Great. Yet another thing he hadn’t deigned to mention.
And getting the Magister’s business records? Fat chance.
“So how was she changed? Witchcraft?”
“That’s what we figure.”
“To pull something like that off…I mean, that’s complex magic, Costa.”
He pushed up from the bed and stalked across the room to the small mini-fridge in the corner. “I know.” He grabbed a paper sack from the top of the fridge and tossed the bag, revealing a small bottle of whiskey. Quirking his eyebrow, he held it up. An offer.
I shook my head and he shrugged. Grabbing a plastic hotel-provided cup, he said, “It either has to be a Covenant witch behind this, or one of the stronger underground anti-Covenant groups.” He poured a couple of shots into the plastic cup, sans ice. “At this point, I’m not sure which would be worse.” He downed the whiskey in one quick motion.
My stomach dropped. A witch strong enough, clever enough, to twist an otherworlder’s powers. Not only strong enough, but willing to do so for money. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe such a person.
“Right now, we’re operating under the official assumption that this is the work of an underground group, perhaps led by an excommunicated Covenant member.
It’s more likely than an individual. A coven of witches with enough power to pull this off isn’t a stretch.”
I nodded. “And if they were led by a person with Covenant training…”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t even know that they excommunicated members. I mean, I’d heard that they don’t always accept every Covenant family member, but not about that.”
“It’s rare.” He poured another double shot and grimaced. “They may not allow a Covenant family member to join for a few reasons; the most common, as you probably know, is a lack of power. They blame it on diluted bloodlines, but it happens in the pure families as well. Genetics always tosses one out there with a weak magical capacity. But excommunication is different.” He tossed back the shots and let out a small cough. “They excommunicate for crimes against the Covenant, ones that aren’t severe enough for execution.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
He twisted the lid back onto the whiskey bottle and set it on the fridge. “I don’t know, really. I could hazard some guesses, though. Stealing, putting the Covenant in a bad public light for not following their rules. They’re very twitchy about outsiders getting into their business, so I don’t know for sure.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’ve known this all along and you didn’t share it with me. What happened to giving me all the case information, Costa?”
“I did it for your own good. You were already under enough pressure with Elaine.” He glanced wistfully at the bottle on top of the fridge.
“Another fucking lie. You didn’t tell me because you didn’t trust me. You proved that when you accused me of going after the head of security. What the hell do you have against succubi?”
His eyes seemed darker than normal, and it was almost as if the whites of his eyes had disappeared. I tried to clear my vision. His eyes were normal again. A trick of the light? No. That was what Natalie had meant by their eyes taking the characteristics of true salamanders. I stared back, unflinching.
“It’s personal.” He looked at the floor, and his jaw muscle clenched. “Let’s just say I don’t place a lot of trust in succubi.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds before turning his gaze back to me. “I won’t lie to you again.”
My stomach wound itself into a tight knot. He either told me the truth or he didn’t. Forcing him to tell me everything he knew wasn’t something I could do, and badgering him the whole night for his life story was hardly a productive way to spend my time. For whatever reason, he didn’t trust succubi. I’d bet my salary that one had broken his heart way back when, and apparently the man couldn’t let it go. “Is that everything you know?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better not be lying to me.” I got up from the chair. “You know, there is at least one very powerful Covenant member in town this week. Viktor Koslov.”
“The council member?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Something to check out, maybe—very quietly. But I don’t see a council member being involved in a crime like this.”
I brushed a chunk of hair from my eyes. “Why not?”
“Well, for one, they tend to be from old, very wealthy families. That would remove the money motivation, and I’m not sure why else someone would be selling succubi.
Killing, sure, if they hated the species or women in general.
But selling them?” He shrugged.
I frowned. “I can’t really think of another motive offhand, either, but I don’t think we can write him off.”
He nodded and reached into a laptop bag that was propped at the edge of the bed. “Here.” He gave me a stack of folders as thick as my fist. “Copies of our full files.”
I reached out and grasped the folders, but he didn’t release them. I met his hard gaze and blinked.
“We will find her, Marisol.”
I took a deep breath and tried to clear my thoughts.
“Okay. So where is Wendy?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Pardon?”
“We sent a sample of her DNA, in addition to some personal objects, back to my partner.”
My mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t aware psychometrists could do that. I thought they just got images, pictures from objects. Most generally unrelated to crimes. Well, I’ve heard of them getting crime-related images off murder weapons and such, but not random items.”
“That’s true, but my partner has better luck getting useful information from objects than your average psychometrist. She saw Wendy’s death from her hair sample. The other objects only gave her old memories, unrelated.”
I took a step toward him. “Did she get a look at the killer?”
“Not really. She got a flash of an arm, some sort of sleeve tattoo, but she couldn’t see any details. Wendy was… Well, she’d already been beaten pretty severely at the point where the vision started.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat and kept my eyes on his chest. “Tell me everything she saw.”
“Beatrice could barely see through her eyes; everything was blurred. Not just the normal blurring because of the psychometry, but—”
“Yeah, I get it.” Her eyes were probably swollen, maybe injured.
“There were two men in the room, Beatrice is certain of that much. One with the tattoos down his arm, and the other she never saw. But while the tattooed man held Wendy, the other man did something to her neck. It was painful, Bea said. And she thinks that’s what killed her.”
He reached out and pushed my hair behind my shoulder.
Then, letting his arm fall slowly, slid his hand from my shoulder to my elbow.
“A vampire? Could it have been a vampire at her neck?”
“She couldn’t be sure. But yes, that’s possible.”
“We need to find Wendy’s body.”
The unbearable silence of my empty townhouse threatened to suffocate me, so I spread Costa’s files across my kitchen table as soon as I got home and started to go through them. I grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and a couple of pieces of toast and called it dinner, eating and drinking while I read the files. But the words on the pages only seemed to confirm what Costa had told me.
The OWEA knew exactly jack about these kidnappings.
Oh, they’d managed to track down other possible victims—succubi from Los Angeles to New York to Denver, one in Anchorage, even—but they seemed to have almost nothing else to go on. The women disappeared from their homes, their jobs, their schools. Most were young—under thirty. That made sense. Top dollar would be paid for the young ones.
I massaged my neck and tried to think. The asshole selling the succubi was smart. He seemed to leave no trail.
And he was getting braver. For the last two years he’d been taking women, but no more than one per month. The last three—including one in Anchorage, one in Phoenix, one in Chicago—had been taken within three weeks of each other. Had he streamlined his process to change them? If so, he might plan on selling Elaine and moving her out of the city faster.
I looked through the city list again, memorizing it.
Memorizing the girls’ names.
I filled my glass with ginger ale, deciding I might as well give myself a fighting chance at some sleep. A brief worry flitted into my mind while I watched the bubbles fizz over the ice. I was a succubus, too. But no. I was too old. And I was a cop. No way would they be stupid enough to come for me. And whoever was behind this wasn’t an idiot.
It almost had to be a witch. Nothing else could hope to bend powers like that. Hell, if Costa didn’t have the succubus they’d rescued, I would have said it was impossible even for a witch. I tried to wrap my mind around a power twisting like that, and I wondered if they only warped the conscious part of the succubus powers, or if they warped the unconscious part, too.
I spun around slowly in my chair and tried to imagine a nonsuccubus with succubus powers, ignoring the sidelong look one of the uniforms gave me. One chuckled, and I resisted the urge to make a rude gesture toward him the next time I spun his direction.
I’d almost never tapped into my conscious powers— the ability to pull energy from others and thrall. In fact, I’d never taken power from someone before. The risk was too great, and it connected the succubus to the person she took the power from. That was risky in all but the most solid relationships. I’d played a bit with thralling when I was younger, but my attempts were meager. Succubi who didn’t pull power from a mate didn’t have much juice.
I stopped turning in my chair long enough to take a quick sip of ginger ale, then resumed my slow spin.
