Last Breath (17 page)

Seriously? I’d never been in this store or met this guy. I’d covered my tattoo with the wide leather bracelet. Was there a wanted poster out with my picture on it?
Curses shall rain down on those who speak or sell candles to this Templar?

Thankfully Tremelay stepped up. “Yes, she is. And I’m a cop.” He flashed his badge and Elmo winced.

“Fine.
You
can buy candles.
She
can’t.”

Racist pigs. “I’m working as a consultant with the police department about a series of murders in Baltimore.”

“The murderers killed people with candles?” Elmo was being deliberately obtuse. It annoyed me almost as much as his freaky hairdo.

Tremelay took over the interrogation. “No, the murderers performed a magical ritual in which they sacrificed a woman. Now, I know you sell more than candles here, and as the nearest shop carrying ceremonial magic supplies, it makes sense that the killers might be customers of yours.” The detective put away his badge. He was amazingly calm given the clerk’s hostility.

Fear tightened the clerk’s face. “What exactly do you need?”

The detective looked over to me and I motioned for him to continue to take the lead. He was getting more information with his cop-talk than I would as a Templar.

“We’re trying to find out who bought dog bones in the last month.”

Elmo gave an exaggerated shrug. “Lots of people. Dog bones are top of the list when you’re doing magic that involves a psychopomp.”

Spiritualists sometimes used them. Although not your run-of-the-mill ghost chaser with their pocket EMF and motion sensing cameras, or even priests. The only ones who tended to use dog bones in clearing a haunted room were those with skills in necromancy. I knew of only one necromancer in the Baltimore area, and although I’m sure Russell did have dog bones, he would have shelled out the extra for a skull rather than use these dinky toy-dog leg bones.

“These people do death magic,” I said. “They buy dog bones in sets of four, along with blood chalices and knives for sacrificial work. These aren’t necromancers.”

Elmo looked around the store then began twisting his hands together. “That’s pretty much every mage in Baltimore. You know that. You used to hang with Haul Du before they kicked you out. They go straight to the source in Baltimore.”

I suddenly felt like someone was sitting on my chest—someone who weighed over four hundred pounds. “Source?”

The clerk swallowed hard. “Source. I mean, I don’t do that sort of thing. I don’t ask my customers what they’re doing with the stuff they buy. It’s not my place to judge.”

He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. I glanced over at Tremelay, who was staring at the pair of us as if we were suddenly speaking an alien language. “They
all
do soul work? All of them?”

“No! Well, not usually. You need a soul trap for that sort of thing. They can take decades to put together, but only if you’ve got the specific skill-set to make your own. Existing ones aren’t easy to come by. Cheap ones are a couple thousand, but if you’re going to go to the effort to kill someone and take their soul, you want to maximize the energy output. A good soul trap can be fifty grand, if you can manage to find one for sale, that is.”

“Sell one lately?” Tremelay asked.

Elmo’s eyes bugged out. “You kidding? We deal in basic magical supplies, not high-end stuff like that. I don’t even remember the last time I
saw
one for sale.”

“But someone in Baltimore has one,” I told him.

The clerk nodded. “I heard the rumors, although I think it’s a recent acquisition.”

This whole thing was making me ill. Fifty grand so you could murder someone and use their soul to power a ritual. “I know the mages in Baltimore do death magic, but usually that’s just animals, not humans and
souls
. That’s… sick.”

“And summoning demons isn’t? Where do you think demons get their power? This is just cutting out the middleman. It’s safer.”

Safer except for the victim being sacrificed. Yes, demons took souls, but that was with the consent of the human. There were deals, an exchange of sorts. What we were talking about was murder.

He must have seen the horror on my face, because he quickly backpedaled. “I’ve never seen it. That’s just what people say. It’s probably just a rumor. I doubt they’re using anything more than chickens and rats.”

“We need a list of who bought dog bones, blood chalices, and sacrificial knives.” Tremelay wasn’t buying the guy’s sudden ignorance any more than I was.

Elmo shook his head. “I can’t. They’ll kill me. It’s not just one or two mages, it’s a lot. I’ll be ruined if word gets out that I gave up that kind of information.”

“You’ll be ruined if I have to subpoena that information,” Tremelay told him.

The guy set his jaw. “All you get is a list of customers who bought candles. You don’t seriously think those guys pay by credit card or personal check, do you? They don’t even use their real names. I honestly can’t help you.”

I pulled out a picture I’d downloaded off the internet of Ronald Stull. “This guy one of them?”

Elmo took a step back and swallowed hard. “I can’t remember.”

I was about to get my sword to see if that would jog the guy’s memory a bit, but Tremelay had a different idea.

“Okay, then what do you remember? Help me out here, buddy so I don’t need to get your shop shut down for trafficking in human remains and illegal, endangered-species animal parts.”

Elmo winced. “Look, ever since they got the soul trap, the Baltimore group does soul work. They’re
all
involved with death magic, but in the last few months they started sacrificial magic. I think their group is twenty to thirty mages. They call themselves Fiore Noir.”

Ugh. Never trust a magical group whose name mixes romance languages. I waved the picture at Elmo once more. “So Ronald Stull was part of Fiore Noir?”

The clerk chewed his lip. “Breaker. That guy… he’s got a reputation for revenge. You gotta understand, I say anything and I’ll be the next guy bleeding out in their circle.”

“He’s dead. Is he part of Fiore Noir and can you describe any of the other members?”

Elmo practically slumped with relief. “Yeah, he’s Fiore Noir. He isn’t their leader, but I got the feeling he had a lot of influence and was in charge of some of their major magical workings. He was the one who came out to buy supplies. I don’t know any other mages who I can specifically say were in Fiore Noir, but Breaker had a friend. This guy made Breaker look like a saint. Big guy, mid-fifties, I’d guess. One look and you knew not to cross him. I didn’t even want to meet his eyes, you know? Anyway, from what I hear, he’s the one who loaned Fiore Noir the soul trap.”

The stranger. Unfortunately big, mean-looking mid-fifties guys weren’t a rare occurrence in Baltimore.

“Anything else you remember?” Tremelay asked. “Names, even magical ones? Dates or times for their rituals? Locations?”

Elmo thought a moment then nodded. “I overheard Breaker last week on the phone. From what he said, I think they were doing their rituals near Security Boulevard. There’s a big park there with a stream running through it.”

“Dead Run,” Tremelay mused. I had no idea where that was, although I’d driven by signs for Security Boulevard a few times since I’d moved here. “It’s a narrow winding park, but there are some spots where there’s nothing nearby beyond the highway. That area’s mostly businesses. Perfect place to conduct midnight activity unseen.”

The clerk nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. Something went wrong last time, so they moved to a spot with lots of abandoned buildings.”

Old Town Mall. The detective and I exchanged knowing looks. Was it wrong to be this excited? It was a decent lead, even if we didn’t have names and addresses of the mages involved. From what Elmo said, Bethany’s sacrifice had been the first in the Mall, but, like Janice had suspected, it wasn’t this Fiore Noir group’s first death magic ritual. I got a feeling that a search of Dead Run would reveal signs of an abandoned ritual space, and possibly the remains of previous victims. Unless the group had some mass disposal site, they probably had left the bodies there. Transporting dead was risky. It would have been easier to dig a giant hole and toss them all into it.

“One last thing.” I pulled another picture out of my pocket. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Elmo looked at the picture of Bethany Scarborough and shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen her in the shop before.”

I didn’t get the feeling he was lying. We had some forward momentum on the mages who’d killed her, but still no clue as to why they’d chosen Bethany. I was still in the dark as to why Benton and Alban had wanted to kill a list of people—the entirety of the Fiore Noir mages it sounded like. And then there was that angel. What role did Araziel play in any of this?

And one more thing. “How did you know who I was?”

Elmo smirked. “Haul Du made a big deal when they threw you out. Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing that you’d fooled them for eight months, but they were more interested in making sure you didn’t gain entry to any other group than preserving their dignity.”

Great. “So you’re not allowed to sell me anything? Or are you supposed to report me to someone?”

He sniffed. “Both. There’s a price on your head. Normally I’d be all about collecting that bounty, but it’s not enough to risk pissing off a bunch of Templars. I don’t need that kind of hurt coming down on me. Besides, it’s like five hundred dollars. Chump change.”

I was so shocked I could barely wrap my brain around his words. A price on my head? Me? “The DC group put a bounty on me? Dark Iron put a bounty on me? Like a dead or alive bounty?”

“Someone in that DC group would be happy see you dead, and they’d pay for it, too. The Baltimore group, Fiore Noir just wants you out of town. Forever.”

Y
OU THINKING WHAT
I’m thinking?” I asked Tremelay as we climbed into his car.

“I’m thinking I’ve got a busy day ahead of me,” he replied. “I’m gonna try and pull a few guys to help us search Dead Run for signs of rituals and possibly other victims. Then I need to file for that warrant on Ronald Stull’s place, and fast track that list of names we got from the DC house.”

“Our killers are on that list,” I told him. Actually from what we’d been told the entire list had been complicit in at least one murder. Probably more. If Elmo was right and all of Fiore Noir had participated, there was a lot they needed to answer to.

And then there was this lame bounty on my head. What the heck was that about? I could see Fiore Noir being nervous about having a Templar in their backyard when they were doing soul magic, but who at Haul Du would care enough to throw a few bucks at anyone who took me out? I was a member for only eight months, and when they threw me out, I left quietly. Yeah, Dark Iron seemed to have a particularly large stick up his ass when it came to me, but disliking someone intensely was a far cry from putting out a passive-aggressive plea for their murder.

I needed to call Raven. I couldn’t see a mage psycho enough to kill just to please Dark Iron, but it worried me. Was Elmo being dramatic? Would I find myself plowed down by a city bus one day, or hit on the head with a chunk of falling cement just so some mage could score a few hundred dollars?

I’m sure it was nothing. Mages just didn’t murder people they casually disliked. Elmo was trying to scare me. It worked, but I wasn’t going to let my paranoia distract me from this case. I had things to do.

“So, wanna grab a bite before we start hiking through Dead Run? Our drive-through choices seem to be burgers or chicken.”

Yum, especially if the detective was paying. But I had a tight schedule today. “I’m meeting my sister at my place at noon to banish that demon from DC, and I’ve got some prep work to do first.”

“Call me when you’re done and I’ll let you know where we are in our search. You can come out and meet me.”

Were we
friends
? I mean, I know I was an expert witness and all that, but Detective Tremelay seemed unusually eager for my company. Although searching for dead bodies and magical sites in a suburban wilderness hardly seemed the sort of thing buddies would do together. Well, normal buddies anyway.

My phone chimed and I looked down at the message. “I’m probably gonna be tied up most of the day. Can you call me and let me know if you find anything? Otherwise I’ll check in with you later tonight.”

He’d have to search Dead Run alone because I just got a message I’d been waiting all day for.

I knew Bethany Scarborough. Pissed. So fucking pissed that I’m going to tell you everything I know. Meet me at O’Grady’s in Westminster at five.

Raven. And as interested as I was to figure out how Bethany was connected to all this beyond the settlement of an insurance claim, I was happier to know my ex-friend was going to fully cooperate and that she’d reached out to
me
to help.

T
HIS… THIS HAS
got to be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Athena was strangely enchanted by my tiny, ratty apartment. She was equally enchanted by the double circle with two sets of symbols that I’d just finished painting on my dry, gray floor. My sister handed me a box and threw her coat on the sofa before kneeling down to inspect my work. I winced, thinking about what the floor leveler was going to do to her creamy linen pants. Although her pants were the least of her worries. Athena drove a dark blue Mercedes S class that she’d left in my parking lot in between the twenty-year-old Geo Metro with mismatched body panels and an AMC Gremlin that looked like it hadn’t moved from its space since 1978. She’d be lucky if there was a scrap of metal left on that car when she went to leave.

“What are you going to do in this thing? I’ve seen you make charms before and you’ve never used something this elaborate.”

“It will concentrate any magical energies, so anything I do will have more oomph. Everyone should have one of these. They’re very useful.” I opened up the box and unwrapped the contents. One was a Breyer horse—a four inch tall chestnut mare that reminded me of a painting back home. One was a resin fox, tail cured around his legs as he sat. The third was a prickly brush hedgehog with a smirk painted on his wooden face. I put them up on the book shelf with the others and stood back to admire them. Great grandma Essie was… eccentric. She was also well over one hundred years old. I had no idea why she was sending me all these little animals, but they’d been arriving steadily by post over the last week.