Fair Game

He considered it.‘You mean the children’s book.’

‘I have got to get you to watch more movies,’ she said. ‘You’d enjoy these. Yes, I mean the children’s book.’

He shook his head.‘Not quite. Noticing some things make them more real. They are already real to me. If you notice them, they might become real to you as well, and that would not be good.’

Suddenly she knew. Charles had told her once that he didn’t speak his mother’s name for fear that it would tie her to this world and not let her go on to the next. Ghosts, he’d told her, need to be mourned and then released. If you keep them with you, they become unhappy and tainted.

‘Ghosts,’ she said, and he drew in a sharp breath and stepped away from her, closer to the window.

‘Don’t,’ he said sharply. She’d have snapped back at him if she hadn’t remembered that when he’d closed down their bond he’d been worried about her.

‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘You feel better than before we came here, though. Right?’ If he was getting better, he was dealing with it.

He had to think about that one before he answered her.‘Yes. Not good, but better.’

She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and breathed him in.‘I’ll leave it alone if you promise me one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If it starts getting worse again, you’ll tell me – and you’ll tell Bran.’

‘I can do that.’

‘All right.’ She brushed off the back of his shirt, as if there were some lint or something on it and not as though her hands were hungry for the warmth of his skin. ‘Sleep or breakfast?’ she asked briskly. ‘We have two hours before the FBI picks us up and takes us to the morgue.’

The small, sheet-covered body on the table smelled of rotting flesh, salt, and fish. None of which managed to quite cover up the lingering scent of terror. From the size of the corpse, A

A

Irony aside, A

Beside her, Brother Wolf growled, the sound low enough that she didn’t think any of the humans heard it. He’d come as wolf – again. A

Charles promised that he’d let her know if it got worse – but he hadn’t reopened the bond between them, not even wide enough that he could talk to her while he was in wolf shape.

‘His family were supposed to pick him up today,’ said the man who’d let them in. He was dressed in scrubs that were clean and fresh – either he was just begi

‘You didn’t tell his parents they were bringing me, too?’ said the witch, who looked like she’d come right out of a 1970s sitcom – middle-aged, a little dumpy, a little rumpled, hair an improbable shade of red, and wearing clothes that didn’t quite fit. ‘The werewolf is incidental and, I might add, begged the witch to come – and you didn’t think to mention me?’ The death threat in her voice did a fair job of removing any sense of comedy, though A

A

Dr Fuller– A

The witch smiled.‘Probably not,’ she agreed cheerfully, just as if she hadn’t taken offense a moment before.

Isaac had warned A

‘Tell them we appreciate their cooperation,’ said Heuter, the younger Cantrip agent, who had shown up as they were waiting for the witch in front of the building where the county morgue resided. He’d claimed that someone told him that they were going to visit the body, but from Leslie’s attitude (polite but distant) it hadn’t been her.

Goldstein had been called away to discuss the case with someone in the Boston Police Department, so Heuter’s addition made them five. Had there been any more of them, they’d have had to leave the door to the small room open.

Dr Fuller pulled back the sheet.‘Jacob Mott, age eight. Water in his lungs tells us that he drowned. Joggers found him washed up on Castle Island early in the morning. His parents tell us that he did not have pierced ears, so the killer must have pierced both – though only the left ear was tagged. The tag is in evidence.’

A

Jacob had been in the water and the fishes had nibbled, though he wouldn’t have cared at that point. Compared to what had been done to this boy, the fish were only a footnote. Death had nothing much to teach A

dying could be so hard. Jacob’s dying had been very hard.

The witch reached out and touched the body with a lust A

‘Ooh,’ she crooned, and the doctor’s clinical recitation stumbled to a halt. ‘Didn’t you make someone a lovely meal, child?’ She put her face down on the boy’s chest, and A

‘Someone’s been a naughty girl,’ the witch said to herself as her fingers traced a series of symbols incised into the boy’s thigh. She pulled her face away and began humming ‘It’s a Small World’ as her fingers continued to trace the marks on the body. ‘There’s surely more on the back,’ she said, looking at the doctor.

Mutely he nodded, and she picked up the body and rolled Jacob on his face. She was strong, for all that she looked lumpy and dumpy, because she didn’t have to struggle particularly. Dead bodies were, mostly, harder to move than live ones.

More on the back, the witch had said, and there were. More symbols and more marks of abuse. A

‘Before death,’ said the witch happily. ‘All of it was done before death. Someone harvested your pain and your ending, didn’t they, little one? But they were sloppy, sloppy with it. Not professional, not at all.’ Her hands caressed the dead boy. ‘I recognize this. Bad Sally Reilly. She wasn’t a very talented witch, was she? But she wrote a book and went on TV and wrote more books and became famous. Pretty, pretty Sally sold her services and then –poof, she went. Just like a witch who was bad and broke all the rules should.’