Mortal Sins, page 6
part #5 of World of the Lupi Series
“Disposing of the bodies, then driving back into town so he could hand the sheriff the bat with all that great physical evidence.”
“Yeah. The guy’s nuts, but insanity usually has its own weird logic. I can’t make that fit any kind of logic, no matter how twisted. As for the other scenario … evidence at the victims’ home suggested that the kids were killed in their beds, but the mother was chased down. Death magic—the extraction of power through killing—has to be performed ritually, right? That doesn’t sound like the kind of controlled situation a ritual requires.”
“Could be the first kid was killed ritually and the others were taken out because they’d witnessed it.”
“What kind of idiot sets up a ritual killing with others in the house?”
“He’d have to be loony tunes,” Karonski agreed. “Probably a lousy practitioner, too. Maybe he thought he’d spelled the others asleep and got it wrong.”
Lily tapped one finger against the steering wheel, frowning. It didn’t feel right. “They all had it on them. I confirmed that on the scene. Death magic was smeared on all three of them. Would that be true if only one of them was killed ritually?”
Karonski had a deep, windy sigh like a weary hound. “No, you’re right. I obviously need more coffee. Nothing I know makes that possible. Of course, there’s a hell of a lot I don’t know about death magic. What I keep having trouble with, though, is the bat. Blunt force trauma is not symbolically correct.”
“Expand on that.”
“Death magic involving human victims is extremely rare, but animal killings aren’t, so we know a little about what’s required. Every ritual I’ve heard of uses a knife or blade. The Aztecs didn’t bash their sacrifices’ heads in. Another thing … most Wiccans believe death magic operates the same as blood magic, that they’re related. Blood magic requires a blade and control. You have to control what happens with the blood to use it. Hard to do that if you’re smashing people with a baseball bat.”
Lily shook her head. “I don’t know. Blood magic doesn’t feel the same to me. I know Wiccans believe it’s tainted—”
“We’re not the only ones.”
“No, and you may be right, though the Catholics disagree. But that’s not my point. The thing is, I don’t personally know that blood magic is tainted. I don’t pick up that sort of thing when I touch magic.”
“Unless it’s death magic.”
“Yeah.” Evil. That’s what she touched when she touched death magic, and she did not understand. Power was power, and magic no more held a moral component than did electricity—or so she’d believed until the first time she’d touched a body slain by death magic. “I’m right about those bodies. I’m sure.”
“Hey, I’m not doubting you. Just having a hard time coming up with an explanation. We may not know much about death magic, but what’s happened there violates the little we do know. Have you talked to your pet sorcerer?”
“Not yet. It’s still short of five a.m. in California. I texted him, but I texted Cynna, too, just to make sure.”
Cynna was Lily’s friend. She was also an FBI agent, Rule’s former lover, and the only woman in the world married to a lupus—Cullen Seabourne, whom she was living with at Nokolai Clanhome while they awaited the birth of their child. Cullen was Rule’s friend, a former lone wolf, a stripper … and a sorcerer. Sorcerers were supposed to have died out in the Purge; lone wolves were supposed to go crazy cut off from their clans; lupi were never Gifted—and they never, ever got married.
Cullen didn’t so much break rules as explode them.
“How’s she doing?’ Karonski asked. “Is she getting fat yet?”
“You do know better than to use the word ‘fat’ around a pregnant woman, don’t you? Especially Cynna. She’s armed.”
Karonski chuckled. “Good point. You figure she’ll make sure Seabourne calls you back?”
“Yeah.” Among Cullen’s bad habits was ignoring phone calls if they weren’t immediately interesting. Lily thought the mention of death magic would get his attention, but you never knew with Cullen, especially when he was hip-deep in some complicated arcane research. Which was usually. “Listen, I’ve got one hypothesis that might fit. I’d like to run it by you.”
“Shoot.”
“What if the whole family was involved? Maybe Meacham got them to participate, told them it was some other sort of ritual they were performing. Some spells require multiple practitioners, right? If they’d all been part of it, then when the boy was killed, they’d all be smeared by it.”
He was silent a moment. “Theoretically possible, but you’d have a hell of a time proving it.”
“I’m going to have a hell of a time proving anything. Especially if the Wiccan coven Ruben’s sending can’t confirm that death magic was involved.” A limited number of Wiccan spells were the only form of magically acquired evidence admissible in court, but the coven might not pick up the traces Lily had. Cullen said that trying to get a spell to do what an innate Gift did was like programming a robot to walk. You could do it, but a toddler would outperform the robot.
In other words, there was a good chance the coven wouldn’t be able to find anything.
“Is he having Sherry’s bunch do the test?”
“Probably, and I know they’re good, but it’s been four days. The traces I felt were pretty faint. I …”
“What?”
She’d seen something move, or thought she had—at the edge of her vision, a flickering sort of movement. But when she looked in that direction, all she saw was a single swing swaying gently. The other swings weren’t moving.
A pale bird—a dove, maybe—took off from the other end of the swing set and she shook her head, feeling foolish. Must have glimpsed another bird taking off from the swing, making it move. “Nothing. I’m distractable today.” Maybe because she didn’t like the next question she needed to ask. “Karonski … exactly what does a death magic ritual take from its victim?”
“You’re asking about the soul.”
She hadn’t expected him to go there so fast. “I guess I am.”
“Different systems, different faiths, have different takes on that. Most Christian churches teach that the soul is indestructible, but a few of the evangelical ones disagree. Of course, they’re the ones who think a demon can steal your soul, so I don’t put a lot of credence in their opinion. Still, many Wiccans believe that death magic can damage a soul, while Islam—”
“I’m not asking about religion. What do we know?”
“You asked about souls. Can’t go there without talking religion, because we don’t know a damned thing.” He paused. “You said Turner was knocked out while he was guarding the bodies. He had death magic on him.”
“It’s gone now.”
“Right, but how do you fit that in?”
“With a crowbar and a whole lot of maybes.” She raked a hand through her hair. “If Meacham is the killer, then someone else wandering in the woods last night used death magic on Rule. That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. We don’t know how many people were involved in the ritual. Maybe Meacham had one or more confederates. But it doesn’t explain why …”
“Why he or she didn’t kill Turner.”
Lily swallowed. “Yeah. I’m thinking maybe he or she couldn’t do it. Rule’s not easy to kill, and our second perp might not have had enough juice to do the job. If the death magic was shared between a bunch of ritualists, maybe …” She broke off, sighed. “That’s a lot of maybes.” She needed to talk to Cullen, dammit, about what was or wasn’t possible, but … she glanced at her watch. “Shit. I’m late.”
“You go, then, and I can go get me some eggs.”
Lily thanked him for the consult, put her phone away, tidied the take-out trash, and backed out of her spot in front of the school.
Religion. She hated the way it kept intruding on her cases. Not that she was opposed to religion, per se … Oh, be honest, she told herself. She had issues. Her father was Buddhist. Her mother was Christian. There’d been a discreet little war throughout her childhood on the subject. As a result, she was … well, not exactly prejudiced. Religion was fine for other people. She simply preferred not to think about it.
Lily pulled into the parking lot in back of the sheriff’s office. Karonski was probably right about most of what he’d said, but they did know one thing about souls. At least, Lily did. Souls existed. That was more than she’d known for the first twenty-eight years of her life, so she counted it as an important datum.
Especially since she’d had to die to obtain it. Lily climbed out of the plush car, shut and locked the door. And did her best not to remember.
SEVEN
IN the fresh light of an early summer morning, something hovered on the wide front porch of the two-story house, waiting. It hung near the door, remembering walls and that doors need opening, but not how to manage the trick.
The man was inside the house. It knew that without having any idea how it knew, nor did it wonder at its knowledge. Questions, curiosity, thought … none endured long in the constant fracturing that was its reality.
Cold, cold. So cold. It knew how to gain warmth; dimly it remembered that lesson and the bliss, the sheer joy of heat. For a little while, it had thought it was fixed. Freed. For a little while, it had remembered.
Something had gone wrong. What? It didn’t know, couldn’t hold on to the thought or what passed for memory, not with bits of itself breaking up, always breaking up, like ice chips fracturing under pressure. But it knew—without knowing why—that to be warm again, it would have to leave this house.
It didn’t want to go. The man was inside. The one who knew it. It wanted, needed, to wait here, wait for the man to come out the door. If it could be close to him again, maybe it would know …
It no longer remembered what was missing. What it needed to know.
The howl of anguish was silent, a shuddering despair too great for its shredded being. It quivered and lost track of doors and houses and whatever had held it in one place.
Deep in the darkness of its fractured self, it heard The Voice.
Maybe the calling had been there all along; maybe it was newly come. It only knew the loathing and fear and promise of The Voice.
The call would grow louder, until it could no longer resist. It had to escape. It had to get warm again. Once it was warm, it wouldn’t hear The Voice, and then it could remember … surely warmth would let it remember enough. Then it could find the man who knew it. Maybe it could ask the man … whatever it was it needed so badly to know.
Once it was warm again. Yes.
It skittered away from the house, searching. Resisting the need to return to The Voice. Warmth would protect it, provide for it—yes, it remembered that much: when it was warm enough, The Voice went away.
Once it was warm again, all would be well. Yes.
It glided down the street—lost, fragmented, starved. Picking up speed as it went. Warmths were everywhere, but at first it found only the small warmths. Some of those would let it in, but the small warmths weren’t enough. It remembered that. It needed more.
Come, said The Voice. Come, come, come …
No! Frantic now, it hunted. It had to find a warmth, the right kind of warmth, or return to The Voice. There were warmths nearby, large warmths in the houses it glided past, but they wouldn’t work. It needed …
Ah, there! A door, a door in that warmth! Not a physical door—it had forgotten physicality again, so didn’t note the distinction—but a door nonetheless. A way in.
Walls were barriers only when it noticed the physical. It slid through one now without being aware of the passage, focused on the warmth it tracked. It eased close, found the “door” it needed, and slipped through. And into the warmth.
The shock of heat, of self, was sweet beyond expression. Lost in the bliss of sensation—Arms, legs, skin! It had skin!—for some time it simply rode the physical without noticing the other things it had regained.
Memory, though not its own. And words.
Gun, it thought in surprise, remembering now what a gun was. Then, tenderly sharing the discovery with its warmth, it added more words: Gun, yes. We will get the gun and kill and kill.
EIGHT
AT 8:22 A.M. Lily walked back into Sheriff Deacon’s office.
“Agent Yu.” He didn’t get up and his expression didn’t tell her much, but he wasn’t thrilled to see her. He nodded at the other person in the room, who had stood when Lily entered. “This is Meacham’s attorney, Crystal Kessenblaum.”
The PD was a tall, thin woman, thirtyish or more, with an explosion of red hair that had rained freckles all over her skin. She wore white linen slacks with a long, slitted tunic in spring green—a pretty outfit, but an odd choice for the situation. It all but screamed, “Don’t think of me as a lawyer.” She also wore glasses, little round Ben Franklins, and not a speck of makeup. She had a crisp nod for Lily, but didn’t offer to shake hands.
So Lily did, extending one hand confidently. “Ms. Kessenblaum. I’m glad you could make it here so early.”
Kessenblaum’s nearly invisible eyebrows shot up. She stared at Lily’s hand a second, then seemed to decide what the hell and took it. Her tone was belligerent. “Checking me out?”
She had a decent grip, damp palms, and a little lick of magic. Fire magic, mostly—one of the more common Gifts, and one that was relatively kind to its possessor. Most of those with a slight dose of Fire learned to control it fairly easily. A few never even knew it was there.
“Of course. I gather the sheriff told you I’m a sensitive?”
Kessenblaum shot the sheriff an aggravated glance. Maybe there was some history between the two of them; maybe Kessenblaum was always aggravated, annoyed, or otherwise aggrieved. “Yes, and I want to go on record that nothing you learn about my client through touch is admissible.”
Why did everyone feel obliged to point that out? “So noted. Sheriff, have you heard from the DA?”
“Yeah, yeah. Twice. First time to say she was meeting you here. Second time to say she was running late. Her youngest came down with a stomach bug. Mark usually takes the kids to day care, but he’s got the heaves, too, so she had to drop ’em off on her way here.”
“How many children does she have?” Lily was newly interested in such things, in how women balanced careers and kids. Not that finding someone to pitch in when she and Rule had to be away would be a problem, not with his father right there at Clanhome and about a hundred other potential sitters standing by. Lupi were kind of communal about child care.
Not that she knew exactly what her place was in Toby’s life. She wasn’t a stepmom, wasn’t sure she wanted to be one, but … but something ached inside her at the thought. Something she didn’t understand.
“Three—two girls and a boy.” Deacon shoved his chair back and stood. “We might as well head on down. Marcia will meet us there.”
Kessenblaum headed out the door without another word. Lily started to follow. The sheriff’s hand on her arm stopped her. “Listen, Agent Yu, I, uh …” He grimaced. “I had it coming. That’s all I want to say.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Good enough.”
THE jail occupied the basement and most of the first floor. Deacon took them to the admissions area, where he gave instructions for Meacham to be brought to a small interview room. He’d just finished when Marcia Farquhar arrived, slightly breathless. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“No problem,” Lily said, holding out her hand. “The sheriff explained.”
The DA looked like a mother. Not Lily’s mother, heaven knows—Marcia Farquhar was plump and pink, with a drawl like raw honey—but someone’s. Her hair was prematurely silver, worn long and pulled back in an old-fashioned bun from a soft, round face. She wore a good suit, dusky rose, with a crisp white shirt. Her handshake was brisk and business-like.
No magic in Marcia Farquhar.
“You’re messing with my case, Agent Yu.”
Lily nodded. “You had every reason to believe this one was solid. Turns out it isn’t. The arraignment’s this afternoon, I understand. I’d like to discuss that, if you have a few minutes after the interview with Meacham. You delayed the arraignment the maximum allowed.”
“We lacked bodies—which you have now provided, along with some complications. But that won’t affect the arraignment.”
It damned sure ought to. “We’ll talk,” Lily repeated.
Kessenblaum’s eyes had been darting between the two of them. “You have information that affects my client, Agent Yu?”
“Nothing admissible.” Lily took petty satisfaction in saying that.
“If you’re planning to bring additional charges against Mr. Meacham—”
“I don’t bring charges. I conduct investigations. Your client is a witness in an investigation into the use of magic in a multiple homicide.”
“You won’t learn anything here. Mr. Meacham is not competent to answer questions.”
“He’s competent enough to insist on your presence at all interviews.”
“I’m glad he remembered to do that, but it doesn’t indicate competency. More that he knows who to trust and who not to trust. He ought to be in a medical facility, not jail.” The look she shot Marcia Farquhar sizzled with some prior argument.
“Crystal,” Farquhar said in her honey-soft drawl, “you aren’t going to do your client much good if you take everything so personally. Right now, you ought to be cozying up to Agent Yu, here. She’s your new best friend, seein’ that whatever screws up my case helps you.”
Oh, yeah, plenty of history between these two. Normally a DA didn’t give a wobbly young PD advice—not good advice, anyway. Lily wanted to know what the deal was with these two, but not now. She looked at Deacon. “Where’s that interview room?”
The jail wasn’t much different from a dozen others Lily had seen. Newer than some, which meant it ought to seem cleaner, but it didn’t. The usual tang of disinfectant hovered over other scents, nothing her human nose could decipher precisely. Nothing pleasant, though. She was glad she lacked Rule’s sense of smell, and even gladder she was wholly numb to whatever psychic effluvia clung to the place. How could even a blocked empath stand working directly over it?
