Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (11 page)

And then she slammed the door in my face.

“That was helpful,” Isobel said brightly.

No fucking kidding.

We got stuck in traffic after leaving Suzy’s. I didn’t know where we were going, so it didn’t really matter. I just drove without stopping, creeping down the 5 Freeway slowly enough that I might as well have walked it.

The Union was probably tracking us now. We’d have to ditch the car soon—find another one. Where and how, I didn’t know. I was exhausted and annoyed and my ability to plan had been left behind in the desert. I’d expected Suzy to have the answers—and access to Erin’s body. Without either of those, I had no idea what to do next.

“Do you know where the OPA takes victims for autopsy?” Isobel asked.

Guess my aimlessness was obvious. “No,” I admitted. “I never deal with murder. I specialize in picking up witches who’ve been getting into trouble, but generally not the homicidal type.”

“More like the ‘talking to the dead’ type?” she asked with a teasing smile.

“If you’re asking if you’re one of my cases, yes. You are.” I huffed out a breath. “Were.” But she had the gears in my skull turning. Where
did
we take the dead? I’d never seen body bags hauled into my office building, but I had seen ambulances around. They probably went somewhere on the OPA campus.

The idea of breaking into one of our buildings was laughably bad. We had hundreds of magical and physical alarms—I’d have gotten arrested before I made it past the Starbucks between the Magical Violations and Infernal Relations buildings.

But maybe if someone could bring Erin’s body out…

“How much body do you need?” I asked. “The whole thing, or would an arm or a finger work?”

Isobel pulled a face. “I don’t know. I suppose I could do it with any part of the body.”

Any
part?

I cast my mind back to the blood in my bathroom. It might not have been cleaned up yet. And Erin had to have left some tissue behind, too.

We were almost past the exit closest to my apartment. I changed lanes without signaling, slicing through the narrow space between cars. Horns blared at me.

Isobel grabbed the leather arm of her chair. “What are you doing?”

“Getting you a piece of the victim.”

+ + +

We parked a few blocks away from my apartment building and walked the rest of the way there. I noticed that Isobel was carrying the bag from the herb shop with her, but didn’t ask what else she had bought. She’d already admitted to using animal blood. I probably didn’t want to know what she had in there.

It was a nice night for walking, even if I was out with a necrocognitive. The moon was hazy yellow, and the air was quiet and still. No signs of cops or Union anywhere. Didn’t get any better than that.

Isobel eyeballed my building as we headed around back. “What is this place?”

“What, got a problem with it?”

Guess my defensiveness had given me away. She gave me a skeptical look. “You live
here
?”

I took another look at my apartment. It was indistinguishable from any of a million other apartment buildings in Los Angeles. The architecture was…well, it wasn’t going to win any awards, but it wasn’t like I spent much time looking at the big taupe box from the outside. It had a secure lobby and a couple trees. Whatever. I spent most of my time at the office anyway.

“You live in a teal RV with beaded curtains,” I pointed out.

“Teal is a magical conductor. The curtains…” The corner of her mouth quirked. “Well, there’s no excuse for that.”

At least she was willing to admit it.

Grabbing the fire escape’s ladder, I pulled it down and stepped aside.

“Ladies first,” I said.

Isobel stared up at it. “I don’t like heights.”

“It’s the only way up.” I extended my hands toward her. “I won’t let you fall.”

She hesitated then climbed onto the first rung. I dutifully stood behind her, prepared to catch her in the unlikely event of the fire escape suddenly melting and throwing her to the ground. As soon as she reached the second floor, I followed her. And we did that all the way up to my floor.

When we got up to my apartment’s window, Isobel glanced over the railing at the ground and turned pale. She grabbed my sleeve.

“I’ve got you,” I said, steadying her.

She sighed and leaned against my chest, all warm and soft. Probably trying not to fall over. “You do have me, don’t you?”

And with that weird question, she pushed in the screen for my window and slipped inside.

I climbed in after her.

My apartment hadn’t changed since the last time I was there. I was relieved to see everything intact. The landlord was kind of a dick; I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d tossed all my belongings to the curb as soon as I went missing. But a cursory search proved that nothing new had gone missing since my last visit. The rent was paid through to the end of the month—maybe I could actually keep my home if I managed to clear my name before April rolled around.

Not that it felt like home anymore. I stood awkwardly in the bedroom as Isobel picked through my closet, staring at the bed that I’d woken up in on my last morning as an innocent man.

I’d been with Erin there. She’d died in this place. Shot and strangled.

I wasn’t sure I could feel at home anywhere ever again.

“What do you need out of my closet?” I asked.

“Oh, just looking around,” she said airily, with a hint of that “shaman princess” tone. Yeah, right. She was snooping.

I pushed the door shut. “Look around somewhere else.”

She lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right.”

“Need lights so that you can search for Erin’s tissue?” I opened my bedside table in search of a flashlight.

She wandered out of the bedroom. “No, thanks. I don’t need to see to find what I’m looking for.”

I grabbed the flashlight anyway and turned it on. There was still blood on the hallway carpet. Isobel flinched at the sight of it. A little skittish for someone who had slapped animal blood on her bare breasts for a ritual in a cemetery.

“Getting any vibes?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly. “Where did Erin die?”

I led her to the bathroom. “The tub.”

It was hard to stand there, staring at the empty bathtub, knowing what had been inside of it. But I had the necrocognitive. We were on the scene of the crime. If this were what I had to do to find Erin’s killer—well, I’d do a hell of a lot worse to bring justice to her.

Isobel stopped beside me in the doorway. She swallowed hard.

“Do it,” I urged. “Raise her.”

Isobel kneeled on a clear patch of floor by the tub, clutching her bag from the herb shop. Her face was ashen in the darkness. “So much blood,” she whispered, trailing her hand over the edge of the tub. “How did she die?”

The memory of the bruised handprints on Erin’s throat came to mind. “You tell me.”

She clenched her jaw. Reached into the bag and sprinkled herbs across the floor. Thank God that was some kind of plant matter and nothing animal in origin. “Erin Karwell,” Isobel said, one hand on the herbs, the other hand stretched over a tacky puddle of dried blood. She cleared her throat. When she spoke, she only had a trace of that dramatic, fake Indian accent. “I summon—I summon the spirits to…” She looked at me and trailed off.

“Well?” I demanded.

She put both hands on the tub and squeezed her eyes shut. “Erin Karwell,” she whispered.

Isobel was silent for several long seconds. It was nothing like the cemetery. She wasn’t even pretending to put on a show. She just…sat there. Doing nothing.

And after a minute, her eyes popped open again. “I don’t have the right supplies.” It sounded like she had to fight with herself to make the words come out, like she was confessing to something awful.

“What do you need?” There was a hard edge to my voice. Harder than I meant. “Do you need candles and salt? Do you need raccoon bones? Do you need to take off your shirt?”

“Cèsar…”

“Well?”

“I need a body.”

“You’ve got her blood, you’ve got the herbs,” I said. “Talk to the damn victim, Isobel!”

It exploded out of her. “I
can’t
!”

The force of her frustration punched through me. I stepped back, gripping the doorframe.

So there was the truth. Isobel Stonecrow wasn’t really a necrocog. She was a liar, a scammer. Exactly what the OPA had thought she was.

“The drums,” I said. “The bones. The blood. Fake.”

“Yes, all of that was fake,” Isobel said, scattering the herbs across the bathroom floor as she stood. “And the herbs don’t do anything, either, I was just—I always try to put on a show. But—”

I’d heard enough. I shoved away from the door.

“I can still help you, Cèsar! I just don’t—”

“Forget about it,” I said. The anger burned out of me, dwindling down into a hard iron core of defeat.

Isobel couldn’t raise Erin. She couldn’t give me the truth. I couldn’t get vengeance—couldn’t clear my name, get my job back, get my
life
back.

I didn’t bother with the window. I ripped open the front door of the apartment, tore down the yellow police tape, and stalked away from the home I might never see again.

Isobel followed me to the top of the stairs and gazed at me with wounded eyes.

“Let me help you,” she said. “We can still figure something out.”

What the hell could a scammer do for me? For
Erin
? I froze on the landing and glared at her. “If you’re smart, you’ll get out of town, Stonecrow. And you won’t come back.”

Maybe that was what I should have done in the first place.

The house I was standing in front of was by far the nicest I’d been to since this whole thing started, so long as you liked suburban sprawl—which I did. It was quiet on this street. The kind of place where everyone was in bed by nine and trouble didn’t roam the sidewalks looking for things to tag with spray-paint. Trees were swaying with the breeze, a dog barked in the distance.

The guy who met me at the front door of the house on the corner looked like he belonged. Sweat suit, nice sneakers, crew-cut hair. His tattoos were hidden by sleeves. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to make your way here.”

I sighed. “I didn’t want to bring this to your door, but I just…I’m out of options, man.”

Domingo pushed open the security screen and held his arms open. I stepped into his embrace, squeezed him tight. I’m not so much of a man that I can’t hug my brother hard when I’m having a shitty week. Domingo hugged back just as fiercely.

“You look like shit on a stick. Do I want to know why?”

“I fought off two assassins in the desert. Kicked their asses. Pulled out all the ninja moves.” I mimicked a few karate chops, and Domingo laughed.

“Sure you did. Couch in the den is yours as long as you want it.”

I didn’t want Domingo’s couch at all. It was stiff and old, and Domingo’s wife wouldn’t be happy to see me on it.

What I really wanted was his ritual space.

Domingo and I had gotten into a lot of bad shit together as teenagers, but we’d gotten into a lot of good things, too. Like magic. Abuelita had been the one to identify that we had the old magic in the first place, taught us how to tap into it, but we’d worked together to find the limits of our abilities. Domingo still had an altar in his basement—everything a guy needed to whip up a batch of strength and energy potions.

The house was mostly dark when he let me in. It was well after midnight, but that shouldn’t have mattered in my brother’s house. He was a night owl.

I leaned around the end of his stairs to check the second floor. All the doors were open and the rooms were dark.

“Sofia already in bed?” I asked.

“She isn’t here.” A sigh. “We’re taking a little time apart. And before you say it—”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“—she’s in love with someone else.”