whiskey witches 02 - blood moon magick (7 page)

“You could say that again.”

“I’m going to need help tracking down the demon side of things.”

“Since you can’t get within fifty feet of them without them possessing you?”

“Exactly.”

“Perfect.” He grabbed the file on his desk and headed for the door. “Let’s go grab your other partner.”

Her phone chirped. She raised her finger, pushing her chair back to her desk. “That’s Barn.” She pulled her phone off her belt and swiped it, putting it to her ear. “Hey, Barn. Do you need a bagel?”

“Latte. Stat.” His tone sounded ragged with excitement.

Paige straightened. “You got it. What’s up?”

“Last night’s victim.”

“Kinda fast.”

“It’s your case.”

“Aw. Thanks.”

“Shut it and feed it.”

“Latte. Got it. Information now or later?”

“Get down here.”

“With coffee.”

“You better, or you’ll be on my table next.”

Tipping her head to the side with a frown, she stared at her phone as she disconnected.

“Latte,” Tony said, his lips drawn down. “I hope you know which kind.”

“Of course.” She narrowed her eyes, collecting her jacket. “You heard that?”

“Who didn’t?”

Vampire super hearing? Her questions were going to have to wait.

The drive to Starbucks wasn’t that difficult, but trying to find parking was. She ordered his skinny raspberry latte, quad shot, no foam, and was back in her illegally parked car before she received more than a few dirty looks and a couple car honks. She pulled up to the non-descript concrete building that housed the city morgue, and breezed through the front door.

Down in the basement, she swept through the double doors of Barn’s office and perched on his desk.

He didn’t even look up from his scope.

She waited.

He held out his hand beside and behind him.

She pressed the paper cup into his waiting fingers. “What do you got for me, Barn?”

He didn’t answer. He held onto the latte suspended in air, and peered through the scope. Finally, he pulled away. He twirled his chair around, tucking the latte to his chest. “Oh! Tony.” Barn’s black-rimmed glasses fell down his reddish bald forehead and onto his nose.

Tony gave the coroner a tight smile. “Hey.”

Barn pushed his glasses back into place and sipped his latte. “Ah, well, found some interesting stuff on our victim, but nothing too major.”

Paige narrowed her gaze. What was going on between her partner and their coroner?

“Really, I just wanted a latte.” Barn’s chuckle was uneasy.

Hmm. Interesting. Was Barn terrified of Tony? And if so, what had that “this is why I keep a lid on things” vampire done to
make
Barn so scared?

“I believe,” Tony said, “that I ordered the body taken to Nederland.”

“Right. Right. You sure did.”

“Wait.” Paige turned to Tony, understanding dawning. “He has rules he has to follow.”

Tony nodded, his gaze focused on Barn. Then, he blinked and centered that dark gaze on her. The weight of his expression reminded her that she was dealing with the paranormal.

She raised her eyebrow, dropped her jaw, and sucked in her cheeks. If he thought this was her first rodeo, he was wrong. Dead wrong. “You know what? I think I forgot the case file on the desk. How about you go retrieve that so we can be on our way?”

He narrowed his eyes.

She smiled. “You’re the one who said we had somewhere to go.”

Finally, Tony straightened. He pointed his finger at her in warning, tapped his ear with it, and left.

Barn expelled a breath of relief. “That man gives me the creeps.”

His eyes lit up with intrigue. “All of his cases to go to Nederland. All the bodies of his victims? All the murderers he catches?”

“What are you hinting at, Barn?” He didn’t beat around the bush well.

He clamped his lips shut for a long moment, then said, “I have rules I have to follow, is all I’m saying. Sending all these bodies to Nederland before they’re processed sends up red flags I’m tired of covering for.”

That was something she’d have to work out with Tony. Barn had a point. They either brought him in on everything, or Tony did a better job of covering. “What do you got?”

“Well, we could start with this.” He turned back to his scope and slid his office chair away. “Take a look.”

“You realize I’m not going to know what I’m looking at, right?”

He shrugged.

Except, when she peered through the scope, she
did
understand what she saw. Sulfur in the blood. The crystals were hard to ignore.

His gaze was expectant. “You know what that is, don’t you?”

She straightened and crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you hedging at, Barn?”

He mimicked her stance from his seated position. “I’m not stupid, Paige. I watched your files in Texas because I helped Ethel process some of your evidence.”

Paige’s heart slammed. Ethel had been the only normal human in Texas she’d trusted to process the evidence. The woman had
sworn
to tell no one. Paige was going to wring her neck the next time she saw her.

“I was hoping something would show up when you transferred up here, but nothing ever did. Everything was clean for five years. Then, last night, you just happened to know how that woman died?”

“Keen observation.”

“That’s what I initially thought, then I saw that. Sulfur.”

Paige raised her chin.

“We’re talking demons, aren’t we?”

What was she supposed to do? Deny it? That hadn’t worked on Ethel, which was the reason Paige had finally had to come clean with the tech. But could she trust Barn? She smashed her lips together and bowed her head.

Barn set his latte down, clapped his hands together, and shot to his feet. “Oh my dog, this is so exciting!”

He always said, “Oh my dog,” because he didn’t want to offend anyone by being disrespectful to their god.

Paige had to make a decision. Lie—which had failed miserably with Ethel—or tell the truth—which could also turn out just as horribly. Civilians and magick didn’t always mix.

He led the way into the operating theater. “I found things and did some research, but I still have questions.”

“Okay,” she ground out. It felt wrong. Like there was something inside her forcing her to shut up, to shut him down. But he was already so close.

“Besides the sulfur—in her blood, by the way, which is very interesting. Does that mean she was possessed?”

Oddly, no. Ethel had proven that sulfur did not show up in the blood after possession, so this was something different altogether.

Barn waved her off. “We’ll get to that later. There was also this.” He held up a glass cup with a plastic top.

Paige stepped forward and took it from him, tipping it one way, then another to get a better look at whatever was inside. “What am I seeing?”

“A chip. A tracking device. Of sorts.” He walked around the table of a sheet-covered corpse. “It doesn’t ‘track,’ as much as it sends electronic impulses into the brain.”

“What?” Paige asked, aghast. She set the glass down a little harder than she intended, but the thing didn’t shatter against the metal table.

Barn tipped his head with a tight, excited smile. “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

“The murder only happened last night.”

“And this is my third latte.”

She needed to—what?

Listen.

She gestured to Barn to continue.

“Okay, so Matt’s a buddy of mine. He’s an inventor and can write code like it’s butter and he’s the knife. Anyway, I just had an idea because of what I saw on the x-ray and asked him to come over.”

“X-ray. Explain.”

He waved her off. “Standard procedure. Found something metal between C1 & C2.”

“What?” She wasn’t a doctor. For a reason.

“Right. Base of the skull.”

“Oh.”

“So, I gave it to Matt. He ran a few tests, and was immediately intrigued, but he couldn’t do anything else.”

Oh no. “Tell me you didn’t let him leave with evidence.”

“I’d never tell you that. Just like I won’t ever tell the chief that your partner is sending bodies—as in plural—to Nederland without being properly processed.”

She bit off her curse and gripped the cold table behind her. “Okay. What did he find?”

“You need to see how it showed up on the X-ray first.” He walked over to the light board and flipped the switch next to it, turning it on. “Do you see this?”

She didn’t know what she was looking at. Skull. Spine.

Bones.

“See that speck there?”

What speck? There were specks all over the place.

He pointed to the brightest speck on the X-Ray.

“Sure.” Thin lines curled out of it. She’d originally thought it was part of the spinal cord, but then remembered that the spinal cord couldn’t be seen on an X-ray. It wasn’t dense enough? Or something. There were reasons she wasn’t a doctor. “What is that?”

“Alien tech?” He shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’s advanced. Anyway, Matt discovered it has a tracking program, but that it also has a control function.”

Paige narrowed her eyes. “What kind of control function?”

“He doesn’t know. He had leave before you arrived, so he wasn’t able to finish running his tests.”

She wanted to tell him to bring Matt in. To finish running those tests.

Civilians.

Shit.

“But that’s not all.”

She rubbed her eyebrow. She’d already gone way past the point of no return with Barn. There was no sense feeling bad now, but she did. “What?”

“Retractable claws.”

The door opened then shut behind Paige. A heavy, primal presence entered the room, causing a tingling along the nape of her neck.

Tony.

He settled beside her, staring hard at the body.

Barn went still, grasping the victim’s fingers.

How was she supposed to handle this? She took in a deep breath. “You said they retract? I don’t see them extended.”

Barn pulled a pen out of the pocket at his hip, the rest of his body frozen, and pressed it to the victim’s fingertip. A thick, pale claw extended. He relieved the pressure and the claw retracted.

Tony’s expression was stone cold.

Paige clucked her tongue. “What else, Barn?”

His breath came quickly as he watched Tony. He brought his hands up, took them back.

“Barn,” Paige said, drawing his attention to her. “It’s okay. What did you find?”

Swallowing, he placed his hands on the victim’s head, pushing away the woman’s dark brown hair. “Ears.”

No normal, human ears. In their place, cat ears. Paige didn’t know her cats very well. They could have been a dog’s, a wolf’s. Maybe. But they reminded her of a cat. Werecats?

Paige needed a stiff drink after this. “Anything else?”

Barn’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He kept his gaze locked on Paige’s face. “Just this.” He pulled the sheet back enough to reveal the woman’s chest.

A symbol.

A chill ran down Paige’s spine. “I didn’t see that at the crime scene.” The location of the symbol was on her breastplate. With the cut of the dress, Paige
would
have seen it at the crime scene.

“That’s because she didn’t arrive here with it.”

Paige narrowed her eyes on the man.

“Someone came in here and did this when I stepped out.”

Cold washed over her. The edges of the wounds didn’t look like a knife. The edges were raw and singed. Someone had branded her with magick, this was the result of that magick tearing from her decaying corpse. Blessed Mother. She’d seen this only on one other case.

A case she’d been pulled off of. She blinked as she recalled it. It had been a woman. Similar mark as this on her chest. The case had been removed from her jurisdiction, though. She hadn’t understood why, but she’d been too busy with other cases to be overly concerned.

The symbol, though? A sideways number three with a dot behind it. It looked like it should have been a rune, but it wasn’t a rune she knew. And she’d never been able to track down what it meant, mainly because she’d gotten so distracted on other cases.

She jerked her mind back to
this
case. “When did you step out?”

“Around midnight. I had to pee.”

“How long were you gone?” If she could figure out what that symbol meant, she could figure out why the prior case had been taken from her.

“A few minutes.”

Tony didn’t move. “What does it mean?” His growl bordered on something not quite human.

Barn shook his head.

Paige bit down on her lips, thinking really, really hard about what she was about to ask. In front of Barn. “Would any of your special contacts know what this means?”

Tony tipped his head, anger pouring from his gaze like hot lava. “Could it be something like what you have on your chest?”

Paige didn’t want to answer, but she owed him something since it appeared his world was being invaded by hers. And Barn was standing right on the edge. He could teeter either way. If he went in search of the paranormal on his own, he could be seriously hurt. Or worse.

She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse to uncover her scabbed skin.

Barn eyes widened as he stared at her chest, but he didn’t move for a closer view.

Tony glanced at it out of the corner of his eye. “That’s what opened you for possession.”

She nodded and buttoned her shirt closed again.

“Is it the same thing?”

“No.”
That
was something else, something that possibly had to do with the werewolf? Werecat? How many different types of were-animals were there?

Tony glared at her.

“I don’t think this has anything to with me.”

“Are you sure?”

She couldn’t be. She should have ended Sven in Louisiana when she’d had the chance. She should have sent him back to Hell. She should have kept the key to a gate that no longer needed a key. Just her soul. “Yeah.”

She should have buried Dexx.

She looked at the body of Elizabeth Harwood and hoped this wasn’t another person she could add to her personal body count. “I’m pretty sure.”