Shifty Magic (12 page)

The body was suspended between the corner of
the walls about three feet above the floor. Bolts had been driven
into the exposed studs, two on each side, with the barbed wire from
Morrocroft secured around each bolt. The other ends of the wires
had been wrapped around Laiyla's wrists and ankles, digging into
the skin like thorns. The lifeless ruby in her protective necklace
had cracked and a chilling darkness seemed to cling to it.

Dried blood trailed down the arms and feet,
leaving scattered splashes of rusty brown across the floor under
the body. No other mark was on her that I could see.

Her face was frozen into a mask of complete
and utter terror, and my legs trembled with the need to run. She'd
been a powerful practitioner. Who or what could have terrified her
so completely as it killed her without leaving a scratch?

"Look at this," Cooper said, his voice
tense.

I dragged my attention away from the horror
and pain on that face and focused on Cooper. Balancing on the balls
of his feet, he'd squatted down to peer at the floor around the
body.

I swallowed and forced myself to move closer
to the awful specter of Laiyla's last moments. A circle about eight
feet wide had been swept clean and strange symbols drawn on the
floor. In the center, directly under the body, a thin, sharp
triangle, like a dagger, had been painted. To the right, I noticed
a small circle of fine, white powder.

"What do you make of this?" he asked, his
gaze tracking over the symbols.

In high school, I'd taken a course in
ancient languages out of curiosity. I was crazy like that. "Looks
like Sumerian. Sort of." I squatted down next to him to get a
closer look at one of the markings. "I'm guessing the lab will show
that all of these symbols are written in vamp blood."

"It is. I can smell it." His upper lip
quivered as he struggled to hold back a snarl. "About five, maybe
six hours ago, which supports Stillman's report."

I pointed to the symbol in front of him.
"See those lines that look like a star burst? Normally I'd say that
was the symbol for God, but look how it's crossed with that other
mark. The one that looks like an open cursive Z with a dot over it?
I've never seen that before."

I stared at the unusual symbol hoping my
subconscious would kick up a flash of understanding. As I studied
it, the lines shifted and moved and a tendril of sooty fog rose up,
curling and weaving like a snake. It turned toward me and a wave of
despair washed over me.

I jumped back, lost my balance and landed on
my butt in the dust. I heard Cooper call my name, but the words
were muffled like he was talking to me from the bottom of a deep
hole. All I could do was stare at the finger of smoke as it reared
up and drifted in my direction.

A malicious hunger radiated toward me and
fear gripped my heart, squeezing it so that I could hardly breathe.
My thoughts froze, bouncing so fast between the urge to run and
feeling too shocked to move that I was immobilized.

The tendril snaked closer, satisfaction
overlaying the hunger. I could almost hear the triumphant laughter
coming off the blasted thing. It knew it had me and it was looking
forward to the taking.

The hell with that. There's only one thing
to do when evil smog laughs at you. I pulled out my gun and shot
it.

Sound rushed back in on the explosion of the
bullet shattering the floor. Cooper yelled a string of curses, and
I pulled in the first full breath I'd taken in what felt like
years.

"You just destroyed evidence!" he
ranted.

I narrowed my eyes at the rest of the
symbols. They stayed quiet and sedate, so I glanced up at the body.
The darkness around Laiyla's pendant was gone.

Satisfaction settled into my chest, and I
holstered my gun. "Whatever that was, you don't want anyone looking
at it."

"Yes, as a matter of fact I do, you crazy
woman. It could have been the key to finding the killer."

"Doesn't matter. Too dangerous to mess
with."

A muscle ticked along his jaw. "You planning
to destroy anything else?"

"Only if the other symbols try to attack
me."

He shoved a hand through his hair and his
gaze practically shot out fire. "There was nothing there!"

Agents Stillman and Miller piled up at the
doorway in a rush of movement, guns drawn. "We heard a shot,"
Miller said breathlessly. His dark eyes went to the hole in the
floor and then to the body and widened. "What happened?"

"She destroyed one of the blasted markings,"
Cooper said, his disgust unmistakable.

"The residual magic is gone," Miller noted,
surprise in his voice.

I glanced at the practitioner. "Little
bugger came right at me."

Miller hurried over to us, Stillman trailing
behind, for once looking less than certain. "What did you see?" he
asked.

I described the way the whatever-it-was had
come out of the symbol. A familiar beep sounded behind me, and I
turned to see Cooper scowling at the readout on his high tech iC
with its built-in scanner.

"She's human. How is this possible? I
thought only practitioners could see stuff like that," he said.

Miller took out his device and scanned
himself. The indicator lighted up purple. He reset it and scanned
me. "Yellow. Huh." He gave me a curious look. "I don't understand
this."

"Maybe some of the magic was still hanging
around and messing up the readings?" Stillman offered.

"Then I'd register as human too," Miller
said, his thumbs moving across the screen of his iC.

I refrained from giving the snooty Were girl
a "not so smart now, are you?" look, but the urge was definitely
there. "Do you know what the symbol was?" I asked Agent Miller.

"No idea, other than the sign for God." He
frowned at his screen. "Diagnostics don't show any anomalies."

"None here, either," Cooper said.

They all leveled some seriously intense
looks at me. I ignored them, my attention moving back to the body.
I didn't care about abusive vamps getting what they deserved, but
this? Even if Laiyla was involved, this was a terrible way to
die.

A heavy sadness settled into my chest. Maybe
I shouldn't have gone off on my own...maybe if I'd pooled my
resources with Cooper's we could have protected her. I should have
put my pride aside right from the start, ignored my feelings for
him and not been such an idiot.

Would it really have been
so bad working with the FBI? Sure they all had corncobs up their
butts one way or another, but I'd worked with worse. I could have
handled it. I
should
have handled it.

I looked away. "Can't somebody get her
down?" I said quietly. "It's not right leaving her like that."

Cooper nodded to the others, and they
scurried off. A minute later a crew came in. I suppressed a wince
when one of the Evidence Response Team members snapped through the
barbed wire with a cutter. Three other ERT guys kept a grip on
Laiyla's body and gently lowered it to a gurney as the bindings
gave way.

Scrubbing my hand over my mouth, I glanced
at Cooper. "She didn't deserve this."

His expression softened, and he stepped
closer, reaching out to trace the tip of his finger down my cheek.
My throat tightened at the gentle, intimate touch, and the urge to
step into his arms and allow myself to be held and comforted went
through me like a warm breeze. Then his mouth pinched down, and
Cooper let his hand fall back to his side.

He glanced at his iC and then back at me.
Doubt filled his wolf's eyes, and the moment of softness sank into
the dust. He rubbed the finger he'd used to touch my cheek against
his thumb as if I'd contaminated him. "There's nothing else we can
do here."

I swallowed down the sting at the back of my
throat. I learned a long time ago that comfort and companionship
was not something I should ever expect from life. "Don't you mean
to say 'What the devil are you, Addison?'" I said, gritting my
teeth.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and
squeezed his eyes closed as if praying for patience. "If I thought
you knew the answer to that, I'd ask." Dropping his hand, his
impatient gaze snapped onto me. "You're so damn prickly. You know
that?"

Outrage tightened through me and then
abruptly fizzled out. He was right. Not only that, but there were
bigger things at stake here than a cute guy hurting my
feelings.

I put my fists on my hips and stubbornly
held his gaze, not something many people could do with a Were as
powerful as Cooper. "Too bad for you then, because now you're stuck
with me."

His eyebrows rose as surprise washed away
his irritation. "You're joining up?"

"The FBI's not for me, Coop. Deal with it.
But I'd like to partner with you on this case."

"What if you're part of the case?"

Insulted, I narrowed my eyes at him and
wondered how many punches I might get in before he pinned me to the
floor. "If you think I'm some kind of secret black magic
practitioner—"

"I'm not saying that." He ran his hand
through his silver-black hair, making it spike up across the top of
his head. "The most powerful vampire in this sector is interested
in keeping you close. At the same time, it looks like someone's
targeting paranormals for ritual dark magic killings. A possible
suspect in a murder case becomes the next victim. Which leads to
the biggest question bugging me—how the hell are you seeing what's
left of whatever spell was cast when you're only human?"

"You think I'm at the center of this whole
mess?" I sputtered.

"It's all probably a coincidence, but maybe
not." A muscle ticked along his jaw. "Working this case might be
too much of a risk for you."

My first impulse was to jump down his throat
for treating me like I was two years old and knew nothing about the
world. I held back, staring into his silver-green eyes and trying
to see the truth. Why had he pulled me into this? Why was he trying
to kick me out now? The thudding of my heart in my ears quickened
at the worry I saw reflected in his gaze.

Breaking eye contact, I
willed the tension bearing down on my shoulders to drain away.
"Then I have even more of a right to be involved.
Resolving
this means
keeping myself out of danger. We should go back to Laiyla's
apartment and have a look around. We might find something that will
help."

I could feel his gaze on me and heat flushed
across my cheeks. After a moment, he pushed out a frustrated growl
and stalked from the room.

CHAPTER FIVE

Cooper didn't say two words to me as we drove back to
Morrocroft and FBI'd our way onto the property. The compound's
guard was the same guy who'd been manning the gate when I came to
interview Laiyla. Travis she'd called him—the one who'd ordered a
Cupid Spell.

He was seriously unhappy about having to
open a resident's apartment to outsiders, but while we milled
around outside Laiyla's door, his supervisor called and changed his
attitude.

As he punched in the master key code on the
lock pad, Travis' gaze kept darting to Cooper. His swarthy
complexion had a decidedly pale cast to it, and he was obviously
uncomfortable being so close to a Were. To say the residents of
Morrocroft were paranoid about paranormals was an
understatement.

"Miss Billings?" the guard called as he
cracked open the door, his voice catching with uncertainty or maybe
embarrassment. He probably thought we were invading her privacy,
since he had no idea she was dead. At least not until the air in
the apartment fled into the hall. Travis stumbled back
coughing.

Mixing with the sharp stink of death, a
sickly sweet stench like rotten jasmine collided into us, reminding
me of the alley where the vamp's body was found. "What is that?" I
asked, wrinkling my nose.

"Not good." Cooper drew his gun, and stepped
to the side of the doorway as he pushed me behind him. I drew my
Browning and darted to the other side of the door, grabbing the
guard on my way and dragging him behind me.

Cooper sent me a pinched look of annoyance
and I shrugged. "Partners don't get in each other's line of fire,"
I whispered.

His gaze narrowed, but then he gave me a
curt nod and moved his attention back to the apartment.

Travis leaned around me, sweat beading up on
his forehead. He glanced at the apartment door with worried,
frightened eyes. "Oh, my God," he said in a choked voice.

"Who else lived with Laiyla?" I asked, anger
knotting in my stomach. What had this pathetic excuse for a
security guard done?

He rubbed his hand over his mouth. "I...I
didn't know," he protested. "How could I have known?"

Cooper frowned at him. "Didn't know
what?"

"I was trying to help her. She wanted the
spell, so I gave her the name. That's all. Just the name. I didn't
know."

In the dim light of the hall, Cooper's eyes
glowed faintly. "Stay here. Don't let anyone in," he snarled at
Travis.

The guard's Adam's apple bobbed up and down
and he looked about ready to faint, but he managed to nod.

Cooper nudged the door wider, and the odor
spilled out in a nauseous wave. The guard gagged and covered his
nose and mouth with his hand as he fell back against the wall.

Careful to expose as little of himself as
possible to the room, Cooper reached around the doorframe and
flipped on the light switch. Scattered patches of light flared on
throughout the apartment.

The main room looked like a war had been
fought in it. The sofa was overturned, side tables and lamps lay
scattered and broken around the floor, and the coffee table had
been cracked down the middle as if a giant fist had slammed down on
it.