him that they were going to visit the body, but from Leslie's attitude (polite but distant) it hadn't been her.
Goldstein had been called away to discuss the case with someone in the Boston Police Department, so Heuter's addition made them five. Had there been any more of them, they'd have had to leave the door to the small room open.
Dr. Fuller pulled back the sheet. "Jacob Mott, age eight. Water in his lungs tells us that he drowned. Joggers found him washed up on Castle Island early in the morning. His parents tell us that he did not have pierced ears, so the killer must have pierced both - though only the left ear was tagged. The tag is in evidence."
Anna let the words run in one ear and out the other. They were unimportant next to the small body laid out before them. Besides, Charles would remember every word - and she didn't want to.
Jacob had been in the water and the fishes had nibbled, though he wouldn't have cared at that point. Compared to what had been done to this boy, the fish were only a footnote. Death had nothing much to teach Anna, but dying...dying could be so hard. Jacob's dying had been very hard.
The witch reached out and touched the body with a lust Anna could smell even with her human nose.
"Ooh," she crooned, and the doctor's clinical recitation stumbled to a halt. "Didn't you make someone a lovely meal, child?" She put her face down on the boy's chest, and Anna wanted to grab her and rip her off. Anna folded her arms across her chest instead. No use ticking the witch off before they got what they needed from her. Jacob was past caring what the witch did.
"Someone's been a naughty girl," the witch said to herself as her fingers traced a series of symbols incised into the boy's thigh. She pulled her face away and began humming "It's a Small World" as her fingers continued to trace the marks on the body. "There's surely more on the back," she said, looking at the doctor.
Mutely he nodded, and she picked up the body and rolled Jacob on his face. She was strong, for all that she looked lumpy and dumpy, because she didn't have to struggle particularly. Dead bodies were, mostly, harder to move than live ones.
More on the back, the witch had said, and there were. More symbols and more marks of abuse. Anna swallowed hard.
"Before death," said the witch happily. "All of it was done before death. Someone harvested your pain and your ending, didn't they, little one? But they were sloppy, sloppy with it. Not professional, not at all." Her hands caressed the dead boy. "I recognize this. Bad Sally Reilly. She wasn't a very talented witch, was she? But she wrote a book and went on TV and wrote more books and became famous. Pretty, pretty Sally sold her services and then - poof, she went. Just like a witch who was bad and broke all the rules should."
"Sally Reilly carved these symbols?" asked Agent Fisher, her voice only a little sharp.
"Sally Reilly is dead. Twenty years or more dead, because she gave mundane people a way to do this." Caitlin bent down and licked the dead boy's skin, and Heuter drew in a harsh breath. "But they did it wrong and they didn't get it all, did they? They left all this lovely magic behind instead of eating it."
"Precious," murmured Anna.
The witch tilted her head. "What did you say?"
"You forgot the 'my precious,'" Anna said dryly. "If you want to act like a freaking nutcase, you have to do it right."
The witch lowered her eyelashes, flicked her hands at Anna, and said something that sounded almost like a sneeze. Brother Wolf bumped Anna aside, flexed a little as if he were absorbing a hit, and then hopped over the table, pushing the witch away from Jacob Mott's body and onto the floor. Neat and precise as a cat, he did it without touching Jacob at all, though he knocked Heuter and the doctor back a few paces.
Anna ran around the table so she could see what was going on, and so she saw Brother Wolf bare his ivory fangs at the witch - who immediately quit struggling.
"Charles has a grandmother who was a witch and a grandfather who was a shaman - on opposite sides of his lineage," Anna said calmly into the silence. "You're outmatched. Now, why don't