by Rain Oxford
“What do you need?” I asked.
“I have a new blood supplier coming in tonight. He’s selling Sanguatine, a synthetic blood that has been out for a while.”
I knew a little about Sanguatine, because I knew the maker of it. Andrew Martin was a demon, like Langril, as well as a necromancer, chemist, healer, and doctor at Quintessence. He first made a synthetic blood for the vampire students at Quintessence. However, it had a soporific effect to help curb their predatory nature. Outside of school, that was counterproductive, so he made a type that wasn’t calming.
“Sounds good. What do you need me for?”
“The price he’s quoting me is too high.”
“Then turn him down.”
“It’s the only synthetic blood that vampires can live on. I want you to make him lower the price.”
“No.”
“You’re my employee. That means you do as you’re told.”
“You’re wrong on both accounts. I’m a private investigator. I’m working here because I like it, but I’m still a private investigator and my work might take me away from the club. My skills help you and you pay me. I’m not going to use my powers to cheat someone out of money.”
“He’s the one trying to cheat me!”
“Supply and demand. Get him to come down, accept the price, or turn him down. You don’t have a lot of options, and I’m not going to help you cheat anyone. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be getting ready for the crowd.”
“At least sit in on the meeting. You’ll see for yourself that he’s trying to gouge me.”
“Fine. Call me when he gets here.” I went downstairs and started scanning the minds of the staff. As I did that, I helped Pitch and Mariah get the bar ready. When it was time to let people in, I skimmed through their thoughts.
Even on a Thursday, the club would be packed. It was rarely crazy on weekdays, but people liked to hang out with fellow paranormals and play with humans. I read the minds of people as they entered and especially those who looked or acted suspicious. Within a few weeks of working here, I learned who the regulars were and which ones I had to worry about.
Over several months of constant practice during nine hour shifts, I mastered the ability to skim minds for particular times, emotions, or key thoughts. Before, I would see too much of a person when all I wanted was to know if they were lying or telling the truth.
A couple hours in, Pitch approached. He was a gorilla shifter, just as tall as Kevin and even more muscular. Even though he could kill me with a half-hearted punch, my instincts didn’t warn me of danger like they did around Kevin. Pitch was a friend. Kevin would eat me in a split second if he thought he could get away with it. In fact, he had tried to sneak up on me several times and it was only my mind control abilities that stopped him from trying harder.
“Hey, Dev. Jorge is about to take his break, but I’m kind of busy in the back. Can you cover me for about fifteen minutes?”
Since my magic was already flowing wild, I caught the image of a woman in his mind. “Sure.” Manning the door was actually the easiest way for me to do my job, and I’d rather do it alone than listen to Pitch talk about his flings.
“Thanks.” He left, probably afraid I’d see his real intention in his mind if he stuck around.
I went to the door and relieved Jorge to take his break. I greeted and chatted with regulars as they entered for another ten minutes until I noticed something odd in the dancing crowd. I focused my power on fear and it directed me to a man who was harassing a sixteen-year-old girl.
She’d gotten past Jorge by stealing her older sister’s driver’s license. The man was a rogue vampire who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, with medium brown hair and dark blue eyes. I sent out an image of the two to all of the staff in the club. It was a backup plan. The instant they were all aware of the situation, I turned my attention to the troublemaker. “Leave her alone and go home,” I ordered him. My magic easily overpowered him and he practically ran for the door. However, before he could reach me, Pitch grabbed him by the shirt collar.
“Where do you think you’re going? Drake is waiting for you.”
I looked deeper in the man’s mind. He’d known the girl he was harassing was underage. He was also the supplier for Sanguatine in this area. I made a mental note to see if Stephen would be willing to supply it to Drake’s club directly.
Vampires who didn’t live in covens were called rogues. The largest and most powerful vampire coven in North America belonged to Stephen Yocum. Rogues were allowed in coven territory, but they had to follow the rules of the coven master and were generally held in suspicion.
I only took two steps towards them before something struck me from behind. Aside from the fact that it hurt like a bitch, my vision darkened and my magic stopped flowing. I had been hit with some kind of magic. It wasn’t that my energy was blocked; I was too disoriented to focus it.
I shook my head, gaining enough sight back to realize someone was dragging me outside. I tried to lash out with my power, but I only managed a burst of fire.
Although Quintessence emphasized elemental magic, my natural instinct was to go with psychic magic. Powerful wizards could disrupt electrical devices because magical energy was similar to electricity. Once a wizard knew how to create fire, it was easy to use it in anger.
“Gag him,” a man said.
“That’s not how his magic works,” a woman argued.
“Then hit him again.”
“I need a minute to recover my energy.”
While they were talking, I was doing my best to gather my wits. I was picked up and put into the back of a truck. I attempted to roll over to see my attackers, but I couldn’t figure out which direction to look in. A moment later, the truck was in motion. Even though I couldn’t focus my power to control their minds, I did have a constant mental connection to my familiar, Rocky, so she was aware when anything was wrong with me.
I felt her presence an instant before the truck lurched to a stop. Then metal crumpled as the roof of the car was torn from the rest of the frame. My assailants screamed, which was overshadowed by the furious screech of my gargoyle. By then, I had gained enough clarity to use magic. I sensed their minds and that they had magic, but I didn’t have the time to analyze it. As Rocky picked me up, I lashed out automatically to my would-be-abductors, filling their heads with pain.
Rocky set me down a few minutes later on the side of the street and turned invisible. I could still sense her there, but she knew better than to let humans see her. “Thank you,” I said.
“Be more careful,” she admonished in my mind.
Every wizard had a familiar. Not every wizard met his familiar, though. There was a calling ritual, which the familiar had to answer or it would lose its magic. The familiar could be an animal or, if the wizard was powerful enough, a magical creature. The wizard and familiar could also see through each other’s mind.
Normally, the familiar would die if his or her wizard was killed, but in our case, it was the other way around, since my heart was cursed by a mad human with stolen magic.
My familiar was a gargoyle. Her gray stone body was short and muscular with arms a little too long to be called humanoid, massive bat wings, and a clubbed tail. Her head had a short snout, resembling something between a human and a dog, with a bat nose, bat ears, horns, and glowing white eyes.
“I will.” I climbed to my feet and shook the remaining effects of the spell off. “Do you know who attacked me?”
“An enemy of yours, I suspect. There are far too many mortals to know who all of them are or care.”
“Did I kill them?”
“Probably.” With that, she left.
I hadn’t cared in the moment if I killed them, and that was the problem. I controlled people easier and easier as my power developed. It was at the point where I didn’t even think about it. Killing anyone was tough to live with. Even when I had no other choice, like with John, it weighed on me. The alternative was to stop car
ing, however, and that was worse.
I was a mile away from the club, so it took me fifteen minutes to get back to it. Not surprisingly, both Pitch and Jorge were at the door when I got there. “Where’ve you been?” Pitch asked, concerned. Jorge was clearly suspicious.
“I was attacked.”
“By who?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Drake is looking for you and he’s pissed.”
“I don’t really care.”
“You may have other options, but we like our jobs, and when you piss off Drake, we’re the ones who have to put up with him. Can you keep your fangs to yourself for the rest of the night or just leave?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I consider Drake a client, not a boss, but I will put up with him for the rest of the night.”
“Well, he said you were supposed to sit in on his meeting with the supplier of blood for the vampires.”
“Is he still here?”
“They’re upstairs, waiting for you. Drake wouldn’t agree to the meeting without ‘his mind reader’ there.”
“Great.” I headed inside and upstairs. The supplier was sitting on one couch and Drake was sitting across from him.
The vampire stood and held out his hand to shake mine. I ignored it. Instead, I searched his mind. The teenager at the club was the only underage girl he had ever harassed. Although that didn’t excuse his actions, I was relieved to know he wasn’t a serial pedophile. He was, however, trying to charge Drake twice the value of the synthetic blood.
Drake had good instincts.
“I know Andrew Martin personally,” I said. “Drake can get a much better deal elsewhere.”
“You haven’t even heard my price!”
“I can see it all over your face. Go home, come up with a fair number, and call back.”
He sputtered, so I reinforced the command with magic. Again, I hadn’t even thought about it before doing it. He left without another word.
“That was rude,” Drake commented.
“I was just attacked.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it hunters?”
“I don’t think so, because one of them had magic.”
“Are you telling me because you need help dealing with them?”
“I might have killed them. If I didn’t, you need to be wary, because they could come looking for me.”
“Can’t you take care of it?”
“I’ll try, but I have to leave town tomorrow morning.”
He kept his mouth shut, not wanting to get into an argument again. He wanted me to stay on as his employee because I was good for business. I could prevent problems. But I wouldn’t. We would be butting heads too often and although I liked the club, solving cases was what I enjoyed doing.
“Well, I appreciate you sticking around for longer than we’d originally agreed. If you ever get tired of being a private investigator, you have a job here.”
“Thanks. If you find yourself needing me for a specific case, you have my number.”
“Does it still work?”
“Good point. You have the school’s number.”
Quintessence forbade outside contact, but the children’s school had to be able to receive messages. There was an off-site staff member who took calls for staff and students and conveyed those messages.
* * *
I went outside to retrace my steps. Considering I had no idea which way the assailants had dragged me, that wasn’t too easy. I checked the parking lot for clues, then the nearby roads. Rocky had damaged the car, but if the assailants survived or had accomplices, then they could have cleaned the scene. After two hours without finding anything, I returned to the club to work for the remaining night.
* * *
The box of kittens was empty when I got home, so the first thing I did was go hunting. I found one kitten under the fridge, one on the window blinds, and peeled one off a sticky trap under the kitchen sink. After corralling them, I went into the bathroom, slipped on my vision ring, and closed my eyes, recalling the details of the event.
I instantly felt disoriented and had to push my way through it. It wasn’t until Rocky arrived in the vision that I could sense anything. At that point, I pushed my magic into their minds through the vision. It was difficult, but I got enough to know that they survived the incident.
My vision abruptly changed to show me standing in an office in front of Jason. Jason and Jameson, twin five-year-olds, were John Cross’s sons, and their human mother couldn’t control them. They had their father’s mind control abilities, although they were still developing. While Jason had a conscience, his brother was definitely following in his father’s footsteps.
Jason was crying in a chair in front of a desk. The details of the vision were blurry. “I told him not to do it, but he won’t listen to me.”
“You have to do whatever it takes to stop him,” I heard myself say. I could hear it in my own voice that I was tired and frustrated. I felt the magic I unleashed, but it wasn’t intentional.
An instant later, Jason was at the door, covered in blood. “I stopped him.”
The vision ended and I was back in my apartment with a kitten climbing up my pant leg. When I killed John, I gained his power. Vincent helped me control my visions, but I practiced my mind control as I needed it. It didn’t escape my notice that I was starting to use it regularly without intending to.
If my vision was correct, the problem was much more serious than I had first thought. I had to be stopped.
* * *
Friday, August 5
I pulled into my mother’s driveway. It was a quaint, one-story, stone house with an attached garage and an iron picket fence. Most of the front yard was taken up by a magnolia tree, which wasn’t in bloom, and flowering plants that didn’t bother her allergies. The arched front door was wooden and accented with stained-glass windows on either side. It had a small covered porch with white roses climbing up the iron support beams at the corners. To the right of the door was a huge front window.
Before I could reach the door, my mother opened it. I set the box of kittens on the porch and hugged her. After a few minutes, she broke away. Her dark brown hair was braided and her soft green eyes were trusting. She was in her sixties, but she no longer looked frail like she did when her mind was damaged.
“Come inside.”
I picked up the box and followed her in. The door opened into the living room. It had hardwood floors and a sloped ceiling. There was a brown couch and matching chair with a rustic coffee table. The walls were tan with two rose canvas paintings. Across the room was a bookshelf with a fifty-inch television that wasn’t even plugged in.
To the left was a wide archway into a dining room, which was open to the kitchen.
Vincent came out of the kitchen to greet me. Despite being at least seventy-five, he looked to be in his late forties. That wasn’t uncommon for powerful wizards. He was six-four with short black hair and a thin scar from the far end of his left eyebrow to the tip of his left nostril. His left eye was icy blue, while his right was dark purple. He held out a plate of butterscotch and chocolate chip cookies.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Vincent said.
“You, too.”
My mother took the box from me and set it on the table, then pulled the kittens out. “They’re so cute!” she gushed. “We got their food and litter box, but we wanted to wait to get the toys and furniture until they could be here.”
I grabbed a cookie to make my mother happy and Vincent set the plate on the kitchen table. “You’re taking Vincent to a pet store? I would like to tag along. Is Kyle here?”
My mother’s live-in nurse moved out the previous month to give her more independence, since she was completely off medication. He wouldn’t let her push herself too hard, though. Kyle still insisted on doing her shopping and running errands, and was on cal
l at all hours.
“No. He was here earlier, but he met a girl and I told him to spend more time with her.”
Ghost appeared on the coffee table. Vincent’s familiar was a long-haired brown cat with fur that ranged from light to dark brown. He had one light blue eye and one gold eye. “Hey, Ghost,” I said. He ignored me and checked out the box of kittens. “What do you think? Now you have three little munchkins to look up to you like a brother.”
He meowed.
“Ghost!” Vincent scolded. “Don’t use that language around the baby cats.”
* * *
We spent a couple of hours chatting before my mother went to bed. I immediately felt uncomfortable, not because I didn’t trust Vincent, but because I was keeping a huge secret from him. Since my ability to see and sense the dead faded soon after I got rid of the key, I didn’t tell anyone, not even Henry and Darwin.
Vincent taught me to control my visions, he was John’s brother, and he had a key to the tower. If there was anyone I should have been able to confide in with that secret, it was him. I just didn’t want to be any stranger than I already was.
“You seem distressed,” Vincent said after a few minutes of awkward silence.
“I had a distressing vision last night.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I need more time to think about it.”
“I know how disturbing visions can be.”
“It’s not my visions I’m worried about.”
“No, it’s your mind control. Did you have a vision in which you controlled someone on accident and it hurt them?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Mind control is a power that leads to destruction and is easy to become addicted to. Your problem is that you have a sense of morality.”
“How is that a problem?”
“You will always doubt yourself, but only after the fact. You have an extremely high protective drive and you’re used to trusting your instincts, so you will act before thinking if someone you love is in danger. While you won’t turn out like John, you will take things too far.”