A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  Derrick looking up. His eyes sad. “Don’t you want this? Tess?”

  Miles grinned at me. He raised an eyebrow. His bare foot rubbed against Derrick’s thigh, and I saw his hand snake around his waist.

  “I . . .” My mouth was suddenly dry.

  Derrick shook his head. “You fucking bitch.”

  I blinked and snapped out of it.

  Suddenly, I felt like I was suffocating in the car. The windows were starting to fog up. I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, Caitlin was standing outside.

  I hadn’t heard her close the front door. She was wearing a long gray coat, and her hair was swept up. She didn’t shiver against the cold. She was holding something, but I couldn’t see it from here.

  All of a sudden, I had no idea why I’d decided to come. Did I want to talk to her? What would I say? So, Patrick’s a senior, huh? He must eat a lot, and I’ll bet he hogs the bathroom and steals all the hot water. Oh, and by the way, can we talk about that time at the turn of the century—you know, when you were still a pro?

  A part of me was thrilled that I’d been right. I’d followed the trail that Caitlin left for me, and now here we were. But what happened now? What did she need from me? What did she have planned for Patrick?

  “Tell me something,” I whispered. “Caitlin Siobhan. Tell me something about this killer. Tell me what it is.”

  Caitlin looked up.

  I always forgot about vampire hearing.

  Of course, she’d probably smelled me ages ago. Our eyes locked. I could still feel her power, even this far away, even locked inside the car. She may not have been magnate anymore, but she was still a walking nightmare.

  Her eyes were still. Almost sad.

  “What do you want?” I asked her through the window. “Caitlin, how can I help you? How can we help each other?”

  She stared at me for another beat. I felt my heart constrict. Behind her, a single window on the top floor of the house gleamed with yellow light.

  Was it Patrick’s room? Was he doing his homework? Listening to music?

  Maybe he was jerking off. The thought made me smile despite myself. He was seventeen, after all. Imagine if he missed his chance to take over the world because he was rubbing one off to Internet porn or a hot picture of Dita Von Teese. Pants and boxers around his ankles, toes curling in his pure white socks, quick and dirty with one arm thrown over his face. That’s how my teenage boyfriend, Alex, used to jerk off. Watching him answered a lot of questions for me about the male mystique.

  I used to think about Tim Curry when I masturbated as a teenager. What does that say about me?

  Caitlin didn’t say anything. She put something in her pocket. Then she turned and walked down the street, disappearing at the corner. I could have followed her, but it seemed pointless. Her look had said more than any awkward conversation could. She knew something, and she was into this deep. So was Patrick.

  Now I had to keep them both away from Mia.

  I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. A few seconds later, my cell rang. It was Selena.

  “Stanley Park,” she said simply. “Twenty minutes. You’ll see us.”

  “Same deal?” I asked her.

  Silence crackled on the phone. “Get down here as soon as you can. Bring Siegel and Sedgwick. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

  I snapped the phone shut.

  That eliminated one suspect. Not even Caitlin Siobhan could be in two places at once. I’ll bet she knew something that could, though.

  Derrick appeared, struggling to open the car door as he held a folded newspaper, two coffee cups, and a shopping bag.

  “They didn’t have Twix,” he said, “so I got you a Big Turk.”

  12

  We arrived home to find Mia and Miles watching an old VHS copy of Uncle Buck, with John Candy about to drill through the bedroom door.

  “I don’t get why the daughter is such a cow,” Mia was saying.

  “It’s a difficult age for her,” Miles replied.

  “Yeah, but why is she so hella mean to everyone? And her hair is so curly and, like, so tight. Maybe that’s why she’s so pissed off.”

  “Because of the perm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You were right, though. This movie rocks. Wait . . .” She laughed. “What’s the sign for ‘movie’ again?”

  Derrick touched the palm of his right hand to the index finger of his left. Then he waved the fingers of his left hand.

  “Oh, like a movie projector. Cool.”

  “You’re a natural at sign.”

  “That’s so weird, because I suck at French. I can never remember the verb tenses. But talking with your hands is different. I like it.”

  “Something smells amazing,” Derrick said as we walked up the stairs. Baron was sandwiched comfortably between Mia and Miles on the couch. He stared lazily at us, but didn’t get up. Mia scratched behind his ears.

  “Miles made curry popcorn,” Mia said, gesturing to the green Tupperware bowl that they were passing between them. “It’s major. That’s what Posh is saying now. Everything’s major.” She giggled. “We watched The Beckhams earlier.”

  “What happens if she has a major crisis?” Miles asked.

  “She’d be like, ‘Blimey, this is majorly major! David!’ ”

  “Quick, David, put the kids in the bomb shelter!”

  “No wait—doesn’t she have, like, that insane closet—”

  “With the MRI in it? To scan her outfits?”

  “Yeah! They could totally hide in there!”

  “Kids! Into Mommy’s MRI, quickly!”

  Mia laughed and took a handful of popcorn. “There’s peanuts in it,” she clarified, “and yellow curry. You should take notes.”

  “Right.” I collapsed into the chair by the television. “Here’s the thing. We have to go to Stanley Park tonight.”

  Miles looked at me sharply. “Did Selena call?”

  I nodded.

  “Is there another body?” Mia asked.

  I glared at her. “We are not having this conversation.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t seen a body before. Remember?”

  I winced. “I’d like to make sure you don’t see any more. I think that’s the lowest we can set the bar as your legal guardians—trying to keep you away from crime scenes.”

  “But our life is pretty much one big crime scene.” She licked the curried butter from her fingertips. “Right?”

  “I can stay longer . . .” Miles began.

  “No, they need you at the scene.”

  “Then”—he glanced from me to Mia—“what should we—”

  She sighed explosively. “I’m fourteen. I’m not a baby. Just go to your stupid crime scene and leave me here. I’ll finish the movie and go to bed.”

  “We’re not leaving you alone.”

  “Tess . . .”

  “This has nothing to do with your independence, okay? Serious shit is about to go down, and we need to keep you close.”

  “God, why don’t you just get me a leash?”

  “There’s always . . .” Derrick hesitated. He didn’t look happy. “I mean, what about Lucian? Could we call him?”

  “The necromancer?” Mia glared at me. “What, I can’t be trusted to take care of myself, so you’re going to leave me with some dude who raises the dead? Great, Tess. That’s really great parenting. Why don’t you find a vampire, or one of those Thyroid demons from last year—”

  “Vailoid demons,” I corrected, closing my eyes. “I guess we could call Lucian. It’s not like he’ll be asleep at this hour.”

  “Can we trust him?” Derrick blinked. “I mean, this is different from the investigation. This is our home.”

  “They’re not different,” I murmured. “They never will be. Not anymore. Everything’s just so—screwed up.”

  “That’s awesome!” Mia stood up. “Fine, call the creepy necromancer! I’l
l go call social services and tell them you’re endangering a minor!”

  “You’ll do no such thing!”

  She stormed down the hall. “I’m getting my phone!”

  “You don’t have any minutes left—and we pay the bill!” I called back after her.

  She slammed the door.

  Miles gave me a reassuring smile. “She’s an amazing kid,” he said. “You’re doing a great job. Don’t worry.”

  “Yeah. We’re about to win parents of the year.” I rubbed my eyes. “Next she’ll be making out with a vampire. Or shop-lifting.”

  “There isn’t a room big enough to hold her,” Miles said. “She’s smart, and she’s powerful. She’s going to do great things someday. But for now, she’s a regular teenager who hates everyone and everything.”

  “You can sense her power, too?”

  He nodded, eyes wide. “Oh yeah. She’s like one of those deluxe barbecues, throwing off heat.”

  “That’s our kidlet.” Derrick sighed. “So—you’re making the call, right? I’m not talking to the dude.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course I’ll make the call.”

  Honestly, I was as anxious about talking to Lucian as Derrick was. I still hadn’t mentioned my sleepover to anyone, and Derrick just assumed that I’d gone to a CORE clinic and stayed until morning. I didn’t feel like muddying up the waters any further. And the key to his warehouse still felt heavy in my pocket. It felt like a big, heavy cluster of secrets.

  Lucian arrived twenty minutes later, wearing blue jeans and a vintage Canucks jersey—the black one with the crazy yellow skate on it. I stared at him critically.

  “What?”

  “Nothing—at least you look harmless. That’s a good thing.”

  He rubbed his eyes. I noticed that his hair was uncharacteristically askew.

  “Were you actually sleeping when I called?”

  “Not yet, but I was looking forward to it.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Life happens. It’s not a problem.”

  “Tonight, it’s more like death happens.”

  “That’s business as usual.” He followed me up the stairs. “So—this is where you live. You know, you’ve never invited me over.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  He took in the living room and nodded. “I like it.”

  “Your approval means the world to me.” His expression fell. I sighed. “Sorry. I’m a crazy bitch tonight. I just want to go to sleep, but that’s become an impossible luxury. I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “I can handle it.”

  I decided not to unpack that statement. “There’s coffee and doughnuts in the kitchen,” I said, “and Mia’s room is down the hall. She probably won’t come out. If she does, try to be nice. Don’t tell her anything about the investigation.”

  “Are you sure? I thought I’d debrief her, and then later we could raise some skeleton warriors—you know, just for kicks.”

  I stared at him levelly. “Sarcasm is too sophisticated for me at this hour. Please tell me that you’re fine with this.”

  He laid both hands on my shoulders. “I’m fine with this.”

  Miles and Derrick emerged from the hallway. They were signing rapidly to each other, but I couldn’t catch what they were saying. Derrick’s smile evaporated when he saw Lucian, and he cleared his throat.

  “Hey.”

  Lucian nodded. “Hey.”

  Miles looked at him. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I shook my head. “Let’s all just bust them out and start measuring, shall we? Derrick, go warm up the car. Miles, can you make sure that both of our kits are in the trunk? And don’t forget the extra flashlight batteries.”

  They wavered for a moment.

  I blinked. “Was I unclear?”

  Derrick mumbled something. Then they both headed down the stairs.

  “You should have been in the army,” Lucian said.

  “My dad always says I should have gone into real estate.” I chuckled. “He doesn’t know how many Realtors are actually undead.”

  “That’s a common mistake.”

  I looked at him squarely for a moment.

  “What?” The corner of his mouth twitched.

  “Just . . .” I smoothed my hair to keep my hands occupied. “Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.”

  “It’s not a problem, Tess.”

  “I need to know that she’s safe.”

  He smiled. “I won’t let anything happen.”

  “But you and I tend to be danger magnets. Or had you forgotten?”

  “Go deal with the scene. I’ll deal with the dishes.”

  I laughed. “God. Maybe you are the perfect guy.” It escaped before I could stop it. I felt the blush creep up my face.

  Shit.

  Lucian looked satisfied, but made no reply.

  I ran outside, barely remembering to throw my jacket on before the cold hit me. I was awake now. My nerves were on fire.

  Stanley Park comprises over 1,000 acres. Bigger than Central Park, which is only 846 acres, give or take a tree. It isn’t especially safe at night, but people go there anyway. Some trails are known to offer up anonymous sex, if that’s what you’re looking for. Not a tourist attraction that Vancouver likes to advertise, but it’s there all the same. The seawall stretches almost nine kilometers around it, like a medieval barbican or some other strange fortification, patrolled by roller-blading teenagers rather than knights. The peninsula upon which the park sits—designed as a military reserve back in the 1860s—abuts the Pacific Ocean, now watching over everyone and no one, an empty fortress whose gears and cannons were long ago overgrown with rich dark moss and silent, cavernous roots.

  The city was still trying to repair the damage wreaked by severe storms a few years back, which had destroyed centuries-old redwoods and torn a swath through Prospect Point like some mad giant on a rampage. But with 200 kilometers of trails and roads crisscrossing each other like joined arteries deep within the flesh of the park, it was still the perfect place to hide a body.

  When I was little, my parents used to let me play in Cathedral Grove, where all the oldest trees were. I sat on the eight-hundred-year-old stump of the Hollow Tree, where wagons used to pause for photographs at the turn of the century. I stared at Siwash Rock with its statue of the beautiful girl in a wet suit—some glamorous secret lover of Jacques Cousteau in his youth, I imagined—and Deadman’s Island, whose shadowed contours had become a mass burial site for Coast Salish peoples during the smallpox outbreak of the late 1880s. To me, the park had always been like something out of a fantasy novel, like Tolkien’s Mirkwood or the home of the elves.

  Now it was just another crime scene. And I felt betrayed, as if by nature itself.

  We crossed the Lion’s Gate Bridge, glowing steel-green like a floating emerald walkway in the night, some piece of Faerie that had come miraculously unstuck. It closed the distance between the first narrows of Burrard Inlet and the North Shore, giving way to the residential splendor of North Vancouver, as well as the south entrance to the park and just about the only place you could hope to find parking. The bridge’s name was derived from the mountains that it faced, “the lions,” which towered from the north and cast their shadow over us all. The lights atop the bridge gleamed like a strand of pearls—a gift from the Guinness family. My mother used to tell me they were fairies that had fallen in love with the city and stayed here.

  Tonight they looked more like white blood cells, poised to attack something nameless and horrifying. Whatever was doing this. The thing that Duessa had called simply “it.”

  The lights of the bridge flickered as we drove. I felt like a strand of film in a movie projector, my life flashing forward. Planes of even darkness loomed on either side of us, waiting. Traffic was backed up due to construction, but Derrick was surprisingly adept at cutting people off and finding creative new lanes that only a compact could fit
safely into. He ignored the sound of the horns blaring behind us. Miles in the backseat kept smoothing out an invisible wrinkle in his pants, looking a bit queasy.

  We turned off at the set of orange lights, speeding down the parkway. The transition was gradual. The trees began to multiply, until suddenly the park was all around us, looking uncharacteristically sinister. Trails branched off and disappeared in all directions. Moonlight danced on the water to our right, and I could see the glowing neon sign for Monk’s restaurant at the foot of the Cambie Street Bridge. There was also a floating Shell station with a glowing icon for boats, and I could remember standing in a nearby grove when I was barely eighteen, making out with my college boyfriend beneath the light of those same signs. He had nearly hairless wrists. Odd for a boy.

  We saw the lights. Flares were placed approximately ten feet apart, burning green against the dark. The occlusion field was a lot stronger than normal, since it was difficult to mystically cordon off a quarter-mile stretch of Stanley Park. The materia flow, usually more like a spiderweb touch, hit me like a coffee spike to the chest. I glanced at Miles and Derrick, seeing that they felt it, too. The air around us was running hot.

  We parked by a group of unmarked sedans in a gravel patch, as close as we could get to the scene. A portable site had been set up with extra kits, batteries, gloves, Tyvek suits, and a pile of gel cell generators for alternate light sources. I could see the flashbulbs of a dozen cameras in the distance, just past the line of trees.

  “Guess we’re hiking,” Derrick said, grabbing supplies.

  My kit felt reassuringly heavy. I pretended that it was full of knowledge and experience rather than just scene equipment. Miles looked oddly uncomfortable as he stood there, empty-handed. I gave him a PVC apron and some shoe covers. He smiled, as if grateful to carry something.

  As we made our way past the tree line, I could hear competing voices, the hum of equipment, and the sound of portable generators. A scene photographer nearly bumped into me as she passed, her eyes on the monitor of her digital camera instead of the pathway. She apologized and kept going. I started to reach for my own camera with the ring flash—we used it for macrophotography of small bloodstains—but Derrick was already handing it to me. He smiled wanly. It was a “get ready” look. We knew each other too well.