Missing, Suspected Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective

by Rachel Graves

  “Did you ever feel like some part of you was missing? Like a connection was lost?” The situations weren’t the same, but here was LaRue, abandoned by his Mom, and there was Ted, emotionally abandoned by his Mom. Maybe I could get some insight on how to help.

  “Where does all this come from, dear Elisabeth?” His hand caught my hair, fingertips playing on my cheek. He was curious, not angry.

  I hesitated, trying to decide if I should share the story, then realized I needed all the advice I could get. I gave him the broad strokes, then launched into my questions.

  “I don’t know what to say to Ted, I don’t know how to help him. Do I side against her or with her? If he asks my advice, what do I say? It’s driving me nuts.” In the glow of the lights from the house I searched his face for some answer. His eyes were somber, and a hint of sadness came from him.

  “If I were you, I would kill her. Quickly, without dramatic gestures or pain, but I would be certain of her death.” He turned toward the front door without saying anything else.

  LaRue and Josephine lived in a farmhouse he’d renovated into a French Château. In the driveway, a large fountain looked like Venus rising from the half shell, with Jo starring as Venus. The house and the grounds around it made LaRue look like I imagined he’d been once: a moneyed lord of a palatial estate, a man who decided when a subject was closed. As we walked toward the front door in the moonlight, I suspected he wouldn’t say another word on the topic. But he stopped just before the top step, where one of his boys would open the door for us. He turned toward me and put his hand on my shoulders. The cold of his skin came through the fabric of my shirt, bringing with it a stark concern for me.

  “This woman would kill you in an instant if it served her purpose. She sees her son as a tool to be used to an end. Don’t let the title she wears deceive you, be on your guard.”

  I blinked, not sure how to interpret his worry. “How do you know that?”

  He deliberately removed his skin from mine before he replied. “Because she is a monster, and so am I.”

  Before I could catch him, Samuel, who was on door duty, opened the door. Like always, LaRue never even reached toward the knob. I wouldn’t take his aloofness, not on this. I sprinted up to get in his way. “No. That’s not good enough. I want a better explanation. I demand it.”

  “You demand?” His eyes danced at the idea, his voice teetering on the edge of laughter. Maybe he liked seeing me mad. “It is not so easily explained. One attempt, and then we move on.”

  “Okay, try me.”

  “There are some points that should not be crossed. Once you pass them, you lose your ability to understand the people you left behind. The farther you go away from them, the less you care, the less you worry about the things you once held dear. His mother and I, Marie, Josephine, we have all passed that point. You have not.

  “You have gone here.” He held a hand up and marked a point in the air in front of him. “To the place where killing and death are acceptable. Already you keep yourself separate from the people you love.”

  I swallowed hard, my chest tight. He was right. I loved Mom and Dad but I hadn’t had a deep heart-to-heart with either of them since before I’d killed someone.

  “It is the same with us, only we have passed here.” He moved his hand farther to the right, away from the figurative point where I’d been. “And gone on to here, past killing to where feeding off another, turning them into meaningless things to satisfy your desires is an everyday occurrence.”

  “And everyone who passes that point is evil? Irredeemably evil?”

  He nodded.

  “I disagree.”

  That time he did laugh, and while my palm itched to slap him, Josephine showed up and saved him.

  “What’s the joke?” she asked.

  “Elisabeth disagrees,” he said, as if that explained it.

  “Long story,” I told her, letting him enjoy himself. “What are you up to?”

  “On my way out to sing a few sets. If something’s come up, I can cancel.” She cocked her head to the side and looked at me. “You okay?”

  “I will be. There’s just stuff with Ted and his mother, it’s a whole big thing. Go sing. Call me about it tomorrow?”

  “Sure thing.” She gave me a strong hug goodbye. “Don’t let him get to you, okay?”

  “Promise, go break a leg.”

  Of course, LaRue just couldn’t tell her goodbye. He walked her to the town car Calvin had brought around, kissing her goodbye and whispering to her in French. Samuel and I watched in silence.

  When he got back to the steps, LaRue became sober again. “Her light brings me back. It reminds me of who I was before I crossed that point.”

  “I’m glad you two have each other.”

  He said nothing as I followed him through the doorway but stopped at the foot of the stairs. Every time I walked through this door I turned left. Left toward the room designed to match the parlor where Josephine first flirted with him. Left and into the kitchen with its lonely microwave and complete lack of food. Sometimes left and down to the basement where a heavy steel core door protected the bed they slept in and four coffins stood outside. Left, always left, and now LaRue was inviting me upstairs.

  “I don’t want to sound silly but what’s up there?”

  “My office, Josephine’s dressing room.” He turned back so his green eyes smoldered at me. “The bedroom we use when we…entertain.”

  “You have a room for that?” I instantly wished I hadn’t asked.

  “Would you like to see?” He stretched his hand out to me. Once he’d offered me a spot in bed with them, between them. I said no, even though parts of me wanted to say yes. I believed in my ideals. LaRue was beautiful and treacherous, like that snake. He wanted to push my boundaries, so he could never be trusted, no matter how much he fascinated me. I knew all that, yet I took his hand anyway.

  I expected him to lead me upstairs but instead he used the connection to send images into my mind. Body parts sweating in ecstasy, languid movements after he’d climaxed, glimpses of satin sheets and round breasts, bodies moving with heat. My hand wrapped around his, tighter, knowing the memories were getting better. Jo was there, riding a man I vaguely recognized. LaRue made a woman moan with his tongue. But in his mind there was something better, something he wanted to savor. That was the memory my magic raced towards, the one it wanted. His body inside a woman, her face close to his, her climax, and then her throat, rushing up to meet his mouth—

  “Non,” he whispered, dropping my hand. “Not that.”

  “Yeah.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. For LaRue, the best part of sex was the biting. I didn’t want to watch that. Ever. “Probably a bad idea.”

  “I expected you to drop my hand.” His smile was half-impressed and half-surprised.

  “Guess I’m not firing on all cylinders. So your office?”

  He nodded and we went upstairs. Most of the house reminded me of rooms I shared with my first lover in the French countryside. Our unit took an abandoned house for our campground. Sean and I spent blissful hours in rooms with peeling plaster and faded robin’s egg blue walls. LaRue’s office was nothing like that. The feminine elements that pervaded the rest of the place were conspicuously absent. Dark wooden floors almost matched the deep brown leather furniture, and green glass lamp shades offered more dark color. More surprising, the room was awash in knickknacks, souvenirs, things. I let my magic open as my fingertips trailed.

  A set of maps curled half open on a wide mahogany table, their paper surface dry under my fingertips. I smelled seawater as I touched them. When my hand drifted to a magnifying glass next to the maps it got stronger. Salt water and the rocking of a boat came from the hand-drawn pages. In a corner, numbers marked distance and when I concentrated, I could barely get the memory of LaRue making them by candlelight. I drifted to a dark wood shelf, leather-bound books, most of them smaller than my hand in perfect rows. I closed my eyes to see more: each on
e was his, read in a hammock, on a cold winter night, or in the belly of a ship. One of them felt like frustration and anger. Opening my eyes, I saw the spine was cracked and the front cover nearly torn off.

  “This one?” I asked, not looking up.

  “My first.”

  “You learned to read with this book?” I took it off the shelf and gently turned the pages, getting more of the memory. “You were older though, you were…”

  “I was a vampire then, twenty-five and sixty at the same time.”

  “So old.” I put it back and moved on to some stones, a piece of coral. A lady’s fan attached to memories so hot my cheeks burned. I recognized the dark haired woman; someone LaRue had told me he could have loved as much as Jo, someone Jo had killed. I never knew her name but when I looked up to ask I found him staring at me.

  “I’m sorry, Jean-Laurent, I didn’t realize…” I tried, not sure what to say. The look on his face shamed me. Handling these things, even gently, was like handling his naked heart.

  “I have the information.” He pointed to his ledger. I crossed the room keeping my hands to myself, trying to keep my mind closed. Of course, it was never that easy, everything I hadn’t touched: a feather, a pipe, even the green leather blotter on his desk teased with emotions I could read if I only pushed a little. Instead, I concentrated on the wooden desk, the solid oak frame, big enough for three people to work at and yet it fit him perfectly.

  “Thanks.” I took the papers from him but didn’t bother to look at them. I was halfway to the door when his voice stopped me.

  “Elisabeth.” I swallowed hard but didn’t turn around.

  “Are you going to slap me, again? For overstepping my bounds?” I tried to joke about one of our first disastrous meetings but he stood in front of me, his eyes serious.

  “I will never raise my hand to you again,” he said. I thought he might say more, might make some flirtatious quip to lighten the mood. Instead, his hand was coming up to my cheek, ready to pull our bodies closer together. Maybe when he’d been alive friends touched like that, stroked faces, or pressed their foreheads together. But after the memories he’d shared the way he stepped inside my personal space was too much. I stepped back and left without another word. As I ran out, Samuel laughed at me, and I hoped LaRue flayed him for it.

  7

  Riding through the cold night air didn’t stop me from arriving at home still flushed. If it was anyone else, I’d shake off the encounter, but LaRue always threw me off balance. I was two feet inside the door before I remembered Douglas was on cat-sitting duty. On the edge of the couch, gently petting the kitten curled up on his lap, Douglas looked positively domesticated.

  “Tough night?” I asked.

  “Not as bad as yours. What’s got your heart pounding?”

  “LaRue,” I said, as if that covered it.

  “Up to his usual?”

  “Pretty much.” I grabbed a beer from the fridge. “You want a bottle?”

  “I’m good. Besides, if you two were fighting I’d better get back.”

  “We weren’t fighting.” I took a long deep swallow, then followed it with another.

  “Oh, that again?”

  “Yep.”

  “You gonna get over it, or are you still back on that hillside?”

  The hillside…where Douglas and the rest of the squad tried to pull a rouge vampire off me. I remembered the cold skin pressed against my body as I screamed. As always, the memory held so much pain I absently massaged my arm, proving to myself it wasn’t happening again. It had taken me a long time to get over the attack enough to have vampire friends, but I’d never put it together with how I felt when LaRue flirted. Did it only bother me because some part of me saw him as a monster? Or was the real problem that I liked him and his flirting even though he was a monster? LaRue was easily two hundred years old and had been married longer than I’d been alive. If any other old married guy flirted with me and I’d chalk it up to a cute personality quirk. But with LaRue-

  “Still on the hillside,” Douglas decided for me. He shifted slowly, gingerly trying not to disturb the kitten as he got up. Later, I’d probably smile at the memory of Douglas’s large dark-skinned hands oh-so-gently shifting the adorable cat. “LaRue’s not that bad you know.”

  “Really? Because I was pretty sure he had a habit of sleeping with people and then, when he gets bored with them, they tend to end up dead.”

  “Not always. I hear some of them just get broken. Life is like that though. Your guy?”

  “Ted,” I supplied.

  “He could break your heart, too. Vampires don’t have the market on that.”

  “I can’t believe you’re talking me into having an affair with my best friend’s husband.” I shook my head at him.

  “Not what I’m doing. What I’m saying is, you don’t get to say no because he’s a vampire. Say no because he’s her husband, or because you’re in love with someone, or because you don’t like him, not over the vampire thing.”

  “But I still get to say no?”

  “Of course.” Douglas looked at me like he thought I was crazy. “Did you think you didn’t?”

  “Sometimes…” I stopped myself. I should be having this deep conversation about desire and wanting men you shouldn’t with Jo or another woman, not Douglas, who would always see things so differently. “The kitten was cool?”

  “Leo’s a great kid. Tell his mom I said so when you find her.”

  “Leo?”

  “Yeah, the lion.”

  I laughed and wished Douglas a good night. The cat meant I couldn’t tell Jo to come over after she was done singing so I texted instead, telling her we should meet up somewhere, some other time. After a few seconds, I tapped another one to Ted saying almost exactly the same thing.

  I floated between awake and asleep, my body ready to rest but still wound up, my mind not quite sure. The quiet amplified every sound: the kitten’s breathing, the raspy noise of a key going into the lock in the front door. Only one person in town had a key and would use it at this hour of night.

  “It’s me, lover,” Ted said, coming into the room. “I spent some time meditating, got my head on straight.”

  He stood against the doorframe to my bedroom, the light from the kitchen making him a silhouette with dark features. We both meditated, a few times together, though never by design. If I found him trying to quiet his mind, I’d join in. Usually it took me a half an hour to get myself together. I glanced at the glowing bedside clock. Tonight, it’d taken him three hours.

  I pulled back the blankets and patted the bed. He took my invitation, coming into the room and taking off his clothes. He neatly folded each garment and set them on my dresser. His movements might have been more precise and controlled than usual. Maybe. “Any decisions?”

  “Some, I guess.” He slid into the bed next to me. “Not really.”

  “I talked to LaRue about it.”

  “Yeah? What’d he say?”

  “That you should kill your mom.”

  “I never realized how smart he was before.”

  In the darkness I rolled my eyes. “Wouldn’t really solve the problem, would it? Amy would still have to worry.”

  “That’s true,” Ted allowed. “But I’d feel better about helping the rest of them if Mom wasn’t there.”

  “So ignore her. Act like she doesn’t exist.”

  “I wish it was that easy.” He pulled me close to him, my body fitting snugly against his chest. His arms held me tight. “We’ll do breakfast.”

  “Just breakfast?”

  He dropped his head down to quickly kiss my neck. “If she can be civil, breakfast might lead to something. I don’t know what. If she plays games, tries to manipulate me using Amy…”

  “Then we walk out.” I pushed against him, feeling parts of him respond. After a few interested brushes of his body against mine, I moved backwards, ready to close the subject. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” />
  “I don’t intend to.” He reached around to grab my backside. After a gentle squeeze, he released it and began to smoothly stroke my skin. “There are other things I’d like to do.”

  “Really? I can’t even imagine what,” I teased.

  “Let me help you.” The images coming from his mind didn’t have anything to do with his mother. Instead they centered on how my flesh felt beneath his hands and how much he wanted me. I let him know I wanted him back, gliding my hands along the flesh of his back, cupping his backside gently to pull him closer. We moved together, my body meeting his, each movement connecting us, letting our minds echo each other. Our love felt like comfort, the melding of pleasure, hunger, caring and caress. When the passion ended the love stayed, and I held him close, not wanting to let go for a long time.

  I woke up next to a live male body giving off a pleasant hum of lust. A few feet away a spirit gave off wave after wave of anger and bitterness. I sat up to look at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. Only half of his throat remained intact, like something clamped strong jaws on to the front of it and ripped it away. His stomach wore a different style of destruction: shredded into ropy pieces from at least eight blades. A length of gray intestine hung out of him, and his legs were soaked with blood. He had clothes on, a sure sign his body hadn’t been taken to a hospital. After a few minutes of staring, I tried to focus on his eyes.

  “Tell that bitch she’s never going to find him now.” His teeth showed a grin filled with malice

  “Tell who? About who?” The dead were often scattered but rarely this mean.

  “Nala… Nala Renji. Bitch thought she was a badass for taking my job from me. Well, I took something more important from her, and now she can never get it back.” The hate in his voice made my skin cold.

  “What did you take?”

  “Her son.” He nodded in triumph, making fresh blood bubble out of his throat. “And when she came after me she ruined the only way she had to get him back. Not like Hank is going to tell her anything.”