Buried Secrets. Evelyn Vaughn

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      Chapter 4

      The last fifteen miles to the Bruja’s house were on a dirt road. State-of-the-art suspension or not, the car bounced enough to make Zack’s classic-rock CD skip. Almanuevo was so far out, the only radio stations that came in were AM. Pushing the scan button landed the radio on Spanish stations, sermons, commentary and—heaven help them—polka music. So they stuck with the CD.

      Not for the first time, he wondered how the hell Josephine James lived out here. Then he reminded himself that, oh yeah, living hadn’t exactly been the lady’s priority. It sounded like she’d pretty much retired from life after that mining accident.

      He guessed she’d been going for safety. But most safety-conscious women wouldn’t leave her mobile phone in her truck.

      “I forget I have it,” she’d explained, after she caught him sliding his glance toward her lap, looking for a belt-clip, and demanded an explanation. “It’s personal anyway. My brother signed me up. Spur doesn’t provide extras like that.”

      Extras?

      So if they got into trouble it would be up to him, his Nokia and the Ferrari to get them out. Peachy.

      Zack was used to visiting scary, out-of-the-way places by now. He doubted Jo, what he and his partner called a “civilian,” was as prepared. Even if she was as tough as she made out, this was no thief or drug dealer. This was a witch. Old school. Unlike Wiccans, Brujas weren’t above the occasional curse.

      Something about owls eating out one’s innards came to mind.

      Not a standard stop on the safety-conscious tour of Texas.

      Zack kind of hoped the old crone would scare Sheriff James right out of helping with his investigation. But he also hoped Jo would get over her fright without losing years and moving to an even smaller town—if such a thing existed—to do so.

      At least he had a life…albeit one devoted to hunting down and killing things most people didn’t even believe and therefore didn’t see. Things he once hadn’t seen or believed himself.

      Gabriella’s young death, even her body’s disappearance, hadn’t been enough to open Zack’s eyes. First he’d tried investigating through normal channels—despite the lack of witnesses, security footage, fingerprints or hair. Only when that proved a dead end did he turn, reluctantly, to the death itself.

      He’d found her drowned in their bathtub. The front door had been locked and her clothes were where she had always hung them. Even in shock, he’d noticed those things; he’d been trained to notice. He’d dragged her from the water, so strangely beautiful even in death, and he’d called 9-1-1, her long black hair soaking him, and he’d cried, wanting her back, barely believing—but some damned cold part of him had still noticed the other details. Nothing pointed to suicide or murder. An autopsy revealed that she’d had some kind of mild heart attack and passed out. If she hadn’t been in the bath… If he’d just been home… It was an accident.

      Or was it?

      Her corpse’s disappearance upped Zack’s suspicions. He began to ask the M.E. how a bright, healthy woman of twenty-three could have even a mild heart attack, and whether it could have been drug induced, and whether drugs existed that were new enough to not show up in the tests. Then, needing more answers, he went after her new friends. The Life Force, they’d ironically called themselves. He hadn’t known she was even in a club until some of its members, other college students, showed up at her funeral. And if the death hadn’t been an accident…

      Murdered women generally die at the hands of family or friends, not strangers. Zack had known Gabriella’s family his whole life. But these new kids—they were into reincarnation and near-death experiences, stuff he’d laughed at while Gabriella was alive. Was that why she hadn’t told him? With her dead, he found himself tracking her friends down and asking so many questions that they began to whine about police harassment.

      His captain told him to let it go, and Zack quit to become a private investigator. There was something suspicious about the Life Force, even if most of its members were goofs.

      Something dark. Something beyond the normal world, even.

      And at the point that Zack finally tracked down the club’s president, that something tried to kill him. Either that, or in one weekend he developed the worst luck in human history. Three car accidents. A runaway bus. An electrical fire. Dizzy spells. A nurse in the E.R. came within a needle-prick of giving him penicillin, despite his chart labeling him as deathly allergic. His Nona began to babble about the evil eye. After his pistol went off by itself, grazing him and barely missing a three-year-old nephew, Zack didn’t dare disbelieve.

      Out of possibilities, he’d turned to impossibilities—and to Cecil Taylor, the young man he’d met at the cemetery. Instinct said to trust Mr. If Anybody Respects the Dead, It Is I, and Zack’s instinct proved right. Taylor knew some honest-to-God, twentieth-century, Windy City magic users who managed to break the curse that was haunting him.

      Barely.

      When Zack went back to find the sonovabitch who’d run the Life Force Club—certain that nobody would freakin’ curse him unless they were guilty of something—the boy had vanished.

      Unlike Gabriella, he’d done it alive.

      He’d been searching ever since, Cecil’s help becoming a partnership. That’s when he’d learned that once you started looking, really opening your eyes, monsters and dark magic lurked everywhere. Lorenzo Investigations began to specialize.

      Bringing him here. With a civilian woman.

      Pulling up in front of the Bruja’s adobe hut, braking to avoid some scrawny chickens, Zack made a grudging stab at shielding Jo. “Wait in the car while I see if she’s home.”

      “Hah,” said Jo, climbing out unaided.

      So much for that plan.

      Jo doubted she’d ever met Doña Maria Ruiz, but in her job as small-town sheriff she’d visited several homes like this one—dry, sparse and proudly neat for a house made of baked clay. The curtains in the open window were white and starched.

      So this was how Brujas lived.

      Zack knocked on the wooden door, and Jo rubbed her hands nervously down her jeans. These old Latin ladies could be pretty disapproving of a woman in pants, even in this day and age. It was daunting even when they weren’t witches.

      The door cracked, revealing only a narrow shaft of the shadowy interior. One rheumy eye regarded them from a visible strip of dark, craggy face—classic witch. A potpourri of candles and herbs and something strange wafted out, something that sent shivers of warning through her. “Quién es?”

      “Uh, hi,” said Zack. “Do you speak English?”

      The one rheumy eye seemed unimpressed.

      So he didn’t need help, huh? Jo stepped closer. “Buenos dias, Señora. Estoy…él está…nosotros…” I am, he is, we are—freshman conjugations! She hoped her pidgin Spanish was up to the occasion. “Buscamos a la Bruja. Por favor.”

      We seek the witch, please.

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