Witch Hunt (14 page)

The guy at the door ran along our side, slamming his hands into the door. I couldn’t hear what he was shouting over the engine noises.

Every fiber of my being wanted to stop the RV—every fiber except that narrow sliver of self-preservation that was screaming. Stopping would mean death. So I kept my foot flat on the pedal.

The last incubus fell away. He couldn’t keep up.

I swung the wheel around, turning a tight corner. The iron arch leading back to civilization appeared at the end of the street.

We passed through the barrier. My heart contracted and my sinuses itched.

The instant that we were out of Helltown’s wards, Domingo’s cell phone rang.

I didn’t answer it. I drove faster.

The more distance I put between Helltown and me, the faster the thrall faded. It took three blocks before I could think of anything but turning back and letting our attackers have their way with me.

I dared a look over my shoulder at Isobel as I careened down the streets. “Izzy? You okay?”

She was pulling her shorts up and buttoning them, cheeks flushed bright red. “I’m fine. I think.” She sat in the passenger’s seat, twisted around to watch Helltown disappear through the back window.

“Are we being followed?”

“I don’t see anyone,” she said. She let her head drop into her hands. “I’m so sorry about that, Cèsar. That was my fault. I never should have gone back to
vedae som matis duvak
—they were probably watching for my RV.”

“Wait, what? Why would the incubi be after you? I thought they were after me.”

She frowned. “Huh?”

Interesting. It seemed we had a mutual enemy. “Not a friend of the Silver Needles?”

Isobel stuffed her breasts back into her corset.

“No,” she said flatly.

Domingo’s phone rang again, interrupting us. This time, I answered it. “Domingo here.”

It was Suzy. “You still in LA, Cèsar?”

I had never been happier to hear her voice before. I didn’t bother asking how she knew that I had my brother’s cell phone. Suzy knew everything. “I thought you were done with me.”

“I’ve come to terms with the fact that you’re not leaving town until you’ve got your answers. So you want to talk to Erin Karwell or not?”

“You found her.”

“I’m breaking about fifty laws that most Americans don’t even know exist to tell you this. I could lose my job. I could be imprisoned. I could be
killed
. I hope you’re grateful.”

“Oh, I’m grateful. I could just about kiss you,” I said.

Isobel gave me a side eye. I ignored her and kept driving.

“Don’t go all sappy on me.” But Suzy’s voice had softened. “Her body wasn’t taken to the usual morgue. She was sent to Bittman Labs, out in Torrance.”

Torrance? That wasn’t anywhere near the scene of the crime. But I knew where it was, so I got into the turn lane. “I owe you, Suze.”

“Hell yeah, you do.” A pause, and then, “Do you still have the necrocog?”

“She’s with me right now.”

Isobel gave me another look, this one more warning. The same kind of look Aunt Raina used to give me before beating sense into my ass with a chancla.

“I guess that’s good,” Suzy said. “I’m going to meet you at Bittman Labs. I’m on my way now.”

“Don’t. You’ve gotten yourself in enough danger.”

“Did it sound like I was asking for your opinion? I’ll meet you around back in, what, half an hour? Maybe forty-five. Don’t go in without me.”

Suzy hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Isobel asked, a hard edge to her voice.

“Suzume Takeuchi. Suzy. The woman we visited.”

“Your coworker at the Office of Preternatural Affairs? The place that’s sending guys out to
execute
us?”

“That has nothing to do with Suzy.”

“Are you so sure about that?” When I stopped at the intersection, Isobel grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at her. “If someone in the OPA is out to get you, how do you know that you can trust anyone that works there?”

Eduardo and Joey
were
friends of Suzy’s. But I shook off the thought as soon as it crept over me. A lot of crazy shit had happened the last few days, but if I could trust anything, it was my taste in friends. “You don’t know Suzy,” I said. Isobel made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat. That sound was enough to take me from offended to pissed in two seconds flat. “How do I know I can trust
you
? You’re the one fucking around with demons in Helltown.”

“I’m the one the incubi in Helltown want dead,” she said dryly.

I winced. “Good point. The enemy of my enemy, or…whatever.”

“She’s been in Helltown,” Isobel said.

“What? Who?”

“Your Suzy. I asked around. Does she usually wear business suits and throw money at all her contacts? She was in Helltown this morning. Yesterday, too.”

That was news to me. But it didn’t mean anything. Suzy had multiple cases, just like I usually did. She could have been chasing down anyone. “We can trust Suzy.”

A smile flickered over Isobel’s lips. “I hope so, because you’re staking both of our lives on it.”

The light turned green. We got on the freeway and headed for Torrance.

THERE WAS ONLY ONE car in the parking lot when we got to Bittman Labs, and it wasn’t Suzy’s. Isobel passed the building at a crawl, leaning forward to squint out the windshield. “Is that hers?” she asked.

“No, Suzy said she’d be around back.”

Isobel hesitated, knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Last chance to escape with our lives.”

“I won’t have a life if we leave,” I said.

She parked the RV behind the morgue.

Suzy was already waiting for us on foot. No car in sight. She gave me a look through the windshield that could have curdled milk—or maybe that look was for the giant teal beast that came groaning around the corner.

I jumped out.

“Hey, Scooby,” Suzy said by way of greeting. “Nice Mystery Machine. Why is your bumper bloody?”

It was Isobel who responded from behind me. “It’s incubus blood. Don’t worry about it.” She clambered out of the RV, pulling a t-shirt over the corset that had more holes than cloth in it. The Cabo Wabo logo was stretched over her ample breasts.

Suzy’s expression changed completely as she looked Isobel up and down, hand resting almost casually on her hip where she usually wore a holster. No gun tonight. Probably for the best. The two of them together were a real Odd Couple, all right—Suzy buttoned up tight in a suit and tie, Isobel fast and loose.

“Agent Takeuchi,” Suzy said, extending her hand. “We haven’t officially met yet.” It was hard to tell what she was thinking, but the vein that had appeared in her forehead made me think it wasn’t real good.

After a beat, Isobel shook her hand. “I’m Isobel Stonecrow.” Was that a moment of hesitation before she said her name? Man, I wanted to run her face through our databases. See what other pseudonyms she might have.

“Why is there incubus blood on your RV?”

Suzy didn’t know about my history with the Silver Needles, and I didn’t want to have to explain why incubi might be attacking me. When Isobel opened her mouth to reply, I interrupted her. “We can talk later. We’re in kind of a rush with Erin now, aren’t we?” I asked.

“I guess so,” Suzy said. “Where are your supplies for the spell, Stonecrow?”

Isobel glanced at me.

I answered for her. “She doesn’t need them.”

“But the ritual sites we’ve found…”

“Fake,” I said.

“Interesting.” I’d seen Suzy in a lot of weird moods before, but not this one. She was usually brash. Aggressive. But this chilly thing, this was new. She jerked a thumb toward the back door. “I called ahead. Rob left it unlocked. Just gotta go in.”

She turned and headed inside.

Isobel hung back, hesitating to follow.

“Problem?” I asked.

“This is going to sound like the obvious statement of the day, but there are a lot of dead bodies in there.”

And she could probably hear every last one of them. I wouldn’t be eager to go inside either. “Could you call up Erin from out here?”

“I need to be closer than that.”

But she didn’t look like she was in a hurry to make that happen.

Suzy opened the back door, propping it against her foot so that it stayed open. “Coming?”

“I’m coming,” Isobel said, but she still didn’t move.

“I don’t like morgues,” I said. “You got my back on this?” I reached out for her, offering a hand. She stared at me for a long time before taking it.

“Sure,” she said, leaning against my side. We fit together pretty well. “I’ve got your back.”

I’d like to say that was just a smooth line to get her inside, but not so much. Never been a fan of morgues. Bodies give me the heebie jeebies.

Suzy held the door until we passed through. Then she closed it, punched a few numbers in the keypad by the handle, reactivated the alarm sensors by pressing a red button.

We were in a sterile hallway. The night crew wasn’t in this part of the building, so only the emergency signs over the doors gave us any light.

Suzy clicked on a penlight and traced it along the wall. “Rob said he’d leave me alone to check the bodies, but I didn’t tell him that I’d have company. Be quiet.”

“What excuse did you give him for wanting a little one-on-one time with cadavers?” I asked in a whisper.

“I didn’t give him an excuse. I gave him money.” Suzy led us down an adjacent hall. Isobel had pulled back from me, hugging her arms around herself, walking slowly. She was shivering in her shorts and tee.

Shucking my jacket, I dropped it over her shoulders. I had long sleeves underneath. It didn’t make a difference to me. But she looked startled and kind of pleased. “Thanks,” she said, pulling the lapels closed over her chest.

“I looked up Peter’s case file,” Suzy said, walking backward so that she could address me directly. She talked like Isobel wasn’t with us. “Our last necrocog.”

“I remember Peter.”

“They scanned his personal notes and put them in the database. Good reading. Did you know the dead can’t lie?”

“Of course they can’t,” Isobel said, picking up her pace to walk alongside me. “Souls move on after the bodies are gone. All that they leave is residue. An imprint. Memories don’t have the motivation to lie. The testimony of the dead is inviolable.”

Suzy nodded. “If the victim’s body is still here, and if Stonecrow can talk to her, you’ll have your answer.” She stopped in front of the door to the refrigerator and gave me a hard look. “You sure you want that? It’s not too late for you to hop a bus to Mexico.”

I answered by pushing the door open.

It was even colder inside. One wall was nothing but silver drawers. There was a steel table in the middle, some jars and cabinets to the wall on the right. Chills rolled down my spine at the sight of them.

Suzy grabbed a clipboard off the wall. “Karwell, Karwell…” she muttered, tracing her flashlight down the page.

While she searched for Erin’s name, Isobel moved to stand in front of the drawers. She’d been reluctant to enter the building, but she didn’t look reluctant now. She looked…drunk. Intoxicated. Her eyes were lidded and she was breathing heavy.

“Isobel?”

She didn’t respond to me. She lifted her hands in front of her like she was trying to push curtains apart.

That glazed look was starting to freak me out. Way creepier than tribal drums and raccoon bones and shit.

Suzy hung the clipboard up on the wall again and faced me. Her features were pinched. Bad sign. “Erin Karwell is here.”

“Where?”

She didn’t move toward the drawers. She went to the cabinets on the opposite wall, grabbed keys hanging from a hook, and unlocked them. There were several white boxes inside, each a bit smaller than a banker’s box. Isobel recoiled at the sight of them.

Suzy grabbed one. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take a few steps back when she carried it over and set it on the steel table.

She lifted the top. There was a bag of gray dust inside.

Cremains.

“Erin Karwell,” she said.

I’D FLIRTED WITH ERIN for months, so you’d think that I would know more about her. Or at least be able to put together a memory of her face and hold it clear in my mind, as crisp as the grayscale photograph in my pocket. Like, what color were her eyes? Were her ears pierced? Did she wear jewelry?

I couldn’t remember any of that without checking the picture Domingo had printed up. I couldn’t remember Erin’s smile or laugh or even her black eye all that well. Months of heavy tipping and one trip sneaking into the kitchen to find her name, and I couldn’t even tell you how long her hair had been when she wasn’t wearing a ponytail.

But I remembered what her body looked like in my bathtub. I remembered her cracked fingernail and the hole between her breasts. I remembered the bruised shape of a hand imprinted on her unbreathing throat.

Now even that was gone.

Erin Karwell had been cremated. Body vaporized.

“Shit,” I said. “I’m
fucked
.” Probably an understatement.

Suzy seemed to deflate. It didn’t look like disappointment, but relief. “Guess that’s it,” she said, moving to put the lid back onto the box.

Isobel stopped her by reaching in to grab the plastic bag. “I can try. I’ve never done ash before, but I’ve worked with some rotted bodies. It can’t be that different.”

“A lot of cremains are just bone and whatever the victim was burned inside,” Suzy said, her voice hard-edged as she tried to pull the box out of Isobel’s reach. “There’s probably barely any of the body left.”

Isobel dragged the bag toward her anyway. “We can at least attempt it.”

They were playing tug of war with the box. I settled it by grabbing Erin’s cremains and placing them in front of Isobel. She pulled the rubber band off, folded down the edges of the bag.

“Cèsar,” Suzy said warningly.

“The worst thing that can happen is nothing,” I said. “Stop worrying so much.”

“It can be so much worse than that,” she whispered. I ignored her.

Isobel had her hands stretched out over the cremains and her eyes had gone blank. She stared at the wall without seeming to see it. “Erin Karwell? Erin…come on…” Her cheeks flushed. The muscles in her hands strained.