Something Wicked (4 page)

“You mean Victor’s finger
print.
Singular. That’s a good piece of evidence.” Al paused to thank the waitress for our coffee, then to add sugar to his. “It’s also the only evidence, except for your ID. And there’s evidence against Ben, too.”

He took a sip and winced. “Good coffee.”

My gut twisted. Ben Fisher wasn’t the killer. I’d seen both brothers together, in the lineup. I’d seen how Victor smiled.

I couldn’t be wrong…could I?

True, I would have cursed the right man. On the downside, he was wandering free this very night! And that couldn’t happen. Not if the world had any rightness left.

Looking disappointed that I hadn’t taken my cue, Al kept talking. “I don’t know if you’re aware how much publicity your sister’s murder is getting.”

I stared at him grimly. “Because that has nothing to do with why you’re talking to me?”

“Yeah, well…Because it’s so high-profile, a lot of evidence is being collected from public tips. Supposedly Benny has been interviewing local magic users. You know, covens, occult shops, that sort of thing. Authorities figure that’s how he found your sister. Word is, he seemed particularly interested in tracing one magical tool more than any others.”

I thought I knew what he was going to say. Still, I didn’t want to prompt him.

“Chalices,” announced Al, and I was right. “Especially chalices used in goddess worship.”

The Hekate Cup.
I was sure Aunt Maria had mentioned its absence to cousin Ray by now. But its theft shouldn’t be public knowledge yet, not even to a nosy faux reporter like Al Barker.

Could that really be why Diana had died? For a stupid
goblet?
Okay, yes. A sacred goddess goblet. But it was still a
thing,
like a rosary or a crucifix. Just a symbol.

“Why would he be after those?” I asked, putting the spoon down. Cold weather or not, I didn’t want coffee.

Al shrugged. “Ben says it wasn’t him, the assumption being that Victor used his name. But Ben’s made a living out of explaining all things mystical. He’s got a real knack for it. Why would a political consultant be networking with the area pagans instead?”

“I don’t know.” I challenged. “Why?”

I should’ve guessed his answer. “It’s a
conspiracy.
Victor’s obviously set Ben up. If you hadn’t interrupted him, he could have cleaned up his fingerprints and nobody would be the wiser. So what I need to know is, what’s so important about witch chalices? Did your sister even have one? If so, what’s so special about it?”

I hated him using the word “need” that way. We need air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat. Anything you can survive without, you don’t
need.

“No comment,” I warned.

“Come on.” He spread his thick hands. “Katie. Sweetie. You owe me something, here.”

The anger was creeping back, a tension in my bruised jaw, a burning in my chest. That happened pretty easily, lately. “You jumped onto
my
roof and broke into
my
home.”

“I thought the place would be empty. Who moves right back into a murder house?”

This time I picked up the fork. Not that I would stab him with it or anything, fun though that might be. I just needed something in my hand. “I haven’t called the cops on you. You could tell me ten times as much about the Fisher brothers, and I still wouldn’t say we’re even.”

“You’ve got to tell me
something.
Don’t you want the truth to come out? Aren’t you willing to do whatever you can to bring the real killer to justice?”

Another voice, beside me, asked, “And how, exactly, will polluting the jury pool accomplish that, Al?”

The voice had a vaguely familiar rasp of city bluntness, and my stomach knotted as I lifted my face to see him.

The panic hit first, instinctive and immediate. I wished I had my athame.

I’d dropped the fork and fumbled for my butter knife before I noticed the dark-haired man’s long curls, his untucked shirt under his jacket, his obvious concern about our discussion.

The face, the eyes—those, I’d never forget. But the concern confused me.

Then I really recognized him.

My recognition of Ben Fisher went way beyond him having the same face as Diana’s murderer. What I felt was a connection to him, deep down.

I curse you, Ben Fisher.

Oh, hell. I’d bound us together with my spell casting.

All three of us.

B
en’s deep brown eyes searched mine for a long moment, as if he felt something similar. Or maybe the bruises ooked him out. Then he seemed to realize he was staring. He dipped his attention to my makeshift excuse for a weapon.

His brows quirked into fleeting amusement. “Kinda possessive about the cutlery, huh?” he joked, with a lopsided smile, before his gaze darted back to mine. “Hi. I’m Ben. Have…have we met? That sounds like a pickup line. I didn’t mean it that way, not that you’re someone I wouldn’t…” He shook his head, wincing and half laughing at his conversational train wreck. “You look familiar, is all. Al?”

I didn’t take Ben’s hand, and not just because my good hand was still curled tight around the handle of a butter knife. He didn’t seem dangerous. In fact, he had the kind of unassuming keenness that used to attract me to mathletes and chess-clubbers in high school. Really. It did. I come from a blue-collar family. People with a chance at real college degrees are cool.

But my broken hand throbbed and my jaw ached just from seeing him, all the same. Even without having met, we had more baggage between us than he could begin to guess.

His quick expression stilled as he let his hand drop, untouched. A shrug and a head tip indicated Al. “Just be careful of this guy, okay? He’s got a good heart, but he’d sell his mom for the publicity. No offense, Al.”

“None taken, Benny. Thanks for meeting with us.” With that, Al explained in full the coincidence of Ben Fisher’s presence. My gaze shot over to that smug bastard—what the
hell?
But Al was scooting over to make room for his partner in the booth.

Apparently we’d both been set up. If I thought I could talk, at that moment, I would’ve ripped Al a new one. But the clutch in my throat almost blocked breathing, much less speech.

With a suspicious glance from Al to me and back, Ben took a single step back. He had no intention of joining us.

Good!

His gaze met and then veered from mine, another smile there and then gone. I braced myself for the same reaction I’d had in the police station, when his brother grinned right at me.

Instead, I found myself noticing his dark lashes, the angle of his jaw and the slope of his tanned neck into his T-shirt collar. Though not a big man, not beside Al anyway, Ben Fisher had the tight build of a runner or a swimmer, and
did I find him attractive?

Damn, I was one sick woman, wasn’t I?

Luckily, Ben had turned a more direct stare to his business partner. “Considering what you were discussing when I got here, I’m not thinking it’s something I should involve myself in. No offense, Ms.…”

His gaze darted back to mine—and stuck. The only thing that nudged me out of my silence was that Al was about to speak. I was suddenly so furious at Al Barker for manipulating us that I didn’t want to hear his voice or his excuses, radio-quality or not.

“Trillo,” I said sharply. “I’m Kate Trillo.”

Ben’s olive complexion went pale. “Oh, my God. That’s where…
Oh,
God. Al…!”

I was already turning on his friend. “Stay away from me, Barker. Stay away from my family. Don’t talk about us on your sorry excuse of a radio program. And
on
the record? Go to hell.”

I stood to stalk out, but Ben Fisher followed. “Ms. Trillo, I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I mean, I’m sorry for your loss, too.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

Some young women who’d been giggling in the back corner booth fell suspiciously silent. I think they were checking out Ben’s butt.

“No, I’m sure you’re right,” he agreed. “I won’t assume to know what you’re going through, but I didn’t know about this. I wouldn’t have imposed, if I’d had any idea what Al…”

I spun on him. But my fury ebbed at the distress I saw in his intense eyes, on his open face. No, he couldn’t be as sorry as I was. He hadn’t just seen the last of his immediate family wiped out. But neither had he done anything wrong.

I
felt
his innocence, in whatever energies connected us. And damn it, I couldn’t hate the guy.

His brother was still fair game. But with Ben, I’d already made one hell of a mistake. Words from the week before echoed back at me.
I wish you agony, Ben Fisher. I wish you despair….

Not good.

His expression asked me to believe him, even as he backed away to give me space. A shrug seemed to say that I could take my time, that he was sorry for pressing me.

The person I’d been barely a week ago, the nurse, the healer, responded. Why did I have to have cursed a nice guy?

The person I’d become needed to know more about whether it had even worked. About curses in general.

“You’re some sort of expert on the supernatural, right?” I asked suddenly.

His head came up. “I don’t know if anyone could be classified as an expert, the subject’s so fluid, but sure, I’ve got a working grasp of the theories.”

Uh-huh. “Why do you call your Web site Superrational?”

“Our viewpoint is that there’s a rational explanation for almost everything that’s considered supernatural,” explained Ben, squinting slightly as if studying something I couldn’t see. “The natural in supernatural. The normal in paranormal. Finding it takes some of the fright factor out of it.”

“So you’re one of those debunkers?” I folded my arms. I hated skeptics and debunkers with their single-minded cynicism. They always seemed so…mean.

“No! Not at all. Debunkers are pessimists about human nature. They tend to think that everything’s a con. I’m more of an optimist. I think it’s all real—ghosts, magic, reincarnation, you name it.” Ben relaxed as he spoke. His hands tried to shape ideas in the air, and he had no problem at all holding my gaze. “I mean, people have believed this stuff for millennia! To think differently…isn’t that fairly conceited? Our ancestors may not have had our science, although even that’s increasingly debatable. But they had basic human intelligence. Even now, statistics show the average adult believes in at least something that’s been labeled ‘supernatural,’ so—”

Ben stopped himself then, as if embarrassed.

Even Joe had looked up from his paper by now. The girls were whispering among themselves. Two lovebirds sitting near them had stopped snuggling to stare.

“I’m—” Ben swallowed back what I suspected would have been yet another apology and set his shoulders. “That was, er, the long answer. Why do you ask?”

I need to know more about curses.

But asking that in front of Al Barker had to be its own kind of stupidity. Better to keep track of Ben through the press, make sure nothing happened that could conceivably bring him a lonely, empty, suffering life or a long, lingering death…or anything else I’d wished on him. Them.

Hekate had to understand who I meant.

“You know your brother’s guilty, right?” I asked instead.

Ben’s brightness faded. “Yeah,” he admitted, the word squeezing from his throat. “I just wish I knew why.”

“I don’t give a damn why.” I turned away to the glass exit.
As long as he goes down for it.

I didn’t see anything except for a blinding wash of high beams. I didn’t hear a warning. But with a sudden body blow, Ben Fisher tackled me to the floor.

Then
the place exploded in noise. Crashing. Shouting. Screeching. And my only thought, as my shoulder blades slammed onto the linoleum and Ben Fisher slammed onto me, was a strangely calm and foolishly childish,
One, two, three, protected be.

Please.

Safety glass hailed down on us even as we skidded from the force of the tackle. Red booths and a table launched themselves into the air. Right behind them a broken headlight, a crumpled fender, a thick black tire loomed over us—

We rolled. Somehow, Ben Fisher and I rolled faster than a car could fly.

The red sedan ground to a stop amidst debris, its near wheel spinning inches from our heads.

As suddenly as it had happened, it was over. The sedan now sat in the middle of Joe’s Diner. Through the ruined front of the diner, icy winter air washed across us. The back of the diner looked freakishly normal. A dangling picture labeled Bay of Naples dropped off the wall with a smash. Steam hissed from the car’s gaping hood, above us. Someone moaned behind the air bag.

And Ben Fisher slowly sat up, one arm still tight around me, lifting me with him, and I didn’t even think to mind.

“My God,” he muttered, more than once. “Oh, my God. Are you okay? Kate, are you hurt or—”

“I’m fine.” I tipped my head to meet his wide eyes. Then I forced my gaze to the wreckage. “I’m…wow.”

We were close enough that I could see the tiny pits and scratches on the car’s undercarriage, the kind left by winter road salt. If either of us hadn’t moved…

But how
had
we moved that fast? Even with Ben jumping me like that.
One, two, three?

Oh, hell. “The others,” I gasped, struggling to my feet. Ben helped. “I’ve got to see if anyone’s—I’m a nurse—”

To my immense relief, Joe was already on the phone calling 911. The lovebirds seemed unhurt, although when the woman stood, staring, she began to wobble.

“Sit down!” I commanded loudly, pointing. “Have her put her head down. Put her coat on her.”

Ben was pulling at the driver’s door. “It’s locked!” He circled to the passenger side while I made my way across glass and rubble to check on the girls in the back booth. One had passed out, but her pulse and breathing were strong. I left her friends piling their jackets over her and went to check Al.

He had minor lacerations from flying glass. After getting Joe to toss me an unopened box of rubber gloves, I put one on and found that only one of Al’s cuts, over his forehead, looked deep. I pushed the edges together with my good hand and pressed a clean napkin to the wound. “Keep pressure on it. Head wounds bleed like crazy, but you should be fine.”

A nervous glance over my shoulder showed that Ben had stopped trying the doors and instead knelt on the hood, pulling broken safety glass from the windshield with a jacket-wrapped hand. His T-shirt clung to the length of his back, to the strain of his shoulders. Smoke billowed through the opening he created. Oh, hell….

“I’ve got to get shots of this,” Al argued, reclaiming my attention as he fumbled with his camera.

“No.” As I protested, I felt the strangest thrill of power—and I looked at my hand in its oversized, neon-yellow rubber glove.

Al’s blood smeared the fingertips.

Words came to me, almost audible in their clarity.
Take no pictures, feed no press. Sit in silence, nothing less.
With one smear of blood and one weird, whispered rhyme, I might just…

No.
I stripped off the glove as I left Al to hemorrhage or not, as he chose, and ran to join Ben. Bad enough that after years of normalcy, I was suddenly turning to magic. Why was I so drawn to dark magic?
Blood
magic?

This wasn’t my family’s way. But it seemed to be mine.

“What’s burning?” I demanded, as Ben cleared the last of the pebbled glass from the now gaping windshield and hopped down to the rubble to make room for me.

“Nothing. The smoke’s a mixture of combustion and talcum powder. It’s a kind of lubricant, to keep the air bag from sticking to itself. Kate—stop!”

I paused, one knee already on the side of the car to boost myself closer to the open windshield. I’d already turned the unused, left-hand glove inside out and fumbled it onto my right hand, We could hear a groan from behind the driver-side air bag. “He’s hurt!”

“Just give me a second.” He tried to lift the crumpled hood, but it wouldn’t stay up. Though unsure what he meant to do, I ducked in to support it with my shoulder.

With careful, quick movements, Ben disconnected the negative battery cable. “So none of the other air bags deploy into you,” he explained shortly. “That’s the plan, anyway.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I, uh, come from a smart family.”

After taking care of the positive cable, he held the hood so I could step back. Then he dropped it with a hollow thud.

I hitched myself up onto the hood and braced my cast arm on the roof to hold me. I reached through the gaping windshield and pushed the deflating air bag out of the way. I glanced for other passengers—none. I quickly checked the driver’s seat belt—fastened. His steering wheel wasn’t bent. Then, more hopeful that he’d avoided internal injuries, I turned to the driver himself.

He was regaining consciousness. Good sign.

So was the sound of sirens approaching.

I kept the guy talking and tried to hold his head steady in case of neck injury until the EMTs arrived. Since they were the professionals at emergency response, I was glad to let them take over. After that, everything became a confusion of cops and firemen and strobes of red and blue and white lights.

I ended up standing next to Ben Fisher, who had a blanket draped loosely over his T-shirted shoulders since he’d gotten glass in his jacket. The concern on his angular face as his dark, bright eyes followed the EMTs was either genuine or Academy Award worthy. How could identical twins be so different?

“Thanks for pushing me out of the way,” I said.

He smiled fleetingly at me. “Anyone would have done the same.”

“No, they wouldn’t.” Victor, for example.

He shrugged.

“So how
do
you know about disabling air bags?” I asked, to change the subject.

“It’s kind of weird, actually. I’ve had three accidents this last week. Nothing too serious, obviously, but I sure got some firsthand, up-close experience with air bags.”

This week?
“Three accidents including this one?”

“I guess I should start taking the El.”

Except…as goddess of the crossroads, Hekate had powers over all transportation, even the elevated train. Not just cars.

“Here, you take the blanket.” He shrugged it off to drape across my shoulders before I could protest. It was warm from his body. It smelled good, too, like some kind of spicy soap. I still had long sleeves on and so didn’t need the blanket as much as he did. But I couldn’t bring myself to protest.