Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson 13)

“You said that there were other witches missing?” Adam asked.

She nodded. “We think that the first was Ruben Gresham. He disappeared a few weeks ago. He was a white witch with a little more power than most men, from an old family that has a reputation for producing a few male witches every generation. I didn’t know him—he vanished before I moved here. He wasn’t a member of the coven, exactly, more of a loner. But he had a few contacts there. Maybe he got scared and just left.” Her voice grew darker. “We white witches know how to run.”

“Yes,” I said.

That seemed to be what she needed. When she continued, her voice was steadier. “But if Ruben ran, he left everything behind, told no one, and knocked over his dining room table in the process. That was about four weeks ago. We called his family—one of my group is a cousin of sorts. They came and cleaned out his apartment, but none of them had heard from him. Not that they admitted to, anyway. Probably if it weren’t for the other two, no one would have thought much about his disappearance.”

“White witches don’t file missing persons reports,” George said. “If one of their people has reason to run, they don’t want to have the police—or anyone else—searching for them.”

“He’s right,” Geena said. “There might be more. These are the ones that no one thought would run. The third witch was Millie Sawyer.”

Adam stiffened. “I know her. About eighty years old? Lives in West Richland near the pizza place? Elizaveta brought her in for some work once.” He glanced at me. “Back when I was still married to Christy.”

“Nearer to ninety according to what I was told,” Geena said. “She didn’t get out much, but some of my coven would go play bridge with her on Sundays. Two weeks ago, they found her door broken and no sign of Millie. Like Ruben, she didn’t seem to have packed up and gone anywhere. Her car was still in the garage.”

Adam looked at George. “Those are the three witches who disappeared. You sounded like something else is happening, too.”

“Yes.” It was Geena who answered. “I don’t have a real name for this one. Sarina, she called herself. S-A-R-I-N-A but pronounced like the title. She pretended to be the reincarnation of a Russian Czarina—”

I couldn’t help my snort.

Geena smiled briefly. “I’d have been more inclined to believe it if she’d said she was the reincarnation of a chambermaid or cook myself. Anyway, Sarina does—did—readings, virtual and in person, in a room she rented in the upstairs of an antiques store in downtown Kennewick owned by another witch.”

She wrinkled her nose as if she didn’t approve of the store owner.

“On Monday, one of Sarina’s regular customers told the store owner, Helena, that the door to the reading room was locked. The owner sent the customer off and went upstairs to check for herself.”

Geena pulled out her phone, opened the photo gallery, and handed it to Adam. “Helena—who is a gray witch—texted the leader of our coven, sent her the photos, told her to be careful, and said she was leaving for a while.”

I leaned over his shoulder so I could see, too.

There were a series of photos. It took four of them to understand what we were looking at because the photos had been taken too close: a human body sliced up by something sharp. There was a pattern to the cuts, which were evenly spaced, but I couldn’t quite see it.

“Why hasn’t this been in the news?” asked Adam with a frown.

“No time,” George said. “Geena took me by the store. There’s a ‘Closed until further notice’ sign in the window, and the door is bolted. I thought about breaking in, but I called the police instead—about an hour ago.”

I raised my eyebrows. George was “the police.”

He gave me a faint smile. “I called the Kennewick police.”

That was an interesting thing for him to do. The more usual thing was for us to cover up crimes we were sure only involved the preternatural community. Those were too dangerous for human law enforcement.

“Was the body still there?” asked Adam.

George nodded. “I was surprised about that.”

“Helena must have been seriously spooked to leave the corpse,” Geena said. “For a gray witch, a murder victim...” She hesitated.

“Christmas and birthday present all in one?” I suggested.

She nodded. “As long as Helena wasn’t the killer—and I don’t think she was—such a body would be the source of spell components, even if it wasn’t fresh enough to supply magical energy.”

“Do you mind if I send the photos to myself?” Adam asked, still thumbing the images back and forth.

“No,” she said. “Of course. You should have them.” She grimaced. “Ugly things.”

“I’m putting my number in your contacts, too,” Adam said as he tapped on her phone. “Feel free to call me if you need us.”