Embracing Magick: an Urban Fantasy Novel (The Witch Blood Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  EMBRACING MAGICK

  Debbie Cassidy

  Copyright © 2017, Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by Covers by Julie

  1

  “I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee,” Melody said as we drew up to the terraced family home in Camden.

  People lined the sidewalk, some dressed for work, others still in their pajamas and slippers. A woman held a squirming baby on her hip, jiggling him every time he fussed. And a group of teenagers hovered on the pavement across the street.

  A smartly dressed elderly couple exited the house and walked toward us, just as the IEPEU vans zoomed around the corner and onto the tidy residential street. Citizens stumbled back as the sleek vehicles came to a halt, and operatives jumped out. Tech equipment was unloaded, and Melody and I exited her Corvette to meet the couple who’d called this in.

  Mr. and Mrs. Finch were the parents of Mr. Stanley Finch, who, until last night, had been a resident at this address.

  “Where are they? Where’s my family?” the woman demanded. If not for the tears in her eyes, I would have taken offense at her tone, but considering the circumstances, the poor woman had every reason to be upset.

  “I assure you we will do everything we can to find out, Mrs. Finch.” My tone was deliberately confident and soothing.

  The man snorted. “Like you did the last time, and the time before? How many families have to go missing before you people do something?”

  A murmur rose up from the gathered neighbors.

  “They were here last night,” the woman with the baby called out. “I saw Stan putting the bin out.”

  “What’s going on?” someone else cried.

  “It could be us next. The fucking government don’t give a toss.”

  Great, the last thing we needed was an angry mob. I stepped off the curb and into the road. “Please!” I held up my hands. “Everybody, go back into your homes and get on with your day. In order to solve this case we’re going to need your cooperation. An operative will be doing the rounds to speak to you all shortly. Please provide the operative with any relevant information. If you don’t have the time right now, then we’ll make an appointment to speak with you. But please, allow us to do our job. The longer we wait, the colder the trail gets.”

  Stanley’s mother whimpered and her husband put his arm around her, pulling her close.

  “Just do what you have to do,” he said. “Find my son, my daughter-in-law and my grandbabies.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leaving the couple outside, we headed into the house, knowing exactly what we would find but dreading it all the same.

  ***

  The bare room stared back at me. Barren and clean, not even a mini dust bunny to say it had ever been lived in. The whole house was the same—picked clean. If not for the fact that the family had been here yesterday, there’d be no case. But this was the tenth vanishing in the city. Ten families gone—poof, overnight. Their relatives, friends, neighbors none the wiser. How? How could you move out all your shit in one night and clean the house and have no one notice? You couldn’t, that’s how? Guaranteed there’d be no trace of removal van hire, and the cars they’d owned were parked outside on the street—also picked clean. All this, coupled with the fact that Stanley’s parents had traveled down from up north to spend the week with them, suggested that this family hadn’t disappeared of their own volition.

  There was some strange shit going on, and it was my responsibility to find out just what.

  “Anything?” Melody strode in, scanning the room. “This is getting ridiculous.”

  “You’ve done a sweep downstairs?”

  She nodded.

  “Up here is clear,” I walked out into the hallway. “No basement. Attic? Did you check?”

  “Harriet did. It’s empty.”

  She headed for the stairs, but my feet remained rooted to the spot as my asura power expanded in warning. “Wait. We’re missing something.”

  I exhaled and relinquished control to the power within. A few months ago, my heart would have fluttered in panic at handing over the reins to the dragon inside. But over the course of the last six weeks, we’d come to an understanding—I let her out to play now and then, and she respected my boundaries. My feet carried me to the hatch in the ceiling.

  “You want to check again?” Melody asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I yanked the rope to bring down the steps. The dragon sensed something up there, and it was rarely, if ever, wrong. Training with Vritra for the last six weeks, sparring with Gita and Kiran and the other asura—who hadn’t gone easy on me despite getting their arses handed to them by my dragon—had honed my skills. I made sure to leave the skein untapped in those matches. Hardly fair to double up on my opponent, besides it was the asura power I needed to master, the skein came naturally, and man, did it feel good to have it back. Once the coven discovered Banner’s deception, and checked out the enchanted chain he’d given me, there’d been no choice for them but to give me back my connection to the skein. Which opened up the question of who the heck had bound my powers and why? If it wasn’t to prevent me from doing dodgy things with the skein, then what was it?

  At the top of the steps was a light switch. I flicked it on, but nothing happened. “Melody? You got a flashlight?”

  She handed me her penlight. It would have to do. Climbing up into the attic, nothing more than a crammed crawl space, I swept the light over the boxes, and bags of old toys and Christmas decorations. Not so clean up here. What was I missing? Fuck. There had to be something. The dragon was never wrong.

  “Anything?” Melody asked.

  Shimmying up into the crawl space, light between my teeth, I began moving the boxes and bags. A soft whimper caught my attention, closely followed by a strangled sob. My hand came into contact with something smooth and crackly, and then the mound moved.

  I yanked my hand away. “What the fuck!”

  “Carmella?” Melody called up the stairs.

  It was a silver blanket. Like one of those insulation ones you used when backpacking, and something, no, someone was underneath it.

  Keeping my voice low and calm, I reached for the edge of the blanket. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Please...you can’t take it off. If you take it off they’ll find me.”

  “I’m with the IEPEU. I promise you’re safe now.”

  The body under the blanket quivered. “They took them. They took them all and it’s my fault. All my fault.”

  “Who took them?”

  Another sob. “The aliens.”

  Oh, lord. “I’m going to take the blanket off now and we can talk about this over a nice hot drink, okay?”

  “No!”

  I tugged the blanket off the body, and for a moment there he was, a pimply teenage boy with overly gelled hair and a heavy metal t-shirt, and then...
he was gone.

  2

  “Carmella? Carmella? What’s going on? Who are you talking to?”

  Heart thudding hard against my ribs, I stared at the silver blanket and the spot where the boy had been mere moments ago. There was something peeking out from under the silver—a notebook laptop.

  “Dammit, woman.” Her boots thudded up the steps behind me.

  I picked up the electronic notebook. What had just happened?

  “Who were you talking to?” Melody peered around me into the gloom.

  “There was a boy here. A teenage boy and then... And then he just disappeared.”

  Melody stared at me, then down at the notebook in my hand, then across at the insulation blanket.

  She nodded curtly. “Well, that’s the first darn clue we’ve had all month, so let’s get this shit to the lab and figure this out.”

  Another thing I had to love about Melody—she never doubted my perceptions. And because of her confidence, neither did I. There’d been a boy in the attic. A scared boy who’d believed aliens had taken his parents. It sounded preposterous but, like Melody said, it was the first solid lead we had.

  Outside, the older Finches were waiting, expectation written on their faces. Mr. Finch’s gaze fell to the laptop in my hand.

  “What are you doing with Ben’s notebook? Is it a clue?”

  “Possibly,” Melody said. No need to tell them we’d just seen their grandson but been unable to save him. “We won’t know until we get it to the labs. Have you spoken to the operatives? Given your statements?”

  They both nodded.

  “In that case, the best thing for you to do right now is to go home. We’ll keep you updated.”

  “Like hell!” Mr. Finch said, his grip on his wife tightening reflexively.

  The woman’s lips pinched. “We’re not going anywhere. We’ll be staying right here in the city in a hotel for as long as it takes to get answers.”

  Oh, boy.

  Mr. Finch’s gaze narrowed. “Someone needs to hold the authorities accountable for what’s happening here. You’re not going to sweep this one under the carpet. I can tell you that now. We’re not the average Joe. We have connections. We will not be silenced!”

  I took a step forward, hands up in a placatory gesture. “I can understand your fear and frustration, but threats are unnecessary. Trust me, we want to solve these cases just as much as you do, and I promise you I will personally do everything in my power to find out what happened to your family.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded.

  His wife blinked rapidly, as if holding back tears. “Just find them. Please.”

  As the operatives sealed up the house, the straggler audience retreated back into their homes. Melody and I strapped into her car.

  “What did he say?” she asked. “The boy?”

  “He said that it was all his fault, and that the aliens took his family.”

  Melody started the engine. “Well, let’s go find out what the heck he was talking about.”

  ◆◆◆

  Kevin plugged in the notepad and switched it on. A password screen came up.

  “Okay. It’s password protected.”

  “But you can bypass that right?”

  He grinned. “Of course. It shouldn’t be hard. He began tapping at keys.”

  Melody entered carrying two cups of coffee.

  “Do not bring those drinks anywhere near my equipment,” Kevin said.

  Melody snorted. “Trust me. I have no intention of going anywhere near your equipment.”

  Kevin frowned. “Miss. Parker, if you were a database, I’d be giving you a good scrubbing.”

  She snorted again, and passed me a foam cup.

  “Thanks.” Grateful for the caffeine, I accepted the steaming drink.

  “So? You in yet?” she asked Kevin.

  He sat back and tapped his fingers on his thighs. “How old was this kid?”

  He’d been young. “Fourteen, maybe fifteen at a push.”

  “Fourteen,” Melody said. “Ben Finch, the Finches’ middle child. They also have a sixteen-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son.”

  “Well, Ben has skills,” Kevin said. “You can’t circumvent the password the usual route for this system.”

  “But you can bypass it, right?” Melody asked.

  “Pfft, course I can.” He cracked his knuckles. “No way am I getting beaten by a fourteen-year-old.”

  I sipped my drink. “How long?”

  He shrugged. “Shouldn’t be more than a few more minutes.

  A half hour later, Kevin sat back, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, I may need a little more time.”

  I glanced at my watch—standard issue IEPEU fare. We’d been at this for almost forty-five minutes already. “How much more time?”

  “An hour tops.”

  I drained my coffee. “I’m gonna check out the other case files. See if there’s anything we missed in the statements.”

  “Good call,” Melody said. “I have some calls to return. “Kevin, page us when you have something.”

  “Will do.” Kevin rubbed his hands together and then got started on the machine again.

  Leaving him to it, we headed out separate ways. Down on the investigative floor, Murdoch met me at my desk, clutching the files I needed.

  “How did you know?” I took them, grateful not to have to go rooting for them.

  “It’s what I’d do. What I have been doing.”

  It wasn’t his case, but I wasn’t dumb enough or arrogant enough to turn down the help of one of the best operatives in investigations. Plus, he was still smarting from not figuring out the Yamduth case, for not managing to pinpoint Banner as the person who’d wanted me dead. It was a mark on his record he didn’t like. This case had landed on my lap weeks ago when the first family had gone missing, and I’m sure if I wasn’t already elbows deep in it, the powers that be would happily transfer it to Murdoch. But the families of the missing knew me, they trusted me. I’d built a rapport with them. Having said that, if I didn’t get solid answers soon I’d be the scapegoat they hung out to dry when the wolves came baying.

  Murdoch plonked the files on the desk and grabbed a nearby chair. “Grab a pen, we’re going to make a comparison chart.”

  “I already did that.” I reached for my notepad.

  “Whoa. Don’t look at that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re going to do a new chart. Fresh case. Fresh eyes. Walk me through these. One at a time.”

  I blew out a breath. He was right. “Okay, let’s do this again. There could be something we missed the first time.”

  An hour later we sat back with our list. “Nothing new.” I sighed. “Aside from the fact that all the missing are families of four or five and all lived in London, they have nothing else in common. The houses were wiped clean so there’s no evidence to find. No prints, no DNA, no electronic footprint. Nothing. Neighbors all say the same kind of stuff though. Nice family, no trouble, good neighbors...wait...” I grabbed the top file. The Vincents’, and riffled through the neighbor statements, until I got to the one that had rang a bell. “Listen to this—David’s a strange lad though, always staring out his window with that telescope of his and banging on about extraterrestrials.”

  Murdoch sat up straighter. “How did we miss that?”

  “Because it sounds just like a prepubescent boy—obsessed with something or other, in this case, aliens. But in the light of what the Finch boy said we need to take this more seriously.”

  A second look through the statements unearthed no mention of aliens, but now we were looking for them, comments about the children jumped out at us. In one case, it was the thirteen-year-old daughter who was withdrawn and shy, always tapping away on that phone of hers. In another, it was the fifteen-year-old boy who never left the house, and even when he did, he always had his tablet with him.

  “There is another link,” Murdoch said.

  I m
et his gaze. “The children and their tech.”

  Murdoch’s lips tightened. “We need to get into that notebook. It could be our only chance of cracking this case. Whoever took those families messed up this time, but I doubt they’ll be making the same mistake again.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed Kevin. He answered on the third ring.

  “Please tell me you’ve cracked it?”

  3

  How could a fourteen-year-old outsmart an IEPEU tech expert? The question was still circulating in my head as I lounged in my flat and finished off my supper of soup and bread. Yeah, sod cooking. My pager sat on the table waiting patiently for good news. It turned out that our little Ben was some kind of prodigy when it came to computers, and he’d installed, downloaded and thingajigged his machine to prevent any kind of hack. I didn’t get half the jargon that Kevin had thrown at me, but the gist was, “shit this is gonna take much longer than we thought.” Right now, they had it connected to a machine running every possible combination of password to try and find the one that matched, while Kevin continued to search for a backdoor.

  The whole thing sounded way too complicated and exhausting, and I needed them to hurry up. I’d already fielded two calls from the Finches, one from a member of the Vincent family and two calls from the press, which should really have gone to our public relations department. Oh wait, the IEPEU didn’t have one of those. We just preferred to ignore such things, or tell the press what to print to allay panic. Except in this case, there was no covering up anything. The crimes, or whatever they were, were out in the open, and the world was watching us to see what we did about solving them. These weren’t supernatural people going missing. These were humans. And although humans were happy to turn a blind eye when a yaksha war broke out, or vamps decided to rally against the gods, they were less willing to let it slide when humans went missing, especially when the circumstances reeked of the supernatural.

  The word alien was under wraps though. Until we had solid proof of the cause of the disappearances, that nugget would remain buried.