Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  All Fairchilds always knew where to direct their anger — at the outsider.

  Kett leaned across her, pulling an iPad out of the glove box and handing it to my cousin.

  “An iPad mini,” she said doubtfully. “Despite popular opinion, this is not, and never shall be, a proper replacement for a laptop.”

  “It will hold you until we find a store,” Kett said, speaking to Jasmine though he was watching me in the rearview mirror.

  “If it even starts,” she grumbled to herself. “And Apple stores don’t grow on trees.”

  I glanced down at the cube still sitting on the box beside me. It glowed with magic, though I had no idea what new image or images it contained. I’d been too angry, too keen on proving Kett wrong, too determined to show that I’d already done my best, so that I hadn’t taken any notice of what had flashed through my mind as I grabbed the residual magic.

  “You don’t put enough of yourself into your reconstructions,” Kett said, his tone cold. But no longer judgemental.

  “A reconstruction isn’t about the caster,” I said. “This is probably contaminated.”

  The vampire arched a single eyebrow.

  Jasmine glanced back through the seats, eyeing the cube. “Pretty,” she said. “It better be worth frying my computer.” She glared at Kett, then turned her attention to the iPad, which appeared to have successfully started.

  I ran my fingers across the edges of the cube. An image of a dark-haired man appeared on its top surface. “Same slim build,” I said. “Tall.”

  I positioned my fingers solidly on the top edges, coaxing the reconstruction to project just above the cube, as I did when testifying during a tribunal. Even miniaturized, the reconstruction was startlingly substantial. Almost real, as if I might reach out and stroke the vampire’s cheek. If I was ever insane enough to go around caressing a vampire’s face.

  The man in the image turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut and grimacing in pain. When he reopened them, his eyes were whirling with blood.

  I flinched, nearly knocking over the cube.

  “More detail than before,” Kett said. “Good.” He didn’t sound smug, though. “Is this the moment the blood was separated from his body?”

  “Would that hurt him?”

  “No.”

  “He appears to be in pain.”

  Kett didn’t respond, so I continued. “Reconstruction doesn’t work like that. ‘Yes’ would be the easy answer to give you. This could be an imprint of that moment, but there might be a stronger magical influence, greater than the moment of bloodletting that’s depicted here.”

  “I thought you might pull more. A scene perhaps.”

  “There might not have been other magic or action taking place at the time.”

  Kett nodded. Then he turned back around to start the SUV, pulling out of the rest stop parking lot.

  “He looks human,” I said without thinking.

  “He’s young. Not very powerful,” Kett said, seemingly unfazed by the inference that I found him inhuman.

  We pulled into the traffic streaming along I-5, Kett perfectly matching the speed of the vehicles surrounding us. He wasn’t a reckless driver.

  I played with the magic of the reconstruction, spinning it underneath my fingers, trying to catch a glimpse of the background or even the foreground of the moment. Replaying the vampire’s grimace over and over again, looking for clues.

  “He’s … I think he’s actually lying down,” I murmured. “I don’t think he’s standing.”

  No one answered me. I really did wish reconstructions had a zoom function. While capturing them, I could move closer to certain aspects of the scene I discovered in the residual magic, piecing together clues. But not afterward, not once events were stored within the cube.

  “So this is weird,” Jasmine said. “You asked me to look into Teresa Vern …”

  Kett glanced up at me in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t bother asking why I was interested in Ben’s mother.

  “And?”

  “Well, her Social Security number is only twenty-two years old.”

  “Maybe she remarried. She’s divorced, yes?”

  “Or she only became a US citizen twenty-two years ago. Or she was a victim of identity theft. Lots of possible reasons, but interesting anyway. If I had my laptop, I could dig deeper, quicker. She’s totally legit, though. Name, address, work history, taxes. And, yeah, Ben has been battling leukemia since he was about eleven. But his mother’s online footprint only goes back twenty-two years or so.”

  “I doubt it’s anything of interest to us,” Kett said.

  “She is, after all, only human,” I said snarkily.

  The vampire ignored me, which was fine. I was making a point, not looking for a response.

  “Will you keep looking?” I asked Jasmine.

  “I will. Right after we stop in Longview and get me a new computer.” She leaned forward and typed a new address into the SUV’s GPS. According to the map, we were nineteen minutes away from our new destination.

  Jasmine eyed Kett. “You’re buying.”

  “Of course,” he said stiffly.

  ❒ ❒ ❒

  The entire picturesque town of Astoria sloped gently up from the river’s edge. After a couple of blocks of historic buildings that had been converted into various businesses, hotels, and restaurants, the landscape gave way to mostly older homes on good-sized lots. The residential neighborhood just up from the river was comprised mostly of Craftsman-inspired architecture, but a few random Victorian, Tudor, and converted Georgian duplexes were mixed throughout.

  We arrived at the post office that Jasmine had identified as the point of origin for Pax’s blood shipment, a massive building that occupied half its block. It looked to have been built sometime in the 1930s, and was capped by a red tile roof. Knowing that we couldn’t exactly interrogate the postmaster about whether or not a vampire had mailed a bunch of boxes filled with packets of blood a couple of weeks ago, it was meant only as a starting point for our hunt.

  Kett parked in a half-empty lot behind the post office, then slipped from the SUV without a word.

  I followed slowly. A breeze off the river caught the front ties of my navy-blue silk blouse, flicking them up over my shoulder as I scanned the neighborhood. I shivered, reaching back into the SUV for my navy-blue trench coat and teal pashmina stole. Autumn had taken hold as the afternoon waned, though it was still a couple of hours from sunset.

  I didn’t know Astoria at all except as a place to drive through, and for the delicious Bowpicker Fish and Chips food truck — or food boat, in this case. No Adepts of note that I was aware of made their homes here, or anywhere else on the coast of Oregon, so there was no one we could consult about suspicious activity. As long as he wasn’t leaving bodies drained of blood in his wake, a vampire might have been living and hunting in Astoria for decades.

  The area around us was pretty but worn around the edges, almost sun bleached. Kett was standing on the sidewalk –– a strikingly pale marble statue in the gray late-afternoon light. He turned his head, listening for things I knew I would never be able to hear. He stood out against the background of the historic riverside town, and the contrast was startling to note. As ancient as he was, he was utterly alien in this environment. Even if he’d been wearing a suit and tie instead of cashmere and jeans, he still would have been too vital, too dreadfully beautiful to traverse Astoria’s streets.

  As if he could hear my thoughts, the vampire glanced over at me. His eyes appeared to be a deeper blue in the low light, but I knew they turned red when he was hungry or angry. I knew his chiseled features and smooth demeanor hid a vicious, immortal monster. Kett’s gaze dropped to my hands. I was cupping my left hand over my right wrist, unintentionally covering my white-picket-fence bracelet from the vampire’s view.

  For a moment, I swore that the platinum trinkets warmed underneath my grasp.

  Kett turned his attention back to our surroundings.
/>   “What the hell are we doing?” I whispered.

  Jasmine stepped into my peripheral vision, her gaze also glued to Kett. “Hunting a vampire with the executioner of the Conclave.”

  “Right,” I said shakily. “Thanks for the clarification. So … um … are you going to try to cast a seek spell?”

  Because we had the blood of the vampire we were hunting, a seek spell should have been an easy working. Except Jasmine’s castings weren’t terribly reliable, and I’d probably destroy any magic contained in the blood if I tried to manipulate it outside of a reconstruction.

  “If necessary.” She held her phone up. “Or we could just look for the nearest hermit.”

  I laughed, assuming she was joking. She wasn’t. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, it’s a leap in logic full of what-ifs, like what if the vampire just used this post office as a decoy. But we’re here with no other viable leads, so we might as well look around.”

  “Right. I meant how can you possibly tell someone is a hermit without … living next to them?”

  “Only eleven houses in the immediate area haven’t changed hands — you know, been sold or transferred — in the last thirty years. So then, concentrating on those addresses, I know that Ms. Smith, Ms. Jones, and Ms. Wilson regularly attend a knitting, bridge, and kayaking club. Fred Mason is on the reserve fire brigade. Not a great job for a vampire. Sue Byrd runs a daycare, and so on and so forth.”

  I was staring at my cousin with my mouth hanging open. “So on and so forth? You … you are exceedingly scary.”

  Jasmine threw her head back and laughed. Her peals of joy rang throughout the parking lot, drawing Kett back to us.

  “How many houses are there to investigate, witch?” Kett asked Jasmine.

  “I can narrow it down further if you give me a bit more —”

  “How many?” Kett’s tone was stiff and steely. Though he would take what help we could offer, it was obvious the vampire would prefer that we weren’t tagging along.

  “Five.”

  “Show me on a map.”

  Jasmine obligingly stepped up beside Kett, practically leaning against him while showing him the screen of her phone.

  Kett pointed to the screen. “You take these two. I’ll take the three farthest out. If you find something of note, text me.”

  “And if you find …” I started to ask.

  Kett had disappeared.

  I was talking to empty air. “… anything of note?”

  Jasmine smirked at me. “I don’t think he can hear you.”

  “Oh, he can hear us,” I grumbled, tugging my stole tighter around my neck and setting the weight of my bag more securely on my shoulder.

  Jasmine chuckled as she zoomed in on her screen. “It’s this place anyway,” she whispered. “Three blocks up and two over. As far as I’ve been able to figure out so far, the guy who owns it doesn’t work, doesn’t maintain any social media accounts, doesn’t belong to any organizations, but he still pays bills, including his property tax and utilities.”

  I looked at her, shocked.

  She shrugged, exaggerating the gesture. “Kett didn’t ask.”

  “He did ask!”

  Jasmine giggled. “He didn’t ask nicely. And I could be wrong. It’s not like the guy has a subscription to Martha Stewart Vampire Living or anything.”

  “But let’s head there first?”

  “Yeah, let’s do that.”

  Jasmine was wearing a brown suede coat, which perfectly complimented all her curves, over low-slung distressed jeans. When she lifted her arm to swing her brown leather satchel on, I caught sight of the tattoo on her belly — an intricately drawn letter B with a superscript number three. B cubed. For Betty-Sue, Betty-Lou, and Bubba — our two childhood alter egos, and Declan’s.

  I looked away. We all carried our past with us in some way. Or at least Jasmine and I did. Me with my bracelet, and her with her self-designed tattoo.

  She settled the strap of her satchel over the shoulder nearest to me, so that the brand-new laptop we’d picked up in Longview — and which she’d gotten back to work on surprisingly fast with her cloud backup data — was slung as far away from me as possible.

  She tucked her phone into her far jacket pocket for the same reason as we headed up Eighth Street.

  The converted historic buildings and apartment complexes around the post office gave way to regular homes after two blocks. We turned right on Franklin Avenue, passing a small park. The fire hydrants we passed were painted yellow, and I could smell at least a few people barbecuing as we followed Jasmine’s map. Though it wasn’t near sunset yet, the gray sky was darkening with rain-heavy clouds. Streetlights began to flicker on after another block, though people hadn’t begun to pull their curtains yet.

  I felt like a voyeur, soaking in all the signs of normal life. Cataloging every toy, or basketball hoop, or RV in every front driveway. Every rose and lilac bush. Every snippet of conversation tumbling out of open kitchen windows.

  “Betty-Lou.” I sighed. This was the life Jasmine and I had visualized for ourselves when we were still young enough to dream of parents who actually loved us more than they loved power.

  “I see, Betty-Sue. I see.”

  I looked away from the homes, concentrating on the hard, eroded pavement underneath my feet, and scanning the interior of each occasional car slipping down the street beside us for a dark-haired, too-pale face.

  “Wisteria …” Jasmine said.

  “It’s okay, Jasmine.”

  “No.” She nodded emphatically up ahead and to the left with her chin, rather than pointing. “There. On the corner.”

  High laurel hedges hid the first floor of what appeared to be a decrepit Victorian manor. The cream paint of the wraparound front patio was faded, and the steeply pitched red roof needed new shingles. One of the windows in the upper floor of the house’s garret tower was broken.

  By unspoken agreement, Jasmine and I crossed between two parked cars, darting diagonally across the street and approaching the house from the side. Up close, I couldn’t see anything beyond the hedge, which was neatly trimmed back from the sidewalk.

  “Someone maintains the yard,” I murmured.

  “Someone doesn’t want to draw the attention of the city ordinance people,” Jasmine said.

  We turned left, casually glancing through the black-painted, wrought-iron gate wedged into an archway cut through the middle of the hedge. A fairly new, unusually large mailbox hung off the middle of the gate — a box in which a mail carrier could deposit all but the largest of packages without setting foot on the property. The front patio was bare of furniture, as was the grassed front yard. Decorative window moldings encased stained glass above and on either side of the front door.

  We kept walking, as if we might have been out for an after-work or before-dinner stroll. The basement windows I caught a glimpse of while passing were bricked over.

  “Basement,” I said.

  “Yep. Magic?”

  I shook my head, but I hadn’t been looking for magic on the first pass.

  “It’s a little too typical, isn’t it?” Jasmine said. “Rundown Victorian manor in the middle of a family-friendly neighborhood. Hermit lifestyle? You want to bet that the neighborhood kids dare each other to open the gate or ring the doorbell?”

  “I don’t imagine the doorbell works,” I muttered as we turned the corner, then doubled back for our next pass.

  “I mean, how have the neighbors not armed themselves with stakes and pitchforks by now?”

  “Would you prefer he worked the night shift at the local Walmart?”

  Jasmine chuckled. “I just mean, he could have anything, right? He’s a vampire.”

  “A fledgling, according to Kett.”

  “So? Stay out of the sun and he’s immortal, invulnerable, with all those mind-control abilities … I’d have a penthouse in the tallest tower in San Francisco, looking west over the bridge.”

  �
��With some heavy-duty blackout curtains.”

  Jasmine continued, seemingly lost in the fantasy she was spinning in her head. “I’d rob banks. With that shadow trick Kett has going on, plus my tech skills? I’d be brilliant at it.” She sounded almost wistful.

  I stopped short.

  My cousin took a few more steps, then turned to look back at me.

  “You’ve been playing that game too much,” I said. “Unseen Arcana.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jasmine …” The tinge of sorrow I heard in her voice physically hurt me to hear. “You could have all those things now. I wouldn’t recommend robbing banks. But if you were really good at it, you might get sanctioned by the Convocation.”

  She nodded, casting her gaze around my feet.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered, shivering now. The chill in the air was deepening with the onset of the evening, but it was the conversation that was making me cold. Normally, Jasmine was the warm breeze that held me aloft.

  “Nothing,” she said, casting her gaze aside and blatantly lying.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked again, more insistent this time.

  My cousin raised her brilliant blue gaze to meet mine. “What’s always wrong? Our vile, soul-destroying past.”

  We stood in silence. Warm light was radiating from the family homes surrounding us. Quiet traffic purred on the main street a few blocks away. The first of the autumn leaves rustled in the light breeze along the sidewalk, drifting past our ankles.

  “I can’t fix that,” I finally said, ignoring the tears welling up in my eyes.

  Jasmine plastered on a smile, stepping back to wrap her arm through mine. “And that is why we’re skulking the streets of Astoria, hunting a rogue vampire.”

  I forced myself to laugh. It came out strained, but I managed to push away the tears that had been evoked by our conversation. “Right.”

  We traversed the next block in silence, though Jasmine’s grip on my arm was firmer than it usually was.

  Her phone pinged with a text message.

  “Kett,” she said, glancing at the screen. “He wants an update.”

  I shrugged, focusing my attention on the high laurel hedge and the windowed tower as we approached the house again.