Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (3 page)

“Worked for me.”

“I wonder what we can do with it if we really try?”

“Let’s not test it too soon. It was bad enough that I was halfway across Santa Fe at a robbery scene inspecting a dead body when the wind started screaming at me.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“This hasn’t been my best night. Grab some things to take to my place. We’ll stop by Gordon’s latest case since I wasn’t finished. You taught me enough about auras to trace who walked where, but as long as you’re coming along, it won’t hurt to have your expertise.”

I pulled at my wet shirt. “I need to grab some clothes and...things.” Panic fluttered in my chest. I wanted my entire lab with me, not just a piece or two. This was my
home.
Sure, it was smaller than White Feather’s place, but we could live here...well, not right now we couldn’t. “I can still come back here and work if I need to.”

White Feather must have sensed the insecurity in my words, but he guessed wrong about the reason. “I’ll be right next to you while you pack some clothes. If Patrick or any other vamp is stupid enough to show up, we’ll be ready.”

Now probably wasn’t the right time to tell him I didn’t want to give up my home and move in with him. Especially since I was the one who had sealed the deal by inviting a vamp into my house.

Feeling the tension lodge deeper in my shoulders, I moved to bundle up a few of the basic necessities from the lab.

Chapter 4

When I was sixteen, I began selling spells. At seventeen I brokered the deal to buy the property where my house currently stood. It was a trade for removing a nasty curse from a very desperate and wealthy individual. My parents hadn’t taken my witching business seriously, which was a huge advantage in getting started without interference. It was over a year before they realized I was well on my way to rebuilding the house on the property. The first house had burned to the ground after my inexperience with tainted gold loosed an evil spirit.

I’d been doing my own thing for the better part of ten years.

Loving someone and living with them day in and day out were two different things. The love part was easy. I was head over heels. Giving up my freedom was a lot scarier. And I didn’t mean dating freedom.

White Feather not only helped his brother Gordon with undercover work, he was a consultant on various engineering projects, usually projects involving wind energy. He worked from home frequently. So did I.

White Feather had more or less planned for the working from home thing. With his house torn in half, it wasn’t difficult to add a lab for me. The problem was that the lab wasn’t done. And “moving in with White Feather someday soon” was not the same as “moving in with White Feather right this second.”

It wasn’t that I wasn’t committed to White Feather, it was that...what if he decided he didn’t like me after he knew all my weird quirks? I wasn’t a great cook. I was neat as a pin in the lab because it was necessary; you don’t want stray ingredients sneaking into a spell, and you must be able to locate items quickly in an emergency. The rest of my house collected dust as though dirt were a fine wine that needed to be aged. The kitchen was almost always clean, but that was mostly because I didn’t cook often. Laundry was done under the duress of washing it or buying clean clothes every month.

I packed items from my lab halfheartedly, unsure what to take. My ears listened for a vamp, which was silly. If Patrick decided to return and didn’t want me to hear him, he would be quieter than a whisper. “Do you think we could cover that hole in the living room? And fix the front door?”

“Good idea.” White Feather set aside the box I had just handed him.

We stared at the closed lab door. Then we looked at each other. He wouldn’t allow me do it, and I wasn’t about to sit in here packing like a good wife while he did it.

“I have some plywood.” At the wood stack, I grabbed up a long piece of sharp willow instead of the flat plywood. “The ash, at least I think it is ash, is in the hallway.”

We moved together, a team.

The living room was quiet. And cold. Morning was a long way off, but with no vamps in sight, we had time to secure the place. I picked up the discarded piece of ash on my way back to retrieve the plywood. “Let’s get this done.”

* * *

By the time we left, I had worked up a sweat and felt a sense of satisfaction from sharing chores with White Feather. It helped my mood that we headed to the robbery site rather than driving straight to his place. Working a case was just another job.

I asked, “What’s the deal with this robbery?”

“No witnesses, but a bystander—or more likely one of the perps—was killed inside the jewelry store.”

“Shot?”

He shook his head. “ME said the cause of death mimicked a strangulation, but her neck is intact. There are pinpoint hemorrhages in the eyes and more hemorrhages across the chest and at least one arm. The robbery was called in about nine o’clock when the shop owner stopped by to stash some new inventory in the safe. Everything on the street was already closed, thus no witnesses.”

“Hmm. That late at night doesn’t fit innocent window shopper.”

“Especially since the dead lady was inside the store.”

Santa Fe had numerous art galleries and high-end design stores all over the city. The most popular and successful were in the plaza area, of course. The older galleries had learned to bring in popular local commissions and stayed in business for years. New ones popped up in homes redesigned as stores and came and went with the seasons or fads.

White Feather pulled in front of a white-washed building four or five blocks from the plaza. There were no restaurants on the street, and nothing opened late. “Piercing Hoops,” I read. The building had crime scene tape strung across the front, but the police personnel were gone. “Looks like you missed most of the fun.”

“Yeah. Too bad.” White Feather opened his door. “Everything taken was gold or silver, except for a couple of nicer pieces that had little precious metal, but must have caught the eyes of the perps.”

“Sounds planned, except they probably lost one of their own. Why were you called in?”

“Because it’s the second robbery in two weeks where it looks like one of the perps died of the same symptoms.”

“Hmm.” The windows were intact, and the door was locked, but White Feather knew where Gordon had hidden a key for him. He unlocked the door, let his wind search ahead, then found the light switch. He motioned me inside.

Before stepping forward, I took a deep breath. The air smelled of White Feather; soap, shaving cream, and a touch of mountain forest tinged with mesquite that was his wind magic. The second breath wasn’t so nice. The odor of dead body was a stink of loose bowels. At least there was no blood. I had my witching fork ready.

White Feather pointed to where the body had been, but it was pretty obvious.

Wrinkling my nose, I rolled the fork in the essence, and let it lead me where it would. To my surprise, it led right back outside to the curb.

I traced it twice, getting a stronger pull right near the door, but otherwise the strongest spot was where the woman had fallen.

“That’s exactly what I found,” White Feather said with satisfaction. “The perps pulled up to the curb, stood at the door until the locks were picked, and went inside. This lady never even made it to a jewelry case before collapsing.”

“How did the alarm get disabled?” I inspected the small space, noting that the paintings hadn’t been of interest to the thieves. “And what about the cameras?”

“That’s where the robbery takes another unusual turn. The door doesn’t show any signs of being picked. The alarm appears to have been turned off right before the robbery. Same with the cameras. One of the technicians with Gordon said it was possible a strong electromagnetic source interfered with the camera signals, but that wouldn’t have disabled the alarm. That had to be done manually.”

I stood under one of the cameras and held the witching fork up. Nothing. “Where is the switch for the camera and alarms?”

“There’s an emergency alarm button by the register. The cameras and the overall alarm settings are controlled from a computer in the office.”

I waved the fork over the counter and the alarm button, but there was nary a twitch.

The office was nothing more than a glorified closet behind the counter.

As I poked my head through the door, White Feather said, “The alarm was easy to disable. Turn around, and you’ll see the alarm control right next to the light switch. The code to set or disarm it is written underneath. The owner figured if you were inside the office, the alarm had already gone off or you were one of the employees.

“Shutting down the cameras was done easily from the computer. The digital recording should have shown the first person who entered and came back to the office to shut off the alarm, but the recording doesn’t show lights or people. It was simply turned off and never turned back on,” White Feather said.

At the desk, the fork twitched ever so slightly. “She was in here?” The fork definitely twitched on the keyboard. I moved the fork around, but had to crouch to pick up the signal on the floor. Even then it was weak.

“I didn’t find any aura in there.” White Feather leaned over the counter. If he tried to join me back here, we’d trip over one another.

I expected the trail to lead me back to the body, but once I reached the counter, it went around one side and then faded. “Can you enhance this with your wind?” He had strengthened a witching fork for me before, but that was to make it search further out. This time we needed the opposite. “Maybe if you create one of those air pockets of blank air around the fork so that it stays focused on this narrow trail?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Those bubbles are hard to form and hold, you know. I’ve never done one that wasn’t around myself.”

The bubble trick was one he’d learned for survival. Attaching it to something else, especially without life and death as a motivation, might take some doing. I smiled. “Aw, come on. Just move the bubble in front of you. Put it around the fork.”

He grumbled something that sounded like, “Most guys only have to come up with wine and roses.” Then louder, he said, “Gimme the fork.”

When he handed it back to me, I could tell no difference, except it smelled of his magic.

He stepped back and watched me work, his eyes hooded as though he were still concentrating. I left him to do his thing and did mine.

Holding the fork near the ground, I duck-walked behind the signal halfway to the door before it completely stopped right in the middle of the store. Searching from my position, I noticed a nearly one-inch gap at the bottom of the entrance door. “Looks like the rubber weatherstripping is missing from under the door.”

White Feather leaned down to look. “Or wasn’t ever there.”

Running the fork along the bottom of the door yielded another light tug that I was sure would return directly to the body, but with White Feather’s bubble keeping it focused, this line went around the jewelry counter on the other side and into the office. “In and out and then it stops.” I followed it twice. “But this weak line never goes to the body. Odd. The fork is set to the body. It’s like it’s following something that came from the body, but never went back there.”

I wandered throughout the store, letting the witch fork hover. There wasn’t any sign of aura near the jewelry cases. They had been smashed open and looted hurriedly. “Was she a witch? What was her name?”

“Alicia Romero. No idea if she was or not.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. It’s almost as if the dead lady magically pushed an object into the office and used it to turn the alarm off. She didn’t walk back there. The signal isn’t strong enough. But whatever went into the office didn’t return to her.” I didn’t like where my thoughts were taking me. The pattern almost resembled someone controlling a familiar.

“Maybe one of the other perps picked up whatever it was and carried it out. With that weak signal, and all the people investigating the scene walking through here, the trail might have been obliterated.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you should have Lynx stop by here.”

“Why?”

“His nose.” Lynx wouldn’t be pleased about being asked, because his birthright and past were sore spots. “Lynx can tell us if the victim was a shifter. And if she wasn’t, he could probably tell us if they brought in an animal that the others took home with them, some kind of familiar.”

“A familiar.” His eyes narrowed as he considered the idea.

“You should also ask Gordon for a picture of the dead woman, too. I can show it to Mat.” Many witches sold on consignment through Mat’s shop to prevent broadcasting to the world who and what they were. Mat might recognize the face, but not the name, because most witches didn’t use their real name.

“Photos won’t be pretty.”

“I don’t imagine so.”

He switched off the lights, and it was time to go. Home. The new one, not the old one. I was too tired to fret about it.

Chapter 5

Waking up next to White Feather did a lot to make staying at his place worth it. He took his time saying good morning, persuading me that I was welcome. The bedroom was a safe haven in his home; one of the few rooms in his house that was completely intact. Computer terminals on his hand-carved desk monitored the power-generating reeds and windmills that had been rebuilt along the edge of his property.

The purely masculine ambiance was very different from the decor of my own bedroom, but the combination of hand-worked wood married to his engineering background was a comfortable blend of magics.

While White Feather showered, I stretched lazily. My eyes couldn’t help but drift to the dark, gnarled mesquite dresser that was his connection to his heritage and far more than a gorgeous work of art. White Feather was a guardian of the sacred place hidden behind the dresser. His grandfather’s ghost still kept guard too, but I had never seen him.

The place wasn’t home, but I could probably get used to it. I had better, because returning to my place wasn’t in the cards, at least not right now.