I just didn’t know if I wanted to advertise that we could call upon that kind of power. And I wasn’t sure either Joel or Aiden had enough control to just burn the goats and stop.
“Are any of the Salases still around? I’d like to ask a few questions.”
She nodded. “Jimmy, Mr. Salas, and Mr. Salas’s very large friend are all sitting on the porch talking about their days in the Marines. The mom is fending off the hoi polloi from the front yard.”
“Mr. Salas was a Marine, too?” I asked.
She nodded. “And English is his native tongue; he was born and raised on a quarter-horse ranch outside San Diego. I don’t think Mrs. Salas speaks English, but he is certainly bilingual. Not the first time I’ve seen the ‘speak no English’ used when people are facing hostile law enforcement.”
She glanced over at the Salas house and then back at me.
“Fedders is a problem,” she admitted with a sigh. “Apparently he’s better known in the Spanish-speaking community around here than we thought. He was first on scene.”
She gave me a quick smile. “He’s like a black sheep—part of the family but also awkward and occasionally dangerous. You wouldn’t think it from today’s performance, but he’s really good with trauma victims—even those from our Spanish-speaking communities. When he’s helping someone who is hurt, he drops all that crap. I’m sure Captain Gonzales will explain, again, why antagonizing people isn’t useful. Someday it will stick, or he’ll cause such a big problem they’ll promote him right off the streets.”
She glanced at Mary Jo, who was keeping back far enough to give the officer a false sense of safety. “Maybe some big werewolf will get tired of him, chew him up, and spit him out with an attitude adjustment.”
Mary Jo grinned at her.
“My, what big teeth,” said the deputy with a smile, though her hand slipped toward her gun. Funny how Little Red Riding Hood came up whenever the werewolves were about.
Mary Jo closed her mouth and wagged her tail.
A nice path opened up for us through the gathering crowd—werewolves are useful like that—and we slipped past the hordes unmolested. It wasn’t really a big group of people, maybe fifteen or twenty.
“Mr. Salas,” I said. “Mary Jo and I were able to round up all the goats. I’ll make sure they are taken care of. If anyone gives you trouble or asks you to pay for damages, you call us.” I gave him a card. “This is not your fault in any way. You are not responsible for any damages, and if someone needs to be reminded of that, my husband will take care of it.”
He took the card and looked thoughtful.
Mary Jo nudged me to get my attention, then she trotted off. I assumed that she was going to regain her human shape. I didn’t let my gaze linger on her; instead, I considered the Salases’ situation.
“Did you, your wife, or your children have any trouble with anyone lately?” I asked. “With a stranger, probably.” Certainly.
There were, I understood, several kinds of practitioners who could create zombies. But this was witchcraft. As soon as I touched the first goat, I could feel the black magic humming in my bones and turning my stomach.
Leaving aside the black magic—because there were no black-magic witches in the Tri-Cities—no local witches would have done anything like it. They were too afraid of Elizaveta and her family. And we didn’t, to my knowledge, have anyone with this kind of power except for Elizaveta herself. Zombies took serious mojo—I knew that much.
But I couldn’t explain our local witch population to Salas or the police; I didn’t want to cause anyone to go out hunting witches. That was Elizaveta’s job.
Salas shook his head. He called a question to his wife, who shook her head. “A moment,” he said. “I will ask my son.”
“He served this country for eight years,” the blond deputy (presumably Jimmy) told us, a snap in his voice. “And he has to hide when the police come to call?”
“No,” I said. “Because there are deputies like you here.”
Salas returned to the porch, shaking his head. “No. No unusual arguments. But Santiago, my son, he says there was a lady who stopped yesterday morning while he was feeding his goats. She wanted to buy them all, all twenty, but he didn’t like her so he told her they were not for sale. He stayed inside the pen while she talked—the way he