Kicking It

never met one, and they damn sure didn’t live in Austin, Texas. The picture of Portia proved she wasn’t one of them, either.

We sat down on the steps of the house, and Andy put his arm around me. We didn’t speak. I watched lights go on and off in the other houses and thought that this would, yet again, be brought up at the association meeting as a disruption. We were those people now. And while we lived in a time a bit too PC for pitchforks and torches, I could feel the tide of sentiment turning against us.

Witches had come out to the public in an odd sort of way, about ten years back. Two specialists had teamed up because they wanted to solve a murder. One was a potions witch, and the other was a witch who specialized in making shells—creating a perfect copy of a human, but without the spark of life. A potions witch—commonly called a resurrection witch, when they did what I do—could brew a potion that put the spark of life back in, and that was exactly what they’d done. Together, they’d brought back a murder victim from beyond, to tell the incredulous detective all about his murder. And who did it.

Other witches teamed up for the same purpose. Before long, unsolved cases were being closed right and left . . . but there was a hitch. Even the strongest resurrection witches—and I was among them—couldn’t keep a dead soul in a resurrected living body for long. We expended our own energy to seal the bond, and the dead . . . Well, death had its own gravity. Eventually, it pulled the soul away. The longer that soul had to stay, the more it, and the witch, suffered. So the logical recourse for the cops was to record the testimony of the resurrected, and play it in court.

Turned out that was ruled unconstitutional at the highest levels, and now testimony of the dead no longer counted. It still solved cases, but it was inadmissible. The business for resurrection witches had fallen off significantly, and although people still wanted their loved ones revived for a brief period, it wasn’t exactly a cash- heavy business.

I often felt that we’d revealed ourselves for nothing, really. As my dad used to say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Which explained the burning cross on my lawn.

A regular patrol car arrived without lights or sirens and parked at the curb under the pecan tree; the two patrolwomen seemed professional enough, and they interviewed Andy and me separately. Detective Rosen arrived about thirty minutes later, just after I’d taken a seat on the step again. Andy was still talking to the officer. He was holding his temper, but I could see it was an effort.

“Can’t keep him out of trouble, can you?” Ed Rosen asked, and sat down next to me. Even at this predawn hour, he was well dressed, in a gray suit and a tie. I never could get a read on Rosen’s mood; he always seemed completely closed off. I respected it, but it could also be off-putting at moments like this, when I badly needed someone to be on my side.

“Considering we were sleeping in our own beds, we’re doing our best, sir,” I said. “It looked like the usual nonsense, a truck full of drunk assholes with a cross and a Google map. The thing looks too nice for them to have nailed it together, by the way. I think they stole it from a church.”

“It takes a special sort of self-righteousness to steal a cross from a church to burn on somebody’s lawn,” he agreed. “Also, usually some alcohol.”

“Check that off your list. I saw the bottles in their hands.”

“Recognize anyone?”

“Ski masks,” I said.

“License plate?”

“Did you miss the part where I said we were in bed?”

“Then why am I here, Caldwell?” His voice had taken on a weary edge, and I realized he thought I was just taking advantage of the fact that we’d worked together a couple of times before. I missed Detective Prieto. He’d been surly and difficult, but I’d always known where he stood.

A lot of people thought it was my fault he was dead. They weren’t completely wrong about that. His murder had stirred up all kinds of trouble in Austin, and now, six months later, it was becoming popular to hate our witches. Churches were more vocal. None of us much dared to have a Facebook or Twitter account, which might be used to track us down; the digital threats made it almost useless, anyway. Considering that Austin had always been a model of tolerance and support, it felt like a last-stand situation to me.

“Come look at this,” I said to Rosen, and walked him over to the picture. He examined it as closely as I had, shook his head, and took some photos of his own. “The woman in the photo is named Portia. I don’t know her last name. She’s a foreseer witch, runs some kind of tarot-reading business.”

“Here in Austin?”

“I think so,” I said. “I’ve never been to her place. I met her at a conference.”

Rosen glanced up at me, and his gaze lingered. He had a long, rectangular face and a fringe of thick silver hair, with thick eyebrows to match. Kind of a silver fox, actually. “Witches have conferences? What do you do, exchange spells? Sell each other cauldrons?”

“Something like that,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for mockery. “A woman is dead, Detective. So maybe you could stop judging and investigate?”

“We fully investigate everything that’s reported,” Rosen said. “Even when it’s a waste of time.”

“You think a dead witch is a waste of time?” That calm, quiet voice came from behind me. Andy had walked over to join us, probably drawn by the dark energy of our face-off. He did love a good fight. “Where I come from, the law had to pretend to do a little more work before they gave up, at least.”

“Where you’re from, the law was whatever the man with the fastest gun said it was. At least, that’s what the stories say.” Rosen studied Andy for a moment. “Can’t see it, personally. All this gunfighter bullshit.”

Thank God Andy wasn’t wearing a holster and a six-gun. I still saw the impulse travel through his body, the twitching of fingers on his right hand. And I saw the dark, uneven slice of the smile on his face. “Probably is bullshit,” he agreed. “I’d stick with that, Detective. But, hand to God, you’d best get to digging on Portia’s death, or I will.”

Rosen kept eyeballing him. “Is that a threat, Mr. Toland?”

“Not toward you, sir.”

So very polite, all this male aggression. “Do you need anything else?” I asked Rosen. I was regretting that I’d asked for him on this, but I honestly couldn’t name a single detective at APD who would have been any more receptive just now. “Because it’s been a hell of a night so far.”

“I’d expect it’s been worse for the woman in that picture,” he said. “I know my job, and I’ll do it. You two stay the hell out of everybody’s way. We don’t need amateurs cock-blocking us and blowing up the investigation.”

“You mean you’re going to do one?”

“If she’s really dead,” Rosen said. “Right now, I see a picture that might be a fake. Once I have an honest- to-God corpse, I’ll get to work. Other than that, maybe you ought to put a fence around your yard and get a big dog, unless you enjoy this kind of thing.”

“So you’re just going to file it and forget it,” I said. “Right?”

“Miss Caldwell, every hate crime gets reported to the FBI, and I’m going to flag it that way. So just quit punching me. It’s not a fight.”

He sounded tired, and in that moment I saw the strain in the tight wrinkles around his eyes. He’d probably been up for hours, and maybe had been just kicking off for the night when he’d gotten the call to come to us. Made sense he wasn’t thrilled to be here.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Bad night?”

Some of the tension left his body. “Yeah, bad enough. We had a teen girl missing over in Clarksville. Found her in a cardboard box behind a bar. Not a pretty sight. I’ve got a daughter her age.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know Rosen all that well on a personal level; he wore a wedding ring, but I knew nothing about his home life, if he had much of one at all. Some cops didn’t. On impulse, I held up a finger. “Wait here, okay? Be right back.” I dashed into the house and opened up a cardboard box sitting on the sofa in the living room. In it were small bottles with the printed label HOLLY’S BALM. It was magic, but benign and shelf-stable. Not my creation. Andy’s. And it was selling like hotcakes.

I grabbed a bottle from the carton and went back outside to Rosen. “Stress relief,” I said, holding it out to him. “No charge, and I promise, it won’t damn your immortal soul or anything. But it works.”