Missing, Suspected Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective

by Rachel Graves

  “Ya hav’ta know your place, son.” The man drew up his arm for the blow that would render the boy unconscious.

  “He’s not your son.” The voice was a growl and the vampire behind it grabbed the man’s arm and snapped it off at the elbow. The severed limb fell a few feet in front of Edward. On the edge of consciousness, he focused on the knob of bone and blood taking deep breaths, trying calm himself. The memory was dim at the edges, then grew lighter, getting back into focus as he mastered the pain.

  He turned his head, a thousand muscles screaming at him, bruises scraping the dirt floor, as he watched his stepfather turn into a wolf, skin giving way to fur. Magic poured over flesh drawing his mouth into a snout, lengthening his body, changing the bend of his legs. The vampire stood taller, but his body looked soft, especially next to the large, muscled man-wolf. Edward whimpered, a cry for the inevitable. The wolf turned at the sound and the vampire moved, hand out, reaching for the other man’s belly. But instead of grabbing, his hand went through and inside, ripping open and spilling intestines on the floor. A hot coppery smell filled the room as the two men stood together in a twisted embrace. The wolf bit down at the vampire’s neck and shoulder, teeth ripping into flesh. His claws cut into the vampire’s back, leaving trails of dark blood. The vampire ignored it, biting down hard on sinew and fur, then moved one hand to the wolf’s chest. He thrust into the wolf, and drew out the heart.

  The memory slowed to almost nothing, as the wolf looked down at the still beating organ, stunned. The vampire, still softer, but clearly smarter, held the heart in his hand. And then the wolf crumbled, dead.

  “Edward?” The vampire turned toward us, and our first instinct was to cower, to protect our head from the blow that might be coming. “I’m Sebastian. We talked on the phone?”

  The words sounded so normal, they made Edward relax. He smiled, even though the movement made his face hurt. “You came.”

  “You said I had to.”

  “Is she going to be all right?” Edward’s eyes went back to the girl. I could feel how important it was to him. The memory started to fade, exhaustion and fear taking its toll on the boy’s body.

  “Why don’t you ride to the hospital with her?” the vampire asked. He was coated in blood more than anything else, his clothes reduced to tatters. His neck was scarred, heavy marks circled it like a permanent noose. His stomach and chest stood out, a curve and extra flesh where there should have been hard muscles. But for all that, in Edward’s memory he was a hero. I agreed with him.

  “You’re crying,” he said to me.

  “You should be, too,” I replied, defiant.

  “I stopped crying over that a long time ago.”

  “What brought it back?” I asked, scared that something I had done, some word or some phrase had made him revisit this pain.

  “Nothing important.” He shook his head, and folded me into a tighter embrace. I could tell when people lied without touching them. It was easier with Ted, I knew him, but this time I wasn’t sure. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a lie. “It just comes sometimes.”

  “So that was the Pack?” I asked, referencing the werewolves that kidnapped him when he was nine.

  “He was part of the Pack. My mother’s mate, the one who hit me.” His voice was so matter-of-fact, I cringed. “Mom used to…she used to be there when he hit me…to watch…then tell me why I deserved it, how I’d broken Pack rules or done something wrong during the hunt.”

  “Jesus, you went hunting with them?” I hadn’t meant to sound so shocked.

  “The Pack hunts together, the Pack eats together,” he recited. “You know how people say human flesh tastes like pork? They’re wrong. There’s a reason I don’t eat red meat.”

  We were silent for a long time. Eventually, we started talking about something else, something that didn’t matter, and then after a while, Edward fell back to sleep. I stayed up, watching the darkness, my hand near his gun, making sure a werewolf that had been dead for years didn’t show up again.

  3

  The smell of coffee came to me like sweet ambrosia. Beside me, Ted slept, his face showing no signs of the horror of his dreams. I slipped out of bed and headed toward my first cup.

  The coffee maker eagerly doing its job by the stove technically belonged to me, but it always lived at Ted’s house. In the cabinet with all the coffee mugs, my very extra-large mug waited for me. I never worried the mug or the maker wouldn’t be there, or how I could get them back if something happened. Somehow I’d eased into a relationship, sharing things and space without thinking. The coffee maker appeared on the counter wearing a large red bow, a gift from Ted, clearly mine. The coffee mug I had picked up at a craft fair with my mother but brought back here. Small things, but signs that our relationship was moving forward, deepening. What was the next step? What comes after “you saved my life” and “I’ve seen your worst nightmares”?

  The noisy transformation of water into the perfect morning beverage finished and I filled my cup. After a few minutes, the caffeine and the time, registered in my brain. Almost nine. I needed to wake Ted. He usually got to the Spa first, opening the place. Gina would already be there by now. Maybe she could handle the start of the morning. With the night he’d had he deserved some time off. We could spend the day making vacation plans. Anything to do with the woods was definitely out after what I’d learned last night, but maybe a cruise. My eyes fell on the phone, and the red blinking light indicating messages.

  Remembering the late-night phone call, I hit the speed dial for voicemail. If the message was important enough, I’d wake him. If not, I’d call Gina. I put the phone on speaker while I rummaged in the fridge for breakfast.

  “You have six messages,” the voicemail reported. “First message. Sent yesterday at eleven thirty a.m.” A pause and then I heard a woman’s voice. “Edward? Please call me. It’s important.” She rattled off numbers. I closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it, a carton of eggs in my hand.

  I called my boyfriend Edward in bed. His sole remaining teammate from the OPS, William, called him that. His dad might call him that, maybe. But no one else around town knew that name. He was Ted to them.

  “Sent yesterday at one thirty-eight p.m.” I glanced back at the phone. “Edward, it’s bad here. The Pack needs you. I need you. Please call me.”

  And now I understood why that particular nightmare came up last night. The only question left was who, and the next message answered that.

  “You hav’ta call me, Edward, I’m your mother. I nee—” The word ended in a loud squeal as Edward ripped the phone cord from the wall.

  “I didn’t know you were up.” I swallowed hard at the look of rage and bitterness on his face.

  “Her voice woke me. That phrase, ‘have to,’” he pronounced it slowly and perfectly, with no accent like she had or he’d had in the nightmare. “The way she said it, ‘Edward you have to,’ that was what she would say afterwards. How I had to do this or that.”

  Afterwards, he’d said, like I’d know he meant after he got beaten. I did, but that didn’t make it any better.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” I shook my head, my words not doing the job I needed them to do. “I was going to let you sleep in, tell Gina to cancel your appointments. Should I?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks anyway, but I’ll be fine for work. In fact, I’m going to go work out.” He kissed me on the forehead while I held the egg carton feeling useless. “If you want to do me a favor, you’ll delete her messages.”

  “Happy to. And breakfast?”

  “Sure, in about twenty minutes.”

  He gave me a weak smile and I returned it. As he walked down the hallway, I gulped my coffee down scalding my tongue. After a few more swallows, I went back to the messages. She’d left several but hadn’t given much information. There was trouble with the Pack. They’d moved to San Francisco. He should call. I erased each message, but wrote the number down just in case. She was his mother after a
ll.

  The sound of loudly clinking weights continued while I showered, dressed, and made it back to the kitchen. He was pushing himself, working out the rage. I didn’t want to interrupt him so I went for the fresh foods bin. My mother cooked like the 1950s housewife she wished she was. When I got back from the war I stayed with my parents for a while, and got used to her food again. It was Ted’s kitchen that brought the exoticness of peppers back into my life. He loved spicy food, and the rainbow of colors in the drawer proved it. Mild peppers in yellow and green, warmer ones in red, and then the bright white peppers, the really spicy ones tucked carefully to the side in their own plastic baggie. Other flavorful foods came out: avocados, cilantro, jalapeno, and finally a boring red onion. I chopped them all, preparing the food without a thought for my arm and its fake tissue. Once, in the occupational therapy rooms at Walter Reed, getting the knife to move in a fast uniform way had been impossible for me. Now, I chopped without any trouble.

  I tossed everything but the avocado into the frying pan with butter, and started to crack some eggs.

  “Smells good.”

  “I’m glad you think so, because you get to clean up after me.”

  He grinned back at me and got to work. He was only wearing jeans, and hadn’t bothered to shower. The light dusting of dark hair on his chest was a little damp. On his head, the hair stood up in unruly spikes, the kind that came from running your hand through it. Gina did his color, turning the deep chestnut brown into a golden blond on the ends. The look gave his hair depth, and when it was styled, he looked ultra-trendy. I preferred the look he sported now, smelling like good clean sweat in tight jeans.

  I restrained my more prurient thoughts while he wiped down the counters. He told me once that his need for cleanliness came from living without running water, where being dirty was the only option. Until I shared his nightmare last night, I hadn’t realized how bad it had been.

  “Was that the camp last night? The place with no oil lamps, and no electric?” I asked, seeing if he would even talk about it.

  “No electric, no hot water, no gas for cooking, which means no yummy omelets. Shouldn’t you flip that?”

  “Already did, I’m thinking about how I want to fold the avocado into it.”

  “Hmm, maybe with some sour cream?”

  “Why not?” I got the container from the fridge. A few tablespoons went into the center of the eggs with the avocado slices on top. “Is now a good time to talk about it?”

  “Let me get you the plates, we can talk over breakfast.”

  I plated up the omelet, then he got orange juice while I sat down.

  “Talk,” I commanded, sure breakfast was a distraction. “I thought your mom was dead.”

  “Dead to me,” he said cheerfully. “You make a great omelet.”

  “Thanks, it’s because you stock the fridge so well. She’s not dead?” I deliberately didn’t let him change the subject.

  “Apparently not. She probably called Dad to get my number.”

  “You mean she and your dad still get along?” My mind boggled for a minute at how that relationship could work.

  “Sure. He never stopped loving her. I mean we got kidnapped, he searched for us for three years, waiting and hoping, but then she wouldn’t come home. I did, but not her.”

  “She’d changed though, turned into a werewolf.”

  “Yeah, she was infected after the first day.” Edward chewed his eggs for a second. “That was how they worked. Pick someone they wanted, turn them, make them hunt with the Pack. That way, even if they wanted to leave, they couldn’t. No one would take them back after that. There’s no place else to go.”

  My breakfast stuck in my throat remembering the biting and licking from his nightmare. It had a purpose. “That’s what they were doing to the girl last night.”

  “Her name is Amy, and yes. The more open wounds the easier it is.” He supplied this fact without emotion. “Supposedly if they only make a small bite, you just die you don’t transform.”

  I shivered, hoping I never had to choose between being hurt like Amy had been or dying. I shifted the topic away from the violence. “But your dad would have taken your mom back?”

  “If she came home,” he shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows? But she didn’t. She waited until the FBI finished bringing everyone up on charges. After that she stayed with whoever was left.”

  “And not with you.”

  “Don’t make it sound like I wanted her home.” His voice took on an edge.

  “You know what happened to you wasn’t her fault.”

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrow at me. We were on dangerous ground. “Maybe I didn’t tell the story right. I was nine. We went back-to-school shopping at the mall. There was a boy, Jason, who came up to Mom and told her he needed her help. Now Mom was psychic, really psychic. She needed anti-anxiety drugs to handle grocery shopping, but somehow she missed that he was lying to her. She took us down a long tile corridor, at the back end of the mall, with no one around, and failed to notice the werewolves waiting for us. When they grabbed us, she screamed, but didn’t reach out to anyone, not Dad, not mall security. She didn’t use her gift to get someone to help.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know how?” I couldn’t call to anyone. Spirit witches weren’t exactly like psychics, but I couldn’t even project emotions.

  “Let’s say she didn’t,” he allowed. “What about later? What about after they shoved us in the van? We stopped at gas stations. They let us out to use the bathroom. She couldn’t do anything then? What about every day after that?”

  Apparently, his mom had already been tried and convicted for this crime. There was nothing I could do to get her an appeal. “So she screwed up.”

  “Understatement of the year,” Ted said without any bitterness.

  “But it sounds like she needs you.”

  “People in hell need ice water.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Okay, then.” I’d never been hurt the way he had, never been betrayed by someone who was supposed to love and protect me. Maybe he was right. I wasn’t going to push it. “What have you got going on today?”

  “Not much.” He pushed back from the table, the wooden chair making a scraping noise on the tile floor.

  “Does that mean you have time to talk about vacation plans tonight?”

  He nodded and started doing the dishes. I grabbed a clean towel and got ready to dry.

  “Happy to. What about New Orleans?”

  “It’s an idea, we could do a swamp tour, maybe see some old houses. I wonder what else they have to do?”

  “Why don’t you ask Jo? She’s what, a hundred years old?”

  “Two,” I corrected.

  “I’m sure she’s gone on vacation once or twice.” He stopped cleaning to look up at me. Whatever he said next would be groan-worthy. “Or you could ask Gina about her honeymoon ideas.”

  I groaned and hit him with a dish towel.

  Ted dropped me at my place on his way into work. Before the vacation talk could get serious, I needed to wrap up a case. Upstairs in my bedroom I put on a clean pair of jeans, tossed on my lightest long sleeve shirt in deference to the heat of the California day and checked my gun. A while back Ted replaced my usual bullets with silver ones, just in case. I went to the range at least once a week, but I’d never brought myself to waste them on a target. Instead, I kept practice clips in the gun and the silver ones in the drawer. Today I switched the clips. With the nightmare I’d experienced last night it felt smart. I barely heard a light knock on my door before my sister’s voice filled the apartment.

  “Lizzie, are you up?” she sang.

  “Yeah, come on in.” I holstered the gun because it made her nervous, and went to meet her in the living room. Growing up, all Reggie cared about was softball. These days she went by Gina and never left the house without makeup. We had the same cream-colored skin that would never hold a tan, and when she did
n’t dye it, the same brown-black hair. Today, hers was sporting red-gold highlights, looking glamorous.

  She handed me a cup of coffee. “I’m on a coffee break, so I got you one.”

  I didn’t mention that she hadn’t gotten her own cup, just gratefully took a few greedy sips.

  She flounced on to the couch, a sign that whining would come next. Not too long ago she’d snuck off to marry a movie star in a courthouse ceremony expecting to live a life as amazing as she looked. It hadn’t worked out that way and the already married bride-to-be took it out on the rest of us, pouting and nitpicking about everything. I’d been avoiding the situation and her for a while. It hadn’t helped.

  “You’re never around,” she whined.

  “You’re right. I was just about to head out of town for a case, what’s up? Wedding stuff?”

  “No. I mean, not really, unless you want to help me design the place cards?”

  I shook my head. Place cards weren’t my kind of thing. An ideal wedding in my world took place in someone’s backyard with the barbeque reception immediately following. An event where the bride got to say hey to everyone holding on to a beer. It was the kind of wedding my mother would never go for. She insisted on the church. Also the kind of low-budget reception Gina wanted nothing to do with. Lucky for me that meant they didn’t want my opinion.

  “You could make an effort, you know, try to act like you care,” she scolded me.

  “Nope, sorry, I don’t. As long as Jeremy treats you right, it wouldn’t bother me one little bit if the cocktail napkins are blush or bashful.”

  “Pink and pink? No way. I’m going with purple and opal.” She stopped for a second, her eyes narrowed.

  “What?”

  Her lips pursed together signaling the beginning of a tantrum. “You were supposed to ask me what color opal really is.”

  “Oh, sorry, what color is opal, really?” I did my best not to let the sarcasm come through in my voice but it didn’t work.