Bone Coven (Winter Wayne Book 2) Read online

  “We’re screwed,” I said when he got back into the passenger seat. We had so little time. February second was far too close, and I did not want to see another picture of a dead body just because I hadn’t been fast enough.

  “Cheer up, will you? You’re kind of stealing my role. I’m supposed to be the pessimist here,” Bender said.

  My mouth opened, but no word came out. Where the hell did this new guy come from?

  “Ammic doesn’t live here anymore, but I spoke to his sister and she gave me the new address.”

  “So we’re not screwed.” I grinned.

  “Yet.” He put his seatbelt on. I let him be the pessimist and turned the ignition on without word. “The good news is, he’s in Pennsylvania. The bad news is he’s in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I suggest you hit the gas if you want to make it there before tomorrow.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If you wanted a faster car, we should have taken yours. Oh, wait. You don’t have one.” There was no spirit behind my joke, but it’s the words that count.

  Bender’s reply was a throaty laugh. After that, we didn’t say much until we got to our destination, two and a half hours later. Turtle wasn’t fast, but he got us there in one piece. I was proud of the ugly thing. When the map on my phone said we were right in front of the address I’d put in, we got out of the car in front of a five-story apartment building. The street was quiet enough, and since nobody was staring at me yet, I figured the neighborhood was mostly populated by humans.

  “I’ll let you go in first.” Bender nodded at the entrance door with the upper window broken.

  “Sure, boss,” I mumbled, and with one of my knives in hand, I walked inside the building. Not because Bender said so, but because I always went in first, no matter the situation.

  Ammic’s apartment was on the second floor. The small hallway only had three doors in it. When we got in front of the third door, Bender slammed both his fists on it three times. I raised my brows in question, but he only shrugged.

  A second later, we heard footsteps coming from the inside. My beads were ready, and so was my knife. Not that I didn’t trust Bender, but people changed. For all we knew, this guy could be working with the ECU, or maybe his sister had given us a false address. The possibilities were endless.

  “Who is it?” the man from the inside said.

  “Trevor, it’s Eli. Eli Bender. Open up.”

  It was easy to see the excitement in Bender’s face. He wasn’t being the least cautious. Maybe this guy was his friend, but he definitely wasn’t mine. I’d keep my distance and my doubt for now.

  The lock on the door turned, and the next second, a man as tall as the woman Bender had spoken to in Bloomsburg appeared in front of us. His hair had gone grey to the sides of his ears, and his brown eyes had dark blue circles underneath them. He was also pale as a ghost, but maybe because he looked positively shocked at seeing Bender.

  “Bender, my God,” the man whispered and shook his head. “It’s been so long.”

  Grinning proudly, Bender offered his hand. “Too long, my friend,” he said. “It’s good to see you, Trevor.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Ammic said and shook his friend’s hand before pulling him into half a hug.

  Okay, so this guy was definitely not hostile. So far so good. And then he looked at me. I’d spoken too soon.

  “What is this?” he hissed as he took me in, knife in hand and all.

  I ordered my beads to discretely fly up my arm, behind my bit shoulder, and stand alert.

  “She’s a friend,” Bender said.

  “She’s a fairy.” Ammic took a step back, and his arm slowly moved behind his back. He was reaching for a weapon, possibly a gun. My beads rose higher and flowed forward.

  “And you’re a witch. Doesn’t make me look disgusted, does it?” I said through gritted teeth. Being judged for the way I looked was so much more annoying than I would have ever guessed.

  “Trevor, I can explain everything,” Bender said. “Let’s just get inside.”

  Ammic turned to him, his brows raised in shock. “What the hell is going on? Why are you with a fairy?”

  Goddamn it. He spoke as if I wasn’t even there!

  “She’s also a witch—and a Wayne.”

  This was the first time in my life that my last name had any weight. I’d heard that inside covens, your family name meant a lot, but since I was never part of it as a kid, and since the coven broke apart before I could even think of joining it, I’d never had the chance to witness something like this before. But I liked it. I liked it a lot.

  “She looks like—”

  “A fairy,” I cut him off. “Yes, I do look like a fairy. That doesn’t mean you’re better than me, dude. Get over it.”

  “Look, let’s just get inside. Trevor, trust me on this. I can explain,” Bender said when Ammic only seemed to be more pissed off by my words. He could turn into the Hulk for all I cared. I spoke the truth.

  It took a long minute for Ammic to come to terms with the fact that he had to let a fairy into his home. In the end, though, he decided he trusted Bender more than he disliked me, and he reluctantly stepped aside. Bender nodded at me to go in first, probably afraid of what I might do if he left us alone in the hallway. Shrugging, I walked inside without even looking at Ammic. We were here on business, and he could be as big an asshole as he wanted. I still needed his skills and knowledge, and I would try to keep my mouth shut for the sake of that.

  The apartment was small and kind of suffocating. Low ceiling, draped windows, the light coming from the broken chandelier too yellow. It made everything look old.

  “I haven’t heard from you in a long time,” Ammic said to Bender, but he didn’t sound as excited now as in the beginning.

  “I’ve been keeping low,” Bender mumbled.

  If he’d looked at me, I would have rolled my eyes, but he didn’t. Keeping low, my ass. When I found him, he was trying to kill himself with booze and cigarettes.

  “What’s this about, Bender?” Ammic said, looking at me while I pretended to be interested in my surroundings—like the old TV in his living room and the chessboard on the dinner table.

  “It’s about the coven,” Bender said. “We think we know who killed the kids, Trevor.”

  But Ammic didn’t miss a beat. “No one knows who killed those people. We’ve been over this a thousand times.”

  “It’s different this time. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

  With a sigh, Ammic rubbed his face for a few seconds. “What’s different this time?” he asked reluctantly.

  “I am.” Bender was going to go in rounds to try not to piss his friend off, but I didn’t have to. I was saving us precious time. “I’ve come across a creature, something like a werewolf but worse, and I’ve got reason to believe that it and its friends killed the four witches of the Bone coven, then let you guys blame each other.”

  Ammic didn’t even bother to laugh in my face. He ignored me instead, and spoke to Bender again. “Since when do you trust a fairy?”

  Bite your tongue, Winter. Let it go.

  “Since this morning,” Bender said. “Look, she is a private investigator. Pretend she looks like a witch instead of a fairy. Once we get over that, you’ll be able to see more clearly.”

  Go, Bender.

  “I can’t believe this,” Ammic mumbled, shaking his head, then went over to sit on his sofa without bothering to invite us. I didn’t need an invitation, anyway. I sat on the one across from him all by myself. Bender joined me.

  “I can’t really give you the details because they involve another coven, but Winter is right, we have reason to believe that these beasts are responsible for what happened.”

  “Why?” Ammic asked. “Why now? It’s been so long.”

  I thought he’d never ask. “That’s where you come in. I think these beasts are involved in a ritual of some kind.”

  But he shook his head. “We studied everything the last time. Everything.”


  “We have the map with us.” I nodded to Bender. “Mind going through it with me?”

  Raising his brows, Ammic turned to Bender. “Are you serious?”

  That was it. My ears began to whistle.

  “Will you just get over it already?” I hissed. “I don’t care who you think you are. I demand to be respected as your equal. I am a Bone witch. My family has led yours for centuries! I don’t mind showing you why you should take my advice, but trust me, you really don’t want that.”

  By the time I said the last word, I was breathless. Ammic’s eyes grew wide as they looked at my beads buzzing right in front of his face, begging me to unleash them. Fuck. It had been a while since I’d lost control that way. I didn’t mean to lash out at him like that, but I was sick and tired of people looking at me like I was worthless because I looked like a fairy. I just wanted it to stop. God, how I wished it would stop.

  “Okay,” Ammic whispered, and my jaw nearly touched the floor.

  “Okay?” Was he playing me or was he for real?

  “Yeah, okay, Winter Wayne.” Holy shit, he was for real.

  I looked at Bender. Had I screwed up?

  His wide grin said I hadn’t. A loud sigh of relief left my lips as I watched Ammic unfold Bender’s map on the low table. My heart was still beating like mad, but I felt good. Great even. Maybe I should yell at people more often, I thought. It sure made me feel a thousand times lighter.

  “These orange dots represent the places from where the four witches were taken. The red ones are the places where their bodies were found,” Ammic started, his long fingers gracefully moving over the Bloomsburg map. “The orange dots mean absolutely nothing. The red dots are…how can I say this,” he whispered, rubbing his fingers together. “They have potential.”

  “Like, they could be an indication to a ritual?”

  “Look at this pattern,” he said, going over the connected red lines between the dots. “It’s a diamond shape. Diamond shapes are used for dark magic rituals, but usually, the sacrifices are animals.” He flinched.

  “The problem is, as we discovered before, the diamond shape is used for a lot of rituals,” Bender said.

  “Exactly. And since we’re talking about dark magic, this shape could lead to a thousand different kinds of rituals. There’s no way in hell to know which one the killer was using.”

  My heart sank. “Have you searched every kind this leads to?” I said, nodding at the map.

  Bender shrugged. “What’s the point?”

  “The point is to know what was achieved through these deaths. What did those killers get?”

  Chewing on his lip, Bender looked away.

  Ammic shook his head. “We searched for years. No Bone family in the states ever changed in a way a ritual of this size would be responsible for.”

  “That’s because no Bone family did this. Those beasts did.”

  “But they’re shifters. They can’t do magic,” Ammic said, shaking his head.

  “No, no, I don’t think they’re shifters. They’re witches. The one I spoke to, its eyes were green, and its voice as normal as mine.”

  “What kind of witches?” Ammic said, but I only shrugged. “What if they’re Bones?”

  “Could be,” Bender said. “Whoever did this, maybe they somehow used the four people they killed ten years ago to transform into those beasts?”

  “I don’t think so. They were beasts ten years ago, too. Remember the interrogations?” He had the recordings of all four people who’d found the four bodies, and their testimonies made it pretty clear—to me—that they were abducted and killed by those beasts, or ones like them.

  “Without knowing the kind of magic they use, it’s going to be impossible to even start to research again,” Ammic said. “If that’s what you want me to do.”

  Damn it. Just when I thought I was so close, I got pushed two steps back.

  “Who could be strong enough to pull off something like this?” Bender asked, and Ammic shrugged.

  “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s the ECU or someone from the ECU. They’re the only ones with that much power.”

  I would believe him, except my gut was telling me that wasn’t it. I squeezed my eyes shut as a headache began to develop behind my eyes and in the back of my head. Who were those beasts? How was I going to find them before it was too late?

  Bender and Ammic continued to talk about what they’d done ten years ago and how they’d ruled out options, but I couldn’t even listen to them. Something like a huge fingernail kept scratching the inside of my brain, and it was almost painful.

  The beast’s eyes came to my mind. They were as green as a forest, nothing like the eyes of a werewolf. It was a witch, all right, but it was also a fully developed wolf. If it’d stood on all fours, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between it and the animal.

  The animal…

  “What if…” I realized I could be talking nonsense here, but it was a thought. “What if they reversed it?”

  Both men looked at me in confusion. “What?” Bender asked.

  “You said before that these kinds of rituals were usually done with animals used as sacrifice. What if these witches reversed the ritual and used humans as sacrifice instead, to become like animals?”

  They both opened their mouths, but no words came out. Then they looked at each other for a long second, and finally, Ammic’s lips stretched into a smile.

  “It would be as easy as taking a shit—for witches with enough power,” he whispered. Ew.

  “Are you sure?” Bender asked before I could.

  “I think so. I mean, I’ll need to check. I’ll need to go back to my studies, but in theory, it’s possible.”

  Just like it had been possible for me to reverse the ritual that had turned me into a fairy—in theory.

  “Whatever you demand from the sacrificed animal in a ritual, the same could be demanded from a human. Or a witch. Or a werewolf…”

  “Holy shit, we have to talk to the packs,” I said. Blood rushed to my cheeks as I stood up, too nervous to stay seated. “These beasts, they could have used werewolves as sacrifices even before they attacked the Bone coven. Maybe that’s why they look like wolves!”

  It made sense. So much sense, I was drowning in it, and then…

  “But why would they use witches ten years ago, and again now?” Bender said and broke my little sparkly bubble.

  With a sigh, I sat down again. “We can still talk to the werewolf packs, see if something like this ever happened to them like, twenty years ago or something. And if it did, maybe they had suspects. Maybe they even caught someone.”

  “It certainly wouldn’t hurt. Do you know anyone we could talk to?” Bender asked.

  I flinched. I did know a few werewolves, but not more than to say hi. Now that I was a fairy, I had zero chance at speaking to them. Unless I used Finn again. Though he’d left the Kayne pack years ago, he still kept his contacts. But using Finn again would mean telling Finn everything, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that just yet.

  “If you two are done, I’d like to get on with my research, see if I can find any reverse ritual precedents or even try to associate them with any kind of magic.”

  Ammic stood up and looked at us with his brows raised. Get the hell out didn’t get any clearer than that. I gladly complied.

  “Thank you for doing this,” Bender said to him while he showed us to the door, as if he was afraid we’d return.

  “Thank you for reaching out to me,” Ammic said. “If the fairy is right and we find out who did this and why, who knows? We might even get the coven back.”

  It was obvious to see how happy that made him. Bender’s eyes sparked for a second. That made him very happy, too.

  “Call me the second you find anything.”

  “I will,” Ammic said.

  He only nodded to me before shutting the door in our faces. A nod was better than nothing, I guessed.

 
“I’m starving,” Bender said. “Let’s get something to eat. I’m buying.”

  That surprised me. “You are?” Wasn’t he…broke?

  “Absolutely. You deserve it.”

  I gave him a cheeky grin. I was a good gal, wasn’t I? This was why I’d missed my job. Figuring shit out made me feel better about myself. It made the world seem like a better place, too. And as long as I was helping people, sleeping would never be an issue for me. Like my mother always said: a life well lived is a life lived for others.

  Fifteen

  As soon as I saw the black smoke, I knew something was wrong. My heart hammered in my chest. When I turned the corner, my whole body froze.

  Bender’s house was devoured in bright orange flames.

  “What the hell?”

  I looked at Bender to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, but the look on his pale face said I wasn’t. It was real. His house was being burned down. I stopped the car in the middle of the street and got out. The tips of my ears were on fire as the guilt began to grow into a monster inside my chest. This was my fault. I had no idea how, but it was.

  A firetruck was parked right in front of the house, and three men were holding up the hose to try and put the fire out. People, both humans and witches, had gathered around to see the show. The heat coming off the house made me realize that this wasn’t a normal fire. It was magic fueled, and it wasn’t going to go out until every last bit of the house was destroyed.

  Bender was right behind me, but I didn’t dare look at him. What the hell was I supposed to say to him now?

  “They’re gone,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “The bodies,” he said. “The vampire bodies are gone.”

  So that’s how this was my fault. I rose to the tips of my toes to get a better view, and he was right. No dead bodies in front of the porch. Those fucking vampires had done this, and they’d done it because of me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to think about my office. If they did this to Bender’s house just because they’d seen me here, why wouldn’t they burn down my office, too?