried something else and set it down? So it has her smell. But I don’t know what it is. Has an earth smell with stuff mixed in.”

  “Let’s get gone,” White Feather said. “We’ll meet you back at my place—our place.”

  I shoved the bag on the passenger side to the floor and crammed myself in the Prius. White Feather pulled away from the curb, swung around and parked on a side street. “I was planning on watching for Gordon in the rearview mirror, but that isn’t possible with all the stuff you put in here.” He grinned at me. “Is this everything?”

  “Very funny. There’s still a lot of equipment in the lab. Lynx has most of my clothes in my car.”

  White Feather rolled the window down, listening to the breeze. I shifted the bag under my feet off to one side. When an unmarked police car cruised up in front of the house, White Feather pulled away. An ambulance turned the corner as we eased past.

  “I hope we learned something worthwhile,” he muttered.

  “It looks to me like the victims either carried a familiar in or controlled one to do reconnaissance and shut off the alarms. I don’t know what it is though and neither does Lynx.”

  “Somehow I don’t think reporting that to Gordon will help his case very much.”

  “Well, we now know that both victims had tattoos.”

  White Feather sighed and concentrated on his driving.

  Chapter 9

  I was nervous about meeting the rest of White Feather’s family. It was strange to have been introduced to his ancestors before his living relatives, but we’d been too busy keeping ourselves alive and hidden from a rogue wind spirit to engage in normal social niceties. And like moving in with White Feather, I might have been putting it off.

  Because of the latest dead body, we ran late on our promise to arrive at his mother’s house at six. At least Tam had worked magic on my hair with the new style. No amount of fussing with it would improve on it, either.

  White Feather waited impatiently as I sorted through my piles of luggage. It was six o’clock, and the evening was settling in below freezing. I dug out my purple ski jacket. Not that I skied, but I did hike in the winter, and it had been on an awesome sale.

  Heels would dress up my jeans, but it was cold, and while first impressions were important, so was being able to run from danger. Okay, it was unlikely I’d have to run from any bad guys while eating dinner with White Feather and his family. My sneakers with the helium flight spell would definitely be overkill.

  I went with the sneakers anyway because they were comfortable.

  When the piles were pushed back into a semblance of unorganized, but out of the way mess, I stood to find White Feather watching me.

  “You look good,” he said. His eyes traveled across my face.

  Feeling self-conscious, I brushed one of the newly trimmed bangs away from my cheek.

  “I need a dressier coat.” I fussed with the zipper, running it up and down. I didn’t own a dress coat.

  He smiled, his green eyes sparking with mischief. He touched a strand of my hair. “You’re cute. Just the way you are.”

  Did that mean he realized I had a new haircut and approved? Was it important that he noticed? Cute was cute. I smiled. Good enough for me.

  We headed out.

  Like my parents, White Feather’s mother lived in one of the older sections of Santa Fe. The short brown adobe house had an expansive front yard and a Spanish style middle section for gardening. In the old days, the center area might have been used for chickens, but White Feather’s mother kept her chickens in the winter-dormant outer yard. A rolling coop was tucked around the side of the house.

  Since the chickens had snuggled down for the evening, White Feather shut the door and latched it for her.

  I waited while he rolled it around the back.

  The only magic around me was that of family and a very content Mother Earth. This home was a happy little pocket of soil where vegetables had grown and trees waited for spring. The porch was swept clean of cobwebs and dirt, but the concrete steps were cracked, a somewhat obvious add-on or perhaps replacement for older wooden steps.

  White Feather joined me on the porch. “Dad has been gone since Tara was five. Gordon and I keep an eye on things. Mom will be glad to meet you.” His voice was filled with the guilt of a child who remembered his father every time he visited, and knew he could never fill the void.

  I reached for his hand before realizing it would mean we’d end up walking in holding hands. Not that it mattered, but I wanted to make a positive first impression, not look like a clingy girlfriend.

  White Feather ducked his head for a quick kiss.

  My heart and face warmed. Resolutely, I stowed most of my nerves where they belonged, at least until he ushered me into the living room.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. Three people waited off to the side, two of them seated at a long dining room table. The first person that registered was Mat’s boyfriend, Jim. His smug, somewhat sheepish expression grinned at me as though he had just finished laughing—at my expense.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” The familiar golden skin, the handsome face...the resemblance to White Feather was there, although Jim was stockier, and his frank, honest eyes were obviously full of deceit. I grounded automatically, as though under attack. White Feather would have had to be dead magically to have missed the surge as I struggled to find my balance.

  “What’s wrong?” White Feather asked.

  It might not be an outright attack, but as far as I was concerned, the threat was real enough.

  Jim’s smile widened at the shock on my face.

  Tara giggled. She sat next to Jim, not resembling either brother. “Let me guess. My brother used a disguise on you, and you just figured it out.”

  I had no time for her. Tara was a smart-mouthed teen, struggling to train a talent that she should have discovered five or six years earlier. It had taken my mother, myself and a lot of danger to tease it out from behind her attitude problem.

  She smirked. “Don’t feel badly,” she said, obviously hoping I would. “He fools lots of people. Smarter people—”

  White Feather made a noise that was a cross between a growl and a grunt. He floated a breeze across the table that was hard enough to shift a napkin in front of her face.

  Tara stiffened with surprise and her lips locked shut, something she had only recently learned to do, but should have conquered when she was seven years old instead of eighteen.

  “You played your part well,” I snapped. White Feather and I had met when he was operating undercover on a case for his cop brother, Gordon, the idiot sitting at the dinner table. I had never met him, not as Gordon. When I met Jim in Matilda’s shop, he was playing a successful engineer. I hadn’t known he was Gordon because he had completely failed to mention that he was a cop, related to White Feather, or was anyone but a doting boyfriend.

  I had never made the connection. I was willing to bet my best friend hadn’t made the connection either, because she would have mentioned it.

  Gordon, aka Jim, shrugged and gave a quiet, assured laugh. “No harm done.”

  It was bad enough that he had chosen to spring his identity on me in front of a family gathering. Hurting for my friend over his deceit only made me escalate to furious that much faster. Mat didn’t kn
ow he was a cop. If he was using her to gain inside information into the magical underground, she was going to hit him with a spell that might blow up half the plaza.

  He was lucky I wasn’t carrying any spells with firepower. Witches had a hard enough time trusting men; on top of the usual scum who discarded women carelessly, there were groupies, naysayers, and the worst of all, those who “wanted to see what it was like to be with a witch.” From Gordon’s smug attitude, it appeared that he was in a race to lock in a spot on the lowest part of the totem pole.

  White Feather squeezed my fingers, his own tension ratcheting a notch. “Gordon, what are you up to now?” He switched his attention to me. “You haven’t met Gordon yet?”

  I shook my head. “No, I only met Jim. Mat’s boyfriend, the impressive and successful engineer who has been spending a lot of time with her.”

  “We’ve been at enough crime scenes...but I guess we’ve never actually run into him.” Light dawned on White Feather’s face as he sorted through the times I had had the opportunity to meet Gordon face-to-face. But it had never happened, and maybe someone in this room had been actively avoiding it.

  Well, here went positive first impressions. I swallowed my desire to throw a firecracker spell in Gordon’s lap and said, “Twenty-four hours. If you don’t tell her, I will.”

  That wiped the smile off his face. His eyes turned a darker brown, and he sat up straighter. “It’s none of your business.”

  “She’s my best friend. I guarantee you it’s better if you let her down easy because when I tell her, I won’t sugar coat that you aren’t who you’ve been pretending to be.”

  A breeze swirled in the air, a warning from White Feather. I tore my anger away from Gordon, my muscles clenched for a fight. If White Feather sided with his brother, I didn’t even have a home to escape to, not in the middle of vampire hours. But I wasn’t going to stand here and watch some guy smirk his way through dinner at the way he’d put one over on my best friend. I couldn’t blame White Feather for standing by his family, but what about Mat? She was as close to me as family, closer if you considered that my sister Kas and I barely spoke.