Bad Witch: A Snarky Paranormal Detective Story (A Cat McKenzie Novel Book 2)

by Lauren Dawes

  “Her name is Amy Elliot. She’s been practicing in Buxton for the past twenty years.”

  “And if she can’t help us?”

  He pursed his lips into a hard line and inhaled sharply through his nose. “I don’t know.”

  “What about Kailon?” I studied his face, watching it morph from relaxed to enraged in a nanosecond.

  “What about that motherfucker?” he asked through his gritted teeth.

  “I know owing a fae is a no-no, but he’s already asked something of us. Shouldn’t we be able to do the same?”

  “Technically, yes, but I would no sooner trust him than a rabid dog not to bite. But you need to be careful when it comes to the fae, Cat.”

  I slid my legs beneath my body and turned to him. “What’s your beef with him anyway?” Sawyer didn’t say anything for a long minute, so I glanced over at him. “If it’s something that’s going to affect this case, I need to know.”

  “I don’t see why you’d need to know. I can keep my personal shit to myself on a case.”

  My brows rose. “Really? Yeah, I guess that’s what your brawl in Sharyn’s apartment was… you know the one where you let the suspect escape. Yep, that was you keeping your personal shit locked up tight.”

  He rolled his eyes at my sarcasm. “Just drop it, McKenzie.”

  McKenzie? Oh, I’d hit a nerve. Perfect. “Tell me, Sawyer, or are you too chicken shit?”

  He let out a low growl. “I tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. I tell you if you talk to me about what happened at Slayke.”

  I blinked. “Why? We already discussed it at the hospital after I killed Draco,” I hedged. Draco was the vampire who’d killed my father in retribution for destroying his kiss twelve years earlier.

  “No, you blew me off and changed the subject.”

  I frowned. So, yeah, okay, I had done that, but I don’t do feelings and talking about how much I wanted my partner—my incubus partner—to follow up those three a-ma-zing orgasms from the club just wasn’t something I wanted to give airtime.

  Instead of being a grown-up about the whole thing, I told him, “Forgive me if I don’t want to rehash what happened in that club.” The truth of the matter was that I’d wanted more—still wanted more.

  But wanting more would ruin everything Sawyer and I had going on.

  Unwilling to fall down this rabbit hole of a conversation, I hauled myself onto my feet and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I paused, however, when I heard a car alarm go off outside.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Racing to the window, I pressed my nose to the glass and peered down onto the street.

  “Motherfucker!”

  Five

  I ran out of the apartment, chanting three words I never thought I’d have to say again. “Not my truck. Not my truck. Not my fucking new truck.”

  Punching the button on the elevator, Sawyer appeared at my side.

  “What was—”

  “You don’t want to know the answer,” he replied, his jaw tight, his eyes darkening.

  When the elevator arrived with a ding, we stepped into the car and hit the button for the lobby.

  “What’s that doing here?” I muttered, picking up Reaver who was propped up in the corner like it had been waiting for us.

  “At least it showed up,” Sawyer replied. “Keep it with you.”

  The whole ride down, the walls shivered every few seconds, making me hold onto the railing to steady myself.

  The elevator slowed to a stop. The doors opened slowly, revealing a group of panicked people rushing to get in. Shoving our way free, we hurried to the front door of the building, lurching when the floor buckled and bowed.

  “You know, I’m starting to think I’m cursed here,” I said to Sawyer as I gripped the arm he’d thrown out to stop me from falling. At his raised brows, I added, “You know, with buildings falling apart around me.”

  The floor shook again, the reverberations slamming into my joints and making my teeth rattle.

  “Come on.”

  A man raced through the front door then, the look of absolute terror giving me pause. If he was scared, I then knew what I’d seen from the window had been real. I watched him run to the bank of elevators, pressing the call button like his life depended on it.

  Rushing outside, I used the wall for support as another shockwave went through me. The ripples were rhythmic, like those of something heavy walking on a hardwood floor. Sawyer had lowered his center of gravity, his knees bent, riding every aftershock. The sidewalk ahead of me had cracked, each fissure slowly inching apart with each vibration.

  I looked up to find two hairy, three-toed feet the size of city buses in length coming toward me. As I let my gaze drift up, I saw what those feet were connected to and wished we hadn’t bothered coming to investigate.

  At least sixty-five feet in the air above me stood a green-furred creature that would’ve looked like a man if it weren’t for his three-fingered hands. All the other features looked too small for the dimensions of its face—the green eyes piggish and too close together, the nose bulbous. Pointed bat-like ears topped off the ugly ensemble—and then there was its flaccid sex hanging between its legs, its testicles the size of tractor tires.

  Looking over, I saw what few people who were on the street had now gone, all finding safety. Well, bully for them. And with no other police yet on the scene, it looked like it was up to us.

  Holding Reaver out in front of me, I demanded, “Sawyer, what is that?”

  “It’s a gremlin.”

  I blinked at him as my fear morphed into irrational anger. “All my childhood impressions of gremlins is now ruined!” I yelled at him.

  I didn’t know why I was yelling.

  Oh, yes I did.

  It was better than curling into a ball and crying in the corner, which was looking like a more appealing option.

  “I told you they were big.” He took out his phone and hit a number on speed dial. “Yeah, we need backup. Bull gremlin on the loose outside the Astoria Building on 5th.”

  “What can we do?” I glanced up at the windows of the apartments on either side of the street. Frightened faces were pressed against the glass, their curiosity fighting with their fear. “There’s a lot of collateral damage potential here.”

  Sawyer followed my gaze and nodded.

  I turned when the sound of screaming, twisting metal and shattering glass reached me. The gremlin had just stomped its bus-sized, hairy feet down on my brand new truck. “No!” I yelled, my arms outstretched in front of me like that would stop the destruction. “Not my new truck!”

  The gremlin smiled at me revealing yellowing, broken teeth and ground its heel down even harder. I was going to punch the bastard in the balls for that. Spinning, I demanded frantically, “How do we stop him?” I gestured wildly at the gremlin who had scooped up my truck and was holding it in its furry hand, plucking off the wheels as the alarm system slowly died to a squeak.

  “We can’t do anything until we get backup,” he replied calmly.

  I turned back to watch the final shuddering breaths of my new truck, cursing the bastard who crushed it. “Please tell me they’ll bring some awesome weapon to stop it,” I whined.

  “They will,” Sawyer replied. “All we can do now is wait.”

  Wait and watch my truck get eaten because that’s what the fucking gremlin was doing now. Chewing on the bed, metal screeched and groaned between his giant jaws. How in the hell was I supposed to pay for another truck? Insurance barely came to the party with the last accident. Somehow, I didn’t think ‘consumed by a green gremlin’ was going to be a sufficient reason this time.

  “What can we do while we wait for backup?”

  “There’s nothing to do, Cat. This fucker is as tall as a six-story building. I don’t know what you expect to do.”

  Flipping him off mentally, I scanned the street. Why was the big hairy bastard not targeting anyone else’s cars?
“Where did it come from? Maybe we can lure it back there.”

  “Wonderland,” my partner said, and I fought the shiver that tracked up each and every one of my vertebrae. Wonderland was what the humans and other supernatural creatures called the domain of the fae. A weird parallel universe, it mirrored our world—from what I’d accidentally seen anyway—only everything over there could kill you without a second thought.

  I didn’t want to go back there. Technically, I shouldn’t have been able to go in there in the first place, but I was a special cupcake—apparently.

  “Should we at least try to take it in the direction of the docks then?” I’d unwittingly stumbled into Wonderland the last time we were investigating a crime down there. I hadn’t known at the time where I was or who I’d encountered, but it was enough for me to know that I didn’t want a repeat performance.

  Sawyer stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “The entrance to Wonderland isn’t always in the same place. It changes according to the will of the current Sidhe Queen.”

  I held my hands up in front of me, imploring him to stop. I hated how he just kept dropping information on me like that. It was like he was waiting for the moment where there’d be maximum freak-out time, then…

  BOOM!

  Supernatural truth bomb.

  “Why?” I whined. “Why must the supernatural thing always be so freaking hard? And wipe that smirk off your face, Sawyer Taylor, or I’m going to become the roommate from hell.” When he said nothing, I asked, “Do you know where the entrance is now?”“No.”

  “Could it still be down at the docks?”

  He shrugged.

  I turned around when I realized I hadn’t been able to hear the tragic melody of screaming metal on enamel. Really, my observational skills could do with some work because by the way the gremlin was frozen to the spot with its mouth gaping, it had been a while. Its green lips were turning blue, a sure sign that hypoxia was the name of the game. Held weakly in its furred hand was my mangled truck—well, what was left of my mangled truck. Three wheels were gone. The last remaining survivor was worse for wear—hanging off at a cock-eyed angle.

  I scanned the street again, squinting when I saw the shadows move in the alleyway across the road.

  That’s when I saw Kailon Perry emerge.

  “I thought you could do with some help to slow it down,” the fae rumbled in his smooth, glassy voice.

  “We don’t need your help,” Sawyer replied in a dangerous drawl.

  Kailon was unruffled by Sawyer’s hostility. “I think you’re wrong about that.” He was dressed in another suit, this one black on black on black––black suit, black shirt, black tie. His gaze narrowed on Reaver. “That’s a very interesting sword, Cat McKenzie.”

  Instinctively, I moved my arm holding the sword behind my back. “Are you going to kill it?” I asked Kailon, flicking my free hand in the direction of the gremlin.

  “I could if that’s what you wanted.” Such dark promises in his words.

  “Cat,” Sawyer warned. I turned to look at him. “Be careful.”

  “She has nothing to fear from me,” Kailon purred, flicking Sawyer an annoyed glare. “Do you, Cat?”

  Shaking my head because I’d had just about enough of the fae, I snapped, “Cut the shit. Why are you here, Kailon?”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, pretending to be affronted by the question.

  “How did you know to come here now? Why are you helping us? To prove to us you can be useful?”

  “No.”

  “Did you send the gremlin?”

  He gave an ophidian smile. “Why would I set a gremlin loose in downtown Buxton? They’re lumbering idiots who have brains the size of walnuts.”

  “Because you want to make a point.”

  “And that point is?”

  “That you can send anything our way if we don’t catch this witch for you.”

  His brows hiked into his hairline. “It’s a wonder you made it this far in life without trusting people,” he murmured.

  “Oh, I did trust people, but it turned out everything I was told is a lie.” Starting with my parents and birth. Apparently, I was the culmination of two of the strongest bloodlines of Rogue Faction––a clandestine group who hunted supes before the supes had even come out of the closet. And the only person who truly knew anything about me was Mrs. Brown, the elderly woman who had practically raised me when my dad went AWOL after my mother’s death.

  Kailon narrowed his green eyes at me. “I have a penthouse suite a couple of buildings away, Cat. I sensed the gremlin was coming, and I came to see if I could help.”

  Call me stupid, but I believed him. My opal lay quietly against my heart, the fact that it wasn’t reacting giving me all the evidence I needed. If Kailon was manipulating the situation, I had no doubt the opal would’ve lit up like a Christmas tree.

  The gremlin made a sharp, keening noise, and I looked up to find its green eyes on Kailon. He knew the fae had the power to control his air flow.

  “I’d rather you didn’t kill it,” I said. Unnecessary cruelty wasn’t something I delighted in. “But we need to… I don’t know, knock it out so we can remove it from downtown.”

  He stared at me for a beat, stared with an intensity that made me shift on my feet. “I will do this for you if…” I braced myself for the words ‘if you let me kill the witch,’ so color me surprised when he finished with, “… you agree to come out to dinner with me.”

  “McKenzie!” Sawyer barked, drawing my attention. He shook his head, the muscles in his jaw feathering. I frowned. Was he telling me no so I wouldn’t get involved with him, or no because Kailon was dangerous? I already knew he was dangerous, but so was a six-story gremlin on the loose downtown.

  Returning my eyes to Kailon, I had a fleeting thought that I was doing the wrong thing, but then again, what other choice did I have? “Fine,” I bit out. “Dinner only.” I looked up at the gremlin. “Knock him out.”

  The fae sketched a bow and blew in the direction of the gremlin. The creature’s limbs went limp, his nobby knees falling out from under him. When it slammed into the road, its boar-coarse fur sounded like the bristles of a stiff broom hitting a tile floor. The asphalt cracked beneath it, sending the cars that lined the street airborne for a moment before slamming back down to earth.

  I opened my mouth to thank the fae but shut it at the last minute. I didn’t want to be indebted to the bastard. Being held to a date was bad enough.

  An hour later, I—along with about a hundred other people who had come down for the show now that the danger was over—watched three tow trucks haul the unconscious gremlin away, its green fur buffeting the parked cars as it went. They rocked on their tires, the suspension picking up the slack as the giant metal bodies resettled like a bunch of birds ruffling their feathers.

  “Where will they take it?” I asked Sawyer, who stood beside me.

  “Out of the city limits, somewhere like a field where it can wake up slowly.”

  “Will it come back?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Gremlins don’t have large brains, so complex thoughts about terrorizing a city just aren’t in there unless someone put them there.”

  “You think someone sent it here on purpose?”

  “Maybe. Yes.” He finally turned his stormy eyes to me. “I also think that’s why only your truck was targeted.”

  I looked around the street. He was right. None of the other cars had been touched. Their alarms had only been set off on its arrival into the city because it was stomping around.

  I wanted to scream, but I held my frustration back. “Why is it always me?”

  A small smirk formed on his perfect mouth. “You do seem to draw the supes to you.”

  “Argh, don’t be a bag of dicks.” I looked over at my crushed truck. All four tires were now gone thanks to the six-story drop. The tray had been masticated like a pit bull’s chew toy, so it was less than three-quarters of what it used to be, the
hood and roof had been dented into the shape of a gremlin hand and every single window had been shattered. “My truck,” I whimpered.

  Sawyer drew his arm around my shoulders and turned us back to his apartment building. The regular cops had cordoned off the scene and shut down the road in both directions while they worked to remove the gremlin, and the yellow tape was like a beacon for onlookers. Every man and his dog were standing as close to the line as they could get, their phones out either taking photos or recording what had happened.

  We ducked under the tape and pushed through the crowd. All I wanted to do was go to bed. The last couple of days had finally topped off my I-can’t-handle-any-more-shit bucket.

  Back in the apartment, Sawyer announced that he’d make me some tea while I took a shower. Unwilling to argue that I didn’t actually like tea, I shuffled off into the bathroom, depositing Reaver on top of the bureau as I passed through the bedroom. Undressing quickly, I moaned as soon as I set foot under the spray. It was so good, and I needed the hot water to wash everything away. I had just turned around to rinse out the shampoo I’d been rubbing into my hair when I yelped. Sawyer was leaning against the counter, his eyes unreadable.

  I covered myself with my arms and hands, then demanded, “What the hell, Sawyer? I think this goes beyond what partners do together.”

  “I’ve seen you naked before,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Yes, he had seen me naked before––after my numerous trips to the hospital, but most recently last night after passing out from exhaustion. “That was different. I was almost completely incapacitated in every other instance then.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, nor did he move. He just watched me with an intense expression. I felt like he was sliding back into asshole-Sawyer mode like when I’d first met him. I didn’t want him to go back to that. I needed him to be the guy who laughed at my jokes––because, hello, I’m hilarious––but also the guy who backed me the fuck up.

  When he didn’t move or say anything for a good minute, I rinsed out the remaining shampoo. If he wanted to stand there, he could knock himself out, but I was going to get what I needed done. Squirting some conditioner into my hand, I ran it through the tips of my hair then set about washing myself.