“At least now you can clear you brother’s name,” I said. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Erin shook her head. “Carla will say there’s no proof Beverly is working alone, assuming she believes me at all.”
“I thought it was group rule.”
“It’s supposed to be, but Carla likes to pretend she’s in charge, and everyone just lets her.”
I thought of Cazimir and his role as the self-proclaimed vampire king of Seattle. Most people, even his own people, didn’t really consider him monarch of anything, but they played the game. And what was the difference, really, between bowing down in irony or actual fealty? The result was the same. People deferred to his decisions, he made treaties with the local witches. He called himself a king and acted like one, and in the end it pretty much made him a king of sorts. He was a living example of Fake It Till You Make It.
Erin stood. “I guess I should break the news to everyone else. If she really did attack Byron, we’re all in danger.”
“I’ll let you get to it,” I said. I picked up my purse and my sword, which I’d leaned against the wall near the front door. “Good luck.”
“It’s gonna suck a lot,” she said, grabbing her phone off the coffee table. “Thanks for your help.”
I nodded and left, keeping my sword ready as I made my way to my car in case Beverly had caught up to me. If any of the neighbors saw, I hoped they’d chalk it up to cosplay or LARPing, but I wasn’t willing to face the darkness unarmed.
Chapter 22
The next afternoon, I texted Erin to ask how reporting Beverly’s attack had gone over with her Guild. She replied that Beverly was missing in action. Not surprising. Serial killers never stayed put and waited for hell to rain down on them. That would be too damn easy.
Erin asked if I wanted to go to Beverly’s house and look through her shit in hopes of finding clues or maybe, if we got lucky, a detailed account of her plans. It was either that or stay home and do laundry, so I agreed. I pulled on my last pair of clean pants—dark denim jeans with a few rips in the knees— along with a sweater and another decorative scarf to cover the fading but still prominent bruises on my neck.
Beverly’s house was in West Seattle, not too far from Sean’s. It was a small box of a house, built into the hill and surrounded by similarly tiny, charming homes. Hers was painted bright blue with white trim. The driveway was a slope steep enough to ski down, ending in a garage door. Erin parked on the street.
Someone else in the Guild had given Erin a spare key to Beverly’s house. I had my sword out, and blood thrummed in my ears. If Beverly was here, she wasn’t going to come willingly, and knocking would only give her a head start if she tried to run.
Erin took a breath before she inserted the key into the deadbolt, and then unlocked the door handle, quickly pushing the door open.
There was a thud and a crash of broken glass from somewhere inside. Erin readied her magic, lifting a hand and curling her fingers. I tightened my grip on my sword. Byron tripped into view, stumbling over his injured leg and catching himself against a wall.
“What the hell! What are you doing here?” Erin yelled. She practically jumped over the threshold into the house’s small living room, and I followed. Erin reached Byron as he steadied himself with the help of a wooden cane.
“Nothing! What are you doing?” Byron asked, his voice two octaves too high.
Erin snatched the notebook out of his grasp before he could stop her. She opened it to the first page and shut it again. The color drained out of Byron’s face like his blood was being drained.
“This is Barry’s spellbook,” Erin whispered, disbelieving. “You stole it from the vault.”
“I borrowed it,” Byron corrected. His free hand was down at his side, but he was twisting it around nervously.
No, not nervously. Alarm bells rang in my mind. He was gathering energy for a spell. I stepped forward and started to speak, to warn Erin, but he flung the spell before I could get a word out. Something hit Erin, knocking her backward. Then he turned on me. A blast of wind slammed into me. I lost my footing and struggled to regain my balance.
Byron bolted for the door. His limp had disappeared. Maybe someone had done a healing spell for him.
Erin recovered first and flung her own spell in his direction. A blast of icy wind smacked into him and knocked him over. He scrabbled to his feet as I raced to get in front of him, cutting him off from the door just before he reached it. I held my sword out and snarled.
Byron looked at my sword with a sour expression and then put his hands in the air. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“No? Because right now, it looks like you’re working with Beverly,” Erin said.
“Actually, it’s going to look a lot worse than that,” Byron said cryptically, slamming the cane down next to his foot. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He wore a thick coat, but I could see one of his tattoos snaking up his neck. He had dark circles under his eyes, like he wasn’t getting much sleep. I doubted anyone in the Guild was sleeping soundly, guilty or otherwise.
“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded.
Byron swallowed. “I borrowed Uncle Barry’s book because I was curious, all right? He’d done some great work; none of us can deny that. But he also laid the framework for the death ritual the killer has been using. It’s all in there.” He pointed to the notebook in Erin’s hand. “I don’t think he ever did the spell. He did a less complex version of it, with that woman.” He dropped his hand. “I don’t condone that or this. Killing is wrong. I believe that. I just wanted to understand what was going through his mind at the end. And I thought perhaps if I could understand the ritual the killer is using, I’d be better equipped to stop them.”
“So we’re supposed to believe you’re here to stop Beverly?” I asked, not bothering to drop my sword.
He shook his head. “No, not at all.”
“So why are you?” Erin asked.
His expression turned sheepish. “When you told the Guild one of Barry’s notebooks was stolen, I knew I had to hide it. Carla would never believe I took it for innocent reasons, especially once she saw the spells inside. The killer must have a copy of these spells, or they’d read them before Barry died. They’re definitely working from Barry’s notes. She’d lock me up like she locked up Evan for having a murder on his property. So when you told us Beverly was the attacker…” He gestured with his palm flat, a you see motion.
“You came to plant the book among her things,” I said. “To make it look like she was the one who took it.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do. This nightmare has turned into a literal witch-hunt. Carla would be happy to detain all of us and abolish the Elders. She’s always wanted to run the whole show herself.”
He met Erin’s eyes and she sighed. “You could have just told me. Then I could have ‘found it’”—she put air quotes around the last two words—“and no one would have known.”
“Except she—” Byron pointed at me, finger almost touching the blade of my sword— “thinks I’m guilty. And she might have persuaded you to agree, especially if I told you about having the spellbook.”
“I don’t think you’re guilty,” I said. I hadn’t settled on my opinions on that front. “But I do think you’re acting suspicious.”
“Same thing. Besides, I didn’t want the spellbook to get destroyed.”
Erin was looking at Byron like he was gum on her shoe. “If that book contains instructions on how to burn people down to bones with magic to make someone immortal, then it should be destroyed.”
“That kind of attitude is exactly why we’re not prepared for this.” Byron practically spat the words. “We keep destroying any and all evidence of black magic, as if doing so will eradicate it from the world. It doesn’t work like that.”
Byron had a point. Look at the majority of mortals, who insisted monsters didn’t exist and magic wasn’t real. It didn’t stop the monsters from lu
rking in the shadows or keep magic from impacting their lives, even if they never realized it.
But my mind was still spinning around something he’d said earlier.
“What did you mean when you said it was going to look a lot worse?” I asked.
Byron looked from me to Erin, seemingly weighing something in his mind before his shoulders sank and he dropped his hands. “I didn’t do it,” he said firmly, “but there’s something you need to see.”
Erin’s brow furrowed. My stomach dropped. I could guess what he was going to show us, and I damn sure didn’t like it.
* * *
The basement of this house was unfinished, with exposed wall beams and a cold concrete floor. A washer and dryer sat against a far wall, with a rickety set of shelves to one side that held the detergent and other cleaning supplies. Brooms and mops were shoved into a corner. The air smelled of bleach and mold.
It was a shitty final resting place. I wondered if Beverly had thought the same thing, before the ritual had been completed and stripped her mind away.
“Holy shit,” Erin said when she saw the bones. She raced down the stairs past Byron, nearly knocking him over. I remained behind him so he couldn’t bolt when we weren’t looking.
Bones lay in the center of a circle drawn on the floor in salt and flecks of something green, like a dried herb. The skeleton—Beverly’s skeleton, I assumed—lay flat and lifeless, arms around her back as if they’d been tied there.
Her right hand was missing, the bone ending at the wrist. A single foot dangled outside the circle, wearing her purple chucks. If this body wasn’t Beverly, it was staged to make us think it was her.
“I found her like that,” Byron said, gesturing to the body. “I swear to all the gods, I wouldn’t do this.”
Erin bent over the skeleton. “The bones are human, not vampire,” she said, the second word sticking in her throat. “Fucking hell. Do you think it’s really Bev?”
“You think it’s someone else?” Byron asked, surprised. Clearly, he didn’t like that idea.
“The hand I cut off is gone,” I said.
Erin’s eyes trailed up the arm bones and swallowed uneasily.
Byron paled and gave me a startled look. “You cut off her hand?”
“She was flinging spells at me. What was I supposed to do?” I gestured at the skeleton. “So either this is her, or it’s a very clever attempt to make it look like her.”
It would be a smart move on Beverly’s part to leave a skeleton wearing her shoe and minus a hand in the basement of her house so we assumed she was dead. Then she would be free to go about her business, working on her immortality spell—or whatever her plan was—until she succeeded.
“I can tell you who she is, or at least whether or not it’s Bev. But I need a moment alone with it,” I said reluctantly.
Byron’s head snapped backward so fast I thought his neck would break. “What are you going to do?”
“After what happened with the last one?” Erin asked, referring to the skeleton that tried to squeeze the life out of me. She sounded almost suspicious, as if I might be up to something.
“Can you tell if it’s spelled to attack?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Erin said.
I shrugged. “Then I can tell if it’s really her. Want my help or not?”
“How?” Byron asked.
“She tastes their blood,” Erin said. “It’ll show her who this was.”
I felt my heart skip. “How—”
“Come on, Henri, I’m not an idiot,” she said. “Vampires can see things in blood, right? I figured the Cure didn’t totally strip you bare.”
I stood there blindsided. I shouldn’t have been surprised Erin had figured it out—it wasn’t that much of a leap, and maybe she’d even seen the cuts on the legs of the first two corpses, allowing her to connect the dots—but I didn’t like people knowing my secrets, especially people I didn’t know well enough to trust.
“It’s a very minor version of what I used to be able to do,” I said finally. “But I can tell if it’s her.”
Erin leaned over the bones, placing a hand over them and closing her eyes for a moment. “I don’t feel any magical traps, but I can’t be sure. Dark magic is sort of like dark matter— it’s harder to detect.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said, not bothering to hold back the sarcasm.
I hesitated for just a moment before kneeling beside the intact foot. The flesh of the ankle had been cauterized by the heat of the magic that had stripped the rest of the meat and clothing from the bones. I pulled off the shoe and sliced open the foot.
Byron sucked in a breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Erin watching me with interest and had to force myself to ignore her.
The blood was cold and gelatinous, like salty jello, and I swallowed back bile as I brought it to my mouth. No vampire would dare go near blood like this. But I wasn’t a vampire, and if I wanted to be sure this was actually Beverly and not some clever ruse, I didn’t have a choice.
The vision exploded in my mind as the blood touched my tongue. Beverly was in her kitchen fidgeting with a teabag, struggling to open it with one hand, and hoping her phone would ring. She didn’t know what to do now that that ex-vampire had identified her. She wanted to murder the bitch for cutting off her hand and ruining her life by living to tattle on her to the Guild. She’d been on her way to check on the mortals and that bitch had caught her off guard. She’d hidden in the shadows and attacked, hastily pulling the mask on and not realizing her hair was visible. One stupid mistake and she might have ruined everything.
Her kettle hissed with steam and she made herself a cup of tea in her favorite mug, the one she always used. She noticed a funny taste in the first sip, but took another before her vision blurred. She hit the ground and the world went black.
I snapped back into myself. She’d been poisoned. But she hadn’t seen who’d done it and therefore her memories didn’t hold a single useful clue. It could have been Byron or it could have been literally anyone else. I sighed in frustration, shoving the shoe back on the foot.
At least I knew for sure this was Beverly, for whatever that was worth.
I relayed what I’d learned as we all headed upstairs. I noticed Erin locked the door to the basement when she closed it.
Byron sat at the dining room table while Erin leaned against the counter. A mug was broken on the floor. I pointed at it as I told my story.
“You didn’t see who did it?” Byron asked. He sounded confused, but maybe it was relief in disguise.
“Nope. Beverly didn’t see who, but she’d called or texted someone, probably to let them know the jig was up. If you see her phone anywhere, it could tell us who did it.”
Though if the killer had half a brain cell—and there was no guarantee of that—they’d probably taken the phone or at least erased the evidence from it. I didn’t see it on the counter, where it’d been in the vision.
My own phone buzzed. I pulled it from my pocket. I’d shoved it, a thin wallet, and my Taser into my coat, allowing me to skip the purse. A sword was enough to carry.
The message was from Ry. It only said “He’s awake.”
Chapter 23
I took one of the gaudy red RapidRide buses downtown. It also happened to go all the way up to Ballard, so I didn’t have to change buses, which was a relief. I didn’t think my carrying a sword on Third Avenue would go over as well, even if I insisted it was a costume prop.
I sat at the back and watched people get on and off, leaving my sword next to my leg like it was a cane or umbrella. No one commented on it.
Back when I’d been a vampire, riding around on public transit had always been a fascinating study in humanity. As a human, it was too hot and stuffy with the heater at full blast and a guy in front of me coughing up a lung.
I reached Ry’s house in a little over an hour. I could have stopped for my car, but I couldn’t bring myself to take the detour.
Cazimir is awak
e.
Hope and relief bubbled up inside me, but I tamped them down, unable to let them really fly until I’d seen it for myself. After all, “awake” could mean a lot of things, and Ry had been known to exaggerate in the name of wishful thinking.
I didn’t knock. I tried the door but it was locked. Ry must have heard me jiggle the handle, because he opened it. When I saw his face, I let the relief wash over me. He was grinning.
“Where is he?” I asked, still anxious to see him for myself.
Ry opened the door wide and gestured for me to enter. Cazimir sat on a chair that had been pulled into the living area from the dining room. He wore a t-shirt and sweat pants. His hair was damp and neatly combed. His skin was pale and his eyes bright with the subtle glow of immortality.
“Henri, ma cherie,” he said, laying the French accent on thick. His face was expressionless and his attitude impassive, as though I’d just arrived at the Factory to demand a favor he had no obligation or desire to grant.
An invisible vice squeezed my heart.
“Cazimir,” I said, imitating his tone. “You’re awake.”
“And you are still mortal,” he said flatly. “I assumed by now you’d have hit someone over the head until they gave you immortality.” His eyes roved over to the sword on my belt. “But I see you’ve gotten yourself a proper weapon. I suppose some improvement is better than none.”
“Yeah, well, it’s nice to see you’re no longer doing your Sleeping Beauty impression. It was getting kind of old.”
“I do hate to disappoint.” He smiled, and there was a hint of fang. An honest-to-god tear pricked at my eye, and I forced it away.
King Cazimir was not a king, but he had a regal air about him nonetheless. Even here in Ry’s tiny living room, he had a presence and authority that he’d lacked while he’d wallowed in self-pity after being turned mortal. It was good to have him back, restored to his former, wholly irritating and arrogant self.
Sanguinity (Henri Dunn Book 3) Page 14