I retracted the probe. “Did you remove any spells?”

  “No.” Jerry shook his head. “I did my investigation, and they closed off this room. It’s just as I left it.”

  “Any suggestions?” I tipped my head toward the phantom.

  It didn’t respond.

  “We’ll try easy and then the hard way.” I leaned into the display, setting the skull roughly under the unicorn’s hooves. “In theory, this should be enough.”

  The phantom stood behind me.

  I watched the magic.

  “Should I be seeing something?” Devi asked.

  “The easy way isn’t working,” Jerry said. “Ladder or levitation?”

  I sighed. Nothing was ever easy. “How do you get up there to attach a skull?”

  Devi beamed. “We just upgraded our scissor lift last year. I’ll bring it around.”

  The phantom seemed fine waiting, so I sat down on the floor and leaned my head against the platform.

  “I brought you tea. It’s in the car.” Jerry crouched down in front of me. “How’d you find this thing?”

  “Oh, tea. I can’t wait. I ran out on the way here.” I huffed out a breath. “You’re going to get to work with Cherokee on this one. It was terrorizing a Halloween Essence.”

  He rocked back. “How in Narzel’s name did it end up there?”

  “That’s your problem.” I shrugged. “But when you find out, give me a call.”

  Jerry gave me a crooked grin. “I’ve heard about your in-laws to be. I’ll come up with a pressing reason we need to have lunch.”

  “You’re a gem.” I gave him the short version of events.

  A high-pitched, mechanical groan interrupted the end of my story. Devi rolled in on a bright blue scissor lift, sporting a hardhat and a safety belt. The lift had a platform large enough for two people if they enjoyed each other's company. “Will this do?”

  “It’ll do.” I picked up the skull and moved out of the way.

  Devi got the lift in position. I belted myself in, and Devi got us in the air.

  Wires and a metal rod stuck out from the vertebrae. This would’ve been useful if I had any idea how to securely attach the skull. I peered down at the phantom. “She’s going to have to do this part.”

  “I’ll take good care of you,” Devi said solemnly.

  To her credit, Devi told me just how to support the skull while she positioned it and wired it back into place. It wasn’t the quickest process, but when she was done, the skull wasn’t going anywhere.

  Devi dusted off her hands. “How’s the curse looking?”

  “Well, the phantom is still here, so not great.”

  She leaned over. “You’re back together. What more do you want? You know I can’t have a curse in here. We teach children.”

  The phantom reared up and then landed back on four hooves.

  Back together. The phrase rattled around my tired brain as I switched my vision to see the magic. The binding spell was still broken. Ideally, I’d strip the magic away and recast the spell. Since the binding was part of what had created the curse, that didn’t seem like the best idea.

  With a twist of my wrist, I summoned my wand. This binding was a more complex one, but the fragments of the original spell blended seamlessly with the new magic. I finished the spell with a flourish. “Purisaz esaz Algiz.”

  The binding spell snapped into place, coating the entire skeleton, including the skull. The phantom faded away. I probed the skull, but it didn’t have any hint of magic or curse left on it. “It’s done.”

  Now I could go home and get some sleep. At least until the next emergency.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’d seen death before. Some were a cold horror, like the dismembered body. Others were odd, like the body by the fountain. This was spooky.

  Or maybe I was tired. Five hours of very interrupted sleep would do that.

  Any other morning, this would’ve been a quiet neighborhood, with the houses set back from the road, old-growth trees, and sizable yards. The decorations were modest, a skeleton or headstone, bats hanging from trees, and the like. A few houses had done more, including the one in front of me. A skeleton crawled across the yard, pumpkin lights lined the front walk, and a sarcophagus leaned against the tree, its lid on the ground.

  With the fake skeleton crawling away from the sarcophagus, I assumed it was supposed to be empty. Only there was a person in the sarcophagus: a man, dressed in jeans and a partly buttoned flannel shirt, his medium-brown hair short, his skin pale.

  I wish it was as pale as death, but no. His head leaned against the side of the sarcophagus, neck slashed. Blood crusted the wound and the underside of his chin.

  Like the last two, he’d been drained.

  “I couldn’t find any magic, but maybe you can,” Rodriguez said.

  “Doubtful. The others didn’t have a trace of magic.” And I’d looked. Really, I had. “What about the drunk behavior? Anyone acting oddly?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Could be everyone was asleep, or it didn’t happen this time.”

  “I’ll look, but don’t get your hopes up.” I closed my eyes and lowered my shields.

  Sure, there was magic around. This house had several minor magical items inside, the always popular ever-sharp knife, a hairbrush of untangling, and such. The neighboring house had an anti-fire spell on the kitchen. Several houses had anti-pest spells, but nothing more exotic.

  The murder itself was bare of any magic. Not one drop, not one mote of power that could’ve been a spell before. It was as non-magical as it got.

  “There’s no magic.” The third body drained of blood in about as many days? I knew why I was here. They wanted help catching this serial killer before more people died. But last I’d heard, they didn’t have any more physical evidence than I did magical.

  “You’re sure?”

  I stared at him.

  Rodriguez nodded and rubbed a head across his face. “There’s a bloody spot on the side of the sarcophagus. We think it’s a fingerprint of sorts.”

  “What does ‘of sorts’ mean? I thought things were or weren’t fingerprints.”

  “Come look.”

  Everyone but me had done their job, so I wasn’t trampling on undocumented evidence while I walked across the lawn.

  Up close, the edges of the cut were clean. Other than the blood on the chin, the body appeared free of blood splatter. It struck me as odd. Killing and slitting throats was a messy business.

  Rodriguez motioned for me to look at a smudge on the left side of the sarcophagus.

  It wasn’t much. A bit of a bloody blur with dark lines crisscrossing. It didn’t look like a normal fingerprint with ridges and whorls. “What is it?”

  “We think it’s from a glove. Leather, probably.”

  The temperature had dropped into the fifties last night. “So the killer had cold hands?”

  “Or was trying not to leave a print,” Rodriguez said. “Can you use it to track the killer?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. If it was the killer’s print and there were enough oils and skin cells left behind, maybe.” Reaching well below the smudge, I rapped my knuckles against the sarcophagus. “Plastic. If there are enough cells left behind, I could try to connect this print to the glove, but it’s a long shot.”

  “Could you try?”

  “Sure.” I got a tracking charm from my car. After checking the residue on the sarcophagus, I altered the spell so it would connect to the traces of leather. Forcing aside my doubts so they didn’t interfere with the spell, I linked the charm to the blood spot on the plastic.

  The link started to attach to the blood. I narrowed the focus even more and tried again. The link stalled. I adjudged the magic, making it more attractive to any bits of leather.

  The spell shattered, and the charm went a dull gray.

  “Sorry. There wasn’t enough there.”

  “It was worth a shot.” Rodriguez tugged me away from the body and motioned the medical examiner over. Hopefully, he would have better luck finding evidence.

  Since I was an extra expense, cases like this didn’t typically make their way to me. Most of what I dealt with was overtly magical. Occasionally, I got called in on other cases where they wanted the matter settled quickly. Either way, I seldom ended up working crimes this lacking in evidence. This one wouldn’t have become my responsibility either if it hadn’t been for the drunken werewolves.

  Which was a good point. Why hadn’t there been any reports of drunken behavior around this body? What changed?

  It had the same Halloween-style décor, carved pumpkins and a carved turnip on the porch. Turnips weren’t as common these days, but some people liked their Old World traditions.

  “Could the homeowner have been involved?” I asked. “A copycat? It has some differences from the previous murders.”

  Rodriguez shook his head. “The family got back this morning from an out-of-town trip. They didn’t notice it at first, but when the dad went out to check mail, he followed the scent.”

  “Shifter?”

  “Fey.”

  “Ah.” Still a better nose than humans or witches. Not that we were much competition in that department.

  “Alibi is rock-solid. None of the neighbors are likely suspects. We haven’t talked to the family two doors down. Newly divorced. We’re locating them.”

  “Great, but not my area.”

  Rodriguez stared at me. “That’s not why you’re here. Boss wants you to go through all the evidence. See if there’s magic or a magical creature behind all of this. He also wants an update on your research into the drunkenness.”

  “That’s easy. I don’t have much. One book had a reference to a ‘hell beast’ that caused a Dionysus effect.” October was supposed to be the spooky, fun, magical time of the year. Instead, it had become the-baffle-the-witch month. I was not a fan.

  “So?” Rodriguez prompted.

  I just stared at him.

  “What’s the hell beast? Could it be the cause? How do we track it?”

  “Great questions! The book didn’t answer a single one of them, and I couldn’t find any other documentation of a hell beast. If it exists, it has a different name, and I don’t know how to find it.” And that was how to keep customers happy.

  “We got the test results back. No one was on drugs. They did find alcohol, but no one will admit to heavy drinking.” His eyes focused on the medical examiner wheeling away the body. “When that many people tell me they weren’t drinking, I believe them.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me.” I glanced around the neighborhood one more time. Nothing caught my eye. “There isn’t anything else I can do here. I need food. Your office, half an hour?”

  Rodriguez nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  I patted his shoulder and left.

  Earth knew I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how. None of this was in my field. Magic. That was where I brought something to the table.

  While waiting for my food, I gave Elron a quick call. He didn’t answer, so I left a message asking about the hell beast. It was the only thing I could think to do. It wasn’t like there was a database of these things. Rare creatures tended to pop up, do enough to create a story about them, and vanish again. Which was likely what made them rare.

  It was a short drive back to the office and then a computer. I set out my burger and fries and pulled up the reports. The power combo.

  I read through the case notes while I ate. They were digital, so I wouldn’t get greasy fingerprints on them. The only thing of interest in the first case was the homeowner. She was a single woman and said she thought someone had been following her home. She went inside and was on the phone with her mom until the police knocked on her door. She was giving her mom the live action report when the officer first spoke to her.

  Being followed home could give her a motive, but it wasn’t compelling. Call records proved she was on the phone during the murder time frame. It could be a well-constructed alibi, but even so, a human woman didn’t fit the profile of the killer. Not when the first body was literally torn apart.

  Yup. Torn.

  The average human woman wasn’t anywhere near that strong.

  Oh, and the victim? The medical examiner was sure it was a human man. Police were waiting on DNA to confirm it was a guy who lived above one of the nearby shops. He’d gone missing that night.

  This brought me to the second victim. She’d often walked by River Depot on her way home. She’d lived a mile from her job at the bar and had worked the closing shift the night she died. Other than the closing shift workers ending up in the same drunken state as everyone around the first body, nothing useful had come up during the investigation.

  Today’s victim gave us a geographical profile. The three locations weren’t close to each other, but they were all along I-575, moving south. Though, the killer wasn’t moving fast. It was about ten miles from Ball Ground to the River Depot, and another seven miles to get to the house in Holly Springs with the most recent victim.

  Someone with more crime-fighting experience would have a useful interpretation of that information. All I knew was there would be another murder, and it would be south of Holly Springs.

  All the murders happened at night. Either the murderer thought they were less likely to be caught at night, or they were nocturnal. I didn’t know which was more likely.

  The lack of blood made me think these killings were the work of a vampire, but vampires didn’t slit throats and drain people. They bit them, leaving clear fang marks.

  I didn’t know of any creature who slit the throat, drained the blood, and carried it away. Clearly the killer wanted the blood—all of the blood, according to the report.

  Why? That was the question everyone was asking. A range of ideas showed up in the notes. Cult rituals, feeding multiple vampires, blood magic, and more. The evidence didn’t support any of those theories. Of course, there wasn’t any evidence to the contrary either.

  After lunch, I joined Rodriguez in his workroom. He had the pictures and printed files spread out on the table. A jug of coffee sat next to him.

  “You’re up to date?” he asked.

  I tugged the pictures of the first crime scene over. “Yup. Ready to review the pictures.”

  Since I’d been to every crime scene, it was more to refresh my memory than anything. Which it did, werewolves munching on hands and all.

  After going through the photos, I didn’t see anything useful. Sure, there were bodies at Halloween displays, but given the time of year, it would be harder to avoid the decorations.

  I started through the pictures and reports again. There had to be useful information in here. There just had to be. My eyes drooped.

  A hand shook my shoulder. I startled, sitting up. My eyelids fluttered, trying to get used to the light.

  Rodriguez peered down at me. “You fell asleep.”

  “Narzel fart.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nearly dinner time. Go home. You’re not the only person who’s looked at the evidence and come up with nothing.” He stacked the picture and files. “I’m going home too.”

  “The drunkenness is the key. And why it wasn’t at the last crime scene.” A thought occurred to me. “And why the family with the giant spider was drunk. No one died there.”

  “Great. When you figure it out, let me know.” Rodriguez all but shoved me out the door.

  What could’ve caused them to become drunk? That thought occupied my mind for the entire drive home. It stayed there through my shower and was still in the back of my brain when Tricks knocked on my door.

  She bounced inside. “The lodge said you were back.”

  “It was right, and you timed it well. Do you want to visit Ty?”

  “Yes!” She bounced back out the door.

  I followed at a more reasonable pace. We didn’t have far to go. Ty, my magical construct pet who happened to be a T. rex, was in the side garden nosing his giant beach ball. The pink and purple coloring made him look approachable, and to his credit, he liked most people.

  “Did Elron tell you about the turnip?” Tricks rubbed Ty’s cheek.

  I scratched his nose. “I haven’t talked to him today.”

  Ty closed his eyes and groaned.

  Tricks reached up and found the itchy spot on the top of his head. “Nearly 70 pounds! The turnip, that is. Elron had to move it around, but I got to carve it. It’s going in the display with one of giant pumpkins. We picked two smaller pumpkins and carved them. Well, I say we, but a bunch of people helped. All the pumpkin is going to make pies for the school, and a bunch of other places.”

  “It was 70 pounds? That’s huge for a turnip!” I’d known they were big, but that was even bigger than I’d pictured.

  Trick nodded rapidly. “And it took one of those rolling crane things to move the pumpkin. We had to carve them on the platform where they’ll be for the festival. I went up and down a ladder so many times.”

  “How much did the pumpkin weigh?” I went over to the T-rex-sized beach ball and rolled it toward Ty.

  He lifted his head up and nosed the ball back at me.

  “We didn’t weigh it.” She darted over and rolled the ball back to Ty.

  Tricks, Ty and I played until Elron came out. He sent her in to have dinner with their parents. He guided me back to his apartment where he’d set out dinner, with candles and wine.

  “I feel guilty indulging.” That didn’t stop me from sitting down.

  Elron poured the wine. “Why? After weeks of miserable dinners with my parents, you deserve a few quiet evenings.”

  “It’s not that.” Though poor Tricks was stuck with them. “The case. The killer isn’t going to stop. I can’t find any magic, and the police can’t find any useful physical evidence.”

  “One dinner will not change the unsolvable case.” He caught my eyes. “Your life, our lives must go on. As we have done in the past.”

  He was right. That didn’t make it any less bitter a reminder. “Hand me the wine and tell me about your day.”