Missing, Suspected Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective

by Rachel Graves

  He nodded. “You have to take organs out completely, otherwise they heal too quick. You use silver knives, silver drills, inject them with liquid silver. You have to be careful though, too much and they go into shock and die. It takes a delicate touch.”

  “You’re good at it, aren’t you?”

  “I’m the best,” he told me. I believed him.

  I’ve attended a few tense family dinners in my time. Meals where someone announced they were a witch or Dad told everyone he was moving out. I’ve stayed in the room with clients when they showed their spouse pictures that proved an affair. Awkward exchanges where people knew something bad was coming but couldn’t stop it; tasteless food eaten by nervous people. The meal with the werewolves was nothing like that.

  We waited until a few minutes after the beginning of dinner, but still walked into the middle of a group prayer. All but a few of the tables were filled, Sue stood in front of one table leading the prayer. Vincent was seated across from her with a pair of empty chairs beside him. Amy was in the back, seated with only two other people. She’d caught Ted’s glance, but when Vincent gestured to the chairs next to him she shook her head no. We took our place at Sue’s table, bowing our heads with everyone else. It was the generic Christian grace, bless-us-oh-lord. Ted and I knew enough to say Amen with the group.

  “Supper tonight is thanks to Jim and Marie, with Kali’s help.” A little girl with adorable cornrow braids smiled at everyone as they all said thanks. “I know you haven’t missed our two guests: my son, Edward, and his partner, Elisabeth.” Everyone stared and I nodded an awkward hello at them. “They’re family, so if they need anything or ask anything, feel free to let them know. We lost Harley on Wednesday night, and with luck Elisabeth’s going to help us find him.” Now the stares looked hopeful and carried the weight of everyone’s expectations. “All right, everyone, dig in!”

  The family that cooked brought out platters, one per table. Sue thanked them, served herself, and then passed the plates on to each of us. Getting to eat first probably meant something in werewolf culture. It made me want to grab the chicken out of her hands but I’d had enough shooting for one day. I settled for smiling as Ted handed me each plate.

  “Heard you took Jason down a peg,” Sue said to Ted as she scooped roasted potatoes. Her voice stayed casual, and I didn’t feel any particular emotions coming from her.

  “He needed it,” Edward told her. He took a piece of chicken from the platter and passed it to me.

  “Amen to that,” Vincent agreed. “Jason’s one of the last people who grew up at the camp. I don’t know if it was so good for him.”

  “It was his home,” Sue reminded us. The authority in her voice didn’t leave room for argument. “His, mine, yours. We’re the last three left now that Harley’s gone.”

  “Except for Edward,” Vincent acknowledged.

  “I’m not here to stay,” Ted reminded them, as if there could be any doubt.

  Vincent clearly wasn’t as smart as I thought. “You could though, assuming Jason gets it.”

  “Oh I’d say he got it,” Sue smiled at the thought. “I helped him dig those bullets out. You can sleep sound tonight, Elisabeth.”

  Before a neutral enough reply came to mind she went on.

  “Not that I blame him. You’re strong and beautiful. You’d be a great addition to the family.”

  “She’s not staying here,” Ted snarled at her.

  “That’s not the only way she could join the family,” Sue said quietly. Coming from her, that was a concession, and it surprised me. My boyfriend didn’t bother to acknowledge it. “But I know you have things on your mind, Elisabeth, those traffickers.”

  Across the table, Vincent raised his eyebrows at me. I couldn’t remember what I’d said in front of him. “It’s about a baby werelion.”

  “Glad it’s not us, we’ve got enough problems.”

  I considered the idea. It had possibilities, scary possibilities. “Have there been any issues like that around here? In Pack history?”

  Vincent looked thoughtful for a minute but shook his head. Sue chewed on her lip, trying to decide if she was going to say something. I beat her to it, asking, “What happened?”

  “There was an ATF agent, a wolf, but working for them. I think he got, well, sold. His name was…Bruiser?” She looked at Vincent.

  “You’re right. I forgot about him. Bruiser. Lord, that was ages ago.”

  “Who did the selling?” I asked.

  “My stepfather,” Edward said.

  “You remember?”

  “Don’t need to. He was in charge.”

  “Edward’s right,” Sue told me. “He was alpha male. Things have changed now. I wouldn’t make a call like that without asking Vincent or the other adults.”

  “Who else?”

  She pointed people out, gave me their names. She didn’t seem to notice what she’d just admitted to. Somehow the idea of selling a friend into slavery was okay as long as everyone in charge agreed. My dinner rose in my throat at the idea. If my nausea or the disgust I felt for her in that moment registered, Sue never showed it on her face. Instead, she spent the rest of dinner talking about other things.

  A man stopped by the table to ask about the furniture and what we thought about it. He’d created it from recovered materials. He wanted to market it, which Sue and Vincent both agreed with. The problem came with how. Both of the alphas wanted the name of the product and the logo to mention the Pack. They tossed around possibilities like “Wolf Wood Works” while the artisan wanted his work judged on his ability not his status as a werewolf. The conversation was friendly, if unproductive. Sue and Vincent weren’t going to change their minds. If he wanted to start this side business, he needed to do it their way. As the conversation got more heated, Ted and I left to talk to Amy.

  When we got to her table, she gestured to two recently vacated chairs. “How are things at the grown-up table?” she asked with a mischievous grin.

  “Tons of fun.” I told her.

  “The usual,” Ted put it.

  “So I heard. Wolf Wood Works isn’t a bad name. Larry needs to get over it if he wants to get started.”

  “Or he could leave,” I pointed out.

  “Fat chance,” Amy told me, and Ted nodded.

  “What, is it like the mob or something, there’s no retirement plan?” I’d meant it as a joke but they both looked grim.

  Amy pushed her plate away, so she could wave her arm. “Let’s say he did decide to leave, would his mate go with him?”

  “Why not? Families move all the time?”

  “Okay, so he convinces her to leave her support network and go someplace new. Where are they going to live?”

  “A house somewhere? An apartment?”

  “They’d need one with a cage, or with access to someplace secure come the full moon,” Amy explained.

  “And one where the neighbors are either far enough away so they don’t hear things or neighbors that don’t care,” Ted added, his voice telling me there wasn’t much chance of that.

  “It could happen,” I protested.

  “Sure it could,” Amy said. “But then he has to start over from scratch and buy all new equipment. That takes money.”

  “But he can save money here before he—”

  “He doesn’t have money to save. What he makes goes to the Pack,” Ted corrected me.

  “All of it?” I asked shocked.

  “Not anymore. Now they just take seventy-five percent,” Amy said.

  “Very forward thinking.” Ted’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “But…” I couldn’t even consider it. “Why would anyone live here, taking orders from Sue and Vincent, handing them most of their money, and not being able to do what they want?”

  “Because they’re Pack,” Ted told me.

  Amy nodded.

  I started to protest but gave up before the words even came out of my mouth. It didn’t make any sense. It was stupid. But neither
of those facts changed reality. All around me people had given up the right to make decisions for themselves, along with the money they made, and probably a thousand other things I couldn’t think of, just because they were Pack. The idea made my blood run cold.

  It warmed up a little as the night went. People came by, introduced themselves, told me their stories. One woman became a werewolf to cure cystic fibrosis. Another man made the change to please the woman he loved. As we chatted, I began to understand the appeal of the Pack. A group of people who accept you, always protect you, and will do anything for you is a nice idea.

  Then Jason slinked into the room, only to slip out, unacknowledged with a plate of food. The family idea of the Pack only worked so far. Sue would protect any of them with her dying breath, but she wouldn’t raise a hand to stop internal fights. Edward had shot his stepbrother twice, then threatened to kill him. Vincent had been happy about it. That wasn’t the kind of family I wanted to join.

  It was late when Ted and I climbed the stairs, but still the hallways were busy. We passed a motley group of teens watching TV in the library and a few people coming and going. The second floor, our floor, was deserted. At least until you opened our door. Sitting inside, his back to the fire escape, William looked unrumpled in a dark suit despite flying up from Osceola. Even his dark brown hair looked like it was still in place.

  “Good to see you,” I told him.

  “It’s better to be here,” he replied with a dark look for Ted.

  “Did I miss something?”

  “I told William we wouldn’t need him. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d stay,” Ted admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “The thing that happened with Jason? I expected it to happen within ten minutes, maybe fifteen. I figured we’d leave, get a nice hotel somewhere.”

  “So they surprised you?”

  He nodded. “The new people have. They seem decent. Amy’s made some changes. Of course, Jason—”

  “What happened?” William asked.

  I headed to the bathroom, not in the mood to hear the story. By the time I came out in my PJs, William was ready to render judgment.

  “He’ll need to attack again to prove he’s stronger.”

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  “And if I kill him?”

  “No one will notice.” Ted condemned the boy he’d grown up with without a second thought.

  “Sue might,” I reminded him.

  He shrugged. “That’s life in the Pack. If he was a kid someone would stick up for him, but he’s a man.”

  “And you don’t like him,” I said what he hadn’t.

  “I know what he’s capable of.”

  “Right, I know.” As I climbed into bed, Ted went into the bathroom to change. I thought about Jason, how little we knew about him. When Ted got back, I asked, “Do you think he’s the one who made the others disappear?”

  Ted didn’t even take a minute to think about it. “Yes. Vincent’s getting old. He’s probably sixty-five, maybe even seventy. For an alpha male he’s pretty non-violent. Everyone that disappeared, they were all above Jason in pack order. He would have had to challenge them or get their support to move up. It’d be a lot easier to take them out somewhere and kill them.”

  “But what about the bodies?”

  “Werewolves eat their own.”

  I cringed. “One of them was a woman, she wouldn’t have been an obstacle to him, right?”

  “Maybe not, but maybe she knew something, guessed something. Maybe she got pregnant with his kid.” He held his palms up, gesturing that he didn’t know before he climbed into bed bedside me. “Could be a thousand things. Maybe she smelled like sex, too.”

  I cringed a second time. “I’m going to sleep great after that thought. I don’t suppose you know any good lullabies, William?”

  He surprised me by nodding.

  “Really?”

  He looked at me with more than a bit of disdain.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but the weight of his gaze stopped me. Minutes ticked by. Ted slept, no doubt used to this set-up from their time together during the war. I flipped over on my belly and sighed deeply. It wasn’t about noise really, William wasn’t even breathing.

  “Okay, would you sing for me, then? Please?” I asked, desperate.

  Another nod, and then he began singing softly in a rich baritone. The song wasn’t one I’d heard before, and I stayed awake a little longer to listen.

  William and Ted whispered on the fire escape in pre-dawn darkness. My nightmare disappeared at the sound of their relaxed voices, and sleep pulled me under again. The second time I woke up the sky was lighter. Ted sat at the small desk, cleaning his gun. Magic told me he was using the motions to calm himself.

  They worked on me, too, the smell of gun oil made me feel safe. “Is my gun next?”

  He turned and smiled at me. “It could be.”

  “How about you come to bed instead?”

  “When I’m done.”

  Instead of waiting, I drifted back to sleep.

  A noise woke me, caution making me instantly awake. The sound repeated: a grunt or maybe a moan. I grabbed the gun under Ted’s pillow, glad it had been freshly cleaned and returned to where it belonged. With the gun at the ready I stared in the room trying to find the source of the noise. The dawn still hadn’t come, or maybe here in San Francisco it never came, the gray fog just changed shades. Slowly, the shapes resolved into furniture, the moving blur by the bathroom formed itself into a body. Ted’s body, but his motion didn’t make any sense. My heart beats slowed, and after a minute on guard, I left the gun and went to investigate.

  Three quarters of his body bobbed in front of me, his face and hands above the door frame, the rest of him blocking the view to the bathroom. I watched as hard abs and tight chest muscles crunched, the beginning of a pull up, then a curl. Two reps went by before I decided to ask, “What are you doing?”

  “Working out.” His reply was more of a grunt.

  “There’s a pull-up bar in there?”

  He stopped, lowered himself down the final foot, then released his hands from the top of the doorframe.

  “I made one.”

  He showed his bruised knuckles and I ducked under his arm to find the rest. He’d punched two holes into the drywall, then grabbed the wooden stud that framed the door.

  “You must really have wanted to work out.”

  “I thought it would clear my mind.”

  “Did it?”

  “No,” he shook his head. Sweat dripped down his body, making his skin shine in that weird gray dawn. Parts of my body that normally didn’t wake up for a few hours were suddenly wondering how that skin would taste. I stepped forward and gave in, tracing my tongue over those hard muscles, finding his nipple and indulging in the flavor.

  “Elisabeth,” he moaned softly. Desire started inside of him, mixed with anger and bitterness. “We can’t do this.”

  “Why not?” The bitterness was for the wolves around us, the anger was probably for them, too. The desire was all mine, and I wanted it. I returned my attention to his chest, my hand drifting lower.

  “I didn’t bring any protection.” He sounded disappointed, and for a second I was, too, but then my hand reached its destination, slipping inside the waistband of the tight boxer briefs he wore. They were wet with sweat and the hard shaft I found inside them was practically slick with it. I inhaled smelling the clean scent, the way a man should smell sometimes, and that primal aroma brought all of my body awake.

  “I don’t care.” There were so many other things to worry about, so many more pressuring concerns. But holding him, feeling how hard he was, and seeing those muscles and that body, I didn’t care about condoms. I kissed him, putting my other hand behind his head, letting my tongue play in his mouth, touching his lips, his cheeks, kissing everything I could find, while my hand gently tugged him forward. My legs brushed the bed and I laid back on it, pulling him on top of
me.

  Walking over he’d been fighting it, trying to do what was right, but here on the bed things changed. His mind went someplace else, ignoring the consequences. He kissed my throat, and then my chest, and then finally his mouth locked on my nipple, sucking gently until my breath came in tight gasps. His hand drifted between my legs, trying to catch my clit, and a second later his thumb massaged it gently. We stayed tightly together, each stroke of his fingers sending me higher and higher, until I couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Please, Edward, now, please,” I tried to shift, but with his weight on top of me I didn’t have much control.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh God, yes, please.”

  He stopped moving, brought his head up to kiss my mouth, one kiss, quick and almost chaste. Then he looked into my eyes, trying to see past the lust that was inside him, the lust I could feel. He wanted reassurance. He was worried about me. All I wanted was him. “I won’t regret this.”

  He nodded, and kept his eyes on mine while our bodies locked together. I waited for a breath, feeling him fill me, then moved against him. His shaft slid deeper inside me, touching parts of my body that brought time to a standstill. I could feel his side of it, the way he wanted to make this slow dance a fast beat of passion, but I wanted the sensual slowness. He drew his body out of me, just an inch, maybe two, then dipped his head over my breast, his teeth gently nibbling on my nipple. I moaned, and pulled him back into me wanting both sensations at once. Then suddenly it wasn’t enough, none of it was enough, and I moved his hand down my body.

  “Like this?” he teased, a smile on his face when he looked up at me from above my breast. He stopped to kiss the tight nipple once, then his hand went between my legs, pinching lightly, pulling just a little, rubbing me between his fingers softly while I screamed and begged. Somehow he managed to concentrate on his movement and that swollen tip, somehow he held it while he gently slid in and out of my body.

  I clamped my teeth together, fighting the urge to scream as everything stopped, the room, my breath, everything. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to grab the pleasure, my hands clutching his ass instead. My body tightened around him as my climax grew, and then in the middle of it I felt his climax join mine.