At the Behest of the Dead (7 page)

So you have read the books about the boy wizard (and I have always wondered where she got some of her info) and how he uses a broom to flit around. Sounds like fun, right?

Let me try and break down why it’s not.

Ever been in a small plane when the air is breaking through cracks and tiny holes in the fuselage or streaming in through the windows? Pretty loud, huh. Now, imagine you are plastered to the windshield.

First of all you can’t hear a thing because of the air rushing past your ears. Forget about talking to someone as you fly. It screams and whips by, creating a howling banshee cry. The air is also ice cold when it hits your body. The leather helps but it isn’t enough. But because you have to concentrate on staying aloft, forget about a spell to stay warm while you’re up there.

Take offs are the worst part.

I took a few awkward steps.

Running with a pitchfork between your legs isn’t the smartest thing a man can do. Hit a bump and you’re singing soprano for the evening. I forked my fingers and slowly raised them. The wood responded and even warmed as I funneled more energy. I was in the air in a half heartbeat and then roaring over the woods two beats later. Energy caressed the tines and made some kind of deal with the air that allowed me to stay aloft. As much as we have researched witchcraft
, we don’t really understand half of it.

Back when we came out of the magic closet
, a bunch of physicists tried to break our art into a science. They worked with the league, sequestered themselves in a lab with a couple of witches and warlocks. They came out with a huge volume of research papers but they still couldn’t explain jack.

My stomach was in my throat in another heartbeat and I wished I had thought to prepare some ginger tea because it really t
ook the edge off motion sickness.

I passed houses and stores a moment later and kept heading north. I took to a respectable height to avoid the stares
, but not high enough so as to run into air traffic. I buzzed to the east a bit so as to avoid Auburn’s tiny airport.

A shape came up behind me fast and I ducked involuntarily. There was a screech as Frank zipped overhead, his mighty wings beating at the sky in a display of precision that never ceased to send chills up and down my cynical old spine. The hawk beak turned, tiny eyes
moving with them, and I swear he winked at me.

I gave him the finger in return.

I passed from cloud to cloud. Rain from one, and a mist from another.

We sailed over the landscape and I veered toward Interstate 5 and let it guide me into the city. Not
that I could get lost up here. Landmarks were etched in my brain that hadn’t changed in many years. The lay of the land, the sweep of the hills. The northwest is not a flat area. It’s covered in green, which makes finding landing spots a pain at times. You can’t exactly land on a street, and a backyard is normally too short and apt to draw the ire of the homeowner. It’s best to find a small neighborhood and make sure there aren’t any cars about to back out of driveways.

I have a large plot of land and an area setup for landings
, but it isn’t without its risks, like the molehill I tried to close up earlier. Landing on that could make problems, like a sprained ankle, broken wrist, or a thoroughly ruffed up sense of pride.

Frank swooped away from me and dove toward a pair of smaller birds below. He screamed past them and they took off in another direction.

Was that how he got his kicks?

It only took about ten minutes to reach the outer limits of the city. Traffic was clogged up as it led into Seattle but I peeled off, following Alaska way so as to bleed of speed and height with gentle dips and pulls at the stick.

My hands were sweaty around the old groove where the hangman’s noose used to lay. Can’t wear gloves on a fork. It breaks the contact with the cusp and the wood. Break the bond and break up on the ground.

The buildings came up fast, warehouses and shops, a luxury automobile dealer and a donut shop. People stopped and glanced up. Look Mom, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s a filthy witch up to no good.

Someone cat-called to me. A long low whistle. Frank flew over the man and deposited a load of white that splattered at his feet, sending the hapless guy jumping back in shock. I burst out laughing.

We flew over the baseball stadium and then the football stadium, which for some inexplicable reason couldn’t have been combined. Taxpayers would be paying those things off for decades. Th
ey were beautiful, though. Especially the baseball field with its moving roof. Best thing in Seattle is a roof.

I wanted to get close to the crime scenes so I dropped low, passed over a Starbucks at about thirty feet
, and flared a bit of power into the tip, pulled up sharply, and made a running landing.

There was a canopy of trees over the birthplace of Seattle called Pio
neer Square. A pair of passersby saw me come in and dashed out of the way. The man had his Mariner ball cap on backwards and gave me a look that was pure hostility. Some tourist snapped pictures and then exclaimed as Frank landed on a huge tree branch.

Buildings rose on either side, casting this part of Seattle in perpetual shadow. Night was approaching so streetlights popped on all over the place. I moved to the sidewalk as quickly as I could because I didn’t want to stand around and answer questions from tourists. Cars whipped by from light to light
, barely stopping for the timed necessities. There was a huge pothole and a city bus blasted over it, bouncing hard and causing the riders to leave their seats, and then look surprised as they came down even harder.

This part of the city was built
, in pieces, over old Seattle. A fire was set off by a carpenter and thirty three blocks burned to the ground. The truth was that a band of witch hunters were in town and got wind of a local coven. They were hiding among the ‘seamstresses,’ what the ladies of the evening called their profession when the city was a booming frontier town, and were caught off guard. The fight was fast and furious, with men drawing guns and shooting indiscriminately. I was holed up with a honey haired banker’s daughter at the time and came out to see fireballs ripping across the road.

A pair of witches went down first. I’d worked from the shadows to draw glyphs as quickly as I could. At first it slowed the men with guns. Then a very angry Meredith Jones, mistress of the coven
, strode onto the street in a black dress that swept the ground. She turned her gaze on the men, whispered words that broiled in the air, and tossed shaved brass upward. She accelerated the shards and the men went down with their bodies ripped to shreds.

It was a hell of a sight.

Then she unleashed brimstone and left smoldering corpses. That’s when a lucky shot from one of the men hiding in a general store caught her across the shoulder. She spun around and the fire swept from her fingertips and splashed across a carpenter’s shop. It didn’t take long for the wooden structure to catch. We fled the scene a moment later, me struggling, still drunk, into my trousers and a shirt of wool. Damned scratchy old things that always seemed to smell of animals no matter how much they were washed. The banker’s daughter barely got into the first layer of her dress, and we fled because the flames were already leaping into the night.

Th
e smell was terrible, cloying. It stole our breath and we pounded up the street and away as fast as we could. Her bodice was undone, and every time I glanced over her breasts, which were full and milk white, threatened to spill out. I think her name was Ellen or maybe Elaine. She’d later grow up to be a prominent figure in the city, having gotten the wild side out in her youth.

I was no use. We started drinking a foul brew they claimed was beer and then moved onto the old standby, whiskey. I remember
ed the night as a haze, me unable to concentrate enough to get off any spells to help contain the blaze.

Meredith died that night
, and just like that another of our kind was gone. She was a powerful witch in her day, and narrowly escaped the trials and certain death at the stake, but not a date with a fiery end.

I set my fork in a dark corner, leaned it against a wall
, and then added my goggles and helmet. A quick pass and the imbued glyphs camouflaged the gear. It was still there and anyone looking closely would see it. The spell was more of a way of making someone’s eyes slip past. As if to say:
Hey, look at that terribly interesting but featureless wall.

“Are you a witch?” a little voice asked. I looked down and a boy about seven or eight was standing there with a tin
y yellow umbrella in one hand.

Kids. So cute I want to eat them up.

“No.”

“Cause you look like one.”

“I’m a warlock, and I can change you into a toad with a flick of my fingers.” I snapped my hand out and waggled my fingers at the kid because I am a jerk like that.

The kid looked at me without fear.

“Cool. Can you change my mom into a lollipop factory?”

“That’s just weird. Why don’t you go throw stuff at the seagulls?” I frowned.

Then his parents rushed over, concern etched on their faces over their child consorting with a madman on the street. I guess I did look a bit strange in my robe, but the covenants required us to go around in public dressed so. No racial profiling necessary. We were forced to wear our raiments. Some treated it like a uniform, as if we were about the work of the authorities.

I ignored the stares and took out the envelope. The pictures were still in order so I extracted the first one and looked at the address scrawled at the bottom. I followed the street to First Avenue and then located the cross street. I walked back and forth, passing an alley that reeked of piss and shit and decided that was probably where the first murder had taken place.

I explored the oft-traveled back way until I located a chunk of wall that more or less matched the background in the photo. There were a couple of large black bags here with green labels on them. That couldn’t be good. I shifted them to the side and half expected to feel body parts shifting around in them, but it was just clean up gear. Probably forgotten by the forensics units. I made a mental note to let Andrews know her department wasn’t picking up after themselves.

The ground was clean under them and I dropped to my knees and extracted some tools from a pouch. I drew a glyph in white so I had a guide, then I etched over it in charcoal. I added a drop of my blood, pricked with the little bone knife.

I pressed it to the ground in the center of a mark that looked like a three-year-old tried to write his name. A little puff of smoke rose and I waited for the feeling. I stayed, head bowed for a few minutes, but the residue was gone.

“You praying, chief?” Frank interrupted me.

I half pounced to my feet with a spell on my lips, words of power forming for a strike, but it would have been against a brown skinned naked man.

“God, Frank, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Is it my manhood?”

“Would you get dressed? You’re
gonna bring the cops over.”

“They are already here.” He looked pointedly to the end of the alley where a black sedan was sitting. I couldn’t make out the shape at the
wheel but I was betting it was Detective Andrews. I wondered how long she’d been there. The car motored away as I stood up.

“Frank, don’t you have any shame?”

“Are you afraid the women will see me and want to go for a ride?”

I made a point of looking anywhere but there.

“We Makah are not shy and never have been. I have hunted without clothes, fought without clothes. Of course, only in the summer. This weather is too cold even for me,” he leaned over to whisper. “Shrinkage.”

“Then get some pants!” I said.

And with that, he took to the air once again. A pair of women dressed as goths walked past when he veered.

“Too cool,” o
ne said to the other.

“He’s just showing off.” I watched him take wing, screech, and then depart.

“Yeah. Showing off. So what do you turn into?” the one with a pink bob asked.

“I’m a
warlock,” I said, a tad defensively. I might not be able to change into a feathered animal, but I still had a few tricks at my command. “I don’t change into anything except grumpy in the morning.”

“Really? Will Ricky Parson fall in love with me?”

“He’s in love with a vampire.”

“I knew that jerk had the
hots for that chick in 4
th
period. What’s her name?”

“Natalia, I think,” h
er friend responded.

I ducked out of their conversation.

I took out the second photo and tracked down the address. It was also in an alley near a big green dumpster that reeked of refuse. I repeated the process, wishing I had some of that crap the cops put on their nose to cover the smell.

There was no residue at thi
s location either. I stood up with creaking knees and walked out of the alley. It was now full dark and I needed a little energy, so I strolled into a Starbucks, of which there are just about one on every corner.