Blood Debt (Judah Black Novels Book 2) (4 page)

“My professors are all dicks and pricks.”

“You’re taking classes online, Mara.”

“So? Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” She crossed her arms and settled deeper into her seat. “Why the fuck do I need to know anatomy and physiology to be a federal agent? Don’t you people have specialists and stuff?”

I put my hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly. “Did you fail an anatomy and physiology test again?”

“It’s not my fault! The questions are worded weird. I swear, it’s like they want you to fail.”

Letting out a sigh through puffed cheeks, I lowered my head onto the top of the steering wheel. Four months ago, I’d made the mistake of agreeing to take part in a nationwide mentoring project. BSI hooked agents in the field up with similarly powered supernatural youths and young adults at risk. The program gave BSI a much needed positive publicity boost and my superiors had suggested it would be a good way for me to put something positive in my career files. I thought it’d be a once a month gig where I showed up to spend an afternoon watching cartoons with some over-eager psychic seven-year-old.

Instead, I got Mara.

Mentoring Mara was like another full-time job. Like me, she was a human with innate magickal talent, though her areas of expertise were somewhat outside my own. She’d had a recent run-in with the law for theft, which qualified her to participate in the program and avoid an official record. My history with Mara went further back than her arrest, though. I’d killed her parents.

The couple had been running an illegal business, selling their daughter for cash. Their gig revolved around Mara, who was spirit sensitive, meaning she was able to call up the spirits of the dead and let them speak and act through her. Somehow, her parents got it in their head they could put famous dead celebrities in their daughter and make some quick cash. For a few hundred bucks, customers could spend the evening with the dead celebrity of their choice, no holds barred. As you can imagine, people want to do some sick things to celebrities in little girls’ bodies.

Mara ran away…but she couldn’t stay gone. Her parents grabbed her and dosed her with painkillers. When I finally found her, she weighed just seventy-nine pounds.

She was a good kid who’d been through some bad shit, but she was doing something about it. In the wake of her situation, she’d decided to follow in my footsteps and study criminal justice.

“Okay,” I said after a moment. “There’s still a few weeks left in the course, plenty of time to turn it around. You’ve still got one more exam and a research project, right?”

“I was kind of hoping to turn this ride-along into my project. I figure you’ll be hitting the morgue eventually. I can attend the autopsy. That’d be a sick report.”

I thought about it for a minute. Attending an autopsy would be good for her. Not only would it help her see how solving a crime and knowledge of anatomy were related, but it would be a damn good test of her will. If she couldn’t handle an autopsy, it would be best to know now before she invested too much time in the career field. But then I remembered the hole in Jane Doe’s body and the black marks around it. My stomach turned.

“Not this one, kid,” I said, starting the car.

“Why the hell not?”

I didn’t answer her. Instead, I decided a change in subject was in order. As I backed the car carefully out of the parking lot and eased it onto the road I said, “Any luck with those other tracking spells I put you on?”

“No,” Mara said after popping some gum into her mouth. Good. At least she wasn’t smoking anymore. “It just keeps going to voicemail.”

“Voicemail?”

“Yeah. Happens sometimes. Means the other person can’t respond. They’re either incapacitated or dead. I could track a body if I had something better like hair or blood instead of ceramic toys and shit.”

I frowned and concentrated on the road. The owners of said objects were Robbie’s missing fae. If Mara wasn’t getting anything, they weren’t missing persons cases anymore. They were murder cases.

“So, about this case…I heard it was messy. What are you thinking? Werewolf? Vampire?” Mara said as we pulled out onto the open highway between Eden and Paint Rock.

The sun poked up over the horizon, prompting the low bush and cacti to cast long shadows. A few semi-trucks sped by us. I wanted to roll down my window to let in the cool morning air and let the stuffy air out. But if I cranked the window down, Mara and I would be choking on highway fumes so I left it up.

“You know I’m not supposed to comment on open investigations,” I answered.

Mara gave me a doubtful look. “Bullshit. Lay it on me. I can give some perspective.”

I gave her a wary glance. Mara wasn’t my sidekick. She was my…Well, what’s the opposite of mentor? Mentee? Ward? Anything but student or sidekick. Anyway, all the will I had to keep the case to myself went out the door when I looked over at her and saw her curious, patient face light up. I remembered what it was like to be new to the world of supernatural investigations. In some ways, I was jealous of her innocence.

“Riddle me this.” I turned back to the road. “What can drop the temperature of a room thirty degrees, explode a vampire and bore a two-inch hole all the way through another victim? Oh, and the second victim is in the middle of freezing solid. You don’t even want to know what happened to the third guy.”

Her eyes widened. “One thing killed three people?”

“On a closed set behind locked doors.”

“Damn. That’s badass.”

I glared at her.

“I mean…Yeah, I guess it is messy. So, what are you thinking?”

“I haven’t got any leads yet.”

“But with all the evidence—”

“Welcome to the adult world of crime solving where there are no smoking guns and the paperwork doesn’t matter but you’ve got to do it anyway.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “Red tape is such bullshit. Man, fuck the man.”

A smile crept up onto my face. Mara was a pain in the neck, but sometimes I thought being her mentor was the best damn thing. I offered her a fist. “Damn right.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Nobody does that anymore.”

“I do. Come on, kid. Don’t leave me hanging.”

She sighed and lightly rapped her knuckles against mine. “Fine. Happy? Now what?”

“Now,” I said, “I take you home to study.”

“Oh, come on!” Mara insisted. “You and I both know if you take me home now, I’m going to pass out asleep, not study.”

“And that’s why you’re failing anatomy, Mara.”

*****

Mara lived in a triplex on Willow Road, just down the street from the laundromat. Her unit was the one on the end, an efficiency I could only describe in a good way as cozy. Since she was living off of her student loan overage checks, the utilities and other associated living costs were still more than she could afford. I helped her keep all the utilities on and she covered the rest doing odd jobs here and there. For months, I’d been urging her to find a roommate to reduce costs but I guess there was a certain appeal to being out on her own. Mara was nothing if not proud of her independence. Her place was a short walk from mine, less than a half mile, but still far enough from the station I didn’t want to hang out too long. I wasn’t ready to just drop her off and run either, though.

I pulled into the parking space designated for her unit and put the car in park. Mara didn’t move from her seat. All the lights in her apartment were off.

“You want me to come in?” I asked her. “I have a few minutes to help you with the dishes or something.”

“No!”

Her quick response and the unmasked panic in her voice set off an alarm bell. “Is everything okay, Mara? Something you’re not telling me?”

“It’s just…the place is kind of a mess.” I raised an eyebrow. She added, “And there may or may not be someone else in the apartment.”

“As in a boy someone else?”

Mara chewed on her bottom lip. “Maybe.”

I shook my head. “No wonder you’re not doing so hot on those tests.”

“If anything, you’d think it would be helping my grade. I mean, it’s hands-on study.
Very
hands-on.”

“Somehow, I don’t think your sexual exploits count as studying.”

Mara’s proud grin faded to a sneer and she rolled her eyes. “How would you know? When was the last time you had anyone warming your bed, huh?”

“That’s a low blow.”

Mara threw open her door. “I don’t need a lecture, okay?” she said and then got out, slamming the door closed behind her.

I hurried to roll the window down before she walked away. “Mara, I’m not trying to lecture you! Please.” She bent down and gazed through the window. I rubbed the back of my head, trying to relieve some of the pressure. “I just want to see you succeed, Mara. It’s great you’re making friends but…But these one-night stands have got to stop.”

“I’m being safe.”

“When I said go out and form relationships, this isn’t what I meant. Guy of the day isn’t going to give you what you need. You need a support system, Mara. You need people in your life who value you and who are going to build you up instead of bringing you down.”

Mara pushed away from the door. “You have no idea what I need,” she said. Then she stomped across the lot, up the sidewalk and into her apartment, heels of her boots clicking the whole way.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Paint Rock police station was on the corner of Main and West streets near the center of Paint Rock. One of the few multi-story buildings in town, it loomed over the courthouse next door. While the courthouse was a building constructed of sandstone and pretty red paint, the police station was a block of cement with a few added windows. There was a big flag pole out front but it stood empty except for the big, black POW-MIA flag. There used to be an American flag up there but, after some protest, the Paint Rock PD decided to take it down.

The reservation was its own sovereign land, gifted to the supernaturals by the United States government. But the government also gifted them high walls, border patrol, and highly trained police officers. There were more guns in the hands of US employees in Paint Rock than in all the rest of the town. Tindall said there were two guns in the town for every man, woman and child. According to him, more than two-thirds of them didn’t belong to residents. I believed him, considering gun crime wasn’t so much of a problem on the reservation.

I parked in the desolate lot only to have Tindall’s black Cadillac pull in right beside me.
He must’ve stopped at home
, I thought, getting out to greet him. He got out of his car in a huff, looking a lot like an angry rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike.

“Hey,” I said in the form of a greeting. “Something the matter?”

“Just Maude,” he growled and stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it up. “The more time I spend with the guy, the more I just want to wring his fat little neck. I mean, who the fuck does he think he is, ordering me around?”

“Technically, he’s still the sheriff,” I pointed out. “At least for another few weeks.”

Tindall removed the cigarette from between his lips and cast a wary glance upward. Gray storm clouds had rolled in, but they were staying high enough in the sky that the chance of rain was still pretty low. More likely, the system would move on east and dump all the rain on Dallas.

“What if I win the election?” he asked. “Then what? What’s Paint Rock going to do without me?” He lowered his head. “What are you going to do without me?”

He had a point. For all the good I’d done in Paint Rock, the local cops still didn’t like me much. Tindall was often the only friend I had on the force. They wouldn’t go out of their way to block my investigations or anything, but they didn’t work hard at being nice, either. If Tindall moved up the chain of command and took over as sheriff, Paint Rock would lose one of the best and brightest members of the force. But Tindall could do a lot of good at the county level. Concho County needed a sheriff with some morals, someone who had experience in dealing with the supernatural community. I had to think about the big picture, even if it did make my life harder in the short run.

“We’ll all manage just fine,” I said with a smile. “Besides, it’s not like you’d be leaving. You’d still be around. You just get more responsibility and more work. What’s not to love?”

“And more blame,” Tindall pointed out. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette and stomped on it. “Maude’s press conference should be airing here pretty soon. What do you say we go in and see if we can catch it?”

The portly duty sergeant looked up from her desk when we came in. Ignoring me, she greeted Tindall with a stack of notes in messy handwriting. “Tell your supporters to stop calling the station to donate to your sheriff bid,” she grunted. “And tell ‘em we don’t keep those ugly yard signs here, either.”

“Thanks, Cathy,” he grumbled and stuffed the stack of notes into his pocket.

“You win this, you get yourself a secretary, Tindall. I’m done answering phones for you,” Cathy said with a sour face and sat back down.

Instead of heading for my office, we ambled down a narrow pathway between cubicles and slid into the tiny, twelve by thirteen breakroom. Three other cops were in there and, with the five of us plus the TV, chairs and coffee pots, it made for a tight fit. Still, when the other guys realized it was Tindall trying to press his way into the room, they stepped aside and let him and I go to the front.

The scene on the screen was a familiar one. Someone had set a wooden podium up on a portable stage in front of the Eden Police Department building. A series of flags ranging from Old Glory to the EPD banner hung limply in the background. Ten or so foam-topped microphones waited, strapped to the podium. A gaggle of anxious looking reporters stood behind police line, waiting for the sheriff to appear and address the people of Concho County.

The other half of the screen was similar, depicting another standard press conference setup, except it was at another location. The backdrop of this half was a sprawling, Spanish-style hacienda mansion. A ginger haired, middle aged man with unnaturally fair skin and a strong jaw stood under the cover of an easy up, speaking into the microphone. I didn’t need to read the captions scrolling across the bottom of the screen to know who he was. There was Marcus Kelley, the wealthiest vampire in the American south, CEO of Fitz Pharmaceuticals, media-proclaimed philanthropist and easily the most well-respected and powerful supernatural voice in all of Texas, if not the entire United States. He was also Kim Kelly’s father. Aisling wasn’t the only shady enterprise I’d heard he was connected to and I was certain Marcus was up to no good. You don’t get as rich as Marcus—or as infamous—without getting a little dirty.