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then went on, “He’s added to the search. Carla is looking for information about latent witches.”
    “Good, thanks.” Key did a second search of the room. He found a file of papers, airline tickets, hotel receipts, paperwork on the conference, nothing on Roxy or Liam.
    “Got something.”
    He shot across the room. “Liam?”
    “No, a file for Roxanne Banfield, in the folder Witch Mark.”
    Key checked his BlackBerry again and Roxy was fine. He shifted his gaze to the computer screen as the pixels formed into a picture. It was a strange marking on delicate creamy skin, with a curve that would fit his palm. He could almost feel the softness, wanted to feel—“Shit, that’s her thigh!” The inside of her thigh. Did Roxy know someone had taken that picture? He didn’t like the idea of someone else that close to her inner thigh
    Forget it! Focus on the marking, not her thigh. “It’s almost the color of clay bleached out by the sun
    very light tan pink.” Now that he was concentrating, he could see that it was in the shape of a goddess symbol, about two inches high, with her arms stretched up and her body clearly female. Like a fading sketch. “Schema.” That’s what she had called the picture Mack took. “Sutton, ask Carla what a schema is to witches.”
    “On it.”
    When he’d been drawing the wall-woman, he hadn’t been able to see the marking. She’d turned her thigh, covering her mound, and that had pissed him off. He had wanted to see her, wanted to know every inch of her. But the way she’d stood, shielding herself not just from modesty, but hiding that marking
    it twisted inside him. As if that mark connected them.
    The skin beneath his dragon tat stretched and pulled.
    “Key?” The voice of Sutton’s mate, Dr. Carla Fisk, came over his headset. Sutton must have patched her through.
    “Yeah, what do you have?”
    “Schema is a representation of the true self.” Carla’s voice was fascinated. “It only happens with one kind of power that I know of—fertility witches.”
    Fertility witches! They were the single type of witch he distrusted. They screwed with nature and created monsters.
    Like him.
    Revulsion tried to shudder through him, but he repressed it. “So Roxy’s a fertility witch. What does that mean? Her power is flat.”
    “I don’t know much more. Fertility witches have always been shrouded in secrecy. I do know why you’re not feeling her power; their magic is latent until they come into their power. Since their gift is sex magic, that’s a good thing. I think that happens around their twenties, but that’s about all I know.”
    Sutton broke in. “There’s a picture and description of Roxy in that file. But there are files of other witches with partial marks in the folder.”
    He looked at the laptop and saw five witches, each with a schema on different parts of their bodies, and in different stages. Two were brightly colored like a tattoo. All of those were just half of the goddess mark, not the fully formed one like Roxy’s was. “What does it mean that Roxy has the full mark?”
    “I’m not sure,” Carla said. “I’ll try to find out, but right now I’m checking on these five witches to see—Oh Ancestors! All five of them have been killed.” She took a loud breath. “Someone is targeting fertility witches.”
    “The last file,” Sutton said slowly, “is full of directions on how to disable the witch’s power by cutting her, using a stun gun, etcetera. There’s a number to call for sightings, directions, capture, and delivery.”
    Key scanned the file, his stomach churning with a potent combination of disgust, outrage, and just enough of the darker craving to have those witches. You have a witch in your room, that seductively cool voice whispered while his veins swelled for the feel of witch blood. Hating that part of himself, he said, “I’ll call the number.”
    “Wait, I want to trace it,” Sutton said. “Okay, go.”
    Key switched lines on his BlackBerry and dialed. Waited through the rings and forced himself to breathe.