Midnight Hunter (The Execution Underground Book 3)

by Kait Ballenger

  She stomped to the other side of the kitchen.

  “Most people are happy to hear they still have a soul. Though I still think you’ve been attempting to give orders to a regular house cat,” he said.

  She glared at him through narrowed eyes. “You just wait until he does something worthwhile, then you won’t think he’s so ordinary.” With that, she turned toward the hall. “I’m going to go out in the stairwell and make a few calls. In private.”

  She strode from the room, and he was surprised when she didn’t slam the apartment door behind her. Once she was gone, he ate another brownie, the whole time pondering if she really had been offering herself to him. No empty bed, huh?

  * * *

  VERA RESISTED THE very strong urge to slam the door behind her as she left the apartment. She’d told Shane she needed to make some calls to find out when the next meeting was, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. There were only two black-magic covens in Rochester, and she knew the next meeting times of both of them, which made her feel both guilty for lying to Shane and like a criminal, which she was. God, what was wrong with her? She’d been so stupid looking for a hit of power last night that she’d participated in the circle without asking what spells they’d been casting. She’d been so concerned with the magical high, she hadn’t bothered to think about who she was hurting or even the state of her own soul.

  Now, as her stomach twisted into knots and a cold sweat broke out over her palms, she thought of the disturbing sight of Mrs. Foley attacking Doc Grey, and it made her question her own sanity. She hoped beyond anything that she hadn’t haphazardly allowed herself to be a part of a spell like the one that had animated Mrs. Foley.

  The guilt had been eating away at her insides since she’d realized what exactly was happening. Necromancy? Really? That was one area of black magic she’d promised herself she would never get into, and now she might have inadvertently gotten herself neck-deep in a huge steaming pile of it.

  The worst part? Ever since she’d left the meeting, she’d been itching to experience that power again.

  She sat down on the top of the staircase outside the apartment. Burying her face in her hands, she tried to clear her mind of everything. Of her possible transgressions, of the sight of her gorgeous half-naked professor who was a damn witch hunter to boot, of the horror show that had been the decapitated Mrs. Foley. Her life was royally fucked up.

  Meditating for a moment, she concentrated on the in and out of her breath. She wanted to do the right thing and tell Shane the truth, but she couldn’t. Already she envisioned the pity and judgment in his eyes, and she was certain that if she bared herself to him and then felt the sting of his rejection, she would crumble to pieces. It wasn’t as if no one had ever called her a messed-up junkie freak before. Her mother and father had called her much worse. But their opinions of her had never fazed her. They had been wretched people.

  On the other hand, Shane was a fundamentally good person to his core. That made things different. That made his opinion matter. Good people had never been in abundance in her life. They were harder to come by than a blue moon. She wasn’t about to disappoint the one good one she knew, regardless of his “I don’t date students” mantra. Keeping the truth a secret would prove difficult, but if she planned her steps wisely, she could provide Shane with the information necessary to bring the covens to justice without incriminating herself.

  The ache for the power she constantly craved coursed through her, reminding her of all her failures. No. She wouldn’t go back to that. Not again. She’d already been weak once. In that moment she swore to herself that she would never practice black magic again. She’d sworn the same oath to herself many times before, but never had the stakes been so high. After the familiar had shown up in her home, she’d known it was only a matter of time before her habits killed her or worse, led her to kill another. She couldn’t allow that to happen.

  When she had spent enough time sitting on her ass in the stairwell to make it believable that she’d been calling the covens in search of the meeting time, she got up from the stairs. Shane buzzed her back through the ultra-secure door he’d installed to keep Grandma Grey in and any potential foes out, and Vera trudged back into Grandma Grey’s apartment. Grandma Grey’s, or Shane’s? She wasn’t sure who paid the bills and didn’t necessarily have the heart to ask. Initially, she would have said the thought of a man living with his grandmother was completely unappealing, but when she saw the way Shane cared for his grandmother, a warmth filled her chest and she couldn’t deny that she found his care for the elderly woman more than a little bit endearing. Like, did he really have to take care of his sweet but demented grandma on top of being intelligent and having the body of a Greek god? Seriously? It wasn’t really fair to the female of the species.

  She padded down the hall of the small apartment and into the rooster-covered kitchen. Shane was still at the table, the now-empty brownie plate sitting in front of him. Her eyes darted between the crumbs on the plate and him. “How do you eat like that and stay so ripped?”

  “It’s a gift,” he said with a grin. “Besides, I didn’t eat all of them by myself.” He shot her a knowing smirk.

  She pointed a finger at him. “Smart men don’t comment on a woman’s eating habits, regardless of how many brownies she can shove in her mouth at one time.”

  He laughed. “In that case, I guess I’m not as smart as you think I am.”

  “Apparently not.”

  He pinched one of the chocolate crumbs off the plate, tossed it into his mouth and swallowed. “You don’t need to worry about it, though. You could eat whatever you wanted and still be beautiful.”

  She laughed. “Well, aren’t you smooth, Casanova?”

  He lifted the empty plate from the table and put it into the sink. “I don’t try to be smooth. I’m just telling the truth.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. I get what you’re going for. You don’t try to be smooth, you were just born that way, right? It all comes naturally. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that from drunken bar patrons? Be careful, Doc Grey, or I might get the impression you’re trying to come on to me.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant. I would never come on to you. You’re my student.”

  Ouch! Did that one sting or what? She nearly winced at the word never.

  He continued, not seeming to notice how his words had affected her. “But speaking of being born a certain way, would you mind satisfying my curiosity?”

  She frowned. “What does satisfying your curiosity entail?” Damn, she couldn’t keep staring at him if she expected to hold it together. Turning back to the dishes, she started scrubbing the brownie plate.

  “I’ve been wondering...if you were born a witch—and I know you were, because you clearly have witch magic—why do you bother with black magic? You have all the white magic in the world at your disposal.”

  Really? That was what he wanted to know? If he wanted to take a leisurely stroll through her past memories, couldn’t he have asked before he shut her down? Now, if she didn’t answer, her hurt would show through and damn if she would have that. “I’m not usually one for answering questions, but since I can’t resist taking pity on a man who takes care of his ailing grandma, I suppose I’ll make an exception just this once.” She sighed. “Have you ever met a really rich person who, at their core, is completely miserable, despite all their money?”

  Shane nodded his head. “Unfortunately, growing up in Vegas, I knew a lot of people like that.”

  “Basically, if you can understand that concept, that was me, but in my case it was magical abilities. Somehow, despite it all, that didn’t seem like enough. I was a different person back then. I was looking to fill some sort of void and didn’t know how. Then, after my father was murdered and my mother couldn’t stop popping quaaludes, I turned to black magic as a sort of comfort
. It had been something I’d done just to rebel before, but I was never really serious about it until then. By the time I realized it couldn’t fill the void in my life, I was already addicted.” She rinsed the plate before drying it off.

  “I’m sorry about your father.” Sincerity rang in his words. Before she could respond, he added, “And I know what it’s like to have a mother who’s an addict. It’s enough to make anyone act out of character.”

  Her eyes widened. Was he saying his mother had been an addict? The image of his childhood she had envisioned in her head shattered to bits. An addict? She had imagined white picket fences, parents with PhDs as impressive as his, with copies of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past as their bathroom reading material and fresh French-pressed coffee prepared every morning. Somehow, knowing that he hadn’t benefitted from such a perfectly pristine background made him even more impressive. Man, why couldn’t she have turned out that way? He’d been given a crap hand but turned it into a royal flush. Since she wasn’t certain what to say to his revelation about his mother, she avoided the subject.

  “Thanks for the condolences. It’s been a long time since my dad died, though, so I’ve moved on.”

  “What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  She turned away from the dishes to face him. “Actually, he was killed by a hunter. My father was involved in a fair amount of black magic himself. He wasn’t a great person, but even so, losing him was hard, because despite all his flaws he was still my dad, you know?”

  Shane nodded. “I’m sorry that your father was killed, no matter how just the hunter thought he was being.”

  “For a long time I blamed the hunter, and in some ways I still do, but it’s not like my dad hadn’t hurt people. Nevertheless, that doesn’t exactly predispose me to trust hunters. It’s a big deal that I trust you enough to work with you. Anyway, I’m so sorry about your mom.” And she really was. She knew how sucky it was to have a parent on drugs, which was why she’d sworn to herself that she would never have children until she’d cleaned up her act for good. Her drug might have been black magic, but it was as addicting as heroin.

  “Thanks. She’s been addicted to coke from the time I was a small child. We never had a very stable life. She and I haven’t had a relationship since I started working on my first PhD. I’ve long since escaped her and Vegas.”

  “Do you keep anything to remember her by?” She reached into the neckline of her shirt and removed half of a silver pendant that appeared to have been crudely burned in half. “This was my dad’s. They only recovered half from his body, but I’ve always kept it close as a memento, even though he and I never really saw eye to eye.”

  Shane’s eyes widened at the sight of the pendant. He stayed silent for a long moment before asking, “Is that an etching of a crescent moon?”

  She nodded. “Part of one, anyway.”

  Pushing back his chair, he stood and rushed from the room. “I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder.

  She raised a single brow. What was going on?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SHANE ROCKETED INTO his bedroom at lightning speed. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening, right? As soon as he closed the door behind him, he rushed to the dresser and threw open his top drawer. Without a doubt, inside sat the other half of the pendant Vera had identified as her father’s. The other half of the crescent moon was etched into its surface. Shane swore. He’d known from the moment she’d pulled the pendant from under her shirt. Not just any hunter had killed her father. His father had killed him, then taken half the pendant as proof to the Execution Underground that Johnathan Summers was finally dead.

  Shit. Not only did that mean there was bad blood between their families, it meant that Vera had managed to keep her true identity hidden from the Execution Underground. If they had known her father was the infamous Johnathan Summers, there was no way she would have walked out of their facility alive. Which meant one thing: Vera was way more dangerous—and deceitful—than he’d thought.

  It wasn’t as if Shane and his father had ever been close. On the contrary, he’d barely known his father. He’d been raised by his mother, who’d basically been a single parent, not that she’d ever really been great at it, but at least she’d tried. His dad, however, had been so devoted to his career with the Execution Underground that he’d failed at ever being a father. Long hours spent hunting witches and warlocks meant his father had little time for showing up on Christmas Day, or at his fifth birthday party, or just to teach his son how to ride a bike. They had reconnected to a minor extent once Shane was old enough that his own interests had turned to a career with the Execution Underground, a decision that had little to do with any admiration for his father and was based more on the fact that the subject interested him. When his father had been killed in a battle against one of the last menacing warlocks of the time, a year or two after he’d killed Johnathan Summers, Shane had saved the one token that remained on his father’s lifeless person.

  How could he have let this happen? He should have known better than to trust a witch, regardless of whether she was his student or not, which only led him into scolding himself for being attracted enough to a student that his judgment had been blinded. He closed the top drawer and headed back into the kitchen. He had to keep his cool. He couldn’t allow Vera to know that he knew about her past. He still needed her to aid him with this case. Lives depended on it.

  “Are you okay?” she asked when he returned.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just realized I needed to check on Grandma Grey, that’s all.”

  Her eyes softened at the mere mention of his elderly family member. Either she was a really good actress or she legitimately seemed to care for his grandmother. He wasn’t sure which he found more disturbing: the fact that he couldn’t tell the difference, or that he wanted to believe she was truly a nice girl, despite her familial history.

  “The first meeting is scheduled for three nights from now. The next isn’t for five nights.”

  Shane swore. “I had hoped they’d be sooner. This gives us time to prepare, but if our necromancer is working independently from his coven, we could have more victims on our hands by then.”

  “Not to sound morbid, because clearly I don’t want anyone to die, but wouldn’t more victims mean more potential clues into what’s going on?”

  “From a purely logical standpoint, yes, but...” Had he really been so wrong about her? Had his judgment been so clouded that he’d failed to see what was right in front of him? How could she have suggested such a thing, even with a disclaimer? His features drew together in a look of disgust.

  Vera gaped at him as if he’d slapped her. “I said I wouldn’t want—you don’t think...?” She closed her eyes, and a shiver ran through her from head to toe, as if she couldn’t stand the mere thought of him thinking badly of her. “It was just a question. I was trying to figure out a strategy.”

  “The deaths of innocent people should never be viewed as strategy.” His words dripped with venom, but at the moment he didn’t care. Anger bubbled inside him because he’d been so easily duped, and he harbored one big wallop of hurt, too, because damn it, he liked her. He really liked her. Finding out that she wasn’t what she appeared to be felt like a stab straight to the chest.

  Vera scowled. “You know that’s not what I meant,” she snapped.

  Despite her anger, visible hurt clouded her eyes. Damn it. Regardless of her deceit, he would never forgive himself if he made her cry.

  Tears threatened to fall, but she held herself together. “I’ll just keep my mouth shut and leave the planning to you, then, since in your opinion I’m clearly subhuman. We may not know each other well, but I figured you’d at least give me a bit more credit than that.”

  Guilt washed over him. She was right. Regardless of her past or her family or whatever lau
ndry list of awful things she’d done, she was also the woman who had baked brownies just to make his dementia-ridden grandmother happy. She might be a liar or at least not entirely honest, but she wasn’t a monster. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she cut him off.

  “If I’m supposed to stay with you for protection—and by the way, I don’t see that these four walls are any more protected from witchcraft than my own home, but whatever—where am I supposed to sleep? Suddenly I find myself overwhelmingly tired of the day’s bullshit.”

  He knew from the way her mouth tightened that by “the day’s bullshit” she meant his bullshit. He couldn’t say he really blamed her.

  “The guest bedroom is the first room on the right. The bathroom is right next door, and there are fresh towels in there, if you want to shower.” He tried not to think about how sexy she would look naked with warm water dripping over her sweet curves. Dear God, help him. “Make yourself at home.”

  Without even so much as a good-night, she stalked into the hallway.

  “And, Vera,” he called after her.

  He heard her footsteps pause. She poked her head around the corner. “What?” she snapped.

  “There are more wards here than you think.” He stood and tilted the table onto two of its legs, displaying the underside to her. A ward against black magic painted in his own blood covered the bottom of the table. “They’re all around the house, pretty much any type of magic warding symbol you can think of. They’re just hidden from plain view, so I promise you’re safer here than you think. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She appraised him, as if she were trying to solve an extremely puzzling Rubik’s Cube. “Hmmph.”

  That was all she said. Aside from that, nothing but the light padding of her footsteps against the hallway carpet answered him.

  He lingered in the silence for a long moment, uncertain what to do, until he decided he might as well retire to his room, too. He had some rather important reading to attend to. After retrieving his weapons and his Execution Underground files, along with the pile of midterm papers he needed to grade, he, too, headed down the hall. Once he stood in the privacy of his own room, he slipped back to the top drawer again, removing the half of Johnathan Summer’s pendant, along with a file stored in a manila envelope he’d been meaning to read for some time.