If Wishes Were Horses Read online

  never been on such formal terms with a lover before.”

  She stomped the brake, bringing them to an abrupt halt on the rural highway, and glared at him. “We're not lovers, Herne. We had a quick fuck and that was it. It was a mistake in judgment on my part, and if you don't drop it, it's going to be a seriousmistake in yours.”

  He studied her. “Is that why you looked at me the way you did at the shop, when you thought I wasn’t looking? Because I was a quick fuck? “ He turned back to the window. “I must look like hell if you're trying to be nice to me.”

  He was hard to keep up with. Sarah tried counting to ten for patience, made it to five. “I'm normally a nice person. You bring out the mean in me.”

  He smiled, but his attention was on something far beyond the car.

  “So why this kind of store? Why not just your average sex shop? You know, no windows, dirty books, fluorescent lights and all male clientele?”

  “Well, when you make it sound so appealing, I can't imagine what came over me,” he said dryly. He spread his fingers out, long and capable, on his knees. “The easy answer is I enjoy women. A woman's desires have always fascinated me, so different from ours.”

  She'd hit the right button. The store was as much about who he was as it was his livelihood, which was obvious from walking into it. She didn't want to think about whether she'd done it to pump him for information or to get his mind off of what lay ahead. She supposed it didn't matter as long as it accomplished the same thing.

  “How so?”

  He slanted a glance at her, and she thought he knew what she was doing, because a look of amusement crossed his features, as if he were laughing at both of them.

  “Sexuality for women is such a deep, spiritual part of them, connected to the sacredness of the Earth herself. Male sexuality is the curiosity of the rover, the passion of the hunter, the bird flashing into the sky in a sudden burst of exuberance. It is woman's body that grounds him, that brings above and below together and balances. To find ways to bring forth that deep sensuality in a woman to make it easier for the

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  two to come together, that’s a sexual experience surpassing anything a casual rut with the campus cheerleader can bring.”

  “So your faith is a 'make love not war' type of thing?”

  He did not smile this time. “It's easy to think of it that way, more harmless. That only touches on the surface of some very deep waters. The Goddess is as much warrior as creator.” His gaze moved to her badge clipped on her belt, her gun in the shoulder holster. “You know that.”

  They pulled onto the service access road. Justin blinked. “You didn't say this adjoined my property.”

  “You didn't ask, and I didn't know for sure, though I suspected. You've got a pretty sizeable chunk of land. We have to park here and walk a ways. It's marked with tape.” She glanced at his polished shoes. “Sorry. I should have warned you we'd be going through the woods.”

  “It's all right.” He got out, bent out of sight behind the door. When he came around to join her, he was barefoot, carrying the shoes in one hand, the socks folded inside them.

  He should have looked silly, but he didn't. Instead, she was reminded forcefully ofwhat he had looked like in the woods the previous night, bare except for the antlered headdress. She recalled also that the shoes in his hand were the ones he had worn less

  than a few hours ago while he knelt on her bed, driving into her.

  He’d caught her staring. That knowledge started her from her musings, warmed

  her cheeks.

  “Aren't you worried about the slacks?” She gestured toward the expensive summer

  wool.

  “Do you want me to take them off?”

  It was a sardonic comment, without humor. He apparently wasn't feeling likelaughing, at her or with her.

  “Sorry, I wasn't thinking of it that way. Come on.”

  He followed her to the murder site without another word. When they got to the lip of the shallow valley where the victim was located, Sarah saw the scene through his eyes. The dark earth, the pale, uncovered body, the staring eyes. She glanced at him, studied his face as both cop and lover. She acknowledged the necessity of the duality atthe same time she regretted it, though she wasn't yet sure which one caused her the most chagrin.

  Up until his face changed, when she told him what she wanted him to do, she realized she had felt as though he had the upper hand, that he was untouchable, nothuman. A woman was allowed to be a bit touchy and defensive around a man who had overwhelmed her every defense. Maybe that's why now she felt so much more kindly disposed toward him.

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  He had paled again, but the set of his jaw was grim and he didn't turn away. Heappeared frozen, every muscle of his body locked. His pulse pounded visibly in his throat.

  There was a uniform overseeing the site with Eric, but they weren’t doing much,just waiting for her to bring Herne to view the body before they removed the victim. “No press yet?” Sarah asked.

  Chief Wassler shook his head. “We're out in the middle of nowhere, and so far we've kept it off the radio. I’ll do a press release after the coroner picks her up. Justin, good to see you. Thanks for coming.”

  Herne nodded, his mouth a thin line. Sarah let him take the lead, subtly motioning Eric to hang back with her as they approached the ritual site and the woman's body. Shekept to Herne’s left so she could see his profile. As he got closer his face grew moreempty and still, as if he were mimicking the corpse’s lack of animation. When heswallowed and went glassy-eyed, she prepared to leap forward and push his head between his knees before he keeled on her. Then she saw his eyes start moving. She could almost hear the wheels clicking, as they had for her when she viewed her first victim. Focus on the clues, the evidence, portion it down so you don't lose your mind oryour stomach.

  “This is a typical circle casting,” he said at last. His voice was rough and strange. Sarah saw his jaw had not relaxed a fraction, his gaze still on that white, motionless body.

  “She most likely used a dark, dry dirt to cast the circle and pentagram. It’s a good ingredient, because you can do a liberal coating but it will blow away and remix with the earth, less clean up. She'll have called the quarter spirits, names for the four elements that would have suited her purpose. That’s what the oak branch, candle, censer and goblet represent. Four of the nine stones mark them, the others for the five points of the pentagram, as you can see. If there are carvings on them they may be symbols you'll want me to see and identify. They could be bindings, to hold whatever she called in, or reinforcements for the spell she was casting.” He swallowed again. “The cat’s blood was to help call it.”

  He closed his eyes.

  Sarah cursed herself, gave in and put a hand on his arm. “Can you take a closer look at the body?”

  Justin raised his lids, looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Yes, I can,” he said.

  He took the necessary eight steps to draw near her, and Sarah could almost feelhow difficult each of those steps was for him. She and Eric stayed close behind him, exchanging a glance.

  Justin stopped, looked down. “May I touch her?”

  Sarah turned to the uniform and he provided a pair of latex gloves. “You can, but wear these. And give me your shoes.”

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  He hesitated, nodded and made the exchange. Inevitably, their fingers brushed, and his eyes flickered up to hers.

  Sarah held his gaze with a flat expression of her own. She could keep the impassive cop face in their present surroundings, but it was harder than usual. He turned away, put on the gloves and knelt by the body.

  He touched her face, traced the sunken cheeks, the drawn lines around the mouth. “She's not this old,” he said.

  “She shows evidence of being a hard drug user,” Sarah began, but he shook his head again.

  “N
o, it's not that. Something sucked the life from her.”

  A chill skittered up Sarah's spine. “Are you suggesting she called some type of vampire?”

  “If I did, I'm sure you wouldn't believe it. I'm telling you I knew this woman.”

  Sarah came to attention and felt Eric do the same. “How did you know her?” Wassler asked.

  “Her name is Lorraine Messenger. She's in her early thirties. She moved to the county area about three months ago. I don't know where she was living, if she was living anywhere. She approached me about joining our coven. It was obvious her addiction made her unstable. I told her…” He stopped, and for a moment Sarah could not see his face, because he averted it, stared at the woods. “She would not be permitted to join our coven unless she took steps to clean herself up. I offered to get her into a program. She declined, and I didn't see her again.”

  He rose, turned back to Sarah. When strong emotions seized him, she realized that all those perfect features grew still. His dark eyes seemed to go flat and yet fathomless at once, and Sarah felt as if she could be lost in the abyss of their desolation.

  “The blood painted on her arms and legs is likely hers. The cat’s was used to strengthen the outer circle. Your own blood is the most powerful binding agent. She was calling something to her specifically,” he said.

  “Was there anybody else here with her? Based on your experience with that type of ritual?”

  “It's best to do with at least one other person. When you're calling spirits from the astral planes, you can run into trouble. It's like going swimming by yourself. If you get in too deep, there's no one to pull you out or run for help. But she might have done it by herself, if she was unwise.”

  He motioned to their surroundings. “The center of the pentagram, the pentagonshe's in here, next to the fire, this was where she intended to contain what she called.” He nodded toward the portion of black powder that had been scattered. “There's where it broke through and left her after it killed her. From her appearance, whatever it is froze her to death.”

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  Sarah heard the uniform murmur behind her and tried not to let the same

  incredulity she heard in his tone reflect in her voice. “You're serious. You

  think…whatever she summoned did this to her?”

  “I know it. You won't find any evidence of another human being at this site, Chiefs. I promise you that.”

  She’d been fucked half-blind by a lunatic, a Twilight Zone escapee who likely believed in alien abductions.

  “So, what was it?” She'd play along and see what she could learn.

  “I'm not sure.” He hesitated, then pointed at Lorraine Messenger's midriff. “There's a tattoo of a seal there, a sigil. It might represent what she called.” He lifted a shoulder. “I can research it and let you know what it represents. I know you don't believe my theory, Chief. You said I'd be useful to you for my ritual knowledge, so you can use it or not, and discount the rest as the ravings of a lunatic, if it makes you sleep better at night.”

  “There are things you're not telling me,” she realized.

  “Many things, Sarah.” His gaze came back to hers, and she felt the heat rise in her face. “But they're things you wouldn't believe and aren't ready to hear. What you need to know about this woman's death, I've told you.”

  “Cops tend to like to decide for themselves what they need to know. You know the charge for obstruction, Herne?”

  “There are penances of the soul that are far more harsh to bear than the longest prison sentence.” He gazed down at Lorraine Messenger again. “You are looking at someone who has paid hers.

  “You've no reason to trust me, Chief Sarah,” he added quietly. His attention went to Wassler. “But believe me when I tell you what else I know about this woman is simply the sad story of a wasted life, with no bearing on your investigation.”

  “And, regardless, it's all you're going to tell us.”

  “Yes. I'm sorry. The rest should be between her and the Goddess. I would like to give her a final blessing.”

  “Why?” Wassler frowned.

  “I am a priest of my faith, and this woman was of that faith.”

  Sarah glanced at Eric, gave him a slight nod. The Marion police chief grunted, took out a cigarette and stepped away, nodding his reluctant agreement.

  Justin knelt, pressing his fancy slacks into the earthen floor at the woman's side. He took Lorraine Messenger's right hand in the gentle grip of his gloved one. He bowed his head and began to murmur words Sarah could not hear. She felt that heat gather around him, like the blast from the circle she had experienced the night before. It was a different heat from what she had felt in her home. That had been an intimate energy between the two of them. This was magic and power, and the difference disturbed her. She would have preferred not to discern the difference, so she could claim Herne had

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  used some hocus pocus on her, rather than just brought out something in her that readily accepted him into her bed. Something that she felt even now with every look he shot her way, every time his scent reached her nostrils, or his body brushed hers in the most casual contact.

  She turned to Wassler.

  “At least we have an ID, and that's a start,” the chief commented, tearing his gaze

  from Herne. He didn't look any happier than Sarah did.

  “Yeah, but he's not telling us everything he knows,” she murmured.

  “You still think he might have done this.”

  “No, actually, I don’t, but I think he might suspect who did.” At Eric's narrowed expression, she put a hand out to stay him. “And I don’t think it’s some demon from another plane. You know him better. I won't tell you your business, but if it were me, I'd take him down to your office and grill him for a while, try to get it out of him with a duty-to-the-community approach.” She turned so her back was to Herne and drew Wassler a few steps further away. “Have your investigative team head over to Gainesville and see if they can use the department's computers to run any connections between Justin Herne and Lorraine Messenger. Sometimes if you can wiggle your toe in through the door of the room where the witness or suspect is hiding their information, they'll give in and open up.”

  She turned at a rustle of leaves. Justin rose to his feet. “If you're done with me, I'd like to go home. I can walk from here. There's a trail to my house just over that rise.”

  It was pretty ballsy of him to draw their attention to it, Sarah thought. He'd have made a good cop, Eric was right, except for the fact she now thought his polished shoe tips hadn’t brushed the tallest grass blades of the ground of reality in awhile.

  “I'd like to talk to you down at my office for a bit, Justin,” Wassler said. “Go over some of the things you talked to Sarah about.”

  “All right,” Justin nodded, “but I'd like to go home for about an hour. I can bring you some books and printouts that will confirm what some of this means, give you some other sources on it. Will that work?”

  “That'll be fine,” Eric said after a glance at Sarah. She stood impassively, letting him take the lead on that decision. “My office in an hour.”

  Justin nodded, accepted his shoes from Sarah. He turned away, stopped. “You already solved one crime today, officers.”

  “What’s that?” Sarah asked, brow raised.

  He glanced back at her, and she thought a ghost couldn’t look as transparent and

  haunted as he did.

  “That’s my wig she’s wearing, the one missing from my shop.”

  He walked out of the circle, away from the body and them, his back tense. He took the trail up the ravine side with familiar confidence, but as he came out of the shadows at the top of the rise, Sarah noticed his shoulders had slumped, his control slipping.

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  He'd done well, better than a lot of rookies with their first body. Sarah had the ab
surd desire to follow him, to be there to help make sure he could handle what he had just

  seen.

  Where had the flash of tenderness come from? She hadn't acted so stupid over a

  guy since she was fourteen.

  She knelt, looked at the tattoo he had mentioned. It was on the woman's belly, just over the womb, and it was new. The skin was still irritated around it and the colors were vibrant, a swirling pattern that made no sense to Sarah.

  A drug addict in a Florida forest, wearing a three-digit wig, sporting a new tattoo and looking like she had died of exposure on an Alaskan tundra. If Marion was going to have its first murder since pioneer days, why couldn't it have been a flash of barroom temper, a domestic dispute instead of a Thomas Harris novel?

  She just couldn't see Justin as Hannibal Lecter.

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  Chapter 7

  She filled out a report, met with the Lilesville town manager to fill him in on what she knew, and did the same with her men. There was the usual business of traffic issues, animal control calls and the occasional squabble over a parking space or petty vandalism that made up typical police work in a small town.

  As she moved through her day, a strange collage of thoughts stayed with her. Lorraine Messenger's vacant eyes, the sigil tattoo, Justin's smooth voice offering a bride guidance, a black powdered circle, the charred remains of a bonfire. Justin's body covering hers, surging into her and slamming into her defenses, knocking them down one by one like dominos until she had nothing separating her soul from his except the smashed ruins.

  Another person would have discounted such a strange grouping of thoughts tomental agitation from the murder, or indigestion. Sarah knew better. The images were linked somehow, and it was her job to find out how. Eric Wassler's call gave her theexcuse, though she didn’t welcome it.