“I’m on my way,” I told Myra, as I scrambled into the passenger seat. Jame gunned it. “Are you hurt? Is Bathin hurt?”
There was a pause, then Bathin’s voice came over the phone. “She’s fine,” he said. “But it’s a mess here. We’ll do what we can to keep it quiet, but you’ll want to bring someone who can throw an illusion.”
He hung up on me. I cussed my way through my contacts list, trying to decide who was the best with illusions.
“Jules,” Jame suggested. “Or Rossi. Though Rossi’s going to be more of a one-on-one thing with people. Jules is a witch, she’ll have a spell.”
I dialed her. She didn’t pick up, so I tried her crystal shop. Nothing. She was either flooded with customers or had turned all her phones off to get away from them.
“She isn’t answering.”
Jame wove through the back neighborhoods as far as he could, avoiding the main street, which was clogged with traffic. “Rossi’s there, he’ll deal with it.”
“I don’t want Rossi to deal with it. It’s my job.” I dialed Jean.
“Hey, Boss.”
“Myra and Bathin have a situation on their hands. Myra’s house. Demons.”
“What the fuck? I’m on my way.”
“No. I need you to get Stevie and take him there.”
“Shit. Be safe.”
We hung up. Jame laid on his horn to get into traffic and across traffic to the street we needed, then he put on the gas to get us to Myra’s house in a hurry.
Crime scenes are strange things. Most of the time, law enforcement gets there after the tragedy has already happened. Sometimes there’s blood, or fire, or grieving witnesses. Sometimes there are injured who don’t know they’re hurt. Sometimes there’s death.
But sometimes when rolling up to a crime scene there is nothing out of place. No signs of struggle. The wind is calm. The neighborhood is going about its business as if nothing has happened. Birds are chirping and the chitter of squirrels making haste for winter fills the air.
Those crimes scenes were always the hardest for me. Because it was clear there was one world, one reality where I could pretend nothing had changed, where I could hope it wasn’t as bad as the call had made it out to be. That there had been a mistake, and the horror, the loss, the grief would turn out not to have happened at all.
And then there was the other world, where I knew that was all a lie.
I was out of Jame’s truck before he’d come to a stop. Myra’s house looked fine, like nothing had happened, like no one was even home.
Myra walked out onto the porch. Her hair was pulled back with a red kerchief, She was in tights and a sweater, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. “In here,” she said. “Jame?”
“Rossi sent him to get me.”
She nodded, her mouth a grim line. “We’re going to need containment.”
“I sent Jean to get Stevie.”
“That will work. Come through.”
She turned toward the door, but I stopped her and gave her a quick hug. “Are you okay?”
She hugged me back. “Angry. Otherwise, fine. I should have seen this coming. I should have been paying attention.”
“No, you were right where you needed to be. Jean didn’t feel doom twinges. So maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems.”
I stepped into her home which was always softer than most people would assume, with doilies and knit pillows and live plants in the windows.
“Out back.” She took me through to the backyard, and that’s when one reality definitely became another, much more grim, reality.
Three bodies lay on the grass, all male. They were dressed in formal wear, which was strange, and all appeared to be middle aged. There wasn’t any blood I could see, but from the broken ways they were lying, they were all very much dead.
