Grave Omen (Raina Kirkland Book 3) Read online

  “How are we supposed to find your cousin in this crowd?” Katie asked when I stopped walking to buy some coffee at a small café near the water fountain.

  “Everett isn’t hard to find, Katie. Just keep a look out for a scary looking guy. That will probably be him—then again, this is Washington. We have a lot of scary looking guys,” I said to her before I told the man at the counter my order. My usual—a grande, soy milk, double shot, hazelnut macchiato with a caramel drizzle. I gestured to Katie and she ordered a red-bull raspberry Italian soda.

  I smiled big time when I smelled my cousin before I felt his arm around my shoulder or saw his face. He had a distinct smell that one could not soon forget. He always smelt of burnt wood, like a camp fire, and sage. It was an odd scent combination, not a bad one, but definitely unique.

  “You buying?” he asked with a southern brogue, and I looked up at him. He was tall, something near six feet or more, and handsome in a rugged sort of way. His hair was several different shades of green, short enough to stay off his shoulders but long enough to mostly hide his eyes. His skin was a tanned, almost mocha color, the sort of color one gets from living in the sun all their life. But none of that was particularly scary. No, I’d bet good money that what frightened the drivers was his pagan tattoos, his many piercings, his serious muscles and his bright red eyes. Any one thing was probably fine by its self, but all together! I was surprised he was still allowed in the airport. He did look very warlock-ish. Looking past him I saw some airport security hovering around. I looked back at him. He was hiding his eyes with his hair on purpose. I was lucky that my own red eyes didn’t get me into more trouble than they did. Then again, I had a girly figure and approachable casual style of dressing; usually just a wrap-skirt and a blouse that flattered my breast size (not an easy find) or jeans and a sweater or tank top.

  “Yeah,” I said with a smile. He leaned into me, looking past me at the man taking our order, and ordered himself an iced mocha with whipped cream.

  We stepped aside and let the next people in line move up as we waited for our order.

  “No luggage?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said as he gestured to the small duffle bag he was carrying. “And who is this fine lady?” he said with his eyes on Katie.

  “Everett, this is Katie, my half-sister,” I said.

  “Charmed,” he said by way of greeting.

  Katie looked up at him as though he was, well, a warlock. She looked stunned. Everett smiled down at her. He was probably used to getting that sort of reaction from people.

  He extended his hand to her. “You aren’t a witch, are you?” he asked.

  Katie shook her head and looked down at his hand, still a bit dazed. There was an awkward pause and then she set her small hand in his much larger one. He brought it to his lips and laid a kiss on her knuckles. That made her already large brown eyes grow even larger.

  “Well, no one’s perfect,” he shrugged. He turned to me. “You look better than when I saw you last. You filled in a bit, at least.”

  “Too many sweets, I suppose. But, I earned every one of them.”

  “I heard,” he said as we grabbed our drinks. “You’re a bounty hunter now. You hunt witches?”

  I led the way back to the parking structure. “Do you consider necromancers witches?” I asked, because some people did and others did not. Necromancers have magic but they can only do one thing with it, manipulate the dead: zombies, ghouls, ghosts and vampires.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then I’ve hunted a wizard only once,” I said. “A man named Ethan who was raping and mutilating children in Bellingham. I took him out just a week ago actually.”

  “You sure he was guilty?” Everett asked. I understood his suspicions. It was far too easy for a preternatural to be marked for death by any old court. It doesn’t take a clever mind to think that human courts could be ordering marks on innocent non-humans out of prejudice.

  “I wouldn’t have taken the case if he was innocent, Everett. I’m a witch, not some racist killer.”

  “Like most monster hunters,” he said.

  I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t. I didn’t like the handful of hunters I’d met so far. They did seem driven by their hate for non-humans and their love of the hunt. I hated the hunt; I loved my fellow outcasts. But bad people come in all flavors, all races and creeds.

  “Did you kill him?” he asked.

  We were at the escalator now and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before stepping onto it. My knees went weak for a second but I regained my equilibrium.

  “I didn’t want to,” I said with my eyes closed. “I tracked him down to an ex-girlfriends place. There was a lot of evidence against him. All of it could have been planted, but I didn’t think so. Everything about him felt off and when I found him he was with a boy. He’d already done the deed and even though I wanted to kill him so badly, I called the police instead.”

  We stepped off the escalator and made our way across the sky bridge, fucking sky bridge.

  “How did you keep him from running while you were on the phone?” Everett asked.

  I couldn’t answer him because I’d used the part of me that was part god to do that. I used the muse in me, the part of me that could read emotions and minds and sometimes control them. In present company only Katie knew my secret. But, if more than three people know, is it still a secret? Katie, Damon, Alistair, Nick, Mom and Raphael all knew I was a demigoddess; not much of a secret. At least, not a well-kept one.

  Still, I wasn’t sure if it was mercy or cruelty on Katie’s part when she spared me having to answer Everett’s question, by asking her own.

  “You said you didn’t want to kill him. Does that mean you did have to kill him?” she asked.

  We reached my car and I used the amount of time it took me to unlock the car and take my seat behind the wheel to think of how best to answer that question.

  “The boy he’d stolen the day before was crying, blooded from the—abuse. I held onto him.” The words were hard to come by. It was only a week ago and I could still remember the smell of the room: sex, blood and sweat. I could still feel the kid trembling in my arms—naked, bloody and screaming for his dad and mom. I’d taken the job when the parents of the third victim contacted me and introduced me to their son. He was the same age as Thomas, just as smart and just as sweet. He’d been kidnapped from school and kept for weeks. His body and mind were broken in ways that time could never heal. I knew right then that I was going to kill this man, but I hoped I could just have him arrested. It was a lost hope. The boy in my arms was the fourth victim, and the last. I knew I could kill the wizard and no one would give a shit. Hell, they’d praise me for doing it. The boy would feel better if his tormentor was dead and gone. The other victims would, too. My conscience said no, wait for the police. He’d be arrested, and then killed without trial, but they would kill him humanely. They would spare him pain, pain he’d caused four innocent boys, four young children whose lives would be forever changed, whose bodies would be forever scarred. I hated that man more than anything and Goddess help me, I filled him full of lead. He was helpless, frozen where he stood because I told him that he was and I killed him. I pulled out my brand new, barely used small hand gun that Damon insisted I carried even though I was a horrible shot. I walked up to him, and at point blank range I pulled the trigger. I kept pulling the trigger until the damn thing clicked empty and it felt great to do it. Every bullet hit him square in the stomach. It was a slow death.

  But, I couldn’t say all that. I was ashamed that I’d murdered a man in cold blood, no matter how evil. I licked my lips. “Like you said, I couldn’t stop him from running,” I said before I turned the ignition and started the car. If my body language didn’t convey just how much I was done with that conversation, the loud heavy metal music did the job just fine.

  HOTEL POLICY

  KATIE HATED ROCK music; her tastes leaned more toward rap and pop with a dash of coun
try music, so it wasn’t long before she leaned forward in the front passenger seat and turned the music down to a tolerable level. I didn’t mind. The music had done its job. Everett and Katie weren’t completely socially ignorant. My irritation was noted and they left me alone to drive in peace. But, Everett wasn’t the sort to sit quietly for any length of time. For the entire ride he asked Katie questions about herself and told her stories about himself. Katie obviously didn’t want to talk but she wasn’t rude; she would nod here and there, and say, ‘yeah?’ or ‘really?’ every now and then. But, once we reached Federal Way he’d broken through her solid wall of polite disinterest. She finally stopped giving short one word answers and turned in her seat to actually talk back to him. Soon my music was being drowned out by their lively conversation. I looked at Katie and saw her smiling. I hadn’t seen that kind of smile on her face in forever. It wasn’t forced or bitter or a shadow of a real smile. It was a full on cheesy grin from ear to ear. He was just talking about off-roading in his four by four Jeep through South Carolina’s rugged back country, but somehow he’d brought a light to her face that I’d never seen.

  “You should call me some time,” Everett said.

  “Sure,” she said.

  I spared another look at Katie and saw her cheeks become a little red. She leaned forward and grabbed her cell phone from her back pocket, a slim little thing capable of more impressive feats than most home computers. Everett took his thin black phone from his pocket and they did their thing while I merged into the far right lane.

  I took the second exit for Tacoma and drove down many broken, dirty and dangerous roads to reach the hotel closest to our coven’s temple. It was a large building, just off the main street that led to downtown Tacoma. The grey clouds were low in the sky and the rain was still coming down hard. Tacoma looked livable on sunny days, delightful when it snowed, but on rainy days it looked like hell and most days were rainy. The old buildings were no longer charming, just trashy. The people walking on the sidewalk looked unhappy and uncomfortable. Wholly, it seemed an outdated, grimy city full of unfriendly people, which wasn’t too far from the truth if you considered the ramped gang violence, vicious racism, failing infrastructure and deep seated corruption. Home sweet home.

  After parking, Katie and I got out of the car without hesitation, but Everett stayed put. He looked at us from the dry warmth of my car as if we were mad for standing outside in the freezing rain. I smiled.

  “You came to Washington State without a coat or an umbrella?” I asked him through the window.

  He showed me a rude hand gesture before he gathered his bag into his arms, opened the door and ran for the building. Katie and I followed him. The rain was loud outside the hotel, but my family was louder inside. The young ones were sitting in the lobby…well, running, sitting and playing in the lobby, while their adult counterparts were raising hell at the front desk. A large woman in a dress suit and a smaller woman in a polo shirt with the hotel’s name on it were standing behind the desk trying to calm down my family. Everett shook himself like a dog coming in from the rain and the smaller lady behind the front desk ran away at the sight of him.

  I found mom in the crowd and interrupted the bickering with a loud, “What’s going on?”

  Mom’s lips pursed, she put her hands on her hips and looked at the larger lady in the dress suit. Her name tag read, Samantha.

  Samantha didn’t speak to me, she spoke to Mom. “When you made the reservations for your wedding party, you did not say what sort of people would be in those rooms. We have a strict no witch and/or wizard policy. It’s clearly stated on our website.”

  “I didn’t make the reservations through your website, Samantha. I made them here, in person,” Mom said through tight lips, “and, there is nothing here that states that. I’m clearly a witch, am I not?”

  “No, Miss Kirkland. You are not clearly a witch or we would not have allowed you to reserve rooms. Now, you’re elf family members may stay here, but I cannot allow the rest of your party to check in. You won’t be charged a dime for their rooms. I’m sorry about this miscommunication, but I cannot check them in and no amount of yelling, name calling or threatening is going to change that. It’s not a managerial decision, it’s a corporate decision. If you have a problem with it, take it up with them.”

  Mom scoffed, “A racist establishment should mark themselves as such. There should be a sign on that door, witches not allowed!” The manager said nothing to that, because there really wasn’t anything more to say.

  “Well, what do we do now, Ann?” asked my aunt Marge, an outspoken witch dressed as ‘normal’ as possible in simple jeans and a tacky sweater. Her short black and red hair was mostly hidden under her hat, but as much as she tried to hide what she was, she couldn’t hide her bright red eyes and witch’s birth mark; half of her face had a red tint to it.

  Most of my relatives were playing at being human, but it was all too obvious that they were witches. If it wasn’t a visible witch’s birthmark that gave them away, it was their odd hair color. And then there were those who were still wearing witch’s robes. Like Great Aunt Maggie, who was wearing bright florescent pink robes with long fake eyelashes that perfectly showcased her purple eyes, and so nicely matched her hair of the same color. The eyes were natural, but her hair color was due to a charm she wore. I recognized it only because I had a charm of the same sort that changed my hair color to black.

  Mom put her delicate hand to her forehead, “I don’t know, let me think.”

  “We should think elsewhere, Aunty. I think the young miss may have called the cops,” said Everett. I agreed with him. If the smaller woman hadn’t yet called the police, surely someone else would soon. A lobby of angry witches and wizards wasn’t something humans would tolerate for long.

  ♦

  My grandparents both died a long time ago, but grandpa had three sisters; Maggie, Elaina and Bethany, though Elaina died a few years ago and Bethany went by the surname, Jacobs. They and their families were what was left of the Kirkland Coven of South Carolina.

  Between Fauna, Mom, Damon and I, we were able to lodge my wizarding relatives. Eccentric Great Aunt Maggie (not my biggest fan) went home with Fauna. As did her grown son, Sonny, his wife, Marge and their young children; Morris, Lou and Madelyn. Mom took home her favorite Great Aunt Bethany, who hates my guts because I’m a dud on the magic scale, and her two grown daughters Linn and Ell. But because Mom didn’t have the room in her house, I took Linn’s seventeen year old twin girls, Tria and Flow, and Ell’s fifteen year old twin boys, Robin and Anthony. I also took in Everett’s family, my favorite uncle, Robert and his wife Lidia, as well as Everett’s older siblings Kent and Eros.

  I had plenty of room in my house for everyone on account of my basement being divided into three rooms, well, four if you include the laundry room, but three spare bedrooms. That took care of both sets of twins and my lovely cousin Eros. I had only one spare room upstairs and that went to Robert and Lidia. As for Everett and Kent, well, they took the formal living room across the hall from my library/office. Robert and Damon put up a curtain to act as a door over the entrance to give the boys privacy while Katie, Everett and Kent set up two air mattresses on the floor.

  While everyone was settling in, I was in the kitchen trying to find something to feed these people for dinner. I had a lot of food, but I wasn’t much of a cook and I couldn’t ask Katie to cook for so many people. I shut the fridge and thought to myself, Pizza or Chinese?

  “You have a lovely home,” said Aunt Lidia.

  It was indeed a lovely home. It was my dream home, but I acquired it under horrible circumstances. The previous owners were murdered by people who were trying to bewitch me and used the house as bait. Once I learned that, I wanted to move out but I never could find the houses equal and eventually I stopped looking altogether.

  I smiled at her while I grabbed my phone. I had the best local delivery numbers saved in it and their menus were in a drawer by the coff
ee maker. “Thank you.”

  “How did you come by it? I mean, your mom keeps the family up to date on everything that’s going on with you kids, but she was kind of vague on you these past years. Something about vampires and demons and now you’re a big shot hunter, famous in these parts. You got a big house and a little boy? What is going on Miss Raina?”

  I just kept smiling. Lidia was a lovely woman and a talented witch, but she was a bit of a gossip.

  “I don’t know where to begin. It’s been a crazy couple of years. I was infected…”

  “You killed the man who hurt you and your brother, right?” she interrupted.

  I grinned at her with pride and held my head up high. My mom and brother were disgusted and ashamed of me for seeking revenge, but they were more elf than witch. Revenge and protecting your own was a big part of being a witch, not a Wiccan, a full on dark ages sort of pagan. Wiccans were a new sort of witch. They were all about love and respect, and while those traits are all well and good, witches of the old world were vengeful, powerful, scary sorts of people. We hold grudges and make lists. We weren’t always so vengeful. It took years of prejudges and persecution to make us this way and now it’s our culture.

  “I did,” I said. “And in doing so I ran into some trouble with a demon, who would only let me live if I took in Thomas, his grandson through marriage. The trouble was that Thomas had already been adopted by Damon.”

  “And that was before you two started dating?” she asked as I set all the menus on the counter in a row.

  “Yes. And when I took in Thomas I was granted a large sum of money to help me take care of him. I bought this house with some of the money. The house was big enough and I wasn’t about to split up a family, so I proposed that Damon and I raise Thomas together and we fell in love, over time.”