Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Kate Waters Mysteries Book 2) (22 page)

“You can think that I dragged you into this, Erika, or you can think that maybe some preemptive protection is for the best.”

Erika took the bottle from Kate. “I know, but the latter has been difficult to adopt, considering one of our sisters is dead.”

“It’s better than two, three, or all of us, isn’t it?” Thea replied.

Erika swallowed from the bottle and handed it back to Thea. Thea closed the circle, thanking the elements for their presence and insight, and then packed up their supplies.

Donna walked beside Kate as they headed back to their cars through the wooded path. “Don’t worry, Kate. The spell will work. I believe in Thea. I trust her. Just remember, our part now is to believe, believe that we will be protected from Rán.”

Like her last spell though, Kate didn’t feel any different, even though she knew that wasn’t how magic worked. It didn’t change anything in you except for how you perceived your situation afterwards, in the deep-rooted belief that the spell would be carried out.

Kate’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She checked who the text message was from. It was from Suzanne.

Need to talk, asap! dead snake, doorstep.

The Willamette River coiled like a black serpent through the city lights of downtown Portland. Building fluorescents, billboard signs, and the stream of traffic put Wells into a focused string of connected thoughts, the foremost being relief that Julie and her girlfriend were taking action on the boy who had sexually assaulted them, with charges already booked against him. He trusted Officer Hanes to handle the case, and imagined that no later than tomorrow morning, the boy would be in permanent custody. Now, he could direct all of his energy on Andre Singer and whoever had attacked Kate.

The Willamette Moorage Park backed up to a patch of cottonwoods and birch lining the Willamette River. Andre Singer kept his boat there. Wells wasn’t sure what he would find there, but if Andre was hiding something, a concealed boatshed seemed the likely place to keep it, and whoever made copies of Andre’s background must also think the same. Wells hoped he would get there first.

The exit off the freeway wound down to the river onto a narrow street cut in two by train tracks. The road followed the Willamette River and passed through an older, industrial section of the city. He pulled over on the side of the road when he encountered the graveled lot of Willamette Moor Park. Google Maps showed the boat dock to be a couple hundred yards away. He parked behind a thicket of blackberries that surrounded two large dumpsters.

Wells noted the time on his watch, 10:37 and then stepped from the car, checked his gun, taking the safety off and re-holstering it. He walked until he located the covered boatsheds extending along the banks. The moor had seven docks, each holding three sheds. Andre’s was number 17, so Wells steered to the sixth dock.

As he moved along the plank boards of the main dock, he scanned the other boatsheds, all secured with padlocks on the doors, and each had an electrical box at the corner. Outside lamps, connected by string wire, threw cold, bright light against the docks and the dark water beyond. The air smelled like earthworms. Wells passed boatshed 15, then paused at 16. Everything was still and quiet. He walked up to 17 and peered around the side of the shed.

A figure moved in his periphery. Someone had darted behind the boatshed. Wells unclipped his gun and drew the barrel in front of him. It wasn’t a good time to run into Andre—he hadn’t dispatched his location yet.

“This is Detective Orwin Wells with the Portland Metro Police Department. Come out with your hands up.” He sounded more confident than the tingling rush to his stomach. The pounding of his heart boomed in his eardrums. He let out his breath and inhaled another.

Why wasn’t the person coming out from behind the shed?

Wells spoke again, this time louder, meaner. “I said this is Detective Wells. Come out now with your hands up.”

Heat came to his face. He steadied himself. A shuffling sounded and then a silhouette emerged from behind the boatshed, arms raised. It wasn’t Andre. In the shadows, he could only distinguish the size of the person, small, likely female. “Don’t move,” Wells said. He stepped closer when the realization of who stood in front of his gun brought the heat from his face to his insides like hot wax.

“Thea?”

She moved slowly into the umbrella of lamplight above. “Hello, Detective. What are you doing here?” She sounded calm, casual.

Wells lowered his gun and stuck it back into a holster underneath his jacket. “I’m obviously going to ask you the same thing?”

***

Kate pulled onto Suzanne’s street, the neighborhood vaguely familiar since her last visit, the gray house with wind chimes, the white van parked along the curb one house up, and the red mailbox out front of Suzanne’s house. She hoped Andre wasn’t home, and didn’t think Suzanne would have asked her to come over if he was. She approached with caution just in case, parking one block down. His car was gone, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The drumming of her pulse added to her regret in not having told Thea or Donna about Suzanne’s text, or calling Wells. What if Suzanne had been assaulted and the attacker waited nearby? Kate couldn’t fight off another attack. Still, there was no point in calling Wells yet, just because Suzanne had found a dead snake on her doorstep. What could he do besides check the area? He would record it in his notebook, give her that same you’d-better-be-careful frown, and tell her to call him if anything else happened.

So, that’s what she would do. Call if something else happened. As for Thea, Kate couldn’t risk her knowing any more than she already did. After her vision of Thea with the statue, Kate wasn’t sure she could trust her anymore. Had she really tried to get a hold of Suzanne? Like how she’d contacted Brooke…when it was too late?

Kate rummaged through her glove box for a can of mace just to be safe. She doubted the protection bracelet at her wrist could protect her in such a situation. Finding the mace buried at the bottom, she slid the red lever aside to be ready, and then stepped from the car and turned her attention to Suzanne’s doorstep. The shapes on the ground were angular, not those of a dead snake. Suzanne must have moved it. As she got closer, Kate found twigs splayed out in the shape of a pentacle with a patch of blood in the middle. Dark-red dried blood that looked to have come from the snake and not Suzanne’s own. Kate shivered inside at the sight of it, at the devil-like appearance the makeshift pentacle portrayed. She knew now that magic was a natural religion, a practice connecting one to the divine, but she still couldn’t erase the years of societal conditioning that pentacles were marks of the devil.

Kate stepped around the pentacle and knocked softly three times on Suzanne’s door. She leaned to the side to peer in the window, but a blanket of darkness shaded the room and obscured her view. Unease prickled her skin with gooseflesh. She tried the door handle, but the door was already open. Déjà vu slipped over her, and she was stepping back into Brooke’s house, fearing the worst all over again.

“Suzanne? It’s me, Kate.”

Silence. Kate paused, listening for movement, the creak of floorboards, the scrape of drawers, the hiss of a faucet, but silence continued to buzz around her.

Even though shadows masked the house, Kate remembered the kitchen was located off the back of the living room. She headed straight for it, preparing herself for another ghastly discovery. She held the can of mace up, ready to spray if she had to. The drumming in her chest had now surged into her head like loud music. She slowed at the break between tile and carpet, not wanting to step any farther into the kitchen, but she had gone this far. She couldn’t turn back now.

Taking a deep breath, she ran her hand along the wall for the light switch, found the lever, and flipped it on. The kitchen was empty. She let out a hard sigh of relief, turned around, still holding the mace up in front of her, and continued her search into the hallway towards the bedrooms.

She grazed her hand near the doorframe and flicked on another light switch. Light sliced into the first bedroom.

“Suzanne? Are you here?” That room was empty too.

She went to the end and looked in the one on the right. In the corner, she noticed a hump of a shadow. “Suz…” was all she spoke before a flashlight blinded her in the face. Kate threw her arms up to shield her eyes from the light, the vial of mace aimed in front of her.

“Kate?”

The flashlight clicked off, but white spots still veiled Kate’s vision. She fumbled for the light switch in the bedroom and turned it on.

Kate lowered her mace and put it in her pocket. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.” She walked into the room, taking in the bed and two dressers on opposite sides of the room. Suzanne looked like a lost kitten, crouched with wide eyes. “Are you all right?” Kate asked her, kneeling to the floor.

“Define all right?” Suzanne said. “I mean, if I’m about to.… What happened to your face?”

“I was attacked last night, in my house.”

Suzanne sat up. “My God, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” Kate said, touching the bruise to her left eye. The last she had seen of it, the bruise had deepened to a raisin purple and stone blue arc along her eye socket. Though still tender, her racing heart ached worse.

“Do you know who did it?”

“No.” But she had one giant suspicion of who. Kate didn’t have the heart then to tell her she thought it was Andre. Detective Wells had that job, and she was already in trouble for intruding on his investigation earlier.

“Where’s Andre? Is he here?”

“No. He went to his mother's house. She needed his help with something.”

Good, Kate thought. One less problem to deal with. She sat down on the bed and noticed Suzanne looked even tinier than the last time she had seen her, as if she were wilting away to skin and bone.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Suzanne said.

“Don’t say that. No, you’re not going to die.”

Suzanne sat down on the bed next to her. “I know about the curse,” she said, without looking at Kate. “Thea thinks it’s targeting sisters in our coven, and that the dead snake is an omen. Death will come to one of us soon, just like what happened with Brooke.”

Kate noticed Suzanne hadn’t mentioned the statue. “She didn’t mention anything else?”

Suzanne’s forehead crumbled. “No. Is there something else?”

Kate shook her head, knowing Thea wouldn’t have said anything about the statue. The fewer who knew, the better…or had Suzanne intentionally lied about it too? Thea wanted the statue from the beginning, she said to protect others, but what if she had other reasons? Money wasn’t like Thea, but maybe for power. Dark magic.

Suzanne’s eyes wandered to the bedroom window. Outside, a streetlight lit up the vacant neighborhood like an eye in the night.

“I feel like there is something else,” Suzanne said. “Something that’s going on that I don’t know about.”

If Suzanne didn’t know about the statue, Kate thought she should, especially if it was Andre who had attacked her and stolen it. If that was the case, the statue might be in the house and Suzanne in danger. She needed to know the truth, for her own safety.

“Brooke found a statue. Thea believes it is cursed and was the reason she died. It’s a statue of the Goddess Rán, a storm goddess.” Kate didn’t see the point in explaining how Thea had stolen it from Brooke, and that she had stolen it from Thea. “Anyone who comes into contact with the statue is in danger. The dead snake, the freak accidents, and…” Kate paused, wondering if Suzanne had the mark on the back of her neck, “…and the person in possession of it gets a mark on the back of their neck, a symbol the same as the one on the statue.”

Suzanne stood from the bed, crossed her boney, pale arms in front of her. “But I don’t have the statue, so why would I have a dead snake on my doorstep?”

According to the curse, Suzanne wouldn’t have had a dead snake on her doorstep unless she had the statue, which could mean only one of two things: either the snakes weren’t a part of Rán’s curse and were instead someone’s sick joke, or Andre had the statue and kept it secret from her. Both seemed likely to Kate.

“What about Andre? Could he have the statue?”

“How would he have known about it?”

“Brooke?”

Anger flashed in Suzanne’s eyes. “I suppose anything is possible. He’s not who I thought he was.”

“I can relate,” Kate said. Love had a way of blinding people. “You think you know someone, but then they do something so hurtful, they become a complete stranger.”

Suzanne nodded. “I guess we should search the house.”

It was exactly what Kate hoped to do.

“And what if we find it?” Suzanne asked.

“Then we’ll take protective measures. Do a protection rite.”

“Okay,” Suzanne said. She started walking toward the bedroom door. “If it’s anywhere in the house, Andre probably would have hidden it in the room where he keeps his things or in the shed in the backyard. If not, then he probably has it in his boatshed at Willamette Mooring. I think it’s number 17.”

“He owns a boat?” Kate wondered at the abundance of snakes one might find down there. Andre could easily store them in a bucket for when he needed one next.

“Yes. It’s just a small boat, but he likes getting out on the water by himself.”

“Let’s start with the house first,” Kate said.

She followed Suzanne from the bedroom and helped her search through Andre’s belongings, mostly boat supplies—fishing nets, docking bumpers and hooks, tools, and a collection of beer steins from around the world. Kate entertained the possibility that he didn’t have the statue, but if he didn’t have it, then there was only one other person Kate could think of who did.

Kate and Suzanne finished searching the shed, with no luck.

“What do we do now?” Suzanne asked.

“I guess we search the boatshed,” Kate said. And if they didn’t find it there? After days of fearing Rán and the curse, Kate stressed over an even more terrifying thought: the real danger wasn’t in the curse, or Rán, but in Thea.

Light in her eye, blood on her hands…

***

Wells holstered his gun and put his hands at his hips. His eyes dropped down the length of Thea. She was wearing tight black spandex shorts and a black tank top that revealed the curve of her breasts. Heat flushed to his face, and he blinked away, correcting his gaze back up to her face. As attractive as she was standing there half-naked, he couldn’t dispel the fear in his gut, that maybe it was Thea who had broken into his office. “What are you doing here, Thea?”