Possessing the Witch. Elle James

       Chapter 6

      “Chicago Police Department and animal control have issued a warning for citizens and guests to be on the lookout for a man fitting the forensic artist’s rendition of the murder victim’s attacker. What more proof do you need?” Brigid drummed her fingers on the bistro table at the local delicatessen, where she’d insisted Selene meet her and Deme.

      Selene’s salad remained untouched on the plate in front of her. She hadn’t had much of an appetite since Gryph had disappeared. If only she knew where to look for him, she could set her mind at ease and quit worrying about his wounds and whether he’d healed properly.

      Unlike her siblings, she understood why he’d left. The television in her kitchen had been on when she’d gone inside her apartment. He had to have seen the report on the news about the attack on the victim in the hospital.

      He’d been there when she and Brigid rode up on the motorcycle. Selene felt his presence and had sensed him in the shadows at the corner of her building. While her sisters figured his absence confirmed his guilt, Selene knew he couldn’t have been the one to attack the woman in the hospital. He’d barely been able to stand when they’d left. When Cal had gone after him, she’d held her breath, praying to the goddess that he would escape. Injured like he was, he might not have been so lucky. Cal was one of Chicago Police Department’s best, was in good shape and hadn’t lost several pints of blood in a vicious attack.

      “Cal said he just disappeared. One minute he ran down an alley and the next, he was gone. The doors into the buildings on either side had been locked. Unless he had a key to one of them, he couldn’t have gotten in.”

      Yeah, he’d disappeared, after stirring up such intense feelings inside her. How far would they have gone had he not been injured? Could she have stopped herself from making love to the man?

      “Selene?” Deme stopped in the middle of her conjecture. “Are you even listening to me?”

      “Yes.” Selene blinked, her cheeks burning. “What was it you said?”

      “Is it possible that we have more shifters in the city?” Deme asked.

      Selene glanced from Deme to Brigid. “Shifters? As in half man, half animal?”

      “Yes.” Brigid leaned forward. “If the stranger you had in your apartment could look like a man one moment and a lion the next, who’s to say there aren’t other kinds of shifters roaming the streets?”

      “Seems reasonable.” Selene wasn’t sure where the conversation was going.

      Brigid dug her smartphone out of her pocket and tapped the screen. “We know whatever attacked Amanda in the parking garage wasn’t human.”

      “Right,” Deme agreed. “The scratches and bite marks could only have been a large animal.”

      Brigid’s thumbs flying over the keypad, she continued talking with her head down. “Whoever entered the hospital and Amanda’s room was human. An animal would have certainly been noticed well before making it to her door.”

      Deme nodded. “Undoubtedly.”

      Brigid’s brows drew together. “At least human at the time he entered the hospital, killed the girl and escaped.”

      “What do you mean?”

      Brigid glanced up. “Amanda was attacked by an animal on the street.”

      “Agreed,” Selene said. “Gryph said it was a wolf.”

      “Though an animal supposedly attacked her, a human thought it important enough to finish her off, right?”

      “Right.” Brigid glanced up. “I just got word that the surveillance video showed a man dressed in scrubs with a stolen ID entered her room with a chart. Walked right past the guard we had posted. It was shortly afterward that they found her and informed us.

      “Unfortunately, before she died, the description she gave of her attacker was that of a lion with a man’s face.” Brigid laid a hand over Selene’s. “Honey, it’s a pretty damning eyewitness account.”

      “On the video, what did the man look like?” Selene demanded.

      Brigid shook her head. “Couldn’t tell from the video. He was wearing a surgical mask.”

      “Gryph said it was a wolf that attacked Amanda in the alley, and I believe him. I don’t know who the man was who came in the hospital to kill her, but it wasn’t Gryph.”

      “He could have left your apartment right after you did, come to the hospital, waited for us to leave Amanda’s room and sneaked in to kill her.”

      “I’m telling you, he wouldn’t have killed her,” Selene insisted.

      “If he didn’t come to the hospital to kill her, why did he leave your apartment and make a run for it? Why not hang around and tell his side of the story?”

      “With a description circulating on the television, knowing I’d seen him like...like that, he had to feel like it was run, or be sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.”

      “If it was a wolf, we could have a lot more shifters in the city than any of us can imagine. If they can look human, there’s no telling who they are or where we should look to find them.” Brigid tipped her head toward the man seated at the table beside them, and she leaned close to whisper, “The guy in the seat beside you could be a shifter and we’d never know until he shifted in front of us.”

      Deme and Selene both looked left at the same time. The man had lifted a large hoagie to his lips and was just about to take a bite when their gazes met.

      He frowned, the frown turning into a glare as he turned his chair, put his back to them and bit into the sandwich.

      “Who would know more?”

      “We could go to a library and research the news reports,” Deme offered. “Or check through the police files of all the reports passed to the special investigations team.”

      “Or we can go to Byron Crownover.” Brigid shoved her phone across the table, the screen displaying an internet page identifying strange and unusual happenings in Chicago.

      “Who is Byron Crownover?” Selene leaned over the screen and read the title—Chicago’s Secret Inhabitants. “What’s this about?”

      “We’ve had loads of calls about strange happenings reported to the police department, from sightings of pumas on the streets to a huge bird flying past the Willis Tower with the wings of a hawk and the face and body of a man.”

      Deme snorted. “Sounds like the people who report being abducted by alien creatures.”

      “I know.” Brigid leaned forward. “But we know from our experience battling the Chimera beneath the Colyer-Fenton College campus, that otherkin exist.”

      Selene shivered. She and her sisters had nearly been killed trying to save Aurai, the youngest, from the creature who’d taken up residence in the tunnels deep beneath the city.

      “Question is—” Deme leaned closer to the phone “—what kind of shifters and how many live here in the city?”