Black Wings, Gray Skies (Black Hat Bureau 4)

Perhaps sensing he was seconds away from tasting my cast iron displeasure, he held one hand in front of his face as a shield then cracked the fridge and passed me a foam bucket marked as local oysters.

“You don’t get hangry. You get mean. Does that make you hean? Mangry?”

“I know you keep your signed photo of Giada in the bottom of your favorite wig box.”

Giada De Laurentiis, famous chef/TV personality, and current object of Clay’s culinary obsession.

“Leave Giada out of this.” His gaze darted toward his room. “It was four or five days ago, okay?”

“Thank you.” I found an oyster knife in a drawer and handed it to him along with a towel. “What else?”

“They ran to get help, but when they came back, the body was gone.”

“Why didn’t they…?” I caught up to what he had been saying. “They were naked, so no phones.”

“No phones, so no pictures. No one wanted to stand watch, so they all ran back to their vehicles.”

“What I’m hearing is, there’s no proof any of this happened the way they claim or even at all.”

The best we could hope for was a record of the call to the local PD, which the Vandenburghs could verify for us. A boozy firsthand account without evidence didn’t amount to much but was better than nothing.

“The faux witches found one item to mark where the body had been.” He ducked into the living room then returned with a paper bag he crinkled for effect. “The police told them it was nothing. A kid probably lost it in the sand.” He placed the evidence on the counter, thankfully far from the food. “Most of them decided they had watched Jaws one too many times and must have tripped over their own feet.”

“Tequila,” I murmured, not without sympathy.

“But Glinda couldn’t let it go, and she asked to keep it.”

I had a bad feeling what I would see when I looked in that bag, and I wasn’t proven wrong.

A shoe.

A girl’s shoe.

A girl’s shoe last worn by a boy.

“It’s a match for the first victim.” I recognized the characters. I was starting to think I would never forget them. A side effect of conscience? “Luke Reynolds vanished at night. His blood was reported in the alley the next morning. Let’s say the killer has a secure location for casting the unraveling spell. The skin must cure prior to use, so she brought Luke’s body to Folly Beach for easy disposal while she waited. Then she wore the skin to lure in the next victim. Rinse and repeat.”

“The previous victim luring the next to their death. That’s dark.”

“That’s the timeline Asa and I hashed out, but if your source is telling the truth, then we got it wrong somewhere. There’s no way they wouldn’t notice the corpse was missing its skin.”

“Taunting humans by planting evidence? Or us?” Clay sighed. “Either way, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” I decided. “See what we see.”

After he filled in a few other details I could have lived without, mostly involving his new friends and their spectacular figures, I described our run-in with Jilo and supervised his shucking.

“I’ll take naked witchy wannabes over a spiralized cat any day.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “Did you learn anything else?”

“They’re the only openly practicing coven in the city.” He chuckled. “They were very proud of that.”

“Goddess bless,” I muttered. “What a mess.”

“What boo hags practice falls firmly within the dark arts realm, no question, but it’s got a familiar vibe.” He helped me dredge the oysters in a flour, cornmeal, and herb mix. “Do you think they’re related to black witches? Maybe they branched off along the evolutionary line.”

“I was wondering that too.” I checked the temperature on my oil. “What are you thinking?”