A Life for a Life

The next morning, Jess strolled through WISP and found Charlie already at her desk, talking on the phone. With a glance at her watch, Jess saw she was only about ten minutes late, which was pretty good for her. Maybe Charlie was one of those early risers. Charlie hung up the phone and turned to her partner.

“Chloe is being released this morning, probably in another hour or so. I asked Karen if she could bring her by here on their way out so you could talk to her again.”

“Great, thanks. Any word from the annoying detective yet?”

Charlie chose not to comment on the title. “No, not yet. I was going to start pulling unsolved case files from the last eight months. Do you want to see if you can find something that connects our sensitives who feel the imbalance?”

“Sure, give me the easy task,” Jess grumbled, sitting down at her computer. Charlie smirked.

“You’re the senior investigator, you get the fun ones,” Charlie joked. Jess narrowed her eyes at her but started a search for “Chloe” on her computer. Without the last name, or even a first name for this mysterious informant’s girlfriend Matt told them about, Jess doubted she’d find much information, let alone something pertinent.

After thirty unsuccessful minutes on Jess’s part, she leaned back in her chair and glanced around the room. The pen was coming to life and Jess took note of who was around without thinking about it. That is, until someone smacked into the back of her chair, causing her to jerk forward.

“Oops, sorry Baker,” Malak said, smirking. Jess glared, but he pretended not to notice, sidling his way over to Charlie’s desk.

“Well, well, well, who might this vision be?”

Charlie looked up in surprise, swinging her chair back when she realized how close Malak was. Through gritted teeth, Jess introduced her new partner while at the same time opening her shields to get a good look at Malak. He seemed rather chirper and Jess wanted to know why. He was usually gruffer first thing in the morning.

His aura was deep magenta, as usual, with streaks of black and orange, not so usual. Jess wasn’t sure exactly what it all meant, but black was always indicative of dark magic.

“What have you been working on, Malak?” Jess asked, trying to act nonchalant. Malak pulled his teeth back in a feral grin.

“Oh nothing much—just locating the hideout of a gang of goblins that keep attacking human citizens. You’ve heard about the case, right? The last attack happened on the governor’s niece? I expect I’ll be getting a promotion any time now.” If Malak’s smirk got any bigger, his face would break, Jess thought sourly.

“Uh-huh, and just how did you find them?”

“Tut, tut, I can’t be giving away all my secrets, now can I?” Malak shook a finger at her like she was being a naughty schoolgirl and turned back to Charlie.

“Well darlin’, if you get tired of old cheerleader over there, you come find me. I’ll be a much better partner and we’ll go places together.” He gave her a wink. Charlie looked between him and Jess, not knowing the history, but clearly seeing the tension between the two. She raised her eyebrows.

“I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, you might want to try quitting smoking. That magic lighter in your pocket has tasted flesh and you wouldn’t want it to burn you, would you?” Charlie stared sweetly up at him while Malak scowled. He stormed off, bypassing his own desk and leaving the room. Charlie turned to Jess.

“Magic lighter?” Jess asked.

“I believe so. It’s small but can act like a mini blow torch. And it has definitely been used to torture people, I could sense it.”

“I’ll let Teddy know, but Malak will probably pass it off as something he confiscated. I bet he’s taking it straight to evidence for the holding of black magic objects right this minute.” Jess sighed. “I know he’s a bad guy, I just haven’t been able to catch him in the act.”

“How do you know he’s bad?” Charlie inquired, studying her.

Jess busied herself typing something on her computer, not meeting Charlie’s eyes. “I just know these things about people.” Charlie might be her partner now, but Jess wasn’t ready to tell her about her ability to see souls yet. Let Charlie at least get to know her first.

“Okay.” Charlie continued to stare, but Jess was saved from answering when Matt walked into the pen. He made his way over to their desks, carrying a coffee to-go cup.

“Morning girls,” he said, taking a swig of coffee as he leaned against Jess’s desk.

“I believe the proper term is ‘ladies’ or ‘inspectors’, not girls,” Jess answered him, her exasperation evident. He still wasn’t taking them seriously, though at least he wasn’t hostile today. Matt grunted, but Charlie beat him to the punch.

“Don’t start you two,” she said. “What happened last night, Matt?”

“Mass chaos is what happened,” Matt answered with a grimace. “Johnny’s girlfriend, I guess her name is Sara, was flying off the handle, throwing things and tearing her hair out. She kept saying ‘the air is wrong’, over and over again. According to Johnny, her only power is reading the emotions of others so she wasn’t hurting anyone with her magic, but after that talk with Chloe, I told the patrolmen to bring her here. As soon as she got into one of those cells, she calmed right down and went to sleep. I haven’t spoken with her yet today.”

“So…Sara doesn’t have the same affliction to magic that Chloe does, but the imbalance made her a little crazy too,” Jess said slowly.

“Apparently,” Matt said, turning when Karen came around the corner with Chloe following close behind.

“Good morning Inspectors,” Chloe said to them. “This officer said you might have more questions for me today?”

“Yes, it’ll only take a moment,” Charlie jumped in, giving Jess a chance to focus on loosening her shields so she could take a good look at Chloe. As Charlie led them to a nearby conference room, Jess stared closely at the yellow soul inside Chloe.

Her soul glowed pure yellow with no hint of other colors, but it was paler than what Jess was used to seeing, almost like it was sick. Jess thought that might have been due to the unnatural way her body reacted to magic.

If Jess looked out of the corner of her eye, she could detect a slight black haze hovering around Chloe’s aura. It didn’t seem to touch her but it followed after her so it clearly was attached to the woman. It wasn’t attacking or doing anything as far as Jess could tell, but maybe this was the cause of the imbalance Chloe felt? If Sara had the same thing, that would tell Jess for sure.

Matt was asking Chloe if she knew Sara when Jess closed her shields and started paying attention again. She said she didn’t know anyone by that name and when Matt showed her a picture, affirmed that she didn’t recognize the young woman.

“I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything else you didn’t remember last night, have you?” Matt asked.

“I can’t think of anything else from before, but I can tell you one thing,” Chloe said. They leaned in.

“The imbalance is damn sure worse today,” she whispered. “I think whatever is causing this happened again. He’s killed again.” Chloe shuddered and looked like she might be ill. Charlie stared at her with concern.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here? Not as a prisoner but just for your own protection? We can keep you from feeling the imbalance until we stop this person,” Charlie urged, but Chloe was already shaking her head.

“I need to get back to my people. They tend to get agitated when I’m not around to referee things. But I won’t use magic. I even have one of those magic blocking bracelet things that I’ll put on as soon as I get back, I promise. I just need to get home.” Jess couldn’t help but wonder where “home” was when you were technically homeless but felt that it might be rude to ask. For once she managed to think before she spoke.

“We’ll get someone to take you home,” Jess said when her cellphone rang. After a brief conversation, she hung up.

“We’ve got another body.”

*

Matt, Jess, and Charlie rode together to the crime scene, a back alley near Chinatown. They signed in with the officers at the scene and made their way to the end of the alley where Riley was examining the body.

“Morning guys,” she greeted them. They mumbled hellos and surrounded her to get a better look. This victim appeared to be female, based on the loose-fitting dress and long dark hair, but like the others, was emaciated beyond recognition. Riley was sticking a metal probe into the abdomen to get a temperature reading.

“Well, it’s hard saying for sure, but I don’t think she’s been dead for more than a couple of hours roughly. There’s also one big difference between this one and the others.”

“What’s that?” Jess asked.

“He didn’t slit her throat. He stabbed her multiple times. At a glance, more than twenty times, way more than he needed to kill her. I’m not a profiler, but I think he was really pissed off this time.”

“Unfortunately, that means he’ll probably try again,” Jess noted with a sigh. Matt cursed and turned away to talk to the patrol officers guarding the scene.

“Is there anything else you can tell us Riley?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, she was a witch.”

“How do you know that?” Jess asked. If a person looked human, you couldn’t tell if it was a witch or Norm or anything else until you did a DNA test. A dead body was a dead body with no magic to sense.

“The bastard didn’t bother hiding her identity. She’s got a purse with ID, credit cards, and a membership to the Witches’ Social Club, though no cash. We don’t know if that’s because she didn’t carry cash or he took it, but we have a name. Mary Linker. I don’t think she was homeless either.”

The CSIs were photographing and processing the scene, but one allowed Charlie to put on a pair of gloves and hold the purse. Charlie closed her eyes as she lightly ran a hand over the beige leather bag. She didn’t say anything but pulled out the wallet and did the same thing over the outside, opening it to see the ID.

“Thirty-three years old, married, mother of two, got this wallet as a birthday gift from her mother last November. She and her mother were close, had a standing brunch and shopping date every first Sunday of the month but Mary didn’t show last week. That means she’s been missing for three days but wasn’t killed until early this morning so he held her for a little while this time.” Charlie opened her eyes and looked around self-consciously at the many faces staring at her.

“Guys, we’re with WISP, this is how we operate. Now get back to work,” Jess said loudly. They looked away and went back to what they were doing.

“Thank you,” Charlie said.

“No problem. Gawkers aside though, that was pretty cool,” Jess said with a grin.

“I do what I can,” Charlie replied, smiling back. She sobered quickly.

“Jess, she was also a doctor, a certified healer with quite a bit of power. I didn’t get much sense of him overall but I think that this fact is important somehow. He’s looking for just the right candidate and thought for sure that a witch would be the answer. When it wasn’t, he was furious. That’s what I get most from him, a lot of anger and a little bit of despair. Things are going to get worse if we don’t stop him soon.”

“So we better stop him then,” Jess replied firmly.

Matt wandered back over to them, his face grim. “The body was found by two kids who live nearby.”

“Shit,” Jess said with a flinch. No one should see these kinds of things but especially not kids.

“Yeah, pretty much. The parents just got here to take them home. They didn’t have anything helpful to tell the officers. I guess they use this alley as a shortcut on the way to school all the time, despite their parents’ warning not to. Wrong time and place for them, damn it,” Matt said with a scowl. “What have you learned here?”

Charlie filled him in on the woman’s identity as well as her impressions of the killer. They watched in silence while the scene around them was processed before Jess suggested they head back to WISP headquarters to get more work done.

“So, he’s completely changing his MO then,” Matt noted once they got back.

“If he’s going after power instead of easy targets, then yeah, pretty much,” Jess replied. They were sitting at Jess’s desk, waiting for Charlie to finish up with a phone call before going to talk to Sara in the holding cells.

John walked past them to his own desk, grumbling under his breath about “time wasters” before plopping down in his chair. He let out a deep sigh.

“Something on your mind, John?” Jess asked him.

“People suck, you know that?” John burst out.

Jess crossed her arms. “I’m a cop. Yeah, I knew that.”

John snorted. “It’s this robbery I was working on. Turns out my gut was right and the woman faked the whole thing to cover up an affair she was having. When her husband came home unexpectedly, she and her lover scrambled out a back window and forgot to close it. So, naturally, the husband was suspicious, but the wife told him he must have interrupted someone breaking in. After thinking about it for a while, I guess she figured she might as well try to get the insurance money for her grandmother’s necklace as well. What a piece of work!”

“Fakes can’t be all that uncommon in your line of work, can they?” Matt asked him.

“No, but that’s not the point!” John growled. “Besides, this woman was vouched for by my own uncle who said she was a friend. I was going above and beyond because, hey, it’s family, right? Guess the joke’s on me this time.”

“Damn, I’m sorry John, that does suck.”

“Yeah, you can bet I’m going straight to my uncle’s house after work tonight to give him a piece of my mind,” John said. Matt chuckled and turned away as Charlie hung up the phone.

“Anything good?” Jess asked her.

“Not about the case but for me, yes. My apartment is finally ready. It was supposed to be available for me to move in a week ago but they found some water damage that had to be fixed so it took a little longer,” Charlie answered, leaning back in her chair.

“You seem pretty calm. I would’ve been pissed. Does anything rile you up?” Jess asked.

“Yes,” Charlie stated. When Jess raised her eyebrows, Charlie grinned and shook her head.

“Getting back to the case, I was thinking perhaps I should go to Sara’s apartment and see if I can pick up anything there. I’m still convinced there must be a reason she and Chloe had a physical reaction to what is going on. Maybe I’ll find it in her home while you try talking to her.”

“Fine by me. We could use all the information we can get,” Jess replied, getting up from her chair.

“I could drive you. I know where it is,” Matt offered. He sounded awkward, as if he was trying—and failing—to sound casual. If Charlie noticed, she didn’t let on. She merely nodded, calm as always. Interesting.

“Thank you, Matt, I appreciate that.” The three of them walked out together but parted as Jess took the stairs to the basement and Charlie and Matt headed outside.