“Mrs. Muldoon, I’m not sure even I appreciate the difficulty of my situation right now.” That said, Morrison put the car in Drive and peeled out of the parking lot. “Walker, call Dispatch. Tell them to put out an APB that I am in a rented blue Toyota Avalon, license plate number CTAK3887—”
“You know the car’s license plate number?” I asked in admiring astonishment.
Morrison’s lifted eyebrow suggested he memorized the plates of every vehicle he ever got in, no matter how little time he expected to spend in it. “And that I am approaching Thunderbird Falls from the southwest, at as high a speed as I can manage. This vehicle is not to be stopped for traffic violations.”
Morrison was going to rack up traffic violations on my behalf. I’d never heard anything half so sexy in my life. I put the call in and gasped gladly when I recognized the dispatcher who picked up: my old friend Bruce. “I’ll see if I can get any squad cars to clear some streets for you,” he offered without missing a beat. “Where are you coming from, exactly?”
I told him, finishing with, “If I could cook I’d make you and Elise the best meal you’d ever had, in thanks.”
“I can cook,” Annie put in.
I laughed, relaying the offer, although not who it was from. Bruce counter-offered with a cook-off, his wife’s tamales against the best Annie could come up with, and then got serious again. “I can get you a police escort starting in about fifteen blocks. I’ve got other cars moving to clear the road ahead of you, but with the escort you’ll have sirens. Be careful, Joanie.”
“It’s Jo, now. And we will be.” I hung up, gave Morrison the down-low and spent the next seven minutes trying not to shriek with speed-demon joy as my staid, steady boss took corners too fast, blew traffic lights, rode the meridian and braked hard from accelerations.
Annie, in the back middle seat, bounced and clapped her hands when the escort, sirens wailing and lights flashing, joined us. I burst out laughing, and Suzy had her knuckles in her mouth, trying to hold back squeals. “Wonder if this is what the president feels like,” Gary rumbled.
Morrison shot him one short look in the rearview mirror before bringing his attention back to the road. “The president doesn’t usually travel this fast in land vehicles. This better get us there in time, Walker.”
That cut the legs right out from under my glee. There was no in time: people were already dead. But if I could work a power circle, at least maybe I could contain the black magic swallowing up the falls’ power, and if we were incredibly lucky, maybe we could snare the murderer.
Chances were not good that we’d be incredibly lucky.
With the police escort, we got to the falls in record time. I was out of the car before Morrison had finished pulling into a parking space, but somehow he was still only two steps behind me. I half noticed Gary getting out with Annie and Suzy, but he drew them away from the crime scene that Morrison and I ran for. I was grateful for that: Annie might’ve been a nurse, but Suzy was just a kid, and she didn’t need to see the horror smeared across the beach.
I didn’t count them. I just saw that there were lots, and mentally leaped to the number: thirteen. A coven. A coven meant they all had at least some tiny flush of magical talent. That had to be the ultimate murder prize for the Master. That had to help him to no end. No wonder the falls’ magic was so badly damaged, and no wonder it kept getting worse. I was willing to bet these people had been pouring their hearts and souls into that power right up to the moment of their deaths.
And they weren’t just dead. They’d had their hearts ripped out, every single one of them. Their ribs were broken outward like someone had shoved a hand through their backs and emerged clutching the hardest-working muscle in the body. The blood sprays looked like that, too, easily visible because the victims were all flat on their backs in a perfect circle, as if something very startling had leaped from the earth at their center and the surprise had knocked them all over backward. The blood looked like their hearts had been ripped out after that, like the same something had then come up through their spines and taken the hearts skyward. I shuddered, unable to drag my gaze from the red gaping holes in their chests.
Peripherally, I knew mundane things were going on. Morrison had left me standing stock-still a stone’s throw from the bodies, and was taking charge of the gathering cops, medical teams and, God forbid, reporters. His calm took some of the edge off rising hysteria, though I Saw glimpses of anger and shock sparking through his aura. Eyewitnesses were babbling stories to anyone who would listen, including others who had been there. Some of them were arguing with one another. Pale-faced cops were trying to take down the comments without looking at the bodies, and I saw my friend Heather Fagan, head of the North Precinct’s forensics team, cross under the police tape with her mouth set in a thin grim line. All of this activity was going on around me, and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring myself to look at the faces I was holding out of focus because I was afraid of what I would see.
Afraid it would be worse than blood and bone and viscera spattered across a sand-addled shore. The horribleness of that made me breathe a sharp laugh, which in turn let me close my eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I’d be able to look elsewhere when I opened them again. I did that on purpose, with them still closed: moved my gaze, pointed it in the direction of faces, not bodies. It still took turning my hands into fists to make me open my eyes again.
The first face I saw was a young man. Early twenties, nice-looking, familiar.
“Garth.” The name didn’t make it past my throat. Didn’t even shape my lips as my stomach dropped and left a wake of ice where it had been. Garth Johannsen, Colin’s older brother. Colin, who had played host to a dark sorcerer and paid for it with his life in the battle that had birthed Thunderbird Falls. I thought Garth had gotten out of the Magic Seattle scene. It looked like he’d gotten back in.
I knew the other faces, too. Duane, the very decent guy whose blood I’d shared in a rather literally minded ritual. Thomas, their Elder, the male counterpart to the Crone. Roxie, who’d been as cute as her name.
But I’d been wrong. I’d misjudged in my counting. There weren’t thirteen bodies. There were twelve.
Marcia Williams, the coven’s leader, was missing.
“When?” My question rasped beneath the general babble, not loud enough to gain anyone’s attention. I cleared my throat and tried again. “When? When exactly did this happen?”
Two dozen witnesses turned my way with two dozen answers. Well, no, more like with about four answers, the majority of which were 1:53 p.m. I took that as the median and hobbled a few steps away from the bodies. “Morrison? Michael?”
He turned his head half an inch at his surname, indicating he’d heard me, but when I used his first name he came around full circle, eyes dark with concern. “What is it, Walker?”
“What time exactly did Annie wake up?”
“One fifty-three.”
Of course. I would trust Morrison to know the precise moment that the world planned to end, so I had no doubt at all he was right. I pressed my fingertips into the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t wearing glasses. I hadn’t been wearing them for a while, but the world wasn’t in soft focus. I wondered, briefly, if all the shape-shifting had fixed my vision, then let it go, because there were far more important things to think about. Like, “Then we have a problem.”
If Morrison was the kind of person to give me a no shit look, that would have been the time to do it. Instead, a thread of tension knotted his aura and his shoulders, but