“Dark fae. Some kind of lesser dark fae. Maybe gnome or goblin. I’m going to shift and see if I can track where they took Riona.”
She stepped away from the blood and started pulling off her clothes. I turned around to give her some privacy.
Kyla chuckled. “I forget how shy humans are about nudity. It only took two years for that to be knocked right out of me.”
I shrugged, studying the window, the long white curtains, now decorated with crimson droplets.
Sunlight spilled through the window and onto the floor, glinting off something shiny. I crouched, examining the metal lighter.
“Well, well, well.”
“What is it?” Something— likely her jeans— hit the floor as I carefully used a plastic bag to collect the lighter.
“Some spells require candles. Whoever was here had to clean up fast once Riona interrupted them. They missed this.”
“Wouldn’t a witch just like, wave her hand to light the candle or some shit?”
“Depends on the witch. If they don’t have a natural talent for fire, they wouldn’t attempt to use it when they’re about to do a difficult spell that requires sacrifice.” I shrugged. “Could be that they brought it as a backup. Who knows.”
I slipped the bag into my utility belt. Fingers crossed they hadn’t been wearing gloves.
Something nudged me and I froze, my head slowly turned.
“Whoa. Those are some fangs.”
Kyla opened her mouth in a wolf grin, displaying those lethal-looking teeth for me. I blinked at her. “You’rewhite as snow… How the hell do you hunt at night?”
She lifted her lip in a sneer, giving me a closer look at those gleaming fangs. My mouth trembled as she turned and sniffed at the blood. Her tail was extraordinarily fluffy.
Kyla was likely three times the size of an ordinary wolf. I didn’t understand how the magic worked, or where all that mass went when she shifted back to human.
She made her way closer to the door, glancing over her shoulder at me. I followed her as she prowled down the hall, then lifted one paw, pushing down on the door handle and nudging it open with her nose.
An empty garage.
“You think they took her out of here in a car.”
She nodded, inching back and forth along the garage, then she led me through the rest of the house.
Nothing.
“I think Riona stumbled onto something here,” I said once Kyla had shifted back. “We’ll get in contact with the owners, but they’re human, and it’s more likely that someone knew they’d be out of town. People are idiots these days, bragging about their vacations on social media so everyone knows when their house will be empty. Whoever did a spell like this would’ve wanted a human neighborhood where the residents wouldn’t be able to sense black magic. They weren’t expecting a house sitter, so maybe Riona surprised them.”
Kyla glanced at me. “You think she’s dead.”
“I don’t know. She’s a loose end. But they took her out of here, when they could’ve just left the body or staged it to look like she was the one casting black spells.”
“Might be easier for them to dump the body and make sure it doesn’t lead back to them.”
“Yeah.” I glanced at my phone. “I’ll give the lighter to Samael’s people to analyze in their lab, and we’ll go from there.”
“She could still be alive.”
I glanced around the crime scene, my heart heavy.
“If she is, they won’t keep her alive for long. I’ll get Steve to do a run on the owners of this house and anyone who may have known they’d be out of town.” I sighed. “Let’s go over the scene one more time. They got sloppy with the lighter, maybe they forgot something else.”
We spent the next half hour checking both the crime scene and the rest of the house, but nothing popped out at us. Kyla glanced at me as I closed the door behind us.
