Fair Game

‘Sally Reilly carved these symbols?’ asked Agent Fisher, her voice only a little sharp.

‘Sally Reilly is dead. Twenty years or more dead, because she gave mundane people a way to do this.’ Caitlin bent down and licked the dead boy’s skin, and Heuter drew in a harsh breath. ‘But they did it wrong and they didn’t get it all, did they? They left all this lovely magic behind instead of eating it.’

‘Precious,’ murmured A

The witch tilted her head.‘What did you say?’

‘You forgot the “my precious,” ’ A

The witch lowered her eyelashes, flicked her hands at A

A

‘Charles has a grandmother who was a witch and a grandfather who was a shaman – on opposite sides of his lineage,’ A

A low growl worked its way out of Brother Wolf’s chest and she added, ‘Before he thinks too hard about whatever it was you tried to do to me.’ A

‘The symbols inscribed are meant to increase the power of whoever is named in the ceremony,’ the witch Caitlin said, her voice somewhat higher and tighter than it had been. Sweat dripped down her forehead and into her eyes and she blinked it away.

‘You know,’ A

‘So the symbols will increase a witch’s power?’ Leslie asked unexpectedly.

‘Yes.’

Brother Wolf snapped his teeth just short of Caitlin’s nose and the witch shrieked, jumped, and struggled involuntarily before forcing herself limp.

‘Werewolves,’ A

Caitlin swallowed, her breathing rapid.‘Yes – anyone’s magic abilities. Fae, witch, sorcerer, wizard, mage. Anything. You can store it. For use later. To power a spell or some magic.’

‘What could you store it in?’ A

‘Something dense. Metal or crystal. Most of us use something that can be worn or carried easily.’ She hesitated, looked at Brother Wolf’s big teeth, and said, ‘But that’s not what happened with this spell, specifically. This is designed to feed the magic of a fae.’

‘So this boy was marked by a witch,’ Heuter said.

Caitlin snorted despite her terror of Brother Wolf and answered Heuter as if he’d asked a question instead of making a statement. ‘She onlywishes she were a witch.’

‘What do you mean?’ Leslie’s voice was cool, as if she questioned witches who were flat on their backs being threatened by werewolves every day.

‘Some of the symbols are done wrong, and a couple of them are complete nonsense.’ The witch’s voice was laced with contempt. ‘Sally’s been gone since the late eighties. Maybe someone copied them wrong. A real witch would have been able to feel that they were off, and could have fine-tunedthem on the spot. So someone’s playing make-believe witch.’ Caitlin spoke as if the boy’s life were less than nothing, that the worst thing the person carving on Jacob Mott had done was to get the symbols wrong.

‘Tell us about Sally Reilly,’ A

The witch set her jaw.‘We don’t talk to outsiders about her.’

Brother Wolf gave her a little more fang to look at.

She swallowed.

‘If it makes you feel better,’ A

‘Fine,’ said Caitlin. ‘Sally Reilly figured out a way to let mundane people use our spells. If someone paid her enough, she’d teach them how to write the symbols. She’d give them a charm that, if they wore it while they worked the magic – usually only one specific spell – behaved for them as if they were a real witch. Like playing a tape recorder instead of a violin, she liked to say. It’s been a long time since she was killed, and mostly people have lost either the symbols or the charms that allowed them to use the spell. This one was done wrong. It might have been drawn thatway on purpose, though Sally had the reputation for delivering what she said she would. Probably they thought they had it memorized.’

Caitlin smiled maliciously.‘Spells don’t like the wrong people using them; they tend to fight back when they can. Maybe in a couple of decades it will be wrong enough that they’ll be cutting into someone and it will kill them all.’ Then she looked at Charles and stiffened. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ she said, sounding a little hysterical. ‘I’m telling the truth.’

Muscles flexed in Brother Wolf’s back and A

‘She’s cooperating, Charles,’ A

The werewolf snarled at A

‘Really,’ she told him, tapping him on the nose. ‘It’s enough already. You aren’t a cat. No playing with something you aren’t going to eat.’ It wasn’t the words she hoped to persuade him with; it was the calming touch.

Brother Wolf stepped almost delicately off the witch and watched with yellow eyes as the woman scrambled untidily to her feet.

‘Better?’ A

Caitlin straightened her hair with shaky hands.‘Witches strong enough to do this are women.’

‘You just said that whoever put these symbols on the boy wasn’t a witch.’

‘Did I?’

Brother Wolf growled.

‘I really wouldn’t push him much more,’ A

The witch snorted archly. She reached out to touch Jacob’s body again and stopped when Brother Wolf took a step closer, his eyes on her hand. She pulled it back and answered A

‘And it did work, even though some of the symbols are wrong?’ It was Heuter who asked. A

‘I can feel that it did,’ Caitlin said. ‘Not as well as if the symbols had been inscribed correctly, but yes.’

‘Which symbols are wrong? How would you have done this better?’ Heuter’s voice was a little too eager.

Caitlin gave him a cool gaze. She did psycho suburban housewife about as well as A