CHAPTER 2
I sat low in the leather bucket seat of the Z-ster, my silver 1977 280Z. The driver’s side window was open, a camera balanced on the top of the car door, its lens trained on a motel room door some twenty yards away.
This wasn’t any old camera. It was the latest high-end Canon DSLR, with a twenty-plus megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor—1.6 crop factor—mounted with a four-hundred-millimeter “L”-class telephoto lens and a 1.4-times teleconverter. In short, this was a ridiculously nice piece of equipment with some serious magnification. There was no way I could have afforded to buy the thing; I’d rented it for a few days, at the expense of my current client.
I knew that there were professional photographers working out in the Sonoran Desert with set-ups a lot like this one, snapping amazing photos of the Southwest’s stunning wildlife.
Me? I was sweating in my car, waiting to get a shot of a cheating husband as he emerged with his mistress from the Casa del Oro Motel near Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. Another day in the glamorous life of a private investigator.
In all honesty, I could hardly complain. Over the past few months, I had brought down the Blind Angel Killer, the most notorious serial murderer ever to haunt the streets of the Phoenix metropolitan area, and I had battled a cadre of dark sorcerers and the necromancer who led them. That was more excitement and glamor than most PIs experience in a lifetime, and I had crammed it all into one nearly fatal summer. I should have been grateful for work that wasn’t likely to get me killed.
Instead, I was bored out of my mind, which probably makes me sound insane.
But what else is new? I sound insane on a regular basis. In fact, I am insane on a regular basis. I’m a weremyste. For three nights out of every month—the night of the full moon, and the nights immediately before and after—I lose control of my mind, even as the magic I wield is enhanced by the moon’s pull. What’s more, these phasings, as they’re called, have a cumulative effect; sooner or later—I have a strong preference for later—I’ll go permanently nuts and will suffer from the same kind of delusions, hallucinations, and neuroses that plague my father. He’s a weremyste, too.
The full moon, though, was still seven days away, and for now I had a case to work on, distasteful though it was.
I hated these kinds of jobs. Of all the work I did as a PI—which included uncovering corporate espionage, finding teen runaways, even investigating insurance claims—nothing was worse than these trashy failed-marriage cases. I’d started my business well over a year ago, after losing my job as a homicide detective with the Phoenix Police Department. And in the months since, I’d come to realize that regardless of whether I was hired by the disgruntled husband or the wronged wife, when all was said and done, I could find fault in both of them.
I like clarity in my cases. I like there to be a good guy and a bad guy. Helping one slimeball duke it out with another slimeball was not exactly my idea of the perfect job.
But as owner and president of Justis Fearsson Investigations, Incorporated, and as a guy with a mortgage, I was glad to have the work. My client, Helen Barr, was paying me well to track her tomcatting husband, whose name happened to be Thomas. The Barrs lived in one of the wealthier sections of Scottsdale and she could afford my new prices: $350 per day plus expenses. To be honest, I was a little disappointed by Tom’s choice of this motel for a tryst. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t have sprung for a room in one of the fancier downtown hotels. Then again, if the woman he was sleeping with—one Amanda Wagner—didn’t mind, who was I to complain?
Most cheating spouses are far less clever about concealing their affairs than they think, and Tom was no exception to this. He and Amanda had been smarter than others, but that really wasn’t saying much. They used more than one motel for their rendezvous, and they tended to arrive at the motels on foot, after parking some distance away.
But they met the same days of the week, at the same times. And they made no effort at all to confine their displays of affection to the privacy of their rooms. I wasn’t prone to squeamishness, but I really didn’t need to see Tom Barr sticking his tongue down the throat of a woman half his age.
I’d gotten a few pictures of them going into the room about an hour ago, and by themselves those photos were pretty incriminating. But, in the interest of being thorough, I wanted to get them coming out of the room as well. It wasn’t like I needed to protect Helen Barr’s feelings. She knew what her husband was up to. At this point she wanted the photos so that she could wring as much as possible out of him in the divorce settlement. I couldn’t blame her. And since she was paying me, and providing me with this fine camera equipment, I figured I should give her her money’s worth.
The door to their room opened and I put my eye to the viewfinder. The happy couple emerged into the desert sunlight and I depressed the shutter button. The autofocus whirred and the camera started to click away—eight frames per second burst rate. Returning this camera was going to be difficult.
I got a couple of good ones. One with Amanda’s hand resting on his chest; another with Tom patting her butt and grinning. As I said, Helen was no saint and I knew that neither she nor Tom was blameless in the collapse of their marriage. But Tom was a sleaze, and I’ll admit that I was enjoying myself a little bit knowing how much these pictures would cost him.
And then, with a suddenness that made my heart thump, I wasn’t enjoying myself at all.
Magic brushed my mind, dark, hostile, and too damn close.
Neither Tom nor Amanda was a weremyste. In all the time I’d been on this case, I had sensed no magic in them, and I saw no sign of the blurring around their faces, necks, and shoulders that I could usually see in other sorcerers like me. So, being a fool, I hadn’t taken the time to ward myself from magical attacks. One day being stupid was going to get me killed.
Since my battles with dark sorcerers during the summer, I had been the target of one magical assault after another. As far as I could tell, none had been meant to kill me. Saorla of Brewood, a centuries-old necromancer who commanded these so-called weremancers, had her reasons for wanting me alive, at least until she herself could savor the pleasure of killing me. But that didn’t mean the attacks were a picnic.
Now here I was, unwarded, in my car with the engine off, holding a camera and accessories worth more than I made in a given month, my Glock 22 .40-caliber pistol hidden under the driver’s seat. Stupid. I would have liked to toss the camera in the back seat, but I had a feeling the rental place would be less than pleased.
I set it down on the passenger side, while simultaneously reciting a warding spell in my head and scanning the street for the weremystes I had sensed. The warding would have to be general, which meant that it wouldn’t be as effective as a spell matched to a specific assault. But it would be a hell of a lot better than no protection at all. I conceived the spell in three elements: myself, a sheath of power surrounding me, and whatever magic my stalkers might throw my way. The words and images didn’t matter much. They were what I used to focus my conjurings. These days I was working on casting with a mere thought, without having to resort to the three elements thing. But this didn’t seem like the time to put my training to the test. On the third repetition of the spell’s components, I released the magic building within me, and felt it settle over me like an invisible cloak.
Tom and Amanda had returned their room key and were walking away from the Casa del Oro in opposite directions. I started up the car, hoping that I might manage to slip out of the parking lot without having to confront the dark sorcerers.
No such luck.
The first spell hit me in the chest—these damn dark sorcerers always went for the heart, and this guy was no different. I could tell that whatever spell my attacker tried failed to penetrate my warding. Most attack spells hurt like hell, and in recent months my heart had been crushed, cauterized, and shish kebabed by wielders of dark magic. This time the attack merely felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. I grunted a breath and winced, wondering if my sternum had been shattered. But that was something I could figure out later.
I threw the Z-ster into reverse, only to feel the car shudder, the way it would if I was driving at high speed along a windy stretch of road. It didn’t move, though, and before I could ward the vehicle itself, another car—sleek, midnight blue; I think it was the new BMW 6 coupe—pulled in behind me, blocking my escape. I saw two people sitting up front, which I suppose I should have expected. They had been coming at me in pairs and groups of three for some time now.
It was bad enough being trapped in the parking lot; I didn’t want to be trapped in the car as well. I opened the door and climbed out, my movements stiff, my chest still aching. For the moment, I left my Glock where it was. No sense giving my new friends something else to attack with their spells.
They got out as well. The driver was a man: tall, athletic, good-looking. At least I assumed he was; I couldn’t get a clear view of his face, because the smear of magic on his features was too strong. The suit he wore might well have been as expensive as the Beamer. His passenger was a woman who was about as tall as he, and dressed in business clothes: black skirt, white blouse, a beige linen jacket, and black high heels. Her dark hair was cut short and I could tell through the blur of power on her face that her eyes were pale blue. It was like the two of them had stepped off the pages of Vogue and GQ for the sole purpose of messing with me.
“I’m not sure you’re allowed to park there,” I said, nodding toward the Beamer.
“We won’t be here long,” the woman said, drawing my gaze. “We have a quick message for you from a mutual friend.”
“Saorla is no friend.”
Her smile was as thin as mist. “Who’s Saorla?”
“What’s your message?”
The woman darted a glance toward her companion, my only warning.
Their attacks charged the air, like the gathering power of a lightning strike. I did the one thing I could think of. The sheath of magic that materialized around me shimmered and undulated as if made of heat waves and aqua blue glass. Their spells rebounded off the warding. One of them knocked the man off his feet, so hard he landed on the pavement, the air forced from his lungs with a satisfying oof! The other casting slammed into the BMW, scorching away part of that lovely paint job in a frenzy of white flame.
“My turn,” I said.
I’d learned the hard way that dark conjurers were good at wardings. They almost always had protective magic in place that blocked even the most powerful of my attack spells. Which is why I had long since given up on direct magical assaults. They were figuring this out, of course. Each new team of weremancers sent after me was better prepared than the last for the quirky spells I threw at them, but I was adjusting as well. And I was nowhere near running out of ideas.
With GQ Guy knocked on his keister, he and Vogue Woman were too far from each other to share wardings, and that was fine with me. Under normal circumstances, I would never dream of committing any act of violence toward a woman. But for these dark sorcerers, I was more than happy to make an exception. I threw a spell at her first. Three elements: my hand, the heel of her shoe—the left one—and a good hard twist. I heard the heel snap off her shoe. Her ankle rolled and she lost her balance. As she went down I kicked out, catching her flush on the chin so that her head snapped back. She was out cold before she hit the ground.
I spun toward GQ, who had gotten to his feet.
Once again, my casting took advantage of the sartorial splendor of my opponent. His tie, my hand, and an abrupt yank. He stumbled forward, and couldn’t defend himself from the fist I dug into his gut. I hit him again, an uppercut that connected solidly with his jaw and should have put him down on the pavement. It didn’t. He staggered, fell back several steps, but then he righted himself. Blood trickled from his lip, and even as I saw it, I cast.
His blood, his face, and a magical fist to the jaw. This punch put him down, but not out. He tried to get up, but I closed the distance between us in two strides and kicked him in the side. He folded in on himself, deflating like a balloon. I hit him once more, a chopping blow high on his cheek. He collapsed to the ground and didn’t move again. My hand throbbed from the punches I’d thrown, and I was breathing hard, but they hadn’t hurt me. I’d been lucky. Again.
“Tell Saorla to leave me the hell alone,” I said. I didn’t know if either of them could hear me. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Saorla herself was nearby, unseen, watching and listening to all that had happened.
I fished in GQ’s pockets for the keys to the Beamer, and finding them, moved the car out of the way so that I could back out. That I happened to ram the front grill of the BMW into a dumpster was purely accidental, all three times.
As I walked back to the Z-ster, though, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a large dog padding in my direction.
Except it wasn’t a dog at all. Silver and black fur, golden yellow eyes, and paws as large as my hands. A wolf. A were, no doubt. I froze. The wolf slowed, bared its teeth, hackles rising. It continued in my direction, placing one paw in front of the other with the grace of a dancer.
Hurting weremancers was one thing. They were sorcerers, just like me, and they were fully capable of choosing for themselves which side they fought on in the magical war that had descended on the Phoenix area. Weres—werecats, werecoyotes, and, yes, werewolves—often didn’t have any choice. They were conscripts, controlled by Saorla and her allies. I didn’t want to hurt any of them, this one included. I held my hands at waist level, palms out.
“Good doggie,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.
The wolf growled deep in his throat. Belatedly, it occurred to me that it might not like being called a doggie.
I pointed at Vogue and GQ. “Those are the ones you should be angry with. They’re the ones controlling you.”
The wolf didn’t so much as glance at the unconscious weremystes. He remained fixed on me, and his expression hadn’t softened even a little. My, what big teeth he had.
I eased toward my car, my hands still open in front of me. And I made a point of not breaking eye contact with the were, of not doing anything that the creature might construe as submissive behavior. He tracked me with his eyes, growling again and padding after me, matching my movement.
As I neared my car, however, he took three quick steps, cutting in half the distance between us and snapping his massive jaws.
I cast: my hand, his snout, and the magical equivalent of a two-by-four. The wolf yelped and backed away.
I ran to the car. But before I could get in and close the door he recovered, lunging at me and forcing me back. I tried swatting him on the snout again, but it only made him angrier.
Vogue let out a low groan. I knew that if I didn’t find a way past Rin Tin Tin, and soon, I’d have her and her partner to deal with as well. I didn’t want to hurt the were, but I couldn’t allow him to delay me anymore.
“You can understand me. I know you can. I’ve faced weres before, and all of them retained some trace of their humanity, even after they turned.”
The wolf stared back at me, teeth bared, a snarl on its thinned lips.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Then do not. Defend yourself.
The voice echoing in my head was not my own, but rather the rumbling baritone of Namid’skemu, the runemyste responsible for my training. He was the reincarnated spirit of a shaman from the K’ya’na-Kwe clan of the A’shiwi or Zuni nation. The K’ya’na-Kwe, also known as the water people, were an extinct line, unless one counted Namid, who was, for lack of a better term, a ghost.
I am not a ghost!
He hadn’t actually spoken to me, but after training under his guidance for longer than I cared to remember, I could hear his voice in my sleep.
For the past two months he and I had worked on wardings and assault spells, ignoring other castings with which I also needed practice. Like transporting spells.
But this seemed as good a time as any to practice.
This was a more complicated casting, requiring seven elements: me, the wolf, the weremancers, the pavement on which I stood, the distance between myself and the front seat of my car, the glass and metal of the car door, and the car seat itself, where I wanted to be. I held the elements in my mind, repeating them to myself six times as the power gathered inside me. On the seventh repetition, I released the spell.
Cold and darkness closed around me like a chilling fog, and for the span of several heartbeats I felt as though I was suffocating.
And then I was in the car, heat radiating off the black leather seats and steering wheel. I rolled up the window, dug in my pocket for the car keys, and started her up. The wolf threw himself against the car door.
“Stop that!” I yelled, though I knew it wouldn’t do any good. If I got home and found that he had put even the smallest dent in my door, I was going to drive back here and kick the crap out of him, weres and ethics be damned.
I backed out of the spot, taking care—against my better judgment—not to run over either weremancer, and pulled out onto the street. The wolf ran after me, but I accelerated, leaving him behind. The last I saw of him in my rearview mirror, he was loping off the street, vanishing between two buildings. I exhaled and rolled down my window, my pulse pounding and my hand slick with sweat. Autumn air flooded the car and I savored the caress of the wind on my face.
One of these times, my luck would run out and Saorla’s weremancers would get the better of me. But not today.
I steered onto Interstate 10 and headed back to Chandler, where I have my office and home.
My office is on the second floor of a small shopping complex. It’s nice as offices go: wood floors, windows overlooking the street, and an espresso machine that cost way, way more than it should have. The computer, in contrast, is ancient, which I suppose says something about my priorities.
I switched it on and while I was waiting for it to start up, I also fired up the coffee machine.
When the computer was functional, I removed the memory card from the camera and downloaded the photos I’d taken. They were as clear as I would have expected from such fine equipment. I chose the best dozen or so and copied them onto three compact discs. One copy I hid in my desk. The other two I intended to take with me: one to keep at home and one to give to Helen Barr.
Once the discs were burned and I had a cup of espresso in me, I called Missus Barr and asked if I could come by. She agreed, and I left the office once more and drove up to Scottsdale, fighting traffic all the way. It wasn’t yet what I used to think of as rush hour, but in Phoenix these days “rush hour” began at dawn and continued past dusk. It took way too long, but eventually I reached the Barr home, a Spanish Mission-style mansion in the Scottsdale Ranch Park area. The front lawn was perfectly manicured and along both sides of the house were rocky gardens filled with ocotillos, prickly pears, chollas, and golden barrel cacti. A cactus wren sang from atop an ocotillo stalk, and a pair of thrashers chased each other around the base of one of the chollas.
I followed a winding flagstone path to the front door and rang the bell. Within the house, a small dog began to yap, its claws scratching on the floor on the other side of the door.
A moment later the door opened, revealing Missus Barr. I had met her in person once before. She looked younger than I remembered, perhaps because she had her hair down. She was petite and tanned, with dark blue eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair.
“Mister Fearsson,” she said, a tight smile on her face.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“Of course. Come in.” She waved me into the house and closed the door behind us. “I was about to have a glass of wine,” she said, leading me through the living room. “Can I pour one for you?”
I followed her into an enormous kitchen, complete with granite countertops, cherry cabinets, and every small appliance I could name, plus a few that I couldn’t. The kitchen alone was probably worth more than my entire house.
“Water would be fine.”
She filled a glass with ice and water from the refrigerator door and handed it to me. Then she poured herself a massive glass of white wine and led me over to a breakfast nook that offered a view of the back lawn—also flawless—and yet another rock and cactus garden.
“So, you have news for me,” she said, fixing a smile on her lips.
I pulled out one of the discs I’d burned. “I have photos.”
Her face fell. She stared at the disc for a few seconds, then got up and walked out of the room, only to return moments later with a laptop computer. She set it on the table and held out her hand for the disc, which I handed to her. She inserted it in the slot and, after a few clicks of the touchpad, began to scroll through the photos I’d taken.
“She’s pretty,” she said, after the second or third picture. “What do you know about her?”
“Her name is Amanda Wagner.” I kept my voice low, my tone devoid of inflection. And I kept my eyes on the screen, not on her. “She works for a temp agency, and was assigned to your husband’s office for a few weeks back in February.”
Missus Barr had continued to work her way through the images, but at that she glanced in my direction. “February? That’s when this started?”
“I haven’t been able to determine exactly when their affair began. The earliest date I’ve been able to confirm is in the first week of April, but it’s possible that they started meeting before then.”
“How old is she?”
I lifted a shoulder. “I’m not sure of her exact—”
“Of course you are. How old?”
I hated this part of my job. “Twenty-seven.”
Her nod was jerky. “Tom has always been a handsome man. And I suppose the money helps.”
I said nothing.
She clicked through a few more images, stopping at the shot of her husband with his hand on the young woman’s rear.
“Damn,” she whispered.
I chanced a peek at her, and regretted it right away. Tears ran down her cheeks from eyes that were red-rimmed and swollen.
“I’m sorry, Missus Barr.”
She swiped at her cheeks, the gesture impatient, angry. “It’s not your fault, it’s his. And mine. I told you to find out everything, didn’t I? I thought it wouldn’t bother me, that I’d sue the bastard for divorce, take him to the cleaners, and be happy to walk away. It’s not that easy, is it?”
“In my experience, it never is.”
A small breathless laugh escaped her. “Am I that much of a cliché, Mister Fearsson?”
I dropped my gaze, cringing on the inside. “Forgive me. That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s all right. That was an attempt at humor.” She closed out of the program she was using to view the photos and ejected the disc. “You have more copies of this?” she asked, holding it up.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s yours to keep, and if by some chance you lose it, or he finds it and destroys it, I can make a new one. And I’ll see to it that the photos are available for the divorce proceedings.”
“Good. What do I owe you?”
“I can send you a bill.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re here now. Let me pay you. Or rather, let Tom pay you. I like the irony of that, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, grinning. “But I had some expenses that I need to tally up. And I was wondering if you might want to keep me on retainer in case you should need more information.”
She hesitated. “I suppose that might be a good idea. How does that work?”
“It’s very easy. We’ve already signed an agreement, and it remains in place until we both agree to terminate it. The difference is, I’ll be taking on other clients and will only charge you for those days when I work on your case a minimum of three hours. And in the meantime, I’ll bill you for those days I’ve worked thus far.”
“Yes, all right. Thank you, that’s . . . I find it reassuring knowing that I’ll have your services if I need them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She led me back to the front foyer, seeming more composed than she had when looking through the pictures.
“I’m sorry to have been the bearer of bad news,” I told her as she opened the door.
“You weren’t, not really. I hired you because I suspected Tom was up to something. Now I know beyond a doubt. Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mister Fearsson. I’m fine. Or if not, I will be soon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m going to call my lawyer, then I’m going to take a nice hot bath, and then I’m going to go out and get laid.”
I laughed.
“You didn’t expect that, did you?”
“No,” I said, and meant it.
“Tom won’t expect it either.”
My cell phone rang before I could respond. I glanced at the screen. The call was from Kona Shaw, my former partner on the Phoenix police force.
“I’m sorry, Missus Barr—”
“No apologies. Go answer your phone. And be sure to bill me soon. That’s one check I’m going to enjoy writing.”
I shook her hand and started back up the path to my car. As I walked, I flipped open my phone. Yes, I’m still the somewhat-less-than-proud owner of a flip phone; I try to keep away from gadgets that are smarter than I am, which these days is almost all of them.
“What’s up, partner?” I said. “Please tell me you have work for me.”
“Private investigating business slow these days?” Kona asked, her voice sounding paper thin through the phone. Our connection buzzed with all the noise in the background, not only the din of voices one hears at any crime scene, but also a prominent hum. It sounded like she was standing by a race track.
“Yeah, a little. Where are you?”
“Just off the interstate. Feel like eyeballing a couple of corpses, maybe telling me if you see magic on them?”
“Sick as it might sound, I can’t think of anything better right now. As long as the case has nothing to do with broken marriages or cheating spouses.”
Silence.
“Kona?”
“Sorry, Justis. Meet me at the burger place, exit 162 off of Interstate 10. I’ll explain everything.”