Fair Game (22 page)

“Are you trying to steal my man?” Hally didn’t seem to have any of the trouble the rest of them did moving about the bouncing boat. And she was good at sneaking around because Charles hadn’t noticed that she’d gotten up from her seat to round the opposite side of the console. She still had her satchel—and was holding the Baggie next to her face as if it held a rose instead of a piece of dead boy’s skin.

Anna kept a hand on the railing and rolled to sit with only one hip on the ledge at the bow so she could face the witch. His mate smiled one of her big, generous smiles. “No. Just warning him about sleeping with dangerous things. Tigers are rare treasures—and they will eat you and not give it a second thought.”

The witch preened, her ire sliding away. His Anna was so good at managing people—him included. It was a good thing that the witch was looking at Anna and not Isaac, because Isaac had clearly heard what Anna had said, too. And when an Omega talked, the wolf listened no matter what the man thought. Isaac looked like he’d been slapped.

“Tigers need to be wary around wolves,” Charles said, to keep her from looking Isaac’s way.

Hally narrowed her eyes. She reminded him more of a snake than a tiger—they were beautiful, too, beautiful and cold survivors, killing with poison rather than fang or claw.

“You are sticking your nose into places they don’t belong, wolf,” she said, as if she thought he ought to be worried about her.

Hally had overstepped, and so Brother Wolf met her eyes and let her see that they had killed more powerful witches than she was—and that it wouldn’t bother them to do it again.

She swallowed and stepped back, stumbling when a wave threw her off balance.

“You scratch whatever itches you choose,” Charles told her, his voice cold and quiet. “Enjoy yourself. But at the end of the day, you remember that Isaac belongs to my father—and to me. He is necessary to us as you are not. You will leave him unharmed or I will hunt you down and destroy you.”

She hissed at him like a cat. When he just stared at her, Hally scrambled ungracefully around the far side of the console, out of his line of sight.

Isaac was watching him, his eyes bright gold. And then he tilted his jaw, exposing his throat. Charles lunged forward and nipped him lightly before releasing him.

From the back of the boat Beauclaire watched them with inhuman eyes, and Brother Wolf wanted to teach the fae man respect the way he’d just put the witch in her place. The moon urged, the ghosts in his head howled…and
Charles took a half step away from the gunwale railing.

“You made yourself an enemy,” Isaac said, his voice quiet and soft, distracting Brother Wolf. Beauclaire dropped his eyes at last and the moment was gone.

“She is a black witch,” Charles said, equally quietly. “We have always been enemies. For right now, we are aimed at the same target; that is all. If your target is pleasure and you’re sure that’s what hers is, too, that’s fine. Just remember—a black witch doesn’t love anything but power.”

Isaac swallowed and looked away. “White witches are just food for the rest. Hally had a sister who died when she was sixteen because she refused to take the black route to power. A big, bad wicked witch ate her down.”

Charles nodded. “You can admire the survivor—but Hally
did
survive. She’ll make sure she
always
survives. You better make sure that the same is true of you.”

The little boat slowed; the engines quieted. The sky was inky except for the silver moon and the thin ribbon of cloud that crossed between them and her.

“Here,” said Malcolm unnecessarily.

The witch took her satchel and the Baggie Goldstein had given her and climbed up the aluminum ladder to the fishing platform above the console. It was the best place to do it—a flat open surface on a crowded boat—but Charles was sure that the witch knew and enjoyed the fact that the height put her onstage and made the rest of them her audience.

Standing on the top of the ladder, Hally took a small rug out of her pack and laid it out flat. While she was snapping it into place, Charles caught a glimpse of circles and symbols and realized that she’d woven into the rug the protections that a witch would normally have used chalk
for. It was a clever thing, something that would save her time and trouble—and also work admirably well on a boat in the rain.

Kneeling on the rug, she took out four or five small pottery jars and set them up as if their placement was important. She did the same with eight silver candlesticks holding dark-colored candles—probably black candles, but some witches worked with red. She adjusted and moved things around for a while. At last she set a tall candle in the center of her work.

“Light,” the witch said, in an ordinary voice a half beat before the candles lit themselves despite the salt-sea air. The flames on the wicks burned steady and true though the wind whipped the strands of hair that had worked their way out of his braid. Magic. Her voice hadn’t been the trigger, just a distraction or embellishment. The smoke told his nose what Charles already surmised—there was human blood worked into the candles she burned.

The way witches cast spells differed from one witch to the next depending upon a lot of things: their family background, who their teachers had been—and a little of their own personalities. This one was a wiggler and moaner, but she did it with all the grace of a talented belly dancer, and her moans were both musical and mesmerizing. Charles felt her magic rain down upon their little boat and found himself agreeing with Isaac’s assessment: she was a power.

It made him wish that he’d called the white witch Moira after all. Hally didn’t scare him, but his paranoia didn’t like being in the middle of the ocean on a boat with his mate with a world-class witch who would—as Anna had helpfully pointed out earlier—as soon kill them as not. He intensely disliked being in someone else’s power.

If we jumped up there, she’d scream and fall in the water,
Brother Wolf assured him, because he didn’t like being in her power, either.
Or we could just kill her and save her the trouble of drowning.

Hally put the contents of the Baggie in a small ivory-colored pot
shaped like a toad with big black cartoon eyes, its back open as if it had been made to hold a candle or a small plant. It fit into the palm of her hand. She pulled a vial out of her bag, pulled a cork stopper out with her teeth, and poured the liquid into the pot. By the smell, Charles knew it was brandy, and not the good stuff. Annie Green Springs, Everclear, or rubbing alcohol would have probably done just as well.

Storing the empty vial back in her pack, she held the pot over the flame of the middle candle with both hands and continued her melodic chanting. After a few moments, she slid her hands away and the pot hung over the candle without moving. She sat back on her heels and lifted her face so that the moon caressed her English-pale skin and slid down her hands, which were shaking feverishly about three inches from the pot. Theatrics designed to hide which were the important bits, in case another witch was watching.

Charles started to turn away from the show, but the corner of his eye caught something and he froze. A shadow thicker than steam slid out of the mouth of the frog. It sank to the rug and grew even thicker and darker, filling the space between the witch and the candles. He glanced around at the others, but no one looked worried or excited so he supposed he—and Beauclaire, who was slowly rising to his feet—were the only ones who saw the shadow.

In the middle of her music, at the height of her dance, the witch stilled and said,
“Darkness.”

The candles and every one of the boat’s lights went out.

Malcolm swore, dove for his console, and frantically played with the switches. He put a foot on the first rung of the ladder, presumably to go up and confront the witch for meddling with his boat.

Malcolm was under Charles’s protection, so Charles shoved past Isaac (still watching the witch instead of Malcolm), trusting that the Alpha wolf would have enough presence of mind not to fall overboard. He caught Malcolm by the shoulder when he was two rungs up,
pulling him back to the deck. Interrupting a witch was not a good idea for anyone who wanted to survive long. Malcolm wrenched himself free of the unfamiliar hold and snarled. The noise cut off as soon as he saw who it was who’d manhandled him.

A dim light began to glow on the top of the fishing platform, distracting both of them.

“What in…”

In Hell,
thought Charles, as the light resolved itself into the three-dimensional shape of an eight-year-old boy.

The smell of the black magic made Charles’s earlier seasickness rise with a vengeance, and he moved as far from the center of the boat as he could get. Anna’s cold hand closed on his. She was shaking. Not with fear. Not his Anna. No, she was shaking with rage.

“Tell me this was necessary,” she said.

“No,” Charles answered. He knew Anna didn’t mean the witch; she meant the method the witch had chosen. Directional spells were easy. He didn’t do them himself, but he had watched them cast. Calling a ghost as a compass was a major spell, a show-off spell, and entirely unnecessary.

“Tell me she doesn’t get to keep him.”

“She won’t get to keep him,” Charles told her. He was no witch, but his grandfather had taught him a thing or two. He might not be able to get rid of his own ghosts because he had to somehow fix himself first, but Jacob Mott, held by black magic, would be no trouble.

“All right,” Anna said, her voice tight, trusting him to keep his word.

“Jacob, I invoke thee,” the witch said, her voice like honey rising over the wind and slap of wave. “Jacob, I conjure thee. Jacob, I name thee. Do thou my will.”

The boy’s figure, glowing with silvery moonlight, stood with his back to her, his head bowed, reluctance in every line of his body. But Charles could see his face—
and there was no expression at all upon it, and his eyes glowed red as fire.

“Where did they kill you, Jacob Mott? Where did they sacrifice your mortal being?”

The boy lifted his head, looked south and east, and pointed.

“I can’t run without lights,” Malcolm said. “It’s illegal, for one thing. And I don’t want to get caught with candles made with human blood. I don’t mind fines, but jail isn’t going to happen.”

“My magic needs darkness,” said the witch in a midnight voice.

Beauclaire got out of his seat and touched the rail of the boat. The lights came back on and the witch turned to glare at him.

“Your magic
is
darkness,” said the fae repressively. “The rest is cheap theatrics.”

The witch ignored him and put her hands on the shoulders of the boy, caressing him in a not-motherly fashion.

“Thanks,” said Isaac to the fae.

Malcolm, his face tight—he had to stand directly under the taint of black magic in order to run the boat—turned the
Daciana
. When the direction the boy was indicating lined up with the point of the bow, Isaac said, “That’s good,” and the
Daciana
steadied on course.

Malcolm got busy with his charts and then called out loud enough that people who were not werewolves or fae could hear him over the engine and waves, “Looks like we’re headed to Long, Georges, or Gallops Island.”

“What do you think?” Isaac asked; then to the rest of them he said, “Malcolm makes his living hauling anyone who will pay him out fishing or exploring. He’s been doing it for thirty-five years and he knows the harbor as well as anyone living.”

“Could be any of them, I suppose. Georges has a lot of people during the day, which would make me nervous if I was trying to keep live prisoners.”

“
What about Long Island?” asked Leslie. “It’s accessible by car, too, right?”

“Right.” Malcolm was quiet. “Long Island has the public health facilities, and people who live and work there every day. But there are lots of places no one goes. Places for someone to hide people in, more than either Georges or Gallops. Those old hospital buildings have tunnels going from one to another. There are a few empty buildings—the old concert hall, the chapel, and a couple associated with the old hospital. Fort Strong is falling down and full of good hidey-holes. The old Alpha had me lead a couple of full-moon hunts out there. We hunted Gallops, too—ought to do some more there because there are rabbits doing a lot of damage. As long as no one notices the boats, it would be cool. We don’t have to hunt quiet there ’cause it’s been quarantined for the past decade. Gallops has old military buildings full of asbestos and there’s no money to clean it.”

“Our UNSUB knows a lot about the local area,” Anna noted.

“Always seemed that way to me, too,” agreed Goldstein, who had gotten up and worked his way around the boat until he could get a better look at the dead boy who guided their trip. “He does that in most of his hunting grounds—uses the territory more like a native than a traveler.”

Goldstein stopped and frowned up at the softly glowing boy.

“Is he a ghost?” he asked.

Anna looked at Charles and everyone else followed suit.

The witch looked at him, too, and smiled.

Charles ignored her and did his best to answer. “Not his soul; that’s gone on. She couldn’t have touched it.” He believed that, believed that the only person who could destroy or taint a soul was the person whose soul it was, even though his ghosts were laughing as he spoke.
You tainted us,
they told him.
You stole our life and tainted us.

He continued, stoically ignoring the voices of the dead. “A ghost is the little left-
behind bits, collected together. Memories held in buildings or things—and here by flesh and hair.”

“It’s not really the boy?” asked Leslie Fisher, and from the tone of her voice, if he said yes, she would have shot Hally without a second thought.

“No. More like a sweater that he wore and discarded,” Charles told her. The red eyes, he was pretty sure, were caused by some aspect of the witch’s magic.

Leslie looked at him, and he thought that if she looked at her children that way, they would squirm. Then she nodded her head and made her way to the rear of the boat—and sat next to Beauclaire instead of the backward-facing seats behind the console that would have left her back to the witch. He didn’t blame her.