by E. M. Moore
“The superiors will pull the plug for sure,” Travis said.
“We’re just going to have to head out and try to find him again,” Gabe said. “Try a different locator spell. Maybe. Search for clues...”
With my heart heavy in my chest, I picked myself off the couch and went for the keys on the countertop where I’d left them the night before. “We’ve got to go, guys. Liam needs us.”
We all piled into the Jeep. On the way into Salem, I filled Gabe in on what I hadn’t found at the Reid’s place, and told him how Granny had visited me last night. He seemed troubled by the fact Granny couldn’t trace him because of the damn familiar. Every little piece of evidence seemed to be pointing directly at the idea that Liam was slowly but surely being taken over by that thing. It wasn’t fair.
Once we were on the outskirts of the city, Travis pulled the car over. Randy took out the bag he’d brought with him. He pulled out the silver laptop I recognized as Liam’s. He turned in the seat, so he could face us all. “I thought maybe if we brought something of Liam’s it would make it easier to trace where he was. Let’s just do some searching, see if we can’t find a true connection to the person Liam was before the familiar.
He closed his eyes first, and I followed suit. Where there was nothing but emptiness before, there was a little something more, but just a flicker. Wordlessly, Travis steered the Jeep back onto the road. I kept concentrating on the little glimmer of hope. Travis took to the streets, weaving in and out of intersections and around parked cars. It was hard to tell what was going on because I’d kept my eyes shut as he drove through Salem, so one of us could at least keep the connection.
When we got to the end of the line, the pull of bad magic twisted my stomach into knots and made me cringe. Cramps.
“Son of a bitch,” Gabe said.
Travis pulled the Jeep over sharply. “Another negative magic pull on Liam’s trail.”
“It doesn’t mean he’s guilty,” Randy said, his sudden outburst in Liam’s defense wasn’t a surprise. In fact, all of us, I was sure, wanted to scream the same exact thing. Just because we were aware what connections we would draw if this weren’t Liam, didn’t automatically make him guilty.
Travis pushed his door open. “Be prepared for anything. If Liam’s there, subdue him until we can figure shit out.”
“If he’s not?” I asked, scrambling out of the car after Gabe.
“Randy and I will take off and see if we can’t find where his trail leads.”
We approached the house. “How much do you want to bet there’s a drained witch in here?” Gabe asked.
That was a stupid bet. It was pretty much guaranteed at this point.
Gabe unlocked the human lock, and we all walked in. The house was wide open and sprawling. We followed our noses right to the passed-out witch. It didn’t take long to find him because he was just inside the main area of the house. Gabe and I knelt next to the witch, a man this time, as Randy and Travis took off. They stormed through the entire house, making sure there was no sign of Liam anywhere until they barreled right back down and out the back door.
I helped Gabe pick up the witch and move him into the living room. We waited a couple minutes until his eyes fluttered open. He backed away from us, his eyes wide until they got even wider with recognition as he stared at Gabe. “What the hell happened to me?”
Just as the others, his face was sunken in and pale. His magic wasn’t even buzzing at the surface. From what I could discern, it was under layers and layers, stripped right back to its center. “You’ve been drained,” Gabe said. “We’re trying to find out who did it to you. Do you remember who was here?”
The guy blinked. “I was just about to head out for work.” He shook his head as his vision turned inward, sifting through his memories. “No. It’s weird, though. I don’t remember. It’s not hazy, it’s almost as if the memory just stops.”
Gabe’s eyebrows furrowed. “Have you ever felt that before?” he asked, peeking at me.
“Yeah,” he said. “When someone took my memories away.”
Gabe put a hand on the man’s shoulders and pushed him to relax against the couch. “We’re going to get you water. Be right back.”
He took me by the hand and led me away from the man. “That explains why no one remembers who is doing this.”
“Yeah, someone is intentionally trying to keep quiet about it.”
“It’s got to be someone who knows about us,” Gabe said. He looked through the cupboards until he found a cup and then filled it with tap water.
“Dupre.”
“Or Liam.”
“Or someone we haven’t even come across yet,” I said.
“I don’t want it to be Liam either,” Gabe said, frowning at me. “I’m just being realistic.”
I wrapped my arms around myself and rubbed my forehead. “I know.” If it were anyone else, I’d be blaming them, too.
We walked back into the kitchen. The man’s hands shook as Gabe handed him the glass. “If you can tell us everything you do remember, including which witches you’ve dealt with recently, that would be very helpful to us,” he told him.
The man agreed, immediately talking. It turned out he didn’t deal with many witches. He was an adjunct professor at Salem State who’d just moved here at the suggestion of his cousin who was also a witch.
“And you’d heard about us?” Gabe asked.
From what I’d gathered, that was rare. If you didn’t live in a city near an Order, you might not ever know witches like that existed.
The guy took a sip and nodded. “Of course. Rumors spread, you know. Especially right now. I’m not the only witch who’s been drained lately. People are starting to talk.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. If the word was getting around that witches were showing up drained, we were going to have some hysterical witches on our hands. Like Granny said, for most, it was all about their power.
The guy turned to me. “Am I going to get everything back?”
I peeked at Gabe. He opened his mouth to answer, but this was my gig, too. I knew as much as he did. “We have no reason to believe your powers won’t return. If you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to reach out,” I told him.
Gabe took a paper and a pen from the coffee table in front of him and wrote down his name and number. “We can help,” he said, emphasizing the word.
The witch hadn’t seemed clear on that point. We weren’t here just to wait and see what happened to people and deal with the aftermath. We were here to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Gabe held out his hand, and the witch shook it. “Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
We walked outside and met Randy and Travis by the Jeep. “The guy going to be okay?” Travis asked, his mouth tight.
“Yeah,” Gabe said, peeking back at the front window. “He’s going to be fine. Doesn’t have much trust in us though. Apparently, it’s going around Salem how there’s someone out there draining witches’ magic.”
Randy put his hands on his hips. “Of course, there is. Because all they care about is their magic. No one says a damn thing when we stop something evil from hurting someone.”
“Well, now it’s knocking on their backdoor,” Gabe supplied “When you think about it, you can’t blame them.”
“I can,” Randy muttered. His lips thinned, and he got that angry look in his eye.
Gabe ignored him. “We usually deal with things happening to normal people. Not usually Naturals or Wiccans. Here we have witches who are getting drained. It’s normal for them to be afraid. If witches were out in the open, this would be all over the news. Think about if this was happening to normal people. What if they had a serial murderer on their hands who had a certain type of victim? If you were that person’s type, you’d be worried yourself.”
That much was true. Something was happening to the witches in this town and it wasn’t good. The Order didn’t need any bad press. What if one of these scared witches
decided to give the superiors a call? We’d be fucked then.
“We need to figure this shit out,” I said. “We can’t risk anyone coming to town and snooping around.”
“My bet’s on Dupre, but we’ve never been able to find him before.”
“Yeah, well, Granny says since we’re all linked now, we shouldn’t have to wait long for that.”
Travis perked up, his eyes blazing. “She did tell you that, didn’t she? She told you we were stronger now and that Dupre would be able to find us. What if we made it easy for him to find us?”
“You mean like…?”
“Call his ass,” Travis said, a smile pulling his lips apart. “He obviously wants magic and we’re the strongest witches around. Let’s show him what we can do. He’ll be drawn to us. He won’t be able to help himself.”
Randy nodded. “I like it. Let’s find a place that’s more suitable for us. No flying in blind, not knowing what’s behind the door to get us. We can do a strong spell somewhere where we’re familiar, then we’ll see if he takes the bait.”
“In the meantime,” Gabe said, “let’s send out a message to the witches in Salem to be careful. We should take a proactive stance on this. Plus, they might even be able to lead us to Dupre before we can sucker him in.”
“How do we send messages to all the witches in Salem?” I asked, genuinely curious. Was there some sort of messaging system I wasn’t aware of? Sounded awesome.
“Start with the people we know and have them call everyone they know,” Gabe said, lifting his shoulders.
That was disappointing and sounded like a hell of a lot of work. “There’s no magical way to do it?”
Gabe took his phone out of his pocket and wiggled it in the air. “It is magic. It’s called a cell phone.”
I shook my head at him and got in the car. While Travis drove, Randy and Gabe got on the phone to every witch they knew, telling them to be careful and to look out for someone who fit Dupre’s description and asking them to let us know if they came across anyone like that.
They’d hit a big zero on the list so far. No one knew a thing but appreciated the heads up. It wasn’t until we pulled into the driveway that Randy suddenly sat up straighter. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up the phone and twisted around to face us. “That was Ren. He needs to see us.”
He looked at me. I saw the flame of hope building in his eyes once again. I hoped we could at least solve one piece of the puzzle tonight.
20
We pulled up outside Ren’s dilapidated ranch. I reached for the car door handle, but Gabe held me back. I looked up to find him staring out the window. “Anyone else think it’s weird there are no lights on in that place?”
“It’s a magical whorehouse,” I explained. “They’re all fucked up. They probably think the lights are on.”
“I don’t know,” Travis said. He leaned forward over Randy, his eyes roaming over the house and the trashed lawn. Sure, it wasn’t the best of places, but that hadn’t stopped us from going in before.
I eyed Randy, and he sighed. “Well, I’m going in there. That book is the only thing we have to go on to save Liam and I’m not going to let it slip from our grasps because the freaking lights aren’t on.”
He pushed the car door open and jumped out. I was right behind him. Gabe swore and came out after me. “I wasn’t saying we shouldn’t go in. I was just saying we should be prepared if there’s something there.”
Travis’s door slammed, and he ran up to us. “I also wasn’t saying we shouldn’t go in, just remember what happens when we get impulsive.”
“They’re all cracked out in there and high on magic. The only thing you can get in there is—”
A shattering noise obliterated the stillness. We all looked at one another and then ran inside. The door was already unlocked, and Randy immediately ran toward the area we’d met Ren in before. We stopped halfway there. The girl who’d answered the door when Randy and I came the first time was face down in the carpet, her hair a tangled mess around her. Gabe pulled his shirt up and over his nose. “It smells like a freaking fresh cemetery in here.”
Randy bent down and pulled the girl over. Unstaring, grayed-out eyes met our own, sending a shiver through me. “Son of a bitch!”
He stood and moved on. Another body, a shirtless guy, was only a few feet away, staring straight up at the disgusting ceiling.
A gurgling sound pulled us out of the search for more bodies. Gabe ran forward. “We’ve got a live one.”
Randy and I moved forward. Next to a broken lamp, Ren’s body lay on its side. His chest barely moved, and his pale face was almost gray in the dusky room. “Ren?” I called out, taking his hand. It was cold and clammy.
Randy picked him up and set him on the couch. His head lolled to the side. His eyes stared at everything but us. If I hadn’t known better, it looked as if he’d OD’d on drugs. Crazy the amount of comparisons there were to magic and meth.
Gabe slapped Ren’s face a few times, and he finally shook it, his eyes coming into focus. He blinked. “Randy?”
“Yeah,” Randy said, his eyes still catching on the bodies strewn all over the floor. There were probably even more bodies in the bedrooms. This place was literally a whore house, so it wouldn’t surprise me if every one of them was full. Randy must’ve been thinking the same thing because he pulled on Gabe’s arm and looked at Travis. “You guys check the rooms.” He hiked his thumb over his shoulder pointing down the narrow hallway.
I knelt beside Ren, not daring to take his hand again. “What happened in here?”
Ren coughed. “Well, I found that guy you were calling to warn me about.”
I closed my eyes, taking in the information. Dupre had been here. As we’d suspected, he was the one draining all the witches’ bodies.
Ren reached out and pulled on my sleeve. “He wants you.”
I nodded, acknowledging him. We’d already known that.
“Cassie?” he said, his eyes suddenly widening. “Is she dead?”
I looked around the room. So far, he was the only one we’d found alive. “Which one’s Cassie?”
He looked around us, his face suddenly paling even further. He shook his head, his mouth twisting in agony. “She was alive when I first walked in. She told me this guy had shown up and offered them a magical hit.”
“He did the exact opposite,” Randy said, his voice threatening.
Ren nodded. “Drained them. Drained them right down into nothing. They barely had a damn thing to give him.”
I locked gazes with Randy. That was probably why they were dead. They didn’t have enough magical juice to even amount to anything, so he probably kept taking and taking until they died on him. If he wanted powerful witches why the hell would he come here? They bartered sex for magic.
I turned back to Ren. “You walked in on him, didn’t you?”
The corners of his eyes pulled down. “After finding Cassie, I gave her a bit of magic, hoping it would help her, but I just couldn’t stay with her. I could hear others moving around, so I kept going. He was draining Caleb when I got into this room. He’d tried to protect them, but this guy was all over him. When Caleb fell, it was my turn. I did what I could, but he was so strong. We fought for a while.”
That must’ve been one of the other reasons for the smell of sulfur and rotten meat in here. They’d been throwing negative spells at one another. It smelled like roadkill had been burned in the oven.
Randy sat back on his haunches and shook his head. “I think you’re going to be okay, man.” His jaw hardened. “Everyone else, though. It doesn’t look like they made it.”
Travis and Gabe came walking back up the hallway at that moment with solemn faces. They certainly didn’t look like they’d found someone else alive back there. What a senseless waste and use of life. No, these weren’t upright citizens, but they didn’t deserve to die so one insane fucking witch could get a little hit of magic that probably wouldn’t mak
e a difference in the long run. Then again, he hadn’t just taken out the women and men in here who wanted the magic, he’d also taken out the ones who were willing to give up some of their magic for sex. Maybe he’d gotten a bigger dose than I originally imagined.
Gabe came forward and put his hand on my shoulder. He gave a quick shake of his head.
A muscle in Ren’s jaw twitched. “These were good people.”
“I know,” Randy said.
What else could we say?
Ren sat up straighter as life began to return to him. He looked more like the Ren I knew from before. Not the Ren from the Reid’s house. That had been an extra clean, more business-like Ren. The Ren who sat on the couch now looked like the Ren from when we first met. He leaned forward, his elbows coming to rest on his knees. “While he was leaving, he told me to give you a message.”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
“He knows where your other coven member is, and he says he knows he still has the familiar on him. He’s been watching him. He wants the familiar back.” Ren looked up. “He thinks the only way to get the familiar off is to kill him.”
The world blurred in front of me. Liam…dead? That wasn’t going to happen. Gabe’s fingers sank into my shoulder, grounding me.
“He said that was how the familiar got onto him in the first place. He told me he was going to kill him unless you guys found him first.”
Travis swore. “How would he know where Liam is, and we don’t? We’re the ones connected to him.”
Gabe ran his hands through his thick blond hair. “Maybe Dupre’s connected to the familiar and since the familiar is the one taking things over, he’s more attuned to him than we are to Liam.”
“Fuck!” Randy roared.
We all cowered a little at his outburst. Randy wasn’t scary. He truly wasn’t once you got to know him, but shit, I was right there with him. I wanted to break something or maim something, especially Dupre.