Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(49)

I couldn’t help my snort.

Geena smiled briefly. “I’d have been more inclined to believe it if she’d said she was the reincarnation of a chambermaid or cook myself. Anyway, Sarina does—did—readings, virtual and in person, in a room she rented in the upstairs of an antiques store in downtown Kennewick owned by another witch.”

She wrinkled her nose as if she didn’t approve of the store owner.

“On Monday, one of Sarina’s regular customers told the store owner, Helena, that the door to the reading room was locked. The owner sent the customer off and went upstairs to check for herself.”

Geena pulled out her phone, opened the photo gallery, and handed it to Adam. “Helena—who is a gray witch—texted the leader of our coven, sent her the photos, told her to be careful, and said she was leaving for a while.”

I leaned over his shoulder so I could see, too.

There were a series of photos. It took four of them to understand what we were looking at because the photos had been taken too close: a human body sliced up by something sharp. There was a pattern to the cuts, which were evenly spaced, but I couldn’t quite see it.

“Why hasn’t this been in the news?” asked Adam with a frown.

“No time,” George said. “Geena took me by the store. There’s a ‘Closed until further notice’ sign in the window, and the door is bolted. I thought about breaking in, but I called the police instead—about an hour ago.”

I raised my eyebrows. George was “the police.”

He gave me a faint smile. “I called the Kennewick police.”

That was an interesting thing for him to do. The more usual thing was for us to cover up crimes we were sure only involved the preternatural community. Those were too dangerous for human law enforcement.

“Was the body still there?” asked Adam.

George nodded. “I was surprised about that.”

“Helena must have been seriously spooked to leave the corpse,” Geena said. “For a gray witch, a murder victim . . .” She hesitated.

“Christmas and birthday present all in one?” I suggested.

She nodded. “As long as Helena wasn’t the killer—and I don’t think she was—such a body would be the source of spell components, even if it wasn’t fresh enough to supply magical energy.”

“Do you mind if I send the photos to myself?” Adam asked, still thumbing the images back and forth.

“No,” she said. “Of course. You should have them.” She grimaced. “Ugly things.”

“I’m putting my number in your contacts, too,” Adam said as he tapped on her phone. “Feel free to call me if you need us.”

“Us?” she asked.

“The pack,” Adam said, handing her back her phone.

“Thank you,” George said, putting a hand under Geena’s elbow, urging her to her feet. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“Just the three missing witches?” I asked.

George shrugged. “If you don’t count Helena, who ran.”

“Do you think they are all related?” Adam asked. “White witches . . .” He looked at Geena and stopped.

“Are prey,” she finished for him. “I’ve heard whispers of others disappearing, not just witches. People with just a bit of magic or fae blood. Some of the weaker fae, even goblins. There are whispers that say that you and the Gray Lords don’t really care what happens to us weaker beings. You just want to appease the humans. That the idea of the TriCities as a refuge of safety is just a political sham—or worse, a trap.”

Geena raised her chin. “I told George I didn’t want to come here. That if you are killing your allies, or letting others kill them, what do you care about some missing witches?”

“Killing our allies?” I asked.

“Geena says Wulfe is missing.” George sat back a little.

Encouraged, Geena nodded. “That’s what people are saying. They say that when Marsilia confronted you about it, you threatened to kill all the vampires the way you killed the black witches. They say that you already killed Wulfe.”

She looked suddenly terrified. I’d be terrified of someone who could kill Wulfe, too. She looked up at George, who sighed.

“They say,” George said, with a little emphasis on the vague pronoun, “that maybe we killed the Hardesty witches not because they were evil but because they threatened our power. And now we’re doing it to the vampires, too. Or at least that’s the story Geena’s coven has. Is Wulfe missing?”

I exchanged looks with Adam.

“We don’t know,” Adam said. “But Marsilia told us we needed to find him.”

“When did you hear about a confrontation between Marsilia and us?” I asked.

“This morning,” Geena said. “I heard she met you at Uncle Mike’s.”

“I was the first one to leave,” said George, half-apologetically and half-irritated.

“The only people who were there when Marsilia showed up were Uncle Mike, Sherwood, Zack, Adam, and me,” I said. “Do you think any of them were on the phone this morning talking about it?”

“The pack knows,” Adam said blandly. “I called them myself.”