Bone Coven (Winter Wayne Book 2) Page 16
“He was a Blood witch. Neither of our families accepted our marriage. He ended up leaving his coven, too.”
“Sounds like quite a man,” Bender said and Ms. Riley beamed. It made me smile.
“He was. My Christian was the best man I’ve ever known. Cancer took him much too young, but his memory still lives with me.”
She folded both hands on her chest, and my eyes filled with tears. My mother had died from cancer, too, much too young. She, too, lived in me. It looked like I had more in common with my landlady than I thought. I needed to keep that in mind next time I wanted to kick her out.
“Ms. Riley, can I ask you something?”
It was kind of strange to see Bender so interested in her, but I kept my mouth shut and let him talk.
“Of course, Mr. Bender. Anything you want.”
“It might sound weird to you, but please bear with me,” he said. “When you were young, say more than ten years ago, did anything strange ever happen in your pack?”
That’s when it hit me. This was why Bender had sat down to drink tea with my landlady. Genius. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
“How do you mean, weird?” Ms. Riley asked.
I bit my tongue to keep from speaking. Bender was much better at this than I was.
“I mean anything unusual. Like kidnappings or killings of werewolves. Or both,” Bender said. “Anything that hadn’t happened before and hasn’t happened since.”
I expected my landlady to be scared, or even look suspicious, but she was neither. “I’m afraid not, dear Mr. Bender. The Brighams have very strict rules. Very conservative werewolves. It’s a boring life, I tell you.”
So much for that.
“What about the Kaynes? I imagine the two packs keep close relations. Do you recall anything being talked about, about them?” Bender continued.
Ms. Riley pressed her lips together and looked at her folded hands on her lap for a second. “I can’t tell you that I do. I’m sorry, Mr. Bender, I do want to help you, but I’m old. I don’t remember much. Ten years was a long time ago.”
“That’s okay, Ms. Riley. Thanks, anyway,” I said because I didn’t want her to start feeling bad about this.
“Yes, thank you, Ms. Riley. And thank you for the tea, too. Very delicious, but Winter and I must get back to work now.”
My landlady smiled and stood up. “I’ll let you get to it, then.”
My eyes almost popped out of my skull. I’ll let you get to it? Since when was she letting me get to it? I usually had to walk her all the way to the door then close it in her face to make sure she wouldn’t return, and now, with her silver tray in her hands, she was walking out of my office all by herself. I was going to have to make Bender teach me how to do that.
“Let me help you with that,” he said and held the door open for her to pass. “Bye, Ms. Riley.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Bender,” she said. “Take care of Winny, will you?”
“I’ll do my best,” Bender said.
He was going to close the door, when Ms. Riley turned to us again.
“I do remember the wolves, though,” she suddenly said.
I stood up.
“The wolves?”
“Yes, the wolves. The most beautiful creatures on God’s earth,” she said, looking down at her tray and smiling. “It was a long time ago, though not ten years, but I still feel horrible for them.”
“What happened to the wolves, Ms. Riley?” I said, unable to keep my tongue in check any longer. The impatience was killing me.
“They died,” she whispered. “Three Brigham wolves and three Kaynes. The biggest and most beautiful of all.”
“How did they die?” Bender asked, but he didn’t need to. We already knew how they died. That’s why the beasts didn’t look like werewolves. They’d used wolves for whatever sick game they were into.
“They were killed. Nobody admitted to it, but if you ask me, it was the Kaynes. There are good men in that pack, but some of them are scum. They didn’t need to go after our animals.” Her chin actually shook as she spoke. “Animals are so much better than men, don’t you think?”
“I absolutely do,” Bender said with a nod. “Can you remember when this happened, Ms. Riley? It’s the last question I’ll ask you.”
“It was the spring my Christian passed away,” she said. “This year is his sixth anniversary.”
“Thank you so much, Ms. Riley. We really appreciate it.” Before she could say something else, Bender closed the door and turned to me. “We’ve got to warn them.”
“You think this is enough proof?” I asked halfheartedly. I knew how the ECU operated, and those bastards were very hard to convince.
“Everything is connected, Winter. I’m not willing to bet my life on it yet, but it’s all connected. Those…things, they hit everyone at just the right time so nobody would even look into it seriously.”
“But she said six years ago,” I whispered. The Bone coven had been attacked more than ten.
“Who’s to say it didn’t happen before?” Bender said. He paced fast in front of me, his excitement almost visible.
“I don’t know, Bender. If the packs didn’t make this a big deal, maybe they did find the killer. They treat their wolves like deities. They wouldn’t let something like this just pass by.”
The werewolf packs practically lived with wolves. Rumor had it that they could even read each other’s thoughts. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that was the truth, but you just didn’t mess with a pack’s wolves. Not if you wanted to live.
“The Bone coven wouldn’t let something like this just pass by,” Bender said. “That’s what I would have said to you and to the whole world before everything happened. People are unpredictable. You can never count on anyone to act a certain way.”
“But you can if it’s the ECU we’re talking about. You’ve worked for them. You know how they operate. They’re not going to believe any story a fairy and a retired Bone investigator have to tell.”
Retired was putting it mildly. When Amelia told me about him, she described him as crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the world thought of Bender the same way, too.
“The ring,” he whispered.
The night before came to my mind. I’d remembered where I’d last seen that damned thing. I was trying to put it in my wardrobe when it had slipped from my hand and fell on the floor, then rolled all the way under my bed. I had been in a hurry (not really) so I’d just left it there.
I rushed to my room and laid down on my stomach to look. Relief washed over me when I saw the ring—together with a pearl necklace and a purple earring. God, I was worse than a teenager.
“Got it!” I called and almost pulled my arm trying to reach the ring. When I stood back up, I was a mess of dust. Cleaning the entire office was going to have to make it to the top of my to-do list as soon as this was over.
“Let’s see it,” Bender said, looking at the ring in my hand.
It was still as ugly as I remembered. Old and worn, the two blue stones on top of it looked worse than the ones you could find in the streets.
“Put it on.” I offered it to Bender.
He took a step back. “It’s your ring. You put it on.”
Rolling my eyes, I pretended I hadn’t wished he’d fallen for it, and reluctantly, I put the ring on my pinky—the only finger it would fit. I expected to feel something as the cold metal remained in contact with my skin, but when nothing happened a few seconds later, I stopped holding my breath.
“Anything?” Bender asked, looking at me with a new wave of curiosity now.
“Nothing.” I spun my hand in front of my face slowly, hoping to catch anything unusual about the thing. “Maybe James lied to us.”
Bender pressed his lips. “He said he was given the ring to get through the Green protective spells unnoticed.”
“How would he have activated the spell on this? He’s a vampire.” Vampires didn’t have a single spark of magical energy.
“It looks so ordinary to have all that power,” I mumbled, unable to look away from my finger.
“Try charging it.”
“Of course not. I have no idea what kind of spell it holds.” It could fry me alive for all I knew.
“You said it yourself, it looks too ordinary to have all that power, but we have to test it before we know for sure. Go ahead, just a little bit of magic.” He nodded at me with his brows raised and all, talking to me like I was a little kid.
Unfortunately for me, he was right. We wouldn’t know for sure unless we tried. With a sigh, I tapped into my magic. My lips threatened to stretch into a smile when I found it just as wild as ever. Lately, I’d grown to love my magic, something I never thought I’d be able to do. It was just so alive and so powerful, it was impossible to miss. I liked knowing it was inside of me, coursing through my veins, even when I wasn’t looking.
And with a loud exhale, I sent it towards the ring on my pinky finger.
A second passed. I closed my eyes to make sure I could feel anything it might do, but I got nothing. When I opened my eyes again, the ring looked exactly the same. Not one little spark of something.
“Maybe it’s broken. Or maybe its magic is spent?” It was an option, though I didn’t know that much about enchanted items.
When Bender said nothing, I looked up at him. I found him three steps away from me, and he was moving back still. Not only that, but his eyes were wide, his face paler than a vampire’s, and his hands were shaking, too.
“Bender?” What the hell was wrong with him? Was it me? I checked my hands again. No, definitely not me.
“You…” He pointed at me then shook his head once, but he didn’t finish his sentence.
“Me, what? What the hell are you doing?” His back was against the door now. He looked terrified, and it terrified me, too.
“You look like…you’re a…” he said, his voice shaking. “You’re a wolf.”
“No, I’m not.” I could see my arms, my legs, my stomach. I looked fine. A bit dirty, but normal.
“Winter, you’re one of them,” he whispered, his eyes still as wide.
My stomach fell. He wasn’t kidding. Bender wasn’t kidding.
I have no idea how I made it to the bathroom and to the mirror above the sink, just slightly more to the left. The rust around it always made me flinch but not that day. No, that day, what made me flinch was my reflection.
The reflection of the beast looking back at me.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to take the ring off. The damn thing seemed stuck, or my hands weren’t working properly. By the time I heard it clink as it fell on the sink, my knees had turned to fucking jelly. I held on to the door and breathed deeply, before daring to open my eyes, just a little.
Staring back at me now was me. Winter Wayne, the fairy, violet eyes and pointy ears. The messiest braid I’d ever seen, but it was perfect. Beautiful.
“My God,” Bender whispered.
He had followed me and stood by the door, looking at me, his cheeks now flushed. I couldn’t look away from the mirror, terrified the beast would come back. It had been so real. So fucking real I couldn’t get it out of my head. I’d looked exactly like one of them. Thick, long fur, grey and white, and that snout…the claws and the ears. But my eyes hadn’t changed. If I remembered right, my eyes were the same.
“Winter, are you okay?” Bender asked, but I couldn’t talk yet. I just nodded my head. I was perfectly fine, very comfortable in my body. I’d never complain about being a fairy again. Not ever in a million years. “We need to call someone. This is too big. Winter, you were right all along.”
I turned the faucet on and splashed ice cold water on my face. I looked worse than terrible with mascara all over my face and my hair like a rat’s nest, but it was still me when I looked in the mirror again.
“Peterson,” I whispered. He was the only one close enough to the case to make the ECU listen. “I need to call Peterson.”
Everything was suddenly crystal clear in front of my eyes. The witches that did this were using enchanted items, and I was willing to bet my life that the beast I caught relied on that damned chain he almost killed me with to look like a beast. Damn it, had I known, I’d have just pulled it off him and he’d have been stripped of magic. I’d have seen his real face, and all this would have been over a long time ago.
Back at my desk, Bender brought me a much needed glass of water. He looked even more excited than before.
“This is amazing. This is great!”
Pardon me if I don’t think it’s great to be turned into a fucking beast.
“So they just gave something so valuable to a vampire?”
“Because he couldn’t activate it, even if he tried.” And James was too dumb to even think about trying.
“So they killed those pack wolves to disguise themselves—something I need to tell Trevor. It might help him find what we’re looking for faster.” Bender spoke so fast his words slurred together. “And those vampires, they’re working for them. Or with them, it’s all the same. That means…” He turned to me, not even breathing for a long second. “That means the coven fell apart for nothing.”
“We still need to find them,” I said reluctantly and looked at the screen of my phone and Peterson’s number on it.
“It’s Bloodies,” Bender said. “Who else could it be? They’re the only ones that haven’t been attacked—”
“That we know of,” I said, but he didn’t listen to me.
“And their magic is the strongest. How much of it would one need to create something like that ring?” He pointed at the bathroom door where the ring was still sitting in the sink. “I’ll bet you anything that they have a lot of those things, otherwise they would have never given them away to vampires like James.”
“Calm down, Bender. You need to—”
“I’m not going to calm down. Ten years!” he shouted. “My whole life, Winter. These people, whoever they are, they need to be held responsible for this.”
“And they’re going to be. But right now, I really need to call Peterson. I can’t do it if you keep shouting like that.”
Bender opened his mouth, but he changed his mind the last second. With a nod, he turned his back to me as if to give me the illusion of privacy. Before I could give it another thought, I took the phone from my pocket and dialed the number. I didn’t want to talk to the witch, but I had to.
Peterson answered after the third ring.
“Mr. Peterson, this is Winter Wayne,” I said and cleared my throat. “I need to talk to you.”
“Winter,” Peterson said, and followed it with a loud sigh. It was weird that he addressed me by my first name. It had been Miss Wayne before. “It’s gone, Winter.”
I stopped breathing. “What?”
“The thing you caught,” he cried. “It’s gone. It escaped. We can’t find it.”
“What’s wrong?” Bender said, but all I heard was Peterson breathing heavily through the phone.
“When?”
In my mind, I could see the face of the beast with its green eyes. That witch, whoever he was, was better than I’d imagined if he managed to escape the ECU. No way in hell was he a Bloodie. I’d worked side by side with Julian. I knew how his magic worked, and he had had his fairy magic, too, the whole time. The ECU had still managed to find us everywhere we went.
“This morning,” Peterson said. “I just got the call. It disappeared, and nobody can track it. My children…”
There was something very unsettling about hearing a grown man cry, but I gritted my teeth and made myself get it together.
“Mr. Peterson, we think we know how they’re doing it,” I said. “I need to speak to the ECU. Can you give me the number of the person in charge of the investigation?”
“Yes, of course,” the man said, his voice breaking. “I’ll text you
the details right away. Who are they, Winter?”
“I don’t know, sir. But we’re going to find out.”
“I should have never let you leave. You caught it. You would have been able to keep it. I just thought that…”
He thought the ECU knew what they were doing. I did, too. It was probably the truth. We just had no idea who exactly we were dealing with.
“Send me the number, Mr. Peterson. We’ll be in touch,” I said and hung up before he could get even more guilt in me through the damn phone.
“It’s gone, isn’t it?” Bender said with barely a whisper.
“It escaped the ECU.” I shook my head as I tried to understand it. I couldn’t. “The ECU, Bender. This isn’t a Blood witch.”
Taking his phone out of his pocket, Bender dialed a number. “Let me talk to Trevor.”
My head was a mess and remembering how I looked with that ring on my finger didn’t help. I felt so vulnerable all of a sudden, like anything could happen, and I wouldn’t be able to have any control. I closed my eyes and thought about my mother with all my being until her face filled my mind. Now was not the time to be weak. I needed to nail those bastards and make sure the whole world knew who they were. My phone had already received the message from Peterson. All I had to do was tell the ECU what we knew.
“Trevor’s looking into it,” Bender said.
I hadn’t even heard him speak. I needed to wake up and clear my head asap.
“I’m going to take a shower, then I’m going to give this guy a call. It’ll be over soon,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“And we need to eat. Do you have anything we can make?”
“Make yourself at home,” I mumbled and went into the bathroom. I hated to waste time, but I couldn’t talk to anyone in the state I was in, especially not the ECU, if I wanted them to listen to anything I had to say.
Seventeen
Washed and dressed in fresh clothes, I went back to the office and found Bender eating.
“I toasted some bread and made a peanut butter sandwich,” he said when he heard me come in.
He’d made one for me, too. My stomach turned just looking at it, but I sat down and made myself eat anyway. I was going to need all of my strength. I put the ring on my desk between us. Bender paled at the sight of it. Good to know I wasn’t the only one to feel that way about it.