The light went on and a heavyset blond man stepped out. New guy, recently come over from the St. Cloud Cabal. Jim? John?

Greetings were a brief exchange of hellos. They only had a few hours until daybreak, and a lot of work to do before then. Both Jim and the driver who’d brought them from the airport were trained to assist Dennis and Simon, but it would still take every minute of those remaining hours to process the scene.

Simon moved up behind Dennis, camera in one hand, light source in the other. He handed the light source to the driver—Kyle, wasn’t it?—and pointed out where he wanted Kyle to aim it. Then he started snapping pictures. It took a moment for Dennis to see what Simon was photographing. That was one advantage to having shaman crime techs—lead them to a scene and they instinctively picked up the vibes of violence and knew where to start working.

Following the angle of Simon’s camera lens, Dennis looked up to see a rope dangling from an overhead limb, the end hacked off. Another length lay on the ground, where the EMTs had removed it from the girl’s throat.

“It took me a while to find her,” Jim said. “If I’d been just a few minutes faster…”

“She’s alive,” Dennis said. “If you hadn’t been that fast, she wouldn’t be.”

His cell phone vibrated. He took it from his pocket. A text message.

“Have you updated Mr. Cortez?” he asked Jim. “He hasn’t received a site report yet.”

From Jim’s expression, Dennis knew he hadn’t sent one. With the St. Cloud Cabal you probably didn’t phone anyone in the family at three A.M. unless the Tokyo stock market had just crashed. Not so when you worked for the Cortezes.

“You’ve filled out a preliminary report sheet, right?” Dennis said.

Jim nodded and fumbled to pull his modified PalmPilot from his jacket.

“Well, send it to Mr. Cortez immediately. He’s waiting to notify Dana’s father and he can’t do that until he knows the details.”

“Mr….? Which Mr. Cortez?”

“Benicio,” Simon murmured as he continued snapping pictures. “You need to send it to Benicio.”

“Oh? Uh, right.”

As Jim transmitted the report, Simon moved back to photograph the rope on the ground. Blood streaked the underside of the coil and Dennis flinched, imagining his granddaughter lying there. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to Cabal children. You worked for a Cabal, your kids were protected.

“Randy’s girl, wasn’t it?” Simon said softly behind him. “The older one?”

Dennis could barely picture Randy MacArthur, let alone know how many kids he had. Simon was almost certainly right, though. Lead the man once around a corporate picnic, and the next day he’d be sure to ask Joe Blow in Accounting whether his son’s cold was improving.

“What is herfather?” Jim asked.

“Half-demon,” Simon said. “An Exaudio, I believe.”

Both Jim and Dennis nodded. They were half-demon, as were most of the Cabal’s policing force, and they knew what this meant. Dana would have inherited none of her father’s powers.

“Poor kid never had a chance,” Dennis said.

“Actually, I believe she is a supernatural,” Simon said. “If I’m not mistaken, her mother is a witch, so she would be one as well.”

Dennis shook his head. “Like I said, poor kid never had a chance.”

That Cortez Boy

I SAT IN A HOTEL ROOM, ACROSS FROM TWO THIRTY-SOMETHING witches in business suits, listening as they said all the right things. All the polite things. How they’d heard such wonderful accounts of my mother. How horrified they’d been to learn of her murder. How delighted they were to see that I was doing well despite my break with the Coven.

All this they said, smiling with just the right mixture of sadness, commiseration, and support. Wendy Aiken did most of the talking. While she did, her younger sister Julie’s eyes darted to where Savannah, my thirteen-year-old ward, perched on the bed. I caught the looks Julie shot her, distaste mingled with fear. A black witch’s daughter, in their hotel room.

As Wendy’s lips moved in rehearsed platitudes, her gaze slipped past me to the clock. I knew then that I would fail…again. But I gave my spiel anyway. I told them my vision of a new Coven for the technological age, linked by sisterhood instead of proximity, each witch living where she chooses, but with a full Coven support system only a phone call or e-mail away.

When I finished, the sisters looked at each another.

I continued. “As I mentioned, there’s also the grimoires. Third-level spells, lost for generations. I have them and I want to share them, to return witches to their former glory.”

To me, these books were my trump card. Even if you didn’t give a damn about sisterhood or support, surely you’d want this power. What witch wouldn’t? Yet, as I looked at Wendy and Julie, I saw my words wash right over them, as if I was offering a free set of steak knives with the purchase of a complete living-room suite.

“You’re a very compelling saleswoman,” Wendy said with a smile.

“But…” Savannah muttered from the bed.

“But we must admit, we have a problem with the…present company you keep.”

Julie’s gaze slid toward Savannah. I tensed, ready to leap to her defense.

“That Cortez boy,” Wendy said. “Well, young man, I should say. Yes, I know he’s not involved with his family’s Cabal, but we all know how things like that turn out. Youthful rebellion is all very well, but it doesn’t pay the bills. And I hear he’s not very successful in that regard.”