Shadow Rites

“Pulling into a Popeyes right now,” Alex said. “Bucket of chicken and all the fixings coming up.”

“Make mine grilled,” Eli said, “yours too.” He was cleaning my weapons and rigs and sheaths free of blood. When we got home, he’d do a further cleaning with chemical compounds that would eat away at any DNA evidence. Under a Woods light, they might show up as having been exposed to body fluids, but I was a vamp killer. One might expect body fluids.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Alex said.

Once we finished eating, we drove into the night and checked the other addresses listed in the Nicaud women’s records. We found less than nothing. They might have lived at any of the places at one time, but they had taken off, leaving old scent patterns but no forwarding addresses. With nothing else to do and equipment to clean, we headed back to the house. The wards were up and the lights were on when we got there, and we trooped through, the sting of recognition a reminder of what it would have been like had the ward not been set to allow us entrance, and we tried to enter. Crispy critter YS peeps.

Evan was sitting in the recliner when we entered, and watched us as we scattered to different tasks. Me, to wash and bleach my shirt, jeans, and towels. Evan stopped me halfway through the utility room door with the words “Where’s Molly?”

I stopped and backed three feet into the living room. “Say what?” Which was when I caught the smell of magic and frustration. The trip through the ward had blunted my receptors.

“She told me you had texted her to meet you. But from her absence, I gather that was a lie. She never showed up, did she?”

Carefully, choosing words meant to be honest but innocuous, I said, “No. I didn’t text her. I haven’t seen her.” Molly had lied to Evan before, to do something she knew he would consider to be too dangerous for the mother of his children to do alone. And I was thinking about Molly’s addiction to death magic. . . .

“Molly has a natural ability to find trouble,” Eli said. So much for innocuous.

Suddenly something came to me, the way thoughts come to you when you aren’t looking for them. Molly had never touched the brooches, had shown no interest in them, which was really odd for my curious friend. “Where are the brooches? The two we have?”

Evan’s head came up fast and he and Eli dove for the weapons room, opening the bookshelf door. The smell of vamp and steel and gun oil filled the room. Eli didn’t blow out a relieved sigh when he opened the sack and the foil-wrapped brooches tumbled out onto Edmund’s bed, but his shoulders did relax a hint.

Evan took one and unfolded the foil, revealing the green stones. I took the brooch free of the foil and sniffed it. “Nothing,” I said. Evan took it and instantly jumped back two feet, ramming Eli, cursing a blue streak, and dropping the pin as if he had stuck his fingers into a light socket. Overhead I heard a vague thump as Eli leaned around him and picked the pin up with no problem. Evan glared at it, saying, “It’s being used.”

Angie Baby stuck her head around the corner of the bookshelf opening, saw us and all the weapons on the walls, and said, “Coolio!” Just like me. Dang it.

This time Evan cursed under his breath. Molly would be ticked that the secret location of our weapons room had now been irrevocably revealed to the little witch. Aloud, he said, “You will not tell your brother.”

Angie shrugged and said, “Okay, Daddy. But the witches aren’t using the brooches. They’re just using their power and the jew-lery is tied to them, like the black thing is tied to Aunt Jane.”

“Jew-el-ry. What black thing?”

“Ummm . . .” Angie said, uncertain. “Aunt Jane gots a black witchy thing inside her. It’s not dangerous. Well . . . not right now.”

“There’s nothing I can do about,” I said. “When things settle down we can address my little problems.”

“We know where Tau and Marlene went when they left the Elms after booby-trapping it. I tracked them from the apartment building.”

Our heads snapped up and we all saw Molly standing in the doorway. She looked exhausted.

“Where the . . . blue blazes have you been?” Evan shouted, clearly trying not to cuss in front of his daughter.

“We? I?” I said.

“And I saw the residue of Tau’s magic,” Mol added. “But let me get Angie to bed before we talk.”

“Back to bed,” Evan said, pointing out how late it was.

Molly nodded and herded her daughter up the stairs as we followed her out of the weapons room. Eli put the brooches away and locked up. Edmund was standing in the center of the living room, still dressed in jeans and a very expensive, tailored shirt. He had his hands in his pockets, aping human better than most vamps. I narrowed my eyes at him, putting together the unmatched pronouns. Molly had been with Edmund.

I gave him my best human scowl and ignored his interest in the bloody clothes I was taking to the utility space that backed up to my bathroom. I started a load of clothes with bleach, the chlorine strong enough to make me sneeze. The jeans would be a few shades lighter, but at least they would have nothing for a crime scene tech to find. I pulled off my boots and put them in a bucket, spritzing them with a mixture of water and soap and scrubbing the soles with a stiff brush before rinsing them. Edmund hung at the door, watching.

Finally he said, “Shame on you, wasting all that lovely blood.”

A small snicker escaped me and I sat back on my butt, looking up at him. “I didn’t kill anyone.”