Witch for Hire (8 page)

"
Good
."

I nodded my farewell to the unicorn and started up the remaining side. The first two cages were coated in blood, but didn't have occupants. The third cage contained a phoenix. Phoenixes looked like yellow, orange, and red eagles with the ability to burst into flames. They were immune to damage from fire, and could be reborn in very hot flames. This hedge-practitioner had acquired an impressive number of intelligent races.

"I am Michelle. Do you understand me?"

"
Yes
." Like unicorns, phoenixes could only speak mind to mind.
 

"I'm here to help. I can let you out if you stay near the cage until someone else comes to take you out of here." I gave him a yellow sticker.

"
I can do that
." I let him out and he settled on top of the cage. "
Thank you
."

I looked at the last cage and just stuck a black tag on it. The macaw was dead; there was no question about it.

Before leaving, I checked on Athe, who was carrying on a lively conversation with one of the cops. I made sure the two of them would include the unicorn and phoenix as I started searching for Jerry.

I found Jerry in the kitchen ending a phone call. "How's it going?"

"I've called every service I can think of. They're all on their way."

"Oh, good. I want them to get the best help possible. I can't imagine doing that to an animal, never mind a person." They were all people. Race didn't matter.

"I'll keep an eye on them; they've suffered enough." He forced his hand to uncurl. "I hate to say it, but I found some stuff in the house that you need to look at."

I sighed. "I thought you would."

I followed him out of the kitchen and to the second bedroom. Every wall was covered in shelves, with every sort of expected nick-knack and a few I hadn't wanted to see. The wall to my left had jars of every shape and size holding dead animals and parts of people or animals. I looked at the rest of the room, trying not to think about all the creatures who'd suffered at this woman's hands. The back wall held books, maps, and a strange assortment of talismans and jewelry. Jerry stayed in the door as I walked farther into the room. The wall to my right had many different idols of several demons I recognized and a few I didn't. Turning around I felt sick. Sitting on shelves against the last wall were ritual robes soaked in blood and other things. They were all sitting under a preservation spell.

Dreading what I would see next, I walked to the closet at the end of the wall containing all the parts and creatures. Not wanting to touch anything, I pulled on a latex glove before I opened the door. Inside was an altar, complete with an area for small sacrifices, blood draining, and burning. At the back of the altar was a statue of Gremory, a demon.

Calmly walking back to Jerry, I motioned for him to leave. He followed me back into the kitchen, watching me closely.

"Did you touch anything in there with your bare skin?" I thought he had been trained better than that, but I wasn't sure. He shook his head, indicating no. "Good. I could try to remove the magic from all of those things, and tell you how to dispose of them so any residue wouldn't cause any harm, but that would be hard, dangerous, and take a lot of time. You could hire it out to a firm. That could cost more, but they would be able to do it faster and with less danger to themselves or others."

Jerry's mouth was pinched and his brow furrowed. "Is there anything else we can do?"

"Yes. I would photograph, but not touch anything in that room, and burn this entire damn house in the hottest fire the department can manage. If they need to they can cut down more trees to make it easier to contain, but burn everything in here. Then, have a witch come back out here to make sure everything is destroyed. Anything that wasn't completely destroyed needs special care. I can't work with any of that stuff; you're going to need to hire it out."

"Are you sure there's nothing else you can do?" Jerry preferred to work with me. Unlike most witches, I didn't treat him badly because he was a hedge-practitioner.

I rubbed my face. "Honestly, I don't think I'd work with anything in that room no matter how much you paid me. Standing in there, fully shielded, I could feel things tugging at me. I'm a good witch, both in skill and type of power. That kind of power is seductive. It would be best if you could send a null in there. That's the one type of person I can guarantee won't be attracted to the power."

"I didn't feel anything." His wide eyes showed his fear.

"Not everyone would and you might feel it in different way. Most people who devote their life to protecting others aren't attractive to this power." I patted him on the back, "Don't worry about it, but follow my advice. Do I need to do anything else? I'm wanted in Forsyth."

"No, you're good to go. I'll find someone to drive you back to the station."

"Thanks, Jerry."

"Could you give me better news next time?" He smiled a little.

Smiling in response, I answered, "I'll try."

Twenty minutes later I was riding back to my car with an officer who wasn't needed at the house. It was a long bumpy ride back to pavement. By the time I made it home, it was four in the afternoon. I ran up to my room, throwing enough things for an overnight trip into a duffel before running down to the kitchen to pack the lunch I missed, the dinner I wanted to have later, and some snacks.

"Oaks Consulting." I hated it when my phone rang. It didn't matter that I needed to answer my phone because it meant work and money; I didn't like phones.

"It's Jones. White will be there soon to pick you up."

"Alright, I'll be ready." I hung up without saying goodbye, knowing he wouldn't wait for it anyway.

Sure enough, ten minutes later I heard gravel crunching and hauled my overnight bag, the small cooler, and duffel of work supplies outside. A young man with short dark hair emerged from the car.

"Ma'am, I can help you with that." He zoomed around the car, taking my overnight bag and the cooler. I followed him to the open trunk.

"I'll trade you the cooler for this duffel."

"Yes, Ma'am." We switched and I hopped in the passenger seat with my cooler so I could eat my belated lunch. He zipped around the car and back into the driver's seat in a blur.

"What kind of shifter are you?" It was a long drive, and I wouldn't mind chatting over my food.

He pulled down the driveway. "Well, Ma'am—"

"Please stop calling me Ma'am. I'm not that much older than you." I was grumpy, unfed, and hated being called Ma'am.

He looked sheepish. "Sorry, I was told to be respectful."

"I'm a witch, a young one at that. It would take far too much effort to turn you in to a toad. Beside, I'd be afraid you'd just turn back. So, what kind of shifter are you?" I started to eat my turkey sub.

"I'm a jaguar."

"Cool. How do you like it? Do you wish you were something else?"

"I don't think I'd like being any other type of shifter, but I grew up like this so it's hard to think about being different. I like the power and strength, but we are still adapting to more modern society and roles for women. We aren't sure how all of that is going to work."

"What's the traditional pack structure?" Most shifters didn't follow their wild counterpart as closely as they liked people to think.

"The pack master was always male. The women always ranked below men only fighting with each other for position. It kept them safe. We're hard to kill, but no one wanted to take any chances with the women. We have difficulties reproducing and no one wants to risk children."

"What are the women trying to change?" I'd seldom heard a shifter be this blunt about their pack structure and rules. It wasn't that they couldn't tell people, they just didn't.

He frowned, "It's hard to explain. They want to be equal, but still protected. Right now we are allowing women to choose if they want to fight for pack standing with the males, but we won't know how it's working for a while yet." We both let the conversation lapse. After eating I drifted off to sleep. It had been a long day and I needed to work again later.

I woke up to White gently shaking my shoulder. He helped me haul my stuff back to the work room before returning to his regular duties.

Looking at the map, I could see what Jones meant. It wasn't useful at all. The only place that wasn't glowing was the troll preserve. I microwaved a bowl of water and pulled three vials of human blood out of the freezer, with markings indicating they were from different people. I set them in the hot water and waited for them to thaw.

The actual mechanics of what I needed to do were simple. I needed to tell the map not to look at humans. To make it perfect, I would need to do that for every group or find a way to narrow down the trolls that it was looking for. I'd ask Jones about that tomorrow.

Once the blood vials thawed, I poured them into a bowl and set a preservation spell on the blood. I then unbent a portion of the spell and told it that it shouldn't look for blood like this, but that it needed to focus on the blood most like the other blood. I wound the edge of the spell back together, hoping I didn't have to do that too many more times. Spells could be altered, but every time I pulled it apart I risked damaging the spell.
 

I sat down to read for a while, wanting to keep an eye on the spell before crawling into a cot.
 

Michelle

"Wake up, Michelle."
 

"Hmm, ump." I snuggled into the bed.

"Michelle, wake up!" Jones yelled.

I shot up. "Ok, ok, no need to shout. I'm up. Tea?" I rubbed my eyes and was able to focus. White pushed a cup of tea into my hands. "What happened?"
 

"I don't know, but we're going to another explosion."

"At the preserve?"

"No, at a chicken farm out in the country."

"Oh, ok. I'll meet you out front in three minutes." White left and I ran to the bathroom, pulled my hair into a ponytail, grabbed a snack from the cooler and picked up my duffel. I was ready.
 

Information was flying across the radio. By the time we arrived, I knew the explosion had taken out part of a chicken coop. A body had been discovered, and police from across the county were rushing to the chicken farm.
 

Getting out of the car at the farm, I realized the radio hadn't told me everything. I wasn't prepared for the smell of burned flesh and feathers. My stomach lurched. While walking over to the body, I tried not to think about what I was smelling, or breathe through my nose.
 

White and I passed under the crime scene tape surrounding the body. The medical examiner was kneeling next to her. Feeling giddy with relief, the words I'd been thinking slipped out of my mouth. "That is one crispy troll." White chuckled, as did a few of the other officers nearby. I blushed, muttering, "Sorry."
 

The sight of the troll was just as grisly as her smell. She was small for a troll, only seven feet. Live trolls, with their white skin, hunched shoulders, and wiry hair, were not the most attractive creatures. The pasty skin was logical since they turned to stone in the sun, but I'd never found a satisfactory reason for why they turned to stone.
 

The sight of her disfigured body made my stomach roll. Only a few feet from her, next to me, were the twisted remains of a feed silo with two legs still in the concrete pad. The chicken house was on the far side of the silo, missing a section of wall and roof. Still avoiding her, I reached out with a few fingers of power. There was nothing magical about this. It looked like the grain silo had exploded. The explosion had killed the troll and a lot of chickens. Several escaped chickens were eating the dead ones, as the rest roamed the farm. Nothing about this was my problem.

"White," he looked over at me. "This wasn't magical. I don't think there is anything I can do here. That's a troll, so we're down to seven missing trolls."

"I agree about the blast. You can go—"

"Body!"
 

All of us swiveled, looking for where to go. We spotted one of the guys who had been examining the surrounding area waving his flashlight. Everyone, but the officers on guard duty and the medical examiner, took off running. The officer was at the edge of the woods, just past the end of the partly exploded chicken house. All of us walked the last few feet, trying not to step on anything important. One officer took a look at the body, or the shadowy shape we all thought was a body, before heading back for a flood light. The eight people standing around the body pulled out flashlights, trying to see as much as they could without disturbing the remains.
 

The lights trailed over the corpse, revealing a dark haired young man with a goatee. As the lights played over his form I could see deep bites on his neck and shoulders. The bite to his neck had bled, but not as much as I'd have thought a fatal wound would bleed. With a shift in the flashlights, his nearly severed arm caught my attention. It looked to have been ripped from his body.
 

I wasn't an expert, but it looked like the kid had bled out after a troll had snacked on him; I was betting on the troll over by the chicken coop. What I didn't understand, was why the troll would have stopped eating this guy and left him alone. From what I knew of trolls, they were more likely to take food with them than leave it for scavengers. I wouldn't have thought an explosion would deter a troll from food. A troll would be more likely to move the location of its dinner party.
 

I gently nudged White. "I'm going back to the car." If I didn't leave soon I would be ill.
 

Walking back, I thought longingly of sleep. There was nothing I could do here. The police had investigators who would look into this mess. My job was to get the map working so the trolls could be tracked and captured before another incident occurred.

"I know you don't see why I'm asking questions, or why you're all going to be escorted to the station, but there's been an explosion on this property. There's a dead troll, and we've just found a dead human. I tried asking questions at the house. Ya'll looked at each other and didn't say anything, so you'll be going to the station." The officer had herded four kids and two adults to the cars. I guessed the adults were the parents of at least one of the kids.