Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) Read online

  “There really aren’t that many magicians in the world, and not that much magic, despite your proximity to so much of it,” Amelia said. “Such a thing wouldn’t go unnoticed, and most magicians I’ve known preferred anonymity over wealth.”

  “But a guy like Anderson Layne—”

  “If there’s a way to use magic to pull gold from the ground, he does seem like someone who would be interested, yes.”

  He wiped his hand over his chin, thinking. “So does he? Have a way to pull gold from the ground?”

  “We’ll have to keep playing along if we want to find out. Are you all right with that?” Her eyes were crinkled against the sun—another odd detail that set him off balance, like it was too much detail for him to just be thinking it up. It made him imagine she was more than a ghost, a spirit in his mind. They weren’t here, this wasn’t real. But it sure felt like it.

  “Yeah, it’s just the next step on the path.”

  “Ben won’t be happy with you if he knows you’re in contact with your old crowd.”

  “Then he won’t have to know about it, will he?”

  “That always goes so well,” she murmured. “And now, I would like you to tell me about Mollie Layne.” She didn’t manage the innocent smile she seemed to be trying for.

  “Mollie Cramer, she said.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “There’s history between you. I’m simply curious.”

  It was none of her business, he thought, staring into the woods on the other side of the creek, thinking he might see deer there. She might have been living inside his head, but he deserved some kind of privacy.

  “What you deserve and what we have here are two different things,” she said. Her voice had turned sad, her expression withdrawn. She looked away.

  “It was a long time ago. Twenty years. We were just kids.”

  “But you still find her attractive? If you had an opportunity…”

  “Better if I don’t. Not while we’re working with Layne.” But he’d thought about it. What Amelia was politely not saying was how he hadn’t slept with anyone since before prison. Not that he’d ever had anything resembling a relationship, not like Ben and Kitty had. But he’d had plenty of opportunities. And now … seeing Mollie reminded him that it had been a long time.

  “You’ll see her again, perhaps,” Amelia said. She was trying to be comforting, Cormac realized. Trying to be understanding.

  But right this minute, he just wanted to be alone.

  When he looked up again, Amelia was gone. Didn’t even need to walk anywhere, just vanished. He had the nerve-wracking sense that he’d done something wrong.

  Time to get some sleep, then.

  * * *

  THE NEXT morning, one of the e-mails in the book of shadows account stood out from all the nutjobs. It caught his eye because it was articulate and full of an uncomfortable amount of detail.

  “This is Amy Scanlon’s book, isn’t it? I assume she’s dead, or you wouldn’t have it. Do you know what she was, who she associated with? Have you deciphered the code yet?” Even in text, the tone seemed demanding rather than questioning, as if the sender already knew the answers to the questions.

  Cormac sat back and considered. On the one hand, this sounded like someone who knew something. On the other hand, they were sure being cagey about it. Kitty’s Web guru had shown him how to check for IP addresses and e-mail origins, but when he dug into the header on this one, it didn’t tell him anything. The sender was using the same methods to hide his identity that Cormac used. Whoever sent this, man or woman or something else entirely, Cormac didn’t trust them. Of course he didn’t. But it was a thread to follow.

  He wrote a reply using his own anonymous e-mail, dangling a piece of information as bait, to see what bit. “Yes, the book belonged to Amy Scanlon. She was a magician. Worked with a vampire named Kumarbis.” He hit SEND and was prepared to wait for an answer, but the mail box pinged a reply after just a minute. The sender was online and ready to respond.

  His blood warmed and his senses focused on the job in front of him. This was almost like hunting.

  The reply read: “Where is Kumarbis?”

  Dead, destroyed, but Cormac wasn’t ready to say that. He replied, “I don’t know.” True enough, from a certain point of view. He waited.

  Another message popped up. “Who are you? You have her book—did you inherit it? Are you an apprentice of hers?”

  Cormac wasn’t doing a good job of fishing for information if the other guy was asking all the questions. Amy had had a checkered history; this might have been a previous teacher of hers or some other magical associate. Cormac wanted to keep him, or her, talking. “I’m a student of magic,” he wrote back. “Just curious.”

  The reply came a moment later: “So am I.”

  “And who exactly are you?” Cormac sent back.

  No immediate reply came, and none came after another stretch of waiting. The guy must have logged off. Or been scared off.

  He shut off the laptop, sat back and considered. They’d put the book online because they wanted to see what it would dredge up. Well, here they were then. This could still be some crackpot. But the guy knew something. Maybe not how to break the code, but something. Cormac would just have to figure out how to draw him out.

  * * *

  LAYNE CALLED later that day, which was quicker than Cormac had expected him to.

  “Cormac!” Layne said, as if they were old friends. “I pretty much figured you’d given me a fake number.”

  Fake numbers were too much work. “I wouldn’t do that, I’m not some girl you’re trying to pick up in a bar,” Cormac answered.

  Layne’s chuckle was uncertain. “You’re pretty funny.”

  Yeah, right. “You said you’d have something for me, Layne.”

  “You want to come down to my place? Talk about it in person?”

  Not really, he thought. This is the only way to learn more about Kuzniak, Amelia reminded him. Even though this felt like walking into a bear’s den in springtime.

  “Sure,” he said, and Layne gave him directions.

  The roads to Layne’s parcel of land in the hills of Fremont County weren’t marked; most of them weren’t even professionally built, but rather tracks that had been worn into the ground over time. The point was obvious—if you didn’t get directions straight from Layne, or you didn’t already know where you were going, you weren’t supposed to be there. The last turn was a two-rut 4x4 trail cutting through a stand of scrub oak that opened out into a typical farmstead. An unkempt barbed wire fence, posts rotted and close to falling down, ringed the open pastureland. A post-and-wire gate could be pulled across the road, but lay off to the side for now. A square metal sign hung on the wire nearby: NO TRESPASSING it read, predictably. He drove on.

  The house was a two-story clapboard box, probably a hundred years old, in decent repair. Nothing was falling off it, the roof was in one piece, and the paint wasn’t too badly worn. TV dish on the roof. The barn nearby was in less good shape: unpainted, wooden sides weathered to a pale gray, roof patched with sheets of tin. The remnants of corrals marked off with rotted posts indicated the place hadn’t functioned as a working ranch in a long time. A half-dozen cars and trucks, some of them covered in tarps, some of them in pieces, were parked outside the barn, along with rusted equipment—tractor frames, chain drags, and old-fashioned mowers—long ago grown over with grass and weeds.

  A handful of newer, functional cars and trucks sat outside the house, and Cormac headed there, parking at the end of the row.

  When he got out of the Jeep, he heard the steady pop of small arms fire on the other side of the house.

  The twitch of anxiety in the back of his mind was Amelia’s. A shootout? Here?

  She still had some romantic notions about the West. This wasn’t a shootout. Yes, he heard more than one gun firing—but the shots were controlled, evenly spaced out, steady. He came around to the back of th
e house and saw the firing range, a homemade setup, soda cans and empty beer bottles on straw bales about thirty yards out. Layne’s two sidekicks from the other day were shooting semiautomatic handguns, managing to hit most of what they were aiming at. A couple of other guys, more of Layne’s followers, Cormac guessed, stood by to wait their turn. Layne hung back, leaning on a fence to watch, along with Milo Kuzniak. Kuzniak was flipping the pages of a pocket-sized book, ignoring everyone else.

  Knowing it would be a terrible idea to sneak up on these guys at this particular moment, he scuffed his feet on the dirt path circling the house and called a hello to Layne. One of the sidekicks still spun around, gun raised, a wild look in his eyes. Like he really was going to shoot at intruders. Cormac was expecting this and didn’t even flinch. He was pretty sure that even if he did shoot, the guy was in too much of a panic to actually hit him.

  You are ridiculously confident.

  Smug, that’s the word you’re looking for.

  “Roy, settle down,” Layne ordered before smiling over at Cormac. The sidekicks lowered their weapons and relaxed, but only a notch. Kuzniak quickly shoved the book in a pocket. They kept eyeing Layne and each other, looking for clues about how to act. Cormac’s arrival had disrupted the hierarchy. “Hey, you made it.”

  “Nice place,” Cormac answered. “Family farm?”

  “Someone else’s family,” Layne replied. “I got it cheap in a foreclosure a couple years ago.”

  Which was Layne all over, really.

  “What do you need a place in the middle of nowhere for?” Cormac asked.

  “Oh, this and that. Got my fingers in a lot of pies these days.”

  Cormac could imagine: drugs, guns, protection rackets, moonshining, scamming, general malfeasance. It’s what the guy did in the bad old days, though on a much smaller scale. The barn would make a great warehouse for pot or guns. Might even have a meth lab tucked away.

  He wondered if Mollie was around, and if she knew what her brother was up to. He took a look around—he remembered a couple of cars from the parking lot of the bar, but that didn’t mean any of them were hers. He wasn’t going to ask Layne about her.

  “You want to take a turn? Get in some practice?” Layne craned his head, obviously looking for the holster Cormac wasn’t wearing.

  “No, I’m fine,” Cormac said. There was a pause, everyone looking at him like they were waiting for an explanation. Cormac didn’t give it. He nodded at Milo. “So how’d this work? Did Layne come to you because he knew something was up there, or did you go to him because you needed a backer?”

  As he was sizing Milo up, Milo was sizing up him, standing apart, his gaze dark, focused—a little nerve wracking. A mousy guy like him probably worked on that stare, going for intimidation. Or he might have spent way too much time looking into other worlds. Wasn’t any way to tell how much of a magician he really was until he did something. The guy didn’t carry a gun, and that said something.

  Cormac didn’t have to work for his dark stare, not anymore. If his stare had turned otherworldly over the last few years, it probably didn’t look too much different than the stone-cold stare he’d cultivated before doing time. No one would notice the difference.

  “Oh, I’ve known Milo for a while now. He helps me with a lot of things,” Layne said. “You know anything about protection spells? Charms? Sounds crazy, I know. I thought it did, ’til I saw it work.”

  A wizard on retainer? Was that what the criminal underworld was coming to? “Oh, I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff in my day. I’m willing to give just about anything the benefit of the doubt,” Cormac said.

  “I figure it can’t hurt to cover all my bases.”

  Cormac turned inward a moment, thoughtful: What do you think? Is this guy for real?

  These aren’t my people, Cormac. This isn’t my world. I have no idea.

  “I want to show you something.” Layne walked off and gestured Cormac to follow him, around to the back side of the barn. Kuzniak and one of the heavies followed. So they didn’t trust him, either. That was fine.

  Layne pretended not to notice. “I’ve been having some problems. Usual kind of crap, jokers trying to edge in on my business, scare me off, whatever. Like last night, a couple of punks came through on ATVs and shot up the barn, trying to set it on fire.” He pointed.

  Tire tracks tore up the grass, showing how a couple of vehicles had roared in and swept around before heading back out again. Farther on, Cormac could see part of the barbed wire fence knocked over and broken. The side of the barn had scorch marks on it, streaks of soot, scars from a fire that had been quickly put out. Someone might have thrown a Molotov cocktail at the thing and had it fizzle out. The ancient, dry wood of the barn should have lit like a torch the minute flames hit it. The surrounding grass had only smoldered.

  Magical protections on the property, something to quench fire or repel attack. That, or the barn had been sprayed with fire retardant. Cormac looked at Milo, who was obviously waiting for a reaction. The man quirked a smile as Cormac glanced away. Like he thought he’d won something.

  Cormac ventured, “Looks like they’re mostly trying to annoy you. They wanted to do damage, they’d come out here with more than a couple of bottles of gas.” Cormac had to wonder what Layne had done to his would-be rivals, first.

  “This is more than just a couple of kids playing tricks. This is harassment, and I know Nolan’s paying them so I spend time cleaning up this shit instead of going after him.”

  Cormac recognized the name. Another one of the guys from the movement ten or fifteen years ago, getting back into it apparently. “Jess Nolan? You’ve got some gang war going on with him?”

  Layne rubbed his chin and some of the bravado fell away. “Listen. I could really use your help with this. I’m holding my own, and Milo’s a miracle worker. But Nolan’s operation is tough—”

  “Tougher than your Clanton Gang here?” Layne gave him a confused look, and Cormac shook his head, dismissing the reference.

  “This is serious. They killed one of my guys last month—Roy’s brother. He wasn’t shot—he was torn up. I think he’s got a werewolf working for them. Big guy, really tough. I shot him, I know I did, but the guy walked away like I didn’t even touch him.”

  And that was why Layne was so happy to see a monster hunter show up. Gift from God or something. Cormac frowned. “So he’s a werewolf, that’s what you think? How can you tell?”

  “Trust me, if you met this guy you’d know he isn’t human. I can pay you, Bennett. Take this monster out, I will pay you.” He pulled a stuffed white envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Look, here—half now, half when you take care of it.”

  He’d been planning this out, the speech and everything.

  The smart thing would be to walk away. But that was a very thick envelope. Just a few years ago, this was how Cormac made his living. Layne knew his going rate, and the envelope looked thick enough to hold just that. Time was Cormac would have considered this his duty. His calling. Now, he didn’t think anything at all. He suspected Layne was wrong about this guy being a werewolf in the first place—this didn’t sound like one of Kitty’s pack, and they were right at the edge of her territory. She knew all the werewolves in the region. He wondered if she knew about any lone wolves out this way.

  Cormac ought to just walk away, he knew he should. These people, this life—most of them ended up either in jail or dead. He didn’t owe them anything. He didn’t need them for anything. He should walk, even if it meant not learning a single thing more about the old Milo Kuzniak, or Amy Scanlon’s book of shadows. It wasn’t worth it.

  But what if …

  He couldn’t tell if that was him or Amelia.

  Cormac took the envelope, ran his thumb over the hundreds inside, guessing there was about three or four thousand, and put it in his inside jacket pocket.

  “I’ll check it out,” Cormac said. His mouth was talking but his brain hadn’t quite caught up with him. “Let you kn
ow if the guy really is a werewolf and take care of it for you.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  Layne held out his hand, and Cormac shook on it.

  Chapter 11

  ROGUE WEREWOLF. Add another mystery to the list. He was starting to lose track.

  I’m taking notes for you. Amelia’s wryness made him think she was joking.

  Heading back north after dusk, he stopped for gas station coffee. He had a feeling he was going to need a lot of coffee over the next few days. Jess Nolan, another blast from the past. He wondered if Ben had kept track of any of that crowd and knew what they were up to? But asking would involve telling Ben what he was up to.

  Layne hadn’t told him anything more about his operation and Cormac didn’t ask, because that was how these things worked. He didn’t need to know how many heavies Layne had working for him, whether they were staying in the house with him, or what their plans were. The less he knew, the better, because nobody would point to him as a witness and think he needed to be taken out—or called on to testify. Staying out of a courtroom for the rest of his life was a fine goal.

  Ben complicated things when he called while Cormac was driving back north.

  “You checking up on me?” Cormac said.

  “Just seeing how you’re doing.” The casual statement was laden with subtext, a mountain of concern and curiosity.

  “I got a piece of paper, that’s the only thing that’s changed between last week and this week.”

  “Funny thing how a piece of paper can make a difference. Ask me how I felt when I signed the marriage license. Humor me, Cormac—how are you?”

  I might have taken on a job hunting a werewolf.… “I’m fine. Following up a couple of leads on this thing down in Manitou. It’s gotten complicated.”

  “Complicated how? Anything I can do to help?”

  “I’m trying to solve a hundred-year-old murder, and it looks like the guy left a few loose ends. It’s just complicated. I’m fine.”