"No."
"Then how can you be so sure?" he asked.
"I told you why I'm sure, Captain. Once you've been in the presence of the demonic, you don't forget what it feels like." I shook my head and fought the urge to take another step away from the body.
"But I'm not an expert on demons, Captain Henderson. I suggest you contact a priest. I'm also not an expert on this kind of magic. Call a local witch to look it over. They may be able to give you more information. The best I can do is general stuff."
"Could you have called a demon and made it kill her?"
I frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"
"Just answer the question, Ms. Blake."
"I raise the dead, Captain. I don't do demons."
"A lot of people don't see that big a difference between the two."
"Great, just great. You call me down here. I tell you it's black magic, and now you're going to blame me. I don't feel like being the toasty end of a witch hunt, Captain Henderson."
He smiled. "Just answer the question. Could you do it?"
"No, I could not do this. Trafficking with the demonic taints the soul. I may not be a perfect Christian, but I am trying."
"Fucking vampires taints the soul, too, Blake."
I stared up at him. I looked at him for several long seconds, because what I wanted to do was hit him or scream at him. No, hit him. But I couldn't do that. I settled for one of those smiles you get sometimes when what you really want to do is hurt someone.
"Fine, Captain, fine. This was powerful magic, and I have a reputation for powerful magic. It's not your fault that you don't understand the vast difference between the two schools of magic. Lack of education, can't hold that against you." My voice said plainly that I wanted to. "But if I were going to kill someone, I'd probably just shoot them. That would at least put me near the middle of the suspect list, not the top."
"I heard that about you. That you were a shooter."
I looked at him. "Heard from whom?"
"Cops talk to one another, Ms. Blake. If she'd shown up with a bullet in her head, then I might believe you did it."
"Why would I kill some unknown woman?"
"But she isn't unknown, Ms. Blake." He was watching me very closely.
I glanced back at the body. I looked down the length of it. There was nothing that I recognized. Of all the women I'd met since I came here, none were tall enough for the body. Except one.
I turned back to him and felt the blood drain from my face. "Who is it?"
"Betty Schaffer, the woman who accused your lover boy of rape."
The world swam in stripes of color and heat. Someone was holding my elbow, and only that kept me standing. When my vision cleared, Henderson had my arm, and Wilkes was back. "Are you all right, Ms. Blake?" Wilkes asked.
I looked him right in the eyes and didn't know what to say. Betty Schaffer had been worse than murdered. If the ritual was done right and the person was in jeopardy, not pure, like being a traitor or a liar or lecherous, then the soul could be taken with the life. I'd only seen one body that had been killed in ritual for a demon, and it had been nothing like this. The sacrifice had been killed with a knife, but the soul had been taken. And I couldn't raise the body. If a demon was involved with the death, then the body was just so much clay. I had no power here.
Wilkes couldn't have called a demon. None of his men had the power. Who could have done it? No one I'd met since I arrived had that kind of power and that kind of taint.
Before I could think of anything to say, Wilkes spoke first. "You've got a call. I think you should take it."
He was afraid I'd talk. Trouble was, I didn't have any proof of anything. Hell, I didn't even know what was going on. What was on this ordinary looking land that was worth killing over? Why did the trolls have to be gotten rid of? Was it just so the land could be sold? Or was there a darker purpose? Someone had called a demon to try to make it look like a troll kill. I knew why they'd done it, but not who. I even knew why it was Betty. She'd compromised herself, put herself at risk for that kind of ceremony.
Movies try to give us shit about needing virgins and purity for sacrifice, but true evil doesn't want to kill and send purity to heaven. True evil wants to corrupt good, and once the good are dead, they are beyond the devil's reach. But the impure, to sacrifice them, to kill them -- well, the devil gets his due.
Wilkes took my arm as if to help me.