White Witch, Black Curse. Ким Харрисон

“Can someone check out my car?”

      The squat man’s eyebrows rose. “Having trouble with the transmission?”

      I flushed, wondering if he knew I was the one who’d trashed it while learning how to drive a stick shift. “Uh, I saw Tom Bansen at my car. Maybe I’m being paranoid—”

      “Bansen?” he blurted out, and Jenks nodded from his shoulder. “This is the same witch you tagged in his basement for summoning demons?”

      “He was looking at my car,” I said, thinking it sounded lame. “He said something about making a living, and seeing that there are lots of people who want to see me, uh, dead…” I let my thought trail off. I kept to myself that he’d been shunned and Jenks didn’t say a word. It was a witch thing. When someone got shunned, it was an embarrassment to all of us. “I checked for lethal charms, but I wouldn’t know a car bomb from an odometer cable.”

      The FIB captain’s expression grew hard. “No problem. I’ll have the dog unit come out. Actually…” He looked at the seated officer and smiled. “Alex, go wait by Ms. Morgan’s car for the explosives team.”

      The man stiffened, and I winced apologetically. “Don’t let anyone get within ten feet,” Edden continued. “It might turn you into a toad if you touch it.”

      “It will not,” I complained, thinking being a toad might be pleasant compared to what Tom could probably do.

      Edden shook his head. “There is a news van in the street. I’m not taking any chances.”

      Jenks snickered, and I warmed. Chances were good nothing was wrong with my car, and I felt like a baby, but Edden’s hand on my shoulder made me feel better. All the way up until he turned me back to the kitchen’s door and Alex’s retreating back. “Maybe Alex should take you home right now,” he said, “so he can check out your church. For your own safety.”

      Oh for God’s sake, he’s trying to get rid of me. “That’s why we’ve got a gargoyle in the eaves,” I said sharply, and slipping out from under him, I resolutely paced deeper into the house. Take me home for my own safety, my ass. He was letting Ivy stay. Why couldn’t I?

      “Rachel,” Edden protested, his compact bulk spinning to follow.

      Jenks laughed, taking to the air and saying, “Give it up, FIB man. It’ll take more than you to get her out. Remember what Ivy and I did to your finest last spring? Add Rachel to that, and you can say your prayers.”

      From behind me came Edden’s dry “You think Ivy wants another stint as a candy striper?” But I was here and he was going to let me in on the evidence-gathering part of things. The FIB was confident that Mr. Tilson had attacked Glenn, seeing that it was his house, but his lawyer might try to pass it off on a burglar or something else. Not cool.

      “Nice house,” I said, eyes roving over the bright walls, low ceilings, and clean but worn carpet. We passed a short hallway, then stepped down into a large living room. Immediately I stopped. “Oh my God,” I said, taking it in. “They have shag carpet.” Green shag carpet. This might be why Mr. Tilson was nuts. It would make me nuts.

      There were only a few FIB personnel still here doing their FIB thing. One of them flagged Edden over, and he left me with a stern look that said not to touch anything. The faint tickle of fingerprint dust caught in my nose. Ivy was in the corner with a tall woman who, by the twin cameras draped over her, had to be the photographer. They were both looking at her laptop and the shots she had taken earlier.

      It was bright and overly warm, and Jenks left Edden to park it on the top of the curtains. Warmer up there, probably. The FIB had been here most of the day before letting us in here, not wanting to chance my messing up their precious virgin site, but it still looked raw to me.

      The green-tiled coffee table between the olive-and-orange-striped couch and the brick fireplace—painted to match the floor, incidentally—was on its side and shoved into the raised hearth. The curtains over the wide windows were open to the backyard. God help me but the curtains matched the putrid color combination. Looking at everything, I started to feel nauseous, as if the seventies had taken refuge here against extinction and were preparing to take over the world.

      There was no blood except a small splatter against the couch and wall, an ugly brown against the yellowish green paint. From Glenn’s broken nose, perhaps? An armchair had been shoved into an upright piano, and loose-leaf sheets of music were stacked on the bench. Leaning up against the wall by the large window overlooking the snow-covered swing set was a picture. It had fallen turned against the wall, and I wanted to see what it was in the worst way.

      A Christmas tree was propped up in the corner, disheveled and clearly having fallen at some point if the dark spot on the rug where the water had drained out wasn’t enough of a clue. There were a lot of decorations for one room, and they were a curious mix of style. Most were the inexpensive, mass-produced variety, but there was what was probably a two-hundred-dollar snow globe and an antique Tiffany-style mistletoe display. Weird.

      Three stockings hung from the mantel, and these, too, looked expensive—too classy for most of the decorations. Only the smallest had a name. HOLLY. The baby’s probably. The mantel was empty of pictures, which I thought was odd seeing as there was a new baby in the house. The top of the piano was bare as well.

      Jenks had dropped down to talk with the guy at the piano. Ivy had her head next to the photographer’s. Edden wasn’t paying me any attention. Everyone looked busy, so I wandered to the fireplace and ran a finger over the smooth wood for evidence that the mantel had once held pictures. No dust.

      “Hey!” the man with Edden exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?” His face red, he glanced at Edden, clearly ticked off because he wanted to kick me out but couldn’t.

      Faces turned, and embarrassed, I backed up. “Sorry.”

      Ivy glanced up from the laptop in the sudden quiet. Both she and the photographer wore questioning expressions as they stared at me, looking like yin and yang with Ivy’s short black hair and the photographer’s long blond tresses. I remembered seeing the photographer at Trent’s stables, taking pictures, but Ivy hadn’t been there, and I wondered how she had gotten chummy enough in fifteen minutes to have their heads together discussing the niceties of angles and shadows.

      Almost smiling, Edden harrumphed. Head bowed and stubby-fingered hand in the air to say he was taking care of it, he rocked into motion. Ivy gave the photographer one of our cards, then crossed the room to join me. Jenks landed on her shoulder halfway there, and I saw her lips move in a soft comment that made the pixy laugh.

      By the time they all reached me, I had cocked my hip and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not going to touch anything else!” I exclaimed, wondering if the harsh expressions on the FIB officers’ faces were for me breaking protocol or a lingering doubt about my involvement in Kisten’s death. I knew Edden had done his best to squelch it, but that meant little to a lifetime of prejudice.

      Rolling his eyes at Ivy, Edden took my elbow to lead me into the hallway. Ivy, too, was smiling, but as soon as the privacy of the hall took us, she became serious. “Rachel’s here now, so how about showing us where Glenn was beat up?” she asked, surprising me.

      “That’s it,” Edden said, glancing past me and into the living room. “Everything else looks untouched.”

      I jerked my elbow from Edden and leaned against the wall. Jenks’s wings clattered as he flew to snuggle in my scarf, and Ivy shook her head. “There isn’t enough emotion in the room for someone having been mauled,” she said. “You say it happened this morning? No way.”

      Edden’s face scrunched up, and I looked at Ivy. A vampire could read the pheromones left in a room, giving a qualitative, though not terribly quantitative, impression of the emotions that had been given free rein. By the way Edden looked, I guessed he knew about the ability but didn’t trust it. Neither did the courts, disallowing a vampire’s testimony unless they were trained, registered, and attended quarterly calibration