Minor Magic, page 3
part #7 of Xoe Meyers Series
Our tennis shoes crunched on the rock ground as we left Chase and Allison behind. Now that I was taking the time to look, I found our surroundings breathtaking. Massive rock faces created a huge valley around us. The rocks were a deep red, a few shades darker than the clay-filled earth. The limited vegetation was prickly and offered no shade, but somehow seemed to add to the odd beauty of the place. However, I could have gone without the hot sun beating down on us.
Lucy’s eyes were barely open as she followed her nose. Her black shorts and burgundy teeshirt were the wrong colors to be wearing under the hot sun, but she didn’t seem to notice. Nor did she notice the beads of sweat slowly forming on her forehead. Following a scent took absolute concentration, or so I’d been told. It would have probably been easier to follow the scent in wolf form, but Lucy didn’t transform unless she absolutely had to.
“We’re close,” she muttered.
I let out a shaky breath, glad we didn’t have to travel too far. Allison and Chase were well out of sight, but we’d probably still hear them if they yelled loud enough.
I scanned our surroundings, looking for some sign of Art. At first I noticed nothing out of the ordinary, but with a second glance, I picked out a small, tan tent, nestled on a ledge of rock.
“There,” I whispered, though we were far enough off that whoever was in the tent probably wouldn’t hear us. “You think that’s him?”
She turned her head in the direction of the tent, and took a deep whiff. “It might be, but something smells bad.”
I inhaled deeply through my nose and caught a brief whiff of a ripe, pungent odor, like the smell of long dead roadkill. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I whispered.
Lucy nodded. “It might not be coming from the tent, though. Could just be dead animal. We’ll have to get closer to see.”
I grimaced. “But I don’t want to get closer.”
“Let’s go.” Lucy set off.
She was apparently much braver than I. I followed at her side, but slightly behind. If the smell was coming from the tent, I already had a good idea of what might be inside, and I didn’t want to see it. I’d had enough death in my life already.
It only took us another seven or eight minutes to reach the tent, and the smell had intensified the entire way. I really didn’t want to look inside, but we had to. It might not be Art, and once we called the police, we’d lose our chance to investigate.
“You do it,” I said.
Lucy shook her head. “I am not touching that tent. If you want that zipper unzipped, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”
My face felt flushed with heat and nausea. I was doing my best to breath shallowly through my nose, but the smell was . . . permeating.
Knowing I had no other choice, I knelt down and reached a shaky hand toward the zipper. Nothing within the tent moved, but I still felt like something might jump out at me at any moment. I gripped the small metal toggle, warm from the sun, and slowly unzipped the tent, then reeled back at what I saw.
I’d never met nor seen a picture of Art to identify him, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The body in the tent was so disfigured, there would have been no identifying it anyway.
I scurried away from the tent, fighting the urge to vomit.
A few moments later, Lucy came to stand beside me as I rested on my hands and knees. She crouched down to my level, then held out a worn leather journal.
I turned wide eyes to her. “Where did that come from?”
“It was in the tent.”
“You reached into that tent!” I exclaimed, horrified that she’d put her hand anywhere near the decaying corpse.
“I saw the journal when I looked inside,” she explained, “and I had a feeling we’d want to hide it before we called the police. If it doesn’t belong to Art, then we’ll turn it in anonymously.”
I grabbed the offered journal then forced myself to my feet, taking a few more steps away from the tent. “How are you so calm?”
She shrugged. “I’m good under pressure. I’ll freak out later. Really, I’m surprised you’re so freaked out. You’ve seen dead bodies before.”
“Not rotted ones,” I muttered, glancing down at the journal in my hands. There were no signs of blood or anything else on it, but I still felt the overwhelming urge to drop it in the dirt and run away to take a shower.
“Should we look for any more clues?” Lucy asked, glancing back at the tent.
“Nope,” I replied instantly.
“But there might be evidence as to who murdered him,” she argued.
I began to walk farther away from tent. “What makes you think he was murdered?” I asked, suddenly curious.
“He was covered in blood, Xoe.”
I kept walking. “He could have gotten injured, then maybe a wild animal finished him off.”
She smirked. “And zipped the tent back up after it was done with its supper?”
I would not vomit. I would not vomit. “Maybe he tried to hide in the tent from the animal, and bled out.” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want it to be murder. I guess because it made things more complicated. We might have to deal with a killer on top of everything else.
“There was a knife sticking out of his chest,” she explained.
I flashed back on the corpse and suddenly felt a renewed need to vomit. I hadn’t looked long enough to notice a knife.
“Okay,” I conceded. “So he was murdered. We’re still better off leaving any other evidence in the hands of the police. We don’t have the forensic tools necessary to track a murderer.”
Lucy stopped walking. “I think we should call Abel instead of the police. Really, if this is demon business, it should be taken care of by demons.”
I stared at her, jaw agape. Little Lucy, who was so afraid of breaking the law, was suggesting we not report a murder.
Okay, so I’d failed to report murders in the past, but only when I was involved.
“Plus,” she added. “If we can preserve the murder weapon, maybe Rose or Cynthia could do a spell to track its owner. It might be our only way of solving this mystery.”
“You’re creepy,” I replied, starting to feel better now that we had some distance between us and the tent. She was also right. Rose and Cynthia were talented witches. They could probably help . . . not that they’d want to. They’d stayed as far away from me as possible after I’d forced them to summon a demon. Never mind that the demon was Sam.
“We’ll go back to the car and call Abel,” I agreed. “Moab is only six or seven hours away from here. Maybe he’ll come and take care of it all for us.”
Lucy nodded. “He’ll want to alert the local pack too, especially after what happened last time when supernaturals started disappearing.”
I sighed. “If witches are kidnapping supernaturals again to try stealing their powers, I’m going to be pissed.”
Lucy gently punched my shoulder playfully. “Now there’s the Xoe I know and love.”
I smiled and looked down at the journal in my hands, feeling better. As soon as we called Abel and distanced ourselves from the scene of the crime, I’d go through it. Hopefully there’d be some worthwhile information.
Let the mysterious case of the murdered demon and the leather bound journal commence.
Chapter Four
“Why do these odd occurrences seem to follow you around?” Abel’s voice sighed over the phone.
“It’s not like I do it on purpose,” I grumbled.
Allison was taking her turn at driving with Lucy as copilot. I’d felt shaky since we returned to the car, having lost the initial adrenaline boost after finding the dead body, and was glad to cozy up in the back seat with Chase and Alexius. Chase held my cold, clammy hand as I used the other to keep the phone plastered to my ear.
“Give me directions to find the corpse,” Abel sighed.
I gave him clear directions, then asked, “Are you coming yourself?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “I’ll send a few wolves to take care of the body. My guess is this won’t be a mystery the police are equipped to handle, and we don’t want them making any connections between you and the dead man, if you are in fact kin.”
“If we’re related through my demon father, there’s probably no record of it,” I explained tiredly.
“Be that as it may, I don’t want a repeat of what happened last time.”
I sighed. “Lucy brought that up too. You really think witches might be involved?”
“It’s far too soon to tell. Probably not, but it’s difficult to avoid a bit of paranoia.”
“Nothing wrong with paranoia,” I replied. “It keeps us alive.”
He chuckled. “Amen to that. I recommend you find a hotel far from the murder scene. Take a look at that journal, and wait for me to contact you. If my people find any clues, you’ll be the first to know.”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see it. “Okay,” I confirmed, then hung up. Here I thought we were going to have a nice, information-getting road trip, and now we were about to be neck deep in a supernatural murder investigation.
I looked down at the journal in my lap, almost afraid to look inside. What if it held nothing important? What if it wasn’t even Art’s and I stole some poor, lost hiker’s journal? There was only one way to find out.
I slipped my hand out of Chase’s and opened it. I held it in front of my face, ignoring the gross feeling it gave me. I couldn’t stop imagining it spending all that time in a tent with a dead guy. Only a few of the pages were filled with messy handwriting, but they instantly drew me in.
A few minutes went by as I read.
“Xoe?” Chase questioned, watching me.
I held up a finger and continued to read until I finished the few pages, then shut the journal and sat back against my seat, feeling slightly stunned. Alexius nudged the journal out of my lap so he could replace it with the front half of his body.
I turned wide eyes to Chase.
“What did you find out?” Lucy asked, turning around in her seat to look at me.
“Well my dad was right,” I began numbly. “I was in danger. Still am, maybe.”
Chase reached over and tugged the journal from my hand where it rested beside my leg. He started reading it while I continued to mull things over. Lucy eyed me impatiently, but I still needed a moment for it to sink in.
Once Chase had finished reading the few pages, he handed the journal to Lucy. She read them quickly, still turned around in her seat to dart occasional glances at me.
“Woah,” she said as she finished.
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” Allison snapped from the driver’s seat.
Lucy’s eyes remained on the journal, skimming it a second time as she explained, “Xoe and her father were apparently viewed as rather high up in the demon hierarchy. They got all of the good powers and respect, while their distant relatives ended up more human than demon. Too weak to survive in the demon underground, they fled to the human world where they had to live under the radar of human society.”
I chewed on my fingernail in thought, then blurted, “It doesn’t make sense though, why didn’t my dad tell me all of this?” I turned to Chase. He’d known my dad longer than I had.
He shrugged. “You knew you had a strong bloodline, but I think the existence of distant family members might have been news to your dad as well, which would explain why he’d be researching them. Maybe he’d only recently found out about them and was trying to uncover more information before he told everything to you, but he didn’t get very far before . . . ”
“My grandmother killed him,” I finished for him. “I wonder if her reappearance was what caused my dad to start snooping. According to that journal, Art and a few others had been watching us for a while, and were obviously jealous. He made it seem like they tried to hurt us, but failed, and expected me or my dad to come after them.”
“But neither of you even knew anything had happened,” Chase observed. “You were too busy dealing with Bartimus, then your grandmother.”
“So if this Art had a grudge against you,” Lucy said thoughtfully, “maybe whoever killed him did you a favor.”
Allison cleared her throat, keeping her eyes on the road ahead of us. “Then why didn’t that demon in the RV park try to kill you?” she asked.
“Because they believed my dad and I had all of the power,” I explained. “She wasn’t strong enough to attack me on her own.”
“She didn’t really seem like she hated you,” Chase countered. “In fact, she seemed like she felt kind of guilty.”
“We need to go back and talk to her,” I decided.
“If she’s even still there,” Lucy added.
I sighed. She was right. Suzie had probably high-tailed it out of there as soon as we left. “It’s worth a shot. While we look for her, Abel’s people will have a chance to investigate Art’s tent to get some idea of who killed him. Given the circumstances, finding the murderer will probably be our best lead.”
Lucy frowned, still looking back at me. “Hopefully we can manage it by the end of the week, before Allison and I have to get back to school.”
Allison snorted. “C’mon, we can miss a few days. A murder investigation is much more exciting.”
I watched as Lucy raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t want to get back to Max?”
Allison removed a hand from the wheel and waved her off. “The longer I’m gone, the more he’ll miss me. I’m giving him something to look forward to.”
I laughed, feeling slightly better. My friends tended to have that effect on me. I turned toward Chase. “Is that true? Should I run away for a while so you’ll have a chance to miss me?”
“And let you get into trouble without me?” he questioned. “I think not. I’ve already missed out on plenty, hanging out with Sam to get this ghost-seeing situation under control.”
I inhaled sharply as I had a sudden thought, then turned a mischievous grin to Chase.
He instantly shook his head. “Oh no, I know that smile. I’m not going to like whatever is coming next.”
I smiled wider. “Well I was just thinking, you know, since Art recently died and all. If his ghost is still around, maybe we can summon it and ask it who killed him.”
Chase sighed. “Most ghosts are just remaining energy. They don’t have memories. Your grandmother was different. She stuck around on purpose, unable to let go of what happened to her.”
“And my dad too,” I added. “He managed to hang on for quite a while out of a need to protect me.”
“Art could be hanging on for either of those reasons,” Allison added. “Vengeance on who killed him, or a need to protect anyone else he cared about from big, bad Xoe.”
Chase bit his lip, obviously not liking the idea.
My expression softened as I realized I was being an ass. Chase had discovered his abilities when I died, and they’d caused him nothing but discomfort ever since. For me to ask that he intentionally use them was beyond selfish.
I grabbed his hand and gave him an apologetic smile. “Even if he is around, he would probably only cause us more trouble,” I announced. “For now, we should just question the living.”
Lucy glanced at me, obviously suspicious of my sudden change of heart, then realization dawned on her face and she quickly turned around. Asking Chase to summon a ghost would have been like asking Lucy to go all wolfy just after she’d been attacked, and was still horrified with her new life.
“I’ll try,” Chase sighed, “but I should probably call Sam first to ask just how to do it.”
“It’s okay,” I argued. “Probably a bad idea.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “I really should learn to control this new gift regardless. Plus, we need to call Sam anyways to make sure he’s properly attending to Dorrie’s needs.”
I laughed. “She’s probably already made him check out half the library for her.”
He grinned. “And I imagine he has bloody fingers by now from all of the games of Checkers.”
“I really must meet this Dorrie,” Allison cut in. “Anyone capable of bossing Chase’s brother around seems like my kind of girl.”
I had been meaning to take Lucy and Allison underground to spend time with Dorrie, but we’d just been so busy. I was also worried Allison would be a bad influence on her. Dorrie was already a bit intense. Combining her energy with Allison’s bad attitude was a recipe for disaster. Not that I said so out loud.
“Once we get back to Shelby, I’ll bring you down for a visit,” I assured.
“I’m holding you to that,” Allison replied, taking the turn that would lead us back to the RV park.
Allison would take any opportunity she could get to explore the demon underground. She’d been down a few times before I acquired Dorrie, but demons really weren’t supposed to bring humans into our city. I was yet to stand trial for any of my demonic crimes, but it could happen eventually. I wasn’t even sure how the whole justice system worked, but it probably wouldn’t go well for me without my dad around to help.
But that was a problem for another time. First, we had to deal with the fact that the RV park ahead of us was on fire.
“Well this is bad,” Allison commented, parking the car a few yards away from the nearest fire truck.
There were several police cars present too, and it was evident everyone had just arrived. As we watched, the first of the fire hoses became active to begin spraying the out of control flames. Those evacuated from the park all waited out on the street, watching as their homes and possessions were destroyed. We all sat in the car and watched.
“Well I hope most of these people were just here on vacation and have homes elsewhere, or we just cost a lot of people all of their worldly possessions,” Allison commented.
“We?” I questioned, leaning forward to peer out of the front windshield at the fire.
