Wizard in a Witchy World Read online

  "Just keep it in mind," she said and patted my leg.

  We rode in silence down a long, asphalt lane that wove through a field of uncut grasses. It was late enough in the fall that the grasses had turned amber and red instead of the green hues of summer. A pheasant ran across the road in front of us and Amak veered in an attempt to run it down, cackling as she did.

  The fields gave way to a pine forest, which we drove through for about half a mile before reaching the main gate. Once through the gates, we turned onto a rural two-lane highway and headed toward Leotown.

  I finally got my bearings as we crested a hill and the skyline of Leotown rose in the distance. We were a solid thirty-five minutes from downtown, coming in from the north.

  Amak turned on a heavy-metal station and seemed to be enjoying herself. Between the music and the wind buffeting us through the open cab of her Jeep, there was no potential for conversation. That suited my mood just fine. I leaned my head back and stared out at the corn fields. Rows and rows of stalks whizzed by, my eyes trying, in a millisecond, to follow each row to the horizon before being forced to move on to the next.

  She turned the music down when we finally made it into the downtown area.

  "Going to your house?" she asked.

  "No. Howling Hounds."

  "Copy that," she said.

  When we arrived at the coffee shop, I was annoyed to find that my truck was no longer parked where I'd left it.

  "Damn it! I must have been towed," I said.

  Without warning, Amak turned hard, executing a U-turn in the middle of the street, bouncing over the curbs of the center divider.

  "What in the hell?" I complained.

  "Impound yard isn't that far. Been there a few times," she said. "Witches are always losing their cars."

  Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into an industrial area under an elevated section of one of Leotown's main thoroughfares. The impound lot was surrounded by a twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence, complete with circular razor wire on top.

  I hopped out of Amak's Jeep as she drove up to a break in the fence where a guard shack had been set up.

  "Thanks for the ride," I said.

  "Stay out of trouble," she said and pulled away, throwing gravel from her vehicle's heavily knobbed tires.

  I chuckled to myself at how our relationship had changed within the last thirty-six hours.

  The interior of the guard shack was empty and the lights were off. I did a quick, mental check and realized it was Saturday. Sure enough, the sign inside the window announced they were closed for the weekend. Remind me again, why I liked this town? I considered calling a cab, but it was mid-afternoon and a nice day. I could afford to walk, even though I was five miles from home.

  An hour and a half later, I rounded the corner at the bottom of the hill two blocks from Mrs. Willoughby's house and my apartment. My heart sank as I saw a veritable host of police cruisers parked on the street and in the driveway leading to my lab. Whatever was going on, wasn't good.

  The door to my lab was destroyed and two people were rummaging through my stuff. The brand new door to my apartment had received the same treatment and even more people were inside.

  I caught the eye of a uniformed officer as I stepped toward the dirt path leading to the house.

  "Hold on there," she said, stepping between me and the stairs.

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  "Who are you?"

  I frowned. "Felix Slade. I live here."

  She took a step back and pulled her gun from its holster. "On the ground, Mr. Slade," she demanded.

  "What's going on? What's this about?" I asked.

  "ON THE GROUND," she repeated. This time she attracted the attention of the officers tearing apart my lab.

  I sank to my knees and placed my hands behind my head. Rough hands grabbed my wrists and twisted them one at a time behind my back, locking cuffs on as they did.

  "Stand up, Slade." I recognized Officer Lozano’s voice. He pulled on my arm as I complied.

  "What's going on?" I asked, turning toward him.

  Any doubt as to whether or not Lozano had been infected by lycan was gone. He looked like crap. His eyelids were red and puffy and his eyes extremely bloodshot. It looked like he hadn't shaved in weeks.

  "We're taking you downtown for questioning," he said.

  "Am I under arrest?" I asked.

  "What? Are you Clarence Darrow or something?" The female officer asked.

  "Yeah, something like that," I said.

  Lozano stepped in. "Lieu wants you to come downtown for a conversation. That going to be a problem?"

  "Are you asking or telling? I haven't heard my rights, so it sounds like you're asking. But then, you're trashing my place and I'm in cuffs, so imagine my confusion."

  "Let's say Lt. Dukats is giving us a lot of room on this one. She tends to do that when children are missing," he said.

  "I'll go with you, but if I'm not under arrest, you're taking the cuffs off," I said.

  "We'll take 'em off when we get to the station," Lozano said as his partner patted me down, pulling my wallet and cell phone out as she did.

  She pushed my cell phone and wallet into my front pockets. "He's clean."

  "Let's go." Lozano pushed me in the direction of the street where several cruisers sat.

  "I'll catch up with you at the station, Joe," the female officer said.

  "Yup."

  "Tell me you have a search warrant for my apartment," I said.

  "We do," he said opening a door for me. "Hold on." He un-cuffed my right hand and re-cuffed me so they were in front and then helped me into the back seat.

  Ten minutes later, he pulled into the parking garage beneath the station and opened the door to the cruiser.

  "Cuffs?" I asked, holding them out to him.

  "Don't push it, asshole," he said.

  There have been times in my life when I’ve regretted the lack of a filter between my brain and my mouth. This turned out to be one of them.

  "Rough night?" I asked. It had been the full moon and he looked like hell. It wasn't much of a bet that he'd turned into a wolf last night and awakened this morning naked and in a strange place.

  I didn't see it coming when he grabbed and pushed me back into the cruiser. He brought his elbow around and cracked me on the side of the face.

  "Keep your mouth shut." His breath stunk and I got a whiff of musty dog.

  "Problem, officer?" A woman's voice asked from behind us.

  "No, Mr. Slade here stumbled. Just helping him back up," he said and pulled me off the trunk of the cruiser.

  "That right?" The uniformed woman looked at me questioningly.

  "Yeah, caught my foot in the seatbelt on the way out," I said.

  She nodded and walked off.

  "You talk to anyone about it yet? Like your Grandma?" I asked.

  He looked at me angrily, but didn't toss me again. "My Grandma? What the fuck are you talking about?" He pushed me toward the doors of the basement entry.

  "You said she's Virarica," I said. "She'll know what's going on with you."

  "She's not in the picture and how do you know something's going on?" he asked and pushed me through an automatic door.

  "How's this sound? You blacked out last night and woke up in a strange place."

  He spun me around and got in my face again.

  "What aren't you telling me?" he asked. "What do you have to do with this?"

  I wasn’t going to be his mentor on this. "I've already said too much. You need to talk to your grandmother."

  "She's involved?"

  "No. There's no freaking conspiracy," I said. "You’re sick, she's a shaman. You need her help."

  "I don't believe in that crap," he said.

  I shook my head. "You're about to."

  "Shut up."

  He grabbed my arm and led me to an elevator. We rode in silence and got off at the third floor where he locked me in an interrogation room. Once he was gone
, I slid my hands beneath the table and released the locks on the cuffs.

  Twenty minutes later the door opened and Lt. Dukats walked in.

  "Thank you for coming down, Mr. Slade," Dukats said.

  "Like I had a choice."

  She looked at the cuffs I'd set on the table.

  "We're looking for a missing girl," she said. "We think you know something about it."

  "Clarita Barrios?" I asked.

  "So you do know something. Where is she, Felix? It will go a lot better for you if you tell us now."

  I mentally face-palmed. I shouldn't have acknowledged anything. "No. I was with friends when they received a call that Clarita was missing."

  "Where were you last night around ten o'clock?" she asked.

  "Spent the night in the country - same friends," I said.

  "Who? Anyone corroborate this?"

  "Camille Parasyn," I said. I had no idea if she would vouch for me, but I doubted she would want me to expose that the Council had locked me up in their dungeon last night.

  "Phone number?"

  "I don't have her phone number, but it shouldn’t be that hard to find," I said. "You tossed my apartment. Do you like me for a murder or a child kidnapping?"

  "Two murders of women who, upon investigation, appear to be heavily involved in the occult. And, when we tossed your apartment, we found a significant number of books and paraphernalia related to the occult," she said, enunciating the word tossed strangely.

  "What's wrong with the word 'tossed'?" I asked.

  "Makes you sound like a bad T.V. show. We don't talk like that," she said.

  "Am I under arrest?"

  "Should you be?"

  "No. I think you've asked to talk to me because you didn't find anything. If you thought I was good for this, I'd be under arrest," I said.

  "You're involved in this, Mr. Slade. I can feel it," she said.

  I could feel it too, but hell if I knew how. All I really knew was that a wolf was after Gabriella and that Joe Lozano needed a friend in the worst way.

  "We found bloody scraps of cloth in a glass jar when we searched your things. Do you want to tell me about that?"

  "No," I said. I didn't know if they would be able to match it back to Lozano or not. It might be hard to explain why I had a swatch of towel with Lozano's blood, but I didn't think it would be a big problem.

  "We're having them analyzed. I've got to be honest, they seem like trophies," she said.

  "Were they covered by your search warrant?" I asked.

  She pulled a paper from beneath her notepad and handed it to me. It was the search warrant that covered my apartment, the garage and my truck. I didn't understand much of the legalese, but it seemed broadly defined.

  "Judges are pretty lax when it comes to murdered mothers and their missing children," she said.

  "Do you have any other questions for me?" I asked.

  "What were you doing in the country with your friends last night?"

  "Sorry, not without a lawyer," I said.

  "Don't you want to help us find this missing girl?"

  "If I could help you, I would. You have to have some reason why you think I'm part of this and it has to be something more than my reading habits," I said.

  "We received an anonymous tip that you grabbed the girl," she said.

  "That's convenient."

  "You're not being very helpful," she said.

  "That's because I don't know anything. Can I leave?"

  "No. Felix Slade, you're being held for questioning related to the kidnapping of Clarita Barrios…"

  TINY FOOTPRINTS

  For the second day in a row, I found myself in a cell. Leotown is a city of half a million, twice that if you include the outlying areas. As a small city, it saw its fair share of crime, although on a Saturday night most of what the lockup processed were the drunk and disorderly. To say it wasn't conducive to sleep was an understatement. Although by five o’clock Sunday morning, we'd stopped adding to the population and I was able to cat-nap while resting my head against the wall behind me.

  "Slade."

  The sound of my name woke me from a fitful sleep. A uniformed officer stood by the door to the cell. He'd placed the keys into the lock and was looking directly at me. I stood up, gently pushing Gorby, my late night sleeping companion back to a fully upright position. Gorby stirred, snorted and resumed his blissful sleep.

  "What's up?" I asked as I approached.

  "You're being released," he said.

  I looked at the clock on the wall across from the cell. It was eleven o’clock. I walked through the door, waited for him to relock it and followed him down a hallway to a desk where he directed me to sit. Once I'd complied, he handed me a clipboard that had the inventory of the items they'd taken when I'd been booked. He placed a basket on the edge of the desk containing my belt, wallet, keys, phone and jewelry. I quickly slid the jewelry on and signed the paper acknowledging receipt.

  The officer stood up and escorted me to a steel door. He pressed a button on an intercom and said what I assumed was his name. A moment later, a buzzer sounded. He pushed the door open.

  "There you go," he said.

  I didn't hesitate and walked into a reception area where a number of people were seated, all eyes on me. Whoever they expected, it wasn’t me and as a group, they all looked away.

  "Felix."

  I turned toward the voice and saw Gabriella, standing at the edge of the room. As usual, she was gorgeous, dressed in tight, blood-red leather pants and a loose beige sweater.

  When I walked in her direction, she held her arms out as if to hug me. My face undoubtedly showed horror and my hands went up in protest. I was a mess and knew I stunk of last night's cellmates.

  "Did you bail me out?" I asked.

  "Give me a hug. And don't be silly. You haven't been charged with anything. There’s no bail," she said.

  I gave her a hug and released her as she stiffened.

  "Ripe, right?" I asked.

  "It's horrible. Is that all you?" she asked.

  "Close quarters in the drunk tank. I may have to burn my clothes," I said.

  "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm putting a sheet on my car seat before you get in," she said as she led me out of the building.

  "What are you doing here? How'd you know I was locked up?" I asked.

  "I got a call from Camille. She was visited by Lieutenant Dukats who wanted to know where you'd spent Friday night."

  "How'd that go?" I asked.

  "She vouched for you, although she didn't appreciate being dragged into it," Gabriella said.

  “Tough shit,” I said, half under my breath, which earned me a raised eyebrow from Gabriella.

  I followed her to her gray Civic. She opened the trunk, pulled a tarp out and handed it to me. It was lightly misting, but had rained significantly the night before. I was surprised that I hadn't picked up on the rain, even while I was in the cell.

  "Is that why you're here? Did Camille tell you to come down?" I asked.

  That stopped her.

  "You think I came down here - on a Sunday morning - because Camille barked at me?"

  I knew I'd stepped in it, but wasn't sure what I'd said wrong. It was the story of my life.

  "I've no idea why you came down here," I said. "I had a bad night. So far, every turn I take in Leotown, someone's either trying to pound me, lock me up, or both."

  "Get in," she said. Her words were clipped. and I could tell I hadn't made things any better.

  I opened the passenger door, unfolded the tarp and laid it on the seat.

  "Do you want breakfast?" she asked. She wasn't looking at me, which was not a good sign.

  "Thank you for coming, Gabriella."

  "Tell me right now, Felix. Are you involved in this in any way?" She turned to me, her gaze fierce.

  I held my hand out to her - wrist facing up. "Read me. I won't hold back."

  "You shouldn't do that. You trust too quickly," sh
e said.

  "You may be right. But trust is earned and every time I wake up in a cell, you're right there."

  She slid her hand over mine and rested her middle and index fingers on my wrist, closing her eyes. I reciprocated and stretched my fingers over her wrist as well. Involuntarily, she gasped at the intimacy of our touch, her panic communicated through the tips of my fingers.

  I sensed a swirl of emotion: distrust that seemed related to the missing girl Clarita, fear, compassion, anger and a deep sadness for the loss of her coven sisters.

  "Oh Gabriella, I'm so sorry."

  Fresh tears rolled down her face as she shared her pain.

  "Tell me Felix, what are you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I can read your emotions and your aura, but your magic is inaccessible."

  "I'm a wizard," I said.

  "How is that different than being a witch?"

  "I don't really know. I just know that when I tried to join Judy’s - my foster mom’s – circle, it didn't work very well," I said. "It's one of the reasons I left North Carolina."

  A dark shape flew through my peripheral vision. I tracked it to a tree and saw Maggie take a high perch. She acknowledged my gaze by bobbing her head up and down.

  "Is that Maggie?" Gabriella asked, following my eyes up to the tree.

  I'd forgotten Gabriella still had hold of my wrist and must have felt my reaction to the raven.

  "Yes. Maggie worries about me," I said.

  "You're fond of her, aren't you?"

  "Hard to explain, but she and Judy are the only family I remember with any clarity."

  "I can't imagine growing up without my family." Gabriella released my hand and cut off the transmission of a fresh wave of grief. She pulled away from the curb. "About that breakfast?"

  "Are you sure you want to be seen with me? I haven't showered in at least two days," I said.

  She wrinkled her nose. "Drop by your apartment for a shower first?"

  "I'd go for that."

  We drove in silence for the few minutes it took to get to my apartment.

  "What happened here?" she asked as she pulled onto the gravel drive that led to my lab. The entry door to the garage had been covered with plywood.

  "I figured you already knew. They got a search warrant on my place," I said.

  "On what grounds?" she asked, jumping out of the car.