Black Hat, White Witch by Hailey Edwards

13

The address wasn’t hard to find. There was a mailbox and everything. That led me to trust Clay was right about his hunch we would find some form of troll-friendly accommodations on the property. Where, we had no idea. And the farther we trekked, the deeper into the killer’s territory we roamed. If he was using this property to hold his victims, he would know the area well. He could be watching us from higher ground right now, which blasted chills down my arms.

Up to this point, I had felt relatively safe with Asa and Clay for backup, given my diminished state.

But hunting this killer in his habitat? Without my mantle of power, I was afraid. For us all.

“We can’t afford to waste much more time.” Clay broke the silence of the past hour with what we must all be thinking. “Assuming the killer came here after we visited him, he could have taken what he needed and bolted last night.”

“We don’t know what time he left the trailer,” Asa agreed. “He could be long gone by now.”

“Okay.” I was already outvoted. “Let’s call in the other…”

A familiar scent hit my nose as a strong wind kicked up in the trees.

“Diesel.” Clay picked it up too. “Do you hear a motor?”

The same fuel the killer used to douse his trail to and from his kill sites.

Birdlike, Asa cocked his head. “A generator.”

A predatory smile curved my lips as the hunt sang in my blood, louder and louder, deafening my fears.

The burnt crimson smoldering in Asa’s eyes called to me, like to like, and he growled low in his throat.

“I’ll lead.” Clay was used to playing muscle. “Rue, you’re the middle. Ace, you bring up the rear.”

From what I had gleaned, Asa might prove the superior tracker, but Clay was unkillable. He could be hurt or put out of commission, but if you knew what you were doing, he always came back. Not that it meant I enjoyed him taking one for the team. I didn’t. One peek at Asa told me he wasn’t a fan either.

But we all had our roles to play, and Clay’s had always been as my shield.

The steady purr of the generator led us to the remains of a cabin nature had done its best to reclaim. An orange power cord stretched from the generator through a broken window, giving us the only indication the decrepit structure was habitable.

We saw no sign of the occupant, who may or may not have given up his masque for his true face, but he had gone through the trouble of leaving a steady noise to provide cover for his movements. It worked as much for us as it did against us. The generator might be a decoy he left running after he spent the night out here.

If that was the case, I doubt he intended to come back. Why waste precious resources otherwise?

“No matter how I look at this,” I told the guys softly, “he anticipated a visit from us today.”

The crime scenes were too fastidious for me to believe he was careless in any regard.

“Who wants to go in?” Clay didn’t wait for an answer, he volunteered himself. “Ace, watch her back.”

As the mostly indestructible one, Clay ducked into the cabin and was absorbed by its shadows.

“I don’t like this,” I murmured. “It feels like my skin wants to crawl off my bones.”

I identified it as an amplified version of the sensation that convinced me Olsen was worth a second look.

Black magic might not smell rank to me, but maybe I had switched the balance within myself enough for its presence to register as danger in my subconscious. Handy if I could hone it into conscious awareness.

Five minutes passed with no sign of Clay. Asa and I made the wordless decision to investigate. Together.

Using my wand as an atmospheric measuring stick, I tapped it once against a random log then gritted my teeth against the feedback. Negative energy permeated the building from the foundation to the roof. An almost foul breath of air expelled when we reached the threshold, and I braced as a dark figure loomed.

“Don’t shoot.” Clay held up both his hands. “It’s just me.”

“No offense.” I pricked my finger, murmured a spell, and wiped the blood on his arm. “It’s him.”

When hunting a killer with a penchant for stealing faces and identities, you can’t be too careful.

“The cabin is a front.” He ground his molars. “The bedroom is nothing but a set of stairs leading down into a cavern. I’m too big to fit very far, but we’ve found his home away from home.”

“What aren’t you telling us?” Asa searched his face. “What did you see?”

“There are newspaper clippings.” Clay exhaled. “There are candid photos of Colby too.”

“I need to get down there.” I didn’t ask or wait for permission. “I have to see this.”

The climb down was well lit, thanks to the generator powering miles of string lights.

The main cave, which soared twelve feet high, split off into four different rooms. It was obvious this was the troll’s true home. A couch and recliner sat on a rug in front of a TV on a stand. The closest room had been converted into a simple kitchen with a fridge and a microwave. From the smell, it was plain another one had been used as a bathroom. But the smallest of them, the one that called to me the loudest, had once been a library. Until someone dumped the books on the sofa and made it a shrine.

Yellowed newspaper clippings from the Silver Stag case were taped to the wall in chronological order.

Layers of brittle tape curled, as if this mural had been taken down and put up many times over the years and the artist didn’t want to risk damaging the paper further. The fae presses had the most extensive coverage, but the major para newspapers—all magicked to appear blank to humans—had run the story.

Candids of Clay and me from those days filled spots here and there on the wall, but the bottom row…

For a moment, my heart forgot how to beat, and my blood turned to ice water in my veins.

Those photos were recent, taken within the last few weeks. If I had to date them, I bet I would find they were shot in the time since the first victims were found. The wards kept humans from seeing Colby, but paras could pick her out fine. The killer had taken a keen interest in her based on this spread.

There were dozens of photos of her. Just her. Her face. Her wings. Her legs. The rest of the mural might have been an afterthought compared to his dedicated study of her. Maybe he wanted to consume the one soul to escape the Stag and thus prove his superiority over his idol?

But how? How did he know about her? No one knew about Colby. She was my best kept secret.

The only way he could have discovered her existence was if…he was there.

The night she died.

The night I saved her.

The night I damned her.

“I have to go.” I stumbled back and fell onto the stairs, unable to pry my gaze from the collage. “Now.”

“Come on.” Asa helped me stand then guided me up into the cabin. “I’ve got you.”

“I called the Bureau.” Clay wrapped an arm around me. “They’re sending another team to handle this.”

“I’m calling in Malone,” Asa announced. “I want his input on this scene versus the previous ones.”

Our newest CI, criminal informant, could tie this case up for us with a bow. I just struggled to care.

All I could see was my first good look at Colby. All I could hear was her broken voice begging for my help.

I promised to protect her, keep her safe, and I was failing at the only job I ever had that mattered.

“This was a trap.” I blinked to clear my eyes, and tears poured over my cheeks. “She’s—”

“Shh.” Asa embraced my other side. “Not here.”

Forced to keep a wary eye out for the killer, we paced ourselves, causing the trek back to the SUV to take an eternity.

None of us spoke until the SUV’s tires hit the main road.

“This was a trap,” I repeated my earlier words. “He lured me away from home to clear a path to Colby.”

The ward blink and the security notifications took on sinister implications that twisted my stomach.

“Who is this guy?” Clay pounded a fist into his open palm. “Why fixate on the Silver Stag? Why Colby?”

I recognized the attempt to distract me for what it was, but I was happy to embrace it.

“The Stag had no family. No friends.” I reached back in my memory for those details. “He was a ghost.”

“Not a ghost.” Clay grunted. “An outlier. He lived off the grid with minimal social interaction. His victims were taken from big box stores. He moved around a lot so as not to draw attention to himself. He had at least forty-eight kills under his belt before he took the last group. We may never know the grand total.”

“We got lucky that Colby was a type one diabetic. She got hypoglycemic at the drop of a hat.” How times had changed. She lived on sugar now. “She wore a medical alert bracelet her parents had imbued with a locator spell so that if she had an episode outside the house, they could find her. We followed it right to him. He was in the process of transforming the girls for the hunt. Two of their souls were already outside their bodies, wrapping them in his chosen form. He consumed them while I hammered at his ward.”

Rage had consumed me, not over the girls’ deaths, those hadn’t affected me then, but at my inability to beat him at his own game. No wonder, with all the souls he had devoured over the centuries of his life.

But I had Grandfather’s voice ringing in my ears, the phantom agony of his cane striking a lash across my hands for each failure. Fury and hatred had burned through me and incinerated the ward. I smashed through the barrier, stabbed the Stag in the gut with my wand, and cursed him with delight. Then, I did what all black witches do to ensure their rivals don’t get a shot at revenge.

I ate his foul, black heart.

“Then you saved Colby,” Asa finished the story. “Who else would have known that part?”

“I thought no one saw.” I rubbed my arms. “The third girl had been transformed when I broke in, but she spooked when the other girls were consumed. She broke out of the pen and ran.” I didn’t blame her one bit. “Clay chased after her. The Stag was as good as dead at that point. He used everything he had left to transform Colby into a moth. He couldn’t move. She had to fly to him.” He gave her wings rather than hooves, so she could sail to her own death. “I finished him off before he touched her, then I had an armful of sobbing moth-girl and some hard choices to make.”

“It took two teams three days to find the third girl, but her soul had evaporated beyond saving by then.” A thoughtful expression settled across Clay’s features. “We assumed the fourth girl, Colby, met the same fate.”

“That was the plan.” I toyed with my seat belt. “All this time, I thought it worked.”

“As far as I was concerned, it did.” Clay rubbed his smooth head. “I had no idea.”

“I should have told you.” I wet my lips. “I should have trusted you.” I forced out the rest, because I didn’t want him getting ideas about me being good for goodness’ sake. “I think…I was afraid if I told you what I had done, and I caved to temptation, you would never look at me the same way again.”

“If you had told me,” he said quietly, “I would have helped in any way I could, to whatever end.”

To whatever end.

“I know that now.” I blinked to keep tears from sliding down my cheeks. “I couldn’t see it then.”

Clamping a hand onto my shoulder, Clay squeezed. “Are you booking our flight, or do I get the honors?”

“You do it.” I folded my hands in my lap. “I’m so jittery I might book us a rocket to the moon.”

The seat groaned when Clay leaned back, and his soft voice soothed as he used voice commands to walk his phone through purchasing our tickets.

Asa stole a glance at me. “Will you call Colby to warn her?”

“I tried.” I held my phone in a death grip. “She didn’t answer.”

* * *

The flight homefrom Charlotte was an hour and forty-five minutes.

Four hours had lapsed between the moment we left Olsen’s property until we hit the city limits.

Colby still wasn’t answering her phone or returning texts, and the security cameras had all gone dark.

I was ready to scream. Or punch something. Or scream while I punched something.

The drive home from the airport took forever, and I didn’t wait for Asa to stop before I jumped out. I ran to the gate, casting my senses wide for the wards that had protected us for so long. They were dormant.

The copycat had beaten us here, and he had bypassed my security when he couldn’t outright destroy it.

That familiar rage boiled in my gut over a fellow practitioner getting one over on me, but this time it was the result of terror, not a matter of pride.

After flinging open the gate, I jogged up the steps onto the front porch. The first step told me the ward on the house itself had been cracked open. There were no signs of forced entry, but the doorknob turned in my hand without resistance. The silence of a dark and empty house greeted me.

Colby’s name burned down my throat, eager to escape, but I didn’t want to lure her out until we cleared the house. Room by room, I checked every nook and cranny, using a minor spell to sense her.

“She’s not here.” I swallowed the panic in my voice. “But that’s okay.”

“You mentioned she had safe places.” Asa touched my elbow. “Let’s check those.”

“The house is clear,” Clay confirmed. “The wards are down, the power’s out, and my cell has no signal.”

The killer must have laid hexes on the wards when he dropped them, forming a dead zone within their boundaries.

“That gives us a timeframe. He was here six or seven hours ago.” I checked my messages. “That’s the last time I heard from Colby.”

“He’s come and gone.” Asa rubbed his thumb over my arm. “But he might be hunting her.”

“Let’s do a circuit of the property,” Clay suggested. “Once we clear it as best we can, we’ll fetch Colby.”

Certainty rang through his voice that she would be safe and sound, and I clung to that by my fingernails.

“Okay.” I led them out the back door. “We can start on the north corner and work our way in.”

Within seconds, Asa had given himself over to his daemon, whose eyes burned with determination.

“Smell better,” he said by way of explanation. “Stronger too.”

A nod was all I could spare him as I hit the tree line and began walking the fence that enclosed my land. I couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched, but that came from knowing the witch we hunted was gifted in the art of concealment. If we weren’t careful, we could lead him straight to Colby.

When we reached the point where we began, Clay slanted his eyes toward me. “Satisfied?”

“Not even close.” I offered him a weak smile. “Let’s check her cubbies.”

The first four yielded nothing but a flash of renewed hope. Each one was secured by a functional spell.

That meant the most critical of all my wards had held and that Colby, if she’d reached a cubby, was safe.

Around the ninth location, I began to sweat, and the twelfth left me with shaking hands.

Before I unwound the spell on lucky thirteen, I shut my eyes and sent up a prayer to anyone listening.

As soon as the magic winked out, a small white blur rocketed out in a frenzy of fuzz and wings.

Next thing I knew, a cat-sized moth smacked me in the face. Her legs wrapped around my head in a death grip, and I got a mouthful of furry abdomen. Wings beat against my ears, deafening me, but I didn’t care one whit.

“Rue,” she sobbed onto the top of my head. “I was so scared.”

“I know.” I tugged her down until I could see again and cradled her against my chest. “Me too.”

“He walked right in.” She clung to me. “It was like the wards weren’t even there.”

“You didn’t see him before he walked through the gate?”

“I was online.” Her feathery antennae quivered. “The power cut out, and I went to check the breakers.”

Our house was old, and her rig had shorted out her room more than once when she got plug happy.

“That’s when I saw him.” Her feet bit into me. “He was dressed like Clay and Asa.”

Clay had come up behind us, and his lips thinned to a hard line. “Just like us or a little different?”

“Just like you.” Colby peeked up at him. “I worried something had happened, that he was coming to tell me Rue was hurt.” She sniffed. “I tried to call, but my cell wouldn’t work, and the landline was down.”

Yet another country living necessity—the nearly extinct residential landline phone.

“He must have hoped if he couldn’t get through the wards, she would let him in.” Asa had shifted back while I had my hands full. “He isolated her to incite panic, to scare her into cooperating.”

Smart as Colby was, she was still a kid. She might have done just that if he preyed on her emotions.

“Let’s get back to the house.” I kissed the top of her head. “I don’t like us being out in the open.”

Clay and Asa cleared the house to ensure no one had sneaked in while we were away. I raised the wards again, for all the good it would do us, and Clay got the power back on. Colby stuck to me like glue, and it didn’t bother me one bit. Neither did Asa’s presence at my back, watching over us both.

Once we got things as close to normal as we could manage, I parked Colby at her rig and encouraged her to plug in so we could discuss the Kellies’ report on the cave without upsetting her further. Clay and Asa laid out our usual setup on the kitchen table, but I kept my chair pulled back far enough I could see Colby in the next room.

More importantly, she could see me.

Not many kids would be happy for a former black witch to play guardian angel, but she wasn’t most kids.

“Our copycat was definitely keeping the girls in the cave.” Clay read the first page. “That smell? It wasn’t a bathroom. That’s not how Olsen used it, anyway. That room was chockful of canned goods and bottled water. A bit of a prepper’s paradise.” He wiped a hand over his mouth. “There was an anteroom between two shelves we missed because it wasn’t lit. The killer installed a barred security door to lock the girls in there.”

That far out in the woods, and that deep in the ground, no one would have heard their screams.

“No fingerprints on the mural, despite the tape,” Asa added, “but those are easily wiped with magic.”

“The generator was dead when they arrived.” I rubbed my jaw. “It had a twenty-four-hour fuel tank.”

“What bothers me isn’t that timeline,” Asa said, “but the one here.”

“We know the killer was in Samford—” Clay checked his watch, “—nine hours ago now.”

“There have been multiple incidents, minor ones, since you left.” Asa tapped a finger on the table. “All of them easily explained away.”

A shiver of dread rippled down my spine. “Are you saying we’ve got a pair of copycats?”

“That’s a big leap,” Clay warned. “The evidence doesn’t support your theory.”

“One killer at the trailer, selecting victims,” Asa suggested. “The other in the cave, keeping them alive.”

“You think one killer stayed in North Carolina after I arrived,” I murmured, “and the other came here.”

From the first night, the second killer had been nosing around the property, testing its defenses.

Yes.

That felt right.

“It’s a compelling argument,” Clay allowed. “For now, let’s track the killer we know.”

That was the whole problem. We didn’t know him. Potentially either of them. Not yet.

An idea tickled the back of my mind. “Do we have the recordings of the first two crime scenes?”

“The Kellies sent them over with the third you requested,” Asa confirmed. “I’ll email you both a link.”

“Here we go,” I murmured, clicked, and then swore. “The same person filmed this.”

The style was the same, and style wasn’t a word I ever heard used in reference to crime scene footage.

“Billy Kidd,” Asa supplied when I blanked. “I’ll check the second recording for credits.”

Less than a minute later, he came back with confirmation the same agent had done all the camera work.

“The Bureau called in multiple teams.” Clay watched his screen, a deep line bisecting his wide brow. “It’s not surprising one guy, let alone a junior agent, got stuck with the drudgework.”

Grasping at straws, I was grasping at straws, and I didn’t care. We had no other leads. We had nothing.

“Get the Kellies to draw us a timeline of Billy Kidd’s movements the last few days.” We could start there. “If they push back, tell them we have an eyewitness account. Our suspect is, or might be impersonating, a Black Hat agent.” I had another idea. “Can you pull up a photo of Agent Kidd?” I flipped through my files and hit pay dirt. “I’ve got one of Olsen.”

In seconds, Asa emailed me the image, and I carried my laptop to where Colby sat in her rig.

“Hey, punk.” I tested a theory. “Can you look at a couple of pictures for me?”

The quick swivel of her eyes toward me confirmed she had been listening in and not playing her game.

Given what she had been through, I didn’t have it in me to scold her for disobeying me.

“Yeah.” She removed the headset. “What kind of pictures?”

“Nothing bad,” I rushed to assure her. “I have two headshots of possible suspects.”

“Okay.” She studied my screen when I pivoted it toward her. “I don’t recognize either of them.”

I didn’t ask her if she was sure. I didn’t want to pressure her into making a false ID to please me.

“Thanks.” I lifted her headset. “Try turning this on next time.”

Her antennae drooped at having been caught, but she didn’t apologize, and I doubt she obeyed me.

Kids these days.

This was why I wasn’t cut out to be a mother. I could do the auntie deal, but parenting was too hard.

Back at the table, I joined the others and shook my head, though I was sure they overheard us.

“She cleared Olsen and Kidd.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but disappointment pushed it out of me. “That doesn’t mean much, as far as Olsen is concerned. We don’t know who took over his identity.” That brought me to another salient point. “And, if there are two of them, they might both be wearing masques.”

Humans had it so much easier. Their criminals’ disguises were laughable in comparison to the magic that allowed skilled practitioners, in multitudes of disciplines, to fundamentally change their appearance on a whim. Some paranormal creatures, like fae, were even born with the skill as camouflage to protect them from human detection.

But it also made it twice as hard to pin a crime on them without DNA evidence left at the scene.

“The Kellies checked in.” Clay had his phone in hand, but his gaze swung to mine. “Kidd is MIA.”

A tiny flame of hope kindled in my chest. “How long?”

“He hasn’t been back to work since the day we examined the third crime scene.”

“Okay.” I itched to jump up and pace. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“They’re going to check flight manifests and car rental services, see if they can pin down his movements. It says here they checked his hotel. His room was empty. There were no signs of foul play. He appears to have left of his own free will.” Clay frowned. “They’re sending a unit to his house in Oregon for a welfare check.”

“What about his partner?” I couldn’t recall his name. “Does he know why Kidd bolted?”

“Their hotel was booked solid. A fishing tournament.” Clay shook his head. “They had separate rooms on different floors. Both singles. No suites available. The senior agent went to check on Kidd when he failed to show at the car.”

“And found the room empty,” I finished for him. “Are there security cameras at the hotel?”

Kidd was a warg. He couldn’t cloak himself and walk out unnoticed. He would be visible.

“There are,” Clay confirmed. “They all went dark for twenty minutes around midnight the night before.”

Tech could have done that. Magic could have done it faster and easier. But wargs didn’t have magic.

Proof we had two killers working together? Or evidence our cinematographer was also a hacker?

“We need to contact the Bureau,” I decided. “Let them know he’s a person of interest in our case.”

But if there were two of them…and they had been coordinating with one another…

“Get the Kellies to cross-check the agents present at each scene.” I let my attention drift back to the film. “We know Kidd was there, so the senior agent assigned to him was too. Who else?”

“You won’t want to hear this, but you need to rest.” Clay checked the time. “It’s almost eleven.”

The whole day was a blur of frantic movement and panicked thoughts, but I couldn’t stop yet.

“Colby is exhausted.” Asa hit me where it hurt. “I guarantee she won’t sleep a wink without you.”

Poor thing was in her rig, but she was drooping. Her antennae hung in her eyes, but she didn’t care.

“I’ll work through the night.” Clay made it a promise. “If I get anything good, I’ll wake you.”

“Okay.” I raised my hands in defeat. “I’ll sit with her long enough to put her to sleep.”

Leaving the guys to continue digging, I edged toward Colby, who was deathly pale for a white moth.

“I don’t want to sleep.” She kept staring at the screen, but it was obvious she wasn’t seeing it. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. I’m not fine. No one is fine.” I removed her headset and scooped her into my arms. “It’s been a rough day for all of us.” I aimed us down the hall. “Let’s curl up in your room and unwind.”

“Okay.” She snuggled closer. “We can do that.”

The door to her bedroom stood ajar, and I nudged it wider with my foot.

We discovered along the way that she slept best in a more natural environment. I papered the walls in a forest mural, painted the ceiling with blue skies—thankfully a sea sponge did most of the work for me—and matched it with green carpet. She opted to ditch her bed, and instead I had filled the space with tall artificial plants I fastened to the floor to support her weight if she decided to light on them. In the center of it all, I had strung a Colby-sized hammock that blended with her surroundings. I set her down in there.

In the far corner, a gray beanbag chair, representative of a rock, gave me a place to lounge with her.

“I’m going to veg on my phone,” I told her. “You shut your eyeballs.”

“I can’t shut my eyeballs, but I can close my eyelids.”

“Don’t sass your elders, smarty fuzz butt.” I switched off the light with an effort of will. “Sweet dreams.”