Shifty Magic (14 page)

My mouth went dry and a flock of butterflies
reared their ugly heads in my stomach. "Weres and humans don't mix
well," I said firmly.

"Exactly my point."

I jumped as he shoved to his feet, but all
he did was carry his mug to the sink. "We'll see what ERT finds and
what the autopsies show before we decide our next move in the
case," he said, neatly changing the subject before I could raise
any more objections.

"I'm not buying that some inter-dimensional
whatever is the killer," I said crossly. "Wouldn't it be, I don't
know, out of phase with our physical world or something?"

"True. Normally inhabitants of these other
sectors can't interact with ours. All they can do is get close. We
catch glimpses of them, like when people see a ghost. But you're
right, they can't touch anything that's out of synch with their
vibration."

"You say that like you're speaking from
experience."

He turned around and that delicious hint of
a smile moved across his mouth again. "We're a very old race,
Addie."

"There's no 'we', Cooper. Just you setting
yourself up for disappointment."

"There'll be a pile of information to sift
through tomorrow. Try and get some sleep."

He came over to my chair, kissed the top of
my head and strolled out of my apartment. After all the smoldering
looks, the unexpected show of brotherly affection threw me
completely off, and it took me a moment to collect my thoughts.

When I did, I realized that
in typical Cooper fashion, he'd managed to saunter off without
answering anything that mattered. This case
and
I had more questions than
answers. Like what kind of Were had gone extinct? Why would Laiyla
be trying to get a Gaia fertility spell when she and her human
boyfriend wouldn't need it in order to have children?

But most of all, why would the murderer want
access to another dimension?

* * *

When I showed up at the Tryon Bird the next
morning, I was directed to one of the small rooms off to the side.
I was given a laptop and a stack of files and left alone. Even
though technology had slogged diligently onward in the last years,
a lot of the old ways had reestablished themselves. When the grid
went down under the first paranormal strike and backup facilities
were destroyed, places like hospitals and police stations had made
an important discovery: hardcopies matter.

Most investigators relied on technology for
their answers. I believed there would never be a computer as
sophisticated and creative as the human mind.

Personally, I liked papers and folders
because I could spread them out, rifle through them and look for
patterns. Leaning toward the direct and painfully blunt end of the
personality scale, my talent for seeing subtle connections often
fell short of stellar. Physical methods like highlighters and
studying photographs seemed to help, so I used those non-technical
methods as often as I could. I was glad Cooper had remembered that
about how I worked and provided what I'd need.

Shoving the precinct computer to the side, I
laid each folder from the stack across the table in front of me. I
had coroner reports, forensics on Laiyla's apartment and the
abandoned house, and photos of the alley. There wouldn't be much,
if any physical data on the vamp. The Church had firm and fast
rules regarding outsiders touching their stuff, and they got very
grumpy when the line was crossed.

I picked up the report on Laiyla and her
boyfriend first. I was surprised to see that she'd worked as an
investigator for the southeastern covens union. It was the SCU that
had sent her to New York to investigate the siphoning of vampire
blood. I would bet a can of cat food that they were also the ones
who asked her to track down the practitioner illegally selling Gaia
spells.

After reading a few more paragraphs, I
stared at the ID photos in the top corners, acutely aware of the
hollow, cold knot squatting in the pit of my stomach. Everything in
the report indicated that Laiyla Billings had been a decent person.
She'd been intelligent, dedicated to protecting others, and from
what I'd seen, had a streak of kindness. Why did she have to
die?

I turned the page to the
coroner's report on her and frowned.
Cause
of death unknown
was printed at the top in
bold letters. Every organ and system had been in perfect condition.
The only anomalies were a trace of vampire venom in her system, a
small amount of blood loss, and several non-fatal lacerations on
her wrists and ankles.

I read the report again, convinced that I
must have missed something. The same conclusion kept glaring me in
the face. She shouldn't be dead.

Frustrated, I moved to the information on
Keith Sanders, listed as human, just like the guard had said. Six
feet, two hundred pounds, ranked third place in a local amateur
weightlifting circuit. His spine had been fractured in two places,
but he'd died from a broken neck the morning of Laiyla's murder.
Nothing unusual in his blood stream except a trace of aspirin. I
rubbed my forehead where a headache had started up.

Seeing the lives of two people reduced to
nothing but a few pieces of paper was beyond depressing. How did
Cooper do this day in and day out without completely losing it?

I put the two folders aside and picked up
the evaluation of their apartment. Forensics had found fibers on
the coffee table that matched Keith's T-shirt and cotton pajama
bottoms, which explained the fractured back. Also a syringe with
vamp venom residue and a match to Laiyla's blood on the needle.
That explained in part how the assailant got her out of the
apartment quietly, and why she had traces of the stuff in her
system. Practitioners were partially immune to the venom, so it
wasn't the whole picture, but at least that was one question
answered.

The hard office chair creaked as I leaned
back and stared at the reports like they would suddenly snap to
attention and tell me everything. Laying the last page down in
front of me, I retrieved the folder on the abandoned house and
flipped through the report.

Cooper had been right, the symbols of the
incantation circle tested as vampire blood and were a match for
Danny's DNA—John Doe in the report. I wondered who'd been brave
enough to scrape a bit of dead skin from him before the Church
showed up.

Otherwise, there were no prints, trace
evidence or other giveaways at the house that would identify the
killer. The only interesting part was the final page where the
forensics scientist had entered "Unknown" next to a description of
the powdery substance found near the body. It was described as
being an eighth of an inch wide and making a perfect circle three
feet in diameter.

Picking up the folder with the pictures from
the alley, I flipped through them looking for the circle of white
powder that I remembered seeing. I found it in a close up of the
pavement next to the body.

What the hell was going on?

I put the two photos next to each other and
studied them. I'd never heard of a magic containment circle that
didn't use symbols of some kind and certainly not one with a
substance described as "unknown compound with a texture similar to
cornstarch". I decided to try and get a sample to run by Falcon. A
lot of bizarre things came through the shop in his uncle's quest
for the unusual and strange. If anyone might know what it was,
Falcon would.

Stacking the crime scene reports to the
side, I lined up the ones from each victim. Keith's was
straightforward, but Laiyla's and Danny's were both a mystery. For
Danny, I could only speculate that he'd died from blood loss, but
even that was a gray area. As far as anyone knew, vamps could only
be killed from decapitation or the sun. After what Ms. Fairview had
let slip, they might have rehydrated him and at that very moment
the guy was partying at Bellmonte's mansion.

I looked again at the photos of the impaled
body and tried to recall my interview with the Regent. My temper
flared all over again at how he'd assumed that I worked for him.
Bring him the names of the ones responsible and he might forgive
me? Like I cared.

The names of those
responsible for the
assault
on his nephew, I mentally amended. I felt even
more certain that Danny wasn't actually our first victim, but
merely a means to an end.

I mulled over the implications of that for a
few more minutes and decided that in the end it didn't matter.
Whatever the vampires were up to, it was ultimately no concern of
mine. I had as much interest in supporting the Church's hunger for
petty revenge as I did in working for them.

If their precious vamp princeling wasn't
dead, he wasn't part of the case. But two other lives were and the
guy who'd killed them was still on the loose—a person with a thirst
for black magic, access to a whole vamp's worth of blood and,
according to the reports, also illegal venom. In other words, an
immoral scum bag who was probably itching to kill again if we
didn't stop him.

The door pushed open and Cooper ambled in
juggling another folder and two cans of Dr. Pepper.

"Hope you're ready for the latest," he said
as he set a can down in front of me and took a seat at the other
end of the table.

I popped open the top and took a long
swallow of sweet, ice cold goodness with that just-right hint of
cherry. Heaven. "If it's something that will pull all this nonsense
together, bring it."

"The night guard's alibis hold on all
counts. Check-in scans show he was at his post during the vamp
slaying and the attack at the apartment, and then in his own
apartment when Laiyla was killed."

Cooper put his soda down on the table and
flipped open the folder with one finger. "He's still on the books
for aiding in the trafficking of dangerous magical substances and
was very willing to do a plea bargain."

"That bargaining didn't happen to include a
description of the murderer leaving Morrocroft with Laiyla, did
it?"

"We wouldn't be plowing through all this if
it did." He slid his report toward me. "But apparently there's been
a lot of interest in the Gaia fertility myth recently. Laiyla was
working a case on it, and she and her boyfriend had been fighting
about it. One of their shouting matches went down yesterday
morning."

"The morning after I was attacked."

He nodded. "Two neighbors reported hearing a
third person in the apartment, but they couldn't tell if the
individual was a male or female. When furniture started getting
thrown around, they called the day guard and laid low."

"So we're looking for a deep-voiced girl, or
squeaky guy. That narrows it down," I said, rolling my eyes. "What
did the day guard say?"

A tired, ironic smile tightened around his
mouth and eyes. "We pulled him in for questioning, but he doesn't
remember getting any calls or seeing anyone leave the compound.
However, records show that the magic protecting the wall was
disabled for five seconds at 6:30 AM, and then brought back
up."

"You think the guard's memories were
wiped?"

"I know he thinks he's telling the truth."
Cooper's shoulder twitched with a shrug. "Other than that..."

"I found something too, but I have no idea
what it means." I lined up the photos and reports. "There was a
circle of white stuff near the bodies at both the alley and the
house. There wasn't one at the apartment though. I think it means
something. I want to try and find out what the powder is."

"You sound like you have a plan."

"I think a friend of mine can analyze it. He
has some resources that you might not have here."

"White stuff. Is that a technical term?" he
asked, neatly avoiding asking if my friend used less than legal
methods.

"You could say that." I was glad that we
were getting along again. I was especially happy that he wasn't
nagging me about being a Were. The idea was as ridiculous as
expecting Wizard to sprout wings and go after pigeons. Maybe he'd
thought about it overnight and realized it was a dead end.

"I'd like a sample of the powder, if you can
swing it," I said.

Cooper gave me a piercing look, and I could
almost see the wheels turning as he weighed just how willing he was
to participate in a likely shady method to get some answers. His
chest expanded as he pulled in a long breath, then he unclipped his
iC from his belt. "Drop by forensics on your way out," he said,
keying in a message.

I controlled my triumph and drank the rest
of my soda. "Any idea what the symbol I shot meant?" I asked when
he finished sending the request.

"God and...." He thumbed through his notes.
"Revenge. Our profiler described the killer as highly intelligent,
narcissistic and well on their way to a God complex."

"The generic MO of serial killers
everywhere," I commented, unmoved by the FBI shrink's analogy. I
had some experience with psychologists and had yet to be impressed
by one.

"If you ask me, Marla should be at the top
of the suspect list," I said. "She had a lot of reasons to want the
vampire out of her life."

"Her alibi checks out. I have no
justification for digging further." Cooper accessed another file on
his iC. "But that conference speaker Laiyla told you about? Got an
ID on him: Gregory Frost, 29. Registered as human. Not married,
briefly in therapy after going postal on a coworker for taking
credit for some company-wide recycling idea, quit to attend a
second-rate magic school in Raleigh, and then landed a fill-in
speaking gig when the owner of the school recommended him.
Deceased."

"Let's make him a suspect. You did mention
ghosts as a possibility."

Cooper gave me a level look, a gratifying
mixture of exasperation and amusement skating over his features.
"We're a full load short of leads in this case. This afternoon
we're going to go to Raleigh and talk to the guy who recommended
Frost."