Circle of Death Read Online Free Page A

girlfriend, one Kirby Brown. It was Kirby who found her, apparently.”
    “You get a chance to talk to this woman?” Camille asked, voice sharp.
    “No. The cops have her under protection at a local motel.”
    Camille made a sound of disgust. Her dislike for the police stemmed from her brief stint on the force. She never talked about it much, but Doyle had gathered over the years that it wasn’t so much the rules she disliked as the unwillingness of those in charge to see beyond the material aspects of a case in order to solve it.
    But the police force’s loss was the Damask Circle’s gain. Camille had been quickly pulled from the ranks of general investigators and now helped Seline Whiteshore run the huge organization. That Seline had sent her here with them spoke of the seriousness with which she viewed this situation.
    “They do their best, given the limited resources and expertise they have.” Though Russell’s voice was mild, there was a flash of annoyance in his brown eyes. He’d been a cop himself before he’d crossed the line between the living and the dead, and even now, he readily defended them.
    “What do we know about this Kirby Brown?” Doyle asked, before Russ and Camille could get into yet another argument on the merits of the police.
    “Very little. She paints houses for a living and portraits for fun, and she has apparently known Helen most of her life.”
    “Photo?”
    “Yeah, in the back of the folder. I took it from one of the bedrooms.”
    He shuffled through to find it. The two women could have passed for sisters. They had the same build and the same dusky-brown hair, only Kirby’s was highlighted with streaks of pale gold. Their eyes differed, too. Helen Smith had the eyes of a storm witch—a smoldering, ethereal gray. Kirby’s were a vibrant green. Even though it was only a photo, those eyes seemed to cut right through him and touch something deep in his soul.
    Frowning, he slid the picture across to Camille. “What if it was a mistake? What if the
manarei
went after the wrong woman?”
    “Aside from the fact she’s not on the list?”
    “We don’t know how accurate your list actually is,” he replied.
    “Oh, that’s a brave comment,” Russell murmured.
    Camille cast them both a withering look. “That list is all we’ve got, so you’d better hope it’s at least partially accurate. And Helen Smith
was
on it.”
    Kirby Brown wasn’t. And yet, looking at that picture, at those eyes, he couldn’t escape the notion that
she
was the key they were searching for. “But what if the cops were right? What if the only reason Kirby Brown isn’t also dead is the fact that she’d arrived home late?”
    Camille picked up the photo and studied it for severalseconds. “Well, it’s possible. There’s certainly power in her gaze, and our killer might be after something as simple as that.”
    Doyle frowned. “Meaning what?”
    Camille looked at him, her expression surprised. “You mean to say you’ve been around magic more than half your life, and you didn’t know it’s possible to siphon powers?”
    “I certainly didn’t.” He frowned. “How is something like that even possible? How can you siphon someone’s psychic abilities like they’re nothing more than blood?”
    Camille snorted. “Boy, there are things in this world that can suck the energy from a person until they’re nothing more than a husk. There are even creatures that feed on souls. Why wouldn’t it be possible to siphon psychic energy or abilities?”
    He shrugged. Put like that, it almost seemed reasonable. “So the real question is, why these particular girls?”
    “Until we uncover what the link is between the women on the list—and there is one, have no doubt of that—then we won’t know.” She glanced back at Russell. “Did you get anything personal from the house?”
    Russ reached into his shirt and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside were two hairbrushes.
    Camille smiled. “Such a clever