Kitty Takes a Holiday Page 14

“Somebody’s outside. Wait here.”

  I slipped off the sofa and into the bedroom to find some jeans and a sweater to throw on.

  It couldn’t have been my mad dog–flaying curse meister, or the red-eyed thing. I’d never heard anybody actually moving around the house like this. Maybe it was some hiker who’d gotten lost. I could point them back to the road and be done with it.

  Unfortunately, my life was never that simple, and dread gnawed at my chest.

  I wished Cormac were here with a couple of his guns.

  I went down the porch steps and looked around. Lifting my chin, I breathed deep. Didn’t smell anything odd, but that didn’t mean anything. Whoever it was could just be in the wrong place.

  Something called through the trees, a low, echoing hoot. An owl, incongruous in the morning light. I couldn’t see it, but it made me feel like something watched me.

  Listening hard, looking into the trees, I started to walk around the house. Then I heard a crunching of dried leaves. Up the hill toward the road.

  Knowing where to look now, I saw him. A short man, maybe forty, probably latino, his round face tanned to rust, wrinkles fanning from the corners of his eyes. His long black hair was tied in a ponytail. He wore a thick army-style canvas jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots. He wandered among the trees, hands on his hips like this was property he was planning on buying.

  This was my territory. I walked toward him, stomping to make noise of my own, until he looked at me. He didn’t seem surprised to see me standing in front of him.

  I glared. “Can I help you with something?”

  He glanced at me, not seeming at all startled or concerned.

  “There was something here—” He pointed to the ground, drawing a line in the air that arced halfway around him. “In a circle all the way around the house. It’s all kind of blurry now. But it’s like someone was trying to build a fence or something.”

  He gestured right to where the ring of barbed-wire crosses had lain on the ground.

  “There’s been a lot of blood spilled here, too. All kinds. This place is pretty messed up, spiritually speaking.”

  I stared. My jaw might even have dropped open.

  “Who are you?” I managed to demand without shrieking.

  “Sorry. Name’s Tony. Tony Rivera. Cormac asked me to come out and have a look. I haven’t had the time until now.”

  Simultaneously, the situation became more clear and more confused. This guy knew Cormac how? “He said he called someone, but didn’t say anything about you.”

  “That surprise you? Is he here?”

  “No.” Though he’d probably expected to still be here when he’d called.

  “You must be Kitty.” He approached me slowly, obliquely, swinging a bit to the side—not directly toward me—and keeping his gaze off center, looking out and around, to the ground and the trees, everywhere but directly at me.

  He was speaking wolf. Using wolf body language, at least. Giving me space and letting me take a good look at him. The gesture startled me into thinking well of him. I tilted my chin, breathed deeply—he wasn’t a lycanthrope. He smelled absolutely human, normal and a little earthy, like he spent a lot of time outside.

  “Hi,” I said, able to smile nicely while he stood in front of me. Before I realized I was speaking, I asked, “How’d you learn to do that?”

  “I pay attention. So, what seems to be the problem out here?”

  “You the witch doctor?”

  “Something like that.”

  I gestured over my shoulder. “You want to come in for coffee while we talk?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  Ben, clever boy that he was, was dressed and waiting in the doorway when Tony and I reached the cabin.

  Tony saw him and waved. “Hi, Ben. Cormac said you were here.”

  Ben’s eyes widened. “Tony?” Tony just smiled, and Ben shook his head. “Should have known.”

  I said, “So, ah, I guess you two know each other.”

  “He’s my lawyer,” Tony said.

  Small world and all that. I looked at Ben. He shrugged. “Guess I’m everybody’s lawyer. Cormac didn’t say it was you he’d called.”

  Tony glanced at me with a sparkle in his eyes. “Cormac likes his secrets, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m going to get some coffee.” I went into the house.

  I turned around with a fresh mug of coffee for Tony to find him and Ben studying each other. Ben wilted under the scrutiny, bowing his head and slouching, and I suppressed an urge to jump between them in an effort to protect him.

  Tony said, “When did that happen?”

  That. The lycanthropy. Tony could tell just by looking.

  “Couple weeks ago, I guess. I was out on a job with Cormac.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s rough.” He pointed at me. “So you didn’t—you’re not the one who turned him, are you?”

  “Do you think Cormac would have let me live if I’d done it?”

  An uncomfortable silence fell. Tony took the mug I offered him, but didn’t drink.

  Tony wasn’t here about werewolves, or about Ben. Cormac had called him here for the curse.

  “Cormac thought you might know something about what’s been going on. He thought it was some kind of curse.”

  “Yeah, he told me some of it. You still have any of the stuff? The crosses or the animals?”

  I shook my head and tried not to feel guilty about getting rid of the bag of crosses.

  He said, “That’s too bad. I might have been able to lead you right to whoever’s doing this.”

  “Yeah, well you try living with a dozen skinned dogs hanging outside your house.”

  “Fair enough. You know anything about who might be doing this?”

  “We decided it has to be someone local, since they seem to want me to get out. Cormac thinks whoever it is doesn’t know what they’re doing. It’s been pretty messy, and it isn’t working.” In a low, grumbly voice I added, “Much.”

  Ben said, “Can you really tell who’s doing this just by looking at the mess?”

  Tony shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes there’s spiritual fingerprints. Even when two different people work the same spell, each of them leaves their own stamp on it. Their own personality. If the person is local, it might be as simple as driving around looking for that same stamp. If someone’s trying to put a curse on you, you can bet they’ve cast spells around their own place for protection.”

  “Magic spells,” I couldn’t help but mutter. “Huh.”

  “You don’t believe?” Tony said.

  “Look at me, you can tell what I am. I have to believe in pretty much anything these days. It doesn’t make believing easy. Magic sounds like so much fun when you’re a kid, until you realize how complicated it makes everything. Because you know what? It makes no sense. It makes no sense that throwing a bunch of barbed-wire crosses around my house should scare the pants off me.” My voice rose in volume. This whole situation had made me incredibly cranky.

  “Except it does make sense, because finding a bunch of plastic Mickey Mouses around your house probably wouldn’t have scared you so much, right?” Tony said, donning a half smile that creased his brown face.

  My own smile answered his. “I don’t know. That’d be pretty weird. I always thought Mickey Mouse was kind of creepy.”

  “Tony.” Ben sat in the kitchen chair, leaning forward on his knees, an idea lighting his eyes. “You can spot the type of magic of something by looking at it. Sense it. Whatever. There’s something else that’s been happening around here. Probably not connected to what’s been happening at the house, but who knows. You mind taking a look while you’re out here?”

  “What is it?” Tony asked.

  “Messy,” Ben said.

  I tried to catch Ben’s gaze, to silently ask him what he was doing. He was talking about the cattle mutilations, about the second werewolf that he and Cormac had tracked in New Mexico. What did he think Tony could tell about it?

>   Tony frowned thoughtfully. “What do you think it is?”

  “I’d rather not say. Let you take a look at it without me giving you ideas.”

  “Sure. I’m game.”

  Ben looked at me. “How about it? Where was the last one, out by county line road?”

  Marks wouldn’t tell me exactly where it was. He’d sort of acted like he assumed I already knew. But he’d indicated that general direction.

  “What do you think he’s going to find?”

  “Just curious,” Ben said. “You keep saying this isn’t a werewolf. I’d like to hear what Tony has to say about it.”

  With a complaining sigh, I went to find my car keys. “Ben, you’re going to have to start trusting your nose.” I looked at Tony. “It isn’t a werewolf.”

  “Now I’m curious,” he said.

  “Whatever it is, I want to know so it doesn’t blindside us like it did the last time,” Ben said.

  Which made it sound like there was going to be a next time. Why was I not surprised?

  chapter 11

  The county line road turned off from the state highway a few miles outside town. It was two narrow lanes, paved, no discernible shoulder. Barbed-wire fences lined yellowed pastures on both sides. We all kept our eyes open, peering out the windows for anything unusual, any break in the consistent rangeland.

  Tony spotted it, pointing. “There.”

  I slowed down and pulled onto the grass on the side of the road. To the left, on the other side of a slope of grassland, someone had parked a backhoe. The ordinary piece of equipment seemed ominous somehow, lurking out here by itself. The operator didn’t seem to be around. Gone to lunch, maybe.

  The three of us crossed the road and picked our way over the barbed wire. Walking toward the backhoe—and whatever work it was here for—felt like the last time, when Marks had brought us to see the slaughtered herd. This marching inexorably toward some unnamed horror. I didn’t want to see what lay over that slope. And yet I kept walking.

  Finally, we crested the slope and looked down to what lay beyond.

  The backhoe’s work was done. A mound of newly turned earth lay over a recently covered ditch, a hole some twenty feet to a side. The evidence was buried, cleaned away.

  I could see where the dead cattle had lain, though: the swathes of crushed grass, the dark stains of blood on the earth. Anybody could tell that something had happened here.

  Tony stood with his arms crossed, regarding the scene, his brows furrowed. “Werewolves didn’t do this.”

  “How do you even know what happened?” Ben said.

  “Something died here,” Tony said matter-of-factly. “Messy, like you said. But more. Evil. Can’t you feel it?”

  “I don’t know. What am I supposed to be feeling?”

  I knew what Tony was talking about. Werewolves weren’t inherently evil. They came in all varieties. They were individuals, exhibiting a whole range of behaviors and individual intentions. But this—some miasma rose from the earth itself, seeping under my skin, raising the hair on my arms. It felt like something in the trees was watching me, but I looked and smelled the air, and couldn’t find anything.

  “Evil,” I echoed. “It feels evil. All it wants to do is destroy.”

  Ben spoke with a clenched jaw. “I’ve been feeling that crawling under my skin ever since that son of a bitch bit me. How am I supposed to tell the difference?”

  He could smell the blood, and the scent prodded his wolf, like poking a hornet’s nest with a stick. But he didn’t recognize it. Couldn’t separate his own hunger from the wrongness that permeated the earth here. His shoulders and arms were tense, like he was bracing against something.

  His face held an expression of horror, but I couldn’t tell if the expression was turned out to the scene before us, or inward, to himself.

  I went to him. Didn’t look at him, but gripped his hand and leaned my face against his shoulder.

  “Practice, Ben. Patience.”

  He turned slightly, rubbing his cheek against my head, and I thought he might say something. I thought he might talk it out until this made some kind of sense. Instead, he abruptly broke away from me and stalked back to the road.

  Tony watched him leave. “How’s he doing really?”

  “Oh, just fine,” I answered lightly. “That’s the scary part.”

  I couldn’t imagine what Ben would be like if he were handling this really badly.

  Side by side, Tony and I followed Ben back to the road. I tried to pin Tony down, studying him out of the corner of my eye. Despite the weirdness of the area, despite having spent most of the morning with a couple of werewolves, he didn’t seem tense at all. He kept his head up, his gaze out, looking around at the trees, the top of the hills, the sky, watching everything just in case something interesting chanced by.

  I didn’t make him nervous, and that was refreshing.

  “Did Ben tell you where he’d seen this before?” Tony asked.

  “That job in New Mexico,” I said. “The one that blind-sided him and Cormac. They kept thinking there were two werewolves, but the evidence didn’t add up.”

  “So one werewolf, and one something else? That narrows it down.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. Tony smiled in reply.

  “One more question,” he said. “Cormac said he’d meet me here. What happened?”

  That one was a little harder to answer, because I wasn’t sure myself. The tension had gotten thick. Then it had twisted, gone weird somehow. When we either couldn’t stop glaring at each other, or couldn’t look each other in the eye, something had to break.

  I hadn’t realized I’d let my hesitation stretch into a long silence until Tony answered for me.

  “Ah—you and Cormac, and then you and Ben—”

  “There was never a me and Cormac,” I said.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  He didn’t sound convinced, and I declined to argue the point further. The lady doth protest too much, and all that.

  Another car was parked on the shoulder, right behind mine. I recognized it; I’d seen it all too often the last week or so. Sheriff Marks’s patrol car. His arms crossed, Marks leaned on the hood of his car, staring down Ben, who leaned on the back of mine, staring back.

  “Who’s that?” Tony asked as we made our way over the barbed-wire fence. Marks turned to watch our progress, his expression even more hooded and suspicious than ever.

  “Sheriff Avery Marks. The local stalwart defender of truth, justice, and the American way.”

  “Hm, one of those.”

  “Norville,” Marks called. He’d dropped the “Ms.” I knew I was in trouble now. “May I ask what you’re doing trespassing on Len Ford’s land? Trying to clean up a little mess?”

  I couldn’t quite think of a response that wouldn’t get me arrested on the spot. If he’d been five minutes later he wouldn’t have seen us, and it wouldn’t have been an issue. His timing was impeccable.

  A bit too impeccable. “Have you been following me?” I said.

  I didn’t think it possible, but his frown deepened. “I have the right to keep a suspect under surveillance.”

  Ben straightened, pushing off from the car. “Your ‘surveillance’ is coming awfully close to harassment, Sheriff.”

  “You going to sue me?”

  Ben only raised his brow. Marks didn’t recognize the try me look, but I did.

  Oh, this was going to get ugly.

  Tony butted in, shouldering past me and in front of Marks like he really was breaking up a fight. “Hello, Sheriff Marks? I’m Tony Rivera. I’m afraid this is my fault, I asked Kitty to show me around. She said some weird stuff’s been happening and I wanted to check it out.”

  He held out his hand, an obvious peacemaking gesture, but Marks took his time reaching out to it. Finally, though, they clasped hands. They held on for a long moment, locked in one of those macho who’s going to wince first gripping matches.

  Finally, they let go. Tony
’s face had gone funny, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. He was frowning. He hadn’t frowned once all morning.

  He looked at me. “He’s the one. One of them, anyway.”

  “One of them, what?” I said, perplexed, at nearly the same time Marks said, “One of who?”

  Then my eyes widened as I realized what Tony was talking about: what he’d come here to look for, the curse, my house—Marks was the one.

  “You?” I drew the word out into an accusation and glared at Marks. He didn’t seem like the type to hang skinned dogs from trees. I’d have expected him to just shoot me. I’d never have pegged him as someone who knew anything about magic, even if what he knew was wrong. He was just so… boneheaded.

  “What the hell are you people talking about?”

  Tony said, “Anyone ever tell you that when you lay a curse, you better do it right or it’s going to come back and smack you?”

  If Tony was wrong and Marks didn’t have anything to do with it, I’d have expected denials. I’d have expected more of the sheriff’s blowhard posturing, maybe even threats. Instead, the fury left him for a moment, leaving his face slack and disbelieving.

  His protest was too little, too late. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in a low voice.

  Tony ignored him, and glanced between Ben and me. “Remember what I said about spirits having fingerprints? Everybody’s soul has its own little flavor. It follows them around, touches everything they do. This guy’s stamp is all over your place.”

  “I called him out there a couple of times, to check things out. That could be why,” I said.

  “No. Too strong for that,” Tony said. “This has malice in it.”

  Marks seemed to wake out of a daze. His defenses slammed into place, and the look of puckered rage returned. “You’re accusing me of being the one who pinned those dead rabbits to her porch, and all that other garbage? What a load of crap. I don’t believe this hocus-pocus nonsense.”

  I said, “But you believe I’m a werewolf—a monster that could do something like slaughter a herd of cattle. You can’t have it both ways, Sheriff. Believe one and not the other.” I’d learned that quickly enough.

  “Okay, I won’t say I don’t believe it. Somebody’s done something out at your place, I won’t deny that. But I wouldn’t know the first thing about cursing someone.”