The blood splatter disappeared from the far wall. The boy bounced back from the bed and stepped out of my circle. As if he had practically pounced on his victim from the door, biting him without warning.
Had the boy turned into a vampire in the hospital, or perhaps the morgue, then snuck back here to kill his purely human father? Or brother? Was that why I once again couldn’t see the victim?
“Now the bathroom.”
I flinched, whirling away from the dim magic I was trying to reconstruct. The vampire was standing in the doorway. Light was emanating from down the hall. Apparently, Kett had turned it on.
“Don’t you want to see this?” I asked, leaning down to channel what little energy I’d collected into an oyster-shell cube I’d retrieved from my bag.
“Later. I can speculate based on the police report. It’s the hint of magic in the bathroom I want to know about.”
I gathered my candles, closing the circle. Then I followed Kett into the bathroom. It was so small that we couldn’t comfortably stand in it next to each other. A sickeningly yellow, glaringly bright bare bulb was all that remained of the overhead light.
“I don’t feel anything in here,” I said.
Kett pointed behind me toward the base of the tub, near the wall that held the empty white-plastic towel bar.
I looked closer at the spot he indicated, then shook my head.
“Set your candles. Here, here, here, and here,” he said, directing me to two points in the tub and two on the floor.
I complied doubtfully. Lighting the candles, I held my hands over the spot he’d pointed out.
Something flickered in the mold-blackened caulking.
“Why is it clean in here?” I asked. “But nowhere else?”
“I gather the father cleaned after the apparent suicide. But the police didn’t get a chance to send in a crew after his murder.”
“The lack of blood in the bedroom, or the victim, would have confused them.”
“That’s taken care of. Now focus.”
I swallowed a retort, then attempted to coax the glimmer I could feel on the floor forward.
“Blood,” I murmured, understanding why the vampire had sensed the magic when I hadn’t.
“The teen’s?”
“I don’t think so. It’s different. It’s —”
Intense magic bloomed beside me from outside the circle. I instinctively flinched away from it, almost clambering into the tub to get away.
Kett was holding his hand toward me. A drop of blood dotted the tip of his index finger, then it disappeared without so much as a hint of a scratch or mark left behind. He had cut himself, though I saw no evidence of a blade.
“Like this?” he asked.
I shook my head, struggling to shut my senses down and keep my personal shields in place. I didn’t like looking at intense magic outside of a circle. It felt as though the vampire had attacked me, blindsided me, with magic manifested in a single drop of blood. That was utterly disconcerting.
Kett raised an eyebrow.
I was still shaking my head, acting as if I might have lost my mind. I stopped, focusing on the drop of blood in the circle rather than the far-too-powerful vampire crammed into the tight bathroom with me. And blocking the exit.
I took a breath, coaxing the glimmer in the circle forward and attempting to rationally assess it, comparing it to the tenor and feeling of Kett’s power. “Much less intense,” I finally said. “Same basic makeup, maybe. Perhaps diluted. I’m not a dowser.”
“No, you aren’t.”
Instead of retorting childishly about his completely unprofessional behavior, I continued to focus on the puzzle presented in the circle. The executioner of the Conclave should know better than to cut himself and potentially contaminate the scene and my reconstruction. Which could only mean he’d done it deliberately. Perhaps to test me.
Or perhaps to muddy my findings.
“There’s something else,” I said. “An image trying to manifest from the magic in the blood.”
I squinted at the dim swirl of energy in the circle. “A container? Like the blood was housed in a package of some sort?”
“No. Whatever cleaning solutions were used in here wouldn’t be able to destroy the magic. There is only that one drop.”
I allowed the glimmer I had coaxed forward to fade away. It was far too insubstantial to manipulate any further, collecting it would be a waste of a cube. Though it did confirm the presence of magic other than that of the fledgling vampire.
Someone else had been in the apartment, leaving a single drop of blood behind.
“Why would a … master vampire leave a fledgling? If this is a drop of his blood? Don’t you, I don’t know, oversee their rising when you create a … child?”
Kett glanced at me, then turned his head to contemplate the drop of blood without responding.
I straightened, snuffing out my candles. I wasn’t surprised that he was unwilling to answer my questions. I wondered if the Conclave specifically forbade discussing the creation of fledgling vampires.
Waiting for the wax to harden so I could pack the candles away, I pulled out my cellphone. “You said there was a police report. Do you know the teen’s name?”
“Dennis Bradford.”
I texted the name to Jasmine, along with a quick note asking her to see if she could connect him to Colby Hansen.
“Where is the fledgling?” I finally voiced the question I’d been loath to ask since I’d reconstructed the scene in the bedroom. “We should have a team looking for him.”
“No need,” Kett said, stepping through, then pausing in the doorway. “He’s dead.”
“You killed him.”
“He was rogue, ridiculously weak, and out of control. Incapable of control. Would you have had me attempt to housebreak him?”
I shuddered at the thought. Rogue vampires featured heavily in the cautionary bedtime stories recited to all Adept children. “How many bodies?”
“Three, plus his father. Thankfully, he was easy to track.”
“And the police were easy to enthrall.”
Kett turned his cold gaze on me. “Would you have had me do differently? It’s fortunate that I learned of the killing spree early enough to cover up the murders.”
“He rose in the morgue?” I asked. “He was wearing hospital scrubs.”
“Clothing pilfered from the morgue attendant. He hadn’t taken the time to change. I apprehended him on the way to his mother’s. Thankfully, he appeared incapable of operating a vehicle, the early-morning streets were clear of large numbers of potential victims, and she lives over an hour away. I doubt he would have spared the three other children who were in residence.”
My chest tightened, but I kept my voice even, attempting to match Kett’s dispassion. “Did he dissolve? Like the teen in the graveyard?”
“No. I ripped his head off, then burned the remains rather quickly.”
Bile rose in my throat. I quickly gathered my candles, hoping to cover my discomfort. I never got this deeply involved in an investigation. Never had to deal with any aftermath or process anything that might have occurred before the reconstructions I collected as evidence.
Kett was no longer in the hallway when I exited the bathroom. I quickly made my way toward the front door, glancing into Dennis’s bedroom as I passed it. An older laptop computer and a headset on the desk caught my attention. I wondered if he’d worked a job after school to pay for the computer, but then I refused to allow myself to think about the teen’s life any further.
I wasn’t an investigator. I just collected evidence. Getting involved or caught up in the personal minutiae wouldn’t be helpful, not for me or to the case.
I stepped into the room. Neat stacks of large playing cards were set on either side of the laptop, along with handwritten notes covered in numbers — some sort of points system, perhaps — and a set of multisided dice. The card on top of the nearest stack was decorated with a drawing of a dark-haired
, bearded man wearing a gray cloak, and was titled ‘Sorcerer.’ Dennis had been playing a game of some sort, possibly about magic. I didn’t recognize the cards from anything I’d seen at Jasmine’s, but my cousin’s interests didn’t usually extend to offline gaming.
I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of Dennis’s desk. Then, trying to touch it as briefly as possible, I wrapped the laptop in a discarded Canucks sweatshirt, holding it and the headset at arm’s length.
I turned to find Kett waiting for me in the doorway. I was pleased that I managed to not flinch at his sudden, silent appearance.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Colby Hansen was a gamer,” I said. “Dennis had a headset, and these cards and dice …” — I gestured toward the desk — “… so maybe he was as well. Jasmine might be able to pull something off the computer. Something to connect the boys.”
Kett sneered. “I’m not interested in the humans, reconstructionist. Technology won’t catch whoever turned the teens.”
I lifted my chin. “I doubt the vampire who’s done this has a Facebook page or a Twitter account. But we are dealing with humans, and —”
Kett held out his hand, effectively silencing me and indicating his wish to move forward without so much fuss.
I shut my mouth and passed him the computer. Perhaps I should have felt vindicated, as if I’d won some minor battle. But I didn’t.
Kett unwrapped the computer, tossed the sweatshirt back into the room, and tucked the laptop underneath his arm. Apparently, his magic didn’t fry technology. Or he was deliberately destroying possible evidence.
I would have sworn the shirt landed in the exact spot I’d picked it up from. So either the vampire had an eidetic memory, or he’d been watching me the entire time without me knowing it.
Neither option was particularly thrilling.
“Odd,” I said, glancing around the bedroom a second time. “Shouldn’t the police have taken the laptop? Wouldn’t that sort of thing be automatic in a murder investigation?”
“Their investigation has concluded.”
I settled my gaze on him. “Did they conclude it? Or did you?”
“We’ll take the laptop if you wish. Though I cannot imagine how the electronic ramblings of a child’s mind will be at all helpful, let alone readable. The cleaners will be here within the hour.”
“The cleaners? Your cleaners?”
“Indeed.”
I snorted, crossing to rifle through the desk drawers. “I bet you bought the whole damn building.”
“And if I did?”
“Well then, might I suggest that some upgrades are in order?”
“Indeed. With a bulldozer.”
“The people who live here don’t need to be homeless, Kett. But some fresh paint and new carpet might be nice.”
He didn’t answer. When I turned around, the bedroom was empty. He’d left without a word. That was becoming a pattern with him.
CHAPTER FIVE
“So Dennis Bradford’s father’s body is in the morgue at Surrey Memorial Hospital.” Jasmine’s rich, almost throaty voice was amplified by the speaker on my cellphone, rather than being thinned.
“It’s been taken care of,” Kett said, not bothering to take his gaze from the glassed entrance of Sentinel Secondary. We’d been parked in the visitor lot, adjacent to the entrance of the two-storey high school, for about ten minutes.
The drive into West Vancouver had taken us back onto the freeway, over the Second Narrows Bridge, then up the mountain. An hour later, and we were back in the neighborhood where Colby Hansen had lived and been buried, then unburied. Still trying to piece together the events leading up to his final destruction.
“Looks like the guy was a drunk,” Jasmine said, ignoring Kett’s interruption. “I’ve found evidence of multiple domestic abuse calls, no charges. The Ministry of Families and Children … you know, social services in Canada … paid regular visits to the apartment.”
“How do you know that?” Kett asked.
“I’m a computer hack and Internet diviner in one gorgeous package, vampire.” Jasmine laughed at her own personal assessment.
Kett side-eyed the phone sitting on the shelf above the glove box doubtfully. “Divination is not magic that would be compatible with technology.”
“She’s joking,” I said.
“I am not.” Jasmine’s laughter-filled protest was almost drowned out by the sound of a voice coming over a loudspeaker in the background behind her. My cousin was working while waiting for her flight to Vancouver, which she’d said wouldn’t be boarding for an hour or more. “Just give me a few more seconds.”
I could hear her fingers tapping overtime on a keyboard. She was always in her element when working her magic, as was I when collecting a reconstruction.
After I’d initially tried to introduce them and been cut off by the vampire, Jasmine had talked Kett through giving her remote access to Dennis Bradford’s laptop. The computer was currently open and tethered to the vampire’s cellphone in the back seat of the SUV. As far away as it could be from me, since I might fry it with a single touch. Well, a concentrated series of touches, at any rate.
Unlike my magic — and that of most other witches, actually — Jasmine’s power was compatible with human technology. Not that technology was a great way to track Adepts — which was usually the main aspect of her job — but her specific skill set made her a highly sought-out freelance investigator. She didn’t head her own team, but most lead investigators were a dozen years her senior. Jasmine also wove magical protections — wards against magic — for technology by request at an exceedingly generous hourly rate. Thankfully for my pocketbook, I got her services for free. Otherwise, my phone wouldn’t last nearly as long as it did.
Kett had followed through on his promise that we’d speak to Colby’s girlfriend after I reconstructed the magic he’d sensed at the Bradford apartment. But now that we were waiting for her to get out of school, I was feeling uneasy, more so than I’d been all day. I wasn’t particularly skilled in questioning teenagers, especially nonmagical ones. And even after spending only half a day with Kett, I was fairly certain he wasn’t exactly skilled at communicating with anyone. I had a feeling that the vampire ranked humans somewhere around where cows were ranked by meat-eaters, and I wasn’t sure that he held Adepts in much higher regard.
“Hell, yeah,” Jasmine crowed. “The kid was for sure a gamer. Took me fifteen seconds to crack the password. ElfLord69. Teenaged boys are so predictable.”
I had absolutely no idea why the password ElfLord69 was so predictable. But I kept my mouth shut, glancing over my shoulder at the open laptop in the back seat. Windows and programs were being opened and closed remotely, flashing across the screen.
If I hadn’t already been feeling like a stalker for sitting outside a high school, watching Dennis’s life being excavated in the back seat would have driven it home. People had secrets. People should be allowed to keep secrets. I had secrets that I wasn’t interested in anyone knowing, not even Jasmine. Secrets were a fundamental part of being able to function in everyday society.
Of course, I hadn’t been turned into a vampire, been abandoned by my maker, and then murdered four people.
And as for stalking a school, generally parents weren’t keen on their kids being questioned by a witch, let alone a vampire.
So I was uneasy. People were dead. Innocents. It was past time to get over it.
“Any connection between the deficient fledglings?” Kett asked.
“None that I can find yet,” Jasmine said. “But Dennis played a lot of different RPGs, online and off, using different user screen names. I’ll see if I can find duplicates among the people he played with, and will try to log on to some of these message boards. I’ll get back to you.”
“School’s out,” Kett said, reaching for the phone.
“I’ll see you at the airport,” I said in a rush, just before the vampire tapped the screen and ended the call.
>
A bell rang out across the visitor parking lot. Then teenagers began streaming through the glass-and-steel front doors. I had no idea how the vampire had known the bell was about to ring, except maybe he could sense the mass movement within the building. Either that or he’d lied to Pearl about being involved with Colby’s death and had previously stalked the teen at his school. I acknowledged both as possibilities, then refused to be intimidated by either.
I’d just keep telling that to myself. At some point, it would be true.
Kett opened my text messages, scrolling through to find the picture Jasmine had sent of Luci.
We both glanced at the picture, then up at the sea of teenagers before us.
“How are we going to spot her in this crowd?”
Kett lifted his hand, pointing toward a group of teens currently exiting the main doors.
On my phone, the teenaged girl appeared average in every way — height, weight, hair. But by the cluster of people that surrounded her like a barrier or a battering ram as she exited the school, she was exceedingly popular.
“Lots of friends,” I murmured.
Luci and her companions crossed away from us, toward a parking lot on the side of the wide building.
“Not a concern,” Kett said, slipping out of the SUV.
I followed him out of the vehicle and across the short run of grass that separated the visitor lot from the front sidewalk of the school. Teens streamed around us, full of energy and eager chatter, and unaware of anything beyond their friends or their phones.
If the neighborhood, school, and clothing of the students hadn’t already proclaimed the affluence of the area, the cars parked in the student lot would have. Used BMWs and older Mercedes occupied most of the spots — apparently, wealthy families bought secondhand as well — but a number of new Audis and a couple of Porsches were also scattered about. Not that I could sneer at such displays of wealth. I was a Fairchild by birth, even if no longer by choice. I’d wanted for nothing as a child, financially. Unfortunately, in my family, personal safety and unconditional love had nothing to do with money.
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