Dark Pact

by Lisa Manifold

  “You must promise me, swear a pact with me on your honor, the honor of the Nightingales, that you will keep this safe. If Madigan, or anyone else like him got it—” he closed his eyes, and a shudder ran through him—“The world would no longer be safe for anyone. Not humans, not supernaturals—no one.”

  He had a point. Damn him.

  The silence was getting awkward as I thought over everything he’d said. A sane person would walk away from this. But I wasn’t sane. I was a Holliday and a Nightingale, and we faced things head on. For the most part, anyway. Even with my looming life change, I couldn’t say no to him.

  “All right,” I said finally. “I’ll do it.”

  Caleb rose. “Then you must make a pact with me,” he said formally. He stood up, indicating that I needed to do the same. “Give me your hand, câpân.”

  I held it out, and he came around to my side of the desk, taking it in his own. I had the same sense I’d had before when I touched his hand—of a large person, of safety, of protection. Having that feeling made me see how often I didn’t feel safe.

  Still holding my hand in his, he whipped out a small knife, and before I could protest, cut first his hand, and then mine. He held them together and something—not just blood—passed between us. I stared at him.

  “Swear to me, Deana Holliday, that you will take this trust, and you will keep this safe,” Caleb said, his voice low.

  “I swear I will keep it safe.”

  “For the rest of your life.”

  “For the rest of my life.”

  “And you will pass this on to another such as yourself.”

  “And I will pass this on to another such as myself.” God help them, I thought.

  He gripped my hand tighter, and it was as though I’d stuck my finger in a light socket. There was an actual shock that passed through me. I staggered, and blinked.

  Caleb licked his finger, and then passed it over the cut he’d made in my hand. It healed as though he’d never cut me.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “You have sworn your pact with me, and I entrust you with this,” Caleb said formally. “I thank you, Deana Holliday. You have allowed me to go to the spirit land of my father with peace.”

  “I’m glad,” I said, and I meant it, even with the weight of what I’d agreed to weighing heavily on me.

  “I must go now, câpân. It’s my time. Hide it, and then go through the papers I have left you. They will show you your path.” He patted my hand.

  It was hard to wrap my head around all of this. “What do I do now?”

  “Hide it. Then read the papers.” Caleb moved to the door. “I will see you again,” he said.

  Then he was gone.

  I stared at the pistol on my desk. Son of a bitch. I had to hide it. I snatched it up, and ran to the back office. I put it in the safe and closed the door gratefully, glad to have it out of my sight.

  There was no way I could ever use this or let anyone know I had it. The target on my back would be larger than life. I couldn’t tell my family. I couldn’t tell anyone. Anyone I told would be a potential target, and if I judged incorrectly, they’d try to take it from me.

  It was a metric shit ton of power.

  All locked in my safe. I’d have to come up with a better way to hide it. Something like Caleb’s crumpled brown bag.

  Oh, shit. I ran back out to the front office and found the bag still on the desk. Anyone looking for him, say a demon named Madigan, could walk in here and see the bag—I had to get rid of it.

  Feeling paranoid as hell, I burned it over my trash can. Then I sat down and opened the file. Time to see if anything in here could save me. Because otherwise, I’d have to find a Volcanic exit plan, and hide this thing.

  I looked at the first page. It was a will and attached at the top with a paper clip was a business card for an attorney. Okay. All fine and normal. I set that aside and looked at the next page. It was a deed to a house in—where the hell was Bisbee?

  When I looked online, it was a tiny town in Arizona. What the hell would I be doing in Arizona? Nothing, if I could help it. It was so hot there.

  The next page was a list of bank accounts—“Holy hell,” I said. Whatever Caleb had been doing, it had paid well. He had a hefty sum in his name. Now in my name. When he’d said he didn’t have a lot, he’d been seriously underestimating things.

  I was so getting audited. I could feel it. Getting inheritances from clients? The state would be salivating over such a juicy target. But I’d need to deal with that later. Hopefully, he’d told the attorney something good about why I was his heir.

  The next page was the best. The absolute best. I remembered Caleb telling me that he chatted with people in online forums. He’d left me a list of all his logins. Which made me laugh. He was so old-fashioned, so formal. And here were all his logins, like anyone else in this day and age.

  Clicking on to the forums, I started to read. I couldn’t believe how open people were. Didn’t they know this was the internet, and nothing ever went away? That nothing was private? I glanced at Caleb’s notes again, and he’d written, I don’t often comment, but I try to read to stay aware of what’s going on. You might be able to find out more about the vampire’s death.

  That would be nice. Really fucking nice, as a matter of fact. I went to the forums specifically for vampires. There was a thread dedicated to Who Killed Jessamine? Some of the comments were completely out of control—it was kind of funny to see that vampires had the same conspiracy theory nutters that the rest of the world did.

  No one knew why she’d been targeted. Outside of her recent argument with Lavina, which everyone seemed to know about, and which some people were sure Lavina had organized it because that was up her alley, no one disliked Jessamine. At least, not that they were admitting.

  They were afraid of Levi. That came through. I remembered Tuesday telling me that Levi was strong, and he’d protected himself and Jessamine for years from being dragged into a clan, or politics, or whatever it was vampires did.

  On a whim, I searched out my aunts’ name. There were a number of threads about them, and there was one about the recent kerfuffle in Deadwood. How did people hear about it? There had been no one there outside of the family—and then I saw that Deirdre had actually made a post asking if anyone knew about a witch. She called her a hedge witch. That term made no sense to me, so I wrote it down to look up later. No one had mentioned this to me, but that was interesting.

  This would explain how so many people knew my aunts. I stopped myself. I could go down that rabbit hole all day, and I was on the clock. As interesting as this all was, I was no closer to finding out who had killed Jessamine.

  So she didn’t have any enemies—not any that were publicly declaring themselves. No one felt she needed to die, or was a pain in their ass, to their agenda, or anything else they were willing to state openly.

  That meant someone had killed her for a reason that was hidden, and that didn’t spell good news for anyone. Since no one was talking, I’d need to go to Levi. I needed him to go through her journal, see if there was anything concerning.

  And they were married—I assumed that was what being mated meant. Wouldn’t she have told him if there was someone who had a beef with her? That would be normal, standard.

  Which put me back into waiting for nightfall to find Levi and question him. I sighed. This ‘only available at night’ was such a pain in the ass.

  I spent the next two hours reading through the forum, fascinated. There was so much more to this world than I thought. In addition to vampires, there were shifters of all varieties, including dragons. Fairies, fae—I wasn’t sure of the difference, although it seemed to be wing based—goblins, trolls, dwarves, yeti, witches, wizards, necromancers—I knew about them—and pretty much anything I’d ever read or seen a movie about. Not all the supernaturals were online, but there were discussion boards for all of them.

  This was all great, but it hadn’t helped me find a ki
ller. Well, it told me that there was a killer, and he or she did this wanting to hide it. Because goodwill for Jessamine was falling from the sky, according to these boards.

  I looked at the clock. It wasn’t quite closing time, but I figured it had been quiet after the first hour, so I could cut out and go home early. I found that I was tired, and wanted to nap before Tuesday got up, and I asked her to ferret out where Levi might be. I mean, I knew where he was, but he hadn’t given me permission to call, or come by again, and I worried that he might not want to help me.

  Then again, maybe he would. It was in his best interest to discover if someone was harboring a secret grudge toward his wife.

  The house was quiet when I came in, and I went straight up to my room after leaving a note for Tuesday on the kitchen island. I fell asleep faster than I’d thought, considering my head was full of everything I’d read today.

  The rollercoaster was rattling up the hill, and the rattle increased until it was shaking my entire body. I opened my eyes to see Tuesday looming over me.

  “Ahh!” I half-yelled.

  “I came up to wake you as you asked,” she said. “What’s on the agenda this evening?”

  “Where’d you go last night?”

  “To tell Zachary all that has gone on. He is secretly pleased that you have saved your friend. He believes, as I do, that this was part of some plot on the part of Delgado, and he’s happy to see it thwarted.”

  “Does he have any idea who might have killed her?”

  Tuesday sat down, shaking her head. “No. And I believe him when he says he doesn’t.”

  “Okay, well I had an idea. I spent some time on the message boards—”

  “How did you find out about those?”

  “Witches are on the boards,” I shot back. “It’s not like I’m not part of the people who hang there.”

  Her lips pursed. “That’s true. Then it’s good you were able to access them.” Her lips pursed slightly, and I could tell she wanted to know badly how I’d managed it, but I wasn’t breathing a word about my source. Like my aunts wouldn’t have told me? I didn’t understand why this, of all things, was a big deal.

  “Anyway, everyone was saying how wonderful she was, what a loss to the community this was, who could have wanted her dead, and it came to me that this was carefully planned. Someone knew she and Lavina fought. Someone wanted this to look like a fight that got out of hand. Someone had it in for her, and wanted it secret.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “You’re not getting it,” I said, sitting up. “You said last night that there was more to it. I’m agreeing, and saying it’s probably worse than we think. We need to call Levi, and have him go through the journal to see what else she might have seen, who might have been upset with her.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Do you think he’ll do it?” I asked.

  “Why wouldn’t he? He wants to find the killer as much as you do.”

  “Can you call him?”

  She gave me a look, and then pulled her cell from her pocket, and made the call. “Do you want him to come here?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. She hung up. “He’s on his way.”

  “Then I’d better get my ass up,” I sighed. “I’m just so tired.”

  “This is a challenging week. I find that I’m ready to rest at the dawning as well,” she said.

  Were we exchanging confidences? It felt like it. I smiled, and Tuesday drifted out of the room. I didn’t envy the vampires for much, but every single one I’d met, even the thuggish ones, moved with a grace that was gorgeous.

  Fifteen minutes later, I’d restored myself, called my mom to update her, since I didn’t need her and the aunts sending in any sort of calvary. She let me know they were close to something that could help me, which cheered me.

  I was in the kitchen having a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Tuesday went to answer it, and returned with Levi. He was carrying the small leather journal.

  “How can I help you?” His deep voice and western accent rolled through the room.

  I could listen to him talk forever. He could read my water bill with that voice. “Can you look through the journal and see if she had any problems, or troublesome readings—”

  “Scrying,” he interjected.

  “Okay, if she had any troublesome interactions with anyone else. Because whoever did this wants us to think it was Lavina. I think they knew that Delgado and the vamp cops would think it was her putting Kel up to it.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Did Delgado look all that surprised when the blood memory showed that it wasn’t Kel?” I’d been going over that moment in my head, and something about it had been bothering me, but until this moment, it hadn’t all come together.

  “He looked irritated,” Tuesday snickered.

  “Well, yes, but he didn’t look surprised,” I said again.

  “No, he did not,” Levi said slowly.

  “And he knew the blood memory could have cleared Kel and Lavina. But he didn’t do it. Why?”

  “That’s a good question,” Levi said, meeting my eyes.

  “I think the answer is in that journal,” I said. “If you translate, we’ll write it out, and then we can compare it to the message boards, and anyone else you think we might need to look at.”

  Levi nodded. “That’s not a bad plan.”

  “It’s not great, but it’s the best I have,” I said.

  “Let’s get started. We’re down to four days until Delgado comes looking for answers,” Tuesday said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two days later, after working two nights in a row, we hadn’t found anything that Levi felt was worth pursuing. And he’d been good about following up on anything that looked promising. Watching him questioning people, even over the phone, showed me why Tuesday had warned me about him.

  He was ruthless. But even that ruthlessness didn’t yield a solid lead.

  “I need to go to bed,” I said. “I’m so tired, and I have to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Go ahead,” said Tuesday from her station at her laptop. “I’ll get you up if we find anything.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sleep well,” Levi said, his eyes following me as I went upstairs.

  That was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep. When I woke, the sun was shining in my window. They hadn’t found anything, then. I was down to just over twenty-four hours. For the first time, I felt a wave of despair.

  We weren’t going to find anything. My phone ringing on the bedside table dragged me from serious moping.

  It was my mom. “Hey,” I said.

  “We’ve sent the vamp spray,” she said.

  “Call it by its rightful name!” I heard someone yell in the background.

  Mom sighed. “All right, all right. Keep your hair on. The Vamp NoMo spray should be there today.”

  I burst out laughing. “Who named that? Gran?” I said, overcome with giggling at the thought. Gran was the most proper of the three of us, but Deadwood had a weird effect. She could have. “You actually made it!”

  “We did, And no, Gran did not name it,” Mom said. “As I’m sure you know. It was Daniella. We shipped it express, and it should be there shortly, according to the tracking number.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Spray it at the vampire in question, and they’ll fall down in a deep sleep, giving you about seven and a half minutes to get away.”

  “What, you tested it?”

  “Sort of,” Mom hedged.

  “What does that mean? This is my ass, Mom.”

  “Well, there’s a zombie in the basement at the shop,” she said quickly.

  “What? Why do you—you know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know right now. But I will be asking for details later. So when you sprayed the zombie, it knocked them for seven plus minutes?”

  “Yes. On average. Sometimes, it went a little longe
r. But I think if you plan for six minutes, you’ll be fine.”

  “I love you, Mom,” I said, grinning. “I have until tomorrow. So if things go to shit, I’m out of here. I’ll lock up the house.”

  “Just send me a text. Tell me that you burned a pan, or something,” she said.

  “Mom, thanks. I know you have other things to do.”

  “Well, none of us are on a deadline, so this was more important. How are things on your end?”

  “Not as good as yours. The Vamp NoMo spray is timely,” I said.

  “Dee, if it comes to that, you run your ass off. You get far away, and don’t even text me. But I would appreciate it if you locked down everything whenever you leave the house.”

  “I’m doing it now. I need to go into the office, Mom, so I’m going to go.”

  “I wish I was there,” she said.

  “I’m glad you’re not. It would make me worry more. No one’s going to come at you up there.”

  “That’s not necessarily a comfort.”

  “Nothing is right now. Except NoMo spray.”

  We both laughed, and then said, “Love you,” at the same time.

  When I got up, I felt hopeful. I had an exit strategy. I’d just need to manage to hide the spray on my person and then use it if needed. Sounded simple, but it would take some planning on my part.

  I decided to go into the office late, to wait on the spray. I wanted to be able to carry it with me at all times now, now that I was down to less than two full days.

  The package came within two hours, and I tossed it in my bag, and took Baby and headed out. I didn’t feel safe on either of the bikes at the moment. When I got to the office, I glanced around the parking lot. This had been the week for people waiting on me, so if there was someone there today, I wanted a heads up.

  But the lot was clear. I hurried into the office to check out the spray. As expected, there were tons of notes about how to use it. Desdemona had written, It works on humans too. We sprayed each other and your mom. Gives you about three minutes.

  Then in Gran’s writing, Three minutes is a good middle ground. I should know, as I sprayed all of them and timed it.