SkinThief Read online

  Skin

  Thief

  A Cassandra Farbanks Novel

  By

  Sonnet O’Dell

  Eternal Press

  A division of Damnation Books, LLC.

  P.O. Box 3931

  Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

  www.eternalpress.biz

  Skin Thief

  by Sonnet O’Dell

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-314-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-315-7

  Cover art by: Dawné Dominique

  Edited by: Stephanie Parent

  Copyedited by: Shannyn Lenihan

  Copyright 2011 Sonnet O’Dell

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  1st North American and UK Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To Ally, all the bakeries in all the world could not make enough cream puffs to show you how much your friendship means to me…so I got you a really big cupcake instead.

  It has sprinkles!

  Chapter One

  I had no idea how I’d gotten here. Actually, that’s not true. I had a general semblance of the physical journey itself—I’d come by bus, the bus I was still sitting on—but what I meant was, I had no idea how I’d come to this point in my life. It was bitter cold even for January, and I was wrapped up tighter than a bug in a rug. It was a brand new year, and things had picked up since December. Still, I yearned to go back to Christmas, which had been so close to wonderful I could have sworn I was dreaming.

  I’d helped Magnus put some decorations up around his place, and he’d helped me put up mine, which my mom and I used to do. I have this tiny fake tree, which I usually sit on top of a huge tin of sweets I get every year. I set the tree on top of it so I have to move it every time I want one, and therefore I won’t pig the whole lot in one go. I’ve done it before; I could do it again. Just after I set up the tree, of course, two little neatly wrapped boxes appeared under it. One from Aram and one, surprisingly, from Jareth—which added two more gifts to my last-minute list. What did you buy the vampire who had everything? There was no gift voucher on the planet for the blood bank, though I secretly chuckled to myself that someone could make a fortune if they invented one. Magnus hadn’t been happy with Aram getting me a gift or the fact that he still came in and out of my apartment whenever he liked. I wasn’t fond of it either, even if it was to leave me a little gift.

  Magnus was finishing stripping off the paper in my spare bedroom tonight, and then we planned on going to look at colors to paint it. I liked how he said “we,” as if he’d get any actual veto power on the color I chose. It’s my apartment—I can paint it any damn color I please. That’s the joy of owning your own place. In fact, I should have been sitting at home flicking through the color guides.

  Instead, here I was sitting on a bus to prison. That sounds a lot worse than it is—I hadn’t been arrested. Although when Rourke had put me on the bus, she’d had this strange, almost satisfied smile. She hadn’t wanted me to walk from the train station because of the weather. Ha. If she harbored any feeling for my safety, it was both miniscule and laconic. I was to be a guest of the Birmingham Prison Governor, a man who had many contacts within the Worcester city police force and its governing bodies, who was having an odd problem with one of his inmates. I happened to specialize in odd problems. The request had been bumped to Rourke, and Rourke had then been requested to bump it to me. By whom, I didn’t know, but as a freelancer, I had more time to spare than PCU—that’s the Preternatural Crime Unit—to chase wild geese, as it were.

  It was my first official job since I’d gotten my Preternatural Investigators’ license, through, and the renovations of the ground-floor apartment in my building into a workable office where I could officially see clients were well underway. I’d had the occasional argument with the building owner when he’d decided to cut the usable space in half, making an extra storage area for himself, without telling me. But I didn’t need all that much space; I was just mad when I’d checked in on the work to find the proportions hadn’t seemed right. Like a phone call would have been too much to ask.

  The bus driver, a polite, aging man in his late sixties with a tattoo on the left side of his neck that indicated he’d served time in a different capacity—in the armed forces, I’d wager—kept checking the rearview mirror to look at me. Habit, I guessed. When you’re used to a bunch of prisoners behind you, you’d keep checking to make sure they weren’t up to anything. He looked worried. I’d drawn the hood of my coat up in an attempt to keep warm; my scarf was wrapped so tightly around my lower face and neck that all he could really see was shadows over my eyes. I had to imagine I looked pretty damn creepy. He’d introduced himself as Neil and I as Cassandra, but after that we’d not spoken another word to each other. It hadn’t been necessary. I had to imagine he had reservations about taking a woman into a prison, whether she was a powerful witch or not, especially at night.

  Actually, the governor hadn’t been too thrilled with the idea either. He’d been happy to have the private contractor of Farbanks Investigations (admittedly, I’d not spent a lot of time or thought on the name) come to take a look at what he was considering “preternatural circumstance,” but he had not been pleased when I’d called him to set up day and time. My voice has been described to me as rather soft and young, except when I’m yelling; I’d not been an investigator long, but even I knew you did not start out by yelling at potential clients. I tried to reassure him that I was capable, but trying to put a hard edge to my voice made me sound more petulant than in control. Magnus said it was cute when I tried to do what he called my “grown-up voice.” I’m only twenty-one, and that in itself makes it hard for me to get people to take me seriously. It didn’t matter that a couple of months from now, I’d gain another year—I still looked young. Cops in particular pair youth with naivety, like the two should go skipping hand-in-hand merrily as a rule. Perhaps that’s why I have a particular fondness for breaking such rules. Some of them are just pointless and idiotic anyway. Tell me I can’t do something, and damn it, I’m gonna try to, just to prove I can.

  Winston Green Road was remarkably ordinary, except for the old Victorian-built prison that took up a large chunk of the surrounding area. I’d done some research on it before agreeing to come up to Birmingham to enter it. One thousand four hundred-fifty capacity, built in 1849, adult males, category B & C offenders; those not requiring high security but still needing to be strictly monitored in case of escape. It was an acceptable risk—no murderers and serial killers at least. That had made Magnus feel only a teeny bit better about me going into an all-male prison where most of the men probably hadn’t seen a woman for months. Magnus, like a gentleman of the times in which he had been born, didn’t believe a woman could take care of herself despite an extraordinary talent for Magic. Magnus is in his fifties—and before you can think eww, he’s a half elf. Half elves age differently from humans, so he looks only about twenty-five. He’s handsome and dependable, has a good job, and he wants to be with me, which scores him an extra ten points on the likeable scale.

  The bus pulled to idle in fro
nt of the gates, where two bulky men in prison officer uniform—a dark ribbed jumper and black slacks—pushed open the large green wooden gates to allow us entry. We jostled forward and to the right, moving into a garage area hung with a single flickering, dangling light that swung over the bus as the tires squealed to a stop in its accustomed place. Neil leaned around from the wheel to look directly at me.

  “We’re here.”

  I nodded, shouldering my bag and standing. My boots made little clicking sounds as I went toward the front. The doors whooshed open, hitting the side with a thunk. A large man stood blocking the exit; his jumper was ribbed navy, under which he wore a starched white shirt. The nametag on his left breast read Pert-Smith. I scanned his face from under the shadow of my hood; he was one of those men born with an angry face, even when he was attempting to smile. His hair, turning gray, was clipped close to his head. He looked over my head at Neil, so he had to be well over six foot, as even wearing my smallest heels I am not short. I’m between five-foot-nine and five-foot-ten, but I refused to refer to myself as being five-foot-nine-and-a-half. Adding a half onto things was something children did.

  Pert-Smith peered at me through narrowed eyes as he tried to see through the shadows the hood cast on my face. I took a step down and came closer to him; he took a step back from the bus doors so that we wouldn’t touch chest to chest. Finally he just stood to the side to let me off. It was important for both my standing and my self-esteem that he’d moved out of my way without me needing to ask him to. I kept the hood up as he talked to me.

  “Follow me; I’m to take you to the governor’s office.” He had a strong Birmingham accent and a deep, gruff voice that would have sounded good reading an audio mystery. I let him lead the way, keeping a safe distance behind him as we walked up from the garage into the facility. The main corridor splintered off from the center into different directions, all barred off, with a single Plexiglas window between outsiders and the guard in a booth that controlled each door. Here we stopped while the guard in the booth scrutinized my identification and Pert-Smith got to search my bag. He looked like he didn’t understand a thing he found inside it. After some to-ing and fro-ing about what each item was and did, I passed the inspection, and one of the iron doors slid open to let us through.

  The corridor we walked into was painted in muted tans and creams. Door after door had writing on their glass windows—records, administration, etc. At the end of the corridor was a set of stairs heading up to another floor, which had only one office on it. Pert-Smith opened the door and led me in, motioning for me to take a seat. The big lacquered desk sat across from a large window that let in the deep azure night. No one sat in the big chair behind the desk like I had been expecting. I slung my bag into one of the visitors’ chair and finally peeled myself out of my coat. There was a heater going in one corner, and the room was fairly toasty. My black jeans ran over the tops of my boots, while my red sweater hung off my shoulders and ran down to cover the whole of my arms. It was winter still and deeply cold even inside the rest of the building. My braid fell down my back, swatting against my own ass as I walked, taking in the books on the shelf and the framed documents on the walls.

  “The governor will be along momentarily,” Pert-Smith said. I’d forgotten he was still in the room behind me; he was gaping a little, looking me up and down. I didn’t mind the staring for a minute or two, but anything past that became rude, and I glared at him. He quickly recovered himself and extended his hand toward the unoccupied chair. “Please sit.”

  I took the empty chair next to me and settled into it, crossing my legs. I heard the door shut as Pert-Smith went out.

  The last time I had sat in an office like this had been a little over two weeks ago with the principal of my college and my tutor. We had been discussing how I could make up credits to get me back on track with my qualification in psychology. They were running through option after option that would steal time from me, force me to work till my fingers bled on essays that would no more help me understand people than just meeting them and talking to them would. I had silenced the entire room when I announced I would be withdrawing from college altogether. It was odd for me to be the one comforting them; they were distraught that I wasn’t going to keep trying. I had to explain that I would be all right, that I had found a way to support myself and to help people in my own way. I wasn’t some teenager whose parents they could consult either—I was an adult, and that meant they had to accept that I was capable of making the decisions that were in my best interest. I’d made my decision to put everything into becoming a Paranormal Investigator, and this first case was going to see me either sink or swim.

  The door behind me opened, and a man came in. He had to be the man I was here to see.

  The governor was a short, stocky man built rather like a tree stump but well groomed. His hair was black but receding, and he’d attempted to comb it over rather poorly. No one could mistake that he was losing his hair, but I doubt any polite person would have brought it up anyway. He wore a charcoal gray suit, with an off-white shirt and light blue tie.

  “Good evening, Miss Farbanks, excuse my tardiness.” He sat down in the chair across from me and ran his eyes warily over my body from head to toe just like Pert-Smith had, with a look of astonishment on his face. As I mentioned earlier, I’m twenty-one and I just about look it.

  “Is there a problem, Governor Bird?” I ran my eyes over his golden nameplate reading Governor Adrian Bird and then raised my eyes up to his face. He stared into mine.

  “Not at all. I was expecting someone a bit older, but your youth is only a problem in the sense that it might excite some of the inmates. Some of them haven’t seen a woman in quite some time.”

  I crossed my legs, interlaced my fingers and cupped them over my knee.

  “I understand that, and I am not afraid of any of these men. I am curious as to what is so bizarre about one of your inmates that you believe you require my help.”

  Governor Bird pushed his chair back, turning it toward a filing cabinet; he yanked the top drawer open and pulled out a file. It was brown and nondescript, with a name scrawled on the tag in tight scripted handwriting. He slid it across his highly polished desk. I flipped it open and examined the color photo that was clipped to the papers. The man in it looked to be about eighty. He had white hair brushed over the bald spot on his head—to much better effect than the governor—and wire-rimmed reading glassing perched on his withered nose.

  “This is Ivan Petrovich,” he said, tapping the folder with his index finger. “He is our oldest inmate. Used to be a big man in his native Russia but immigrated here in the early eighties with his family.”

  I flipped through the documents. They were lengthy and filled with fancy lawyer-like talk that I didn’t want to sift through.

  “What was he in for?”

  “Manslaughter. The original Mrs. Petrovich died after their daughter’s eighth birthday, apparently of natural causes. The second Mrs. Petrovich was...well...a little younger than the first.”

  I started reading through the trial details. She’d been twenty-six when he was seventy. He’d either had a lot of money or he’d been excellent in bed—and with about fifty years of practice, the possibility wasn’t too out there.

  “Trophy wife.”

  “Exactly. Petrovich was a fairly wealthy man. Someone broke into his house, and poor Mrs. Petrovich came out the worse for the experience. She was beaten and sexually abused by two of the robbers. Two months after the attack she committed suicide.”

  I nodded my head and closed the file. There wasn’t a lot I was going to get from this file that the governor wasn’t already telling me.

  “So Petrovich tracked them down and killed all three of them—with his money, it wouldn’t be hard to find them. His lawyers got it down to manslaughter?”

  Governor Bird smiled at me. “I know, very good
lawyers, right? He’s been good about serving his time, though; he acts just like a sweet little old Russian man. Then something happened—he got grumpy, isolated, started logging a hell of a lot of time in the computer lab.”

  “If you want to know what he was doing with the computer, you would be better off calling the police’s cyber crime division. Magic isn’t really computer friendly.”

  “That’s not it. Recently there was an incident with one of our guards, Merrick Stone. They were just talking in his cell when something bizarre happened: Stone turned on him and beat him viciously.”

  I leaned back in my seat and rolled my neck, crossing my arms and letting my thoughts roil around in my brain.

  “Do you think he used some sort of magic to make this Merrick Stone act out of character? What would that achieve? Did he get removed to a hospital?”

  “No, he is still here in our infirmary—we can’t risk moving him. Stone was suspended from duty and Petrovich was unconscious for many days. It was when he woke up that things started to get pretty strange.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Petrovich claimed to be Stone, even named his wife and each of his kid’s names and dates of birth.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my chin. I had hoped for something interesting, and I was glad I was not going to be disappointed. I stood up, grabbing my stuff, and brushed a loose lock of hair behind my ear.

  “I’ll need to see him, and then I’ll need to take a look at his cell.”

  Governor Bird blustered, hurrying out of his seat. He got the door for me, and I gave him a small smile. I appreciated it when men acted like gentlemen. He led the way to the infirmary, chatting along the way about unimportant things like how long I had been working in this area and how cold the weather had turned recently. Just the everyday meandering twaddle.