I collected the magic, clipping the glimmering cube onto the zipper tag of the inside pocket of my bag so it wouldn’t get lost. Then I snuffed out the candles.
Kett was watching me from just inside the kitchen’s swing doors. I hadn’t felt him appear behind me. And I couldn’t read his expression.
I involuntarily touched the now-fortified charm bracelet on my right wrist. The vampire’s gaze dropped to the trinket. Then he smiled, amused and completely unfazed.
“You will stay out of my head,” I blurted.
“I will.”
“I won’t let you bite me.”
Kett raised his silver-blue eyes to meet my gaze. His smirk widened into a grin, revealing his impossibly white, impossibly straight teeth.
“You will,” he said. “When the time comes, you will lift your hair from your neck of your own free will, of your own desire. You will align yourself with me, Wisteria Fairchild. I am your doom and your salvation.”
I stared at him, angered and flustered by his words. By his utter arrogance. But I had no words of my own with which to refute his preposterous claims. I clenched my fists at my sides, opening my mouth as if to force myself to speak.
Kett raised one eyebrow.
I shut my mouth, turning my back on him. I collected my candles and slung my bag over my shoulder.
The vampire had moved to the large steel door at the back of the kitchen. “Shall we proceed with your actual job? I have a site for you to look at.”
I lifted my chin, walking toward him and out the door when he opened it.
He wanted to play games, did he? He’d find that difficult with me.
I took no chances.
I made no bets.
I’d been foolish and weak once, and I’d paid for my folly. I had lost everyone I thought I loved, and one of the two people in this world who actually loved me back.
I would do my job. But I wouldn’t gamble with what I’d salvaged.
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun was still attempting to break through the clouds overhead as Kett and I left the bakery and walked toward a white BMW SUV parked a block away on a side street. The vehicle was new and had a current parking permit in the front window, which seemed oddly permanent. Was the executioner of the Conclave living in Vancouver? If so, where? With Jade and her fiance?
The SUV would have been flashy anywhere else, but in Kitsilano, it was almost nondescript. So what was a vampire in designer dark-wash jeans, a steel-blue V-neck cashmere sweater, and brushed suede oxfords doing driving an SUV and sipping Pinot Noir with me the night before?
My cellphone pinged.
I flinched, startled from puzzling out Kett. What he was doing in Vancouver really wasn’t any of my business, but apparently, his suggestion that I was going to beg him to bite me in the near future had me on edge.
I retrieved my phone from my bag, glancing at the text message. It was from Jasmine.
>Gravesite belongs to Colby Hansen. Attended Sentinel Secondary School. Boyfriend of Luci Jennings. Straight As. Big on moody poetry and gaming, on and offline.
Kett opened the passenger door of the SUV for me, then stepped around to the driver’s side.
“It’s from Jasmine. She’s tracked down some info about the teenager. I contacted her last night about the case and followed up with the few details I knew by email this morning.”
“I saw,” Kett said dismissively.
Not quite certain what he was talking about — other than intimidatingly suggesting he’d read my text message on the sly — I climbed into the SUV, tucked my bag behind my feet, and adjusted the shoulder strap of my seat belt to the recommended setting for my height. The vehicle still had that new car smell, and didn’t contain a single personal item I could see.
My phone pinged with another text.
“Facebook page,” I said, clicking the link that had appeared.
Kett started the engine, pulling out to circle the block, then turning left onto West Fourth Avenue, heading east.
I scrolled through Colby Hansen’s Facebook profile. “Not used much by him. Serving as a memorial now. Sad. They think it was a suicide.”
“As they should,” Kett said.
“Drained of blood?” I said snottily. Apparently, maintaining professional detachment around a vampire was going to be a struggle. “That’s how it works, isn’t it? So where did his blood go?”
He didn’t answer.
My phone pinged a third time. I tore my gaze away from Kett’s chiseled profile, already admonishing myself for staring at him at all.
Jasmine had texted a second Facebook link. I clicked on it. “Luci Jennings.”
Colby’s girlfriend’s page didn’t have much on it that was public, but her cover photo was of a handwritten note on a thick piece of letterpress stationary embossed with pink flowers. The pink-inked note read: Thank you for your condolences.
“The pink pencil,” I murmured.
Kett was looking at me, rather than the road. I glanced nervously ahead through the windshield. We were sitting at a red light. I hadn’t noticed that we’d stopped.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“I think we should talk to the girlfriend.”
“A human,” he said derisively.
The light turned green.
“As far as we know. But perhaps a human who knew about Colby’s suicide not being a true suicide —”
“Death is death.”
I paused, assessing this statement. I wasn’t sure what he meant or how it was relevant.
“Because of the pink pencil,” he said.
“What? Yes. In the reconstruction the teen is … staked by a pink pencil.”
“Pencils do not kill vampires. Pink or otherwise.”
I smirked, then quickly smoothed my expression. “Perhaps it was a magical pencil.”
“Perhaps the teenager wasn’t a vampire.”
That gave me pause. “What else could he have been?”
Kett didn’t answer.
My phone pinged a fourth time.
>Vancouver 7:20 p.m.
“Jasmine’s flight gets in this evening,” I said, texting back a thumbs up and a quick ‘Thank you’ for the information.
“There are no direct flights from Connecticut?”
“She was in San Francisco, winding up a case.”
Silence stretched between us. I placed my phone on the shelf above the glove box. Rain sprinkled across the windshield as the city around us flattened, and the real estate lining the wide boulevard became less polished and more serviceable.
Kett flicked on the wipers.
“So the other site?” I asked. “Another incident?”
“You will see.”
I didn’t attempt any further chitchat. I preferred to walk into scenes without preconceived ideas anyway. And silence was the best way to reinforce my unwillingness to participate in whatever game the vampire had going on.
I fingered the tiny oyster-shell cubes attached to my charm bracelet, hoping that whatever Jade had done to the bracelet hadn’t somehow erased the reconstructions I kept housed on it. I could have viewed them just to make sure, but even though the vampire wouldn’t be able to see the magic as it replayed, I didn’t want to do anything so personal in his presence. I had a feeling that everything and anything I did around him would be used as leverage against me at an unnamed but looming date.
“Don’t worry,” Kett said. “The alchemist is exceedingly skilled.”
“It’s an extraordinary gift,” I said, dropping my hand and turning to watch shops, restaurants, and pedestrians slip by outside my window.
“Jade Godfrey is a powerful ally.”
“Not everyone sees the world as being so black and white,” I said, bothered by the suggestion that I would view Jade’s offered friendship as a means to an alliance. Mostly because that was exactly how my family viewed any and all relationships.
“True,” he said. “But you and I do.”
I kept my
mouth shut, though it was a near thing. Not all Fairchilds were powermongers, but what did I care if the vampire thought my last name defined who I was? If he even knew my family, for that matter. Though his previous mention of Connecticut implied as much.
“Where are we heading?” I asked.
“Surrey.”
Excellent. That was an urban sprawl east of Vancouver, and at least a forty-five minute drive trapped in a steel box with a vampire.
“Do you have any questions about the reconstruction?” I asked, trying to keep myself focused on my job and not my potentially claustrophobic surroundings and possibly homicidal companion.
“Do you have any answers?”
“Actually, I don’t. Because, as I’ve stated previously, I don’t look for answers. I leave that to other people.”
“You were exceedingly clear.”
I was tempted to let the discussion languish, reverting to the silence that was always my best weapon against power plays. But this was a job, and I was, at a minimum, attempting to be professional. “I still think we should talk to the girlfriend, Luci.”
Kett nodded. “Afterward. If you don’t turn up anything more substantial than the grieving recollections of a teenaged human female.”
And with that declaration, we spent the rest of the ride in silence.
❒ ❒ ❒
The rain grew heavier as we merged onto the freeway and drove into the city of Surrey. After trading one thrumming vein of traffic for another, then cutting directly through endless neighborhoods filled with large, cookie-cutter homes that occupied almost every square foot of their properties, Kett parked at the curb in front of a nondescript but massive apartment complex.
Without a map to lead me back to Vancouver, I’d have been completely lost in the surrounding urban sprawl. We were only a block off the Fraser Highway, and the traffic noise was constant as I stepped from the SUV. Years of neglect had grayed the pink stucco of the building, and any attempt at landscaping suffered from the same lack of maintenance. The complex looked as if it hadn’t been touched since it had been built in the early eighties.
A well-treed park filled the opposite side of the block. And the surrounding buildings appeared recently renovated. The rundown complex was a holdout from another era, perhaps.
The street was quiet, but it was midday on a Tuesday, so most people would be at work or school. I didn’t have an umbrella, which was pretty laughable given the size of my bag and the fact that I spent most of my days off in Seattle.
“Do we have an appointment?” I asked as I followed Kett up the walk to the building’s front doors.
The vampire didn’t answer, pulling open the door without consulting the list of names above the buzzer. Either he broke the lock so easily that I hadn’t seen him do it, or it had already been broken.
I followed him into the entranceway, which smelled distinctly of day-old food with an underlying layer of pervasive mildew.
We took the stairs, rather than the elevator, to the fifth floor in continuing silence. Stale cigarette smoke dominated the stairwell, and I tripped over the puckered berber carpet as we entered the corridor. It was blotchy gray, but I noted that it hadn’t originally been that color.
Police tape was crisscrossed over the door of apartment 516. Kett reached for the handle.
“Have you been here before?” I asked.
“I had no previous need to enter the apartment.”
I took that to mean he’d simply been in or around the building. The fine details of why there was police tape across the door weren’t any of my business, though. “I should go first. You expect magic, yes? And you want me to do a reconstruction? You might leave residual. I’m not sure. I’ve never worked with a vampire before.”
Kett turned his silvered gaze on me. “You wish for me to wait in the hall?”
I couldn’t tell by his detached tone, but I had a suspicion that the suggestion was an utter affront to him. “For a moment.”
The vampire tipped his chin downward in what I assumed was a nod of acceptance, then he pulled the police tape from the door and popped the lock on the knob. The deadbolt wasn’t engaged. He stepped back, and with a formal sweep of his hand, indicated that I should enter before him.
I ignored the gesture, which I took as sarcasm. I had a job to do, so I would do it.
I stepped into the dim apartment and immediately stumbled over a pile of shoes by the door.
Kett grabbed me by the elbow, steadying me. His touch was almost gentle, but it was like being held by a marble statue. The instant I had my footing, he released me and stepped back, standing just inside the doorway to the hall.
I paused to let my eyes adjust to the darkness, focusing on the immediate area for any residual energy spots that might offer enough power for a reconstruction.
The front door opened up onto a living room, with a galley-style kitchen directly to the left. Beyond the kitchen, a hall ran deeper into the apartment. Sun-bleached curtains hung over what I assumed was a small patio at the windowed side of the living room. A well-worn sectional sofa faced a large flat-screen TV on the wall to my far right. Beer cans and take-out food containers were scattered across the coffee table. The air was stale, but not unpleasant.
“No obvious magic here,” I whispered.
“No,” Kett said agreeably. He hadn’t stepped any farther into the apartment, but being taller than me, he must have had a good view of the main room over my shoulders.
“You can see magic?” I asked, willfully forgetting it was impolite to ask after another Adept’s magical prowess. If I had to work with the vampire, it only seemed logical for me to know what assets he brought to our professional relationship.
“Some.”
That was interesting, and not a noted vampiric talent. At least not in any magical lore I’d studied. I was fairly certain he could see far better in the dark than I could, though.
A trace of light seeped in through the curtains and through the broken Venetian blinds in the kitchen. I gathered we were facing north, which didn’t help with illumination on a gray day.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a candle. Green for earth, which I felt the strongest affinity toward. I was a witch and a Virgo, after all. I also grabbed my butane lighter.
“You use a lighter,” Kett said, amused.
I lit the candle. “What would you use?”
“I am not a witch.”
I glanced back at him. He observed me detachedly, as if he hadn’t just implied that my magic was useless if I couldn’t even light a candle with it.
“Shall I continue?” I asked snottily.
“Please do.” Kett still sounded annoyingly amused.
Ignoring him, I cracked my personal shields just enough that I should have been able to pick up on any residual magic within the circle of light cast by the candle I was holding aloft. Selecting the path of least resistance through the dilapidated furniture, I circled the living room. A broken hockey stick was propped in one corner, sports magazines and discarded flyers were piled under a water-stained side table, and a pizza box was half-tucked between two couch cushions.
I wasn’t sure if this was the normal state of the apartment or whether it had been empty for some time. I was looking only for magic, though. Nothing else mattered to the investigation at this point. Not the vampire, nor the disheartening surroundings.
I traversed the hallway, passing the tiny kitchen and refusing to be distracted by the molding mound of dishes in the murky sink.
The next doorway opened into a boy’s bedroom — judging by the posters of women in tight or minimal clothing and the black, crumpled sheets on the bed — but no magic.
I kept to the hall, glancing into the oddly clean bathroom, which was barely large enough to hold a toilet, sink, and tub. Even cast deep into shadow by my candlelight, the grout was blackened with mold for about a foot and a half above the tub. The shower curtain appeared to be missing, along with all the towels.
A f
ew more steps took me to the end of the hall and the second bedroom. I hadn’t seen a single shred of evidence as to why crime scene tape had been used to seal the front door.
Holding my candle before me, I stepped into the disheveled bedroom. It was larger than the boy’s room. A queen-sized mattress lay on the floor, without a frame or a box spring. The dark-green sheets were a crumpled mess, as if someone had been wrestling rather than sleeping on them.
“The killing took place in here.” Kett’s cool voice sounded out from the hall.
I flinched, almost dropping my candle. I hadn’t heard him approach.
“I’d like you to reconstruct this room. And the bathroom. If possible.”
“The bathroom? Why? There was no magic there.”
“Look again.”
The vampire retreated back along the hall toward the living room without further comment.
I stepped into the bedroom, finally feeling a glimmer of magic when I was about two feet away from the bed. I leaned over, scanning as I moved the candle above the pillows tossed every which way across the head of the bed.
A fine mist of blood was sprayed across the back wall, with more possibly streaking the pillows. But as far as I was able to tell, there was nothing magical about the blood itself.
Unsure where the glimmer was manifesting from, I pulled out and placed all four of my candles around the room. I wasn’t going to look closer until I had my circle in place. I nudged aside a pile of paint-splattered clothing to place the green candle, and used a stack of Penthouse magazines to hold the white pillar.
Calling forth my magic and sealing the circle, I coaxed the glimmer to reveal its origins. The scene before me darkened even more. Whatever was about to be revealed had taken place in the early-morning hours. As far as I could see, the room was empty. Then a dirty-blond teen wearing a set of light-green hospital scrubs walked backward into the room, climbing onto the bed.
I watched as the scene unfolded before me in reverse. The teen pummeled something or someone on the bed. He also appeared to be biting his victim. Feeding, I assumed. And though his eyes whirled with what appeared to be blood and his pale skin marked him as a vampire, his magic was insubstantial. Faded.
Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1) Page 7