Strange Brew Read Free Page A

touched tobacco or any of its relatives—slid through the apartment: “Look, Tom. My gut told me to call you tonight—and I listen to my gut. I’ve been hearing something on the street about a freaky group calling themselves Samhain—” He spelled it, to be sure Tom got it right. “Last few days I’ve had a couple of people following me that might be part of Samhain. No one wants to talk about ‘em much. The streets are afraid of these…”
    He didn’t know if the witch could hear the rest. He’d been a wolf for twenty years and more, so his judgment about what human senses were good for was pretty much gone.
    He could hear the girl’s sweet voice clearly, though. “Lucky Jon?” she asked. “Lucky Jon, who are you calling? Let’s hang it up, now.” A pause, then the girl spoke into the phone. “Hello?” Another pause. “It’s an answering machine, I think. No worries.”
    At the same time, a male, probably young, was saying in a rapid, rabid flow of sound, “I feel it… Doncha feel it? I feel it in him. This is the one. He’ll do for Kouros.” Then there was a soft click as the call ended.
    The last fifty times he’d heard the recording, he couldn’t make out the last word. But with the information the witch had given him, he understood it just fine this time.
    Tom looked at Choo’s witch, but he couldn’t tell what she thought. Somewhere she’d learned to discipline her emotions, so he could smell only the strong ones—like the flash of desire she’d felt as he sniffed the back of her neck. Even in this situation, it had been enough to raise a thread of interest. Maybe after they got his brother back, they could do something about that interest. In the meantime…
    “How much of the last did you hear, Wendy?” he asked.
    “Don’t call me Wendy,” she snapped. “It’s Moira. No one called me Wendy except my mom, and she’s been dead a long time.”
    “Fine,” he snapped back before he could control himself. He was tired and worried, but he could do better than that. He tightened his control and softened his voice. “Did you hear the guy? The one who said that he felt it in him—meaning my brother, I think. And that he would do for Kouros?”
    “No. Or at least not well enough to catch his words. But I know the woman’s voice. You’re right: It was Samhain.” Though he couldn’t feel anything from her, her knuckles were white on the coffee cup.
    “You need a Finder, and I can’t do that anymore. Wait—” She held up a hand before he could say anything. “—I’m not saying I won’t help you, just that it could be a lot simpler. Kouros moves all the time. Did you trace the call? It sounded like a pay phone to me.”
    “I found the phone booth he called from, but I couldn’t find anything except that he’d been there.” He tapped his nose, then glanced at her dark glasses and said, “I could smell him there and backtrail him, but I couldn’t trail him out. They transported him somehow.”
    “They don’t know that he’s a cop, or that his brother is a werewolf.”
    “He doesn’t carry ID with him while he’s undercover. I don’t see how anyone would know I was his brother. Unless he told them, and he wouldn’t.”
    “Good,” she said. “They won’t expect you. That’ll help.”
    “So do you know a Finder I can go to?”
    She shook her head. “Not one who will help you against Samhain. Anyone, anyone who makes a move against them is punished in some rather spectacular ways.” He saw her consider sharing one or two of them with him and discard it. She didn’t want him scared off. Not that he could be, not with Jon’s life at stake. But it was interesting that she hadn’t tried.
    “If you take me to where they stole him, maybe I can find something they left behind, something to use to find them.”
    Tom frowned at her. She didn’t know his brother, he hadn’t mentioned money, and he was getting the feeling that she couldn’t care less if he called