Black Hat, White Witch by Hailey Edwards

9

Iordered in breakfast before I called the guys and invited them to my suite for updates. It was the least I could do to make up for last night. I still felt bad about Colby disturbing them to reach me, but I felt even worse for neglecting her. This was our first time apart, and I was falling down on the job on day one.

Yes, circumstances beyond my control were to blame.

No, that didn’t matter one bit to a scared kid home alone.

A kid who must have stayed up all night playing with her friends if she was missing her requested call.

This time, I would leave a message to make sure she knew I hadn’t forgotten about her.

“You’re not answering, so I assume you’re unconscious. Call if you need me. Or if you need anything. You’re good on food, right? Enough sugar water to last you? How about snacks? Do you need—?”

A knock on the room dividing door kept me from going overboard with the helicopter parenting.

Or not.

Ending the embarrassingly long voicemail, I opened the security app on my phone and jumped indoor cameras until I spotted Colby asleep in her chair in front of her computer. Safe and sound.

Another knock had me rushing over to twist the lock and let the guys in. “Morning.”

“Do I smell bear claws?” Clay sniffed as he entered the room. “Did you knock over a bakery?”

A smile twitched in my cheek when I noticed a gleaming black pompadour perched on his head.

“Those are apology muffins and bear claws of remorse. There’s also coffee of forgiveness and milk of…” I thought about it. “Okay, I’m not sure what the milk signifies, but it’s whole milk. Your favorite.”

“How about ‘milk of you didn’t have to do this’?” He sat and claimed a bear claw. “You’re a package deal with Colby. We knew that when we left Samford.”

The rich tobacco scent I had come to associate with Asa filled my nose as he entered the room.

He wore his Black Hat suit but had left his hair down, and it flowed in a smooth sheet past his hips. His septum bling was a thick silver barbell, and his earrings tiny dots to match. I briefly wondered if he was pierced elsewhere, but I couldn’t focus, even on dirty thoughts, past the hair.

The girly girl in me craved to plait it. Like my fingers actually curled in want of a brush. An overwhelming need to touch it made my palms itch. He was lucky I didn’t have any hairbands on me. Otherwise, I might have attacked him with an insatiable lust to style him.

“Morning,” he said softly. “How did you sleep?”

“Better than I have in years.” That was the honest truth. “I was too tired to toss and turn.”

A quick turkey club from the hotel kitchen, which cost twenty-five dollars, made for a decent meal. After I showered the woods and creek off me, I expected to stare at the ceiling until dawn. The earlier nap had been glorious, and I didn’t expect to get lucky twice in one night. With the Sandman, that is.

The jerk had been holding out on me forever, so I was thrilled he felt like putting out for a change.

“You bought breakfast.” He took the seat opposite mine. “That was thoughtful.”

“The call,” Clay explained between bites. “This is edible guilt.”

After careful consideration of his options, Asa claimed a muffin. He also poured himself a black coffee.

With my guests both eating, I sat and selected a muffin. To play the game well, I chose one with a similar blueberry to crumble ratio. I couldn’t help myself. It was a compulsive behavior at this point. Part of me had to know what Asa would do. I had a good idea, of course, but I had no idea why he did it. That smidgen of mystery was enough to convince myself I ought to yank the daemon’s tail.

Not that Asa had a tail. That I had seen. Did he, though?

Hmm.

“I got a present in my inbox.” I pulled up the file from the Kellies. “I assume you both received a copy?”

“The crime scene recording.” Clay sounded about as thrilled as me to view it. “Synchronize watches.”

“Hitting play…” I hovered my finger over the key, “…now.”

The first five minutes made me regret the one bite of muffin I had taken to mark it.

“I can’t see a thing.” Clay rubbed his stomach like the jumpy footage also made him queasy. “Too blurry.”

The agent wasn’t walking at a fast clip so much as he was sliding down the embankment, which made for a Tilt-A-Whirl ride for his viewers. Namely us. His arm steadied when his feet hit the flat bottom, and I got my first look at the untouched crime scene.

The camera panned a slow circle, taking in the surroundings, before the agent advanced to the creek. He paused there, stood on the bank, and filmed the three lifelike does posed on the rocky outcropping. One sat with her legs tucked under her. Another stood tall and proud at the peak. The last victim balanced on three legs while the fourth leg hovered over the water, as if she were about to jump.

A sleek crow, perched on the highest doe’s head, cawed for the camera before leaping into the sky.

The illusion was so convincing, had I come across this tableau on a hike, I would have frozen, breath held, for fear of spooking the deer.

The video progressed from there. The agent waded into the creek to film the rock from all angles and spent a long time on each doe to ensure no details were lost. When he finished, he backed onto the shore and ended the cut with another framed shot of the entirety of the killer’s handiwork.

“Who filmed this?” I queued it to play again. “He did a good job.”

“Billy Kidd.” Clay read off his screen. “Credits are at the very bottom.”

The word credits triggered a suspicion Billy might have been a film major in college.

“Nothing stood out to me.” Asa drummed his fingers. “What are we looking for?”

“Anything.” I was reminded of my conversation with Billy. “Kidd was hesitant to leave me alone at the scene after everyone else had headed back. He brought up a good point I should have considered sooner. That the killer would have been present when the first agent arrived to receive a critique of his work.”

“You’ve been out of the game.” Clay shrugged. “It’ll come back to you.”

“Kidd was right.” Asa grew a scowl. “We should have thought of it and ensured you had backup.”

“Rue is a badass.” Clay reached for his milk. “She didn’t need us babysitting her. It would have sent the wrong message to the other agents. It’s better that we let her to do her thing, as per usual. We were a holler away, so it’s not like she was in any real danger.”

Except a well-aimed curse would have reached me quicker than they could have, and they both knew it.

Still, I appreciated Clay’s usual thoughtfulness in helping me preserve the illusion of being all-powerful.

“The point is—” I waved a napkin as a white flag, “—the killer might be present in this footage.”

“Nothing stood out.” Asa leaned back in his chair. “We’ll send it back to the Kellies with your theory.”

They had the time, the tech, and the tenacity to ferret out any clues the killer might have left behind.

“That works.” Clay used a pinky to gently navigate his keyboard. “Looks like the Kellies are putting in OT on this one. Check your inboxes, lady and gent. We’ve got confirmation the same lumber company held the contract for all three crime scenes. There’s a list of truckers and machine operators, as well as other employees.”

“They did the crosschecking for us.” I grinned at that, half wishing I could hire the Kellies for minutia at Hollis Apothecary. “Looks like we’ve got a dozen employees present at all three scenes.” I checked their home addresses. “All male, all local.” I pulled up a map app on my phone. “We can hit maybe half these today. A few of the independent contractors have an hour-plus commute in their trucks.”

Not that it mattered if you drove a sleeper truck with a bed and other amenities for long-haul jobs.

“We can cut that number.” Asa rubbed a finger across his bottom lip. “Four employees are human.”

Supernaturals tended to stick to themselves or their own kind, but humans made good minions.

We couldn’t rule out human involvement until we had a firmer grasp on our black witch’s identity.

“Let’s keep them on the list but put them on the bottom.” I made notes of the residences nearest to our hotel. “Do we call ahead, or do we risk rolling up on an empty house?”

My gut told me the killer would welcome us into his home, serve us tea and cookies, and tell us anything that might help the case. Minus his confession, of course. He was starving for praise, not stupid. But there remained a slim chance he would bolt if he thought we were closing in on him.

“We risk it.” Asa checked with Clay. “We don’t want to tip off the killer.”

“I agree.” Clay shoved the last muffin into his mouth. “These girls confirmed his timetable. We have two, maybe three days before he starts collecting again. Past that point, we have a week to find the girls alive before he calls with coordinates for his latest masterpiece.”

“All right.” I closed my laptop and stuck it in the bag Clay provided. “Let’s get moving.”

When Asa disappeared into their room, I assumed to grab equipment, I leaned over to inspect his muffin but found only a wrapper. Okay. No evidence to be found there. That left the one next to me. The one that should be mine. I palmed the muffin and rotated it a full circle, but nope. It was pristine. Not a single bite missing. Not a berry nibbled.

Sneaky daemon had sneaked my breakfast and switched it for his, which both excited me to be right and also made me extra special curious why he had fixated on my food. Before I could decide to ask outright, I intercepted a glare from Clay that would have vaporized me had he possessed laser eyebeams.

Asa emerged with his hair in braids, hands full of equipment, and set out for the SUV.

As I followed him to the parking lot, I decided I would ask how he got his part razor straight every time.

One day. Not anytime soon. I didn’t want him to know I had the hots for his hair.

On the drive, I settled in to flip through the case files of previous victims, hoping to jog a memory.

“He’s got a type.” I cringed from looking at the photos. “That’s for sure.”

There he followed the Silver Stag’s ideal, which meant the copycat had researched the Stag’s victims.

“The names of the Silver Stag victims were released to the public after his death.” By the public, I meant the supernatural public, not humans. “Our copycat wouldn’t have had to look hard to find their details.”

Colby could have been any one of these girls. She had been one of them.

“The other details were sealed,” Clay reminded me. “Only the agents who worked the original case know how he killed his victims, and those files are sealed tighter than a jar of pickles.”

“Perhaps that justifies the divergence from the original MO?” Asa cut me a sideways glance. “What if the killer followed the case in the news, collected every snippet, but assembled the big picture wrong?”

“That would explain why he took girls who fit the profile,” Clay agreed from the back. “He pulled off the trick that earned the Silver Stag his nickname, but those details were leaked early on. The exact manner of death was kept under wraps, and the copycat got it wrong.”

“Or he chose to go his own way.” Asa’s lips turned down. “Which would mean he’s not a true copycat.”

As much as I hated to ask, I had to know how divergent this copycat was in his methodology.

“There was no sign of sexual trauma on the Stag’s victims. Do we know about the recent victims yet?”

Asa tucked his chin, but he didn’t say a word. Clay, thankfully, answered for him.

“The previous victims showed no signs of abuse.”

“Small mercy.” I stared out the window. “That was all the dignity he left them.”

DNA would help the lab identify each girl. Their remains were cremated afterward to insulate the family from the harsh truth there was no return to normalcy for their daughters, even in death. An urn was the lesser of two evils, according to the director, and for once, I had to agree with him.

No parent ought to witness their child reduced to the trophy the killer made of them.

“This is it.” Asa flicked on the blinker. “Our first suspect lives in this subdivision.”

The homes were older, but the yards were neat. Kids played outside, and dogs chased them.

In a word, it looked safe. Not at all like a killer might be hiding amongst these normal, everyday people.

But normal was the best camouflage of all.

“We’re looking for two-thirty-three.” Clay leaned forward. “It should fall on the right side.”

Sure enough, we spotted the house and pulled into the drive behind a pickup swathed in camo decals.

On my walk to the house, I paused at the driver-side door to peer in the vehicle, and I noticed a gun rack mounted in the rear window. It didn’t mean this guy was our killer. Probably half the trucks in this neighborhood had them too. Hunting was how a lot of people in rural areas kept their families fed.

Clay headed straight for the door, and I followed, with Asa trailing me.

“People react better to Clay,” he explained when he noticed me taking stock of our positions.

Hindbrain was a funny thing. Prey species, like humans, got a tickle in the back of their minds that let them know when they were being hunted. They might not have natural predators, but they had plenty of supernatural predators that fed on them or off them.

Despite Clay’s tough-guy exterior, and Asa’s more subdued appearance, human brains picked up on signals their conscious minds missed and transmitted them to their bodies in the form of flight-or-fight reflexes.

It said a lot about me, none of it good, that Asa hadn’t pinged on my radar as a threat.

I needed to reevaluate the pecking order if I wanted to keep breathing. I had to prick my ego, let it burst, then poke the deflated remains to determine how much power I still held and where I ranked magically.

Otherwise, one day I would pick a fight I couldn’t win and lose in spectacular fashion.

Used to be that butting heads with me was like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Now I worried it was like bringing a hot knife to a room temperature stick of butter.

We witches were famous for melting, after all.

The door swung open before Clay could knock, which had me searching for cameras out of habit.

“I’m Agent Kerr with the FBI.” He kept his expression bland. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The twist on our identification meant Clay saw or heard a potential human within the dwelling.

“This ain’t about child support, is it?” The man glared at me like I had brought Clay to hold him upside down and shake him until coins fell out of his pockets. “Tell that woman I’ll pay it when I feel like it. I didn’t want no kids. She did. Now she’s got ’em. It’s not my fault she’s too good to work to pay for ’em.”

His open hostility toward women meant I had to keep my mouth shut for us to get answers.

However, that didn’t prevent me from whispering a spell to nudge his responses in the right direction.

Not a truth spell, exactly, more like a light compulsion to make him comfy enough to confide in us.

No wand or contact required. Just the way I liked it.

“That’s a local matter,” Clay assured him, his voice tight. “We’re not here about that.”

“Oh.” He scratched his bellybutton through his threadbare shirt. “What’s this about then?”

The way he shifted to block the door made it clear he didn’t plan on letting us in. Or putting on pants. His boxers were plaid, holey, and made me wonder if it was too soon to ask for a raise. They were also the only thing he had on, other than his tee.

“The bodies of three girls were discovered near one of the sites where you work,” Clay explained. “We came to ask if you saw or heard anything or noticed anyone acting peculiar.”

“Three girls?” The color drained from his ruddy cheeks. “I got five girls myself.”

Girls he had no interest in supporting, if his tirade was anything to go on, but the spell had loosened his tongue.

“Which site?” He snapped back from the shock quicker than a rubber band. “I work all over.”

Clay rattled off the address from yesterday, and we watched the light bulb click for our machinist.

“I worked there, yeah. For three, maybe four days.” He tugged on his earlobe. “Didn’t hear a peep as I recall, but I wouldn’t with the earplugs in. Don’t remember seeing anything odd either. Just me and the same old guys doing the same old thing.” He shrugged. “The lots blur after a while. Just a bunch of trees and dirt. All that changes is the address.”

“Thank you for your time.” Clay pasted on a good ol’ boy smile. “We appreciate your help.”

We kept silent until we piled into the SUV. As one, the guys looked to me for my opinion.

“He’s not our guy.” I set my laptop on my knees. “The spell nudged him, and he gave us nothing.”

However, the effort gave me a headache. It would have cost me less if I used the wand, but I didn’t want a repeat of the dryad incident, where he smelled black witch and fought when I attempted to touch him.

“He’s a goblin.” Asa stared up at the house. “They’re naturally more resistant to magic.”

“True.” I waited until I held his attention. “Do you think he’s our guy?”

“No.” He waited a beat. “I dislike him, intensely, but he lacks the...”

“…stink of a black arts practitioner?” I huffed out a laugh. “You can say it.”

Asa said no such thing.

“He doesn’t have the juice.” Clay came to his partner’s rescue. “He barely gave me the tingles.”

As a creature animated by magic, Clay sensed power in others. From experience, he had a decent gauge.

To practice the black arts, you didn’t have to be a witch, only magically gifted. But we excelled at it.

Our killer, copycat or not, was skilled in a way that left me certain he was witchborn.

“Then we move on.” I pulled up the next address. “Looks like it’s about fifteen minutes from here.”

On the drive over, Colby texted me proof of life, a photo of her stuffing her face with pollen granules. An orange sports bottle rested on the desk beside her, a kiddie cup verging on doll sized, full of sugar water. And I, to avoid making her feel babied, didn’t mention I had spied on her while she slept. Like an overprotective creeper.

I showed the guys, who both smiled at their first glimpse of her rig, as she called her gaming station.

“Your familiar bond with Colby…” Asa juggled his words more carefully. “Is it functional?”

“It’s set, or she wouldn’t be here.”

“Can you draw power from her?” He kept his tone light and accusation free. “Can she draw from you?”

“I’ve never tried, and to my knowledge, neither has she.”

“You can ever only bond to one familiar.”

“I’m aware.”

“Yet you refuse to use yours for her intended purpose.”

“And?”

“I wonder how you bear it,” he said softly. “The constant temptation to take what you want.”

“It almost sounds like you’re asking if I saved Colby to punish myself.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Maybe you’re right.” His question echoed thoughts I’d had myself, years after the fact. “Maybe she was the motivation I needed to finally screw up the courage to change. Maybe I didn’t feel I deserved a fresh start, but I knew she did.” I wet my lips. “Colby saved me every bit as much as I saved her. Except I had it easy. I killed the Silver Stag for what he did to her and the other girls. Colby, she had to save me from myself.”

“Curiosity is the curse of my heritage,” he said quietly. “Half my heritage, in any case.”

Since he dug around in my past, I felt entitled to his. “How do you identify?”

“As dae.” He smiled a bit. “There are a lot of us.” He glanced at me. “Enough to form our own subrace.”

“Dae.” I mulled it over. “I like it.”

Though he kept quiet, I sensed Clay thinking hard at me, and they weren’t happy thoughts.

He and I had covered old ground too, but it had taken months of partnership, not days of acquaintance.

But Asa had Clay to vouch for him, and a fraction of my trust of Clay extended to Asa on that basis.

I wasn’t jumping in with both feet with Asa. More like dipping my toes in the water.

No matter what Clay thought, or how loud he thought it.