I concentrated on the room, walking around the perimeter first and then through the middle. Amid the visual positioning of the blood and the easily differentiated scent signatures, I put the story together quickly. I went to an opening and along the hall. Here the scents diminished, but they got stronger again when I backtracked and entered the kitchen.
There was blood spatter here. A lot of it. I studied the cheery room with its granite countertops and antique cabinets, tile, and vintage table and chairs. The family spent a lot of time here, cooking together, eating at the casual table.
Carefully, I drew on Beast’s vision to see the magics that swirled. There had been wards in this room, wards of deep green and blue, woven out of love and cooking and family, but something had broken through them and attacked. I centered myself and sought out the patterns. Three adult witches lived here now. Generations before this, maybe as many as eight witches had practiced here, weaving wards of protection. And in the middle of them all, a hole had been torn, the edges waving in the air, blackened and burned. Now that I knew they were here, I could smell them, scorched energies like the stink of lightning and grave earth.
I turned and saw the same thing at the front door: a bigger hole, a hole that had taken the ward off the entire front of the house. It had taken some massive energies to do that. Rick stood at the door, a psy-meter in one hand, held above his head, alternately measuring the magical energies and taking notes on his tablet.
He was also talking to the wolf, giving him instructions. I shook my head in disbelief at the thought of Rick partnering with one of the werewolves who had tortured him for days. The huge wolf took the orders, though admittedly orders posed as suggestions and conversation. I shut them out and returned my attention to the kitchen, following the lines of attack.
Much later, I heard Rick enter behind me. “What do you think?” he asked.
“The vamps came in the front door, four of them, and attacked one witch in the front room. She was armed and fired off several rounds. I counted”—I tilted my head, bringing back the images of the living room—“five casings, so at least that many. Nine mil, silver shot, hand packed most likely. Look for a hand loader set in the husband’s shop.”
“Why do you think that?” Rick asked.
I shrugged. “Can’t say. Something about the round casings on the floor.” I tilted my head the other way, eyes still closed. “Look for tiny pressure points like a vise might make.”
“Okay.” Rick’s tone was halfway between impressed and doubtful.
I went on with my analysis. “She stopped firing. Maybe the gun jammed? And pulled a silver knife. Cut a vamp. But it rode her down, fangs at her throat. Draining her. Another took down the child standing in the hallway. Not so much blood from her, but she drank—” I stopped and sniffed again, turning my head back to the hallway to make sure. “Yeah. Female vamp. And her pals entered the kitchen. Two witches here. The vamps had a charm or something. They went right through the wards on the front of the house and in here and attacked. They were messy, but they were careful too. They didn’t kill anyone, not here. Everyone was alive when they were hauled off. Alive and unconscious, still stinking of fear.”
I opened my eyes and met Rick’s. He was standing close, watching me, our gazes on a level. I smiled at him and knew it was mostly teeth and threat. “Hope you don’t plan on taking any vamps in alive—or undead—on this one. ’Cause I’m gonna take their heads and you better not try to stop me.”
Rick’s lips softened, his stare dropping to my mouth. “How much are you getting per head?”
“Forty K.”
Rick chuckled and shook his head. “And here I am working for Uncle Sam for the price of two heads a year.”
“When you get tired of being cheap labor whose hands are tied by stupid rules, let me know.”
Rick’s Frenchy eyes followed the curve of my jaw like a tender hand. I shivered under the not-touch and felt something hard and cold start to melt deep inside. I had wounded him, but he had forgiven me, I realized, and the coldness melted even faster, running out of me.
“You’ll take me in?” he asked, his voice a purr of sound. “Like a lost kitten?”
“We’d make a good team,” I managed, my voice matching his, purr for purr.
“Yeah. We would. And George? You take him in too?”
All the happy-happy-joy-joy feelings froze solid. “That was low.”
His eyes hardened. “You saying you aren’t interested in the MOC’s sex-and-blood meal?”
“You bringing your Soul in?” I countered. “How about your crazy wolf and the grindy who’d kill us in a heartbeat if we tried to have sex?”
Something flashed between us, something icy and flaming, velvety and thorny, like fear and need, anger and joy, all commingled together. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to break that cold/hot wall between us, but before I could lift my hand, Rick turned to the front of the house, his paper clothing crinkling. The door was still hanging open to the night. “We have company,” he said, his voice displaying none of the emotion I smelled on the air. Vehicle lights sliced through the dark, a van and a car. Crime Scene techs were here, and they’d be ticked that we had entered.
“Good,” I said, on the knot of anger rising in my throat. “Things were getting sticky in here.”
“I like them hot and sweaty better,” Rick said. But he’d turned and was at the door, stripping off his paper and nitrile. Not quite sure what had happened, I followed, picking up a few things I thought we might need on the way. I left my crime scene clothing in a pile with his, remembering a time when I’d had to separate our clothes, which had been tossed onto the floor, so we could dress. I’d lost so much by my own stupidity. My life sucked.
• • •
I waited in the SUV for him and when he got in, Brute again rocking the SUV’s suspension, Rick slammed the door and looked at the stuff in my lap. “You took evidence from a crime scene?”
“Yeah. Arrest me.”
“While the idea of you shackled and bound is appealing, no.” I gave him a hesitant smile and he said, “What do you have?”
“Amulets. At least one witch was a moon witch.” I showed him a moonstone paperweight. “One an earth witch, if you go by the garden. And one was an air witch.” I held up the dried leaves I’d stolen from a bowl on a lamp stand. “There are bowls of dried leaves and twigs and pine needles everywhere, but nothing is scented, like for potpourri. And I can feel the magic on them.” I crunched the leaves slightly and smelled only oak and pine rising from them. “The bowls of windblown leaves are probably set equidistant on the points of a pentacle.”
“Not bad.” Rick started the engine, pulling slowly into the night along the narrow drive, the oak trees sheltering us from the moon until we pulled onto the secondary road. Rick tensed.
“Full-moon problems?” I asked, keeping my tone calm.
“Yeah. Mind if I play my music?” Without waiting for my reply, he hit PLAY on the SUV’s sound system and flute music skirled out. It was a spell, created by my once friend Big Evan to control Rick’s need to turn furry for the three days of the full moon. His tattoos, magic woven into his skin, prevented his turning, and he had nearly gone insane with the pain until Evan had found this treatment.
I looked out the window, knowing I had been cut off. Yet knowing that Rick was as aware of me as I was of him. Knowing that Bruiser and Soul and our past together stood between us, as real as if they fought, swords drawn and blades clashing.
Under my T-shirt was another theft, an old photo of an American Indian woman wearing a homespun dress, soft-looking boots, and a feather woven into her braided hair. Not Cherokee. Maybe Choctaw. She had been staring at me as if begging me to steal her photo. And for reasons I didn’t understand, I had.