Fang Ten

by Emery Belle

  “Here we are,” she said pleasantly as we reached a door at the end of the hallway. She knocked twice and opened it for me, stepping aside to let me enter before closing it behind me, leaving me alone with the silver-haired vampire sitting behind a large mahogany desk.

  He stood and gave me a swift bow, sweeping his dark cape around him as he invited me to sit across from him. When I did, he steepled his fingers under his chin and stared at me intensely, his ice-blue eyes both entrancing and fear-inducing. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I wanted to leap across the table and kiss him, or turn and run from the room as fast as my legs could carry me. He seemed to sense what I was thinking, for he chuckled and lowered his gaze to his desk.

  “My apologies. Sometimes I forget the effect a vampire my age can have on a woman. It is both a gift and a curse.” He produced a pair of glasses from his desk drawer and put them on, and when he looked at me again, the trance was broken. “Now then. Lydia tells me you’re a police officer?”

  “Not quite,” I said, shifting in my chair uncomfortably. “But I’m investigating the disappearance of Hattie Bumble. I don’t know whether you’ve heard…?”

  “Of course.” Maurice’s voice grew grave. “But I thought the wizard Glenn Gulley was the perpetrator?”

  “He is not,” I began hotly, starting to rise from my chair before catching myself and sitting back down. I inhaled deeply. “I mean, we’re looking at all angles right now.”

  Maurice raised his eyebrows briefly, then inclined his head. “A wise decision.” He threaded his long fingers together. “And how may I be of assistance?”

  I opened my purse and pulled out the carpet square I’d taken from Hattie’s house. Maurice extended his hand, and when I gave it to him, he brushed his pale fingertips over the droplets of blood. “I was wondering if there was any way for you to tell what type of person this blood came from.” I hesitated to use the word creature or species. When Maurice frowned at me, I explained, “You know, witch, zombie, gnome. And so on.”

  “Ah.” Maurice nodded. “No, I’m afraid not.” When I visibly deflated, he added, “But there is a potion that can identify whether the blood contains the magic gene found only in witches and wizards. Some vampires have an allergy to magical blood, so I test every unknown sample that comes through the morgue doors. Would that be useful for your investigation?”

  “It would.” I nodded gratefully. It wasn’t as foolproof as I’d hoped, but still, it was better than nothing. Maurice told me he’d be back and swept from the room, leaving me to stare at the bloodstained carpet square with a sick feeling in my stomach. Hattie had been gone for more than a week now. Was she still out there, somewhere, hurt or in pain? Or would any attempts to find her alive end in heartache? One thing was for sure, now that Kellen had made his move on Glenn, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop until I’d cleared his name. No matter how long it took.

  When Maurice returned to his office, he was holding a vial of green liquid and a dropper. He settled himself behind his desk and pulled the carpet square over to him, then began siphoning the liquid from the vial, placing a single drop on each stain. When he was finished, he sat back, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at the carpet. So I did the same.

  Before long, flecks of gold appeared on the carpet, distributed evenly among each crimson stain. “Here we go.” Maurice leaned forward and beckoned me closer, then pressed his fingertip against one of the blood droplets. When he did, the gold flecks seemed to dance before settling back into place.

  “As you can see,” he said, looking up at me, “each of the stains reacted the same to the potion. If this were non-magical blood, it would have remained unchanged. But here—” He waved his hand over the carpet.

  “It’s all magical,” I finished for him. “But there’s no way to tell if it came from a man or a woman, or even…” I trailed off as Maurice shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What about blood type?” I asked, recalling the various vials of blood labeled by type I’d passed on my way to Maurice’s office. I had no idea what type of blood Hattie had, but maybe there was a way to find out… a record at the hospital… or…?

  I was reaching, grasping at straws, and I knew it. Even if the blood didn’t belong to Hattie, that didn’t bring me any closer to solving the mystery. My list of suspects was long, and most of them were witches and wizards—Arthur, Pearl, Fletcher. Maybe someone I hadn’t even met yet. The island was teeming with witches and wizards, any one of whom could have kidnapped Hattie.

  But I was growing increasingly desperate. Maurice must have sensed that, for he took the time to consider my question, his eyes soft and kind as he toyed with the edge of the carpet square. “It would be extremely difficult to extract any type of information from dried blood, but if you leave the carpet with me, I will see what I can do.”

  I thanked him, then scrawled my newly acquired phone number on a piece of paper—Garnet had recently bought a shared phone for our dorm room, for which I was grateful. Cell phones weren’t commonplace on the island, and since mine didn’t work outside of the human world, I oftentimes felt like I was naked without it. Maurice promised to call me if he was able to uncover any more information about the blood, then escorted me out of his office.

  As we walked down the hall, I saw that it was partially blocked by a stack of four coffins that hadn’t been there when I’d arrived. Maurice’s entire face lit up when he spotted them. “What a treat!” he said, running his fingers along the outside of one simple pine coffin while I tried not to lose my breakfast. He looked at me, eyes shining with excitement. “Care for a sample?”

  I shook my head quickly, keeping my fingers pressed against my lips, and Maurice shrugged. “I suppose it’s an acquired taste.” Then he bent down, placed his fingertips beneath the coffin on the bottom of the pile, and lifted all four coffins as easily as if they’d been feathers.

  “Have a nice day, Wren,” he called to me, balancing the coffins in one pale hand as he pushed open a door to our right. One glance over his shoulder revealed that the room was stuffed to the brim with coffins of all shapes and sizes, and suddenly, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  I jogged down the hallway and pushed through the door leading back to the waiting room, where the only vampire still inside glanced up from the bloodstained magazine he was reading to bare his fangs at me in what he clearly thought was a seductive way.

  After letting out a tiny, involuntary whimper of fear, I called out a hurried thanks to Lydia, who had resumed clacking away at her keyboard, before speeding out the morgue’s front door. I didn’t stop or look behind me until the building was well out of sight, and I spent the rest of the day and well into the evening glancing over my shoulder and jumping at the smallest of noises.

  As far as I was concerned, and despite what it meant for my investigation, Maurice could just keep that carpet square. I had no intentions of ever going back.

  “I just don’t get it.” Garnet’s brow was furrowed in concentration as she attempted, for at least the tenth time, to perform a hand-binding hex on me. And, for at least the tenth time, I wiggled my fingers at her to show her that it hadn’t worked. “How are you and Hunter so much better at magic than me?” she fumed. “You’ve barely been on the island for two months!”

  We were practicing spells for our end-of-term exams, which would be upon us in mere days, and the stakes were high—if we passed, we’d finally, finally, be eligible to select wands of our own and begin practicing our magic out in the real world. Although, in Garnet’s case, that was an unsettling thought, especially as she aimed her training wand at me again but sent her next hand-binding hex spinning toward Monty instead. His eyes bugged out as his lips fused together, and he began swinging around frantically on his chain, staring pointedly at my own training wand.

  But instead of coming to his aid, I tucked it into my pocket and gave him an unapologetic shrug. Since he’d spent the better part of the morning
alternating between taunting poor Garnet and spouting out nonsensical words in an attempt to confuse us as we tried to practice our spells out loud, I figured a few minutes of time-out would do all of us a world of good.

  “You’ll get there,” I said soothingly, patting Garnet on the arm. Truth be told, I had no idea why I’d been excelling at my magic so far; I was as surprised as anyone else at how quickly I’d taken to it. I hadn’t shown a lick of magical abilities prior to the day Glenn had plopped out of my showerhead and announced that I was a witch, but I’d only had to practice for the exams for an hour before feeling confident that I’d pass with flying colors. Since then, I’d been trying to help Garnet, but by now we were both running out of patience.

  “I’m going to see Calvin,” Garnet said, flinging her hair over her shoulders in a huff and slipping into her shoes. She and our familiar training instructor had been seeing quite a bit of each other in the past few days, and every time she returned to our shared room after one of their dates she looked like she was walking on cloud nine.

  I, on the other hand, hadn’t seen Sebastian since the night of the coven’s dance—though not for lack of trying on his part. He’d sent me a couple of sparrows suggesting we get dinner, but I always came up with a reason to stay home. I still needed to work out my feelings for him, which were growing more complicated by the day, and with Glenn still on the run, I was too distracted to worry about something as frivolous as my love life.

  “Have fun,” I said to Garnet, then took mercy on Monty by undoing Garnet’s ill-placed spell before plopping onto my bed to go over my mixology notes one last time, ignoring Monty’s muttered threats and curse words as he made loud smacking noises with his newly freed lips. I was just reviewing the ingredients needed to make a cup of courage—and remembering that mine was still tucked in my purse—when the phone rang.

  I launched myself at it, my heart pounding hard. It had been two days since I’d left the carpet square from Hattie’s house at the morgue, but I hadn’t heard from Maurice yet. The only other time the phone had rung since then, it was from a man with a greasy voice trying to sell me a yeti-fur coat.

  “Hello?” I said breathlessly, winding the phone’s cord around my fingers. When I heard a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, my shoulders drooped, until she introduced herself as Lydia, the receptionist from the morgue.

  “Maurice wanted me to send his apologies that he wasn’t able to call himself,” she said, “but he wanted me to pass along a message to you.” She cleared her throat importantly. “He was able to extract enough information from the bloodstains to determine blood type… Have you got a pen or pencil? Because this is a little complicated.”

  “I do,” I said, lunging toward my nightstand to grab my notebook. I listened as she dictated the results of Maurice’s tests, then thanked her and hung up before staring down at what I had written. The testing had revealed the presence of five distinct blood types. How was that possible? One would be obvious—Hattie’s. Two, I could understand—Hattie’s and the perpetrator’s. But five? Had an entire group of people been involved in Hattie’s disappearance?

  I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was looking at, so I set the notebook down and returned to my mixology notes, certain there had to be some mistake in the testing. Perhaps the blood was just too old to get an accurate reading.

  “Poppyseed oil, four-leaf clover, the ear of an earthworm,” I recited dutifully, committing the ingredients to memory in case Glenn—or whoever would administer the mixology exam in his absence—wanted us to recreate our cups of courage. “Stir twice clockwise, then twice counterclockwise, repeating for a duration of no less than five minutes…”

  Though I was trying to focus on my notes, the results from the blood testing were still spinning around in the back of my mind, demanding my attention. There was something I was missing. There was something I wasn’t thinking of.

  And then it hit me like a tidal wave.

  I knew. I knew. It should have been obvious.

  “I have to go,” I shouted at Monty, grabbing my purse and slinging it over my shoulder. I yanked open the door and prepared to step outside, but as I did, a figure melted out of the shadows and lunged toward me.

  And then, darkness.

  Chapter 16

  I woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, my hands and feet bound, a handkerchief tied around my mouth so tightly I had to take little gasping breaths to keep from passing out. The room I’d been imprisoned in was lit only by an ornate candelabra flickering on top of a pipe organ, the flames casting eerie shadows off the purple velvet drapes that hung from the walls.

  An open casket was positioned in the middle of the room, its red silk interior looking plush and inviting in contrast to the straight-back wooden chair I was sitting in that was causing shooting pains to reverberate up and down my back. When I tried adjusting my position, the chair scraped across the floor, causing the man inside the casket to sit up and open his eyes.

  “You’re awake!” Radu Maldova gave me an easy grin and tousled his thick golden hair with his fingers, looking like he’d just stepped straight out of the ocean following one of his surfing classes. His straight white fangs were dazzling against his deeply tanned skin, and for the first time, I noticed that one wall of the room was dedicated entirely to a collection of colorful surfboards.

  He sprang from the coffin and adjusted his sleeveless shirt, which was decorated with a pattern of alternating pineapples and watermelon slices. “Hang tight, I’ll be right back.” He strode from the room, whistling, arms swinging merrily, leaving me alone with only my thoughts…

  No. Not alone. Someone else was sitting a few feet away from me, her hands and feet bound to an identical wooden chair, her chin drooping onto her chest. She seemed to be unconscious, or at least in a very deep sleep. I squinted through the dim room, trying to get a look at her face, which was covered by a tangle of straggly silver hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in days.

  The woman gave a sudden loud snore—almost stopping my heart in the process—and when her head lolled to the side, the light from the candelabra played across her features, confirming what I already suspected. “Hattie?” I choked out around the handkerchief. “Are you okay?” My words were barely distinguishable, but it didn’t matter anyway—my fellow prisoner let out another snore, and a few strands of hair in front of her nose fluttered gently.

  I looked around, taking in the severity of my situation. Not only was I bound and gagged, but the room we were being held in was windowless and stifling. The only way in or out was through the door Radu had just exited, and the metal bars on its tiny window told me I couldn’t just waltz through it if I hadn’t been bound. My purse was on the floor beneath me, not that it mattered—in my haste to leave my dorm room, I’d left my training wand lying on my bed.

  Radu entered the room again, this time carrying a small bottle. “I must not have given you the right dosage,” he said, dipping a rag into the bottle and frowning as he eyed me up and down. “I think I underestimated your weight.”

  Rude.

  After soaking the rag, he held it up to my nose, and I immediately recognized the foul smell wafting from it. Hemlock syrup—the same poison Hattie’s kidnapper used to knock out Dolores, the porcelain witch on her fireplace, so she wouldn’t be a witness to the crime. But the question remained… how had Radu known about the witches in the first place? Had he been in Hattie’s apartment before, and if so, why?

  I sized him up, taking in his surfer-boy good looks. Was it possible he was another of Hattie’s suitors? He looked way too young… but maybe she was having some kind of midlife crisis? If you could define a centuries-old witch as being in her “midlife.”

  “Hmm.” Radu frowned down at the rag as I glared at him, the hemlock syrup having no effect on me. “That’s strange. I guess I’ll just have to…” He trailed off as he ripped the handkerchief from my mouth, then forced my head back and dumped a sizable po
rtion of the hemlock syrup down my throat. I gagged and sputtered as it singed the back of my throat, and almost immediately, I began to feel woozy and weightless, as though I were floating amidst the clouds.

  Radu’s face began to waver in and out of focus, and panic, sudden and sharp, clawed at me.

  Must stay awake.

  Must keep fighting.

  Must…

  “You’re awake!” Radu sprang up from the coffin and grinned at me, raking his fingers through his golden hair, tousling it once more. A sense of déjà vu settled over me as I shook off the fog of the hemlock syrup and the vampire’s handsome face came back into focus. Hadn’t we already done this? I eyed him suspiciously, and his smile faltered.

  He chewed his lip worriedly as he took in my bound hands and feet as if seeing them for the first time, then he squinted up at me, his face contorted with confusion. “It’s Wren, isn’t it?” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the now-empty coffin, then back at me. “What are you doing here?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “This is my bedroom. I have a girlfriend, you know.”

  I gaped at him, my mouth now handkerchief-free. “What do you mean, what am I doing here?” I spluttered. “You kidnapped me!” I jabbed my head toward Hattie, who was still fast asleep. “And her too!”

  Radu stroked the sun-kissed stubble on his chin, looking perplexed. Slowly, he shook his head. “No, that can’t be right.” Then he frowned at me again before hustling out of the room, returning moments later with the same bottle of hemlock syrup and the same rag. “I must not have given you the right dosage,” he muttered, dipping the rag into the bottle and eyeing me up and down for the second time. “I think I underestimated your weight.”