Almost Final Curtain

by Hallaway, Tate

  . . . Or not.

  Because Aiden might also just be some random servant sent to follow me to see if I could lead the Elders to the vampire they thought stole the talisman.

  “Never mind.” I shrugged. “It was probably nothing.”

  “Damn, girl. You scared the shit out of me,” Bea said.

  “I’m sorry. Thanks for coming back for me.”

  Her lips pursed together like she wasn’t so sure she should have, but then she waved me to where the car sat idling noisily. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

  My house was dark. According to my cell, it was just after ten thirty. Late for a school night, but not so late that Mom would have gone to bed. There was this talk show she liked to stay up to watch, and most nights I fell asleep listening to the muffled sounds of it from the other room. “That’s weird,” I said.

  Bea shrugged. “She could be asleep. She’s got school in the morning too, you know.”

  “No, this is starting to freak me out.” I told Bea about how much Mom had gone missing lately.

  “You seriously thought she had a boyfriend?”

  I wasn’t sure I liked Bea’s incredulous tone. “She can be cute ... in a schoolmarm sort of way.” Okay, no, that was weird. I didn’t want to think about Mom that way. I shook my head. “Listen, do you think I could stay over at yours? I can’t take another night in this house all by myself.”

  “My folks would never go for it,” Bea said. I understood. There were pretty strict rules about school nights. “But I don’t have to go home yet. Do you want me to drive you around? Maybe she’s working late at one of her universities?”

  I double-checked my phone for a message. She hadn’t even answered my text about getting the part with a congratulations. That wasn’t like her at all. Nor was all this sneaking around without telling me where she was. “The last thing she told me was that she was going to an Elders’ meeting.”

  Bea fished her cell out of her purse. The phone’s cover glittered red and had rhinestones that spelled “diva.” Her thumbs worked like mad. I tried to see what she was writing, but she pulled the screen close to her chest, like concealing a hand of cards.

  She snapped the phone closed dramatically. Quickly, she slipped it back into her purse as if just having it in my sight might reveal some seekrit information. “There’s no meeting right now,” she said, certain. “If your mom isn’t home, it’s got to be school related.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wanted to doubt her, but if anyone knew what was happening in the Inner Circle, it was Bea. That was why Elias and I tapped her to begin with. “I’ll just check the house and make sure. You want to come in or wait in the car?”

  Bea started to reach for the buckle, but stopped. “Depends. Is there still a vampire in the basement?”

  Good question. If Elias had slipped in before dawn this morning, I never even felt a twinge of the wards. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  Sitting back, she retrieved an iPod from her purse. Tucking a bud in each ear, she said, “I’ll wait.”

  The second I saw the dirty dishes still in the sink, I knew Mom wasn’t home. I double-checked upstairs, but just as I suspected, her bed was empty. No sign of Elias either.

  On my way back up from the basement, I spied the spare keys to the carriage house hanging on their usual hook. Mom kept the main key on the ring in her purse. I’d forgotten about these. I grabbed them. Finally, I could see what she’d been hiding back there.

  I headed out the side door, and hesitated when I saw the baseball bat leaning against the wall. Once, after watching a horror film, I became convinced we should have backup in case the wards failed. Mom rolled her eyes, but when I found the Louisville Slugger at a rummage sale the next day, she relented, agreeing it must be fate. I took it now, pleasantly surprised by its weight. After all, who knew what might be waiting for me in the carriage house?

  Even before I reached the carriage house, I could feel the wards, like a knotty tangle of thorns brushing against my skin. The closer I got, the denser the imaginary thicket became. I came to a halt, unable to move, about an arm’s length from the door. Suffocating under the oppressive magical jungle, my limbs pressed close to my body, I couldn’t even lift my hand to try the key.

  What I needed was a psychic machete.

  Or an invitation.

  But Mom wasn’t home; who could let me in? Another witch in the Inner Circle, perhaps, but who?

  Bea.

  I turned around. Letting the baseball bat clatter onto the sidewalk, I dashed through the side yard to the front. Under the streetlamp, I could see Bea in her car, her head bent over her phone’s keyboard.

  I tapped on the window, startling her. She squeaked and her phone dropped to the floor. “Hey,” I said, once she’d recovered and pulled a bud free from her ear. “Can you go into the carriage house for me? It’s warded.”

  She frowned uncertainly. “I don’t know if I should get involved. I’ve probably helped your vampire friends too much already. I mean, if your vamp boyfriend gets caught breaking into one of the old families’ houses and rats me out—”

  “Who said this had anything to do with vampires?”

  “Um.” Bea’s face couldn’t look guiltier. “You did?”

  But I hadn’t. I’d only said the carriage house was warded, not that it was set to keep out vampires, specifically. “You already know what Mom is hiding in there, don’t you?”

  Bea eyed the stick shift, like she was considering putting the car in gear and running away. I pulled open the car door, and sat down in the passenger seat.

  “How deep in this are you?” I asked.

  “It’s not me,” she insisted, dropping the hand that had begun to reach for the gear shift into her lap with a sigh. “It’s my dad. I was honest with you guys the other night. I don’t know where the talisman is or who has it.”

  “So what do you know?”

  She stared out the window, biting her bottom lip.

  “Bea, we’ve been best friends since kindergarten. I’d hate to have to bite you.” The threat was pretty hollow at this point, but if I got frustrated enough, my fangs would pop out.

  Bea’s frown darkened. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Do you know that for sure?” I tried to sound menacing, but failed when Bea didn’t back down. I’d forgotten that she’d seen my patented spook eye too many times. When I tried to use it on her, she just laughed. I couldn’t resist joining in; my toughgirl act was pretty mock-worthy. After we’d settled down, I said, “Please, Bea. This is important.”

  “I don’t know where the talisman is. I swear on our friendship.”

  “But you do know what my mom has stashed in the carriage house, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I think so, but you’re going to freak out.”

  “I’m already freaked-out!” And as if to prove my point, my eyes changed. At least, I assumed that was why the interior of the car suddenly seemed brighter.

  Bea shrank away from me and put up her hands in surrender. “Okay, once everyone was sure it was the talisman that was stolen, they’ve been ... preparing.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. “Preparing what?”

  “There’s only two things you can do with the talisman,” Bea said, with a look that said, Think it through.

  Enslave vampires ...

  Or make more.

  “Holy shit, we’ve got to get in there!”

  Even though she told me she couldn’t feel the wards at all, Bea approached the carriage house slowly, her steps labored. She got about as far as I had, then stopped dead.

  “Whoa! Neat trick,” she said, her eyes darting around as if looking for something.

  “What happened? Why did you stop?”

  “The carriage house just disappeared.”

  “Can you still move?”

  She took a hesitant step, her hands groping in the air blindly. “It’s weird. Now I feel like I’m walking through a thick fog. I can’t see anything.”

 
; “I’ll guide you through it.”

  Though we looked about as stupid as some kind of elimination challenge on a reality-TV show, I was able to get Bea to the door after only a few missteps. One of them literal. As in, she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk I hadn’t noticed, and ended up sprawling on the grass.

  Her hand pressed to the door, she felt for the keyhole with the other. “I can feel the wards here,” she said. “I’ll try a dampening spell.”

  The moment Bea’s power started to swell, I felt the wards drop. They must be keyed to magic use. Damn, if we’d known that, we could’ve skipped all the stumbling and swearing.

  Bea blinked rapidly. “I guess that worked. Except I didn’t really do anything.”

  “I’ll explain it later,” I said. Cautiously, I took a single step forward. I didn’t know if the wards had been completely disarmed, or whether they’d snap back on once I tried to approach. My foot hit the ground with no zip, no sensation of barbed wire or jungle vines—nothing but normal.

  Or at least what passed for normal around here.

  Quickly, I caught up to Bea, who was mounting the stairs. The carriage house apartment was completely separate from the stable/garage. The steps had an old-fashioned velvet runner down the middle that cushioned our footfalls, but they were narrow. There wasn’t room for me next to Bea on the landing. She used the key at the second door at the top.

  “Hello?” she ventured, peeping around the door.

  When no one answered, she gave me a shrug and walked through. I followed. The ceilings were low and angled like in an attic. The beams had intentionally been left exposed, and an ornate, tulip-shaped light fixture hung from the center. Bea didn’t need to switch on the main light, however, because a table lamp had been left on. A folding chair, a ratty recliner, and a fancy high-back chair sat in a circle near the table and lamp. Though someone clearly had been using the place, it smelled of mothballs and old books.

  Bea checked the water closet. I couldn’t really call the side room a bathroom since the plumbing was pretty decrepit, having last been updated in the early 1900s. “No one here,” she said.

  All this security for nothing besides an impromptu meeting room? I didn’t buy it.

  “There’s one more place to check,” I said. Once, when I was little and decided to run away from home, I spent an entire day and most of the night in the carriage house. I would have lasted until morning too, except for the thunderstorm that scared me back into Mom’s waiting arms. But while I was checking out what I hoped to be my new permanent home, I’d found a trapdoor.

  “Help me move the rug out of the way,” I said. Soon we had the floor exposed. The handle was little more than a notch in the floorboards, but I found it. When I reached to open the door, an electric current shocked through me. I fell back on my heels, shaking the prickles out of my hand. “Ow! Son of a gun!”

  “I’ll do it,” Bea offered. But before touching the trap, she took in a deep breath. Her power bubbled just under the surface. With a defiant flip of her hair, she slid her hand into the groove and gave the trap a heave. The door creaked open with a rain of dust.

  I knelt beside her. Inside the hidden compartment was a book—an old hand-stitched vellum book. Bea looked at me for an explanation. “Is this the talisman?”

  “It’s supposed to be a snake-headed Nile goddess figurine,” I said. “So I don’t think so. But maybe this book contains the spells for binding and creating vampires.”

  Bea picked it up and cradled it gently in her lap. The cover was a moldy brown. If there had been anything written on it, the ink had long ago faded. Slowly, she turned the yellowed and crumbly pages. The script inside reminded me of calligraphy, like the kind you might imagine medieval monks used to copy the Bible or the Book of Kells or something. Except this was completely unreadable. I wasn’t even sure if it was in English.

  “Latin,” Bea said, pointing to a word. “Here it says something about demons. You were right. This is the spell book.”

  “We have to destroy it,” I said.

  Before I could grab for it, Bea slammed the book shut and hugged it protectively against her chest. “Are you insane? This is witch history!”

  “Yeah, but if they don’t have the spell, they can’t use it against us.”

  “Us? They? I’m a witch, Ana. I’m ‘them,’ and so are you,” Bea said, still clutching the grimoire. She stood up, backing away from me with an expression of pure horror. “Besides, there’s clearly more than one spell here. This could be one of the only spell books to survive the Burning Times. I won’t let you do it.”

  Though most of the people accused had been innocent, True Witches had died during the Inquisition too. Those who survived had destroyed all evidence of their practice. In fact, we still lived under the shadow of the Burning Times, which was why we were supposed to keep our witchcraft secret from the general populace, the mundanes.

  Almost like another electric blast, Bea’s words shocked me. I had to stop taking sides. I wasn’t a vampire. I wasn’t a witch. I was both.

  And I needed to start acting like it.

  Bea had been right about so many things. Maybe it was time for me to trust her, really trust her. “Okay,” I said, not getting up from where I knelt on the floor. “But you take the book, and you hide it. Don’t tell anyone, not even me, where it is. Ever.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  For once, Bea didn’t protest. She seemed to understand the gravity of the situation because she bundled the book up in an old sweater we found in the apartment and scurried down the stairs without a single word.

  I’d just finished putting the rug back in place when I heard a bloodcurdling scream.

  Adrenaline brought me to the backyard in no time flat. Bea held the book squeezed tightly against her chest. A figure loomed over her. I bared my teeth and pushed myself between them.

  “Ana, thank Goddess.” It was Elias. “I’ve been looking for you.” I glanced over my shoulder at the terrified Bea. Her eyes glistened with surprise when she noticed my transformation. I waved off her reaction, and instead jerked my head in the direction of her car. She looked confused for a second, but then seemed to catch my drift. I didn’t want Elias to know what she had either. It was best if no vampire did.

  Not even me.

  Bea gave Elias a brief nod as she slunk past him. “Thanks for the fright of my life, asshole,” she said.

  “My pleasure, lady.” He bowed. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to wonder why Bea was sneaking around our backyard clutching an orange sweater. As soon as she was around the corner of the house, he said, “Your mother is in danger, I’m afraid.”

  “What? How?”

  “I wanted to confirm before coming, but it was surprisingly difficult to find a colleague willing to speak with an outcast about such matters.”

  “Would you cut to the chase and tell me what’s going on?”

  “Yes, of course. When I awoke, I felt the hunger building. A hunt has been called.”

  “Vampires are hunting Mom? Are you sure?” He nodded. My stomach dropped. I shifted my feet, not knowing which way to run, feeling overwhelming panic. “But ... it makes no sense!”

  “I think your father is becoming increasingly desperate. Your public denouncement of him as a ‘do-nothing’ ruler put his back against the wall. My source tells me the people have been demanding action, any action,” Elias said. “Perhaps the prince believes that if they attack so openly, the witches will be forced to show their hand as well, and we—er, they—can seize the talisman when it surfaces.”

  “Oh my God, Mom!”

  “Yes, I thought at the very least we should warn her,” Elias said.

  I was near hysteria. “But I don’t know where she is!”

  His hand on my shoulder calmed me. “I can find her.” Gulping back tears, I asked, “How?”

  “I was only exiled yesterday. I can still catch her essence, and I’ll feel the feeding frenzy building.” He glanced around like a wolf,
scenting the wind. “We should hurry.”

  I couldn’t agree more.

  Luckily, Elias had his car, since Bea had already driven off in hers. We didn’t talk much, since I didn’t know how much concentration Elias needed in order to find Mom. I wouldn’t have had anything helpful to say anyway. Wordless dread roiled in my gut. I chewed my fingernails.

  Elias drove down University Avenue, over Highway 280, and past the blinking red lights of the KSTP radio tower. Soon the buildings looked less industrial and took on a more collegiate flare. The dead, empty streets of St. Paul fell behind us, replaced by vibrant Minneapolis. The closer we got to the university, the more restaurants advertised student discounts and late hours. By the time we turned onto Washington Avenue, students traveled the streets in packs, loitered outside of bars or bookstores or coffeehouses, laughing, and generally being loud.

  It felt very alien and only managed to agitate me further.

  “Why?” I asked again. “Why would Dad want to kill Mom?”

  “As I said, I think he’s hoping to flush the talisman out into the open, but I also suspect that after banishing me, he felt the need to unite the kingdom in a common purpose. I had my supporters, but a hunt would wipe all thought of mutiny from their minds.” He snorted, “Or any thought, really, since we become more like dumb animals when we’re caught in the frenzy of a feed.”

  That wasn’t what I’d meant by my question, but Elias got that faraway look that made me think he was doing his tracking thing. What I’d wanted to know was, how could Dad do it? How could he basically take out a hit on Mom? I knew it was foolish to think that there was any love left between them, but to send hungry vampires after your former—no, if I remembered correctly, they’d never officially divorced—current wife? It seemed inhumane. It was hard to believe Dad had been driven to this kind of crazy desperation, but it seemed he had. And maybe even my little rebellion in front of his court had pushed him to it.