Free Book of Shadows by Alexandra Sokoloff

himself. Across the room, Palmer and Morelli were frozen at their desks, openly gaping at the sight.
    Tanith stood with her legs braced until Landauer had completed his big show of sucking off her finger, and released her hand. She let her arm drop to her side. “You’re done,” she said flatly.
    Garrett didn’t miss the brief, jolted look on his partner’s face. He felt distinctly odd, himself.
    Tanith wiped the bloody dagger off on the waistband of her skirt, put the chain back over her head, and dropped the knife back into her shirt, between her breasts. She turned to Garrett. “I take it we’re finished, here.”
    “Thanks for coming in,” Garrett fumbled, still not sure what in Christ’s holy name had just happened. “I—we’ll call you if we have questions.”
    Her smile twisted. “Of course you will.” She gathered her bag from the chair . . . then she turned back, and her eyes met his for a brief, veiled moment.
    “Do you believe in evil, Detective?”
    The question so startled him that he answered honestly. “Yes, I do.”
    She touched her finger to the triangle sketch she had given him, and held his gaze. “This is evil.”
    She turned and walked out through the work pods, with every detective’s eyes following her.

Chapter Nine

    No sooner had the door closed behind her than Landauer threw back his head and wolf-howled. “She can ride my broomstick anytime.”
    Morelli and Palmer chuckled lewdly from behind their desks, and the tension was broken. Garrett fought down irritation, shook his head. “I have two words. Blood test.” Predictably his tone had no effect on the others; they continued to comment obnoxiously. Garrett tuned them out and looked down at his desk. The weird word stared up at him from his legal pad:
Samhain
.
    Five weeks away . . .
    He was tired . . . too tired to process what had just happened. But without thought he turned to his computer and typed “autumnal equinox” into the Google search box. He didn’t even have to click through a link to see that Friday
had
been the equinox, just as the—witch—had said.
    But he went no farther than that. His phone buzzed, and it was Carolyn. The search warrants were ready.
    The partners stopped briefly at the crime-scene lab to order a team with a van to meet them up at Amherst to process Jason’s andErin’s rooms. In the elevator going down, both detectives slumped against the wall; Landauer closed his eyes. Garrett spoke aloud. “It
was
the equinox. Friday night.”
    Land didn’t open his eyes. “I know, G. It was in the paper on Friday, on the Calendar page. That New Age shit always is. She coulda gotten it from there. She coulda gotten the details about the head and carving from the news, already—fuck knows what’s been reported. We had three dozen dump workers tellin’ their wives all about it last night. Everyone’s out to make a buck.”
    Garrett was silent and Landauer finally opened his eyes. “You really want to go back up there and tell Malloy we just got a hot tip from Stevie Nicks?” He didn’t have to describe the scenario. Garrett could picture it just fine on his own. “We got a live suspect in custody, bro, so let’s never mind the spooky shit. We work the case—we nail this fucker.”
    The media was in full force outside the building: television vans with their microwave dishes and camera crews unloading equipment on the sidewalk while Armani-suited reporters and their scruffier print and radio colleagues hurried up the stairs, en route to the press conference. Garrett and Landauer took a quick left toward the back entrance of the building. At least they weren’t required at the briefing. The chief himself was sitting in on this one, with Malloy. Garrett wondered for a second if Malloy’s order to stay away from the press was partly to keep Garrett himself out of the limelight, and immediately thought, with some shame, that he himself would scathe any other detective unmercifully for