Witch Hunt, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series) (13 page)

“Okay, okay,” he said, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Wouldn’t hurt for you to do some thinking too,” I muttered as I walked out the door.

“I heard that.
There’s nothing to think about!” he called after me.

Damn! Oberon was stubborn.
I almost sliced his neck open with the Retaliator and gave him a wound that no amount of magic could heal, and he claims that there’s nothing to think about? I was becoming a danger to him and everyone else as long as lachadiel was around. I needed to find out how to get rid of the mark and the tie that bound me to him. My best shot at that was the Inquisitors. We had to find them fast. There was too much at stake now.

I walked into the kitchen and saw Amalie making a sandwich.

“Don’t start in on me, please.
I just want to get some coffee,” I said.

“Trouble in paradise, Maurin?” a voice behind me inquired.

I spun around to see Masarelli standing in the entrance to the kitchen.

“Who let him in?”
I asked Amalie.

“Come on, Maurin, is that any way to greet an old friend from the department?” he asked sarcastically.

He stood up and walked over, his hand out for me to shake.

“That’s what I went upstairs to tell you.
He said that he needed to talk to you and if I didn’t let him in he’d just come back with a search warrant,” Amalie grumbled.

Amalie was staring at his hand like it carried the plague.

“Oh yeah? On what grounds?” I asked defiantly.

He didn’t say anything.
He just gave me a smug look, his hand still extended. Masarelli was a lot of things, but he wasn’t this stupid. He knew that if I shook his hand then I’d be able to see inside his head. What was he up to?

I took his hand with a firm grip.
I squeezed hard so he couldn’t jerk away if he had a change of heart. His mind was as messy as his car. His thoughts were all jumbled up. I was getting barraged with memories. Most of them were personal and probably more than Masarelli wanted to share. I could feel him trying to tuck them away. Too late. He had started this little game and now I would finish it. I started picking through his mental high school year book. Hmm, he had been a jock; he was good, but not good enough to earn a scout’s attention. He had signed up for the police academy right after graduation. Flash forward to his wife. She was surprisingly lovely. And par for the course of his life, he was falling short there too. There was the affair that he had chosen to ignore, which had ultimately ended his marriage.

Masarelli
slammed up a wall. Quick learner. He flooded his mind with new memories; these were ones that he wanted me to see. It was a massacre. Blood was everywhere. The place was crawling with cops. What the hell? There were more images, flashes of old photos of members of the Inquisitors, and faces of coven members.

“What?
You’re crazy, you know that?” I told him, as I pieced it all together.

“The Inquisitors are dead.
Anyone of the coven members could have done it,” he said.

“The Inquisitors are dead?
When the hell did this happen?” Amalie said, understandably shocked.

I wanted to scream; I felt like screec
hing, cussing and throwing stuff. Things just kept getting worse. The Inquisitors were dead and Masarelli had his sights set on the coven. Then there was my problem with lachadiel. The Inquisitors were dead, but that obviously didn’t mean that he was gone. I had to know more about lachadiel and the connection he had with me. The Inquisitors were my best shot at finding out how to get rid of him for good and now that connection was gone.

“Amalie, go get Mahalia,” I said.

“That’s a great idea,” Masarelli said.

“I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you go out and find the real killer!” I snapped.

“That’s precisely why I’m here. Motive, means and opportunity. Everyone under this roof is a suspect,” he said. “We’ve closed the case on the witch murders. We are now focusing all of our attention on finding the person or persons who killed a total of ten people,” he said.

“Ah, now we’re getting down to it.
Witches are people too, asshole. I don’t know how you ever got on SPTF in the first place,” I said, disgusted.

“I asked the same question about you,” he said.

“Detective, how nice of you to drop by. Amalie tells me there have been some developments in the case. How can we assist you?” Mahalia breezed into the room as she spoke.

Oberon, Juno and Phallon followed behind her.
They looked like a hit squad, which I don’t think helped the argument that no one here had killed the Inquisitors.

“Is that what you call a mass murder?
A development? Is that the new boyfriend, Maurin?” Masarelli chuckled.

His clenched jaw and bulging veins were a good indication that Oberon wanted to unleash on
Masarelli. Thankfully, he had better control of his temper than I did. I knew the game that Masarelli was playing. He was here on a fishing expedition. If he had any true evidence, then he would have brought his warrant with him and torn the place apart.

“How did you even find the Inquisitors, anyway?” I asked.
“Something tells me that the investigation came to a screeching halt when they put you in charge of SPTF.”

“We got a tip.
Turns out they were renting an old warehouse down at the wharf. The property owner got suspicious and went to see what they were up to,” he explained.

“I want to go to the warehouse and I want to see your files,” I told him.

Maybe I could find something there about lachadiel.

“It’s good to want things; it builds character.
Why don’t you ask one of your little witch friends to look into her crystal ball and tell you what really happened,” he said.

“What?
You’re an idiot! You’re obviously not familiar with how this works, since you’re just filling in for Matthison, I’ll clue you in. I’m a liaison. That means that I am entitled to know everything that you know. You can’t even run a background check on an Other without my knowledge,” I informed him.

“Yeah, well, things have changed.
Matthison’s still in a coma and I’m in charge, so we’ll be doing things my way from now on,” he asserted.

“Ooh, tough words big guy but you're just a stand in
. Now tell me which warehouse it is,” I retorted.

“Right, like I’m going to let you and
Broomhilda over there go traipsing around. You think you can contaminate the whole crime scene and make any evidence that we find inadmissible? I don’t think so. Even Matthison wouldn’t tolerate suspects poking around our investigation,” he said, jerking his thumb in Mahalia’s direction.

“Suspects?
We have been attacked and victimized by this group of zealots. They killed innocent people!” Mahalia said in stunned disbelief.

“Right, you’re all a bunch of innocents.
Like I’m supposed to believe that a group of witches could be victims of anything. That line of bullshit might work with the press, but I’m not buying into it,” he said.

“You know, just the other day I thought that you actually had a shred of humanity,” I said.

“I’m more human than you’ll ever be,” he responded.

“That’s it!
I’m not listening to any more of this bullshit!” Oberon said. “You don’t have a warrant, so get out.”

Masarelli
got up, smoothed his suit jacket and grabbed his trench coat off of the back of the kitchen chair. I stifled a laugh. He was certainly taking his temporary position seriously. I hadn’t seen him in full suit and tie once in the four years that I’d known him. I didn’t think that he owned a suit jacket, let alone a dress coat. I followed him to the front door just to be sure that he didn’t try to plant some evidence on his way out. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him.

“I thought that you wanted to see the crime scene?”
he asked, just as I was about to shut the door in his face.

I just stared at him.

“I’ll take you, but only you,” he added.

“Wait here,” I said, closing the door.

Oberon was right behind me.

“I don’t want you going with him.
I don’t trust him,” he said.

“
Masarelli and I have been having this pissing contest for the last four years. He’s a first-class jerk and a little power drunk with his new authority, but he’s harmless. I can handle him,” I said.

“You don’t look good, Maurin, you didn’t get much sleep,” Oberon said.
I could see the compassion in his face, and it sent an inexplicable jolt of pain through me. I steeled myself as he continued. “You’re not yourself. You’re pale, and you look drawn out, like you’ve got the flu.”

“Why darling, you say the sweetest things,” I said, raising my arm to my for
ehead and pretending to swoon.

“I’m serious, Maurin.
Don’t go by yourself. I’ll come with you. Tell him that according to the rules that Matthison and the Council agreed upon, you’re required to bring one member of the Council Guard with you,” he suggested.

“I don’t want to press my luck,” I r
eplied, and Oberon gave me a questioning look. “I may have exaggerated a bit about how much he actually had to share. In truth, the language in the agreement is a little one-sided. I’m supposed to share with them, but they don’t really have to share with me, since we always know before them anyway. I’ve never had to worry about the specific language before, since I always worked with Matthison.”

“So
Masarelli was right; things are going to change,” Oberon clarified.

“No. Matthison will be back,” I stated, unwilling to believe otherwise.
“If he’s going to take me to the warehouse, then I’m going. I don’t care if he has ulterior motives. We need to know what’s going on. If the Inquisitors really are dead, then who killed them? And why?”

I walked past Oberon and went upstairs to grab my coat.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the dresser. I leaned in closer to get a better look. Oberon was right. I didn’t look good. I had the amulet, but I still felt like there was a hole in my defenses and I was leaking energy. I’d probably feel a little better if I could just get some decent sleep and a hot meal, but I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t feel one-hundred percent until lachadiel was gone. I just wished that I knew how to make that happen. I put my coat on and went back downstairs.

Oberon was back in the kitchen, pleading his case to Mahalia.
It was understandable that he wanted to come with me, but I could handle myself. Besides, with the way that Masarelli was behaving, things would go a lot smoother without any witches coming along. From the looks of it, Mahalia agreed with me. I slipped out the front door while Mahalia and Amalie kept Oberon distracted.

Masarelli
was waiting in his car. Actually it wasn’t his car, it was Matthison’s. It was probably full of wrappers from his drive-thru addiction already. Seeing Masarelli sitting behind the wheel of Matthison’s car got my blood boiling. He thought he’d have an easy time climbing the ladder now with Matthison in the hospital. I’d have to knock him down a few rungs.

I opened the car door and brushed the burger wrappers onto the floor before ge
tting in. After I buckled my seatbelt, Masarelli backed out of the driveway.

“Having fun playing pretend?” I asked.

“Who’s pretending? The Commissioner put me in charge of SPTF himself, and he made the right choice,” he said.

“He made the only choice.
No one else has been there as long as you have. As soon as he’s healthy enough, Matthison will be back behind his desk and you’ll be back writing parking tickets,” I taunted.

“Don’t get your hopes up.
I’m about to make my career with this case and I have it on good authority that they’re going to offer Matthison an early retirement with full benefits. His wife will make him take it. It looks like you’ll be dealing with me from now on,” he said confidently.

“I’ll make a deal with you.
You shut your offensive mouth for the rest of the drive and I won’t file a complaint for racially-motivated harassment,” I said.

“Witchcraft is
still classified as a religion - not a race. And you’re not even a witch,” he said.

“Just shut up and drive,” I told him.

Masarelli was actually quiet the rest of the ride. I stared out the window, watching the houses and people as we passed them, but my thoughts kept going back to what he had said about Matthison. Would he retire after he got out of the hospital? I couldn’t blame his wife for making him do so; they had kids and bigger plans. SPTF wouldn’t be the same without him. If Masarelli were at the helm, then the entire purpose of the department would change. And not for the better. Matthison and I worked well together. I couldn’t work with Masarelli at all, especially now. He just wanted things back to the way they were before the Shift.

My stomach and my mood soured as the residential area turned into an industrial area and the warehouses came into view.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which building it was. Masarelli might as well have put up a neon sign with big flashing arrows that said ‘something bad happened here.’ Black and whites lined the chain link fence. A young beat cop pulled the gate open; he closed it again as soon as our rear bumper was clear.