His arm moved, and she could tell he was laughing to himself. “I bet.”
“It could be worse, Toto,” she told him. “I could belong to the Emerald City Pack.”
He laughed out loud at that, a softer sound than she’d expected, given the rough grumble of his voice. “You know, I’ve never thought of it that way. It seemed logical, Seattle being the Emerald City.”
She might have said something, but he suddenly picked up his pace like a hunting dog spotting his prey. She kept her hand tight on his arm and did her best to keep up. He stopped at last. “Here.”
She felt his tension, the desire for action of some sort. Hopefully she’d be able to provide him the opportunity. She released his arm and stepped to the side.
“All right,” she told him, falling into the comfortable patter she adopted with most of her clients—erasing the odd intimacy that had sprung up between them. “I know the girl on your brother’s phone call—her name used to be Molly, but I think she goes by something like Spearmint or Peppermint, Somethingmint. I’m going to call for things that belong to her—a hair, a cigarette—anything will do. You’ll have to do the looking. Whatever it is will glow, but it might be very small, easy to overlook.”
“What if I don’t see anything?”
“Then they didn’t leave anything behind, and I’ll figure out something else to try.”
She set aside her worries, shedding them like a duck would shed the cool Seattle rain. Closing her senses to the outside world, she reached into her well of power and drew out a bucketful and threw it out in a circle around her as she called to the essence that was Molly. She hadn’t done this spell since she could see out of both eyes—but there was no reason she couldn’t do it now. Once learned, spells came to her hand like trained spaniels, and this one was no exception.
“What do you see?” she asked. The vibration of power warmed her against the cold autumn drizzle that began to fall. There was something here; she could feel it.
“Nothing.” His voice told her he’d put a lot of hope into this working.
“There’s something,” she said, sensations crawling up her arms and over her shoulders. She held out her right hand, her left being otherwise occupied with the workings of her spell. “Touching me might help you see.”
Warmth flooded her as his hand touched hers . . . and she could see the faint traces Molly had left behind. She froze.
“Moira?”
She couldn’t see anything else. Just bright bits of pink light sparkling from the ground, giving her a little bit of an idea what the landscape looked like. She let go of his hand and the light disappeared, leaving her in darkness again.
“Did you see anything?” she asked, her voice hoarse. The oddity of seeing anything . . . She craved it too much, and it made her wary because she didn’t know how it worked.
“No.”
He wanted his brother and she wanted to see. Just for a moment. She held her hand out. “Touch me again.”
. . . and the sparkles returned like glitter scattered in front of her. Small bits of skin and hair, too small for what she needed. But there was something . . .
She followed the glittering trail, and as if it had been hidden, a small wad of something blazed like a bonfire.
“Is there a wall just to our right?” she asked.
“A building and an alley.” His voice was tight, but she ignored it. She had other business first.
They’d waited for Tom’s brother in the alley. Maybe Jon came to the pay phone here often.
She led Tom to the blaze and bent to pick it up: soft and sticky, gum. Better, she thought, better than she could have hoped. Saliva would make a stronger guide than hair or fingernails could. She released his hand reluctantly.
“What did you find?”
“Molly’s gum.” She allowed her magic to loosen the last spell and slide back to her, hissing as the power warmed her skin almost to the point of burning. The next spell would be easier, even if it might eventually need more power. Sympathetic magic—which used the connections between like things—was one of those affinities that ran through her father’s bloodlines into her.
But before she tried any more magic, she needed to figure out what Tom had done to her spell. How touching him allowed her to see.
• • •
She looked unearthly. A violent wind he had not felt, not even when she’d fastened on to his hand with fierce strength, had blown her hair away from her face. The skin on her hands was reddened, as if she held them too close to a fire. He wanted to soothe them—but he firmly intended never to touch her again.
He had no idea what she’d done to him while she held on to him and made his body burn and tremble. He didn’t like surprises, and she’d told him that he would have to look, not that she’d use him to see. He especially didn’t like it that as long as she was touching him, he hadn’t wanted her to let him go.
Witches gather more power from hurting those with magic, she’d said . . . more or less. People just like him—but it hadn’t hurt, not that he’d noticed.
He wasn’t afraid of her, not really. Witch or not, she was no match for him. Even in human form, he could break her human-fragile body in mere moments. But if she was using him . . .
“Why are you helping me?” he asked as he had earlier, but the question seemed more important now. He’d known what she was, but witch meant something different to him now. He knew enough about witches not to ask the obvious question, though—like what it was she’d done to him. Witches, in his experience, were secretive about their spells—like junkyard dogs are secretive about their bones.
She’d taken something from him by using him that way . . . broken the trust he’d felt building between them. He needed to reestablish what he could expect out of her. Needed to know exactly what she was getting him into, beyond rescuing his brother. Witches were not altruistic. “What do you want out of this? Revenge for your blindness?”
She watched him . . . appeared to watch him, anyway, as she considered his question. There hadn’t been many people who could lie to Tom before he Changed—cops learn all about lying the first year on the job. Afterward . . . he could smell a lie a mile away an hour before it was spoken.
“Alan Choo sent you,” she said finally. “That’s one. Your brother’s a policeman, and an investigation into his death might be awkward. That’s two. He takes risks to help people he doesn’t know—it’s only right someone return the favor. That’s three.”