White Witch, Black Curse

“Edden called the church first,” she said by way of greeting, her thin eyebrows high as she spotted Ford’s arm linked in mine. “Hi, Ford.”

The man reddened at the lilt she’d put in her last words, but I wouldn’t let him take his arm back. I liked being needed. “He’s having trouble with the background emotion,” I said.

“And he’d rather be abused by yours?”

Nice. “Do you know what room Glenn is in?” I said as Ford’s arm slipped away.

She nodded, her dark eyes not missing a thing. “This way. He’s still not conscious.” Ivy headed down the hallway with us in tow, but when we passed the desk, one of the nurses stood, determination on her no-nonsense face. “I’m sorry. No visitors except family.”

A pang of fear went through me, not because I might not see Glenn, but that his condition was so serious they wouldn’t let anyone in. Ivy didn’t slow down, though, and neither did I.

The nurse started after us. My pulse quickened, but another waved us on, then turned to the first nurse. “It’s Ivy,” the second nurse said, as if that meant something.

“You mean the vampire who’s—” the first nurse said, but she was pulled back to the desk before I heard the rest. I turned to Ivy, seeing that her pale complexion had shifted to pink.

“The vampire who’s what?” I asked, remembering her stint here as a candy striper.

Ivy’s jaw tightened. “Glenn’s room is down here,” she said, avoiding my question. Whatever.

An unexpected sense of panic hit me when Ivy made a sharp left into a room and vanished behind the oversize door. I stared at it, hearing the soft sounds of delicate machinery. Memories of sitting with my dad as he took his last, struggling breaths swam up, then more recent, of watching Quen fight for his life. I froze, unable to move. Behind me, Ford stumbled, as if I had slapped him.

Crap. I flushed, embarrassed that he was feeling my misery. “I’m sorry,” I gushed as he stood in the hallway and held up a hand to tell me he was all right. I thanked God Ivy had already gone in and wasn’t seeing what I’d done to him.

“It’s okay.” His eyes were weary as he came close again, hesitant until he knew I had the old pain safely tucked away. “Can I ask who?”

I swallowed hard. “My dad.”

Eyes down, he guided me to the door. “You were about twelve?”

“Thirteen.” And then we were inside, and I could see that it wasn’t the same room at all.

Slowly my shoulders eased. My dad had died with nothing to save him. As a law enforcer, Glenn was getting the best of everything. His father was in the rocker pulled up to his bedside, ramrod straight. Glenn was being taken care of. Edden was the one in pain.

The small, stocky man tried to smile, but he couldn’t do it. In the few hours since learning about his son’s attack, his pale face had acquired wrinkles I’d only seen hints of before. In his grip was a winter hat, his short fingers working the rim around and around. He stood, and my heart went out to him when he exhaled, the sound carrying all his fear and worry.

Edden was the captain of the FIB’s Cincinnati division, the ex-military man bringing to the office the hard, succeed-against-all-odds determination he’d gained in the service. Seeing him down to the bare bones of himself was hard. The fingering questions in the FIB as to my “convenient” amnesia concerning Kisten’s death had never occurred to Edden. He trusted me, and because of that, he was one of the few humans I absolutely trusted in return. His son, unconscious on the bed, was another.

“Thank you for coming,” he said automatically, his gravelly voice cracking, and I worked to keep from crying when he ran a blunt hand over his short-cropped, graying hair in a recognizable sign of stress. I came close to give him a hug, and the familiar scent of old coffee hit me.

“You know we wouldn’t let you do this alone,” Ivy said from her corner where she’d folded herself stiffly into a padded chair, quietly giving support the only way she could.

“How is he?” I asked as I turned to Glenn.

“They won’t give me a straight answer,” he said, his voice higher than usual. “He’s been beaten up pretty bad. Head trauma—” His voice broke, and he went silent.

I looked at Glenn on the bed, his very dark skin standing out starkly against the sheets. There was a white bandage around his head, and they had shaved a swath of his tightly curling black hair. Bruises marked his face, and he had a split lip. A nasty swath of bruised skin ran from his shoulder to under the sheets, and his fingers resting on the blanket were swollen.

Edden sank into his chair and looked at his son’s damaged hand. “They wouldn’t let me in,” he said softly. “They didn’t believe I was his father. Bigoted bastards.” Slowly his hand went out, and he cradled Glenn’s hand as if it were a baby bird.

I swallowed hard at the love. Edden had adopted Glenn when he married his mother—must have been at least twenty years ago—and though they looked nothing like each other, they were exactly alike where it counted, both strong in their convictions and consistently putting their lives in danger to fight injustice. “I’m sorry,” I almost croaked, feeling his pain.

In the threshold, Ford closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and leaned against the frame.

Grabbing a chair, I dragged it across the linoleum to where I could see Edden and Glenn both. My bag went on the floor and my hand on the FIB captain’s shoulder. “Who did this?”

Edden took a slow breath. In her corner, Ivy sat up. “He was working on something on his own,” the man said, “after hours, in case what surfaced would be better left off the record. One of our officers died last week after a long wasting illness. He was a friend of Glenn’s, and Glenn found out he’d been cheating on his wife.” Edden glanced up. “Keep that to yourselves.”

Ivy got to her feet, interested. “She poisoned her husband?”

The FIB captain shrugged. “That’s what Glenn thought, according to his notes. He went to talk to the mistress this morning. That’s where—” His voice cut off, and we patiently waited while he steadied himself. “The working theory is,” he said softly, “that the husband was there and freaked out, attacked Glenn, and then they both left him for dead in their living room.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, going cold.

“He was off duty,” Edden continued, “so he lay there almost an hour before someone checked on him because he didn’t come in to work. He’s a smart kid, and one of his friends knew what he was doing and where he had gone.”

My breath caught when Edden turned to me, pain etched deep in his brown eyes as he tried to find an answer. “We never would have found him otherwise. Not in time. They left him there. They could have called 911 and fled, but they left my boy to die.”

The warm prick of tears hit me, and I gave the stocky, heartbroken man a sideways hug. “He’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “I know it.” My gaze went to Ford as he came in to stand at the foot of the bed. “Right?”

Ford gripped the footboard as if struggling for balance. “Can I have a moment with Glenn alone?” he asked. “I can’t work with all of you in here.”

Immediately I stood. “Sure.”

Ivy touched the lump that was Glenn’s feet as she passed, and she was gone. Edden slowly stood, letting go of his son’s hand with an obvious reticence. Leaning over Glenn, he whispered in a severe tone, “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, young man. You hear me?”

I drew Edden out of the room. “Come on. I’ll get you some coffee. There’s gotta be a machine around here somewhere.”

I looked back as we left. Glenn looked like crap, but as long as his mind was undamaged, he’d be okay. Ford could tell, couldn’t he?

As I escorted Edden down the hallway in Ivy’s wake, I felt a moment of guilty relief. At least Glenn hadn’t been hurt because of someone trying to get to me. It might sound like vanity on my part, but it had happened before. Ivy’s old master vampire had raped her to get her to kill me, had given Kisten to his death for the same reason. Piscary was dead now, Kisten, too; I was alive, and I wasn’t going to let others get hurt for me again.

Edden pulled out of my grip when we reached a bench across from a vending machine. Everything was done in institutional comfort: soothing shades of taupe and cushions not soft enough to encourage lingering. A wide window opened onto the snowplowed parking lot, and I sat so my feet were in the shaft of dusky sunlight coming in. There was no warmth. Edden sat beside me with his elbows on his knees, his forehead cupped in his hands. I didn’t like seeing the intelligent, quick-fingered man so depressed. I didn’t think he even remembered I was here.

“He’s going to be okay,” I said, and Edden took a deep breath.

“I know he will,” he said with a forcefulness that said he wasn’t sure. “Whoever did this was a professional. Glenn stumbled into something bigger than a wife cheating on her husband.”

Ah hell. Maybe it is my fault. Ivy’s shadow fell on us, and I looked up. Her silhouette was sharp against the bright window, and I leaned back into shadow.

“I’ll find out who did this,” she said, then turned to me. “We both will. And don’t insult us by offering to pay for it.”

My lips parted in surprise. She had tried to hide herself in shadow, but her words gave away her anger. “I thought you didn’t like Glenn,” I said stupidly, then went hot.

Her hand moved to her hip. “This isn’t a matter of like or dislike. Someone mauled a law officer and left him for dead. The I.S. won’t do anything about it, and anarchy can’t be allowed a toehold.” She turned and the sun came in. “I don’t think a human did that to him,” she said as she moved to sit across from us. “Whoever it was knew exactly how to cause an excruciating amount of pain without letting him pass out from it. I’ve seen it before.”

I could almost hear her think, Vampire.

Edden’s hands clenched, then he visibly forced himself to relax. “I agree.”

Unable to sit still, I squirmed. “He’s going to be okay,” I said. Damn it, I didn’t know what else to say! Ivy’s entire vampiric culture was based on monsters who worked outside the law, people who treated people like boxes of chocolates. The biggest and baddest, the ones who made the rules, got away with anything.

Ivy leaned across the wide space between us. “Give me the address where he was found,” she demanded. “I want to look.”

Edden pressed his lips together, making his mustache bunch out. It was the first sign of him regaining himself. “Ivy, I appreciate your offer,” he said, his voice firm. “But we can handle it. I have people out there right now.”

Her eye twitched, and though it was hard to tell, I think her pupils were dilating in pique. “Give me the address,” she repeated. “If an Inderlander did this, you’re going to need Rachel and me. The I.S. won’t help you.”

Not to mention that the FIB will probably miss the Inderland stuff, I thought, settling myself with a soft huff more firmly in the thin padding.

Edden eyed her, clearly peeved himself. “My department is working on it. Glenn will be conscious in a few days, and then—”

His eyes closed, and he became silent. Ivy stood, agitated. Almost brutal, she said, “If you don’t put the heat on whoever did this in the next few hours, they will be gone.” Edden met her eyes and she added more gently, “Let us help. You’re too involved. The entire FIB is. You need someone out there who can look at what happened with dispassion, not a desire for revenge.”

I made a small noise and crossed my arms over my middle. Revenge was on my mind. “Come on, Edden, this is what we do for a living!” I said. “Why won’t you let us help?”

A dry humor was in the short man’s eyes as he looked askance at me. “It’s what Ivy does for a living. You’re not a detective, Rachel. You’re a haul-them-in-girl, and none better. I’ll let you know when we find out who it is, and if it’s a witch, I’ll give you a call.”

That hit me with all the pleasure of a slap in the face, and my eyes narrowed. Ivy saw my irritation, and she leaned back, content to let me yell at him. But instead of standing up and telling him to get Turned—which wouldn’t do anything but get us thrown out—I swallowed my pride, contenting myself with bobbing my foot in anger.

“Then give Ivy the address,” I said, wanting to accidentally kick him in the shins. “She can find a fairy fart in a windstorm,” I said, borrowing one of Jenks’s favorite expressions. “And what if it is an Inderlander? You want to risk losing them because of your human pride?”

Maybe that was low, but I was tired of looking at crime scenes after the cleaning crew.

Edden looked from Ivy’s mocking expectancy to my admirably contained redhead anger, then pulled out a palm-size spiral notebook. I smiled at the scratch of the pencil as he wrote something down, a pleasant slurry of contentment and anticipation filling me. We’d find whoever attacked Glenn and left him to die. And whoever it was better hope I was there with Ivy, or they’d be subjected to her own personal version of justice.

The sound of the paper tearing free was loud, and with a wry grimace, he extended the strip of white and blue to Ivy. She didn’t look at it, handing it to me instead.

“Thank you,” I said crisply, tucking it away.

A soft scrape of shoe on carpet brought my attention up, and I followed Ivy’s gaze, over my shoulder. Ford was shuffling to us, his head bowed and my bag in his grip. I felt a moment of panic, and in response, he looked up, smiling. My eyes closed. Glenn was okay.

“Thank you, God,” Edden whispered, standing up.

I had to hear it, though, and as Ford handed me my forgotten bag and took the cup of coffee Ivy gave him, I asked, “He’s going to be okay?”

Ford nodded, eyeing us over the rim of the paper cup. “His mind is fine,” he said, grimacing at the coffee’s taste. “There’s no damage. He’s deep into his psyche, but as soon as his body repairs itself enough, he will regain consciousness. A day or two?”

Edden’s breath shook as he exhaled, and Ford stiffened when the FIB captain shook his hand. “Thank you. Thank you, Ford. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.”

Ford smiled thinly. “I’m glad I could give you good news.” Regaining his hand, he backed up a step. “Excuse me. I need to try to convince the nurses to back off on the meds. He’s not in as much pain as they think, and it’s slowing down his recovery.”

“I’ll do it.” Ivy eased into motion. “I’ll tell them I can smell it. They won’t know the difference.”

The beginnings of a smile curved my lips up as she almost sauntered down the hall, calling out to one nurse by name. Edden couldn’t stop smiling, and I could see a hint of tears in his eyes as he shifted from foot to foot. “I need to make a couple of calls.” He reached for his cell phone, then hesitated. “Ford, can Glenn hear me when I talk to him?”

Ford nodded, smiling tiredly. “He might not remember it, but he can.”

Edden looked from me to Ford, clearly wanting to be with Glenn. “Go!” I said, giving him a happy little push. “Tell Glenn I want to talk to him when he wakes up.”

His steps fast, Edden strode toward Glenn’s room. I sighed, glad this story would have a happy ending. I was tired of the other kind. Ford looked pleased, and that was good, too. His life must be hell. No wonder he didn’t tell anyone he could do this. They’d work him to death.

“What happened to Glenn’s mom?” I asked now that we were alone.

Ford watched Edden wave to the nurses as he passed beyond the wide, smooth door and into Glenn’s room. “She died fifteen years ago during a sixty-dollar stab-and-grab.”

That’s why he’s a cop, I thought. “They’ve had only each other for a long time,” I added, and Ford nodded, starting for the elevators. He looked whipped.

Ivy joined us after a last comment to the nurse. Falling into place on my other side, she looked across me to Ford. “What happened at the marina?” she asked as she shrugged into her long coat, and the afternoon’s memories rushed back.

Her tone was slightly mocking, and I gave her a sidelong glance. I knew she was secure in her belief that her slow, steady investigations would find Kisten’s killer faster than my reconstructing my memories. It was with no little pleasure that I glanced at Ford, then said to her, “Do you have time to go out tonight and smell the carpet?”

Ford chuckled, and Ivy stared, rocking to a halt at the elevators. “Excuse me?”

I punched the button for the lift. “Your nose is better than mine,” I said simply.

Ivy blinked, her face blanker than usual. “You found something the FIB missed?”

I nodded as Ford pretended not to listen. “There’s sticky silk stuck to the rim of the dresser’s top. There might be a print, ah, other than the one I made today. And the floor under the window smells like vampire. It’s not you or Kisten, so it might be his murderer.”

Again, Ivy stared, looking uncomfortable. “You can tell the difference?”

The elevator doors slid open, and we all entered. “Can’t you?” I said, backing up and pushing the button for the street level with a booted toe just because I could.

“I’m a vampire,” she said, as if this made all the difference.

“I’ve lived with you for over a year,” I said, wondering if I wasn’t supposed to be able to tell the difference. “I know what you smell like,” I muttered, embarrassed. “It’s no big deal.”

“Yes, it is,” she whispered as the doors closed, and I hoped Ford hadn’t heard.

I watched the numbers count down. “So you’ll go out tonight?”

Ivy’s eyes were black. “Yes.”

I stifled a shiver, glad when the doors opened to show the busy lobby. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” she said, her gray-silk voice so thick with anticipation that I almost pitied the vampire who had killed Kisten.

Almost.

Three

I gripped the wheel of my car tighter in annoyance as Jenks continued to sing. Though the sun was going down and the roads had an arid frozenness, the interior of the car was hot. I had half a mind to turn off the heat. Anything to get Jenks to shut up.

“Five trolls in dra-a-a-a-ag,” the four-inch man sang from my shoulder. “Four purple condoms, three French ticklers, two horny vamps, and a succubus in the snow.”

“Jenks, enough!” I shouted, and from the passenger seat, Ivy snickered, idly tracing a hand on the inside of the misted window to clear a spot from which to gaze out at the evening. The street was thick with holiday lights, and it was holy and serene, in a money-oriented, middle-class sort of way. Unlike Jenks’s carol. Which was thirteen-year-old humor to the max.

“‘On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me—’”

I checked behind me and thunked the brakes. Ivy, with her vamp reflexes, easily caught herself, but Jenks was catapulted from my shoulder. He short-stopped himself inches from the windshield. His dragonfly-like wings were a blur of red and silver, but not a shadow of dust slipped from him, saying he’d half expected this. The smirk on his angular face was classic Jenks.

“What…,” he complained, hands on his hips in his best Peter Pan pose.

“Shut. Up.” I rolled through the stop sign. It was icy. Safer that way. At least that was going to be my story if a zealous I.S. cop stopped me.

Jenks laughed, his high-pitched voice sounding right with the easy companionship that filled the car and the festive warmth displayed outside it. “That’s the trouble with you witches. No Christmas spirit,” he said, going to sit on the rearview mirror. It was his favorite spot, and I turned the heater down a smidge. He wouldn’t be there if he was cold.

“Christmas is over,” I muttered, squinting to see the street sign in the dusk. I was sure we were close. “I’ve got plenty of holiday spirit. It’s just not Christian in origin. And though I’m no expert, I don’t think the church would be happy with you singing about succubi.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said as he shifted the layers of green cloth Matalina had draped over him—her attempt at pixy winter wear. “They’d rather hear about rutting incubi.”

The pixy yelped, and I jumped when he darted off the mirror, Ivy’s hand just inches from smacking him. “Shut up, pixy,” the soft-spoken vamp said, her gray-silk voice severe. Her working leathers made her look like a biker chick gone sophisticate, slim and sleek, and her eyes were pupil black under her Harley-logo cap. Jenks took the hint, and muttering something it was probably just as well I didn’t hear, he settled on my big hoop earring to snuggle in between my neck and the soft red scarf I had worn for just this reason. I shivered when his wings brushed my neck, a whisper of chill that felt like water.

A sustained temperature below forty-five would send him into hibernation, but he could handle short, protected trips from the car to wherever. And after he’d found out about Glenn, there was no stopping him from coming out with us. If we hadn’t invited him to the crime scene, I’d find his half-frozen body in my shoulder bag as a stowaway. Frankly, I think he was out here trying to get away from his brood of kids, spending the winter in my desk.

Jenks, though, was worth five FIB investigators, and that was on a bad day. Pixies excelled in sneaking around, making them experts at finding the smallest thing out of place, their curiosity keeping them interested after everyone else had come and gone. Their dust didn’t leave a lasting impression, and their fingerprints were invisible unless you used a microscope, in my opinion making them excellent first-ins at a crime scene. ‘Course, no one at the I.S. had cared what I thought, and it wasn’t often that a pixy would work in anything other than a temporary backup position anyway. That was how I’d met Jenks, and it had been my good fortune. I would’ve taken him with me to the boat earlier today, but he would have had severe problems with the temperature.

Ivy sat up, inadvertently telling me we were close, and I started paying attention to house numbers. It looked like a human neighborhood, on the outskirts of Cincinnati in what was probably a lower- to lower-middle-class neighborhood. It wasn’t a high-crime district, from the number of lights and the general tidiness of the homes, but it held a slightly run-down, soft comfortableness. I’d be willing to bet the area was mostly retirees or new families just starting out. It reminded me of the neighborhood I’d grown up in, and I could hardly wait until tomorrow when I’d be picking up my brother, Robbie, at the airport. He had worked through the solstice, but had somehow managed to get New Year’s off.

That the lights around me now were the green and red of Christmas didn’t mean it was a human neighborhood. Most vampires celebrated Christmas, and lots of humans celebrated the solstice. Ivy still had her tree up in the living room, and we exchanged presents when we felt like it, not on a specific date. Usually that was about an hour after I got back from shopping. Delayed gratification was Ivy’s thing, not mine.

“That’s got to be it,” Ivy said softly, and Jenks shivered his wings for warmth, tickling me. Down the street on the left was a cluster of FIB cruisers, parked with their lights off and looking gray in the dim light. At the corner in a drop of light, two people stood gossiping, their dogs tugging at their leashes to go in. There weren’t any news vans yet, but there would be. I could almost smell them.

Not an I.S. cruiser in sight, which was a relief since they’d probably send Denon out here. I hadn’t seen the living low-blood vampire since blowing apart his cover-up of the Were murderers last summer, and I’d be willing to bet that he had suffered another demotion. “Looks like the I.S. isn’t coming,” I said softly, and Ivy shrugged.

“Why would they? They don’t care if an FIB officer gets beat up.”

I pulled to the curb and parked the car. “They might if it was an Inderlander who did it.”

Jenks laughed. “Doubt it,” he said, and I felt a tug on my hat as he ducked under the soft yarn for the trip inside.