A Flash of Hex Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Afterward

  PRAISE FOR

  Night Child

  “A good old-fashioned murder mystery.”

  —ReviewingTheEvidence.com

  “Jes Battis takes the readers on a tension-filled journey of murder, mystery, and temptation . . . An intriguing story line; easy, flowing dialogue; and fascinating characters all combine to keep readers engaged, but it’s the never knowing what’s around the corner that will have readers coming back for more.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “Battis manages to make the world come alive as a workable universe with infinite complexity.”

  —SFRevu

  “[An] absorbing paranormal detective tale . . . The combo of cutting-edge technology and magic highlights a procedural thriller filled with ominous twists. Telling the tale from the point of view of a stubborn, rule-breaking heroine keeps the tension high and the risk palpable.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Compelling new urban fantasy [that] mixes equal parts forensic investigation, modern science, and down-and-dirty magic to create something new and different . . . a great start to a new series.”

  —The Green Man Review

  “Unique.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  Ace Books by Jes Battis

  NIGHT CHILD

  A FLASH OF HEX

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  A FLASH OF HEX

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / June 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Jes Battis.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-05330-0

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Seba and Brianne,

  who deal with me.

  And for Vancouver.

  Acknowledgments

  I wrote this book while living in New York, Vancouver, and Montreal. So it’s been a busy year for me. Thanks to Lauren Abramo and Ginjer Buchanan for continuing to have faith in the series. Thanks as well to the entire staff at Ace Books for their hard work. And to Ella and Connie, my two first and best readers.

  I drew upon the usual suspects while doing forensics research: Vincent di Maio, Tom Bevel, Dorothy Gennard, Bill Bass, and Kathy Reichs. Someday I’ll be able to afford a subscription to the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

  I feel very uneasy writing about such a contested neighborhood as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, even though A Flash of Hex is set mostly around Commercial Drive and the downtown core. All I can really do is acknowledge that uneasiness and thank the many overlapping communities within the DTES for their indulgence.

  A final thanks to the Harvey Milk High School in New York and the Triangle Program in Toronto. Just for existing.

  1

  “Somebody’s dead—and I can’t decide between Boston cream or jelly.”

  Derrick was fiddling with his messenger bag. Something pricey with useless metal straps that he’d bought from Holts. He pulled out a yellow form, glared at it, pulled out a green form, then muttered something under his breath and shoved both of them back into the bag. Paperwork at mystical crime scenes could be a real bitch.

  “I want the jelly.” I stared intently at the pastry case while the exhausted Tim Hortons employee—Francis, his name tag said—drummed bitten-down nails on the plastic countertop.

  “So get the jelly.” Derrick adjusted the shoulder strap. “We’ve got to go, Tess. Selena’s waiting for us, and the scene is a good six blocks from here.”

  “I want the jelly,” I murmured, as if this were something existential, “but the powdered sugar is going to get all over my coat.”

  “You could wear gloves.”

  I beamed at him. “That’s brilliant.” I rummaged through my purse for a moment, then drew out a pair of latex gloves. My full kit—with tape lifters, dusting powders, forceps, and other scene paraphernalia—was in the trunk of the car, but I always carried extra materials in my purse. I slipped on the gloves.

  “Francis, I’d like two jellies, please.”

  He stared at me.

  “And two coffees,” Derrick added. “It’s almost three thirty in the morning.”

  “Of course.” I smiled at Francis. “Two double-doubles, please, and could you put sleeves on those? I’d rather not get a third-degree burn.”

  Francis took my handful of change wordlessly, and returned with our order. The fluorescent bulbs overhead cast odd, unnatural shadows across his face. He was one of those guys who could be eighteen or forty-eight—pinpointing his age would be impossible. Like trying to pinpoint time of death. I almost smiled at the thought.

  The door to the restroom opened, and I saw a momentary glimmer of harsh, purple light. Most cafés this close to the Downtown Eastside had installed black lights in their rest-rooms
to keep IV-drug users from shooting up. The dim lighting made it too hard for them to find a vein. A woman wearing a bright red kerchief and a black leather jacket emerged shakily from the restroom, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the drastic change in lighting. I saw her fiddling with a fanny pack, shoving something that looked like a piece of elastic tubing back into it. Her pupils were pinned, eyes rolling, head nodding slightly. Obviously, the black light hadn’t stopped her.

  Nobody reacted. At the corner of Hastings and Heatley, only a few blocks from the heart of the Downtown Eastside, everyone was used to watching neighborhood residents fixing in bathrooms, on corners, in alleys, or in whatever space they could find. We were on the edge right now, the uneasy intersection between Chinatown, the club district, and the recently trendy Strathcona neighborhood, where yuppies and hipsters now mingled with longtime residents, battling for affordable housing.

  We weren’t headed there, though.

  Instead, we’d be going into the heart of the yuppie urban core—the trendiest downtown real estate—flanked by the Pacific Ocean and nestled in between stately banks, rambling used bookstores, and the finest, most overpriced pub food in Gastown just a few blocks away.

  I handed Derrick his coffee. “Okay. Let’s get walking.”

  Francis didn’t wave good-bye.

  It was a relief when the cold air outside smacked me in the face. Derrick sipped his coffee silently, chewing delicately on his doughnut, while I slurped mine, spilled some on my sleeve, cursed, then almost dropped the cup. This was a pretty accurate tableau of our different personalities, I thought. Two odd shadows walking down Hastings Street. What bound us together when we were so obviously different?

  Only we knew.

  “Where are we going again?”

  “A residence at the corner of Hastings and Richards. Very posh. Building’s called the Crescendo. One of those up-in-an-instant places with marble countertops and gleaming new fixtures.”

  “Yeah, until two weeks after you buy it, when you realize that the cupboards are crooked, and your bathroom’s the size of a postage stamp, and your upstairs neighbor wears heels all day long.”

  We walked past the gleaming concrete towers, past Harbor Center and the Wosk Centre for Dialogue. (Did dialogue actually occur there?) The pavement was a dark ribbon, backlit by lights from the buses that roared by.

  “Selena said they might be bringing in a profiler,” Derrick said. “Some expert from Toronto.”

  I frowned. “Why? This isn’t a serial case.”

  “Apparently, there’ve been two other murders that are similar—one in Hamilton, the other in Scarborough. So they want to bring in an expert.”

  “I suppose people are still thinking about William Pickton—anything that looks close to a serial murder is going to need special attention,” I said. “And the Downtown Eastside is just six blocks away from this neighborhood. The overlap is unavoidable. These kids may come from rich families, but no matter how connected they are, they’re still dying uncomfortably close to the DTES—and that’s a place that’s been the target of a serial killer in the recent past.”

  “Does Selena think this killer might be a copycat?” Derrick wondered. “Someone using magic to kill in the same manner?”

  “In my experience, Selena almost never assumes anything. But after Marcus . . .” I shivered involuntarily, remembering against my will how our former boss, Marcus Tremblay, had turned out to be a killer as well. It had barely been six months since Marcus had me tied to a chair with a gun pointed at my head.

  Derrick looked at me. “Bad memories?”

  “Just a little spooked. I don’t say his name very often.”

  He rubbed my shoulder. “You don’t have to. He’s gone, Tess. He’s buried, and we’re safe. As safe as we can be in our line of work, at any rate.”

  I could still see Marcus’s cold eyes staring at me, totally devoid of feeling, like the gray, impassive eyes of a shark. I could feel Sabine’s hand gripping my throat, her fangs exposed as she fantasized about tearing into my subclavian artery like fresh meat. And Mia’s lost expression. Mia’s pain, the light draining from her eyes as she realized that her parents were dead, that nothing would ever be the same again.

  “Safe as anyone in this neighborhood,” I muttered. “Anyways, with Marcus gone, Selena’s basically working two jobs until she can find and train a replacement.”

  “Yeah, she’s been extra-prickly about it.”

  “I would be, too. I don’t think she’s slept in six months. And the big bosses are breathing down her neck, watching her every move. She can’t afford to be sloppy. If there’s even a hint of serial murder with this case, she’ll have to make arrangements for a larger investigation.”

  “All while keeping it quiet,” Derrick said. “The last thing Vancouver needs to know is that someone is killing sex workers again. Someone who isn’t human.”

  “Was Pickton human?” I stared at the pavement, which was littered with food wrappers, Styrofoam fragments, and the occasional needle. “He may have killed over forty sex trade workers. What about Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer? Were they actually human? Or something else.”

  “You know what I mean. Magically inclined.”

  “Fuck. It would take magic to survive anywhere in this city.”

  The Crescendo loomed like a steel-and-glass space station before us, or some futuristic Mayan stele, gleaming and dark with the white-on-black checkering of windows with their lights on, off, on, off.

  “It’s the second floor,” Derrick said behind me. “Number 208.”

  We walked past the perimeter team, pushing aside the yellow scene tape marked MYSTICAL CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS. The lobby was floored in marble, like the surface of the moon, a sinuous tongue of black basalt. No one was at the concierge’s desk.

  A temporary station had been set up by the fire exit—a plastic tray table with spare kits, gloves, and neatly folded Tyvek suits. I pulled a pair of plastic booties over my Fluevogs (you don’t mess with thigh-high boots), and Derrick did the same, managing a little hop from side to side as he tried not to lean against the wall. I pulled my hair back in a motion that had become ingrained over the years and slipped on a worn blue Canucks hat. Go team. I wasn’t sure how they’d feel about their product being used at a mystical crime scene.

  We climbed to the second floor, hugging the walls as we advanced down the freezing hallway to 208. The air-conditioning was turned up uncomfortably high, and I shivered in the almost holy silence of the brand-new hallway, with its Berber carpeting and light sconces on every wall. Even though it was now 4 a.m., I could hear various sounds from the other apartments: muffled televisions, applause, laughing, yelling, cursing, thumping, and—most eerily of all—total silence. A door to my right opened abruptly, and an elderly woman scowled at me. Her skin was jaundiced, and one of her hands kept clenching and unclenching involuntarily, scratching against the fabric of her red polyester slacks. The skin on her face was splotchy and peeling, covered in what looked like psoriasis.

  I attempted to smile at her. “Everything’s fine, ma’am.”

  “Fuck you,” she hissed. Before I could react, she vanished behind the door.

  “Nice,” Derrick said. “We should come downtown more often.”

  Room 208 was covered in OSI tape, gleaming faintly in the dark. Derrick and I signed in, and I was just about to lift the tape when Selena Ward appeared. She was wearing a sleek gray trench coat, dark gabardine slacks, and boots twice as expensive as mine. I strained to figure out what brand they were, realizing that it was childish but unable to resist. It was like the woman had access to a twenty-four-hour sample sale that nobody else knew about. Her hair was braided tightly, and she looked exhausted. Being the lead detective and acting director of the Mystical Crimes Division will do that to you.

  “Selena. How are you?”

  “Shit.” Her eyes scanned the hallway. “Everything is shit.”

  “That’s really descriptiv
e,” Derrick said. “Should I write that in the log?”

  “Siegel, I’ve done eight night shifts, back to back, with no break. Earlier today I fell asleep, collapsed on the copier, and Rebecca had to spray water in my face to wake me up.” My eyes widened at Becka’s courage. “My husband thinks that I’m losing my mind, and we haven’t had decent sex in months. That’s months, not weeks. Do you know what that does to a person?”

  Derrick swallowed. “It must be—really traumatic . . .”

  “It puts me on edge,” she continued. “Not just the lack of sex, or the lack of sleep, but the total lack of help from anyone in this shitty department. Do you know what I mean by ‘on edge’?”

  “I’m beginning to get the picture,” he murmured.

  “It means that my days are bad, and my nights are worse. I get dragged to inhuman places like this, and I have to sift through and stare at inhuman acts, committed by deviant sociopaths. And then I start to feel like that. Like I could do something really nasty and homicidal—maybe without even being provoked. Maybe just because someone looked at me the wrong way.” Her eyes were dark. “Get it?”

  He nodded rapidly.

  “Good, I’m glad we understand each other.” She handed something in a paper bindle to one of the evidence techs, then looked at me. “Here’s the situation. We’ve got a young male DB, maybe eighteen, nineteen tops. Blunt force trauma, restraint marks, throat slashed. And there’s a twist.”

  I frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll see. There’s been some interference with the body, and we won’t be able to say anything for certain until the autopsy.”