“Get out of there,” Luc said. It didn’t sound like a suggestion.
“We need to search the place a bit first, but maybe keep the car running and can you let me know if anyone shows up so I can get out of here, fast?”
“Lapin!”
Curtis hung up.
His phone rang again almost immediately.
Anders.
“Seriously?” Rebekah said.
Curtis answered. “Okay, listen up. We’ve got crap to do, you guys can’t come in here and help, so let us get it done. Now, is someone out there already, or were you just calling because you wanted to show Luc you could get me to leave—which you can’t—and rub it in?”
“Uh,” Anders said.
“Keep watch. Let us know.” Curtis shoved the phone back in his pocket.
“You’re kind of badass,” Rebekah said.
“I get cranky when I’m tired.”
“Okay,” Rebekah said. “We look. What about the needle?”
“Unless Stirling asks you a direct question, I’d skip it. Don’t volunteer anything,” Curtis said. “Just answer questions. And…hey, maybe show some of that compliance you’re so well known for.”
Rebekah laughed. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It puffed in front of her in a small cloud.
Curtis bit his lip. “I’m sorry.”
Rebekah shook her head. “No. You’re right. Let’s get to it. And you’re right, no one needs to know about this thing.” She held up the syringe.
“What do you want to do with it?”
Rebekah scowled. “I want to melt it down into nothing. But I think we need to figure out what the hell it does.”
“Do you have somewhere you can hide it?”
She looked at it for a few seconds. “No. You take it. I’ll call Kenzie later. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get free again, but when I do…Maybe we can figure out what it does.” She held it out to him.
Curtis took the syringe. It felt cold and heavy in his hand. He slid it into his hoodie pocket and looked around the room. All things considered, it wasn’t too badly messed up. He grabbed some of the papers that had blown off Graham’s desk and glanced at them. They weren’t numbered and looked like some sort of accounting spreadsheet or something. He made a neat pile of them on the top of the desk.
Rebekah moved over to the window. She lifted her hands, murmuring under her breath. Shards of glass lifted from the ground, lifting out of the snow, and spun in the air. She drew her hands close to her, lacing her fingers, and Curtis watched in amazement as the tiny pieces of glass flew back into place along the ruined window. The single broken wooden beam straightened itself, though the crack remained. With a burst of heat, the shattered edges of all the pieces of glass glowed a dull orange for a moment. The cold, snowy air stopped. The glass wasn’t perfect, but the window was more or less restored.
“You’re good,” Curtis said.
“I broke a lot of things when I was younger. I learned how to fix stuff.” She turned around, frowning. “You know, he pulled his punches.”
“Pardon?” Curtis said.
“My grandfather. He could have done a lot worse than he did. But he didn’t.”
Curtis thought about it. By his count, he’d been thrown across a room and nearly had his brain scrambled. But apart from what felt like a bruised butt, he supposed she had a point. He remembered the look in Graham’s eyes and how often he’d said he was sorry for what he was going to do. “He didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Too late.” Rebekah looked through the warped glass of the patched window, her lips pursed in a tight line. “Come on. Let’s look for the knife.”
Seventeen
Luc’s hands were tight on the steering wheel, and Curtis hadn’t spoken more than three words since Luc had read him the riot act over closing the door in his face. Anders had spent most of the car ride home trying to decide if he should try to calm Curtis down or yell at him some more. It was pretty much a tie. Running off into the Mitchell house? Idiot move. And he’d been attacked, to boot. And what had he gotten to show for it? Some sort of antique magic syringe, a pissed-off wizard on the run, and no knife.
The whole evening had gone to shit.
Anders’s phone rang just as Luc was pulling into their driveway. He pulled it out and groaned at the caller ID. This was not going to help the evening.
“Who?” Luc said.
Anders swiped the screen and put the phone to his ear. “What’s up, David?”
“We all just got fired,” David said.
“What?” Anders sat up in the seat.
“Malcolm Stirling just called to let me know they’re going to handle tracking down Graham Mitchell, and they thank us for our help in the investigation. He said to ‘pass on my regards to Curtis for a job well done,’ but they’ll let us know if we’re needed again.”
Anders moved the phone away from his mouth and turned to Luc. “He says—”
“I heard.”
“I didn’t,” Curtis said from the backseat.
“Stirling’s going after Mitchell, and we’re fired,” Anders said.
“What?” Curtis leaned forward. “That’s insane. We have no proof he’s the loup-garou. And his package was probably the syringe thing. We didn’t find the knife. We don’t have any idea if Graham Mitchell has it, and—”
Anders held up a finger. David was talking. “—don’t think he really cares. I get the feeling there’s no love lost between Malcolm Stirling and Jonathan Mitchell, and this necromantic knife thing is a big enough offence that Stirling can force Mitchell to retire. He thanks us for our service, but says this is an internal matter for the Families now.”
“An internal matter?” Anders laughed. “You’re shitting me. One of his flunkies kills two demons and a werewolf, and it’s internal?”
“His exact words.” David paused. “Look, as soon as he found out about the knife, he lost it. He wants you guys out of it. Me, too.”
“Well, I’m not sorry to see the door hit his ass, either,” Anders said. “Thanks, I guess. I assume our check is in the mail?”
David grunted, then hung up.
“What did he say?”
“Malcolm Stirling is going to use this incident to force Jonathan Mitchell from his position as coven head,” Luc said.
Curtis sighed. “Crap.”
“Hey, the man’s son tried to wipe your fucking brain,” Anders said.
“I know,” Curtis said. “I know. It’s just…” He shook his head. “Graham Mitchell skinning his own grandson, but going easy on me and Rebekah? Does that make sense to you?”
“No,” Anders said. He undid his seat belt and faced Curtis. “But neither does going into a Family house alone.”
Curtis sighed. “Look, you guys couldn’t get in, and I could.”
“And all you risked was a lobotomy,” Luc said.
Anders nodded. The vampire was right.
“Can we skip the riot act?” Curtis said. “If I hadn’t gone in, we wouldn’t have found out about the syringe, and…”
“And?” Anders said. He could feel Curtis’s uncertainty.
“I don’t think it’s Graham Mitchell,” he said. “You think he had multiple necromantic toys? It doesn’t make sense. He went for the syringe, and we couldn’t find any knife in the house.”
“You only had an hour and a half to look,” Luc said.
“It wasn’t there,” Curtis said. Anders recognized the tone. Curtis wasn’t going to budge. “We are not leaving Rebekah to twist in the wind, guys.”
“Let’s go inside,” Luc said. He shared a glance with Anders when Curtis got out of the car.
“Don’t even say it,” Anders said. “I don’t have any idea how we get him to drop this.”
“Then we don’t,” Luc said.
*
“Are we sure tracking him isn’t an option?” Luc said.
“Which him?” Curtis said. “Graham? Or the whoever the hell has the kni
fe?”
Anders had watched the two work through everything they knew for nearly an hour, Curtis lying on the couch, Anders on the love seat, and Luc leaning against the wall. It hadn’t come to much. Anders had just been about to suggest they break for beer, or whatever frou frou wine Luc had on hand and probably tea for Curtis, but a fucking beer for himself, when Luc had started up on the whole tracking spell thing again.
“The killer,” Luc said.
“I don’t have anything to track him with. We used up all the blood Anders got us, and it seemed to crap out on me. It only followed the werewolf for a bit, then it took us to Duane Faris’s body, remember?” Curtis rubbed his eyes. Exhaustion was coming off the wizard in waves. They needed to let him sleep.
Luc shook his head. “Then I don’t see—”
“His body,” Curtis said, sitting up.
Anders felt the thrum of excitement through their bond.
“In essence, you become them,” Curtis said.
“Pardon?” Luc said.
“Something Professor Mann said. And it makes sense. Oh, I am such an idiot.” Curtis got off the couch and started pacing around the room. “Okay…I need to talk it through.”
“Lapin?”
“The blood. The blood Anders got on his hands led us to Faris’s body.” Curtis pointed at him.
“Yep,” Anders said, because he felt like he needed to reply to a pointed finger.
Curtis grinned. “That’s because whoever used the knife used strips of Faris’s skin to become a werewolf. To become him. So when he’s using Faris’s form, he is Faris, in some ways. Enough for the law of constancy to treat the blood you got as being Faris’s.”
“Okay…” Anders looked at Luc. The vampire shook his head. He didn’t see the win here, either.
“Don’t you get it?” Curtis said. “Kavan’s skin. Our murderer took Kavan’s…demon-ness, or whatever you want to call it. But if I try to find Kavan, and the murderer is using Kavan’s skin at the time…”
“Then your rock points you to the guy in the demon skin-suit.” Anders sat up.
“Yes. I’m willing to bet the only reason my pendant crapped out by Parliament Hill was because the murderer decided to shadow-walk away from Taryne. At that point, he wasn’t using Faris’s body anymore. He was using a demon’s. So the only thing in common with the blood for the law of constancy to connect me with became Faris’s body.”
“There’s a problem,” Luc said.
“What?”
“How do you ensure the murderer will use Kavan’s skin? If what you say is true, and given our experiences, I’m inclined to believe you’re correct, even when the murderer does use demon powers, he has multiple demon skins to choose from. What if he uses Flint’s or Burke’s?”
“Crap.”
“Does it matter?” Anders said.
“It does. I mean, I could try it anyway, but if he uses another demon’s skin specifically? If it’s not some sort of blending of the three demons he’s killed, I don’t think I could pull it off.”
“You don’t think you could pull it off,” Anders said.
“I don’t know. I’m willing to try, but…” He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure it would be good for Kavan. We’d need to be beside him, so I could both anchor the spell and make sure I wasn’t reading him. And I’d be pulling on him, magically. There’s not a lot of him left.”
Luc frowned. “If he dies?”
Curtis shook his head. “It would be the same, only he’d be dead. Maybe this isn’t a great idea.”
“No.” Anders rose. “You’re just not seeing the right angle.”
“What angle?” Curtis said. “I don’t know I can pull this off, and if I do it wrong, Kavan might very well die.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Anders looked at them. Between the vampire talking so much and the wizard being so damn smart, he sometimes forgot that he was the only one who brought certain assets to the building. “It’s time to lie.”
Curtis blinked. “What?”
“Look, we’re pretty sure the Mitchells are involved, here, right?”
“Yes…”
“Lie. Lie through your teeth. Tell them you’ve got it figured out, you’re going to magic up a solution, you’re going to burn Kavan to a crisp in the process because it’s the only way, but it’ll expose the murderer once and for all. Or, hey, go big. Tell them whatever you’re going to do, it’s going to nuke the murderer, too.” Anders snapped his fingers. “They won’t even have to worry, because he’s just going to go up in smoke. Tell the Mitchells that? The Families will fall all over themselves spreading it around. And the killer comes right to us.”
Curtis stared. “Lie,” he said. It sounded like a foreign word when Curtis said it.
“You have pulled off magics the Families hadn’t ever considered before. You’re known for it. It’s part of why they don’t trust you,” Luc said. “It could very well work.”
“It would have to be soon. Like, tomorrow. Full moon the night after, so if we have any hope of fixing this before Graham Mitchell loses his coven status, it’s got to be tomorrow.” Curtis tapped a thumb against his lip. “So much for Valentine’s Day.”
“So we do this,” Anders said.
Curtis smiled at him. “Lie,” he said again.
“Lie.” Luc nodded.
“See?” Anders said. “I have ideas.”
*
Jonathan Mitchell was not a happy man. Everything from his ramrod posture to the thin line of his lips made it clear the old man was not at all okay with being summoned by those he deemed lesser than himself.
Anders figured that was a pretty long list.
The great room was pretty full. Anders supposed these were the Mitchells in all their extended glory.
Glory, in this case, meant some pretty waspy-looking people. Jonathan Mitchell was the oldest by a generation. Graham wasn’t present, of course, and Rebekah had been unsure if her mother would come despite her invitation at Curtis’s request. Three other men and two women in their forties or fifties were also present, as well as a half dozen twenty-somethings, each looking a bit more Children of the Corn than the last.
Who even knew sweater vests were still a thing?
Anders eyed them all. Rebekah had introduced everyone. Their names had gone in one of Anders’s ears and out the other, but he wasn’t sure any of these people looked like the “take down a demon and skin it” type. Jonathan Mitchell, maybe. And okay, so maybe the way Rebekah’s oldest uncle—Jack or John or some other boring J-name—was staring ahead and looking at nothing was a bit suspicious, but…
Anders glanced at Luc. Luc gave him the slightest shake of his head.
Not everyone had come. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe their murderer wouldn’t be here, and this hustle wasn’t going to pay off.
Anders tried not to let his worry show. Kavan waited in the center of the room on a hospital bed that must have been rented for the occasion. He was barely breathing, and at some point, an IV and an oxygen mask had been added. Anders wondered how much time Kavan had left, and he caught Curtis staring at Kavan the same way.
He nodded to the wizard, and Curtis swallowed.
At least they weren’t fighting the wards of the house. The residency protecting Graham Mitchell’s house hadn’t so much as blinked after Rebekah had invited the three of them in. He supposed it meant Jonathan, or maybe Malcolm Stirling, had already seen fit to remove Graham’s name from the deed, or maybe they did some other magic thing to put Rebekah’s name on the metaphysical lease.
“Okay,” Curtis said. All eyes turned to him, and Anders felt a surge of pride when Curtis didn’t so much as blink. “I know Rebekah filled you all in. And I know this is last minute, but if there’s any chance of clearing Graham’s name, it’s best if it happens tonight. Tomorrow, he starts missing the full moon, and…” Curtis shrugged. They all knew what that would mean. If Graham Mitchell wasn’t present when the Mitchells reinforced the bond of th
eir coven, he’d end up on his own. A wizard without a coven was fair game for Malcolm Stirling or anyone else who came along.
“I still don’t see what you’re thinking you can accomplish.” Jonathan Mitchell’s voice was ice.
“When the murderer took Kavan’s skin, he—”
“Or she,” Jonathan Mitchell said.
“It wasn’t my mother,” Rebekah said. “She’d never hurt Kavan.”
“You’d think his very nature would make what she’d allow to happen to him rather clear,” Jonathan said.
Anders looked between Rebekah and Jonathan. So. No love lost there.
“Whoever took the skin,” Curtis said, regaining the focus of everyone in the room. “They’re using it like a loup-garou, only with a demonic effect, rather than to borrow the abilities of a werewolf. That’s the mistake.”
“Mistake,” Jonathan Mitchell said.
Anders noticed no one else was speaking, and everyone was watching Curtis. Even John-Jake-Joe-or-whatever had stopped staring off into nowhere.
“Anything that was once a part of someone remains so,” Curtis said, with a patient voice toeing the line of condescension, but only just. Anders didn’t bother to hide his smirk.
“I’m aware of the law of constancy.” Jonathan Mitchell matched him snark for snark.
“Then I’m surprised you didn’t try to take advantage of the connection,” Curtis said.
More than one of the gathered wizards took a breath. Despite makeup, or Botox, or whatever else these people did to make themselves look so polished and poised, their faces twitched or frowned or scowled. Anders watched them, but if any guilt was on display, it wasn’t showing. Not yet.
“How?” Jonathan said.
“Necromancy steals souls and magic and pretty much everything else,” Curtis said. “But in this case, it didn’t quite work. Not all the way. I’m going to use the connection that still remains between Kavan and his would-be-murderer to blow him to bits.”
Jonathan Mitchell’s eyes widened. “You led my granddaughter to believe you could prove Graham’s innocence and reveal the individual responsible. This is not at all what I had in mind when I allowed this evening to move forward.”
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