Michelle's Case Files Read online

  “The pull seems to be getting stronger.”

  “How close are we?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, watching the hair. “Close, but not close enough. I almost wish we’d brought along a shifter or an elf, someone with better-than-human senses. If we could find the children it’s after, we could find it.” I looked up at Rodriguez. “Don’t be afraid to shoot it.”

  “I know,” he nodded.

  “Once you find it, kill it. They can’t be rehabilitated.” I reminded him.

  He glanced at the houses around us. “Are we still going the right way?”

  “Yup. As far as I can tell, it’s somewhere down this road.”

  As we trotted along the sidewalk, I could see people peeking through their windows and talking on their phones. I couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t every day a cop and a witch went running through your neighborhood.

  We must have gotten into range for the spell to work more efficiently, because all of a sudden I had a much clearer feeling of where we needed to go. “We’re getting closer. It’s gonna be off to our right.”

  “Where?”

  “To the right—soon.”

  “That’s not helpful.”

  I sighed. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  The angle was changing with every step. The bugbear had to be in or near one of the next few houses, but I couldn’t tell which one.

  “You’re it,” a young girl called out.

  “No, I tagged Brian. He’s it.”

  Between the squeals and laughter, another kid said, “David’s got four feet. That’s hardly fair.”

  “Hush, Kaley. You fly when you shift.”

  “But I’m not allowed. David’s faster than us.”

  “He’s keeping to a trot. That’s more than fair. And there’s twice as much of him for you to tag.”

  There was more laughter followed by a man saying, “Time for cake.”

  A birthday party? Oh no. That could be enough to get the bugbear to risk being around an adult. With such a large group of children, it might not even realize there were adults around.

  Rodriguez and I exchanged looks and broke into a sprint.

  Over the sound of our feet hitting the pavement, I heard an adult say, “Gather round. Time to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

  It had to be the next house, but from here I couldn’t see a way into their backyard, unless scaling the fence was acceptable. Somehow, I thought that should be a last resort. We could try the front door, but with everyone gathered in the backyard, would they hear the doorbell?

  Rodriguez beat me to the door and hit the doorbell button. We could hear the chime, but he didn’t let it finish before he started pounding on the door. As soon as the chiming stopped, he poked the button again.

  I could hear the kids start singing in the backyard. The hair we’d collected was pulling in that direction. I stuffed it in my pocket and tightened my grip on my wand.

  Rodriguez banged on the door again, yelling, “Police, open up!”

  The door opened under his hand, and a very flustered shifter with white and tan feathers in her hair said, “Yes? What is it?”

  “Ma’am, I’m Officer Rodriguez and this is my colleague, Michelle Oaks. There’s a bugbear in the area, and we need to check your yard.”

  “Bugbear . . . There’s one in the area?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Call me Ava.”

  “We have reason to believe that the—”

  Whatever else he was going to say was drowned out by screams from the backyard. For a moment all three of us froze. For a fraction of a second I thought they could be happy screams, but that hope was dashed by a deep roar. Ava turned and ran through the house. Rodriguez and I were right on her heels.

  Where I would’ve gone down the hallway, she ran to the right. Rodriguez followed her and I was only a half step behind him. We were out a door and in the side yard in seconds. The children were screaming; the angry screech of an owl cut through the noise. I eyed Ava, wondering if she was a wereowl, too, but this wasn’t the time to ask.

  I rounded the corner of the house and got my first look at the bugbear. The pictures I’d studied in school hadn’t fully captured the horror of this creature. It was the size of a small black bear, with red-brown fur that had a wet look, as if coated in blood. Its yellow eyes glowed, and I choked on the scent of decaying flesh, another of the bugbear’s delightful attributes.

  Looking past the bugbear to the rest of the yard, I saw an overturned table with small chairs scattered around and a cake mushed into the grass. The children were hiding behind a playhouse, and the bugbear was steadily advancing on them. An eagle owl swooped down, raking claws along the bear’s back and neck. This obviously hadn’t been its first pass, because there were several rows of ripped flesh. The bear snarled and stood up on his hind legs, reaching to bat at the owl, but it was long gone.

  Ava shifted, her clothing dropping to the ground—that answered one of my questions. She took flight, immediately repeating her partner’s attack.

  I kept my focus on the children and bear. “What do you want me to do?” I asked Rodriguez.

  “Capture it. I don’t have a clear shot.” He started talking into his radio, and I hoped backup was nearby.

  Two of the kids, a centaur and an elf, were looking around the side of the playhouse. The children were doing a good job of hiding, but the playhouse was close to the fence. It wouldn’t take much for the bugbear to corner them. I didn’t know if it would hurt them, and I didn’t want to find out.

  With the bugbear’s ability to warp magic, I had to cast using runes rather than willpower. If I simply willed a spell into being, I would have direct and full contact with the spell, giving the bugbear a way to access my store of magic. Since I wasn’t going to give the creature an opportunity like that, I had to use runes. Once activated, runes were separate from my power. They would also focus the magic, giving it shape and structure, as well, allowing me to add protections against magical tampering. Those protections should prevent the bugbear from messing with the spells. The only problem was that casting with runes was slower. I was partway through the spell when the little elf stepped out from behind the playhouse.

  He bit his lower lip and outstretched his arm. Rodriguez shouted a warning. I couldn’t say anything without disrupting the spell I was working on, but I could feel magic gathering around the elf. The boy was trying to calm the bugbear. With a regular bear, it would’ve worked. But the bugbear’s eyes glowed brightly, the magic twisted, and all the bugbear’s injuries were healed. The boy paled and stumbled as he scrambled to get back behind the playhouse.

  The bugbear roared and charged toward the children. The owls launched a coordinated attack, once again opening long wounds on the bear’s back.

  I abandoned the spell to capture the bugbear and willed an opaque shield wall into being, blocking its access to the playhouse and children. There were a few muffled shrieks from behind the wall, but after a moment the children seemed to take it in stride. The bugbear slid to a stop inches from the wall. It backed up, looking for another way to get to the children.

  I quickly resumed casting the containment spell. Two runes later, I was ready to activate it. The problem was that I had to time it between owl attacks and hope neither of them would crash into it.

  “Watch out,” I yelled as the spell activated. The timing was right. One owl had finished a strike and the other owl was swooping down. The shield went up, encasing the bugbear in a sphere.

  The two owls circled for a moment before landing next to their clothes and shifting back to their human forms. Rodriguez and I kept our eyes on the bugbear while the wereowls got dressed. The bugbear nudged the inside of the spell, getting a burned nose for its trouble. I took that as a good sign and relaxed.

  Keeping one eye on the bugbear, in case something changed, I surveyed the backyard. Other than the blood around the monster, I couldn’t see any other indication of injuries. I adde
d a sight shield around the bugbear, one that was designed to obscure it to children while leaving it visible to adults.

  The male wereowl finished dressing first and approached us. “What is that thing?”

  “Sir, that is a bugbear.” Rodriguez held out his hand. “I’m Officer Rodriguez and this is my associate, Michelle Oaks.”

  “David.” He shook Rodriguez’s hand and nodded at me. “I don’t know what a bugbear is.”

  “It’s a monster that terrorizes and kills children.” I nodded in the direction of his wife, who had finished dressing and was headed over to the kids, and focused the conversation on the important details. “Let's help Ava get the children inside.”

  David flushed and stammered. “O-of course. I don’t know what got into me.”

  Rodriguez waved away his concern. “You had a shock.”

  In the distance I heard sirens. Wanting to get the children inside before the area was swarming with police, I followed the wereowls. “I put a shield around the bugbear, so the kids shouldn’t be able to see it.”

  Ava had stopped a few feet from the shield wall and was staring at her hands. I walked over to her, trying to figure out what was wrong. She held her hands up, turning them over. Both of them were bloody.

  “Go inside, wash up, and show the officers how to get back here,” I told her. “I’ll take care of the kids.” The kids would need the comfort of an adult’s touch—without the blood.

  Ava looked reluctantly at the wall around the playhouse but followed David inside. I dropped the shield wall, relieved to have one less drain on my energy. Five kids were huddled behind the playhouse, looking at me with big eyes and tears running down their cheeks. My heart constricted. None of them could have been more than six years old, which was just too young to start seeing the horrors of the world. I knelt down, eye level with all but the centaur. “Would you like to go inside? The monster isn’t going to bother you again.”

  The little elf who’d tried to stop the bugbear threw himself into my arms, followed by a girl with feathers in her hair, marking her as the young wereowl. Two more kids threw themselves on me, rocking me back on my heels, and the centaur, who might’ve been a year older than the rest, crowded next to me. I patted backs, made soothing noises, and did my best to hug all of them.

  The sirens were closer now. I had to get them in the house. “Will you go inside with me?”

  I got nods and a mumbled “yes.” The little wereowl was still clinging to me, so I hoisted her on to my hip. She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. With two free hands, I was able to gather the remaining children and shuffle them into the house. We had just walked through the door when Ava pulled the girl off me.

  David helped me herd the kids into the living room while the police tromped into the backyard. With the big scary thing out of sight, it seemed to fade from the kids’ minds as two of them started lamenting the lost cake. David picked up the phone and started calling their parents. I couldn’t help but be relieved that I wasn’t the one telling parents that a monster had crashed the birthday party.

  “Michelle, could you come back here?” an officer yelled from outside.

  Giving the young centaur one more hug, I backed out of the room and hurried into the yard. Rodriguez and three other officers were standing around the bugbear, which was still trapped inside the containment spell.

  Since only adults were here now, I removed the sight shield. “What can I do for you?”

  “Can you make the spell allow something, like a bullet, in but not out?”

  “Maybe, but I’ve never tried to stop a bullet before. They generate a lot of energy.” Looking around at all the nearby houses, I knew I would have to disappoint the officers. “In theory it would work, but I don’t think this is the right place to test that theory.”

  “Animal control will be here soon. They can cart it off and deal with it in a safe location,” Rodriguez said. One of the officers looked unconvinced, but he didn’t protest the decision.

  I heard two car doors slam, followed by the sound of running. Since any additional police getting on scene would know that a mad dash wasn’t necessary, it had to be a set of parents. I decided to hang out back and avoid the parental complaints.

  It wasn’t long before the two animal control officers arrived. While we were waiting for them, someone had figured out that there was a gate large enough for a car on the other side of the house. That worked out in everyone’s favor because they could drive the truck into the backyard. From there, it was a matter of getting the bear into a special cage.

  With the animal control officers, a fey and an elf, on hand, all I had to do was drop a section of the containment spell. The bear tried to put up a fight, but between the magical barriers blocking any other direction, and two people that knew how to manage problematic creatures, the bugbear didn’t stand a chance. In less than three minutes, the bugbear was walking right into the cage. They locked it in and, with a little help from the other officers, hoisted it into the back of the truck. The entire operation took ten minutes.

  Since I wasn’t needed anymore and Rodriguez was still taking statements from Ava and David, I found an officer headed back to the office and rode along. After picking up my car, I detoured to the grocery store and then headed home, hoping an evening of funny movies and ice cream would dull the memory of the bugbear and I wouldn’t see it in my dreams.

  Two days later, Rodriguez called and asked me to come out to a dumped trailer and independently verify evidence. He gave me detailed directions to his location, but no address. Before long, I understood that omission. It took me nearly half an hour of driving down backcountry roads that just kept getting more backcountry before I was in the right area. I finally found him down a rutted, one-lane dirt road that was so poorly maintained that trees, bushes, and brambles kept rubbing against my car.

  The only good news was that this part of the road went through a small field, so I’d be able to turn around. A department SUV and an old truck were already pulled into the grass, so I parked behind them. On the other side of the road was a small livestock trailer. Rodriguez stepped out of the trailer and waved at me. His typical smile and cheer were replaced with a frown. I waved back, internally grumbling that he’d made me drive my own car all the way out here. Crossing the road, I glared at Rodriguez.

  “You couldn’t pick me up?” I asked.

  He winced. “I had some good reasons.”

  “Like?” Considering the number of times my car had bottomed out on the drive, they needed to be damn good reasons.

  He tipped his head in the direction of the pickup truck. Turning, I saw a man with a weathered face scowling at the two of us. “That would be the individual who reported the trailer. It took some convincing to get him to guide me out here and stay.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t explain why you couldn’t fetch me.”

  “If I leave, he’s gonna leave, and I need him.” Rodriguez rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not entirely sure I can tow the trailer out of here. If I can’t, he’s agreed to move it to a better location for another unit to pick it up. That generous offer only happened because I mentioned how long it would take for another unit to find this place. It’d be good if we could do this quickly. He told me he wasn’t going to miss his weekly poker game over an abandoned trailer.”

  “Fine. You have a good reason, but I’m charging extra. My sedan wasn’t designed for these roads.” He owed me that for being vague on the road conditions, though considering the number of times I’d ended up going down bad roads, I’d decided long ago that my next car would have better ground clearance.

  Wincing, he nodded. “I’ll warn you next time.”

  “Thanks.” Sighing, I focused on the job. Not far on the other side of the trailer the field turned to trees. I’d seen plenty of trailers like this sitting in fields in my travels around north Georgia. Other than not belonging in this field, the trailer looked like a run-of-the mill
stock trailer, all metal with a solid roof and mostly open sides. “So what’s so special about this trailer?”

  “I need an independent evidence verification. You know what that means.” He sounded a little too chipper at the end.

  “Yeah, I know. You can’t tell me anything.” I moved a few steps closer to the trailer. “I’ll get started.”

  I performed a couple of different types of magical evidence verification for the police. This time I knew the department wanted the complete workup—the kind that would hold up in court. While that sounded pretty, it mostly boiled down to me not getting told anything fun until after I’d examined the item or area and then written and handed in a report.

  Closing my eyes, I opened myself up to the magic and simply got a feeling for what was out there. The answer was swift and firm: spells and plenty of them. With that much answered, I delicately probed the trailer. There were several spells on it, and it took me a little while to sort through them. The first thing I found was an illusion to make any creatures in the trailer look like cows. Then there were two different containment spells, one of which was damaged. There were also spells reinforcing the structure, but one of those felt incomplete or damaged.

  My eyes popped open. I needed to examine the exterior. From this angle the trailer looked intact, but something about those spells made me think I’d find significant damage if I looked hard enough. I approached and examined the side closest to me. From front to back it was a perfectly ordinary stock trailer. Rounding the back of the trailer, which was open, I peered inside. There wasn’t much to see, just the rubber mats on the floor and some dried, crusty excrement. There were some odd shadows at the nose of the trailer, but from where I was, I couldn’t tell if they were from damage or trees at the edge of the field casting shadows.

  On the other side of the trailer, near the front, there was a large hole through the metal. Most of the metal was curled back, but some of it had been completely removed by whatever did this. Considering the size of the hole, I should’ve been able to see the damage from the other side. I prodded the spells, finding a second illusion spell, this one focusing on the appearance of the trailer.