Silent Doll (10 page)

I closed the book with a sigh as Truth appeared at the top of the stairs with the tea in her hand; she bent carefully to offer me the cup.

“It’s green tea with honey, it should be more appealing to your palette.”

I smiled, thanking her, holding the cup between my hands and enjoying the heat that radiated off it. I indicated the volume.

“Nothing in here.”

She took a sip of her tea, placing the cup down very gingerly on the table next to her. “Are you sure you’re looking for a human perpetrator? It couldn’t be a Kumiho or something?”

“What would a nine tailed fox shape shifter from Korea be doing in Worcester?”

“Holiday?” she asked with a rare grin that told me she knew how silly that sounded.

“Besides, if I’m not mistaken, they turned into beautiful young women to seduce and eat the hearts of men. All the victims were female.”

“You know more about them than I would have thought,” she said.

“I came across a paragraph or two on it while I was researching other things.”

“About your new nature?” I stared blankly at her, a little in shock. “Rumors abound, my dear. Whether you like it or not, you are a prominent figure in the supernatural and magical communities, and we do all love to gossip.”

“What rumors are these?” I asked, momentarily pushing my search to one side.

“That you nearly burnt down the Full Moon bar because you went up like the Human Torch.” I opened my mouth to say something and she held a finger up to stop me. “Yes, I know who the Human Torch is; I am not completely behind the times. May I finish? Another rumor is that you have come back from two things that should surely have been the death of you.” Truth stopped, indicating it was my turn to verify or deny the rumors.

“I’d hardly say burnt it down, I don’t think I even singed the floor. I have had some very near calls in the last year. I’m a survivor—what can I say?”

“What about the rumor that claims you entered a hospital seriously wounded, glass embedded into your back, but walked out the next morning with barely a scar to show for it?”

I stared at my hands and thought about it. I wanted to know who the hell was talking about me. “Where did you hear that?”

“I can’t tell you who it was from originally, Cassandra. It’s always something heard from the friend of a friend. The supernaturals here are engaged in one long game of Chinese whispers; things get more exaggerated with each time it’s repeated, and you seem to be a hot topic at the moment. I have to suppose it has something to do with the media coverage. Your picture has been in the papers a few times.”

“So what? I’m suddenly the pinup girl for all the weird and wonderful?”

She brought her cup back up to her lips, smiling. “Something like that.”

“The glass thing wasn’t as bad as the doctors first thought.”

She
tsked
immediately. “Do not try to lie to me, Cassandra.”

“Yes—fine. It healed overnight.”

“Do you know why?”

“I have some idea as to why. I’m researching, trying to find my family, and I would rather not get into it until I know more.”

She nodded as though she understood that and I took my first sip of the tea. It was fresh and sweet. I actually liked it.

“The other fascination is your love life.”

I sprayed tea. None of it reached her, so I was hoping she wouldn’t notice it as I mopped up the spill with the cuff of my shirt.

“You people have nothing better to do than discuss my love life?”

Truth shrugged. “Why do we talk about any celebrity’s love life? Who’s dating who? It’s a weird fad but it’s a long running one, this obsession with knowing people’s business. Are you still with the elf? No, wait, I heard somewhere you were seen in the company of a vampire. My last assistant said the picture of you in the social pages was quite stunning.”

Truth went through a lot of assistants. She had a tendency to treat the norms that applied for the job like butlers. They grew sick of it, and she ended up running the shop by herself, which was taxing on her.

“I’m not currently seeing anyone.”

“But you do not lack for suitors?”

“Perhaps not,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Speaking of. I got some roses from an anonymous source. Make all this gossip useful and tell me if there is anyone pining for me that I don’t know about.”

Truth stroked her chin, apparently thinking about it. “Most men speak of you admiringly. You are quite attractive, even if you don’t see that yourself. I agree, your aura alone is drawing. I suppose if I saw your face I might very well be taken with you, myself.”

“Truth!”

She giggled. Honest to God giggled. I wasn’t sure that I had ever heard her do that before. “Oh, calm yourself. I am a lover of men, mostly. From what I hear tell, you have the interest of your vampire and a few wolves; any others who desire you are keeping their cards very close to their chest. I could not tell you where these flowers came from. You could use tracing magic, but that would, sadly, only lead you to where the flowers were grown, not where they were sold or to who purchased them. Are you sure they came from no one you know?”

“No, they were the wrong color for Aram, and he’d have taken credit. I can’t imagine them coming from the werewolf who’s spoken his interest.”

“True. They are much more likely to pee on the steps of your building to keep other potential mates away than buy flowers.”

I pulled a face and shuddered, then rose to my feet and slipped the book back onto the shelf.

“Let’s get back to work before you give me any more unpleasant mental images.”

“All right. What makes you so sure that you are dealing with a human perpetrator?”

“The hearts were cut out with a knife. Monsters have claws; they don’t need to use a kitchen utensil to get through flesh. It was precise, little mess, and the heart was taken, not consumed on site.”

Truth stood to run her fingers along the spines of her books, then reached up to pluck a black, leather-bound book from the shelf above her head. “You said there were four victims?” I nodded. “Actually, and very sadly, might I add, that does begin to sound like painfully familiar, very dark magic.”

She flipped through the pages by holding her hand over it and using a soft wind to make them flicker back and forth. Her fingers settled on a page and lightly stroked the image there. She turned the book, offering it to me.

“I think you might be looking at three more victims to come,” she said.

“That would make seven,” I said, squinting at the illustration. It looked like a ritual. The words were in another language. “I can’t read this. What is it?”

“Scandinavian. It’s magic to keep a coven young.”

“Oh, not again.” I had dealt before with some witches who were killing children in order to devour them for their youthful properties.

“Not quite. This is not the same as with the dark witches you met. They were physically young, but their appearance was still that of age. This spell requires the heart of a young woman for not only the essence but the beauty. A true youth spell. I guess at size because it is the typical number for a coven; seven is considered mystical.”

I looked harder at the drawing; the way in which the spell appeared to be wrought would require a sacred space of a decent size to be able to perform it.

“So, some coven wants to be young forever?”

“Not forever. These sorts of spells are never forever. They always have stated duration because they go against the natural order of things. I would suggest that it would be an annual thing. One heart, one life, one witch and one year.”

I shuddered. I hadn’t heard of murders like this in Worcester before, which meant the coven would be traveling to avoid being caught. There might be a record in some other city of crimes that matched these. It was an angle that Hamilton could work on.

“Could you photocopy this for me?”

Truth wrinkled her nose, disgusted. “Most certainly not, that would bend the spine. Philistine. Come with me.”

I followed her downstairs. She laid the book out flat on the counter, then placed a piece of plain paper over the image and spread her hand on the back of it.

“Effingo!” There was a brief flash of light. She peeled back the paper to show the image was burnt onto the other side.

“How was that different from a photocopier?” I asked. She closed the book and stroked the undamaged spine as her answer.

Chapter Eleven

I folded the copy into my pocket and left Truth to lock up only after her insistence that she would be fine. Her shop was only accessible by a pedestrian alley in the middle of town, so I’d walked; I wasn’t afraid to walk through the city at night. I was more than capable of taking care of myself.

I stopped at a darkened shop on the high street to use the window, with a street light behind me, like a mirror, checking that my clothes were straight and that the light breeze hadn’t blown my hair all out of shape. I caught a flicker of movement and turned my head slightly. There was a figure two shops down, on the other side of the street, hiding in one of the recessed doorways. All I could tell about the figure was that it was draped in a long dark cloak of some kind, and was trying to keep out of sight.

I continued on as if I hadn’t seen the mysterious figure behind me, using glances I caught in the windows of the other shops to see what the stalker would do. The figure crept out from its hiding place and followed along the street behind me, still on the opposite side, ducking from cover to cover. I wanted to laugh. Had the stalker seen one too many spy movies? I wouldn’t have noticed him—or her–if it hadn’t been for the jerky movements. The late hour and the lack of anyone else around didn’t help either.

I didn’t really want to lead this person home with me. I stopped walking; the stalker dove behind a tree. I made a show of taking out my phone so that I could look at the time while I thought about my route home. There was a place a block past my apartment where the road twisted and there was an alley that you couldn’t see until you passed it–unless of course you knew it was there. I sped my pace as though I was late, and charged on past my apartment building.

I checked the reflection in the side mirror of a parked car; my follower was still there, on my side of the street now. The stalker wasn’t very tall, so I had that advantage, but I didn’t think it safe to just turn around and confront him. I had to be sneaky.

On the corner, as I turned into the winding street, was a house that was undergoing renovations for months. I snagged a stray piece of clay piping and quickened my step again, darting into the alley. I pressed my back tight against the wall and waited.

The figure slowly came into the alley and crept past, looking around. I brought the pipe up, holding my breath, and swung hard. The pipe smashed and my follower went down. I was unprepared for the cracking sound; the hood fell back to reveal that I had knocked her head to a sickening angle.

Her
head. My follower was a woman. I dropped the rest of the pipe, covering my mouth. I hadn’t meant to kill her! I had only intended to subdue her. Blonde ringlets fell around her face, obscuring it; I expected them to be matted with blood from the blow, but they were clean. I bent down and reached under the cloak for her wrist: no pulse. My eyes prickled with tears.

Her head abruptly snapped back into place. I screamed, jumping back. The woman got to her knees, shaking her head from side to side, then turned to glare at me.

“Meanie! You hit me,” she wailed in a high, flutey, babyish voice.

I stared at her and touched a broken street light, using magic to make it work so I saw better. She dusted off her blue and white dress. There were so many layers to the petticoat under the skirt that it looked like a frothy meringue. Her legs were covered in white stockings with little bows at the knees; they went down to petite, doll-like shoes, also blue, that tied around the stockings with satin ribbon. She had perfect pink pouty lips, rosy cheeks, and soft blue eyes. “You’re okay? I didn’t kill you.”

“No, you hit me.” She pointed to her head. “Just because I can’t feel the pain doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

I took a minute to take a deep breath; relief was like a drug. I hadn’t killed her. “You were following me.”

She stopped pouting over being hit and started to look a bit more sheepish. She wrung her hands in her lap.

“I know! I wanted to talk to you but I was scared to just come up to you. I’m sorry.” She bowed her head. The unruly but somehow still perfect curls fell over her shoulders; she had another satin ribbon tied into her hair.

She looked up at me like a little lost puppy dog, and God help me if her big eyes didn’t make me just want to take her home. Then I recognized her: I’d seen her on stage at
Le Cirque de Poupèe
.

I offered my hand to pull her up, trying to recall her name. Even in the heels she was wearing, which had to be at least three inches, I towered over her. She was a tiny little thing, all sweet and doll like. It was funny how I’d thought that before, when I first saw her. I watched her face, waiting for it to change into normal lines, but her eyes stayed big and her cheeks stayed rosy, almost as if they were carved into stone.