A Barrel of Whiskey - (An Urban Fantasy Whiskey Witches Novel) (9 page)

“Anything out of the ordinary.”

“Okay. Hey, how long you been back?”

“Hours.”

“Oh. Okay. Then, I won’t jump your shit. Unless you weren’t planning on calling until something came up.”

Paige hadn’t thought about calling anyone yet. “Was going to give you call later today. Haven’t settled yet.”

“Stayin’ with Alma?”

“Yup.”

“Swing by for dinner?”

“I’ll let her know.”

“I’ll bring apples.”

“She’ll make pie.”

“This case. What’s special about it? You sound wrecked.”

She was. “Best friend.”

“Oh, shit. Your kind of special? You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. She had a baby two days ago, but Holmes said she was tortured for days.”

“Oh. Yeah. Your kind of shit for sure. Okay. I’ll check for sulfur.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Call ya later if I have results. If not, see you at seven.”

“Yup.” Paige pulled the phone away from her ear as the visual on her phone blinked off.

“Who was that?” Gomez asked.

“Ethel. She’s a lab tech.” Paige’s head pounded. “She’s going to work on the evidence from Heather’s case.”

“What do you want to do?”

Paige scanned the report, but there wasn’t a lot there. “Let’s canvas the scene.” Which she couldn’t do because she was so close to the case. But…she was the only witch and she couldn’t call on Leslie. Or Alma.

“You think you’ll be able to spot something the cops didn’t?” Wrick asked, standing and pulling his suit jacket on. It didn’t make him look any more professional.

“Witch.” Paige headed for the door.

“Shifter,” Dexx offered, following close on her heels.

“Hey,” King called. “Are we all coming?”

“Don’t see why not.” Paige didn’t know what she was doing. She’d never headed a team. She’d been lead investigator before, but
that
was not
this
.

The drive through Dallas didn’t take a lot of time. They were in Heather’s residential neighborhood in no time. She’d had to look up the address in the file. She sucked as a best friend. What kind of best friend didn’t even know where her bestie lived?

Heather’s apartment was on the third floor in the middle of an immense apartment complex. The place was a maze. Paige led the way up the concrete stairs to the door that was taped off.

Gomez moved to the front and opened the door with the key. “Came with the case.”

Paige hadn’t even thought about that. She switched into witch vision, scanning the door for anything her normal eyes could not see. A few smudges like smoke, but nothing definitive.

“If you go into the shifter vision,” Dexx muttered on his way past her, “give me the heads up.”

“I won’t make eye contact.” She wasn’t thinking straight and that was the only warning she could really give him.

He grunted.

In witch vision, she saw the outline of the threshold pulse faintly. It was nearly marred in shadow, likely because the heart-power that the threshold thrived on was no longer beating. She didn’t see physical shapes. No outlines. Her legs found the edge of the sofa right next to the door as she stepped through.

The threshold hummed as she passed through it. “Threshold was untampered.”

“Good to know,” Dexx said.

“What does that mean?” Parris asked, his tone low.

“When you live in a place, you give it power,” Dexx explained, his voice distant as if he was in another room, like an open dining room or a kitchen with a breakfast bar, not on the other side of a wall. “That power flows and protects the door, usually because that’s where we direct our fear. Look at the locks. We lock our front door really well, our back door partially well, and our windows little if at all.”

King pulled a face. “Who doesn’t lock their windows?”

Paige didn’t.

“So that whole Buffy thing?” Wrick asked, his voice to the left but close enough that he could have been in the same room.

“The vampires not being able to enter unless invited?” Dexx grunted and a cupboard door closed. “True enough. Though, we’ve discovered that vampires don’t really need to be invited.”

“They do,” Paige said, continuing to scan the room, “create havoc on the threshold if they enter by force. Anything with magick does.” Or at least she assumed it did. She knew about demons. Everything else? Still really new.

Everything in the apartment was dark, for the most part. A few things gave soft glows. A picture of two women, though in witch vision, Paige couldn’t make out who the people were. A sea shell. An old rooster and hen salt and pepper shaker. An afghan.

“Are you picking up anything?” Paige asked, directing her question to Dexx.

“No.” His voice was closer. “I smell the blood, but it’s hard to pick up anything over that.”

I might be able to help
, Cawli said in Paige’s mind.

Paige shrugged.
Okay. How?

He crept to the front and with his presence came other things like the remembrance of sounds, and smells, and feels. He reached through the ends of her fingers, pushed through her nostrils.
I cannot see this way.

“Dexx, switching to shifter vision.” It’s what they called her half-in, half-out of witch vision.

He grunted. “Heading into the other room. Let me know when you’re done.”

“Roger that.” She focused on her eyes and shifted the focus. The shadows dispersed and became objects. The picture with the faint golden glow was of Heather and Paige on the day they’d graduated college. The sea shell sat on the entertainment center that was covered in dust except for right in front of the X-Box. Lines were drawn in the dust like tracks in a snowstorm. Heather had played the game sometime within a few weeks.

Do you sense anything?
she asked.

Smell that?

She still had a hard time distinguishing his smells. He used her nose, which was insufficient at best as he repeatedly told her. However, he knew odors far better than she did, likely because he actually paid attention where she didn’t. She wanted to know when to take out the trash or when she was close to stepping on fresh dog poop. That’s what her nose was good for.

His, though?

Follow the information I’m giving you
.

He’d tried to give her plenty of knowledge over the span of the last few days, but it was sent on levels she still didn’t understand. She understood the speaking language. What he gave her was more intuitive.

She shook out her shoulders and forced herself to relax. Opening her mind to her sense of smell, she concentrated.

Blood. She didn’t need Cawli to tell her that one. It wasn’t fresh. It was a day old, at least, but there was older blood there as well. Layers of blood on a long time-frame.

Can you help me pin this down?
She asked her spirit animal.

He paused, then shook his head.
Weeks?

That’s not even possible. She was just in the hospital two days ago.

I cannot say for sure, but some of this blood has lost its intensity. We also do not track time the way you do.

Which was something she didn’t quite comprehend. She had a hard time with dates and times as it was, but with Cawli riding shot-gun in her head, that was getting even worse. There were times when she looked down at her phone to catch the time and didn’t even comprehend what it meant.

I would still say it has been weeks. Perhaps only a week and a half.

That’s still not possible.

Then we look for what might be probable.

Paige nodded once to herself and set her shoulders.

Wrick’s aura pulsed a steady blue. A few stray shoots of white light escaped, but for the most part, he remained constant. He searched the living room, maneuvering around the couch and the coffee table. He straightened, the blue in his aura setting off definitions of musculature he didn’t have. “This is where she was held.”

Paige stepped closer, careful not to step in the middle of the dried blood on the pale carpet.

Feces.

She didn’t want to know.

She was held here for days, Paige. She wasn’t allowed to get up.

Paige swallowed hard and took in a ragged breath.
Who would do something like that?

There are many who would.

“What was she tied to?” Paige asked.

Wrick got down on one knee and peered under the belly of the coffee table. “I would say this. Those look like rope markings, as though someone had been tied and struggled.”

Someone. Her best friend. Whom she’d forgotten about.

Tied to the coffee table? She lifted a corner of it. Something else had to have been there to leave Heather unable to break free from the coffee table.

“Anything else?” Paige asked. “Anything that could give us a clue?”

“I’ll keep searching.”

Paige saw nothing in her scan that gave her any indication of identity. This couldn’t be happening. First day back and she landed
this
case? What was the likelihood? Was this Sven? So soon?

No. Sven was an issue, but this didn’t
have
to be him. This could be his henchmen. It could be Oriel. After all,
he’d
been the one to kill the shifter on her first day back in Denver.

Fuck!

Wait.
Pull your head out of your ass
, she said to herself. What if this wasn’t about
her?
What if this was about Heather?

Blinking, Paige refocused, her heart slowing minutely. If this wasn’t about Paige, there would likely be no demon markings. So, she would find what she’d been looking for.

What could Heather be into?

During school, Heather had been curious about witchcraft and what Paige and her family could do, but she’d never been odd. She’d always only ever been a muggle. One of those rare, Catholic-and-still-loves-thy-neighbors muggles. She’d been curious about the Craft, but not fearful. She’d believed Paige when she said her magick didn’t come from the devil because, as Heather said it, she’d looked into Paige’s eyes and saw a human being.

Paige couldn’t see Heather being into demon trouble, unless she was on the opposing side. What about something else—

Opposing side.

Angels.

I might not be able to help with that.

Paige understood.
Use your nose.

What am I looking for?

Anything that smells…wrong.

The others had been talking, but Paige barely heard them. She saw King’s blood red aura pulse as she went around the room methodically grabbing samples. Paige vaguely recalled hearing King say she was going to take more of them now that she knew they had a special lab tech on the case.

Parris was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps in another room with Dexx? She didn’t know. Really didn’t care.

There was something…off.

It’s not an odor.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t something she could see, either.

Sound.

Paige frowned and listened, but all she heard was Wrick talking to King who hmmed to him and nodded occasionally. Parris and Dexx talked quietly on the other side of the wall.

Listen to the tone.

Clear. Crisp. Exactly what she thought she’d hear.

No. Not exactly what you would hear. Step outside.

She followed Cawli’s direction. As soon as she stepped across the door, the sounds of conversation ceased.

What’s going on?

Their voices sound like they’re coming from a tunnel.

A tunnel. Something registered in her mind. All those sleepless nights watching the Science Channel were finally paying off.

Einstein. Time travel. Space continuum.

Paige didn’t pretend to understand even half of it, but those were the puzzle pieces clicking into place.

She took her phone off her belt, checked the time. 3:42. She set it on the concrete outside the door and stepped back into the apartment.

Wrick and King were no longer in the living room. Several bags were carefully stashed inside the evidence case on the dining room table. Dexx stood with his back to the front door, his saber toothed cat’s head raised like a wisp of smoke above him.

Paige raised her eyebrow and stepped back outside the door to retrieve her phone.

3:18.

She stepped back inside only to nearly collide into the team as they were leaving.

Dexx threw up his hands in front of his face. “Sight!”

“I never turned it off.”

The thing she discovered in Nederland was that if she was in what they now called shifter vision, the spirit animal of the shapeshifter would react, moving forward and taking control of the human body without having to shift. That worked well for most shifters.

But Dexx was different. He was new and his animal was considerably bigger than most. He was bigger than the bear and the moose combined.

“We’re done.” King raised the evidence case. “I don’t know what you were doing outside for so long, but we’re done in here.”

“What time is it?” Paige asked.

“Check your own phone.”

Paige raised her eyebrow. “Humor me.”

Parris pulled out his phone and looked up at her with his pale eyes. “It’s almost four o’clock.”

Paige held up her phone which wouldn’t unlock. “I stepped outside for a few seconds. Left my phone outside, came back in, then went back out.”

“We did see that,” Wrick said.

Dexx sighed, his back turned. “Vision?”

“Keeping it on.” Paige scanned the room and took a step toward the dining room. “That all happened in a matter of seconds.”

“We’ve been at this for almost forty-five minutes, Paige.”

She shook her head. “Step outside and check your phone. Tell me what time it is.”

Dexx huffed and stepped out the door.

He appeared to be frozen in time.

Gomez rubbed her chin, her mouth and eyes open as her orange aura flared.

Paige walked into the small hallway that led to the bathroom and the single bedroom. Something tingled along her skin as she entered the bedroom. She looked down at her phone. It leapt to 3:29.

Walking back into the living room, she discovered the team standing at the front door.