Otherworld 11 - Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong Page A

extending a hand.
    She held her bloodied hands palms up. “You might not want to do that.”
    “I’m washable,” I said.
    She shook my hand.
    I pointed at the dead chicken. “Did he crow at dawn one too many times?”
    “No,
she
didn’t crow at all. They’re laying hens that reached the end of their laying days.” The woman pointed at the pot. “Soup time.”
    Nice retirement package. I looked down at the headless chicken, now lying motionless on its side.
    “Lorraine at the diner said to ask for Megan,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s you.” If this wasn’t the woman in charge, I’d hate to be the one who tried to order her around.
    “I am. You’re here about the opening?”
    “No, I’m investigating Claire Kennedy’s death.”
    I braced myself for the stiffening back, the hardening face, but she actually seemed to relax.
    “Well, then, you’ve come to the right place,” she said. “Claire died here. The victim of an unspeakable sex act gone horribly awry. Isn’t that what you heard?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then it must be the satanic ritual. We ran out of babies, so we used her. Now we’re down to these ladies.” She held up a chicken. “Sure you don’t want to apply for that opening?”
    “The unspeakable sex acts might change my mind, but for now I’m happy with my current employment. The story I heard was that Claire wanted out, so Alastair killed her and dumped her body in town.”
    “Boring.”
    “I thought so, too.”
    She laid the chickens on an old wooden table. “Really, we don’t need to kill anyone who wants to leave. The brainwashing works just fine. If that fails, there are always drugs. And, of course, chaining the girls to their beds drastically cuts back on the runaway rate.”
    She started plucking the first chicken. “Yes, Claire was one of ours. She joined two weeks before she was killed. We didn’t know her well, but we’d like her killer caught, particularly since he seems to have a fondness for young women, and we don’t like foxes in our hen house.”
    “Understandable. Now, there were two other—”
    “Ginny and Brandi. I saw them in town a few times.” She registered her opinion in a single lip curl. “I wouldn’t let them stay here if they asked, and they didn’t ask. This is a place for women who want to straighten out their lives, and those girls liked theirs just fine.”
    “So they never had any contact with Alastair?”
    “Outside of participating in a few bouts of wild group sex?” Megan set down the chicken. “Let’s get this out of the way now. Yes, we have one man and a houseful of young women, but it’s not what everyone thinks.”
    “No orgies? Damn. There goes my application.”
    She smiled. “Sorry to disappoint, but Alastair has realized there’s another advantage to having a house filled with young women. A far more profitable one.”
    My brows shot up.
    She laughed. “You have a dirty mind, you know that? What we sell here, as you may have heard, is cookies.”
    She motioned me away from the stink of the coop and I smelled something far sweeter wafting from an open side door up at the house.
    “Ever heard of Taste of Heaven cookies?” Megan asked.
    “Sorry. I bake my own.” Close enough.
    “I guarantee they aren’t as good as ours. We aren’t talking Mr. Christie or even Mrs. Fields. These are top-end gourmet cookies, twelve dollars a dozen, made from farm fresh eggs and butter.” She pointed to the chickens, then to a barn. “Fair-trade dark and milk chocolate. Microfarm macadamia nuts from Hawaii and pecans from Georgia. Organic, kosher, nut-free, you want it, we offer it. Even in today’s economy, we can’t keep up with the orders.”
    “Comfort food is recession-proof.”
    “So we’re hoping.” She walked back and picked the last few feathers from the chicken carcass. “If you’re looking for lost and vulnerable souls brainwashed into slavery, you’ve come to the wrong place. Yes, we have a few recovering