“Is she?”
“I…” I paused. “I don’t know. Until a few days ago, believing you were a witch was nutty. Although, if she is, why did she try to kill one of her own?”
Which only brought us back to nutty, unless …
“She’s been in a mental health facility for a long time. According to her now-dead caseworker, she’s escaped several times in the past few months, and no one knows how.”
Had it been magic? Maybe.
“A crazy woman on a mission would be the perfect weapon.” Edward lifted one bushy white eyebrow. “I have seen such things before.”
“You’ve seen everything before,” Cassandra said. “Is Dr. Reitman still in town?”
“He took the evidence back to Madison.”
“He’s from Madison?” Raye asked.
“The UW has the largest veterinary college in Wisconsin.”
“Did he say if he belonged to the coven there?”
“He does, and he was going to ask about a coven near here, but his priestess had been—” I paused, blinked. “She was killed. Did you know about that?”
Raye and Bobby exchanged glances with Franklin and Cassandra. Together, they nodded.
“Can you call him?” Franklin asked.
I was already dialing my phone. It was early yet. Jeremy shouldn’t be in class, but the phone rang so many times I was expecting voice mail when he answered.
“Becca! I was just going to call you.”
“Great.” My voice sounded both too cheery and kind of stiff.
“Something wrong?”
“Beyond the animal mutilations?” My lips were poised to say “yes.” But Raye started shaking her head like Moose after he’d gone for a swim, and instead I said, “I was wondering if you’d found anything yet?”
“I haven’t. The evidence is not in good shape.”
“Do you have any idea who might brand and burn sacrifices?”
Now Raye nodded, encouragingly. I must be on the right track.
“I don’t,” Jeremy said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Raye waved to get my attention, then mouthed: “Coven.”
“Were you able to find out if there’s a coven in my area?”
“I wasn’t.”
I shook my head, and everyone frowned.
“My coven has been thrown into a bit of an uproar,” Jeremy continued.
“I can imagine.”
Franklin held up a sheet of paper, on which he’d written: Is there a natural altar near here?
I repeated the question into the phone.
“Not that I know of.”
I shook my head again, and the FBI agent crumpled the paper in his fist.
“That’s the kind of thing local witches would know,” Jeremy continued.
“I suppose so. Well, thanks.”
I disconnected. It wasn’t until Raye said my name that I realized I was standing there frowning at the phone in my hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I shoved the phone into my back pocket. “He said he’d never heard of branding and burning sacrifices. But being a witch, wouldn’t he know about the Venatores Mali?”
“Considering Roland died in the seventeenth century, not necessarily,” Raye said.
“Wasn’t his high priestess branded?”
“Those details aren’t common knowledge,” Bobby said. “Which was why it took me so long to connect the dots among all the cases. I thought I was tracking a serial killer—”
“It was a serial killer,” Raye interrupted. “Witches are people too.”
He laced their fingers together. “The brand and the burnings were the only link between the bodies. And a lot of the bodies were burned so badly, the brand wasn’t a certainty. We didn’t find the connection until we started searching for burned witches. Not easy since being a witch still isn’t something people advertise.”
“How did you figure it out?” I asked.
“One of the victims didn’t die right away.” He swallowed, and Raye’s fingers tightened around his. “She told me about the Venatores Mali. From there it was all downhill.”
“How did the FBI get involved?” I asked.
“It’s a long story,” Franklin said. “Short version, anything weird gets passed by me.”
“Weird is awful wide.”
“I’ve become pretty good at separating normal-weird from weird-weird.”
Sadly, that made sense.
“It bugs me that whoever attacked you tried to smother you,” Raye said.
“Me too,” I muttered.
“Mistress June’s weapon of choice is the athame of Roland McHugh,” Bobby said. “I’ve never known her to use anything else.”
“What’s an athame?” I asked.
“Double-edged ritual knife,” Raye answered. “Used by a fire witch to cut herbs, draw the sacred circle. Roland’s is squiggly.” She made the sign of an S in the air. “He carved his snarling-wolf symbol into the hilt.”
“If an athame is a witch’s instrument, why did McHugh have one?”