Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson 11)

“Did you, your wife, or your children have any trouble with anyone lately?” I asked. “With a stranger, probably.” Certainly.

There were, I understood, several kinds of practitioners who could create zombies. But this was witchcraft. As soon as I touched the first goat, I could feel the black magic humming in my bones and turning my stomach.

Leaving aside the black magic—because there were no black-magic witches in the Tri-Cities—no local witches would have done anything like it. They were too afraid of Elizaveta and her family. And we didn’t, to my knowledge, have anyone with this kind of power except for Elizaveta herself. Zombies took serious mojo—I knew that much.

But I couldn’t explain our local witch population to Salas or the police; I didn’t want to cause anyone to go out hunting witches. That was Elizaveta’s job.

Salas shook his head. He called a question to his wife, who shook her head. “A moment,” he said. “I will ask my son.”

“He served this country for eight years,” the blond deputy (presumably Jimmy) told us, a snap in his voice. “And he has to hide when the police come to call?”

“No,” I said. “Because there are deputies like you here.”

Salas returned to the porch, shaking his head. “No. No unusual arguments. But Santiago, my son, he says there was a lady who stopped yesterday morning while he was feeding his goats. She wanted to buy them all, all twenty, but he didn’t like her so he told her they were not for sale. He stayed inside the pen while she talked—the way he said it makes me think that maybe she wanted him to come out to her car. He told me that she sounded like one of my friends from the Corps—Porter. Porter is from Georgia.”

Southern was how the witch at Elizaveta’s sounded. I wondered if they were the same witch.

Twenty goats she couldn’t buy, twenty goats that were killed and turned into zombies. Then I had a terrible thought. If she could take the goats, why couldn’t she take the boy? And what did she need with twenty zombie goats? She didn’t even take them with her. That sounded like spite to me.

I looked at the pen that was next to the house. It was the side farthest from the house where the fence was torn open. That section of fence wasn’t visible from the road. “Did the goats damage the pen, or did that happen earlier?”

“Whoever killed the goats cut open the pen,” Salas said. “The goats were dead, so we didn’t bother to repair it.”

I wondered if the witch who had killed them had returned later that night and reanimated them, or if there was a time component. That the goats had been spelled as they died, but it had taken a few hours for them to turn to zombies.

Today that didn’t matter, but I would find out. I didn’t know as much about witches or zombies as I obviously should.

Had she taken the goats because she hadn’t been able to persuade Santiago to come to her? Consent had magical implications for most of the magic-using folk; I didn’t know how it played for witches.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that your son was smart to stay in the pen when the lady came by.”

If the witch had taken the goats, surely she would have been able to walk in and take the boy if she had wanted to. But maybe, I thought, not in the middle of the day. If Salas’s son had come out of the pen and up to her car, she could have taken him then and there with no one thinking anything of it.

Maybe the goats had been second choice.

“Tell him—Santiago? Tell Santiago that if he sees her again, he should go inside the house, lock the doors, and call the number on that card.”

His eyes narrowed and his bearing changed. It was like he had put on the same invisible cloak of readiness that Adam carried around all of the time. Deputy Jimmy had that, too. It was a matter of posture, mostly—head up, shoulders back—but also of intensity. Had Salas looked like that when I’d driven up, I’d have picked him for ex-military of some sort right off the bat.

“You think she is the one who did this? A bruja?”

I shrugged. “A witch did this, I can smell it. I don’t know who that witch was.”

Though for some reason her scent twigged my memory. As if I might not have scented her before, but maybe something about her. Irritating, but until my subconscious worked it through, there was no use trying to figure out what the connection was. When I met her, maybe I would figure it out. I had a feeling I was going to get a chance to do that—predators don’t usually just wander off after they make a bold move on another predator’s territory.

“Maybe,” I said carefully, “the lady who talked to your son was just someone fascinated with your dwarf goats. But she made him uneasy. I’d pay attention to that.”

“I have noticed that people who listen to their instincts live longer,” Salas agreed.

* * *

• • •

There were three messages on my phone when I got into the car. The first was from someone who wanted to talk to me about my credit card. It was a scam and I erased it.

The second was from Adam.

“Got your messages, sweetheart,” he said. “I called Darryl, who is on his way to Elizaveta’s. I can meet him there if I hurry. Good luck with the zombie miniature goats.”

The third one was from my mother.

“I haven’t heard from you in a month,” she said. “Are you alive?” And she hung up.

Mary Jo, who’d been checking her own phone, snorted.

My phone rang while I was texting yes to Mom. I checked the number and smiled.

“Hey, Adam. You missed out on the miniature zombie goat hunt.”

“About those zombies,” he said, his voice solemn. “You have a better nose for magic than any of us. Do you think you could pick between one practitioner’s magic and another’s?”

“Like could I compare the zombie goat magic to whatever you’ve found at Elizaveta’s?” I asked. “There are a lot of witches practicing in Elizaveta’s house. That will make it hard. But I would recognize the scent of the witch who made the zombies. I don’t know that I would recognize the feel of her magic. Maybe?”

“When a witch is dead, their magic dies, too, right?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Can’t you ask any of Elizaveta’s people?”

“No,” he said with finality.

I inhaled. “Adam?”

“Everyone at Elizaveta’s home is dead,” he said.

“How many?” I asked.

“As far as we can tell, everyone in Elizaveta’s family,” he said. “We found fourteen bodies. I’m waiting for Elizaveta to confirm that.”