Kitty Goes to War (Kitty Norville 8)

I stared at Cormac: Mr. Mysterious, minding his own business, keeping to himself, didn’t need guns anymore badass. I thought I’d known him. Or rather I thought I had a pretty good interpretation of the face he presented to the world. Even after he got out of prison I thought I had a little bit of a bead on him. Not so much, it turned out. And after all I’d been through over the last few years, all the people I’d met—psychics and magicians among them—I thought I knew enough to make some guesses. Maybe not.

“Right. No more dodging. Time for a straight answer. You’re a wizard. You learned how to be a wizard in prison.”

In a moment of sheepishness he ducked, looking away. Scuffed a boot in the snow. Then he studied the sky as if we were discussing the weather, which we sort of were, but still. Tyler and Ben had gone to get Franklin out of the snow, and they stood by him now, watching Cormac, waiting for his answer.

“Cormac?”

“I’m not the wizard,” he said finally. “Amelia Parker is.”

“Amelia Parker—”

About a year before his release, halfway into his sentence, Cormac asked me to find some information on a woman who’d been executed a century earlier at the Colorado Territorial Correction Facility, where he was serving his time. I’d discovered Amelia Parker: an odd woman, British, a world traveler and collector of exotic knowledge, something out of a Victorian adventure story. This just got even more odd.

“Amelia Parker is?” I said. “She’s not dead?”

“Not all of her is,” Cormac said.

“Just so we’re clear, we are talking about a woman who was hanged a hundred years ago,” I said. “She was a wizard. She had powers. And now she’s . . . possessing you? Is that it?”

“I guess you could say I met her ghost while I was on the inside. She needed a body and I needed . . . I don’t know. Company, I guess.”

“So, what, you guys just hooked up? So now you’re some kind of possessed zombie wizard?”

He gave me a look. The “you talk too much” look.

Ben had the most precious, adorable, totally confused look on his face I’d ever seen. His brow was furrowed, his mouth open, like he was trying to decide between screaming at Cormac, laughing him off, or asking if this Amelia woman was hot.

“I think I need to sit down,” Ben said. He looked at the drifts of snow around him, growled a little, and looked back at Cormac. “Are you okay? It’s still you in there, right? You’re not possessed possessed, right?”

“I’m fine,” Cormac said, sounding tired.

“But you have her power? Her knowledge?” I asked, trying to understand. Not that the situation could ever be clear cut or described in a straightforward manner.

“No,” Cormac said. “It’s all her. Sometimes, she’s in charge. That’s all. Don’t ask me to explain it. It’s just one of those things.”

We stood in the cold, glaring at each other, uncertain how to move forward.

Tyler cleared his throat and pointed at the unconscious man in the snow. “We really should get this guy out of here.”

Tyler and Ben hauled Franklin up and brought him to the Humvee, covering him with blankets. He made a noise, so he was still with us.

“I guess we should take him to a hospital,” I said. I didn’t know how we were going to explain this at the emergency room. I couldn’t prove anything that happened. And after everything, I might still be sued for libel.

“Are we done here?” Ben said to Cormac. “Spell broken, no more crazy weather?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s over.”

“We’re not done with this conversation,” I said to him, pointing. “You still have explaining to do.”

He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other.

The Humvee was pretty smashed up, the whole driver’s side crunched in, but it was still drivable if you ignored the disturbing clacking noises in the engine. But that was what this vehicle was designed for, getting beat up and still going, right? I wasn’t looking forward to telling Colonel Stafford about it, though.

Franklin’s Hummer started up, but the noises it made sounded pretty sickly as well. We pulled it over to the curb and left it.

Cormac helped with that much. He also patted down Franklin and cleaned out all the charms and amulets from his pockets. He must have found a dozen of them. The look he gave me said he wasn’t going to explain what he found. But I couldn’t argue—Franklin was powerless now.

“I’ll catch up with you later, then,” Cormac said, waving himself off. He went to his Jeep and drove away, just like that.