Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (25 page)

“Then you dragged the lady to the jewelry store?”

“Couldn’t. Zandy was sure the whole thing was bunk so we didn’t have a target ready. Zandy and Jedi made me stay with the lady while they found an empty place to hit. I about shit myself. That tat lizard sat there in the corner, zoning on me. It breathed when she breathed. I never touched it, I swear.”

“Not that time, I bet,” I said.

“Not never. Jedi told me he’d know if I messed around, and he’d feed me to the tat if I so much as touched it or the lady.”

Gordon cleared his throat. “So Zandy and Jedi cased the first jewelry store. Then what?”

“Jedi left Zandy on watch at the jewelry store. He came back for the tat. We loaded the lady and the tarp in the car, and we hit the joint. The tat crawled under the door and turned off the alarm. But the lizard thing, it was like, weak. We barely got inside and it just disappeared. The lady, she strangled. You could hear her dying. We hightailed it outta there. Didn’t get a thing for our trouble. Man, it was terrible.”

“Terrible. Yet you went ahead with the next robbery two weeks later.”

“It wasn’t easy like that! Jedi had this new plan. He said he’d use his own tats so he could control the energy, and he wouldn’t die because he’d call back the tats if he got too weak. It was gonna be perfect!”

“Except another lady died.” Gordon tapped his pad of paper as though it contained a full accounting of wrongs.

“That wasn’t our fault,” Lee grumbled. “Jedi tried his own tats, but it damn near bled him out. I thought he had bit the dust just trying it, but he showed up again with another plan. We were able to hit the second jewelry store. But that lady died too.”

“And somehow you thought it was a great idea to keep right on killing women?” Gordon stabbed the page again. “You robbed your own boss’s home.”

“Jedi swore the next chick wouldn’t die! All we needed was an athlete, someone strong enough to withstand the job pressure. He grabbed this buff runner. I told him we didn’t even need a tat for robbing Tam’s place, so it wasn’t my fault. I could have tricked Kevin into telling me the safe combo. But Jedi was positive the lady would live. Only problem was, she was some kind of body builder. She kept fighting him and bled even faster where the tat had been.”

“You could have stopped the killing. Walked away.”

He nodded frantically. “Damn straight. Those tats creeped me out and Jedi was one sick dude. One or two more jobs, and I figured he was gonna croak on us anyway. But Zandy, he just kept on. Said we needed someone with more power, like a witch. He said it would work because witches, they have some kind of force too, like Jedi.”

My fists clenched. “Only Mat wasn’t an easy target.” I’d like to show him how lethal a witch could be. Lee may have burns from the fireballs, but he deserved worse.

“I didn’t have a thing to do with it after Tam’s place.”

It didn’t take a genius to see the lie. “You kidnapped a homeless guy and did a tat on him
after
Zandy attacked Mat,” I spat out.

He shook his head. “No way. I told them I’d keep selling them tat designs and rent the place out. Why not? If Zandy happened to bring clients to the salon for body art and left them hosed while he checked his next target, that’s none of my business.”

“You were with him today!” I shouted.

He rubbed at the burns on his chest, but with a wince, left them alone. “Different biz. I was only the lookout. Zandy said if I helped him take down the place, I could have all the potions. He didn’t want any of them!” His eyes glimmered with greed. “You know how much cash I could make selling that stuff on the side at the salon? And it wouldn’t even be illegal.”

Mat’s lips tightened with barely repressed rage.

“Stealing them in the first place is illegal. On top of that, you don’t know what any of the spells are for,” I pointed out. Mat labeled the potions with broad strokes, leaving many a jar completely unlabeled. Instructions for any spell came only with the purchase.

“Doesn’t matter. They’d buy the stuff. Those ladies, they have nothing but time and money. I’d tell them all that shit would make their husbands go wild. Or the eighty year old ones that they could get a boyfriend instead of shopping for a cure for loneliness. I could work that.”

Despite another twenty-five thousand questions, we squeezed little else of use from him. He admitted he knew Zandy was still using the shop, and he admitted he considered getting back in on the deals, but he swore he hadn’t met anyone other than Jedi and Zandy. His physical description of Jedi as “some old white guy” was zero help. He didn’t know where he lived, but assumed he’d been staying with Zandy somewhere.

Before White Feather and I departed, I pulled Lynx to the side. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Looked like you had it under control.”

“Did you use the fire packet I tossed to you?”

“I lost it?”

“Liar. Do you want to know the word to set it off or are you just planning on copying the spell? I could train you, you know.”

His eyes gleamed. “Lemme study it first. I can usually twist things to work. I can’t start them from scratch like you do, but I can keep them going.”

The kid was...no longer a kid. But he was still a marvel. “Do not blow yourself up, okay? You know where I live if you want to
ask
questions instead of doing things your own way.” I hesitated before moving on, but it had to be done. “Can you get us in the hospital?”

“Tonight?” Before the word popped out of his mouth he was already shaking his head. “You are not gonna do this one in the daylight!” The end was a feral hiss.

“Patrick works there at night, Lynx!”

“That could be a bonus, you know that, right?”

“Nighttime means he’ll involve himself. That is not something I want to see. And I do
not
want to owe a vamp anything! Not a favor, not an implied favor, barely a truce.”

He set his mouth in a mutinous line. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Lynx, we have to get Zandy to talk
before
Patrick gets to him. Zandy isn’t just a threat to you and me. His blood is a huge problem for Patrick.”

“Patrick doesn’t want his blood. He isn’t going to drink it.”

“No, he’s not, but he won’t stand around letting us ask fifty questions while a perfect weapon against vamps recovers in his hospital.”

“He might let you ask your questions before he takes care of the problem.”

I crossed my arms and waited.

“Okay, Patrick gets to him tonight, it’s gonna be a short fight.” Lynx made fangs out of his fingers. “You gonna tell White Feather?”

“Are you kidding me? You think I’d try to force info out of Zandy on my own?”

Lynx grinned. “Just checking. Plus if White Feather is with you, maybe he can spin you two up to a window. I open it, let you in and we’re done.”

“In broad daylight? We can’t go sailing two or three stories into the air!”

“I tol’ you daytime was a bad idea.”

I’d walked into that.

Lynx wore a smug smile as he disappeared out the back door to “take care of business.” He was such a
cat
sometimes.

Chapter 33

Much to my surprise, we didn’t need Lynx to sneak into the hospital. After we were done with Lee, Gordon suggested we meet him at the hospital at three to “talk” to Zandy. Maybe his being a cop did have its uses.

Gordon said, “Zandy should be stabilized by then. We can’t torture him to obtain answers, but it wouldn’t hurt if you brought a load of silver.”

“Never leave home without it.” Was he crazy? I’d refill at the house, and while there, strap on my sheath for my dagger. It fit under the leg of my jeans and was easier to reach than the backpack. There wasn’t enough silver in the world to make me feel safe around that coyote.

Mat had a big mess to clean, but instead of mopping up, she pulled out a container of colloidal silver and began filling balloons.

“How about using thin blown glass as a container?” I suggested. “The broken glass would embed the silver into the skin. You could even sell beads like that to me!”

“Good idea,” Mat agreed. “The glass would break easily enough and the added damage would be a bonus.”

“We could add a spell or two into the mix.”

“A curse.”

“Excellent. I have a few in mind that won’t stick to the good guys.”

White Feather asked, “How many silver balls did you lose?”

“Just the two.” I had already called the remaining balls back and loaded them on my bracelet. “The arrowheads need to be sharper. Or better yet, I should create a throwing star, shaped like the necklace you bought me.”

“Since the colloidal silver was effective against Zandy, I’ll add a balding spell to a couple of these,” Matilda muttered.

Gordon squawked before quickly muffling the noise. He patted his own head of hair, and then shifted from one foot to the other as his gaze traveled between me and Mat.

White Feather laughed softly.

“What’s so funny?” I asked as White Feather guided me out the back way.

“Nothing. I don’t think Gordon quite understood what he was getting into when he started dating Mat. He thought he knew all about witches and warlocks because he knew me. But I don’t invent weapons as though I’m in hot competition with Los Alamos, and I never fall into the kind of situations that you find yourself in.”

“What?!? I’m not the one who was half eaten by a tattoo!”

“That never happened before I met you.”

“It never happened to me before I met you either!”

White Feather chuckled. “True. But I have a feeling that Gordon saw a beautiful witch and set about seducing her without realizing she could blow him into tiny pieces or spell him into knots. He had no idea that the witch he was dating was truly
dangerous.
Sure, he’s arrested a witch or two, but at least one of those was a fake. He knows two other shifters who play ears in the underground now and then, and I’m pretty sure one of the guys on the force is a shifter, but Gordon has never dealt with them changing, and none of them attacked his girlfriend.”

“And none of his other girlfriends blew up a fire hydrant twice in one week either, I bet.”

“Nope.”

“Well, it was an aberration. She doesn’t do that sort of thing all the time.”

“Uh-huh.” He opened the door to my car. I sat but didn’t swing my legs inside because he crouched down inside the door. “I’ll be right behind you on the way home. Adriel—” He grabbed both my knees. “Could you maybe stay safe until we get there?”

I leaned my forehead against his. “I promise. Zandy is in custody. Lee is too.”

“I love you.”

“Me too.” He squinted at me so I corrected with a grin, “I love you, too.”

He didn’t tailgate me, but it was close.

I showered, changed clothes and loaded my backpack. White Feather strapped on no less than four silver knives. Good. If mine wasn’t enough, I could call his.

Just before the doorbell rang, White Feather said, “Lynx is getting faster and sneakier. He didn’t drive all the way up.”

When I answered the door, Lynx said, “Problem. I can’t find Patrick.”

“Not a problem.” I explained that we had been officially invited to the interrogation.

Lynx paced inside, his head tilted. “He’s not answering his phone, even the number for an emergency.”

“Is that unusual?” I had never tried to call Patrick despite him offering the number.

“His back room is always available. That’s the point. If it’s not, he’s still the contact for a vamp finding a safe house.”

“It’s broad daylight. Vamps won’t be hunting for a safe house right now.”

His head tilted the other way. “Mostly true. Any vamp outside right now would be too fried for treatment. But the thing is, he treats more than vamps. And the rooms in the basement have always been available if you know the code. But he didn’t answer. Or call back.”

“How do people usually gain access to the treatment rooms if he’s not there? And what good does it do them if he’s not there?”

Lynx gave me a blank stare.

“Okay, okay, too many questions.” Lynx guarded client information better than Fort Knox guarded gold. I had been treated in Patrick’s special room during daylight hours. During that emergency, it was possible that Lynx had reached Patrick before Patrick left his night shift at the hospital. But Patrick had also given Mat a key so there was more than one way to deal with Patrick.

“Do you have a key?” I asked.

“Not the way it works. There’s a system, but he doesn’t hand out keys.”

“Hmm.” Lynx didn’t need to know Mat had one. He wasn’t the only one who could keep a secret.

“You don’t need me for the Zandy thing, then?” he asked.

“No, that’s set.” I knew what he was thinking. “Lynx, be careful.”

He was halfway to the door. “Always am.”

“Lynx.” He paused, his hand on the doorknob. “After we’re done with Zandy, we’ll help you find Patrick. If he’s lost. You know where he lives, right?”

Cat eyes. “I’ll do some checking. He’s always answered before. After you’re done with Zandy, maybe you can see if he showed for his shift last night.”

Before I could agree, Lynx was out the door and moving. Great. Just what we needed. Another problem to solve. I didn’t necessarily like Patrick, and my life would be easier without him in it. Still, I didn’t wish him any ill will either. Quite the contrary. Most of the time, I wished he were one of us—alive and someone I could trust.

I headed to the lab to finish packing necessities. White Feather followed me.

“Could Zandy possibly be creating constructs on his own?” he wondered.

“He’s so lazy, I can’t see him figuring out black magic. And spell casters, especially the black magic ones, aren’t likely to explain as they mix their tricks.”

“There were two people at the shop drilling tats on the homeless guy, Nick,” White Feather mused. “But Lee said he wasn’t one of them.”

“Lee could be lying a blue streak in the hopes of a reduced sentence.”

“True, but he has to be telling the truth about that night. Lynx would have recognized his smell if he had been there.”