Fair Game aao-3 Read online

  Caitlin smiled maliciously. ‘Spells don’t like the wrong people using them; they tend to fight back when they can. Maybe in a couple of decades it will be wrong enough that they’ll be cutting into someone and it will kill them all.’ Then she looked at Charles and stiffened. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ she said, sounding a little hysterical. ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  Muscles flexed in Brother Wolf’s back and Anna thought it might be a good idea to get him off the witch before Caitlin really ticked him off – though part of her was happy to see that he was involved in the hunt again.

  ‘She’s cooperating, Charles,’ Anna told him. ‘Let’s let her up before you scare her to death.’

  The werewolf snarled at Anna.

  ‘Really,’ she told him, tapping him on the nose. ‘It’s enough already. You aren’t a cat. No playing with something you aren’t going to eat.’ It wasn’t the words she hoped to persuade him with; it was the calming touch.

  Brother Wolf stepped almost delicately off the witch and watched with yellow eyes as the woman scrambled untidily to her feet.

  ‘Better?’ Anna asked, and then, without waiting for her to respond, continued with another question. ‘How do you know it’s a she? The one who is trying to be a witch?’

  Caitlin straightened her hair with shaky hands. ‘Witches strong enough to do this are women.’

  ‘You just said that whoever put these symbols on the boy wasn’t a witch.’

  ‘Did I?’

  Brother Wolf growled.

  ‘I really wouldn’t push him much more,’ Anna advised. ‘He’s not very happy with you right now.’ Brother Wolf gave Anna an amused look and then went back to being scary.

  The witch snorted archly. She reached out to touch Jacob’s body again and stopped when Brother Wolf took a step closer, his eyes on her hand. She pulled it back and answered Anna’s question. ‘Anyone could have drawn this and made it work. There’s no reason but habit to assume it was a woman. I suppose that the rape means it was probably a man, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And it did work, even though some of the symbols are wrong?’ It was Heuter who asked. Anna had been so focused on the witch and Brother Wolf that she had almost forgotten the others in the room.

  ‘I can feel that it did,’ Caitlin said. ‘Not as well as if the symbols had been inscribed correctly, but yes.’

  ‘Which symbols are wrong? How would you have done this better?’ Heuter’s voice was a little too eager.

  Caitlin gave him a cool gaze. She did psycho suburban housewife about as well as Anna had ever seen it done. ‘I am not here to instruct the FBI in witchcraft.’

  Leslie cleared her throat. ‘I’m Special Agent Fisher of the FBI. He’s Agent Heuter of Cantrip.’

  ‘Cantrip,’ Caitlin snorted contemptuously. She took a card out of her purse and handed it to him. ‘If you have questions, you can call me at this number. But I’m not Sally Reilly, Agent Heuter. I don’t intend to disappear, so I probably won’t help you at all. And I’ll charge you a lot for not doing so.’

  Brother Wolf sneezed, but Anna wasn’t about to laugh because the witch was stepping toward the boy’s body again.

  ‘Is there anything else we should know about this?’ asked Anna.

  Caitlin looked at the table. ‘The sex isn’t part of the ritual.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know if that’s useful.’

  ‘The killer keeps the victims alive for a while,’ Leslie said. ‘Seven days, usually. Sometimes a few more or less. Is that important?’

  Caitlin frowned. ‘That’s probably why the magic functioned, even though he screwed up. He cut the symbols in and left them to work – like a Crock-Pot, you know? Can’t cook very fast at a low temperature, but give it enough time and it gets the job done.’ She huffed. ‘Maybe the sex is because he got bored waiting. If we’re done here, I’d like to go. I have an appointment in half an hour.’

  Leslie handed her a card. ‘If you think of anything more, please call me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Caitlin said. Then she turned to Anna. ‘I’m going to tell Isaac what your wolf did to me.’ She smiled archly. ‘He’s not going to be pleased with you.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll buy him dinner at The Irish Wolfhound to make up for the offense,’ Anna suggested, holding the door open.

  Caitlin looked disappointed at Anna’s lack of reaction. ‘He’s the Alpha of the Olde Towne Pack, and he owes me. You’ll be sorry.’

  ‘You’re going to be late for your appointment if you don’t hurry,’ Anna told her.

  The witch scowled, turned on her heel, and marched out the door. Before she was out of sight, Dr Fuller had the boy’s body back flat on the table and covered protectively. ‘That …’ He sputtered a little, trying to keep his voice down.

  ‘There are reasons we don’t like witches much,’ Anna told him, when she was sure Caitlin was well out of earshot. ‘I know it’s upsetting. But Jacob’s killer has another victim right now. She’s probably alive. And something the witch told us might help us find Lizzie Beauclaire.’

  She thinks the witches killed Sally Reilly.

  Anna looked at Brother Wolf. Their mate bond was still as frozen as a Popsicle in Antarctica, but it was his voice in her head.

  ‘You think differently,’ she said.

  Shaman’s eyes looked at her, Charles’s eyes, then he closed them and shook himself, as if trying to shake off water after a dip in a lake. I think that she gave a spell to a killer who didn’t want her to talk. The witches wouldn’t have been the only ones to want her dead.

  ‘Anna?’ asked Leslie. ‘What’s he saying to you?’

  ‘Nothing we can prove just yet,’ Anna told her. ‘Though it might be interesting to see if Sally Reilly disappeared in one of the years that all of the bodies weren’t found.’

  ‘We don’t know anything about Sally Reilly,’ Leslie reminded her. ‘Let alone that she disappeared.’

  ‘Witchcraft and fae in the same case,’ said Heuter, sounding fascinated and a little excited.

  In the small examination room with a dead little boy on the table, Anna found his excitement distasteful.

  7

  ‘I don’t think Fuller is going to let any more witches into his morgue in the near future,’ said Heuter as he bit into the piece of half-raw steak on his fork.

  ‘That was the creepiest thing I ever saw,’ said Leslie, who was eating her salad and not looking at Heuter. Anna couldn’t decide if she was a vegetarian or just didn’t like watching someone eat raw meat. Maybe the visit to the morgue had something to do with it.

  ‘The witch or Heuter’s bloody steak?’ asked Anna, taking the first nibble of her cheeseburger and deciding she approved. She’d ordered six cheeseburgers on two plates – all medium well. Yes, she preferred rare, though before she’d been Changed she liked very well-done. But she didn’t eat raw meat in front of strangers.

  ‘Heuter’s eating habits are pretty creepy,’ Leslie said. ‘But I was talking about the witch. At least she told us some things we didn’t know.’

  After they’d left the morgue, Leslie had called Goldstein with an update. From what Anna could tell, he’d been pretty excited because his voice had even sped up for a word or two. When she’d finished, Heuter recommended a restaurant with good food and outdoor tables where they could talk without having to fuss about Brother Wolf.

  The waiter’s eyebrows had risen when Anna ordered so much food. He’d protested when she put the plate with four burgers down for Brother Wolf, but had shut up when Leslie produced her badge and said, with a nod, ‘Werewolf.’

  There had been a quick switch in waitstaff, and the new waitress had asked if she could get Brother Wolf a bowl of water (yes) – or if he’d like something else to drink (no). Anna figured that waitress had just earned a pretty big tip. From the smile on the waitress’s face, she figured so as well.

  ‘That was wicked fun, how you yanked the witch’s chain,’ Leslie told her. ‘Until then I hadn’t realized she was just t
rying to freak us out.’

  ‘Umm,’ answered Anna, taking a bite to give herself time to think.

  Brother Wolf looked up and focused on Anna. Okay, she was here to share information. Might as well do her job.

  ‘She wasn’t trying to freak you out,’ Anna told them. ‘Isaac told us she wasn’t very powerful. She didn’t have the control to keep up appearances in the presence of the death magic on the boy’s body. I was trying to distract her, get her focused on me, so she’d tell us something instead of doing something dumb that was going to get her shot.’

  ‘Shot?’ Heuter asked.

  Anna smiled at him. ‘Guns are quite easy to smell. You should see about changing up the holster in the small of your back. You have to reach too far for it; it takes you too long. Try a shoulder holster or get some more practice.’ The bun had been toasted with real butter and the meat seared on charcoal. Anna ate a few fries to put off starting on the second burger.

  ‘And you need to wait until you’re sure you are going to draw before you reach,’ agreed Leslie. She smiled at Anna. ‘Cantrip doesn’t require the same weapons training that we get at Quantico.’

  Something cold came and went in Heuter’s face before he resumed his bland appearance. ‘Right. There’s been some talk about changing that. I’m afraid most of the shooting I’ve done is with a rifle. My folks are from Texas and we have a place in upstate New York where we go hunting every year, too – hunting is a family ritual. But that witch …’

  ‘Creepy,’ said Leslie with a nod. ‘I wish she had been faking it. Did either of you recognize the name she gave us? Sally Reilly?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, but I think Charles did. I’ll talk to him when he changes back and let you know.’

  Leslie frowned and started to say something, then glanced at Heuter and stuffed her mouth with salad instead.

  ‘According to Wiki,’ said Heuter, reading from his phone, ‘in 1967, Sally Reilly wrote a book called My Little Gray Story Book.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Anyway, it was a play on the My Little Red Story Book series of readers in use in elementary schools. My Little Gray Story Book was an underground sensation, and when the second book, A Witch’s Primer, hit the stands three years later, it hit the New York Times bestseller list. Sally Reilly was beautiful, shocking, and funny and became an instant, if small-time, celebrity. The books were less how-to books than here-is-my-life-as-a-witch books. She did a few talk shows, including The Mike Douglas Show, where she straightened some spoons bent by Uri Geller without touching them the day after the famous Israeli psychic appeared.’

  ‘Witches can’t straighten spoons,’ said Anna involuntarily. Witches did things with living and once-living tissue – blood and bodies and stuff like that.

  Heuter tipped his phone at her. ‘It’s on Wiki.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her,’ said Leslie. ‘I know about Uri and his spoon bending. Did something happen to her? The witch seemed pretty sure that she’s dead, and Charles, according to Anna, thinks that she was a victim of our serial killer. What does Wiki say?’

  ‘Wiki doesn’t say,’ said Heuter. ‘Hold on.’

  ‘My dad talks about the sixties and seventies as a heyday of New Age thinking before the New Agers,’ Anna said. ‘Lots of free love and Wicca and magical thinking.’

  Heuter, still searching the Internet, nodded. ‘The Victorian era was the only thing that came close to it. Ouija boards, séances, games that tested whether people could read minds. Then, because everyone was doing it … it became less mysterious, less shadowy, and more … ridiculous. Interests changed.’

  ‘So maybe our Sally Reilly just disappeared from public view as the world gave a yawn,’ suggested Leslie. ‘Is this going to help our missing girl?’

  Heuter didn’t answer her question. ‘There are rumors of a third book she wrote and printed only a few copies of – Elementary Magic. When I get back to the office, I’ll check our archives, see if we have it in the library. I should also be able to find out what happened to her, or if she’s still around.’

  ‘The witch seemed awfully sure she was dead,’ said Anna. She hadn’t been lying.

  Heuter snorted and a scowl marred his handsome face. ‘That witch was … well. I wouldn’t trust her to know which way was up.’

  ‘She gave us Sally Reilly,’ Anna pointed out.

  ‘Which was more than we’d managed to get out of any of the other witches the FBI consulted with on this case,’ agreed Leslie.

  Anna finished her last cheeseburger and retrieved Brother Wolf’s empty plate, stacking them together on the table. She tried to see any way she and Charles could be of more help.

  ‘Maybe if we went out to where Jacob’s body was found, we might be able to find something more,’ she said slowly. ‘He was the last victim, before Lizzie?’

  ‘Right,’ Leslie said. ‘Was he fae or werewolf – could you tell? Dr Fuller said his parents were Baptist. That doesn’t quite go with the whole supernatural thing.’

  Anna blinked at her a moment. She hadn’t thought about that. Why had their killer reverted to killing humans again?

  ‘Fae,’ said Heuter. ‘His father, Ian Mott, is listed in the fae database at Cantrip as full-blood fae and Jacob is clearly listed as half-fae. I ran the list of victims after we talked yesterday. Cantrip’s database is far more extensive than the official one.’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Anna; then she took a quick drink from her water glass to disguise any expression she might be showing. If Jacob Mott had been any sort of preternatural, she’d eat her hat. He hadn’t smelled fae – and even half-bloods smell like fae. Wasn’t it interesting he was listed as fae in Cantrip’s database? Maybe the killer was finding his victims in the same database. Even so, shouldn’t the fae who’d stolen Lizzie away be able to tell Jacob Mott hadn’t been fae? She didn’t really know if one fae could tell if another one was around, though she suspected it was so.

  Charles was watching Heuter with sudden interest. How she could tell it was Charles and not Brother Wolf was … like how a mother of twins knew which one was which: less about the small details and more about instincts.

  Heuter looked at Anna as if he’d forgotten she was there. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you can forget that.’

  ‘Don’t want anyone filing paperwork to see if they are in that database of yours?’ Leslie asked. ‘One of the fringe benefits to working with Cantrip or one of the other, smaller enforcement agencies in the government is that no one ever thinks to file on them with the Freedom of Information Act.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Hueter in a voice very nearly a whine. ‘The people who use FOIA do it extensively and well. Answering those requests is the job we give newbies – and that includes Important Senators’ Sons, like yours truly, too.’ He grinned, showing that he didn’t think that made him any more deserving of privilege than the rest of the newbies. ‘But not even the powers that be could keep me there for long. Information gathering about unknown werewolves is a lot more interesting.’ He looked at Anna. ‘Anna Latham of Chicago, musical prodigy. Left Northwestern University a couple of years short of a degree – much to the chagrin of the co-chair of Musical Studies, whom I talked to this morning, because he thought you’d become the next Yo-Yo Ma. No one seems to have heard from you since – except for your father, who was pretty short on conversation.’

  ‘My father is a lawyer,’ Anna half explained and half apologized. ‘He wouldn’t say anything without a lot more information flowing his way. And probably a court order, though I wouldn’t count on that.’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me your husband’s name or where you live now – and the IRS is extremely uncooperative.’

  ‘Aren’t they supposed to be?’ Anna asked. ‘My husband and I came here to help; we did not come here to become names listed in your database – though we knew that you’d probably figure out who I was.’ He thought he’d pulled a rabbit out of the hat with his revelations about her real identity. She shoul
d have let him continue to pat himself on the back, and she knew it. Heuter was one of those people who liked being smarter than everyone else. He’d have been happier if she was mad or worried that he’d discovered who she was. But he was just a little too smug for Anna to be willing to indulge him.

  ‘Where are you staying while you are here in Boston?’ Heuter asked.

  ‘Why are you worried about that?’ returned Anna. Leslie, who knew where she and Charles were staying, was making steady inroads on the last of her salad. ‘I promise neither of us is going to go berserk and start killing people.’

  Heuter tapped his fingers lightly on the table. ‘I was raised to service,’ he said. ‘It’s a family tradition. I believe in this country. I believe that innocents need protecting. I believe it is my calling to make sure that they are protected from people like you.’

  Heuter’s voice was cool and controlled, even when he spoke the last bit. If Leslie hadn’t drawn in a breath, Anna would have thought she’d misheard. Beside Anna, Brother Wolf stiffened, so she pulled herself together.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Anna said. ‘I’d have thought that terrorists and murderers would be more troublesome than me.’ As a comeback it was weak, but she was more worried about the silver bullets all Cantrip agents loaded their guns with. The gun that Heuter had almost pulled in the morgue. She couldn’t really remember now exactly when he’d tried to go for it. He’d been so slow and clumsy that he hadn’t managed to pull it before Brother Wolf had Caitlin down and contained on the floor. Had he started for it before Brother Wolf jumped, so that he could aim it at the witch? Or had he been too slow and by the time he could have gotten it out, it was already obvious that Brother Wolf wasn’t going to hurt the witch?