I raised startled eyes to hers and she nodded. “Your Rasha may not have understood your coughing fit, but I did. Lilith is not the one you seek.”
“Then who is? Your leads aren’t panning out but someone has to know something about the bindings. I’m a witch. Introduce me. Get me into the community so I can actively investigate.”
“Give me a week to get through this final round of chemo. If I haven’t found anything then I’ll bring you in.”
“Like a witch debutante. I’ll start shopping for my gown.”
“You’re impossible.”
Sweet Tooth 911. Orwell had texted me.
I tossed the azalea sprig onto her bed. “I have to go.”
“Nava.”
I waved at Gelman over my shoulder.
“Nava.” More insistently.
I turned and she held up the sprig. A single green bud had formed. She tossed it to me. “You’re a witch. And probably a damn good one with enough training. But more importantly, you really are part of our group, and we’re going to find whoever is betraying us.”
Us. I tucked the precious bud behind my ear. “Yeah. We are.”
“Are we sure this was Sweet Tooth?” I said to Rohan and Drio. I’d texted them the second I’d left Gelman’s room and they’d gotten there first.
“They fucked themselves to death.” Drio moved away from the rooftop ledge so I could take his place. He handed me the camera. I knelt down to get the best angle, loose rocks digging into my bare knees, and peered through the telephoto lens. “Holy hell. They look like they were torn apart by wild animals.”
The crime scene bedroom on the sixth floor of the building across from the roof I stood on was destroyed. This wasn’t an overturned lamp or shit knocked off shelves during a bout of crazed sex with red scratch marks and a couple of hickeys. This was every photo and stick of furniture smashed, holes in the plaster with blood smeared at the edges, and–
“Fuck me!” I shoved the camera at Drio. “She’s got a chair leg stuffed up her vagina. She’s impaled on it.”
“To be fair, his dick broke off, so…” Rohan said.
I grabbed the camera back.
“It’s in the far corner,” Ro said.
I swung the lens over. “That’s not a lumpy sock?”
The cops and the coroner left the room, missing the appearance of the oshk. The one with the female face. She flowed over to stand directly over the victims for a moment, her expression downcast, and blinked out.
“Visitor.” I told them about the oshk.
Drio packed up the camera case. “That thing needs a tracking chip.”
“Oh. What about a location spell?” I tossed him the lens cap that had fallen on the ground.
“Rasha can’t do those,” Rohan said.
Drio snickered. “You’d know. The Passover dinner,” he told me. “But he’s right. It’s not something you cast. It’s something witches do and I’m not bringing any witches into this.”
“Too late,” I said. “Ta da!” I threw jazz hands, giving him my brightest smile.
Drio gave me his Torture Time smile in response and blurred out. Ro jumped in front of me with a winded omph as he collided with Drio, who flickered into place.
Ro grabbed Drio’s arm, wrenching it up behind his back. “Not happening.”
Double checking that Rohan had Drio secured and was calming him down from the bombshell I’d dropped, I moved to the far end of the rooftop and phoned Dr. Gelman to ask what I needed to do.
Gelman explained that location spells were misnamed because there wasn’t a spell, it was elimination magic. Removing the distance between a single item and its source, like a hair and a person’s head or a prized possession and the owner. It didn’t work on compounds, so I couldn’t use the Sweet Tooth. However, if the oshk had left any secretion behind in the crime scene room, that would work.
“What do I do with it?” I said.
“You ask Sienna really nicely. I’m going in to chemo and you can’t pull this off without training.”
“I portalled. Isn’t this the same idea?”
“You portalled under extreme stress. Try it now and get back to me. Besides, this may be the same idea, but it’s far more complicated to execute. Sienna’s still on duty. Bribes work. She likes sambuca.” Gelman hung up.
“Ack!”
Drio had flash stepped to stand directly in front of me.
I fumbled my phone.
“You’re more powerful than me?” he said.
I bounced on the balls of my feet. “You gonna try and take me, suckah?”
He chucked me under the chin again. This was starting to be our thing. “Training is going to be fun.”
“You’re a weird puppy. You know that, right? Can you zip on over to the crime scene and check for oshk goo? You got gloves? Something to collect it in?”
Drio rummaged in the camera bag, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and dumped a thin filter out of its case. He flashed out.
And then there were two.
I fiddled with the flower behind my ear. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you first about Gelman confirming me as witch.”
Rohan jammed his hands in pockets and shrugged. “That’s the least of the shit between us.”
My lack of a protest lasted a second too long. He gave a bitter laugh and turned away. Only a few feet separated us physically. Emotionally, we were across a chasm I didn’t know how to breach.
My phone rang. It was my mom and I debated ignoring the call but it couldn’t be worse than this pained silence. “Hi, Mom.”
“Can you come over?”
I gripped the phone. “Did something happen?”
“No. Why would you ask that?”
It’s not like you call me for social visits. “No reason.”
Drio returned and shook his head. Damn. No secretion and no bribing Sienna necessary.
“I can come now.” I stuffed my phone into my pink capris. “Gotta go.”
Drio ignored me and Rohan nodded. There was no goodbye kiss.
I stewed on that fact for the entire drive over to my parents.
A charred, slightly sour smell hit me when I unlocked the front door. My knotted-up stomach lurched because the one time Ari had let the coffee burn off, Mom had torn a strip off him. My ass nothing was wrong.
I turned off the coffee maker and put the carafe in the sink to cool. “Mom?”
No answer. I ran through the house, searching, my panic escalating, and images of her dead on the floor whipping through my thoughts.
She was sitting at her desk in her study, her back to me.
“Mom? Mom. Shana!” I shook her shoulder.
She blinked at me. “You got here quickly.”
“You could have burned the house down. The coffee maker.” I clarified at her blank stare.
“Oh.” She stood up, but I pushed her back down.
“It’s handled. Thanks for giving me a heart attack.” I peered at her screen to see what had had her so engrossed. It was open to a search on witchcraft in Judea. “You know you can’t publish anything on that, right?