Black Hat, White Witch (Black Hat Bureau #1) - Hailey Edwards Page 0,51

lack of heartbeats told me what their keen noses and other senses had already relayed to them.

Black magic might not register to my nose, but the sweet-and-sour tang of rot hit me hard.

I followed it into the back bedroom and found what I expected to see. A dead troll well into decomp. His killer, and it was male, had driven a railroad spike through his heart. The rust told me it was old and iron.

Trolls were fae, and cold iron was a death sentence.

I could only hope he was dead before the killer sliced off his face with surgical precision.

“This must be the real Mr. Olsen.” I squatted next to him, examining his body for clues. “Why kill him?”

“I think I can answer that.” Asa waited several feet behind me. “Look.”

Standing, I trailed Clay into a tiny room beside the master. “The missing daughter.”

The door to her bedroom wasn’t substantial, but it had been kicked open, meaning she locked herself in.

“That’s a House Thorn dagger in her chest.” Asa made a gesture of prayer. “She committed suicide.”

“Seppuku?” I backed from the room once confirming his assessment. “A ritual suicide.”

“Similar,” he agreed, then glanced back at Mr. Olsen. “The girl must have been targeted through her father.” He exhaled slowly. “The copycat came for her, here, and she misread his intent.”

“She thought her family came for her.” I shut my eyes. “She took her life rather than let them kill her.”

“Mr. Olsen must have heard the commotion from the yard,” Clay theorized, “or maybe he just got home from work. He came to check on her and got a railroad spike to the chest for his trouble.”

“That narrative fits what we’re seeing.” I left the bodies to search the rest of the trailer. “We’ll know for sure after the lab tells us time of death.” I thought back on the timeline. “Four weeks.” I rubbed my nape as the full implications hit me. “This might have been the copycat’s first victim. Make that victims.”

The director really had wasted no time coming to find me as soon as he required my specific skill set.

“He could have glamoured himself to resemble Olsen and used his identity to stalk the other victims and their kill sites.” Asa picked up my train of thought. “That would explain the complaints against him.”

“He took Olsen’s face.” A technique I hadn’t seen used in ages. “Literally.”

“A masque?” Asa glanced back at Olsen. “That’s old magic.”

Glamour accomplished the same thing, really, and it was easier to cast and dispel. More versatile too.

A masque was exactly what you would think. A mask of dried skin, a face, that you wore over your own. It drew the power to transform you into that person, and only that person, from the target’s own death.

“The killer must have been well and truly pissed at Olsen to expend that much magic on a trinket.”

Masques had limited use, given each was only good for one face, but that had never been the point.

Their creation was rooted in punishment rather than practicality.

“The killer moves on the girl. The girl robs him of his prize.” Clay mulled it over. “Olsen hears her scream and comes running. The killer murders Olsen in a fit of rage.”

“The killer assumes Olsen’s identity, but he doesn’t know Olsen is on vacation.” Asa continued his search for more evidence. “He didn’t plan for this. His first kills, and he’s already made two mistakes.” He gazed across the space. “Maybe he decides he’s found an ideal scapegoat to pin his crimes on when he’s done. He makes the best of it by setting up shop at Olsen’s place, and that’s when he makes the masque.”

“If we’re even half right, we’ve flushed out the killer.” That was the good news. The bad news was, “That means he’ll be on the move.”

Harder to corner prey when it knows it’s being hunted and by whom. The killer’s acting skills tricked Clay and Asa into believing him. No doubt, he would have fooled me too. He had channeled the rage over his discovery into an authentic facsimile of grief. He hurled accusations at them about how no one cared his daughter was missing to keep them off-balance and defensive.

They left, we all did, with a sense of having disturbed a good man, a good father, in mourning.

“He slept and ate here.” Clay indicated food in the fridge and sheets on the couch. “But that’s it.”

“The car is gone.” Asa pulled out his phone. “I’ll issue a BOLO