Witch's Bell Book One (4 page)

“
Right, of course you do. But
are we actually going to go inside? Ben's already gone
ahead.”

Ebony didn't move, she just jutted out
her jaw a little, and patted down the flare in her dress. She
really didn't want to go inside, not that she would ever admit that
to anyone, especially not the blustering Detective Nate.

Theft, illegal summoning,
family curses
– Ebony had seen, and was comfortable, with most of the
witch work she received from the police department. She'd swan in
with her golden earrings glittering in the sun, survey the crime
scene, joke with the on-duty officers, steal their coffee, and
usually solve the crime within the day.

Murders were another thing, though.
She'd only seen two before, and both times she'd had to find an
excuse to run into the bathroom to throw up.

“
You can't rush into these
things,” she eventually offered, staring determinedly up at the
building, “you have to be careful,” she was still patting down her
skirt, “pet,” she added as an afterthought.

Nate arched an eyebrow, his
expression teetering on the edge of annoyance.
“Right, only thing is, the
murder is in there,” he pointed at the door to the building. “And
unless you think the outside of the building committed the crime,
we're really going to have to go inside to get the full story. Oh,
and another thing,” he ducked under the police tape and made for
the stairs, “I'm not your pet, dear,” he called out over his
shoulder.

Ebony bit her lip from annoyance. Who
did this guy think he was? Barely a half-hour ago he was staring at
her all trout-lipped as her magical bookstore tried to kill him.
Now he was all gung-ho to go and check out his first
magical-murder. He should still be whimpering, Ebony decided
firmly, still shaking in his shiny shoes at the mere thought that
witches exist.

“
Whatever,” she snapped, “rookie
then.” Ebony finally ducked under the police tape, ignoring the
shiver that shot down her spine. “You won't be so ballsy when you
see it,” she added to herself.

“
Hey there, Eb,” the cop at the
door nodded to Ebony as she walked up the steps. “How's that store
of yours?”

“
Howdy, Jeb,” Ebony sauntered up
to the man, gave him a wink, and deftly snatched the Styrofoam cup
from his hands, “store's fine. How's the wife?”

“
Gees, Eb, you're such a thief,”
Jeb looked at his empty hands, shook his head, and proceeded to
open the door for Ebony, “and the wife's fine.”

She took a quick sip of her
stolen brew, and winked.
“You know, you are meant to arrest thieves,
Officer.”

“
Oh, I can't arrest you, Eb.
You'd be a bad influence on all the other guys in
lock-up.”

Ebony walked in, pretending to
look thoughtful.
“Good point.”

Nate was waiting for her just
inside the door, and had obviously witnessed the entire exchange,
as he was staring at Ebony with mild disgust.
“When you're finished, everyone
is waiting for us on the second level.”

Ebony bit lightly into the edge
of her cup, and smiled barely.
“Don't rush me, rookie. Remember, it's
your first day. And me,” she patted her chest, “I've been here ...
for ages.”

Nate looked decidedly
underwhelmed by her reply.
“Been here for ages. Wow, I can't compete with
that.”

She narrowed her eyes, staring
at him from over the edge of her coffee.
“You know, this isn't a game,
Detective Wall. Upstairs is going to be a crime scene unlike
anything you've ever seen. No amount of training will ever prepare
you for it.” Ebony tilted her head up and to the side, in an
attempt to get just the right angle, so she seemed both deliciously
ominous and thoroughly in control.

When the detective just stared
back at her, expression blank, Ebony gave a small harrumph and
pushed past him.
“Where did you come from, anyway?”

“
Carrington,” Nate somehow
appeared at her side, matching her pace easily.

“
Oh, the big city,” Ebony took
one last sharp sip on her coffee, before tossing the cup into a
bin.

Nate rolled his dark
eyes.
“We've
got a potential homicide; you mind not messing up the crime scene?”
He walked over to the bin, fished out Ebony's discarded cup, and
handed it to her. His face looked like the picture of a perfect
policeman: his jaw was set, his eyes cold, and his mouth drawn. It
was the face of a man who would stand in the path of a charging
bull, telling it off for being a public nuisance.

Ebony sneered through a smile,
finally snatching the cup off him when she realized it was going to
take too much effort to win this one.
“Right, and exactly what did you do
in the big smoke, Detective Wall? Did you arrest old ladies for
jaywalking?”

“
No,” Nate flattened his tie, “I
worked in homicide.”

The words fell against Ebony like a
tidal wave. Great, she thought bitterly. No wonder he was hardly
sweating over the idea of walking into a brutal crime scene. It
would all be old hat to him.

When Ebony had finished
swearing at the man in her mind, she realized he was paying
particularly close attention to her expression.
“What?” she made the word as
forthright as possible.

“
Correct me if I'm wrong,” Nate
had his head tilted slightly, as if he was examining some specimen
behind glass, “but you haven't dealt with many murders, have
you?”

Ebony couldn't stop her eyes
from widening slightly, and as they did, she could bet that her
stature had changed. If the Detective was half as good as he
thought he was, then he'd notice the tiny change in her posture,
the pale flash to her cheeks, the weak angle of her bottom lip. It
was one of the hardest things about being a summoner witch
– if someone was
careful enough, they could read you like a book.

But darn it, this guy was new!
He'd only found out what witches were an hour ago, and now he was
already sussing her out like a long-time friend.
“A magical,” she
stressed the word, “murder is not like your ordinary homicide.
There are forces at play that you don't understand,” she cautioned,
turning from him and walking determinedly down the
corridor.

“
You mean more than the usual
callus inhumanity of violence, degradation, and
desperation?”

Ebony ignored him, and finally walked
up to Ben as he stood outside of an open door.

“
Where is it?” Ebony said
softly, trying to stamp down on the terror that was raising its
ugly head in the pit of her stomach. She had to be in control, she
was Ebony Elizabeth Bell, after all.

“
Eb,” Ben tried for a smile, but
it really couldn't hold against the sickly sallow of his skin. “I
was wondering where you'd gotten to. Body's in the bedroom,” he
added carefully.

Ebony just swallowed and walked past
him.

She dearly wished she had a coat on.
It wasn't just the terrible chill in the air, or the fact the sun
was now completely hidden by slate-gray storm clouds: it was the
fact she desperately wanted to hide her hands. The great thing
about a coat was that you could plunge your hands into the pockets
and no one would be able to see you digging your fingernails deep
into your palms.

With a breath, Ebony entered the
apartment. The usual mix of uniformed officers, be-suited
detectives, and forensics officers were milling about the place.
Low, respectful mumbling filled the air, with the click, click,
click of cameras as the forensics team tried to completely document
the scene.

To say the feeling hit her like a
wall, wasn't quite right. The mix of dark, desperate dread drove
through Ebony like monsoonal rain. She felt wet, not from water,
but from fear-tinged sweat.

“
What do we know about the
victim?” She heard Nate announce to the room as he entered. “Alone,
single? She living with anyone?”

Ebony was slowly tuning-out to the
bustle around her. Her eyes were drawn to the living-room walls and
she walked towards them, like a sleepwalker in the night. She
picked her way past the man taking photos of the underneath of the
couch and past the uniformed officer flicking through the post on a
dressing table, until she finally touched a hand to the
plum-colored wall.

Fingers pressed up against the cold
paint, Ebony fancied she could feel the wall pulse erratically,
like a heart coming to rest. There were symbols etched deep into
its surface. They had been scratched into the plaster with a
butter-knife maybe, or a used razor, or even the broken neck of a
bottle.

The symbols were wide and irregular,
made by the shaky hand of the frightened, or the fitful rage of the
frantic. They were dotted around the edge of two large circles.
Both circles were painted on with what looked like red food-dye,
but could easily have been watered-down blood.

A powerful spell, thought Ebony, the
coldest of shivers running through her.

A hand latched onto her wrist,
suddenly pulling her fingers from the wall.
“Haven't you ever heard of
gloves?” Detective Nate asked, releasing her wrist after a
moment.

“
You have more of a chance
herding cats than getting Eb to follow procedure,” one of the
forensics officers quipped from across the room.

Nate ignored him, staring at
Ebony instead, before meaningfully depositing a pair of white latex
gloves in her hand.
“This might be a magical murder, or whatever,” he intoned
coldly as he surveyed the room. “And I might be the rookie here.
But there's one thing that I have a feeling is germane to all
police work,” he snapped his head back to look at her, “respect the
crime scene. Don't go walking all over your clues before you know
what they are. Now, you told me outside you watched, well, watching
doesn't mean touching, does it?”

Ebony's shock at being pulled
from the wall so quickly turned into bristling anger.
“Excuse me, are
you, or are you not the same man who walked into my store this
morning without a single clue witches existed? Are you, or are you
not, the man who has just found out about magic? Are you, or are
you not, the man who has just walked into a crime scene he knows
nothing about and yet thinks he can boss everyone else
around?”

Ebony's tone was loud and angry.
Everyone else was now looking at her as she publicly dressed down
the new guy.

The expression on Nate's face turned
colder than a winter's night.

Ebony shifted backwards.
“You want to know
everything about this crime scene, hmm? You want to know all the
background facts? Well let me take a guess,” Ebony's tone was
officious, but underneath, it was all too erratic and peaked in all
the wrong places. “Victim is a woman, lives alone, isn't married,
has a cat, likes the color red.”

Ebony played with the latex
gloves Nate had given her, without once having the inclination to
actually put them on.
“Oh, one other thing, she's a witch.”

This little gem silenced the
room.

Ebony heard Ben swear from over
near the doorway.
“You sure?” he called out.

“
Oh yes,” Ebony finally stopped
playing with the gloves and put them down on the TV
stand.

To Detective Nathan Wall's
credit, he kept the same stance, same expression, and the same
righteous glint to his eye. She may have just been totally rude to
him, but the man was like a dog after a bone.
“She was a witch,” he
corrected.

“
No, she still is
one.”

“
The body in the bedroom would
like to disagree with you,” he cleared his throat, and flattened
his tie. “There's nothing wrong with admitting you're new to
homicide scenes,” he added in a much quieter voice. “But you can't
bluster through them.”

Ebony clenched her
teeth.
“I'm
the one in charge here,” she reminded him, feeling her authority
slip all the more. What an infuriating man, she thought to herself.
Only this morning she'd been playing with him, and now somehow, he
was playing with her. Sheesh, she might have to break the Sacred
Pact and throw a cursed rock through his window.

“
Right, of course you are,” his
words were hollow with sarcasm.

Stop saying that, she longed to
scream at him.
“The witch,” she said clearly and loudly, “isn't dead. This
wasn't a murder at all.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing
and looked up.

“
And how do you know that?” Nate
crossed his arms. “You're right, I'm new to magic crimes, but I
imagine there's more to them than snapping your fingers and pulling
the bad guy's name out of a hat.”

“
That would be a magician's
crime, only magicians pull things out of hats,” she corrected him,
“and I'm not pulling anything out of anywhere, I'm just reading the
writing on the wall.”

“
Arcane symbols, right?” said
one of the forensics guys.