Strange Brew Read Free Page B

in the authorities. “So if Samhain is so all-powerful, how come you, a white witch, are willing to buck them?”
    “You’re a cop, too, aren’t you?” She finished her coffee, but if she was waiting for a reaction, she wasn’t going to get one. He’d seen the “all-knowing” witch act before. Her lips turned up as she set the empty cup on the counter. “It’s not magic. Cops are easy to spot—suspicious is your middle name. Fair enough.”
    She pulled off her glasses, and he saw that he’d been wrong. He’d been pretty sure she was blind—the other reason women wore wraparound sunglasses at night. And she was. But that wasn’t why she wore the sunglasses.
    Her left eye was Swamp Thing-green without pupil or white. Her right eye was gone, and it looked as though it had been removed by someone who wasn’t too good with a knife. It was horrible—and he’d seen some horrible things.
    “Sacrifice is good for power,” she said again. “But it works best if you can manage to make the sacrifice your own.”
    Jesus. She’d done it to herself.
    She might not be able to see him, but she read his reaction just fine. She smiled tightly. “There were some extenuating circumstances,” she continued. “You aren’t going to see witches cutting off their fingers to power their spells—it doesn’t work that way. But this worked for me.” She tapped the scar tissue around her right eye. “Kouros did the other one first. That’s why I’m willing to take them on. I’ve done it before and survived—and I still owe them a few.” She replaced her sunglasses, and he watched her relax as they settled into place.
     
    Tom Franklin hadn’t brought a car, and for obvious reasons, she didn’t drive. He said the phone was only a couple of miles from her apartment, and neither wanted to wait around for a cab. So they walked. She felt his start of surprise when she tucked her arm in his, but he didn’t object. At least he didn’t jump away from her and say “ick,” like the last person who’d seen what she’d done to herself.
    “You’ll have to tell me when we come to curbs or if there’s something in the way,” she told him. “Or you can amuse yourself when I fall on my face. I can find my way around my apartment, but out here I’m at your mercy.”
    He said, with sober humor, “I imagine watching you trip over a few curbs would be a good way to get you to help Jon. Why don’t you get a guide dog?”
    “Small apartments aren’t a good place for big dogs,” she told him. “It’s not fair to the dog.”
    They walked a few blocks in silence, the rain drizzling unhappily down the back of her neck and soaking the bottoms of the jeans she’d put on before they started out. Seattle was living up to its reputation. He guided her as if he’d done it before, unobtrusively but clearly, as if they were waltzing instead of walking down the street. She relaxed and walked faster.
    “Wendy.” He broke the companionable silence with the voice of One Who Suddenly Comprehends. “It’s worse than I thought. I was stuck on Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch. But Wendy Moira… I bet it’s Wendy Moira Angela, isn’t it?”
    She gave him a mock scowl. “I don’t have a kiss for you, and I can’t fly—not even with fairy dust. And I hate Peter Pan , the play, and all the movies.”
    His arm moved, and she could tell he was laughing to himself. “I bet.”
    “It could be worse, Toto,” she told him. “I could belong to the Emerald City Pack.”
    He laughed out loud at that, a softer sound than she’d expected, given the rough grumble of his voice. “You know, I’ve never thought of it that way. It seemed logical, Seattle being the Emerald City.”
    She might have said something, but he suddenly picked up his pace like a hunting dog spotting his prey. She kept her hand tight on his arm and did her best to keep up. He stopped at last. “Here.”
    She felt his tension, the desire for