The Good, The Bad and The Undead

“Rache?” Jenks questioned. “Why are they following you?”

“I don’t know.” My thoughts went to the blood I had left on the roses. If I couldn’t break the scent trail, they could follow me all the way home. But why? Mouth dry, I sat with my back to them, knowing Jenks was watching. “Have they winded me?” I asked.

He left in a clatter of wings. “No,” he said when he returned a bare second later. “You’ve got about half a block between you, but you gotta get moving.”

Jiggling, I weighed the risk of staying still and waiting for Ivy with moving and being spotted. “Damn it, I wish I had a car,” I muttered. I leaned to look into the street, searching for the tall blue top of a bus, a cab, anything. Where the hell was Ivy?

Heart pounding, I stood. Clutching the fish to me, I headed for the street, wanting to get into the adjacent office building and the maze I could lose myself in while waiting for Ivy. But a big black Crown Victoria slowed to a stop, getting in my way.

I glared at the driver, my tight face going slack when the window whined down and he leaned over the front seat. “Ms. Morgan?” the dark man said, his deep voice belligerent.

I glanced at the Weres behind me, then at the car, then him. A black Crown Victoria driven by a man in a black suit could only mean one thing. He was from the Federal Inderland Bureau, the human-run equivalent of the I.S. What did the FIB want? “Yeah. Who are you?”

Bother crossed him. “I talked to Ms. Tamwood earlier. She said I could find you here.”

Ivy. I put a hand on the open window. “Is she all right?”

He pressed his lips together. Traffic was backing up behind him. “She was when I talked with her on the phone.”

Jenks hovered before me, his tiny face frightened. “They winded you, Rache.”

My breath hissed in through my nose. I glanced behind me. My gaze fell on one of the Weres. Seeing me watching him, he barked out a hail. The other two started to converge, loping forward with an unhurried grace. I swallowed hard. I was dog chow. That’s it. Dog chow. Game over. Hit the reset button.

Spinning, I grabbed the door handle and jerked it up. I dove in, slamming the door behind me. “Drive!” I shouted, turning to look out the back window.

The man’s long face took on a tinge of disgust as he glanced behind him in his rearview mirror. “Are they with you?”

“No! Does this thing move, or do you just sit in it and play with yourself?”

Making a low noise of irritation, he accelerated smoothly. I spun in my seat, watching the Weres come to a halt in the middle of the street. Horns blew from the cars forced to stop for them. Turning back around, I clutched my fish canister and closed my eyes in relief. I was going to get Ivy for this. I swear, I was going to use her precious maps as weed block in the garden. She was supposed to pick me up, not send some FIB flunky.

Pulse slowing, I turned to look at him. He was a good head taller than me, which was saying something—with nice shoulders, curly black hair cut close to his skull, square jaw, and a stiff attitude just begging for me to smack him. Comfortably muscled without going overboard, there wasn’t even the hint of a gut on him. In his perfectly fitting black suit, white shirt, and black tie, he could be the FIB poster boy. His mustache and beard were cut in the latest style—so minimal that they almost weren’t there—and I thought he might do better to lighten up on his aftershave. I eyed the handcuff pouch on his belt, wishing I still had mine. They had belonged to the I.S., and I missed them dearly.

Jenks settled himself at his usual spot on the rearview mirror where the wind wouldn’t tear his wings, and the stiff-necked man watched him with an intentness that told me he had little contact with pixies. Lucky him.

A call came over the radio about a shoplifter at the mall, and he snapped it off. “Thanks for the ride,” I said. “Ivy sent you?”

He tore his eyes from Jenks. “No. She said you’d be here. Captain Edden wants to talk you. Something concerning Councilman Trent Kalamack,” the FIB officer added indifferently.

“Kalamack!” I yelped, then cursed myself for having said anything. The wealthy bastard wanted me to work for him or see me dead. It depended on his mood and how well his stock portfolio was doing. “Kalamack, huh?” I amended, shifting uneasily in the leather seat. “Why is Edden sending you to fetch me? You on his hit list this week?”

He said nothing, his blocky hands gripping the wheel so tight that his fingernails went white. The silence grew. We went through a yellow light shifting to red. “Ah, who are you?” I finally asked.

He made a scoffing noise deep in his throat. I was used to wary distrust from most humans. This guy wasn’t afraid, and it was ticking me off. “Detective Glenn, ma’am,” he said.

“Ma’am,” Jenks said, laughing. “He called you ma’am.”

I scowled at Jenks. He looked young to have made detective. The FIB must have been getting desperate. “Well, thank you, Detective Glade,” I said, mangling his name. “You can drop me off anywhere. I can take the bus from here. I’ll come out to see Captain Edden tomorrow. I’m working an important case right now.”

Jenks snickered, and the man flushed, the red almost hidden behind his dark skin. “It’s Glenn, ma’am. And I saw your important case. Want me to take you back to the fountain?”

“No,” I said, slumping in my seat, thoughts of angry young Weres going through my head. “I appreciate the lift to my office, though. It’s in the Hollows, take the next left.”

“I’m not your driver,” he said grimly, clearly unhappy. “I’m your delivery boy.”

I shifted my arm inside as he rolled the window up from his control panel. Immediately it grew stuffy. Jenks flitted to the ceiling, trapped. “What the hell are you doing?” he shrilled.

“Yeah!” I exclaimed, more irate than worried. “What’s up?”

“Captain Edden wants to see you now, Ms. Morgan, not tomorrow.” His gaze darted from the street to me. His jaw was tight, and I didn’t like his nasty smile. “And if you so much as reach for a spell, I’ll yank your witch butt out of my car, cuff you, and throw you in the trunk. Captain Edden sent me to get you, but he didn’t say what kind of shape you had to be in.”

Jenks alighted on my earring, swearing up a blue streak. I repeatedly flicked the switch for the window, but Glenn had locked it. I settled back with a huff. I could jam my finger in Glenn’s eye and force us off the road, but why? I knew where I was going. And Edden would see that I had a ride home. It ticked me off, though, running into a human who had more gall than I did. What was the city coming to?

A sullen silence descended. I took my sunglasses off and leaned over, noticing the man was going fifteen over the posted limit. Figures.

“Watch this,” Jenks whispered. My eyebrows rose as the pixy flitted from my earring. The autumn sun coming in was suddenly full of sparkles as he surreptitiously sifted a glowing dust over the detective. I’d bet my best pair of lace panties it wasn’t the usual pixy dust. Glenn had been pixed.

I hid a smile. In about twenty minutes Glenn would be itching so bad he wouldn’t be able to sit still. “So, how come you aren’t scared of me?” I asked brazenly, feeling vastly better.

“A witch family lived next door when I was a kid,” he said warily. “They had a girl my age. She hit me with just about everything a witch can do to a person.” A faint smile crossed his square face to make him look very un-FIBlike. “The saddest day of my life was when she moved away.”

I made a pouty face. “Poor baby,” I said, and his scowl returned. I wasn’t pleased, though. Edden sent him to pick me up because he had known I couldn’t bully him.

I hated Mondays.

Two

The gray stone of the FIB tower caught the late afternoon sun as we parked in one of the reserved slots right in front of the building. The street was busy, and Glenn stiffly escorted me and my fish in through the front door. Tiny blisters between his neck and collar were already starting to show a sore-looking pink against his dark skin.

Jenks noticed my eyes on them and snorted. “Looks like Mr. FIB Detective is sensitive to pixy dust,” he whispered. “It’s going to run through his lymphatic system. He’s going to be itching in places he didn’t know he had.”

“Really?” I asked, appalled. Usually you only itched where the dust hit. Glenn was in for twenty-four hours of pure torture.

“Yeah, he won’t be trapping a pixy in a car again.”

But I thought I heard a tinge of guilt in his voice, and he wasn’t humming his victory song about daisies and steel glinting red in the moonlight, either. My steps faltered before crossing the FIB emblem inlaid in the lobby floor. I wasn’t superstitious—apart from when it might save my life—but I was entering what was generally humans-only territory. I didn’t like being a minority.

The sporadic conversation and clatter of keyboards remind me of my old job with the I.S., and my shoulders eased. Justice’s wheels were greased with paper and fueled by quick feet on the streets. Whether the feet were human or Inderlander was irrelevant. At least to me.

The FIB had been created to take the place of both local and federal authorities after the Turn. On paper, the FIB had been enacted to help protect the remaining humans from the—ah—more aggressive Inderlanders, generally the vamps and Weres. The reality was, dissolving the old law structure had been a paranoiac attempt to keep us Inderlanders out of law enforcement.

Yeah. Right. The out-of-the-closet, out-of-work Inderland police and Federal agents had simply started their own bureau, the I.S. After forty years the FIB was hopelessly outclassed, taking steady abuse from the I.S. as they both tried to keep tabs on Cincinnati’s varied citizens, the I.S. taking the supernatural stuff the FIB couldn’t.

As I followed Glenn to the back, I shifted the canister to hide my left wrist. Not many people would recognize the small circular scar on the underside of my wrist as a demon mark, but I preferred to err on the side of caution. Neither the FIB nor the I.S. knew I had been involved in the demon-induced incident that trashed the university’s ancient-book locker last spring, and I’d just as soon keep it that way. It had been sent to kill me, but it ultimately saved my life. I’d wear the mark until I found a way to pay the demon back.

Glenn wove between the desks past the lobby, and my eyebrows rose in that not a single officer made one ribald comment about a redhead in leather. But next to the screaming prostitute with purple hair and a glow-in-the-dark chain running from her nose to somewhere under her shirt, we were probably invisible.

I glanced at the shuttered windows of Edden’s office as we passed, waving at Rose, his assistant. Her face flashed red as she pretended to ignore me, and I sniffed. I was used to such slights, but it was still irritating. The rivalry between the FIB and the I.S. was long-standing. That I didn’t work for the I.S. anymore didn’t seem to matter. Then again, it could be she simply didn’t like witches.

I breathed easier when we left the front behind and entered a sterile fluorescent-lit hallway. Glenn, too, relaxed into a slower pace. I could feel the office politics flowing behind us like unseen currents but was too dispirited to care. We passed an empty meeting room, my eyes going to the huge dry-marker board where the week’s most pressing crimes were plastered. Pushing out the usual human-stalked-by-vamp crimes was a list of names. I felt ill as my eyes dropped. We were walking too fast to read them, but I knew what they had to be. I’d been following the papers just like everyone else.

“Morgan!” shouted a familiar voice, and I spun, my boots squeaking on the gray tile.

It was Edden, his squat silhouette hastening down the hallway toward us, arms swinging. Immediately I felt better.

“Slugs take it,” Jenks muttered. “Rache, I’m outta here. I’ll see you at home.”

“Stay put,” I said, amused at the pixy’s grudge. “And if you say one foul word to Edden, I’ll Amdro your stump.”

Glenn snickered, and it was probably just as well I couldn’t hear what Jenks muttered.

Edden was an ex-Navy SEAL and looked it, keeping his hair regulation short, his khaki pants creased, and his body under his starched white shirt honed. Though his thick shock of straight hair was black, his mustache was entirely gray. A welcoming smile covered his round face as he strode forward, tucking a pair of plastic-rimmed reading glasses into his shirt pocket. The captain of Cincinnati’s FIB division came to an abrupt halt, wafting the smell of coffee over me. He was my height almost exactly—making him somewhat short for a man—but he made up for it in presence.

Edden arched his eyebrows at my leather pants and less-than-professional halter top. “It’s good to see you, Morgan,” he said. “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

I shifted my canister and extended my hand. His stubby thick fingers engulfed mine, familiar and welcoming. “No, not at all,” I said dryly, and Edden put a heavy hand on my shoulder, directing me down a short hallway.

Normally I would have reacted to such a show of familiarity with a delicate elbow in a gut. Edden, though, was a kindred spirit, hating injustice as much as I did. Though he looked nothing like him, he reminded me of my dad, having gained my respect by accepting me as a witch and treating me with equality instead of mistrust. I was a sucker for flattery.

We headed down the hallway shoulder-to-shoulder, Glenn lagging behind. “Good to see you flying again, Mr. Jenks,” Edden said, giving the pixy a nod.

Jenks left my earring, his wings clattering harshly. Edden had once snapped Jenks’s wing off while stuffing him into a water cooler, and pixy grudges went deep. “It’s Jenks,” he said coldly. “Just Jenks.”

“Jenks, then. Can we get you anything? Sugar water, peanut butter…” He turned, smiling from behind his mustache. “Coffee, Ms. Morgan?” he drawled. “You look tired.”

His grin banished the last of my bad mood. “That’d be great,” I said, and Edden gave Glenn a directive look. The detective’s jaw was clenched, and several new welts ran down his jawline. Edden grasped his forearm as the frustrated man turned away. Pulling Glenn down, Edden whispered, “It’s too late to wash the pixy dust off. Try cortisone.”

Glenn gave me a closed stare as he straightened and walked back the way we had come.

“I appreciate you dropping in,” Edden continued. “I got a break this morning, and you’re the only one I could call to capitalize on it.”

Jenks made a scoffing laugh. “Whatsa matter, got a Were with a thorn in his paw?”

“Shut up, Jenks,” I said, more from habit than anything else. Glenn had mentioned Trent Kalamack, and that had me itchy. The captain of the FIB drew to a stop before a plain door. Another equally plain door was a foot away. Interrogation rooms. He opened his mouth to explain, then shrugged and pushed the door open to show a bare room at half-light. He ushered me in, waiting until the door shut before turning to the two-way mirror and silently shifting the blinds.

I stared into the other room. “Sara Jane!” I whispered, my face going slack.

“You know her?” Edden crossed his short, thick arms on his chest. “That’s lucky.”

“There’s no such thing as luck,” Jenks snapped, the breeze from his wings brushing my cheek as he hovered at eye level. His hands were on his hips and his wings had gone from their usual translucence to a faint pink. “It’s a setup.”

I drew closer to the glass. “She’s Trent Kalamack’s secretary. What is she doing here?”

Edden stood beside me, his feet spread wide. “Looking for her boyfriend.”

I turned, surprised at the tight expression on his round face. “Warlock named Dan Smather,” Edden said. “Went missing Sunday. The I.S. won’t act until he’s gone for thirty days. She’s convinced his disappearance is tied to the witch hunter murders. I think she’s right.”

My stomach tightened. Cincinnati was not known for its serial killers, but we had endured more unexplained murders in the last six weeks than the last three years combined. The recent violence had everyone upset, Inderlander and human alike. The one-way glass fogged under my breath and I backed up. “Does he fit the profile?” I asked, already knowing the I.S. wouldn’t have brushed her off if he had.

“If he were dead he would. So far he’s only missing.”

The dry rasp of Jenks’s wings broke the silence. “So why bring Rache into it?”

“Two reasons. The first being Ms. Gradenko is a witch.” He nodded to the pretty woman past the glass, frustration thick in his voice. “My officers can’t question her properly.”

I watched Sara Jane look at the clock and wipe her eye. “She doesn’t know how to stir a spell,” I said softly. “She can only invoke them. Technically, she’s a warlock. I wish you people would get it straight that it’s your level of skill, not your sex, that makes you a witch or warlock.”

“Either way, my officers don’t know how to interpret her answers.”

A flicker of anger stirred. I turned to him, my lips pressed. “You can’t tell if she’s lying.”

The captain shrugged, his thick shoulders bunching. “If you like.”

Jenks hovered between us, his hands on his hips in his best Peter Pan pose. “Okay, so you want Rache to question her. What’s the second reason?”

Edden leaned a shoulder against the wall. “I need someone to go back to school, and as I don’t have a witch on my payroll, that’s you, Rachel.”

For a moment I could only stare. “Beg pardon?”

The man’s smile made him look even more like a contriving troll. “You’ve been following the papers?” he needlessly asked, and I nodded.

“The victims were all witches,” I said. “All single except for the first two, and all experienced in ley line magic.” I stifled a grimace. I didn’t like ley lines, and I avoided using them whenever I could. They were gateways to the ever-after and demons. One of the more popular theories was that the victims had been dabbling in the black arts and simply lost control. I didn’t buy that. No one was stupid enough to bind a demon—except Nick, my boyfriend. And that had been only to save my life.

Edden nodded, showing me the top of his head of thick black hair. “What has been kept quiet is that all of them, at one point or another, have been taught by a Dr. Anders.”

I rubbed my scraped palms. “Anders,” I murmured, searching my memory and coming up with a thin-faced, sour-looking woman with her hair too short and her voice too shrill. “I had a class with her.” I glanced at Edden and turned to the one-way glass, embarrassed. “She was a visiting professor from the university while one of our instructors was on sabbatical. Taught Ley Lines for the Earth Witch. She’s a condescending toad. Flunked me out on the third class because I wouldn’t get a familiar.”

He grunted. “Try to get a B this time so I can get reimbursed for tuition.”

“Whoa!” Jenks shouted, his tiny voice pitched high. “Edden, you can just plant your sunflower seeds in someone else’s garden. Rachel isn’t going anywhere near Sara Jane. This is Kalamack trying to get his manicured fingers on her.”

Edden pushed himself away from the wall, frowning. “Mr. Kalamack is not implicated in this whatsoever. And if you take this run gunning for him, Rachel, I’ll sling your lily-white witch butt back across the river and into the Hollows. Dr. Anders is our suspect. If you want the run, you leave Mr. Kalamack out of this.”

Jenks’s wings buzzed an angry whine. “Did you all slip antifreeze in your coffee this morning?” he shrilled. “It’s a setup! This has nothing to do with the witch hunter murders. Rachel, tell him this has nothing to do with the murders.”

“This has nothing to do with the murders,” I said blandly. “I’ll take the run.”

“Rachel!” Jenks protested.

I took a slow breath, knowing I would never be able to explain. Sara Jane was more honest than half the I.S. agents I had once worked with: a farm girl struggling to find her way in the city and help her indentured-servant family. Though she wouldn’t know me from Jack, I owed her. She was the sole person who had shown me any kindness during my three days of purgatory trapped as a mink in Trent Kalamack’s office last spring.

Physically, we were as unalike as two people could possibly be. Where Sara Jane sat stiffly upright at the table in her crisp business dress with every blond hair in place and makeup applied so well it was almost invisible, I stood in scraped-up leather pants with my frizzy red hair wild and untamed. Where she was petite, having a china-doll look with her clear skin and delicate features, I was tall with an athletic build that had saved my life more times than I have freckles on my nose. Where she was amply curved and padded in all the right places, I stopped at the curves, my chest not much more than a suggestion. But I felt a kinship with her. We were both trapped by Trent Kalamack. And by now she probably knew it.

Jenks hovered beside me. “No,” he said. “Trent is using her to reach you.”

Irritated, I waved him away. “Trent can’t touch me. Edden, do you still have that pink folder I gave you last spring?”

“The one with the disc and datebook containing evidence that Trent Kalamack is a manufacturer and distributor of illegal genetic products?” The squat man grinned. “Yeah. I keep it by my bed for when I can’t sleep at night.”

My jaw dropped. “You weren’t supposed to open it unless I went missing!”

“I peek at my Christmas presents, too,” he said. “Relax. I won’t do anything unless Kalamack kills you. I still say blackmailing Kalamack is risky—”

“It’s the only thing keeping me alive!” I said hotly, then winced as I wondered if Sara Jane might have heard me through the glass.

“—but probably safer than trying to bring him to justice—at the present time. This, though?” He gestured to Sara Jane. “He’s too smart for this.”

If it had been anyone but Trent, I’d have to agree. Trent Kalamack was pristine on paper, as charming and attractive in public as he was ruthless and cold behind closed doors. I had watched him kill a man in his office, making it look like an accident with a swiftly implemented set of preparations. But as long as Edden didn’t act on my blackmail, the untouchable man would leave me alone.

Jenks darted between me and the mirror. He came to a hovering standstill, worry creasing his tiny features. “This stinks worse than that fish. Walk away. You gotta walk away.”

My gaze focused past Jenks, upon Sara Jane. She had been crying. “I owe her, Jenks,” I whispered. “Whether she knows it or not.”

Edden shifted to stand beside me, and together we watched Sara Jane. “Morgan?”

Jenks was right. There was no such thing as luck—unless you bought it—and nothing happened around Trent without reason. My eyes were fixed upon Sara Jane. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Three

My gaze was drawn to Sara Jane’s nails as she fidgeted across from me. Last time I had seen her, they were clean but worn down to the quick. Now they were long and shapely, polished a tasteful shade of red. “So,” I said, looking from the fitfully flashing enamel to her eyes. They were blue. I hadn’t known for sure. “You last heard from Dan on Saturday?”

From across the table, Sara Jane nodded. There hadn’t been a flicker of recognition when Edden introduced us. Part of me was relieved, part disappointed. Her lilac scent pulled the unwelcome memory of helplessness I had felt while a mink caged in Trent’s office.

The tissue in Sara Jane’s hand was about the size of a walnut, clenched into a ball with her trembling fingers. “Dan called me as he was coming off of work,” she said, the tremor reflected in her voice. She glanced at Edden, standing beside the closed door with his arms crossed and his white sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Well, he left a message on my machine—it was four in the morning. He said he wanted to have dinner together, that he wanted to talk to me. He never showed up. That’s why I know something’s wrong, Officer Morgan.” Her eyes went wide and her jaw clenched as she struggled not to cry.