Heat of the Moment (29 page)

Which only brought us back to nutty, unless …

“She's been in a mental health facility for a long time. According to her now-dead caseworker, she's escaped several times in the past few months, and no one knows how.”

Had it been magic? Maybe.

“A crazy woman on a mission would be the perfect weapon.” Edward lifted one bushy white eyebrow. “I have seen such things before.”

“You've seen everything before,” Cassandra said. “Is Dr. Reitman still in town?”

“He took the evidence back to Madison.”

“He's from Madison?” Raye asked.

“The UW has the largest veterinary college in Wisconsin.”

“Did he say if he belonged to the coven there?”

“He does, and he was going to ask about a coven near here, but his priestess had been—” I paused, blinked. “She was killed. Did you know about that?”

Raye and Bobby exchanged glances with Franklin and Cassandra. Together, they nodded.

“Can you call him?” Franklin asked.

I was already dialing my phone. It was early yet. Jeremy shouldn't be in class, but the phone rang so many times I was expecting voice mail when he answered.

“Becca! I was just going to call you.”

“Great.” My voice sounded both too cheery and kind of stiff.

“Something wrong?”

“Beyond the animal mutilations?” My lips were poised to say “yes.” But Raye started shaking her head like Moose after he'd gone for a swim, and instead I said, “I was wondering if you'd found anything yet?”

“I haven't. The evidence is not in good shape.”

“Do you have any idea who might brand and burn sacrifices?”

Now Raye nodded, encouragingly. I must be on the right track.

“I don't,” Jeremy said. “I've never seen anything like this.”

Raye waved to get my attention, then mouthed: “Coven.”

“Were you able to find out if there's a coven in my area?”

“I wasn't.”

I shook my head, and everyone frowned.

“My coven has been thrown into a bit of an uproar,” Jeremy continued.

“I can imagine.”

Franklin held up a sheet of paper, on which he'd written:
Is there a natural altar near here?

I repeated the question into the phone.

“Not that I know of.”

I shook my head again, and the FBI agent crumpled the paper in his fist.

“That's the kind of thing local witches would know,” Jeremy continued.

“I suppose so. Well, thanks.”

I disconnected. It wasn't until Raye said my name that I realized I was standing there frowning at the phone in my hand.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

I shoved the phone into my back pocket. “He said he'd never heard of branding and burning sacrifices. But being a witch, wouldn't he know about the
Venatores Mali
?”

“Considering Roland died in the seventeenth century, not necessarily,” Raye said.

“Wasn't his high priestess branded?”

“Those details aren't common knowledge,” Bobby said. “Which was why it took me so long to connect the dots among all the cases. I thought I was tracking a serial killer—”

“It
was
a serial killer,” Raye interrupted. “Witches are people too.”

He laced their fingers together. “The brand and the burnings were the only link between the bodies. And a lot of the bodies were burned so badly, the brand wasn't a certainty. We didn't find the connection until we started searching for burned witches. Not easy since being a witch still isn't something people advertise.”

“How did you figure it out?” I asked.

“One of the victims didn't die right away.” He swallowed, and Raye's fingers tightened around his. “She told me about the
Venatores Mali
. From there it was all downhill.”

“How did the FBI get involved?” I asked.

“It's a long story,” Franklin said. “Short version, anything weird gets passed by me.”

“Weird is awful wide.”

“I've become pretty good at separating normal-weird from weird-weird.”

Sadly, that made sense.

“It bugs me that whoever attacked you tried to smother you,” Raye said.

“Me too,” I muttered.

“Mistress June's weapon of choice is the athame of Roland McHugh,” Bobby said. “I've never known her to use anything else.”

“What's an athame?” I asked.

“Double-edged ritual knife,” Raye answered. “Used by a fire witch to cut herbs, draw the sacred circle. Roland's is squiggly.” She made the sign of an S in the air. “He carved his snarling-wolf symbol into the hilt.”

“If an athame is a witch's instrument, why did McHugh have one?”

“Because he could?” Bobby asked. “The way it was explained to me is that Christians often appropriated pagan holidays and symbols. In that way they blurred the lines between pagan and Christian. People weren't even aware they'd been converted until they were.”

“There's a reason the sabbats fall next to the Christian holidays,” Raye continued. “Christians put the holidays next to the sabbats.”

“Apparently Jesus wasn't even born on December twenty-fifth.” Bobby seemed a little upset about that.

“You think McHugh snatched the ritual knife of a fire witch then carved his symbol into it?”

“I think McHugh snatched a fire witch,” Bobby said, “but close enough.”

“And now his chief minion has it?”

“Yes.” Raye lifted a hand to her upper arm and rubbed. “She stabbed me with the thing.”

Fury washed over me at the thought. “Does it still hurt?”

She dropped her hand, colored a bit. “It's only been a week. It'll heal.”

I pressed my fingers where she had. A spark jumped. Her skin shifted and warmed. She sucked in a sharp breath, and I drew back.

Raye went to the mirror, pulled her shirt down, baring her shoulder to just above her breast, then leaned in. I wasn't sure what she was looking at until she drew a finger over a thin, red line. She spun, threw her arms around my neck, and pulled me in close. “Thanks.”

“If I'd known you were hurt, I'd have done it right away.”

Although, until yesterday, I hadn't realized I could.

“She has the powers of a fire witch?” Cassandra asked.

Raye considered me. “Healing? Check. Destruction of disease and illness? Check and check. What else?”

“The ancients considered a fire witch a djinn,” Cassandra continued. “With fire in the veins instead of blood.”

“I bleed.” Though I'd rather not have to prove it.

“Probably not a literal interpretation,” Cassandra said. “But you never can tell. A fire spirit also has the power to shape-shift into animals.”

“I do not!” I protested.

“Maybe not yet,” Raye put in. “I couldn't levitate until I met you. Heaven knows what we'll be able to do once we find our other sister.”

I didn't mind healing people and animals. But turning from one to the other? Not a fan.

From the way Edward was stroking his rifle and staring at me, he wasn't either. The man was spooky squared.

“Shape-shifting might explain Pru's present form.” Raye's gaze flicked to Henry's corner, and she tilted her head. “Or not. He says that Pru could call wolves, control them, but she wasn't one of them.”

“At least not then,” I said.

“She's not really one of them now. She can think like a human. She can communicate with you and with Henry. She's different and they know it. Wolves avoid her.”

“Lonely,” I observed. Pru couldn't hang out with the humans. They'd run, screaming, “Rabies!” And the wolves didn't want her around either.

“Henry says loneliness was a small price to pay to keep their children safe.”

I saw again the pyre flaring to the sky and the empty stake left behind. “Loneliness wasn't the only cost.”

Silence descended. The FBI agent stood. “I need to get the ring to Elise.”

“I will take it.” Edward held out his hand, and Franklin placed a plastic evidence bag into it.

“I'm not an expert,” I said, “but isn't the FBI going to throw a hissy fit if you give evidence to just anyone?”

When the old man's eyes narrowed on me again, I wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

“Edward isn't just anyone,” Franklin answered. “The J
ä
ger-Suchers have been secretly funded by the U.S. government for decades.”

If it was such a secret I had to wonder why he was telling me. I decided not to ask in case the realization that he had might require Edward to kill me, or at the least cut out my tongue. He seemed capable of it.

“Besides,” Franklin continued. “The J
ä
ger-Sucher lab has equipment the FBI isn't even aware of yet.”

“How'd that happen?”

“Ask him.” Franklin pointed at Edward, who was already striding for the door.

“I'll take your word for it.”

“My wife, Elise, is in charge of the lab. She's a virologist by trade, but she's the most brilliant woman I've ever met.”

“She hasn't cured herself yet,” Edward said, and slammed the door behind him.

“What's he so mad about?” I asked.

“Elise is his granddaughter,” Franklin said.

“What's wrong with her?”

“Nothing,” Franklin snapped, at the same time Cassandra said, “Werewolf.”

“The greatest werewolf hunter of all time has a granddaughter who is one?”

“Life's just full of little ironies, isn't it?” Cassandra murmured.

 

Chapter 24

I sensed a long story there, but I didn't have the time. If I didn't get back to Owen soon, with coffee, he was going to start searching for me. I didn't want to explain …

I glanced around the motel room.

Any of this.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“We'll see if we can get info on a coven, witches, or an altar in the area.” Franklin indicated himself and the voodoo priestess. “Between the two of us we should be able to uncover something.”

“I hope before someone else dies,” Cassandra said.

“I need to go.” I moved toward the door, and Raye followed, stopping me with a hand on my arm.

“Watch yourself.”

“Mistress June is going to be pretty easy to spot.”

“There's more than one killer,” Bobby said. “Again.”

“You sure?”

“The animals.” He lifted one shoulder, the movement both smooth and slightly foreign. “They're the work of an amateur.”

“Practice,” I murmured.

“Oui,”
he agreed, and my gaze flicked to Raye's.

Her lips quirked and while she didn't say anything, I could almost hear her thoughts.
How could I resist a man who speaks French
?

It would be pretty damn hard.

“Mistress June is a pro,” Bobby continued.

“Therefore the animal sacrifices were practice and that equals two killers.”

“At least,” Raye agreed.

“I'll be careful.” I opened the door.

Owen stood on the other side.

*   *   *

Owen had awoken when what he thought was Becca's fingernails scratched his chest. He'd reached for her and gotten a fistful of Grenade instead.

He sat up, the kitten tumbled off, Reggie
woofed,
and the two of them started running around the cabin.

Owen rubbed his eyes. He was used to waking up much earlier, with a lot more noise. Real grenades going off in a completely different way for instance. Yet still he had a headache.

“Becca?”

No answer. A trickle of unease had him inching to the edge of the bed and calling her name again a little louder.

She'd probably had an emergency or an appointment. Except he hadn't heard her phone, hadn't heard her leave. Which made the unease deepen for more reasons than one.

A few months out of the field and he slept right through noises and movement? If he'd been in Afghanistan he'd be dead.

Owen put on some pants and stepped onto the porch. Reggie nosed the kitten back inside when she would have followed. Owen shut the door.

“What's your excuse?” he asked, but the dog trotted into the high grass at the edge of the lake. At this rate, they were both going to have to do some retraining before they returned to work.

Owen's hand fell to his thigh, rubbed where the stiff morning ache usually lived. It was faint today. Amazingly so.

His gaze zeroed in on Carstairs Avenue. From here he couldn't tell if Becca was at the clinic or not. She could have walked back since he'd driven—

His eyes narrowed on the empty space where his rental had been. “Huh.”

Reggie smacked his head against the door. Grenade mewed from the other side, and the dog started barking.

“Shh.” Owen opened it, and the two tumbled across the floor like puppies. He hadn't seen Reggie behave like this … ever. Work was play, hence his reward of the rubber ball whenever he found what he was sent to find. Since they'd been here, Owen had used the ball so little, he wasn't sure exactly where it was.

As he pulled the spare from his duffel and shoved it in his pocket, he caught sight of a piece of paper where one hadn't been last night, and crossed the room, read Becca's note, then glanced at the clock. Eight
A.M.

The time meant nothing, as he'd no idea when she'd left. He retrieved his phone, texted her, waited. Waited some more. Gave the animals some water, a little food. Checked his phone, peered out the window. Twitched. Twitched again.

Finally he put on shirt and shoes, grabbed Reggie's leash, snapped it onto the dog's collar, and they left. It didn't take long to find her. Finding things was what both he and Reggie did best.