Prague Murder (3 page)

“Imagine the lives and the intense faith that brought women here,” Cathy said, eyes filled with the light of respect..

Emily didn’t know what to say to that, so she said to Ingrid, “You’re crazy. I’ll punch you. We’re tired. Tired makes us crazy,” Emily explained to the sisters who were watching them carefully.

The guy in front of Ingrid stumbled into Ingrid. Emily was about to push him off.

“Hey,” Emily said, but he went down, and her shout was cut off.

Ingrid had caught the guy but she wasn’t strong enough to hold him up. She eased him to the ground with an, “Umph.”

His large camera had slid off his body and Ingrid had scooped it up as she stood. Then she held her hands out in front of her. They were covered in a slick, red, substance.

“Oh gods,” Emily said, dropping to her knees next to the guy. He was already not breathing. She found the wound in seconds. It was not small and was bleeding profusely. “Oh Hecate.”

She felt for a pulse, but already knew she’d find nothing. This wasn’t, unfortunately, the first dead body she’d seen. She wouldn’t have expected him to die so very quickly, but the light was gone from the body. The magic. That inner something that made him—
him
.

Holy gods, someone had just killed this guy. Right in front of them.
How? Why?

“Why is it always me?” Ingrid wailed, holding her bloody hands out. Cathy and Carol had gone for the leader of the tour, and he reached them a moment later, nose twitching.

Yep, he was really a vampire. They lived off of potions. But the base of those potions was blood. Preferably magic user. If not magic user, human. If not human, predator. They also lived off of a lot of food. A
lot.
It didn’t happen often, but occasionally a vampire lost control and hunted people. Magic users or not.

“What happened?” he demanded, dropping to his knees across from them.

“I don’t know,” Ingrid said. “He fell back into me. I eased him down. He was—just—gone.”

“Joe? Joe!” The voice came from behind them. The little birdlike woman that had caught Emily’s attention earlier flit over to them and crumpled. “Joe!”

Her voice was a wail that seemed to pierce inside of Emily’s brain.

“Gods, woman, tone it down,” Emily’s eyeball was twitching with the wail.

“Everyone inside,” the tour guide said, herding people away from the body while another person emerged from the shadows to stay with the little birdlike woman and the man’s body.

“Are you kidding me right now?” Ingrid’s voice was infuriated and panicky.
“Why is it always me?”

Chapter 3

Ingrid’s voice was an exhausted slur, but adrenaline seemed to be waking her up. “I need a sink. And all of the soap. ALL of it. Immediately,” she ordered the tour guide, who looked at her hands, swallowed—it was unclear whether he was sick to his stomach or hungry at the smell of the blood—and led Ingrid into a tiny bathroom on the edge of the wide hall. The other tour participants had lined up at the window to watch the woman cry over the body.

Emily looked around and found Cathy and Carol standing nearby. Carol had a look on her face as she stared at the backs of everyone watching the drama unload.

“That’s weird,” Carol said, less concerned with the death than the oddities.

“It’s tragic and horrible,” Cathy said. Her face was white, and her lips were trembling.

“Well…” Carol strung the word out. “He died so fast.”

“He was stabbed,” Cathy said. “Or something like that. That means the killer must have been right there by us. We missed it. I didn’t see anything. Did you?”

Emily shook her head, but her eyes were still on Carol.

“He was stabbed, probably,” Carol said. “Given the blood.”

“So?” Cathy looked around the convent and her thoughts seemed far away.

“It takes a while to die from a stab wound. You don’t just fall down dead.”

Emily’s head cocked and she realized that Carol was probably right. Even in the movies, it took a good half-dozen wounds to die.

“What is going on,” Emily asked. “Why are there always bodies?”

“Now that’s a comment that I find confusing,” Cathy said, her eyes on Emily. “What do you mean?”

Emily wanted to punch herself in the throat. Ingrid would have been understanding. She had been covered in blood…but Emily. Emily didn’t have any reason to tell these people this was her fourth—holy mother of pearl—her
fourth
murder. Emily needed to find that wench fate and slap her until her ears never stopped ringing.

You would think, having traveled across the world, that they would stop stumbling over murders and corpses but no such luck—and now to have just
told
someone that they had been involved in something like this before.

“Unfortunately, we found a murdered body before,” Emily said, evading the truth that this was their fourth. Hecate, their
fourth
. She was never leaving her apartment again. Probably, if they found more bodies, they would rain from the sky.

It was only after she saw the two older women examining her face that Emily thought she shouldn’t let her face show how mad she was about all the bodies. She should try to look distraught. Or…maybe..sad? Should she cry?

She didn’t feel the need to cry. Other than Jill—Mary Martin’s Mom—the two guys who had died had been jerks. And she didn’t know this guy at all. Emily would just as soon all of them had lived, and she wouldn’t have killed them. But that didn’t mean she needed to let their deaths haunt her. What haunted her was constantly being a bedamned murder suspect.

Damn it.

Damn it.

Damn…the door opened where Ingrid had disappeared and she returned with clean hands and upset expression.

“Do they know what happened?” she asked, rubbing her hand over her face again. “I could really go for some wine. Or some coffee. I want tacos again. Tacos and those dumpling things.”

Carol and Cathy’s gazes fixed on Ingrid and her upset feelings. Cathy wrapped an arm around Ingrid and led her to the bench away from the crowd at the window..

“A death makes you want to eat?” one of them asked.

“Stress eat,” Ingrid nodded, emphatically. “I want to eat all the foods and maybe some more of it. Maybe I will eat until I puke and eat some more.”

“That’s an eating disorder,” Carol said, eyes fixed on Ingrid’s gaze.

“I’m feeling pretty ready to have a disorder,” she said.

Doors on the far end of the hall opened and two men in suits came in. They had hard, cold eyes that saw everything.

“They look like mean Gabes,” Ingrid said to Emily. “I don’t want to think about my Gabe like this.”

“Oh yeah,” Emily agreed, watching them come up to the group. “Like the time that Gabe asked you about the death of your husband.”

Ingrid’s gaze widened, and Emily could see that had actually hurt Ingrid. And it didn’t help that these two women were lingering around them.

“I’m sorry,” Emily said, contrite and unafraid to let it show. She weaseled her way in between Cathy and Ingrid, wrapping her friend up in a hug and said, “I’m sorry. Gabe adores you. Harrison’s death was unfortunate, and I know that you miss him. That’s okay.”

Emily didn’t say that she agreed with Ingrid’s lingering regret for Harrison. Now that was a murder she could see having committed. Though, come to think of it, Harrison hadn’t actually been murdered.

The tour guide had noticed the two mean Gabes as well, and he stepped away from the crowd to meet them.

“Cops,” Emily said. “For sure.”

“Or Presidium,” Ingrid replied. “Check out the pentacle necklace.”

“I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. Hazel didn’t seem to like the last set of Presidium very much.”

Hazel, Emily thought, might be their coven leader, but she had relationship baggage from that Presidium type. Her opinion about the Presidium had to be colored by that. Dean seemed to like working for them well enough. Thinking of Dean made her wish he was here. There would be a convenient witness. There was no way she and Ingrid weren’t getting slapped on the suspect list. Dean, her sort-of-boyfriend and sometime-Presidium investigator, could have gotten them removed faster than they’d get off it now.

“But why Presidium,” Ingrid mused. “I mean…”

“Who are the Presidium?” Cathy asked.

Emily was the better liar, so she answered. “They’re like special cops.”

“And a pentacle is a sign of their office,” Carol added.

“Um, yes, I guess. We’re not that familiar with them,” Ingrid said. “Our friend told us about them back home. Speaking of that friend,” Ingrid’s eyes narrowed and she looked around the convent. “It’s her fault we’re here. Do you think…”

Ingrid didn’t finish, but what was she going to say? That Hazel had set them up somehow? That she’d somehow foretold this death? Of course not. Hazel wouldn’t do that to them. It was probably why Ingrid hadn’t finished the question. But why were they always finding bodies? What about them seemed to compel the universe to dump them at their feet?

“This tour is usually for our kind,” Emily said.

“Your kind,” Cathy and Carol asked in unison.

“It’s hard to explain. Sort of like an international club,” Emily lied.

Ingrid rubbed her hands over her face and said to Cathy. “You look tired. Sit on the bench with us again. Travel is exhausting isn’t it?”

Ingrid was probably trying to distract the two sisters before they got in trouble for telling normal humans about the supernatural. Not that lots didn’t know. But the unwritten rule of the magical world was you let those who wanted to figure it out, figure it out. And those who wanted to remain blind, remain blind.

The end.

It wasn’t like there was a task force to get them in trouble. But revealing their world was heavily frowned upon and they’d probably get in trouble with their coven leader.

Cathy and Carol somehow had herded Ingrid and Emily with them. Those two sisters seemed to be naturals at getting what they wanted. And they seemed to want Ingrid and Emily to remain with them.

Fine, Emily thought, but don’t blame me when your eyes are opened to the other.

“You four,” one of the Presidium men said, “We’d like to talk to you one at a time.”

They took Cathy and then Carol into the little room. When Cathy came back, she smiled apologetically and said, “They asked me not to say anything until after they’d spoken to all of us.”

Ingrid smiled a sickly smile. Emily didn’t bother, she was too busy feeling the impending fate of being a murder suspect…yet again. It wouldn’t take the Presidium dudes long to realize that Cathy and Carol weren’t witches or anything else supernatural.

But it would take them about four seconds to get from those two sisters that Ingrid and Emily had been involved in a murder investigation before. And from there, it wouldn’t take them long to get Hazel or Gabe on the line and realize just how many times they’d been suspects. Would these investigators realize that the two of them were innocent? Or would they disregard all the evidence the others had found and determine that they were, in fact, the killers the whole while?

Carol had confirmed that the victim’s name was Joe while Cathy was being interviewed. And, it wasn’t just the murder of Joe—whoever that was—that was making Emily both sweat and have a killing desire to punch someone in the throat. It was the deaths of all of them. Even Ingrid’s husband, Harrison. He’d died a natural death. But his children had insisted on an investigation and it had been a tense few days before the autopsy came back.

Sweet Hecate, Emily breathed, sitting next to Ingrid and leaning into her, so she would feel Emily’s support. This sucked. It sucked so hard. They were supposed to be escaping murder investigations and buying shoes and stocking wine cellars. They were
not
supposed to be catching falling bodies and being taken into small rooms to be cross-examined by blokes who didn’t give a crap about them and their feelings and—for that matter—their plans, how tired they were, and that they could really use some of those fruit dumplings.

* * * * * * *

Ingrid wasn’t sure how they turned a little room into some sort of evil cell—but they had. The room was
tiny.
The light was too-bright. The chairs were the metal sort of evil uncomfortable and the two Presidium types were able to peer right into her soul with the way they had set things up. If they turned out the lights and shined a flashlight on her face, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Hello,” one said with a thick accent, “My name is Alois Jech. This is my partner, Igor Foltys.”

Ingrid blinked, knowing she’d say those names wrong. She nodded to prevent herself from slaughtering their names.

“May we have your name, please?”

Ingrid answered and then described how the man had fallen forward into her arms. She didn’t know him. Had never seen him before. She’d just gotten to Prague. They even discovered that she wasn’t quite sure what country she was in—it was the Czech Republic.