I gave her a look.
She laughed. “What, you were expecting me to put it on the altar and take you out to dance naked in the moonlight?”
“I’ve seen my teacher cleanse jewelry, and she does the four elements: earth, air, water, fire.”
“I thought I would see if I could cleanse it doing something that you might actually do yourself.”
“You mean just wash the bad stuff off?”
“I let the water run for a few minutes, as I thought, ‘All water is sacred.’ Surely you know that running water is a barrier to evil.”
“I’ve actually never found that a vamp couldn’t cross water to get to me. I’ve had ghouls run through a stream.”
“Perhaps the stream, like your cross, needs you to believe.”
“Why isn’t the water like the stones, and works on its own?”
“Why should water be like stone?” she asked.
It was one of those irritating questions that Marianne would ask occasionally. But I’d learned this game. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
She smiled. “I see why you worked so quickly and seamlessly with Michael. You both have a certain exasperating quality to you.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She dried the medallion carefully on a clean kitchen towel, then handed it to me. “This is not like your cross, Marshal. It is not an item that automatically keeps the bad things at bay. It is a neutral object; do you understand what that means?”
I let the medallion and chain pool into the palm of my hand. “It means that it isn’t evil or good; it’s more like a gun. How it’s used depends on who’s pulling the trigger.”
“The analogy will do, but I have never seen anything like this. You do not know me, but I don’t say that very often.”
I looked at the dull gleam of the metal in my hand. “I was told it would keep Marmee Noir out of me.”
“Did they tell you anything else about it?”
I thought, then had to shake my head.
“They may not have known, but I think as it keeps the Dark Mother out of you, it may also call things to you.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
“There’s something very animalistic, almost shamanic, to the energy of the piece, but that’s not quite it, either.”
I wanted to ask, did it call the tigers to me? Was it the medallion itself that was causing me to be drawn to them? Would asking be giving her too much information?
“Why did you ask how good a witch Randy was?”
I felt the compulsion to simply tell her. She was right, I wanted to tell her, felt we should enlist some help from the local talent, but it wasn’t my call. Edward was senior on this, and I bowed to his expertise. What could I say?
“The bad guys, or things, didn’t go in for a killing blow. Their first strikes were to keep him from talking. He was a fully armed, fully trained, special teams guy. That’s dangerous enough to just kill, but whoever struck the blows saw his ability to speak as more dangerous than the weapons.”
“You asked me about a spell, but I can’t think of anything that would force Randy to speak out loud. You saw Michael and what he did. His invocation was soundless.”
“Yeah, but it takes concentration to do that kind of summoning, doesn’t it? Could Randy call up that kind of energy in the middle of a firefight?”
She seemed to think about it. “I don’t know. I have never tried to do a working in the middle of combat. We have other brothers and sisters who are soldiers. I can email them and ask.”
“Just ask if they’ve tried doing magic in the middle of a firefight. No details.”
“I give you my word.”
Had I said too much? It didn’t feel like I had. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that your people tell you they can’t do magic, silent and normal, during combat. What would come up against an armed unit, a SWAT unit, that Randy Sherman would have thought words, a spell, would be more effective against than silver-coated bullets?”
“Are you certain it was silver bullets?”
“It’s standard ops that tac units like SWAT have silver-coated ammo to be carried at all times, in case one of the bad guys turns out to be a vampire or shapeshifter. They were backing up a vampire hunter; they’d have silver ammo.”
“But you didn’t check,” she said.
I nodded. “I will, but I’ve seen these guys work, and they wouldn’t make that big a mistake.”
She nodded. “Randy would certainly not have made such an error.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Phoebe.”
“I was thinking,” she said. She frowned, rolling her lip under just a little. It looked like an old nervous habit that she’d almost lost. I wondered if it was her tell. Did it mean she was lying, or more nervous than she should be? Could she have some tie to what was happening? Well, yeah, duh, but it didn’t feel right. But then, how much was her magic and the house itself with all its wards affecting my reaction to her? Shit, I wished I hadn’t thought of that, or that I’d thought of it sooner. That I hadn’t thought sooner meant I was being messed with again. Shit.
“The demonic, some evil spirits, as you saw with your Mother Dark.” She frowned.
“You’ve thought of something,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, it’s just, it could be almost anything. You haven’t even told me how they stopped Randy from speaking. I assume it was some kind of gag or damage that made speech impossible.”
Honestly, for her to really be a worthwhile information source, she needed more clues, but Edward had expressly told me not to give her any. Crap.
“I know you don’t trust me, Marshal.”
“Why should I? You’ve got this house so wired with magic that you’ve taken most of our natural cynicism away. We’ve talked more openly around you than we should have already.”
“Cynicism is not always conducive to studying and performing magic.”
“But for cops, it’s essential.”
“I did not ward my house with the idea that police would come and question me.”
“Fair enough, but how can we tell what was on purpose and what wasn’t? I can’t even tell if we were talking too much before you redid the wards, or only after. If it was after, you did it on purpose to try to get us to tell you more about Randy Sherman’s death.”
“That would be a very gray thing for a Wiccan priestess to do, Marshal.”
I smiled, and it was a real smile. “You did, didn’t you? You used the emergency to tweak the spells so we’d be more chatty.” I shook a finger at her. “That’s illegal. Using magic on police in the middle of an investigation is automatic arrest. I could charge you with magical malfeasance.”
“That would be an automatic jail sentence of at least six months,” she said.
“It would,” I said.
We stared at each other. “Grief makes me foolish, and I apologize for that, but I want to know what happened to Randy.”
“No,” I said, “you don’t.”
She frowned, and then her face clouded over. “Is it that awful?”
“You don’t want your last”-I hesitated-“image of your friend to be the crime scene photos, and definitely not a visit to the morgue.” I reached out to lay a comforting hand, but stopped myself. I was a little fuzzy on human psychic abilities. Did they grow with touch, like a vampire’s? Mine didn’t, but mine were pretty specialized. I let my hand fall back. “Trust me on this one, Phoebe.”
“How can I trust you when you’re threatening to put me in jail?” There was a thread of anger in her voice now. I guess I couldn’t blame her.
I actually hadn’t said I’d put her in jail. I’d just mentioned that I
