by Helen Bell
“I get that a lot,” Gideon told him.
Philippe regarded me as if I was an alien with four heads. “But … how … how is it possible?”
“You see,” Gideon started, “when someone is brilliant, like me for instance, he tends to be right most of the time. Believe it or not, it’s actually exhausting to always be—”
I rolled my eyes and showed Philippe my left palm. “This is why I’m strong.”
After the stunt he’d just pulled, I wasn’t inclined to explain anything about myself to this asshole. But Gideon had said he might be able to help, and really, what did I have to lose?
His eyes grew larger.
He drew closer and took my hand, then trailed his fingers over the ink, fascinated. “Incroyable,” he muttered in French and in English said, “Black magic. The rarest, the most powerful, I’ve ever seen.”
“Do you have any idea who could be responsible for it?” Gideon’s tone was serious again.
Silence fell on the room as Philippe examined the tattoo, muffled music in the background.
“Less drooling, more sharing your thoughts, Philippe. Tonight,” Gideon said after a while.
Philippe let go of my hand and turned to look at Gideon. “No. I have no idea who may be behind it, but whoever cast the spell is either not afraid to be caught by the Watchers or knows how to cover their tracks very well.”
“The Watchers? Who are they?” I said.
“They’re the law enforcement officers of the entire Hidden World, which is how we refer to the supernatural world. Practicing black magic is illegal,” Gideon explained, and then addressed Philippe. “Okay, let’s move on to the reason I’m here. Where is it?”
“Djar’s hideout?” Philippe asked.
Gideon lost his patience. “No, the tooth fairy’s. What do you think? Of course Djar’s hideout. You called, claiming you know where he is. Ring a bell?”
Philippe seemed insulted by his response. “Could you be any ruder?”
“You’d be surprised. Now, talk,” Gideon replied.
“First, let me start by saying how hard it was to obtain the intel.”
“I’ll double the pay. Where. Is. Djar?” Gideon demanded.
“It’s not money I seek.” When Gideon’s eyebrow cocked in surprise, he elaborated. “My lover, a female human, has disappeared.”
“A human?” Gideon interrupted, his tone suggesting it wasn’t like Philippe to have a human girlfriend.
“She is. I know, it baffles me as well. How an inferior creature like her caught my heart is beyond me. But she did. The last time I heard from her was a week ago when she called to end our relationship, not sounding like her usual self. She said she was starting a new life away from everyone and asked me not to look for her.
“I wanted to make sure she was all right, so I called her the following night, but she wasn’t taking my calls. Now her mobile phone is out of service, and all her social media accounts have been deleted too. She just disappeared off the face of the earth. I need to be reassured that nothing bad has happened to her. I’ve been searching for her everywhere, used every connection I have, even sent a human to her house to check if her parents know anything about her whereabouts. They don’t.
“I questioned her friends, too, especially the Newborn vampire, Kelly, who swore to me she didn’t hurt her and that her blood craving was under control. I don’t know if I believe her. It’s hard to trust baby vampires around humans. Newborns are unstable. I fear for my lover’s safety. I will give you Djar’s whereabouts if you give me hers.”
“What makes you think I can find her if you couldn’t?” Gideon asked.
“I’ve been told I’m too emotionally involved. It affects the way I work, and useful information eludes me. I can’t see things clearly. I am positive you’ll have more productive results than I had,” Philippe answered.
“All right, I’ll do it, but you goddamn better have Djar’s location. Your human, how close was she to you? Have you shared a blood connection with her?”
My eyes furrowed in confusion. “Blood connection? What’s that?”
“In our fangs,” Philippe explained, “all vampires have two types of substances that can be injected into humans, or witches. The first type is called Erasure. Adults and Newborns use it whenever they feed on humans who have no knowledge of our existence. It stays in our victims’ system for thirty minutes and obliterates the memory of us drinking from them.
“The second type is unique to each vampire, like fingerprints, and called Bounding. It’s a precious gift we can choose to give to our mortal. Once it’s out of the fangs, our body won’t generate new Bounding liquid until our human dies. Three things happen to the mortal when this substance enters him or her: one, the body stops aging but is still vulnerable to injuries and diseases and remains fragile.
“Two, the blood turns poisonous to other vampires. And three, it also becomes the sole source of food for the vampire who gave him or her the Bounding liquid. No other blood will nourish that vampire as long as the human lives. The two are bound together. We refer to it as having a blood connection.” Philippe’s eyebrows clenched together as he observed me for a moment, then turned his head to Gideon. “She’s rather ignorant of the way our world works. Odd considering she’s with you. If not a pet or a Donor, what is the human to you? Who is she?”
Gideon’s forehead wrinkled in question. “Didn’t I introduce her when we came in?”
“I’m afraid you failed to do that,” Philippe answered.
“Oh, then it must be none of your goddamn business,” Gideon said and switched the subject back to his missing girlfriend. “The girl, do you have a blood connection with her?”
He mumbled something about Gideon being ill-mannered, which was accompanied by a few French words sounding like curses, before answering. “No. She was my Donor, and I love her deeply.”
“Yeah, so much so you needed Henry to calm your sorrow,” I commented in contempt.
“He was just an enjoyable fuck. Nothing more,” he said calmly, then asked Gideon, “Why is my lover’s status relevant?”
“If you’re not bound to her, it’s unlikely someone took your Donor to starve you,” Gideon answered. “To trace her, I need at least the basics: physical description, home address, age.”
Philippe walked behind the desk and opened a drawer, picking up a cell phone. “She used to aim it at us at various angles and took pictures. She referred to it as …” His face contracted with thought.
“A selfie,” I offered.
“Yes, a selfie,” he said and padded to Gideon to hand him the cell phone. “There are plenty of photos of her on it.”
I neared Gideon to take a look at Philippe’s Donor, and my stomach dropped to my toes. With long, wavy chocolate-brown hair and blue eyes, the girl who was making funny faces at the camera was my sister.
Chapter 7
I couldn’t believe it. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the screen again, but it was still Zoey on it.
“What’s her name?” Gideon asked.
“Zoey,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. “Her name is Zoey.” My gaze moved up to Philippe. “How the hell did my sister get involved with you?”
“Your sister?” both Gideon and Philippe said simultaneously, and I wasn’t sure which one sounded more surprised.
I snatched the phone from Gideon’s hand and scrolled down. One by one, I went over the pictures. Zoey smiling at the camera, Zoey laughing, Zoey hugging Philippe, Zoey kissing Philippe. Kissing! I shook my head. No, this was not happening. She looked happy. She looked in love. With him, a moron, a jerk, a cheater—a leech! What had she been thinking? It didn’t make sense. All her life guys had been throwing themselves at her feet, so why had she settled for an idiot vampire who didn’t really seem to care for her?
“Aren’t you supposed to be missing?” Philippe’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “She was searching for you. We had many fights over it, actually. I did not want her to contin
ue her search; I was afraid for her safety. It is a job for the human police, not for a human without the skills to defend herself.”
My eyebrows clenched together, my lips pursing in anger. “Where did you meet my sister?”
“At a nightclub called The Dark Night,” he began. “One night, I spotted a human, magnificent, so beautiful, from across the cave. She was with Kelly, the Newborn I mentioned, and another human, a female, less pretty. Her name was Izzy. I approached and introduced myself. After that night, we spent quite some time together. She became dear to my heart, and I offered to allow her to be my Donor and my lover. My offer filled her with joy and excitement. After a while, she confessed her love to me.”
I tossed him an appalled look. “Confessed her love to you? Did she know about your enjoyable fucks? About Henry?”
“Of course she did. Unfortunately, Zoey wished to have me all to herself and was upset when I didn’t give her exclusivity.” He stopped and wrinkled his nose, as if the smell of my cancer got worse. “However,” he continued,“not wanting to lose our beautiful relationship, she finally accepted that my body could never be chained to one person.”
His words repulsed me. Zoey loved him and wanted monogamy. Rather than setting her free, he kept her in a toxic relationship where she was miserable. Now, Zoey was probably in her dorm roo—no, wait. She wasn’t. She’d left for an unknown place! But why? It was uncharacteristic of her to act like that. Fear crept into my heart. Had my abductor done something to her because I’d escaped?
My gaze jerked to the douche leech. “When did you last hear from Zoey?”
“A week ago,” he replied.
I felt a slight relief. A week ago, I had still been locked up. Besides, my kidnapper wouldn’t hurt my family now that I was free; they were his only insurance I wouldn’t go to the cops. He’d said so himself when he threatened me.
“The human you sent to my house. Did he talk to my parents?” I asked him.
“He did. Zoey called them too, also about a week ago, saying she’d decided to leave school because she met new friends and wished to go live with them. She asked to be left alone.”
Clearly, she had gone through something, and her jerk of a boyfriend hadn’t been there for her. I stepped up to him and slapped the phone to his chest, not gently. “You disgust me. I’ll make sure my sister will never take you back.” I turned to Gideon. “Are we done here?”
“We are,” Gideon said, then looked at Philippe. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Bear in mind that in the next few weeks, I’ll be away for business and can only be reached via my electronic mail,” Philippe told him.
Gideon nodded, and we walked out of the room. As we moved through a sea of people, too distracted by thoughts of Zoey, I bumped into someone. A girl, I thought. Mumbling an apology, I continued walking toward the front door.
When we reached the alley, Gideon stopped me. “His Donor is your sister, and understandably, you’ll want to help find her. But we are doing it my way.” His tone left no room for argument, but I wasn’t going to, anyway. Whatever the reason behind Zoey’s weird behavior was, it might be connected to the supernatural world. Gideon was part of it, knew its rules, knew how it worked, knew its creatures. I didn’t.
“Okay, your way, so long as it brings us to her. I just have one request. The man who kidnapped me may still be watching her every move. When we find her, before approaching, we have to double-check whether she’s being watched or not. If she is, we need to be careful. I don’t want to risk my parents’ lives, or hers.”
“Okay,” he said, and we headed to his bike.
During the ride back to his house, I brooded over my parents. Their only two children were in trouble. One daughter had gone missing; the other suddenly decided to drop out of college, cut off all ties with the people in her life, and then disappeared. They must be going out of their minds with worry.
The cold wind stopped whipping through my hair, and I noticed Gideon had parked his bike in his driveway. After we got inside, he gestured to the kitchen.
“In the refrigerator, you’ll find two bottles of BFB.”
“Two? Not that it’s any of my business, but how can you afford those pricey pills? And the designer clothes while living here?” I asked.
“You think I purchased a house in this neighborhood because of money issues?”
“Why else then? I doubt having drug dealers around the corner, gangs, and graffiti everywhere would appeal to anyone,” I said.
“No, it wouldn’t, but for some people, less noisy or concerned neighbors would. Let’s put it this way: screams coming out of someone’s house around here probably won’t lead to a human cop knocking on your door.”
“You’ve tortured people in this house?”
One dark eyebrow arched, saying, “Duh.” Then he stepped to the coffee table and picked up something.
“I surmise you don’t have a phone on you,” he said and handed me a brand new cell. “I programmed its number and mine in. Also, there are a tube of sunscreen and sunglasses for you on the kitchen counter.”
“Sunscreen and sunglasses? Why?”
“Since a small quantity of vampire blood is running through your veins, you’ll be sensitive to sunlight.”
I became alarmed. “Wait, will exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays infect me with the UV virus?”
“No, only vampires can contract it. You’re still human, but because of the Ancient’s blood, you’ll experience some pain in the sun.”
He slid his coat sleeve up to his wrist and checked his Rolex, then headed toward the French doors. “I have to go out to buy healthy blood bags before sunrise. You go to bed, get some rest. Tomorrow night is going to be busy.” His hand was on the door handle when he turned to me. “Almost forgot, I packed the freezer with chocolate ice cream. Hope you like the flavor.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he left.
Great. Tempting, empty calories stuffed in the freezer. Thank you, girl with the golden tears, whoever you are. Couldn’t you have come up with a healthier choice of food for the spell? Broccoli, for instance? Sighing, I trudged upstairs. After I brushed my teeth and changed into comfortable pants and a shirt, I crawled into bed. I set the alarm for seven a.m to take the BFB and then let sleep take over.
A vivid dream pulled me back into the all-white hallway. Standing in front of that girl’s room, I had blue pants and a black T-shirt on me again. However, she was shirtless and in a sheer white dress, her long hair concealing her breasts.
“Don’t look at Oberon,” she whispered to me, tears of gold trailing down her cheeks. Gossamer wings spread from her back.
“Are you fae?” I asked her. Light snow started to fall from the white ceiling, the temperature dropping. I shivered. “What’s your name? Who are you? What are you?”
She opened her mouth, and beeps poured out of it. They grew louder and louder until the sound jerked me out of the dream.
I sat up and reached over, tapping the “Off” button on the alarm and hauling myself out of bed. I made a quick trip down to the kitchen, swallowed a BFB pill, and returned to the bedroom, filled with curiosity. The spell didn’t prevent my brain from thinking or dreaming about the girl with the golden tears. Would it allow me to search her on Google?
I took the cell phone from the nightstand and unlocked its screen, praying for an internet connection. I brought up a browser, content when my prayers were answered, then cursed when my fingers typed in “I want ice cream” rather than “a girl crying golden tears.”
I pinched my nose and closed my eyes. Think. How can I rephrase it in a way that won’t trigger the spell? A few seconds later, I typed in, “Do fae cry golden tears?” Dammit! The words “ice cream” appeared once more. Okay, if not her, then Oberon. I set up a new search: The King of the Fae. Obviously, I didn’t expect to get reliable information, but it was worth a try. A string of hits popped up on the screen.
I slowly scrolled down the first page. Result num
ber one, not relevant, number two, the same, number three, nope, number four … um, sounded promising-ish. Its name was The Mysterious World of the Fae. I tapped on the link. An image showing beams of moonlight shining down through a dark wood filled the home page. The site’s sidebar menu presented the following: About Me, Oberon, Royal Fae, Common Fae, Humans and Fae, How to Protect Yourself from Fae, My Blog, Contact Me.
The About Me page revealed that the owner of the site was a twenty-four-year-old guy with a buzz cut and brown eyes. Although all the creatures in the supernatural world fascinated him, he was most obsessed with the fae. “Yes, folks, they have wings, and they exist,” he assured his readers and added, “Fae are beautiful creatures, and they possess the powers of magic like witches.”
On the Humans and Fae page, he explained the danger of humans looking at a royal fae. “They’re creatures of incredible power, so much so that one glance at them and fear will overwhelm your body. You’ll die from a heart attack.” A fae commoner, however, was safe to glance at, at least according to him.
I moved on to other pages, exploring. The data on the site matched what I already knew about the supernatural world. The more I read, the more I was convinced that the information was reliable. And there was a lot of it.
The guy even provided details about the fae’s appearance. Curious, he’d asked his friend, a vampire, about it and learned that fae were humanoids with pointed ears and wings. Their skin was flawless, their hair thick and shiny. The fae’s social class could be recognized by their wings: the commoners’ were gossamer, while royals’ were angelic.
“Um, interesting,” I commented to myself, then searched for anything mentioning golden tears. There was nothing about it, so I went to Oberon’s page.
Just one short paragraph appeared on the screen. Oberon: The King of the Fae, a powerful, ruthless being with white-feathered wings. Only once in a blue moon does he visit our dimension, which was why few supernatural creatures had ever seen him. The paragraph ended with the owner of the site hoping his readers would never encounter The King of the Fae. Yeah, too late for this reader, pal.