Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 55

WE STOOD IN front of a modest suburban house in a street full of other modest suburban houses. There were enough streetlights that we had a good view even in the dark. People forget that Las Vegas's famous Strip with its casinos, shows, and bright lights is only a small part of the city. Other than the fact that the house was set in a yard that ran high to rocks, sand, and native desert plants, it could have been one of a million housing developments anywhere in the country.

Most of the other houses had grass and flowers, as if they were trying to pretend they didn't live in the desert. The day's heat was browning the grass and flowers nicely. They must have a limit on how much they can water, because I've seen yards in deserts as green as a golf course. These yards looked sad and tired in the cooling dark. It was still hot, but had the promise that as the night wore on it would get cooler.

"A high priestess lives here?" Bernardo said.

"According to the phone book," I said.

He came around the car to stand on the sidewalk beside us. "It looks so... ordinary."

"What did you expect, Halloween decorations in August?"

He had the grace to look embarrassed. "I guess I did."

Edward walked to the back of the car and opened it. He reached into his own bag of tricks and got out one of the U.S. Marshal windbreakers.

"It's too hot for that," I said.

He looked at me. "We're armed to the teeth, and it's all visible. Would you let us in your house if you weren't sure we were cops? But I am running low on them. Someone keeps getting them all bloody."

"Sorry about that."

I tapped my badge on its lanyard around my neck. It was what I wore in St. Louis when the heat was too hot for a jacket. "See?" I said. "I'm legal."

"You look more harmless than we do," Edward said, and started handing out jackets to the other men.

Bernardo took his without comment and just slipped it on, pulling his braid out of the back with a practiced flip. Some gestures are not about being a girl or a boy, but just how long your hair is.

Olaf had his badge on a lanyard around his neck, too. It bugged me that we'd both done it, but where else are you gonna put a badge when you're wearing a T-shirt? I did have one of the clips and had put the badge on my backpack a couple of times, but I'd run into situations where I took off the backpack, and got separated from it and my badge. I had the badge on my belt by the Browning, because you always want to flash a badge when you flash a gun. Just good survival skills, and saves the other cops from being called by some panicked civilian who spotted it. You want your badge in the middle of a fight with police and bad guys. It helps the police not shoot you. Yeah, being a girl and looking so uncop helped the good guys know what I looked like, but accidents happen when you're drowning in adrenaline. Badge visible, at least the accident wouldn't be my fault.

Edward clipped his badge to his clothes so that he'd be doubly visible, and Bernardo followed suit. There were still moments when Edward could make me feel like the rookie. I wondered if there'd ever come a time when I truly believed we were equal. Probably not.

I wasn't really a fan of desert landscaping, but someone with an eye for it had arranged the cacti, grass, and rocks so that everything flowed. It gave the illusion of water, dry water, flowing in the shape and color of stone and plant.

"Nice," Bernardo said.

"What?" I asked.

"The garden, the patterns-nice."

I looked up at him and had to give him a point for noticing.

"It's just rocks and plants," Olaf said.

I took a breath to say something, but Edward interrupted. "We're not here to admire her gardening. We're here to talk to her about a murdered parishioner of hers."

"I don't think they call them parishioners," Bernardo said.

Edward gave him a look, and Bernardo spread his hands as if to say, Sorry. Why was Edward being so tense all of a sudden?

I took a step toward him, and suddenly I felt it, too. It was a faint hum up the skin, down the nerves. I looked around the door and finally found it on the porch. It was a mosaic pentagram in pretty colored stone, set in the concrete of the porch itself. It was charged, as in spell charged.

I touched Edward's arm. "You might want to step off the welcome mat."

He glanced at me, then where I was pointing. He didn't argue, just stepped a little to one side. A visible tension lifted in the set of his shoulders. Maybe Edward only thought he couldn't sense things. Being a little psychic would explain how he'd managed to stay alive all these years while hunting preternatural creepy-crawlies.

"I didn't see it," he said, "and I was looking."

"I didn't see it until you acted too tense," I said.

"She's good," he said, as he rang the doorbell.

I nodded.

Olaf was looking at both of us, as if he didn't know what the hell had just happened. Bernardo said, "A hex sign on the porch. Step around it."

"It's not a hex sign," I had time to say before the door opened.

A tall man answered the door. His dark hair was shaved close, and his eyes were dark and not happy to see us. "What do you want?"

Edward slid instantly into Ted's good-ol'-boy persona. You'd think I'd get used to how easily he became someone else, but it still creeped me.

"U.S. Marshal Ted Forrester; we called ahead to make sure Ms. Billings would be home. Or, rather, Marshal Anita Blake called ahead." He grinned as he said it and just exuded charm. Not that slimy charm that some men do, but that hail-fellow-well-met kind of energy. I knew some people who did it naturally, but Edward was the first person I'd known who could turn it on and off like a switch. It always made me wonder if long before the army got hold of him, he'd been more like Ted. Which sounded weird, since Ted was him, but the question still seemed worth poking at.

The man glanced at Edward's ID, then looked past him at us. "Who are they?"

I held up my badge on its lanyard so it was even more visible. "Marshal Anita Blake; I did call and talk to Ms. Billings."

Bernardo said, in a voice as cheerful and well meaning as Ted's, "U.S. Marshal Bernardo Spotted Horse."

Olaf sort of growled behind us all. "Otto Jeffries, U.S. Marshal." He held up his badge so the man could see it over everyone's shoulders. Bernardo did the same.

A woman's voice called from deeper in the house, "Michael, let them in."

The man, Michael presumably, scowled at us but unlatched the screen door. But before he let us cross the threshold, he spoke in a low voice. "Don't upset her."

"We'll do our best not to, sir," Edward said in his Ted voice. We went in through the door, but there was something about Michael at my back that made me turn so I could keep him in my peripheral vision. With everyone inside, I could put him at a little over six feet, which put him taller than Bernardo but shorter than Olaf. I had a moment as we all bunched into the foyer to see just how much smaller Edward was than the other men. It was always hard to remember that Edward wasn't that tall, at five foot eight. He was just one of those people who seemed taller than he was; sometimes physical height isn't what tall is about.

The living room was probably as big a disappointment to Bernardo as the outside had been because it was a typical room. It had a couch and a couple of chairs and was painted in a light and cheerful blue, with hints of a pinkish orange in the cushions and some of the knickknacks. There was tea set out on the long coffee table, with enough cups for everyone. I hadn't told her how many of us were coming, but there they sat, four cups. Psychics, ya gotta love 'em.

Phoebe Billings sat there, her eyes a little red from crying, but her smile serene and sort of knowing. My mentor Marianne had a smile like that. It meant she knew something I needed to know, or was watching me work through a lesson that I needed to learn very badly, but I was being stubborn. Witches who are also counselors are very big on you coming to your realizations in your own time, just in case rushing you would somehow damage your karmic lesson. Yes, Marianne drove me nuts sometimes with the lack of direction, but since one of the things she thought I needed to work on was patience, it was all good for me. Irritating, but good, so she said. I found it mostly irritating.

"Won't you sit down. The tea is hot."

Edward sat down on the couch beside her, still smiling his Ted smile, but it was more sympathetic now. "I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Billings."

"Phoebe, please."

"Phoebe, and I'm Ted; this is Anita, Bernardo, and Otto."

Michael had taken up a post near her, one hand on the other wrist. I knew a bodyguard pose when I saw it. He was either her priest or her black dog-though most covens didn't have one of the latter anymore. The covens that still had it as an office usually had two. They were bodyguards and did protection detail magically when the coven did work. Most of their work was of a spiritually protective nature, but once upon a time, the black dogs had hunted bogeys that were more flesh and less spirit. Michael had the feel of someone who could do both.

Phoebe looked from one to the other of us, then finally came back to Ted. "What do you want to know, Marshals?" There was the slightest of hesitation before she called us by our titles.

She poured tea into our cups. She put sugar in two, and left two plain. Then she handed them to Michael and directed where they should go.

Edward took his tea, as did the others. I got mine last. Neither she nor Michael got cups. I had absolutely no reason to mistrust Phoebe Billings, but unless she drank the tea, I wasn't touching it. Just because you're a witch doesn't mean you're a good witch.

She smiled at us all as we sat with our untouched cups, as if we'd done exactly what she'd known we would do. "Randy wouldn't have taken the tea, either," she said. "Police, you're all so suspicious." She dabbed at her eyes and gave a ladylike sniff.

"Then why did you give us the tea if you knew we wouldn't drink it?" I said.

"Call it a test."

"A test of what?" I asked, and I must have sounded a little more unfriendly than was called for, because Edward touched my leg, just a nudge to let me know to bring the tone down. Edward was one of the few people I'd take the hint from.

"Ask me again in a few days, and I'll answer your question," she said.

"You know, just because you're Wiccan and psychic doesn't mean you have to be mysterious," I said.

"Ask me your questions," she said, and her voice was sad and too somber to match the bright room we sat in, but then grief comes to every room, no matter what color its painted.

Edward sat back a little more on the couch, giving me the best view of her he could give without changing seats. It let me know he was letting me take the lead, like he'd said in the car. Fine.

"How good at magic was Randall, Randy, Sherman?"

"He was as competent at magic as he was at everything he did," she said. A woman appeared from farther into the house. She carried a tray with another cup and saucer on it. She had the priestess's long brown hair, but the body was slender and younger. I wasn't surprised when Phoebe introduced her as her daughter, Kate.

"Then if Sherman started to say a spell in the middle of a firefight, he'd have a reason to think it would help?"

The woman poured tea for her mother from the pot and handed it to her. "Randy never wasted things, neither ammo, nor physical effort, nor a spell."

She drank from the cup. Bernardo followed suit and did a pretty good job of not leering at the daughter as she walked back toward the kitchen with the empty tray. Edward sipped his tea, too.

Phoebe glanced from Olaf to me. "Still don't trust me?"

"Sorry, but I'm a coffee drinker."

"I do not like tea," Olaf said.

"Kate could fix you some coffee."

"I'd rather just ask our questions, if that's all right." I meant that, but it's also been my experience that tea drinkers make bad coffee.

"Why do you think that Randy was saying a spell during a shooting?"

I glanced at Edward, and he took over. I just wasn't sure how much to tell her. "We can't really share too much information on an ongoing investigation, Phoebe. But we have good reason to think that Randy was saying a spell in the middle of a fight."

"Saying?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Randy was very good; he could have simply thought a blessing in the middle of a fight."

"What kind of spell would he have had to say out loud?" I asked.

She frowned. "Some witches need to speak aloud to help focus; Randy didn't. So if he was chanting aloud, then it was something ritualistic and old. Something he'd memorized, like an old charm. I don't know how much any of you know about our faith, but most ritual is created for the purpose of an individual event. It's a very creative, and fluid, process. When you're talking about set words, then it's more ceremonial magicians then Wiccans."

"But Randy was Wiccan, not a ceremonial magician," I said.

"Correct."

"What would he have known, or thought, to say in the middle of a fight? What would have prompted him to think of an old chant, a memorized piece?"

"If you have a recording of what he said, then I can help, or even some of the words, and I can give you some hint."

I looked at Edward.

"We don't have anything we can let you listen to, Phoebe; I'm sorry." It was neatly done, not that we didn't have a recording but that we couldn't let her listen to it. I'd have just told her we didn't have one, which is why I'd let Edward answer.

She looked away from all of us and spoke in a voice that was shaky. "Is it that awful?"

Shit. But Edward moved in smoothly, even touching her hand. "It's not that, Phoebe. It's just that it's an ongoing investigation, and we have to be cautious what information we let out."

She looked at him from inches away. "You think someone in my coven could be involved?"

"Do you?" he asked, in a voice that was not the least surprised, as if to say, yes, we had suspected it, but we'd let her tell us the truth. I'd have sounded surprised and spooked her.

She looked into his eyes from inches away, and his hand on hers was suddenly more important. I felt the prickle of energy, and knew it had nothing to do with wereanimals or vampires.

He smiled, and pulled back his hand. "Trying to psychically read a police officer without permission is illegal, Phoebe."

"I need to know more than you're telling me to answer your questions."

"How can you be sure of that?" he asked, with a smile.

She smiled and put her teacup on the coffee table beside the rest. "I'm psychic, remember. I have information that you need, but I don't know what it is. I only know that if you ask the right question, I'll tell you something important."

I jumped in, "You know psychically."

"Yes."

I turned to the men with me and tried to explain. "Most psychic ability is pretty vague. Phoebe knows she has information that will be important, but there's a question we need to ask to spark that knowledge in her."

"And she knows this, how?" Bernardo asked.

I shrugged. "She couldn't tell you how, and I couldn't either. I've just worked with enough psychics to know that this is as good as the explanation gets sometimes."

Olaf scowled. "That is not an explanation."

I shrugged again. "The best we've got." I turned back to the priestess. "Let's go back to Marshal Forrester's question. Could anyone in your coven be involved?"

She shook her head. "No." It was a very firm no.

I tried again. "Could anyone here in the magical community be involved?"

"How can I answer that? I don't know what spells were used, or why you believe that Randy was trying to say something. Of course, there are bad people in every community, but without more information, I can't tell you whose talents this could have been." She sounded impatient, and I guess I couldn't blame her.

I looked at Edward.

"Do you have a priest's seal of the confessional?"

She smiled. "Yes, the Supreme Court upheld that we are truly priests, so what you tell me is covered under the law."

He looked at Michael's looming figure. "Is he a priest?"

"We are all priests and priestesses if we are called by Goddess," she said. It was a very priestess answer.

I answered for her. "He's her black dog."

Both Phoebe and Michael looked at me, as if I'd done something interesting. "They come here pretending not to know anything about us, but they've checked us out. They're lying."

"Now, Michael, you should know not to jump to conclusions." She turned those gentle brown eyes to me. "Have you checked us out?"

I shook my head. "I swear to you that other than finding out you are Randy Sherman's priestess, no."

"Then how did you know Michael was not my priest?"

I licked my lips and thought about it. How had I known? "There's a bond between most of the priests and priestesses I've met. Either they are a couple, or the magical working as a team just forms a bond. There's no feel of that between you and him. Also, he just screams muscle. The only job in a coven that is all about muscle, either spiritual or physical, is the black dog."

"Most covens don't have them anymore," she said.

I shrugged. "My mentor is into the history of her craft."

"I see the cross, but is it your sign of faith, or merely what the police make you wear?"

"I'm Christian," I said.

She smiled, and it was a little too knowledgeble. "But you find some precepts of the Church limiting."

I fought not to squirm. "I find the Church's attitude toward my own flavor of psychic ability limiting, yes."

"And what is your flavor?"

I started to answer, but Edward made a motion and I stopped. "It doesn't matter what Marshal Blake's gifts are."

I didn't know why Edward didn't want me to share with her, but I trusted his judgment.

Phoebe looked from one to the other of us. "You are very much a partnership."

"We've worked together for years," he said.

She shook her head. "It's more than that." She shook her head as if shaking the thought away. Then she looked back at me, and the eyes were no longer gentle. "Ask your questions, Marshal Blake."

"If Michael leaves the room, then we'll talk more freely," Edward said.

"I will not leave you with them," the big man said.

"They are policemen, like Randy was."

"They have badges," he said, "but they are not policemen like Randy."

"Does my grief make me blind?" she asked him.

His face softened. "I think, it does, my priestess."

"Then tell me what you see, Michael."

He turned dark eyes on us. He pointed at Olaf. "That one's aura is dark, stained by violence and evil things. If you could not feel him at your door, then you are head-blind with grief, Phoebe."

"Then be my eyes, Michael," she said.

He turned to Bernardo. "I don't see any harm in that one, though I wouldn't trust him with my sister."

She smiled. "Handsome men are seldom trustworthy with people's sisters."

He skipped me and went to Edward next. "That one's aura is dark, too, but dark the way Randy's was dark. Dark the way some people that have seen combat are dark. I would not want him at my back, but he means no harm here."

I have to admit that my pulse was up. Michael looked at me, and I fought not to look down but to meet those too-perceptive eyes.

"She is a problem. She is shielding, very tightly. I cannot read much past those shields. But she is powerful, and there is a feel of death to her. I don't know if she brings death, or if death follows her, but it's there, like a scent."

"Destiny lies heavy on some," Phoebe said.

He shook his head. "It's not that." He stared at me, and I felt him pushing at my shields. After what had happened with Sanchez, I did not want my shields down again.

"Stop pushing at my shields, Michael, or we're going to have words."

"Sorry," and he looked embarrassed, "but I don't find many who aren't Wiccan who can shield from me."

"I've been trained by the best," I said.

He glanced at the men with me. "Not by them."

"Never said I learned psychic shielding from the other cops."

"They aren't cops; there's something unfinished, or wilder, about you all. The only other cop I've met who felt close to you was one who had been undercover so long he'd almost become one of the bad guys. He got out, he got the job done, but it changed him. It made him less cop and more criminal."

"You know what they say," I said, "one of the things that makes us good at getting bad guys is that we can think like one."

"Most cops can, but there's a big difference between thinking like one and being one." He studied us all. "The badges are real, but it's like putting a leash on a tiger. It never stops being a tiger."

And that was a little too close to home.