by Lori Drake
I caught Trish’s eyes. “See if you can get to her apartment from here. He might still be there.”
“On it,” Trish said and vanished.
I did my best to avoid looking at Mindi while Trish was gone. Looking at her was like a knife to the gut. Maybe it shouldn’t have been. If she was killed by a flesh and blood man, it totally wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help but feel like I’d failed her, either way.
Fortunately, Trish was only gone for a few seconds. The subtle shake of her head gave me her answer—or at least part of it—before she spoke. “He’s not there. Neither is her body, but it’s obviously a crime scene. The cops have come and gone.”
Trish’s somber eyes suggested she’d reached the same conclusion I did. Whatever had happened to Mindi, it had happened last night or the night before—within forty-eight hours of my pronouncing her apartment ghost-free. Hell, I might’ve been one of the last people to see her alive. Sobering thought.
“Shit. I need to call Sam.” I reached for my phone, but the club door opened and Tripwire’s music spilled out onto the sidewalk as a handful of college kids exited the venue. Wincing, I sent Jess a quick text message.
Had to bail early. Work calls. Great show! I’ll catch up with you later.
I walked back to my new ride and slipped behind the wheel before dialing Sam. Chris’s car search had born fruit the previous day, in the form of a 1998 Jeep Wrangler. I have to admit, I kind of liked the Jeep. It was high enough off the ground that I had good visibility and small enough to be extremely maneuverable. The rain pattered against the soft top, keeping the elements at bay. Or, at least the elements I hadn’t brought into the car with me. Thank God for waterproofed leather upholstery.
Sam picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Sam. I’ve got some bad news. Mindi Masterson is dead.”
“I know.”
I paused, frowning. “You do? How?”
“Long story short, a contact at the Seattle PD. Thanks for—wait, how do you know? Is she…?”
“A fucking ghost? Yeah. Why didn’t you tell me, man?”
“You were off the case.”
I could practically hear him shrugging on the other end of the line. I wanted to put my fist through something, but it wouldn’t have done me any good. “A courtesy call would’ve been nice.” The statement came out a little terser than intended.
“Well, now you know. Did you need anything else? I’ve got a house full of out-of-town guests right now.”
I forced myself to take a deep breath and let my head drop back against the headrest. “So, that’s it? She’s dead, so your case is closed?”
Sam was quiet for long enough that I wondered if I’d crossed a line. I might not have minded it if I had. I was spoiling for a fight. The physical ones were so much more satisfying than the metaphysical ones. Then again, Sam could probably bench press a garbage truck with his superhuman strength. Not exactly the sort a slightly-above-average Joe like me ought to be picking fights with.
“If I pursue it, I’ll be interfering with a police investigation. I could end up in jail or get my license revoked. Or both. You should stay out of it, too.”
“I can’t do that, Sam.”
“I figured. But at least give them a chance to figure it out.”
I stabbed the disconnect button with my thumb and tossed the phone onto the dash, then pounded the steering wheel in frustration. A gentle weight on my thigh drew my attention to the passenger seat, where Trish sat. She squeezed my leg and gave me a resigned but knowing look.
“Are we going somewhere?” Mindi piped up from the backseat. I glanced in the rearview mirror and found her sitting there, bracketed by the two ghosts from the club.
Forget what I said about liking the Jeep. I missed my bike already.
Mindi’s front door had been forced open, probably by the cops. It swung open easily at the touch of my hand, and I eyed the splintered doorframe as I passed through. Mindi and Trish crowded in behind me. I closed the door, plunging the room in darkness.
I rooted around in my pockets until I found a tissue and used it to cover my fingers while I fumbled beside the door for a light switch. The light fixture in the dining area was what I ended up flicking on. The warm glow of the faux candlelight was bright enough that I could move across the living room without tripping over anything, and that was all I really needed. Mindi and Trish trailed along behind me. The rest of the entourage had vanished from the backseat in transit. They’d never said a word to me, but I hadn’t initiated conversation either. Between having my hands full with Mindi’s problem and being more than a little weirded out about the unusual behavior of the spirits around me over the last few days, I wasn’t feeling particularly chatty.
I glanced around the room, but nothing seemed out of place until I spotted the blood trail leading from the bathroom to the bedroom, or vice versa.
“Most of the blood is in the bedroom. I think it happened in there,” Trish said, as if reading my mind.
We went into the bedroom, and I once again fumbled to turn on a light. Trish was right; it was definitely the scene of the crime. The bed had been stripped, but the mattress was stained a ruddy brown in splotches and splatters. Blood also splattered the headboard, walls, and carpet. The trail of blood, part droplets and part smears, ended at the bed. I followed the trail back out of the room, stepping carefully, intent on leaving no trace of my passage behind. After all, just because the cops had already processed the scene didn’t mean they wouldn’t be back. If it got out that I’d been here, that’d be bad for me. I found myself hoping that I hadn’t left any trace behind of my overnight stay. The last thing I needed was the SPD barking up my tree.
The blood trail stopped in front of the bathroom sink. The counter was spattered with blood and dusted with fingerprint powder.
“What happened?” Trish asked. “Did he drag her in here for some reason?”
“It looks that way,” I said, scanning the bathroom for any other clues. “Are you getting anything on your end? Any trace of spirit activity?”
“Not spirits, no. Just the echo from what happened.”
I shifted my focus from studying the mirror to studying Trish in the mirror. “Can you tell what happened from the echo?”
She shook her head. “It’s more of a feeling, not something I can see.”
I nodded and went back to looking around the place. “How the hell did he get in?”
The windows were locked tight, and there were no signs of forced entry on them. The apartment boasted no other entrances, aside from the A/C vents, and there was no way a human being could crawl through one of those less-than-one-square-foot holes.
No human. Had it been something… inhuman? If ghosts, werewolves, and witches existed, what else might be lurking out there? I needed backup. Fortunately, I knew just the witch I could count on.
I showed up at Catherine Boyd’s cottage in Wallingford as early as I dared the next morning. It’d been a rough night, full of nightmares I couldn’t remember that left me with an unsettling sense of foreboding. At least I hadn’t woken up to a room full of spirits this morning. They’d left me alone until I set foot outside the house. I suspected I had Trish to thank for that but couldn’t prove it. I’d fled them on foot and then by bike, gradually outdistancing them on my way into town.
Cat’s small house was in an eclectic neighborhood, and it fit right in. It was painted a sunny yellow with dark purple shutters and white gingerbread trim. I parked alongside the detached garage and let myself in the back, as had become my habit. Or at least I tried. The door was locked.
I knocked and, when no answer came after a minute or so, cupped my hands to peer in the window beside the door. Her car was in the driveway, and she was normally up by now. Just when I began to get worried, I glimpsed movement within, and the back door opened a moment later.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
Her bathrobe and mussed grey hair suggested yes, bu
t the elderly woman shook her head and motioned an invitation. I went inside, frowning at the dark and quiet house.
Cat closed and locked the door.
“That’s new.” I nodded in the direction of the door. Something was definitely off. She hadn’t even offered to make tea yet.
“It seemed prudent after…” Pain flickered across her features, and I remembered that the Grants weren’t the only ones grieving the loss of their matriarch. Adelaide had been Cat’s best friend for decades.
Guilt pierced my heart, and I swept her up in a hug. She felt uncharacteristically frail in my arms. “I’m sorry, Cat. I should’ve come by sooner. Instead, I waited until I needed something. I’m such a jerk.”
She hugged me back but pulled away when a cough wracked her slender frame. I released her, and she coughed into the sleeve of her robe.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, once the coughing fit had run its course. “I might be contagious.”
I ushered her toward a chair. The table was still littered with books, crystals, and other magical paraphernalia from our recent joint research project. Okay, so maybe she’d done most of the research and I mostly sat there and let her study my anti-possession tattoo. It’d worked out in the end.
I still had no idea how my tattoo worked. The man that’d done it for me had died shortly after finishing it—unrelated, I swear—and I didn’t know much about magic, myself.
“Take a load off. I’ll make you some tea,” I said, a thorough role reversal of our usual pattern.
I could feel her eyes on me as I moved around the kitchen, filling her candy apple red tea kettle and putting it on the stove.
“What brings you by?” she asked, eventually.
“I thought I’d check in and see how you were doing.”
“Liar.” A laugh chased the word, a laugh that turned into another coughing fit. The rattle in her lungs worried me.
“How long have you had that cough?”
“A couple of days.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“It’s just a cold.”
“Still, at your age…”
“I’m not dying, child.” A hint of steel crept into her voice, and I knew when to back down.
Silence settled between us until the kettle whistled. I spilled hot water into a mug, and the grassy aroma of chamomile wafted up to tickle my nostrils. I brought the mug to the table, then fetched honey and a spoon.
“Do you want lemon too?” I asked.
“No, thank you. Now, why are you really here?”
I sank into a chair and raked my fingers through my hair. “There’s no fooling you, is there?”
She snorted softly and squeezed honey into her tea. “Rarely.”
I told her about Mindi’s situation, watching as her expression shifted from curious to troubled.
“That poor girl. Is she here now?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her since last night.”
“And you think the killer may be a practitioner?”
“Maybe. Frankly, I’m not sure who—or what—he is. Or if he’s a he. I’m just assuming, based on the whole stalker thing. Please tell me there are no vapor shifters that can travel through air vents.”
She laughed, which set her to coughing again. “No, not as far as I know. That’s not to say there aren’t other types of shifters out there, but the only ones I know of are strictly mammals. And while a rat shifter might be able to crawl through a ventilation duct, he wouldn’t be able to get out without leaving some sort of trace.”
Still caught up on “rat shifter,” I blinked. “How does that even work? I mean, a man to a rat… that’s a lot of lost body mass.”
“You’ve seen a lycanthrope transform, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
“What happens?”
“I dunno. It’s fast. They drop down on all fours and it gets a bit blurry…” I waved a hand. “Then they’re a wolf.
She blew into her tea and took a sip, then nodded. “Shifters are magical creatures. Magic is in their blood, and their transformations are magical rather than physical.”
“So, they’re witches?” I asked, struggling to comprehend what she was saying.
“No. Well, not all of them. That’s another matter entirely. Many go through their lives not fully understanding why they can shift between man and animal. It’s something they were born with, as natural to them as breathing.”
“Huh. Okay.” I rubbed my stubbly jaw and looked up at the ceiling, studying the swirls of white plaster while my thoughts were elsewhere. “So, it’s probably not a shifter unless they’re also a magic user.”
“If you want to know definitively if magic is involved, you need a witch trained in residue reading.”
I snapped to attention, eyes lowering from the ceiling. Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you know one who might be willing to help?”
“You’re looking at one.”
I frowned. “No offense, Cat, but you’re not in any condition for action. Do you know someone else?”
“Possibly. I’ll have to make a few calls. Be a dear and fetch my purse from the counter, would you?”
Half an hour later, I left Cat tucked under a blanket on the couch and departed her home with a phone number scribbled in her elegant script. I dialed the number on my way across the yard.
“Hello?” The voice on the other end was young and feminine.
“May I speak to Amber, please?”
“This is she.”
“Hi, Amber. I’m Dean Torres, a friend of Cat—er, Catherine Boyd. She said you might be able to help me with a problem.”
8
I arrived at the small neighborhood coffee shop in Ballard with only a few minutes to spare. Stepping inside was like walking through a wall of smells. The pungent aroma of freshly ground coffee tickled my nostrils as well as my taste buds. I do like a good cup of java. I bellied up to the counter and waited in line behind a woman who was in the middle of ordering one of the most complicated drinks I’ve ever heard of. Upside down? What does that even mean where coffee is concerned? When my turn came, the harried barista looked relieved that all I wanted was a latte.
I wandered over to wait at the other end of the counter and offered a polite smile to the woman who’d ordered ahead of me. She was dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and pushed her honey-brown hair over her shoulder with one hand as she returned the smile. The motion drew attention to the leather gloves she wore, hugging her slender digits like a second skin.
We both went back to minding our own business until the barista called, “Amber!”
She stepped forward to collect her drink, and I caught her eyes again when she turned. “Amber, is it? I’m Dean.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened, and she flashed me a sheepish smile. “Sorry, I guess we should’ve worked out how we’d know one another, eh?”
“That would’ve been smart. Why don’t you grab a table and I’ll join you in a minute?”
She nodded and headed off to do so. I studied her thoughtfully as she moved away. She wasn’t what I’d expected. Younger, for one. I hoped she had the chops to pull off what I needed, but Cat wouldn’t have referred me to her if she didn’t. Right?
I settled across the tiny round table from her once I had my drink. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice.”
“It’s no trouble. My work hours are pretty flexible.” She smiled.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a marketing consultant. You?”
I leaned back in my chair, briefly debating how to go about this and deciding the direct route was the best. “I’m a medium.”
She took it in stride. “Oh? How’d you get into that?”
There I was, expecting my revelation to throw her off, but she merely turned it around on me. I blinked, then chuckled. “It kind of got into me. Long story.”
Amber nodded. “What is it you need help with? I don’t have any kind of
affinity for spirits.” She toyed with her paper cup, and I noticed she still hadn’t taken off her gloves.
“It’s not spirits I need help with. It’s magic. I’m investigating the murder of a local woman. I think magic may have been involved in her death.”
“Was she a witch? No… I would’ve heard of it if she had been. If you think a witch was involved, you should alert the High Priest.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know if magic is involved. All I know is that she thought she was being stalked, but there’s no trace of how anyone had been getting into her apartment at night, or how the killer entered or exited. The cops had to break the door in because it was bolted from the inside.”
She grimaced and looked away, sipping her coffee. “That’s awful.”
“It is. She was the victim of a horrific crime. Now her spirit is stuck, lacking the closure she needs to cross over, and I’m a bit out of my element. Can you help me, Amber?”
“No.”
Her reply was so prompt, so resolute, that I almost missed the regret in her eyes. I leaned forward in my chair. “Why not? If it’s about money, I can pay you for your time. All you have to do is come with me to the crime scene and work your mojo, tell me if magic was involved.”
She avoided meeting my eyes as she collected her coffee and stood. “I’m sorry, Dean. I just… can’t.”
“Amber, wait—”
I caught her arm as she turned to go, and she jerked away as if my fingers had scalded her through the baggy sweater she wore. Her eyes flashed a warning as she turned back. “Don’t touch me.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. I just— Please, I’m trying to understand. Did I say something wrong?”
Amber closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “No, it’s not you. It’s me. I can’t be involved in something like that. It’s just… it’s just too much. I’m sorry. Good luck.” She fled the coffee shop, sneakers silent on the polished tile.
“Nice to see you haven’t lost your touch,” Trish commented from Amber’s vacated chair.