Psychic for Sale [Rent to Own]

by Amie Gibbons

  Carvi zoomed away without saying anything else and Grant turned to me.

  “Where’s Pyro?” I asked.

  Like he heard me, Pyro flew outta the ballroom where I guessed the injured were being tended to.

  “You okay, baby?” I asked.

  I couldn’t believe I didn’t think to check on him once the sun set tonight.

  I guess I’d had a lot going on, but still.

  Pyro pulled me into a hug and pointed to the doors.

  “You want to know if we’re leaving?” I asked. He nodded. “Yeah, we’re following the trail. The Fae… they have to be stopped.”

  He nodded and held up a tassel before zipping back into the ballroom and came back out with his phone.

  He quickly typed and held it up for me to see.

  “I’m going,” I read.

  “Good idea,” Grant said, “but stay hidden. You’ll be backup.”

  Pyro nodded and folded himself up until he was a bulky square floating in midair with a cellphone clutched in a tassel.

  “Is that uncomfortable?” I asked.

  His tassels flew as he typed and held the phone up. “Yes.”

  I grinned as he settled on one of the cushioned seats near us up against a wall.

  Carvi zoomed down a moment later with Grant’s hard-shelled suitcase. He opened it and took out my custom made lightweight Kevlar vest.

  A few guns of varying sizes and power followed and Grant’s vest after that. We got them on, put on the helmets and armed up.

  Grant strapped the backpack on after checking its contents, and Pyro floated over clumsily and tucked himself into the partly open top.

  “I say move, you move,” Grant said over his shoulder.

  A tassel came up, fibers forming an obvious thumbs up.

  I grinned and a sob followed, making me slam my hand over my mouth.

  “Later,” Grant said.

  “Mission first,” I said. “Always work the mission.”

  “You get that from your dad?” Carvi asked.

  “Book series about a zombie apocalypse,” I said. “Kinda feel like I should’ve paid more attention to the battle parts right now.”

  “We’re not fac… will we be facing zombies?” Grant asked.

  “Possibly. The Fae have powers over the dead,” Carvi said. “One reason they’re so dangerous.”

  I took a deep breath. “Can you tell if they try anything else magical?” I asked.

  He shot me a look. “That’s your job.”

  “Oh. I don’t know if I can.”

  “You will, or we could die. I can’t go back in. They’re ready for me. They may not have had enough time to get your magical signature to be on the lookout for you.”

  Well alright then.

  We headed out.

  Carvi took the front and Grant took the rear, putting me in the middle like always.

  I kept my eyes open, staring around and trying to keep my breath even and mind open.

  Nothing was obviously wrong.

  I’d see it if something was really wrong, right?

  Why? I hadn’t seen it earlier.

  We quick marched down the sidewalk, getting looks from the crowds as soon as we turned the corner out of Carvi’s territory into more normal Miami.

  I guess even gang members didn’t have body armor.

  Or maybe they did, but they didn’t wear it over formal wear.

  The Kevlar was supposedly light weight, but it was enough to drag me down and keep me from being able to do much more than fast walk, and even just doing that, my breaths were short and fast by the time we made it to the restaurant.

  It wasn’t even eleven on a Saturday night, but the restaurant was dark. Not just closed, but empty, not a soul in sight through the windows.

  “Hold up,” Grant said.

  “Why?” Carvi asked, fangs reflecting the streetlight.

  “Place was shot up earlier. The front and side windows were shattered.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So why are all the windows intact?”

  “How?” Carvi said. “The real question is how.”

  “Magic?” I said.

  “If it was that easy to fix, why aren’t they open?” Grant asked.

  I nodded. “Even if they closed at ten, which on a weekend isn’t usual, there should still be servers doing their side work for closing.”

  “Exactly,” Grant said. “I worked in restaurants for seven years. Not once did we close a Saturday night crowd out and get the place cleaned up that fast, not even in summer.”

  “This is Miami, things don’t close here as a general rule,” Carvi said. “We have to go in. But we do this smart. I go in first. I’ll go fast. You two follow.”

  He tossed me a wink and I scowled at him.

  I’m not even sure he noticed as he zoomed to the door, only pausing long enough to break the handle and bust in.

  “What happened in there?” Grant asked, eyes glued to the door and hand on gun on his hip.

  I kept an eye behind us.

  Gave me an excuse not to look at him.

  “He… he got on top of me, was moving, and I was… I said no. I screamed no.”

  “Did he?” Grant’s voice broke and I sniffed, forcing my eyes to stay open and dry and focused on the sidewalk.

  “No, but he was actin’ like he was gonna. He was… moving and he unzipped. That’s when I panicked and magic just kinda came outta me. He said that’s what he was goin’ for, but… How could he do that, sir?”

  Grant sighed. “I don’t know, Ariana. I wish I had an answer for you.”

  Carvi appeared next to me and I jumped, pulling my gun.

  Grant already had his out and up and was lowering it with a grunt before my brain caught up to my reflexes and I put my gun down too.

  “Jumpy?” Carvi asked. “There’s no magic in there, but you need to see this.”

  He turned and walked back to the door instead of zooming and we followed, Grant keeping his gun up as we walked into the dark restaurant.

  The slight background lights all service places have when they’re closed (why do they have those?) gave the place a ghostly glow, and I gulped my stomach back down.

  It smelled wrong in here.

  Something flashed outta the corner of my eyes and I turned fast, gun up.

  Nothing was there.

  “What?” Grant asked.

  “Seeing things again. Carvi?” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “Don’t know, but… wait.”

  He led us to the back room we’d been in before… earlier today? Was that just today?

  The door was propped open and I peeked inside.

  And gagged.

  Bodies littered the room, at least twenty of them.

  Chapter fourteen

  Most were slouched in chairs, brains and guts on display depending on where they’d been shot.

  A few were on the floor next to the door and in the back, guns around them.

  Security.

  The head honcho was at the front of the table, slumped to the side with wide eyes staring at the door, shock captured in his cold dead eyes.

  What was his name?

  I couldn’t even remember it.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice so loud in the dead silence it made me flinch.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Carvi said. “Looks like a hit, but how did someone get them all while they were sitting? They got hit so fast, no one even got up? The guards didn’t reach for their guns? I don’t think so. Only one way that could happen.”

  “Magic,” I said. “Some kinda spell that got everyone where they sat and stood all at once?”

  “Possible,” Carvi said. “Why? Because they talked to us? Touch the bodies. See.”

  His voice held something I couldn’t understand and I turned to look at him. “What is that?”

  Carvi shook his head, face locked down.

  “You’ve seen this before,” Grant said.

  It w
asn’t a question.

  Carvi’s face didn’t so much as twitch a muscle, but the air charged around him, making the hairs on my arms and neck stand at attention.

  “Don’t go prying, Grant,” Carvi said, voice flat and cold.

  “It could help us figure this out, Carvi,” I said.

  “It’s Fae,” he said. “It’s figured out. Touch the bodies. Be careful.”

  I took a deep breath and held my hands up, feeling the air.

  With the death in the air like this, I didn’t even need to touch the bodies.

  Flash.

  I crossed the parking lot to the bar, the Alabama heat heavy on my body even with the light summer shorts and T-shirt. I’d be melting even if I’d been naked.

  I paused near the door and turned my face up to the sun, tasting it on the back of my tongue and smelling the hot asphalt and trees.

  It’d been a bad few days, but everything should be back to normal. And hey, with Kari gone, might be a good idea to find a replacement. That little witch would do. She was fierce and tiny. Would make one hell of a tight fit, but that was the fun part.

  Though, every man knew you didn’t fuck with virgins.

  And you could tell with that girl.

  I chuckled. It’d be fun though. A man like me could teach her a few things.

  “Hey, Benny,” I said as I walked in, eyes adjusting to the dark faster than a human’s, but still taking a few seconds.

  The smell hit me first.

  Blood.

  Not hot and ready for drinking like someone nicked themselves in the kitchen.

  There was too much of it. And it smelled stale.

  Waste. Splashes. Human entrails already cold and rotting.

  My eyes adjusted to the dark inside.

  Benny was slumped over the bar, the back of his skull blown out.

  Kris, Ben and Carlos lay around the tables, bodies full of holes, the giant bins they used to carry around the dishes and bus tables next to each one, broken dishes spilling onto the floor.

  They’d been hit so fast, they hadn’t put down what they’d been doing, let alone been able to reach for their weapons.

  Stella and Scarlet were nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe they’d already gone home?

  I zoomed through the bar, hitting the back room where I often held court around the pool table.

  My nose told me all I needed to know before I reached it.

  The twins had not been granted the luxury of a quick death.

  They’d been twenty-two and the town beauties, made great tips as waitresses, enough to pay for the community college in Mobile. Both had turned him down despite his charms many times. Both good little Baptist girls waiting for marriage.

  They weren’t allowed to leave this world with their dignity or the virtue they’d clung to, despite their beauty and many offers, intact.

  Rage like I hadn’t felt in years ripped through my chest and I screamed, ripping the cue rack from the wall and throwing it across the room.

  Both girls had their throats slit and their uniform skirts pushed up.

  The usually perfect makeup on both faces was smeared, mascara and thick blue eyeshadow tears captured forever on their peaches and cream cheeks.

  “I swear,” I whispered in my first tongue, turning around and walking out of the room. “I swear I will avenge you. I swear they will pay.”

  Hatred made the day ugly as I burst back into the hot, wet afternoon and crossed the lot to my motorcycle.

  I had a witch to ask for help, and Fae to kill.

  Slowly.

  I blinked and sobbed, covering my face.

  I’d tasted the air with the vampire senses. I could smell everything from the dried blood to the cum of the men who’d violated those girls.

  I could still smell the salt of their long dead tears.

  Grant’s arms wrapped around me and I buried my face in his chest, sobbing.

  “What happened here?” Carvi asked, voice soft.

  “Same thing that happened then, I’m guessin’,” I hiccupped into Grant’s Kevlar then pulled back, turning to look at Carvi. “I saw… no, I was you, walking in and seeing when they hit your bar. I could smell…”

  I gagged and looked away.

  “You weren’t supposed to see that,” Carvi said slowly.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” I half laughed. “Um, I’ll see what I can see from here.”

  I walked over to the head guy, breathing shallowly through my mouth, tryin’ not to taste the death, and looked for a… clean spot to touch the man.

  I put my pinkie on the back of his forearm.

  Flash.

  The men took their seats around the table and he took a deep breath. The restaurant would open in an hour and they had to get through a lot after the shooting today.

  Their witch had had a bitch of a time getting the windows fixed and he didn’t like having her out of commission to rest up after a hit like that.

  “We had a shooting here today,” he said.

  The men around the table shut up.

  He knew that’d get their attention.

  “I don’t think we were the targets. We had a visitor, the king of the vampire nest here in Miami. The shooting was classic American gang drive by, but they hit the vampire’s girl, and no one else. Nevertheless, this insult can not go unanswered. I-”

  The bodies danced as bullets from nowhere hit them all at once with no sound, and they slumped over.

  The air opened and my mind balked as something stepped through.

  It was a human female, pretty and blond, but not at the same time.

  Things moved on her, like she was covered with bugs, or scales tossing back the light. My mind couldn’t grab onto her.

  She was wearing a flippy skirt and a midriff top that went outta style back when I was in high school but seemed to be making a comeback. She was tall and tight, probably stereotypically beautiful if I could get a handle on her face. Her features were high and pointy and her eyes were gorgeous blue.

  The eyes from before?

  She looked at me and grinned.

  She walked around the bodies, saying something that tore into my ears like toothpicks stabbed straight through my eardrums and splintering through the sensitive parts.

  “Ahhhh!” I shrieked, slamming my hands over my ears.

  “Ariana!”

  “Lea!”

  Grant and Carvi were on either side of me so fast I couldn’t tell if they’d already been there or jumped to when I screamed.

  “Fae in vision,” I panted. “Hurt to look. Hurt to hear. It… she, whatever, spell to shoot them all at once, just outta nowhere. Then she stepped in from nowhere and looked really proud of herself. And she saw me in there, said something about having my scent now, but it wasn’t scent. I think it meant she could track my magic. So yeah.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and held my ears like that’d wipe out the wrongness of the Fae from my head.

  “If they can do that, they can do it to us,” Grant said.

  “I have a shield around us,” Carvi said. “But they have Ariana’s magical signature now if I understand that Fae correctly. Ariana, can you describe what she looked like?”

  I did as best I could and he snorted, saying, “That describes half of the white girls in Miami.”

  I looked up and met his eyes.

  My insides crawled and it took everything in me not to look away.

  “How…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “I felt you when you looked at those girls. You were as horrified as I would be. You were as disgusted and probably angrier than I’d be too. So how could you do that to me?”

  He actually looked away.

  Maybe he could feel shame after all.

  “I didn’t think of it like that. You weren’t being taken against your will. You want me. Tho-”

  “I didn’t then, Carvi. I was sayin’ no. I was about to start begging you to get off me. How could you? When you know how bad that is?�
��

  “I didn’t actually do it. I was just pretending.”

  “I didn’t know that then. That fear those girls must’ve felt when they were being dragged back to that room, that’s what I felt. You knew I would, otherwise you would’ve scared me in another way. You knew how bad that was.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I did.” He met my eyes again and there was nothing in his. “I did it because I knew how much it would scare you, and that it’d be enough to get those powers of yours charged up. So I did what I had to. And I’d do it again. Because the Fae do shit like this. There are no lengths I won’t go to, to get them, to win this war.”

  My heart broke.

  Just a little more, but it hurt all over again.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Grant said, voice as soft and gentle as I’d ever heard it. “We know what happened, now what?” he asked Carvi.

  “I know what I’d do next, but I want to know what you think,” Carvi said. “As an investigator, if you were called to the scene and it was this, what would you do next?”

  “Process the scene,” Grant said. “Pictures, fingerprints, threads, trash, bullets, ect. Call the M.E. to look at the bodies before bagging them and taking them to autopsy. While the lab techs work on the forensics, we would look into the victims. What they were into, who had motive.” He trailed off, nodding slowly.

  “What, sir?” I asked after a moment.

  “Carvi had no connections to these people. They barely met.”

  “So?” Carvi asked.

  Grant nodded like he was talkin’ to himself and stared at the scene with cold, detached investigator eyes.

  “Nobody kills for no reason,” Grant said. “Even serial killers have their reasons. Why did the Fae go after these people?”

  “What you gettin’ at, sir?” I asked.

  “We made an assumption,” Grant said. “We assumed the Fae were after Carvi and used this place and these people as a convenient cover up when they shot you. What if it was more than that? What if they have something against this gang?”

  “Two birds,” Carvi said. “Had to have a cover for the hit on Ariana earlier, so why not use someone you wanted to take out as well, maybe even pit us against each other?”

  “Exactly,” Grant said. “Otherwise, why waste the resources killing these men?”