Chapter 2
Cressida’s office is an elegantly decorated art deco paradise.
Her desk—a smooth expanse of onyx black—stands before an emerald green accent wall, stenciled with a gold geometric pattern that makes me feel ever so slightly dizzy if I look at it too long.
The carpets are thick enough that I’m pretty sure the agents on the floor below us haven’t heard her yelling at me for the last twenty-six minutes, although her big, brassy voice has managed to rattle the pens in her vintage pen holder more than once.
At least the chair I’m sitting in is comfortable enough.
Still, this feels like the second time in two days I’ve faced death. As if maybe Cressida saved me from an allergic reaction only to murder me herself by tearing me apart with her bare hands in her well-appointed office.
She stops ranting for a moment, and I think I’m supposed to say something here. Explain myself, maybe? Apologize?
“Captain Caine, I—”
Her deep brown eyes darken to nearly black and she practically hisses, “Did I tell you that you could speak?”
So, okay, I was wrong. Not the moment to apologize.
She launches into a litany of all the things I’ve done wrong since I joined the MBI. It’s an embarrassingly long list, although I would argue that a list of all the things I’ve done right would also be pretty long. I’m not a total screwup.
I mean, this might not be the first time I’ve been screamed at in Cressida’s office, but it doesn’t happen regularly.
“I’m tired of this, Jensen. You’re the one agent on this team I have to have this conversation with regularly.”
Fine. I guess Cressida has a different definition of “regularly” than I do.
She finally winds down, her hands jabbing the air less aggressively, her voice lowering until we no longer need the plush carpet to absorb it.
She rakes one hand through her short black hair and sinks into the chair opposite me with a long-suffering sigh.
“Jensen,” she begins, “I just can’t keep covering for your mistakes.
You didn’t just put yourself in danger today.
You let a murderer get away. Who knows how many people will die because you just had to have a snack? ”
I open my mouth to explain about how nervous Emily would have been, how I needed to be in character to keep Granny Annie from becoming suspicious, how meltingly yummy that brownie had looked in that display case.
Honestly, even though that brownie almost killed me and may have destroyed my career, it was almost worth it. That’s how good a brownie it was.
At least Granny had taken pity on me and sent a telepathic message to Cressida letting her know I was in the walk-in cooler, dying.
Possibly she’d sent the message to taunt the MBI thinking I was already dead. Either way, I hadn’t died. And that means I still have a chance to bring Granny Annie to justice.
“Captain, I know I can fix this. Just give me some time and I’ll track her down.”
Cressida folds her hands together on the desk in front of her, her skin snow white against the sleek ebony wood.
She’s wearing a perfectly tailored emerald green skirt suit, as usual.
It’s her signature color. I don’t think I’ve ever seen in her anything but emerald green.
“No, Jensen. You’re off the investigation.
And honestly, I really should fire you, but there’s been a development.
” She leaned forward. “In The Witch investigation.”
The MBI pretty much exclusively investigates witches. Sure, we may look into a shifter here or there, and there’s occasionally some cryptid that shows up on our radar acting particularly dastardly. But when it comes to magical creatures going bad, it’s almost always witches.
Even so, there is no confusion at all regarding what witch she meant.
At the MBI, there is only one witch that everyone refers to in capital letters—The Witch.
The same way the human FBI probably has had The Criminal, or The Bad Guy, or The Mastermind on a most-wanted list at some point. This isn’t just a witch.
It’s The Witch. And she’s as bad as they come. She makes Granny Annie look like a hobbyist. There’s a huge—and ever-growing—reward for her capture. And while we know what Granny Annie looks like and have some ideas as to her MO, The Witch was a total and utter mystery.
I sit up a little straighter. “Did they catch her?”
Cressida’s lips tighten into a straight line. “No, nothing like that.” Then, as though fortifying herself, she quickly adds, “Not yet.” Her eyes go to the wall behind me.
When I say Cressida’s office is decorated in art deco style, I mean that most of her office is art deco.
The back wall, however, the wall right in front of her when she sits at her desk, is one giant murder wall.
And every inch of it is covered in information about The Witch.
Newspaper clippings. Sketch artist drawings from alleged witnesses. Timelines.
And right in the middle of all of that is the newspaper article that I know Cressida probably never wants to see again. One with a giant headline that reads “MBI Deputy Director Killed in Witch Bombing.”
I’m sure she doesn’t need the article there as a reminder.
Surely she remembers every detail about the day her captain and mentor was killed—along with nine civilians—in a bombing at a coffee shop just down the street from the office.
She’d been at the coffee shop with her mentor, after all, had just slipped off to go to the bathroom when the attack happened.
I know Cressida well enough to know the what ifs run through her head daily—what if she’d sensed The Witch before she attacked?
What if she hadn’t gone to the bathroom at that very moment? What if I’d been able to save her?
I was a brand-new agent then, all fresh-faced and sure that the MBI was capable of tracking down any bad guy it set its sights on.
I was too green to be involved in the investigation, but I’ll never forget Cressida packing up the contents of her desk in the bullpen, face grim, hair streaked with soot and smelling of smoke and death, in the moments after she was promoted to deputy director.
The next day, the article about the attack was pinned to that wall.
So I can’t blame her for looking just a teeny bit excited—bordering on manic—at the thought that we might finally have a lead in chasing down The Witch.
“We got a warning about her next attack. In code, as usual.” She pulls a plastic bag out of her top desk drawer and slaps it down on the desk in front of me. Inside the bag is a piece of parchment, on which words crawl about, appearing and disappearing as if they were playing hide-and-seek with us.
“It’s really from her,” I breathe. We haven’t had a confirmed message from The Witch in nearly a year. A few copycats, sure, but no one spells a message like The Witch.
“Looks like it, yes. I had our codebreakers take a look at it. You won’t believe her next target.”
I try to make sense of the flashing words, but they’re moving too fast, and it’s in code, and I’m too close to my own near-death experience to be in top form. I catch one word, though. “Pageantry? A beauty pageant, maybe?”
“Close. It’s the North Mountain Pig Show, held annually in Farrowville, West Virginia.”
I don’t like the spark in Cressida’s dark eyes. She looks…pleased. Smug.
Kind of like she’s about to get back at the person who blew up the Granny Annie investigation.
“We need to get someone in there undercover.”
She’s looking at me pointedly, and I finally realize what she’s saying. “Me?”
She almost-but-not-quite rolls her eyes. “Yes, you, Jensen.”
Well, that isn’t what I’d been expecting. She’s actually going to let me go undercover again? Despite the mess I made of things with Granny Annie? And here I thought she’d never trust me again.
Cressida snatches the letter back, disappearing it into her desk drawer.
“Believe me, I’m not thrilled about this, but I need an agent The Witch doesn’t know.
We assume she’ll target the show itself—believe it or not, it draws quite a crowd—so we’ll have you go down a few days early to meet the other pig handlers and get a feel for the place. ”
The other handlers. “Wait. Will I be…handling a pig?”
Now she really did roll her eyes. “It’s a pig show, Jensen. What else would you be doing there besides showing a pig?”
“Maybe selling concessions? Or working security?” Surely there were other tasks that wouldn’t involve dealing with pigs.
“You’ll need to be a handler to have access to the entire show area. But don’t worry. We’re not sending you in alone.”
Oh, good. I could let my partner handle the pig. “Who’s going with me? Diehl? Peters?”
Cressida snags a pen from her pen holder and rips a sheet of paper from the notepad by her elbow. “You’ll be working with Grayson Michaels,” she says, writing quickly as she speaks. She pauses for a moment to look up at me. “Do you know him? He’s a medical examiner with Beacon Hills.”
I shake my head.
“No matter.” Cressida begins writing again, her script large and loopy. “He’s a pig shifter, so the two of you will fit right in.”
I blink. “What?”
Cressida looks up at me. “He’s the only pig shifter in anything close to a law enforcement capacity on the Eastern Seaboard.
You’ll be going undercover as a pig handler, and he’ll be going undercover as your pig.
Got it?” She drops the pen and shoves the sheet of paper at me.
On it is everything I need to know about the Eastern Pig Show.
She leans back in her chair, one elbow propped casually on the armrest. “And, Jensen? This is your last chance. Screw this up, and you’re done with the MBI. For good.”
Okay, then. I swallow. “I understand, Captain.”
It looks like I’m about to get a crash course in pigs.