He knew why Mary and the others had left. They hadn't told him, but they hadn't had to.
Isabella.
They did not like what Wolf Canyon was becoming. He understood completely. He himself had grave misgivings about what was happening here. This was not what he had envisioned, and he held no resentment toward those who had left.
And the others, the deaths?
Accidents, he told himself, and he made himself believe it.
William sat on his horse and surveyed Wolf Canyon from the top of the upper trail. From up here everything looked the way it always had, but the truth was that the whole tenor of the town had changed. Isabella was not alone in her feelings of anger and hatred toward those who were not witches. Many of the other townspeople, particularly the newer ones, felt the same way and were not shy about expressing their opinions in public. He understood that there'd even been some sort of meeting in the schoolhouse, a sort of strategy session to decide what to do should the 'normals,' as people had taken to calling them, discover Wolf Canyon. He had not been invited to the meeting, but he assumed Isabella had gone.
He had not asked her. He had not wanted to know.
If this had been a democracy, and if Isabella had been a man and allowed to run for office, he had serious doubts as to whether he would be able to beat her in a fair election.
He willed the horse onward, toward the town, hoping that Isabella was at home, in the kitchen, cooking his midday dinner.
But he had the feeling she wasn't.
They killed the first rancher on All Hallow's Eve.
The man had done nothing wrong. He was not even aware of the fact that they were witches. But Clete, returning home from a sojourn east, saw the settler's crude hut and makeshift corral on his return trip and promptly informed Isabella.
Not him. :
Isabella.
The raiding party went out the next night, dressed in black garb and armed only with magic. Isabella said nothing to him, was not there when he arrived home after a long day of overseeing operations at the new tunnel over at the mine, but William knew where she'd gone, knew what she was doing, and he was filled with an anger so pure and strong
it made his hands shake. He strode through the darkened streets of Wolf Canyon, his rage growing as he saw how quiet the town was, how deserted the bar. A lot of them had accompanied her, and he resolved that when she returned home he would lay down the law. This was his town, damn it, and wife or no wife, she had to abide by his will like the others. They all did.
His resolve fled when she arrived, however, covered with blood and singed by fire. What was left of her clothes was torn and blackened.
She leaped from her horse, victorious, and grinned at him. 'We did it!'
William's mouth was dry, the words he'd intended to say, the lecture he'd intended to give, forgotten.
'It was glorious,' she said rapturously. 'We came out of the night like demons, and he obviously thought we were such, for he started shooting even before we had arrived.' Her smile broadened, and William could see the blood on her teeth. 'We took his animals first, making the cow wither in front of his eyes, roasting the pig alive, turning his chickens into statues of dung. He continued shooting, and we burned his corral, set fire to his cabin.
'Then we went in.'
She touched his face, showed him, and William saw the scene through her eyes, saw the bullets reflected back at the shooter, saw Isabella cause the rancher's Bible to explode as he fell to his knees, praying, waiting for the end. He cursed her, cursed all of them, and they took tunas with their spells, Isabella going first, popping off his fingers one by one. Daniel followed, clouding over one eye. Thomas turned the man's teeth to plant flesh
And on and on.
She let go, and William stepped back, flushed. Against his will, he felt some of the same satisfaction she had, the same righteous sense of justice, but he didn't know if these were his own feelings or if she had imparted hers to him.
She bathed in the river, and afterward they made love outside, like in the old days. What she prompted him to do would have made a normal woman sob with shame and humiliation, but Isabella loved it, and he loved it, too. The surrounding world disappeared for him as their bodies intertwined in ways unspeakable, and as wrong as it was, he realized that he would not oppose his wife in anything she did so long as this passion continued.
She read him, she knew this.
And that was the start of the purges.
Now
Miles sat in his cubicle, slumped in his swivel chair, staring at the unfunny Dilbert cartoon one of the agency's computer nerds had tacked up on the cloth wall of the room divider for his amusement.
The case was over.
Marina Lewis had had what was left of her father's body transferred to Arizona for burial as soon as the coroner had finished with the autopsy and the police had completed their paperwork, and she and her husband had gone back as well. Miles told her she didn't owe anything and let her off without bill, although he wasn't sure how he was going to justify that to Perkins. It was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. He'd failed to protect her father, and while, strictly speaking, that wasn't his mandate, it was what he had expected of himself, and he felt as though he'd let Marina down.
He spun slowly around in his chair. He was at a loss because he didn't want to let the case go. There were other jobs he should be working on, a whole host of new clients from which to choose, but he wanted to stick with this. Because it involved his dad.
That's what it came down to. Yes, he was concerned for the safety of Hec Tibbert and the other men on Liam's list. Yes, he desperately wanted to know what was behind these deaths, wanted to put a stop to this before it went any
further--if that was at all possible. But it was his father's involvement that gave everything an added emotional dimension, that personalized it for him and made it so pressing and immediate.
The police had promised to investigate further--after halving been warned of the danger Liam Connor was in, having been given the list, and having watched as Liam became another casualty, as predicted, under their very noses. But he had his doubts that they would follow through. There were too many other, more immediate crimes. Los Angeles was a perpetual wellspring of wrongdoing, with new murders, rapes, and robberies popping up every day. It was all the police could do to keep up with new crimes, let alone get started on the backlog, i
But he could do it. He wanted to continue this investigation. It was his moral and ethical responsibility. What kind of detective would he be, what kind of human being would he be, if he did not follow through and act on what he knew, what he'd learned?
Except he'd be fired if he used the agency's time and resources to continue working on the unfunded case of a client who had not paid in the first place.
It was a lose-lose situation.
Miles felt a pencil nub hit his shoulder, and he glanced over to see Hal leaning forward in his chair, attempting to snap him out of his gloom. 'What would you rather do,' his friend asked, 'perform analingus on an incontinent Ronald Reagan or eat out your sister.
Miles had to smile. It was a game they'd invented several years ago when the recession had cut into the private investigation business and they were stuck in the office for long periods of time without any work to do. It had started out simply, asking each other which of their female coworkers they would most or least like to have sex with, and had gotten more outrageous over time, graduating to gross-out
