Witch Hunt(5)

Sky was turning gray. Looked like rain.
My memory of finding Erin in the bathroom swelled to the surface.
Erin. Jesus, Erin.
I had ridden along on a couple of murder scenes when I was in training for the OPA. Everyone did their time with the union     whether they liked it or not, and it was always unforgettable. I remembered the stuff that they looked for in deaths related to demons. There were often runes and seals, finger painting with blood, that kind of stuff. Smarter demons, the ones more like humans, often liked to carve into their prey. The dumber ones just ate them.
Erin hadn’t been eaten. She hadn’t been carved. There were no runes in my bathroom. Just a hole in her heart and hand-shaped bruises stamped onto her throat.
It looked like any mundane murder I’d seen on those CSI TV shows. Nothing to do with demonic possession or magic or a hungry fiend whose master had lost control. It looked like someone had fucked her, choked her, shot her. All stuff that a human could easily do—anyone with a grudge.
I refused to think of that “anyone” as me. I was a victim here. It was the only possible truth, and the only one I would consider.
Something touched my feet and I looked up to see Bloody Shirt making kissy faces at me. He was pressed up against the bars. Leaning toward me, harassing me with gestures instead of words.
I propped up my knees so they couldn’t reach me. Shut my eyes. I still had a hangover and none of this was making me feel any better about it.
Guess with what happened to Erin, I should have been grateful that I was alive to feel so fucking miserable.
I told myself, Count your blessings, Cèsar, because the day is going to get worse before it gets better.
Sometimes it sucked to be right.



Yesterday had been so much better.
I’d just wrapped up a four-month-long manhunt for a witch named Black Jack who had a quick hand for tarot and a quicker hand for curses. Most of those curses were dumb pranks—might mess with someone’s head, but nothing deadly. The numbers in the OPA’s budget were redder than blood, so he’d been on the observation list for years without anyone managing to justify the cost of hunting him down.
Until he cursed some car keys and his ex-girlfriend drove into oncoming traffic.
That had bumped his priority up real fast.
The New Mexico office sent the file to us and Black Jack landed on my desk. Long story short, I bagged him just like I’d bagged a half a dozen other witches this year. Picked him up in a gas station. Slipped a mix of a sleeping and paralysis potion in his energy drink, knocked him out cold.
That was the result of four months of hunting on my part and years of monitoring by other agents. Taking Black Jack off the streets meant that we’d be saving a lot of money on cleaning up his bullshit. It meant we might actually get merit increases on our paychecks next summer.
Yeah, the big boss had been happy with me, and so was everyone else.
That was why I had been at The Olive Pit last night even though I don’t drink. We were riding high on the knowledge that Black Jack was going to Italy for trial, never to be our problem again. Everyone had been there: Fritz Friederling, the director who had given me the job with the OPA; some hunters with the union    ; all the other investigators in the Magical Violations Department; even the administrative assistants.
Suzy had been there, too. The amount of alcohol that woman could put away was incredible considering she was five feet tall in heels. She had been exchanging crass jokes with Joey and Eduardo, the kind of stuff that I would never say in front of a lady, and playing drinking games that started with setting shots on fire and ended up with us all getting completely trashed.
I hadn’t paid for a single drink. All the guys had been buying for me—the man who nailed Black Jack.
They had given me shit over the way tequila made me cough and choke. Suzy had been pounding her tiny, delicately boned fist on my back and it had felt kind of like a jackhammer.
Bad alcohol, great company. So I had been feeling good. Real good.
Then Erin had arrived for her shift. She’d had a nasty black eye covered up with makeup. Big bruise. It covered half of her face. I remembered when my sister, Ofelia, was trying to cover up the evidence of her abuse, so I’d known immediately what was going on.
I had cornered Erin by the kitchen. I’d said something like, “Tell me who’s messing with you, and I’ll take care of it.” Big words coming from a drunk guy, but I’d meant it.
“Nobody’s messing with me,” she had said. She’d batted her eyelashes at me. Shot me a sweet smile. “I’m okay.”
“Let me help you,” I’d insisted. And then I’d told her who I was, whom I worked for, how I could nail the guy that was hurting her. I shouldn’t have told her the truth, but I did.