Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  No. Not seen it, not written down. Maybe heard it?

  “Okay. So if Salvaggi is the Big Boss, what does that tell us?”

  “That these guys are regional bosses who report to him, maybe.” I looked back at the names more carefully. “So. Augustus runs Manhattan, Deirdre runs Queens, Moshe runs Brooklyn, Santiago runs the Bronx, and Donatello runs Staten Island?”

  “Augustus, Deirdre, Moshe, Santiago, and Donatello? That does not sound like a list of gang names to me. Maybe this is about drugs?”

  “Maybe.” I knew I sounded distracted, but I had suddenly remembered where I’d heard the name

  Salvaggi before. Nick had said it to me. That was the name of the vampire guy who had killed Pearson’s father. So if this really was a vampirarchy, then they were more organized than I would have guessed. I mean, inasmuch as I’d ever considered vampires—which was pretty much never until the last few weeks—I always assumed that they were solitary creatures, more prone to skulking around alone than to setting up corporate-style structures. Then again, the fact that the word “vampirarchy” even existed meant that someone knew about this.

  Trust Greg to find the biggest word possible to describe something.

  Anyway, back to the point: If Salvaggi was the big guy, then these other people were regional bosses, and the names under them must be—what? My mind was racing, filling in the corporate metaphor. These other guys must be the vampire equivalent of mid-level managers. There were at least ten guys on each list. Fifty managers. With who knows how many “employee” vampires.

  Oh, God.

  I must have whispered that last part out loud, because Malcolm looked over at me. “What? You okay?”

  “Yeah. I think I just realized for the first time exactly how big and bad this thing Greg’s into must be.”

  “He tried to kill you and you’re just now realizing how bad it is?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, I knew it, but it’s different having it all on paper right there in front of you.”

  I flipped to the next page. In the same five-column layout with the same five-borough headings was a list of addresses. There were at least six addresses in each column—eight in the Bronx, seven in Manhattan.

  I was guessing that these were vampire hideouts. And at least two of them were disconcertingly close to Fordham and therefore close to my own home address.

  Great. I was living in Bronxylvania.

  We called it a night after I realized that there were vampire dens all over the city. I needed to think about that fact, and I needed Malcolm to be gone while I thought. Of course, we didn’t stop until we’d looked at all the pages I’d printed out, but the rest of the pages were covered with codes and numbers that made no sense to me. Malcolm offered to take them away to try to make some sense out of them. I agreed—he was the mathematician, after all. Unless they’re dates, numbers just confuse me.

  These clearly weren’t dates.

  I half wanted Malcolm to stay at my place that night. He hadn’t worn a disguise to the law offices and Greg had seen him. And it’s hard to tell if you’ve been followed home when the guy who might be following you can swirl away into any convenient shadows. So for all I knew, Greg knew exactly where we had gone and would be outside waiting for one of us to leave. The thought gave me chills.

  But when I suggested to Malcolm that he might want to stay over on my couch, he gave me a strange, indecipherable look.

  “Your couch? No thanks, not the couch. I’d rather go home.”

  “I’m worried that someone might figure out what we’ve done and come after us, Malcolm. I don’t want you walking home alone. It scares me.”

  “Nobody followed us, Elle. I was watching.”

  Yeah. So was I. But I couldn’t tell him why that wasn’t any guarantee that Greg hadn’t followed us home.

  We finally compromised. He called a cab and I watched him from behind the locked glass door of my apartment building while the car pulled away.

  I don’t know if the whole “invite them into your home” thing about vampires extends to entire apartment buildings. The fact that Nick had hustled me off into a new place indicated that vampires did indeed have to have an invitation to come into individual apartments, but the building itself might be another matter. I mean, my building had locks on both the inner and outer doors and only tenants and their guests were supposed to be able to get in, but I didn’t understand vampire entry rules—so for all I knew, a vampire could be hiding in the elevator waiting for me.

  That thought sent me bounding up the four flights to my place. I was breathing heavily by the time I slammed the door behind me and shot the bolt into its slot to lock it.

  Millie wound herself around my ankles and mewed at me inquisitively. I picked her up and stroked her. “I know, Mill. I haven’t paid enough attention to you lately. Let’s go snuggle up in bed.”

  It was almost 3:00 in the morning by then. I checked out all the darker corners of my apartment (yes, I know, vampires can’t get in without an invitation. But I was scared. I did it more to reassure myself than because I thought there would really be anyone there). And then I crawled into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  At 8:00 the next morning, a thought came to me as I drifted through my morning sleep haze. I sat bolt upright in bed.

  What had Malcolm meant, exactly, when he’d said he didn’t want to stay on my couch?

  9

  I spent all morning rolling that thought around in my head. I thought about it all the way through class, all the way back to my apartment.

  Clearly I was crazy—any sane person would have spent the day worrying about the vampire infestation paperwork we’d discovered last night. But not me. Nope. I was more concerned about why Malcolm had stressed that he didn’t want to sleep on my couch.

  I wondered if he would have stayed if I had invited him to sleep in my bed. That thought worried me.

  Not that I wasn’t interested, at least hypothetically. Any woman in her right mind would be interested. He was attractive, kind, smart, funny, willing to sneak into law offices under false pretenses and steal files. What more could a woman ask for? But the problems with Malcolm wanting to sleep with me were legion—and I mean that in the Biblical “demonic” sense. There were monsters out to get me. For that matter, there was one monster out to get me back, as in “back into his undead life as his girlfriend.”

  I hadn’t realized quite how dangerous this whole thing might be for Malcolm. I’d really only thought about my own need for help. But now I knew that keeping Malcolm involved in this could be just as dangerous for him as it was for me—especially if he had developed a romantic interest in me. I suspected that last bit would piss Greg off. And I didn’t want Greg to focus his attention on Malcolm.

  I had let Malcolm take one of the file printouts home last night.

  Curses. Blast. Damn. Hell. And those were the mild ones.

  I had to get that list of numbers back and I had to get Malcolm off the case. He didn’t know enough about what was really going on. I could get him killed.

  And I didn’t want that. I liked him. Which meant that I had to get rid of him.

  Have I mentioned how much it sucks (no pun intended) to be hunted by a vampire? Ruins your whole day.

  And your whole life, if you’re not careful.

  I’d already lost one boyfriend to the vampires. I wasn’t going to lose another, even if he wasn’t actually my boyfriend.

  So only one question remained: how do you break up with an un-boyfriend?

  I decided to put off answering that question in favor of sorting through the garbage bag. It seemed like the more entertaining option of the two.

  Most of the trash was pretty standard working-late-at-the-office stuff: old Starbucks cups, stale doughnut pieces, take-out boxes. I moved those into another bag for disposal. There were a lot of yellow post-it notes, and I saved all of those. In fact, I saved all the paper I found. Some of it had been through a shredder. I didn’t
have a lot of confidence in my ability to piece those pages back together, but I saved it anyway.

  And somewhere along about the middle of the bag, I found a plain white t-shirt. Men’s size XL.

  The front of it was covered in blood from the neckband to the bottom hem.

  At least, I assumed it was blood. It was a dark brown crunchy substance that had, when wet, soaked through to the other side of the shirt. And if it was blood, I didn’t see how anyone could have survived losing that much of it.

  Of course, I don’t know that much about blood loss. I tend to get dizzy when I donate blood, so clearly I believed that even a pint was too much to lose. And I don’t know how much blood it would take to soak through a t-shirt.

  Okay. First things first. I needed to find out if it was even blood.

  The internet is an amazing invention. It allows you to find just about any information you may need with a few clicks of a mouse.

  If, that is, you know how to correctly word your query.

  I knew for a fact that just a few simple chemicals could be combined to show whether or not a substance was blood. I knew this because I’d watched all those crime shows on television.

  I just didn’t know what those chemicals were.

  An hour of web searches later I found it. Hemastix. The website used terms like “blood reagent material that will turn shades of green if blood is present.”

  Okay. Scientific Geek-Speak translation: this stuff tests for blood.

  I discovered something even better than that, though. Hemastix are available in pharmacies.

  They’re used to test for blood in urine samples. I could pop out to my local CVS and pick some up.

  So I did. The t-shirt I shoved into a plastic Ziploc baggie and took with me in my purse. God only knows what someone finding it would make of the fact that I had a bloody t-shirt in my purse, but I didn’t care. I just knew that I didn’t want to leave it behind.

  It probably would have been safer in my apartment.

  I was halfway to the nearest pharmacy when my phone rang.

  “Hey! I think I’ve figured out what those numbers mean. Can I come over?” Malcolm sounded excited. I hated the idea of telling him that I no longer needed his help, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  No time like the present. But I wanted to do this face-to-face. Breaking up with a partner-in-crime might not be exactly like breaking up with a boyfriend, but I felt that it deserved at least the same directness.

  “I’m on my way to pick something up at the pharmacy. Give me an hour or so?”

  “Sure. I’ll see you then.”

  It actually took me about an hour and a half. I had to go to three different pharmacies to find the Hemastix. I probably should have called first, but I was too excited about the possibility of figuring out if this stuff really was blood. Don’t ask me why. I knew that it was blood. I wasn’t going to have to prove it in any court. The Hemastix weren’t necessary. I suspect I wanted the Hemastix to prove I was right just because that would make me feel like I was doing something significant, like I was adding to what I knew.

  Malcolm was waiting outside my door when I got home. I reached into my purse to pull out my key and—of course—it caught on the baggie full of bloody shirt, ripping the Ziploc bag and spilling it onto the floor.

  Malcolm bent to pick it up. “What’s this?”

  “Something I found in the trash bag.”

  “That looks like blood.”

  “I think it is. I got some stuff to test it. What did you figure out about the numbers on that page?”

  We moved into the apartment and I locked the door behind us.

  “They’re stock exchange numbers. I thought they looked familiar. I think this is information about what the guys on this list have been investing in. And if I’m reading it right, they’re making big piles of money.”

  “Big enough to kill for?” I asked.

  “More than big enough. Think that’s what happened to the guy who was wearing that shirt?”

  “Let’s find out.” I pulled the Hemastix out of the plastic store sack I had been carrying. I also pulled out a bottle of water. The instructions on the internet said to use sterile water. I don’t know if reverse osmosis counts as sterilization, but I figured it was close enough. I wasn’t going to send it off for DNA testing; I just wanted to verify that the shirt was blood-soaked.

  It was. Malcolm didn’t say anything until after I had finished my test—dipping a Q-tip (also presumably not sterile, but so what?) into the bottle of water, rubbing it across the bloodstain, then rubbing it across the small strip from the Hemastix bottle.

  I peered at the strip. It was a sickly shade of green. Yep. Blood.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” Malcolm asked.

  “Television. And the internet.”

  “So you’re sure it’s blood?”

  “I was sure before I did the test.” I sat down on the couch, holding the Hemastix test and staring at it despondently.

  “You know,” Malcolm said, “this is beginning to feel a lot more serious than it did a few days ago.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I mean, it was one thing when we were sneaking around offices because your ex-boyfriend was a stalker or something. But I didn’t ever really expect to find anything.”

  “Really? Because I did.” Okay, then. This was my opening. If Malcolm was going to live, I needed either to tell him everything or to find a way to make him go away.

  I didn’t really want to do either of those things.

  But I knew I had to. So I took a deep breath. “You’re right, Malcolm. This is a lot more serious than even I expected. I’m going to call the police.”

  “What are you going to tell them? That we broke into your ex’s law office? They’ll arrest us.”

  “Nope. They’re not going to do anything to us. They’re not going to know that an ‘us’ even exists. I’m going to tell them that I was unpacking a box from my old apartment and found a bunch of old papers that belonged to my ex-boyfriend, along with a bloody t-shirt. I’m not going to bring you into it at all.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, you could say that I was with you when you found the stuff—” His voice trailed off. “No. I guess not. Okay.”

  “So I think maybe you’d better go so I can do that. Okay?” I didn’t look up at him.

  “Okay.” He whispered, and I realized he was standing just above me.

  Then he leaned over and kissed me.

  You know those kisses that send electricity through you—that shoot right through your mouth and end up in your stomach somewhere? This one went straight down to my toes. I got goose bumps.

  I forgot where I was for a moment. I think I forgot who I was for a moment. We were both breathing hard when Malcolm finally pulled away from me.

  “Call me when you’re done talking to the police, okay?” he whispered.

  “I think… I think that maybe I’d better not. I don’t want them to track you down through me.” Oh, God. Surely those words weren’t really coming out of my mouth, were they?

  But they were.

  “I see.” Malcolm said quietly. He looked hurt and puzzled.

  I had to fight myself not to kiss him again, to ask him to stay on my couch, in my bed, on the floor—to do anything other than leave.

  But I really did know that this was for the best. I liked him too much to see him get hurt. And as nice as the kiss had been, I wasn’t ready to start seeing someone again. It had only been three weeks since Greg had un-died. So I just let Malcolm leave my apartment.

  It was dark outside. I watched him shut the door behind himself, wanting to stop him but knowing I couldn’t. I knew he was hurt. I suspected he’d get angry after the immediate hurt wore off. I guess that’s why I didn’t suspect anything when I didn’t hear from him for six days.

  In my own defense, I was distracted—both by Malcolm’s kiss and by what happened after he left.

  But I still feel re
sponsible. I should have known that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  10

  I didn’t call the police when Malcolm left, of course. Instead, I tried to figure out how to deal with this problem on my own.

  I couldn’t think of anything. Malcolm had left the stock exchange information behind when he’d left, but it meant nothing to me. I never could figure out the whole stock exchange thing. People bought shares in stuff. The shares went up or down and people made or lost money. That was the extent of my knowledge.

  So I finished sorting through the garbage. I came up with a lot of trash and not much more. I had a bloody t-shirt, a list of the top New York City vampires and their corporate structure, a list of vampire addresses, and some sort of evidence of their financial solvency. Or immense wealth.

  Whichever.

  The money stuff didn’t surprise me, even if I didn’t fully understand it. If I were going to live forever, I’d figure out a way to be rich, too. I would hate the thought of toiling away at a job for eternity.

  Which brought me back to Greg.

  Why was he still on the payroll at Forster, Pearson, and Sims? And why did he have all of this information on one of their computers?

  With a shrillness that sounded abrupt in my silent apartment, a phone rang. It wasn’t my land line, and it wasn’t my regular cell phone. It was one of the cell phones we’d gotten for The Sting. I picked it up and checked out the caller ID: “Unknown Caller.”

  Hoping that maybe it was Malcolm—and equally hoping that it wasn’t—I answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Elle.”

  It was Greg. Just what I needed: another talk with the Undead Ex. “How did you get this number?”

  I demanded.

  “I pulled it from Sheila’s records.”

  Oh. Yeah. Right. The secretary. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “I see. So what do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you. I’ve been looking for you for days, Elle.”

  For some reason that comment irritated me, and I responded as I might have to any ex. “That’s odd. Because it seems to me that if you wanted to get in touch with me that badly, you could have left a message with the History department at Fordham. And I never got a message from you, Greg. So I just don’t think that you were looking for me all that hard.”