White Witch, Black Curse

A pang of worry made me stiff with tension. "Are they covering it up?"

"Nah. Just ignoring her. Everybody has to kill to eat, right?"

He said it with just the right amount of sarcasm, and I knew he didn't agree with their policy. Everyone had to eat, but eating people wasn't polite.

Jenks's wings fanned, to send the smell of soap to me. He was wearing his wraparound robe instead of his usual work clothes, making him look exotic, and I wondered how Bis was doing watching the church by himself. "I think she and Remus think they are going to slip out with the humans," he said as he landed on my shoulder.

Ivy laughed softly. "I call dibs on the big one."

"I don't know," I said, trying to read Mia's body language from across the large room. "They have to guess we know who they are. I mean, we've been to their house. I think they're waiting because we are."

Ivy smiled, showing a slip of teeth, potent after Farcus's play for my blood. "I still call dibs on the big one."

"Rache," Jenks said, his voice concerned. "Look at Mia's aura. Have you ever seen anything like that?"

Taking a slow breath, I willed my second sight into play. All witches could see auras. Vampires couldn't. Weres couldn't. Some humans could, gaining the ability from hybridizing with elves. Pixies saw them all the time whether they wanted to or not. If I tapped a ley line and worked at it, I could see the ever-after layered over reality. This far out from the center of Cincinnati, it would likely only be stunted trees and frozen scrub. When I'd been in my early teens, I'd spent a lot of time overlaying the ever-after on reality until a trip to the zoo cured me. The tigers had known what I'd been doing, and they'd started for me as if they could walk through the glass to reach me.

I didn't look at auras much. It was illegal to screen employees by their auras, though I knew for a fact some food chains did. Dating services swore by them. I was of the opinion that you could tell more about people in a five-minute conversation than by looking at their auras. Most psychiatrists agreed with me, whether they were human or Inderlander.

Exhaling with a long, slow sound, I turned back to the cluster of humans. Blues, greens, and yellows predominated, with the accompanying flashes of red and black to give evidence of the human condition. There was an unusual amount of orange in a few people's outer fringes, but everyone was upset, and it didn't surprise me.

Remus's aura was a nasty, ugly red with a sheen of purple and the yellow of love at its core. It was a dangerous combination, meaning that he lived in a world that confused him and that he was moved by passion. If one believed in that kind of thing. Mia's…

Jenks clattered his wings, shuddering almost. Mia's was not there—sort of. I mean, it was there, but wasn't. Looking at her predominantly blue aura was like looking at the candles of a protective circle when the candles existed both here and in the ever-after. It was there, but sort of displaced sideways. And it was sucking in everyone else's aura with the faint subtlety of the incoming tide filling a tidal pool. The baby's was exactly the same.

"Look at Remus," Jenks said, shifting his wings to tickle my neck. "His aura isn't being touched at all. Even by the baby's, and he's holding her."

"That might explain why he's still alive," I said, wondering how they managed it. I'd been told that banshees didn't have any control over whose aura they sucked up along with ambient emotions, but clearly that wasn't the case.

Ivy stood beside us with her hip cocked, looking miffed that we were discussing things she couldn't see. It was with an unfamiliar enthusiasm that she straightened and smiled, saying loudly to someone behind me, "Edden. Look, she finally made it."

I dropped my second sight and turned, finding the squat, muscular man almost to us. "Hi, Edden," I said, shifting my bag up higher and unintentionally making Jenks take flight.

The captain of Cincinnati's FIB department shuffled to a stop, his khakis and starched shirt saying he was in charge as much as the badge pinned to his belt and the blue FIB hat he had dropped on his graying head. The gray seemed to be heavier now, and the few wrinkles deeper.

"Rachel," he said as he extended his hand and I shook it. "What took you so long?"

"I was at my mom's," I said, watching the cops behind him start to gossip about us, and he raised his eyebrows knowingly.

"Say no more," he said, then went silent when a Were walked past, limping and with a nasty gash on his forearm.

"You gotta keep 'em separated," Ivy murmured, then turned to us, her expression sharp. "You really think having those two in with the humans is a good idea?"

Edden put a thick hand on my shoulder and turned us away, moving slowly to the cluster of FIB officers by the kiddie rides. "I've got three plainclothes with them. We're getting people out one by one. Nice and easy."