Sacrificed in Shadow by S.M. Reine Read Free Book Online Page B

the car in gear and pulled out. “You said you only work in the evenings, too. I assumed that meant…”
    “That I’m a vampire?”
    “Well, yeah,” he said.
    It was better if nobody knew the limitations of Elise’s demon form. She shrugged. “I’m not a vampire.” End of explanation.
    “Buckle your seatbelt,” he said, casting a sideways glance at her. Elise lifted her eyebrows. He halted the car before leaving the dirt for the main road. “You heard me. Buckle your seatbelt.”
    “I can’t die in a car accident.”
    “It’s the law,” Lincoln said with the conviction of a man used to having people obey him.
    Cute. Very cute. Elise jammed the box of cigarettes into her pocket again, then buckled. “Happy?”
    “Not really.” He pulled onto the road. “You can’t show up at my house and break into my car. You’ll have my neighbors talking.”
    “Gossip is probably the only entertainment around here. I’m the most interesting thing to happen to Northgate in months, short of murder. Consider it a favor.”
    “What if your presence gets back to the sheriff?”
    “I don’t care.”
    The highway turned, letting the sun spill over the driver’s seat. Lincoln pulled sunglasses off his visor and slipped them on. Aviators. Nice. “You should care. You could get arrested for interference.”
    The corner of her mouth twitched. She couldn’t help it. He was so earnest. “I’m not easy to arrest.” She casually leaned against the door, squeezing her knees together so that none of her touched the sun beam. “Fill me in on the investigation. Tell me about your suspects.”
    “No names yet. The rest of the department still thinks it’s a string of animal killings, even though we caught someone on security footage.”
    “Security footage?”
    “Two of the bodies were found in empty fields on the south end of town—not the same field, mind, but across the road from one another. The convenience store caught footage of one body being inspected by a civilian.” Lincoln’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Inspected, but not dumped. Near as we can tell, the tapes of the actual times the murders occurred were wiped.”
    “Magnetic or magic?” Elise asked. At his incredulous look, she said, “Never mind.” Lincoln wouldn’t know the difference between spells, charms, and enchantments, much less mundane interference versus magical.
    Of course, she wouldn’t have expected the sheriff’s office to be warded, either.
    “Which coven do you have here?” she asked.
    “Coven?”
    “It’s a group of witches, often twelve or thirteen of them. They organize on pagan holidays to cast spells together.”
    “There are no witches in Northgate,” Lincoln said. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She had hit a nerve.
    Northgate appeared slowly, peeking out from between the patchy trees. She glimpsed decades-old antique shops nestled beside brand new convenience stores. All of the houses on the main road had been converted into offices—real estate agents, accountants, lawyers. The sidewalks were filled with people traveling on foot.
    “The guy filmed inspecting the body,” Elise said, tucking her hands under her arms so that the sunlight didn’t catch them. “Was he black?”
    “Yes,” Lincoln said. “Approximately six feet, three inches, two hundred pounds.”
    It didn’t seem likely that there would be many men that fit that description in such a small town. It had to be Scarface, the werewolf she had seen at the sheriff’s department the night before.
    “Why would he visit the body again after dumping it?”
    “Serial killers behave in strange ways, Miss Kavanagh.”
    “Elise,” she corrected.
    His jaw tightened. “Maybe he was relishing his handiwork.”
    She highly doubted it, but she wasn’t going to argue the point with Lincoln. A rogue werewolf’s psychology wouldn’t be like a serial killer’s. If one werewolf had killed six people, then it had less to do with