Free Life Cycle by Zoe Winters

in the house?”
    “Yes. I live by myself since Joe died,” she said,
relaxed, her eyes glassy and unfocused.
    “Has anyone been by to question you yet?”
    “Only you.”
    Good. “Did you see anyone next door at any point
today?”
    “A delivery man. I was going to check my mail, but
something made me stay inside. I looked out the window and there he
was. He scared me for some reason, so I didn’t go out.”
    Perfect. Cain couldn’t read minds exactly, but the
vampires could. Anthony could go directly into her mind and
practically get a photograph of The Cycler. If that was the
delivery man’s true identity. They could ask Tam for a description,
of course, but Jack had no doubt changed his look over the years.
What the woman had seen would be most accurate.
    His eyes fixed on the old woman’s. “You will sleep
until I come for you. You will not wake up otherwise, no matter
what happens.”
    The woman went unconscious, and the demon caught her
before she hit the floor. He took her back to her room, laid her on
her bed, and locked the front door before going back to the crime
scene.
    “Cain? Is that you?” Luc called from downstairs.
    “Yeah. You won’t believe my luck. I found a possible
witness...” As he spoke he moved toward his brother’s voice.
    A door popped open with stairs leading down to the
basement. Luc’s eyes were wide when they met his. “I hit the mother
lode.”
    Cain followed his brother downstairs. It wasn’t an
exaggeration. The basement was filled with magical accoutrements of
all sorts and an impressive array of books, some of them clearly
from other dimensions. A few looked like some Cain had in the
libraries of his own dimension.
    “When I first got down here, it was just a musty old
basement, but then this all appeared. Who do you think put up the
glamour?”
    “It had to be The Cycler,” Cain said. “Any glamour
done by the deceased would have dropped as soon as she’d died.”
Glamours took a lot of energy to maintain. It seemed a waste of
good magical energy for the occupant of the home. “Why would Jack
bother if he wants to reveal the truth to the world?”
    Luc’s eyes lit with excitement. “Because he’s having
two different conversations. He left this clue for us. Maybe not us
specifically, but someone from Anthony’s group. I’d put money on
it.”
    In the center of the room, on a weathered wooden
table, was a rolled out scroll of parchment. A magic book at the
top and bottom of the scroll held it open and flat. It was a list
of the members of Jack’s coven with a line drawn through each name
and a date beside it. The names were listed in the order they’d
been killed, with the newest addition at the bottom: a woman named
Naomi.
    Underneath Naomi’s name were the
names of the two remaining cyclers besides Jack. The last name on
the list was Tamar. Little hearts had been drawn beside Tam’s name in blood—no
doubt blood from the latest victim. Cain growled. Why were hearts
beside Tam’s name?
    “Go look for a plastic storage bag in the
kitchen—the kind that zips,” he ordered.
    While Luc was gone, Cain took in the rest of the
basement. Would more investigators be by to find this? He couldn’t
imagine how someone wouldn’t stumble upon it eventually. The
basement had to be cleared out, especially the more esoteric
books.
    Most of the other things looked like your average
occult-shop fare. Though, with the possible outing of the
preternatural world, a complete absence of occult objects would be
safer. When Luc returned, Cain carefully rolled up the scroll and
sealed it in the bag. Then the two demons dematerialized, slipped
out the back of the house, and woke the old lady.
    “You’re a very nice looking young gentleman,” the
old lady said, her fingertips trailing over Cain’s cheek when he
woke her. “I bet you have a lot of lady friends.”
    The demon chuckled. “Ma’am, you don’t know the half
of it.”
     
     

Chapter Four
     
    When they got