Her lips flapped uselessly as she tried to reply. She didn’t expect to need to give a last will and testament on the spot.
“Love’s not something that I sense often in his kind, but it’s there.” He stood and put his hand on her shoulder. Tired and sad, his eyes met hers before he moved for the hall to go upstairs. “It’ll feel less shitty in the morning. Keep the light on for Stace.”
Sulking into the living room, Red couldn’t go to sleep yet.
Kristoff’s blood had revived her magic stores, but the pendulum still refused to reveal Isaac’s location. The stench of failure and merlot upon her, she laid on the couch and fiddled with her mother’s ring. She slipped it on.
A small breeze whipped around the room. The curtains flapped a warning about her unsettled emotions.
She tucked the ring in the breast pocket of the pajamas and buttoned the flap shut, patting it against her heart.
“Mom, what would you say about this?” she whispered to herself, curling up on the cushions. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
---
Mouth dry and hair clinging to her cheek, Red awoke on the couch at the squeak of a hinge. Sluggish from drinking, she lifted her head, squinting at the neon windbreaker in the front doorway. Her sleepy brain recognized her friend after a beat. “Hi.”
Smiling through the fatigue crinkling her eyes, Stace tapped in the security code on the wall-mounted pad. “Did you wait up for me? You shouldn’t have. It’s nearly dawn.”
“I didn’t. I had an argument with Vic and Zach. I fell asleep here.”
“About Isaac, huh?” Shoulders drooping, Stace flopped on the couch. Guilt tightened her pixie features. “I’m sorry. I didn’t find him. Jackson smelled where he washed up, but we lost the trail. Claudia Benston couldn’t scry for him either. He’s camouflaging himself, or it’s just all the extra rift energy.”
“That makes me feel a little better.” Red rubbed her neck. “I got bumkiss.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Kristoff.” She blushed. “They caught me kissing him.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“You two were lovers in a past life. I’ve seen how you look at each other in this one. I was waiting for you to tell me.” Stace shrugged, awkwardly. “We’re still getting to know each other again, so I didn’t want to pry.”
“There wasn’t anything to tell…” Red bit her lip. “Until recently.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“It’s so new, I wouldn’t even call it dating.” She smiled ruefully, thinking of the accusation she had once thrown at Kristoff. “I wanted to make a good impression on you. Emma seemed like the ideal kid, someone who was supposed to go places. She helped save the world before she finished high school. Then there’s you and Zach. You guys are perfect heroes. I’m a two-bit hunter with dirty hands.”
“I know you haven’t been around for long, but what part of my life made you think that I was perfect?” She huffed out a self-deprecating chuckle. “I haven’t been judging you. I’ve been worried about you judging me.”
“Why? You’re amazing.”
Stace counted on her fingers. “My boyfriend is a lone wolf who keeps secrets about his past from me, I live in my childhood home, and I blew all my money on an animal café. Oh, and I let a high school grudge blind me to who the real killer could be. I think we’re pretty even on the funky life choices.”
“So, I’m still in the heroes’ club?”
She pulled Red into a bear hug fairy-fast.“ Where else would you be? You fit in. We’re all freakshows and misfits here.”
20
With only a few hours of fitful sleep after drinking, the sun felt too bright on the drive to Lili’s Diner. Even squinting, Red relished the clear sky above. It wouldn’t last. Storms huddled over the horizon, and a cold wind blew in from the sea.
Stace and Zach processed news about the latest state health warning in the front of the car. In the back seat, Red was still processing a week’s worth of drama in a single night. Even with Kristoff’s blood, she was still recharging her magic. She was going with the others after Isaac anyway. They parked in the small employee lot behind the building.
Leaned up against the Millennium Falcon, Vic watched as they stepped out of the car.
Zach closed the driver’s door, flipping his sunglasses down. “Need help with that one, Red?”
She gestured to the diner. “You guys go inside.” Adjusting her leather jacket nervously, she walked to her mentor. “Good morning.”
“It’s a morning with a job to do.”
Eyebrows lifting at his waspish tone, Red nodded. She got the message on how this day was going to go. Pressing her lips together, she turned to walk away with her hands in her pockets. “Okay. Better get to it then.”
“Fuck, wait.” Vic rubbed the back of his neck. He fidgeted before stepping closer to her. “I’m going to get the nagging out of my system now. Lashawn’s suggestion. Don’t holler at me, and we can leave it here.”
Sucking on her teeth, Red nodded and braced herself. “Deal.”
“I might like having Novak as an ally sometimes, but I don’t trust his motives even when we have the same goal. He’s in deep with the Blood Alliance and God knows what else.” Vic crossed his arms and shrugged. “It’s nothing personal to him. I don’t like you dating vampires, soul or not, friend or not, never did. It makes you cry, and you play too much angry 90s girl rock in the Falcon. A man can only listen to so much Jagged Little Pill.”
Tension broken at his quip, she chuckled. “I get why you’re worried, and I promise I won’t wear out Alanis Morissette for you.”
“If this ends bad and I have to kick his ass with you, I’m gonna say I told ya so.”
“I expect nothing less.” She held out her hand. “We good then?”
Vic shook it and hugged her. “Yeah, you’re off the hook for not telling me.”
“Good, because we still have a bad guy on the loose.” Smiling, she tucked a hair behind her ear.
“Too bad he wasn’t washed out to sea.” He opened the back door of the diner.
She walked past a pile of plastic beer crates into the narrow wood-paneled room that functioned as the hub of employee operations. An old picture of the diner hung over Zach’s cluttered desk in the corner. Personal knickknacks decorated cubby shelves by the bathroom. The swinging kitchen door opened, releasing yummy breakfast smells.
Maudette beckoned them. “The gang’s in the front.”
“Slow day?” Walking inside, Red waved at the cook—Bernardo, one of Zach’s cousins—at the stove. Sizzling bacon made her mouth water. “That smells divine.”
“No one around to overhear your secret plans or to give me tips.” Maudette tossed her brown curls, held back in a high ponytail. “Your order is already cooking.”
“Thanks. You’re amazing.” Red pushed the swinging door to the dining area open, waiting for Vic to catch up.
“Have my order?” He asked, smirking at the older woman.
Maudette tapped his chest with a long pink nail. “I already know what you like.”
“Do you now?”
Red rolled her eyes at the flirting and moseyed around the empty lunch counter to Zach and Stace in their usual booth. She slipped in beside the half-fae and grabbed an extra coffee off the table. “Ooo, caffeine.”
“So, we can be anxious faster.” Stace raised her mug in a sarcastic toast. “I texted Callaway to have her on standby when we need an area cleared of bystanders. All her deputies have Isaac’s description with orders to report him. Jackson is still out there with Lashawn, but they haven’t found anything either.”
“Neither has Kristoff,” Red said. “Magic didn’t dig him up either.”
“He’s upped his game,” Zach said.
“His old tricks were pretty bad.” Stace slumped back on the booth, tapping her fingers on the table.
Red nodded. “He’s a shadow wa
rrior, turns into mist.” It was how he managed to slip around town without being seen. “Probably transformed to break into the magic shop and escape the security cameras at the park well. We’ll need blessed silver, preferably in a spray or net. It can counteract his dark gift for a little bit so he can’t fly away from a fight.”
“Isaac blocked me in the end, but I was able to poke at his emotions. Fear didn’t work on him for some reason,” Zach said, expression grim.
“He’s been scared for ten years, learning magic on the lam. It probably felt normal.” Her blurry reflection judged her from the black coffee. He’d said he had spoken to her at the reunion party because she looked like she understood. The monster might have been right. “Maybe more than success.”
“I’ll get him angry next time, and he’ll make a mistake.”
She crossed her arms. “High risk.”
“High reward,” he countered.
Stace broke the staring match. “We won’t stumble upon him again. We need to lure him out.”
Vic sauntered out of the kitchen to plop down next to Zach in the booth.
“That took a while,” Red said, scrutinizing his tousled mullet and bright eyes.
“Had her put some more on your plate. You did a lot of magic.” He covered the lipstick on his collar discretely. “What did I miss?”
Bracing herself, Red didn’t want to be the one to say this, but she was the unofficial liaison between the two groups and the fact was clear—they had wasted too much time working apart. “We’re running all over town after a guy who can disappear into smoke when he hears us coming. The Novaks have the manpower to pin him so we can take him out.”
Stace and Zach exchanged a glance and nodded.
Vic hunched his shoulders, elbows on the table. “I don't want to involve Kristoff. We’ve already asked him for enough.”
“All we’ve done is missed opportunities by not working together,” Red said. “It’s what we need to do to take this bastard. So, push back any personal feelings you have on this.”
“Hey, ‘fuck feelings’ is my line.”
“Then act like it.” She smiled cheerfully, raising her mug in sassy salute.
Maudette appeared with breakfast and more coffee before retreating to putter around the counter and make eyes at Vic. The conversation rehashed the details of the case. Red gobbled her food up, extra home fries and all, before the rest.
“We need—”
The front doorbell interrupted with a pleasant ting. The waitress hopped up from a stool to attention. “Oh, it’s you, Herman. Go on now. You’re not welcome.”
In gray coveralls, the middle-aged possum shifter walked to the booth, hands up. His face twitched like prey even in human form. “Hear this and you’ll wanna change your mind. I overheard you at the Whaler about the vamper you’re all looking for. Saw him by the summer camp.”
“When?” Red asked. Jackson had scented a vampire nesting there, but it was during the patrol he spent arguing with Vic. It would have been easy for Isaac to dodge them.
“Three nights ago. He was coming from the forest, I reckon. That wasn’t the first time I saw him up there.” Herman touched his forehead and then his shoulders in the sign of the cross. “I swear to God. He has to be the one you’re looking for.”
Zach nodded. “Thanks, Herman.”
“Can I get breakfast then? The Winded Whaler doesn’t get my usual right.”
The empath looked to the waitress. “Ask her.”
Maudette sighed and gestured at the counter. “Get in your spot. Lemme tell Bernando to start up the skillet.”
Vic slapped the tabletop. “Whistle for the wolves. We got a lair to find.”
Clenching her fist, Red stared at her mother’s ring. Her lips curved up in the reflection, too dark to be a grin even on gold.
---
Red hiked beside Vic on the unpaved road to the rebuilt summer camp. Stace and Jackson scouted ahead, darting between Douglas firs with supernatural speed. Fresh undergrowth hid burn scars on the older trees from the wildfire ten years ago. They had left Zach and Lashawn to patrol the stretch of nearby forest by the highway, ordered to call if they spotted Isaac’s lair first.
The sun filtering through the spring leaves was too bright for vampires to come out, but she still had a stake ready in her jacket pocket. She missed the familiar weight of her belted hunter’s kit. Sea water had thrashed the leather, reducing her to an old backpack for her supplies. She felt a little too much like a camper with it on.
Considering how many of those had died here ten years ago, it wasn’t reassuring.
The owners hadn’t bothered to move from the bloody site, simply rebranded from Camp Custer to Camp Ecola to ditch the reputation. The old one was too on the nose considering a massacre happened there. Comprised of perfect little Lincoln log cabins, the campus centered on a long lodge. Like all of Charm, it was picturesque Americana down to the flagpole. She could almost imagine it full of youths. No wonder Alaric chose the place for his welcome back party to the original vampires. Closed for the season, it had an abandoned air that seemed to magnify the sound of their approach.
She turned in a circle, scanning with her third eye for stray auras of magical traces. Nothing. A low ridge overlooking the camp caught her eye, not because of magic, but familiarity. Where had she seen that before… that she remembered?
“We’re going to search the cabins,” Stace said.
Red nodded absently, starting for the worn path to the hill.
“I guess we’re going there.” Vic gestured after her and started up the incline. “Isn’t this where Alaric made his sacrifice?”
“Yeah.” She hadn’t even remembered. The sight alone drew her. “Barbara Benston was her name.”
The landscape spread below them as they hiked to the vista point, revealing the grandeur of the small canyon on the edge of the campgrounds. Birthed as glacial ice ripped through volcanic deposits millions of years ago, the dramatic banded rock face stood out amid the green foliage. Red frowned at a vulture drifting over the canopy. Was it looking for dead meat, or had it found some?
On the top of the flat ridge, old trees stood like sentinels on the edge of a dirt outlook. The conifers seemed to have been there since before the dinosaurs and would be there long after the humans. Wildfire hadn’t touched their trunks. A dark energy lingered here. Not like an active spell but of a stain that not even years of rain could wash away.
“That’s where Lashawn found the skeleton,” he said, indicating a pit between toppled slabs of granite in the clearing.
“Basil showed me this place. In that shaman ceremony in Tahoe.” Red stepped to the edge of the bluff. She owed the soulmancer an apology. His potion had revealed more truth than either of them had realized. The sight, stripped of context, had slipped into her dreams by the time she arrived in LA.
Snippets of a vision assembled in her mind. The wildfire sparked by the opening portal ripped through the summer camp, trapping the high schoolers and the vampires, separating them from the road. She had been trapped in the circle. Lucas fought to save her. Chaos then, but peaceful now.
Life had returned to this forest, but death had returned too.
In her spirit gaze, she noticed something on the other side of the campus that didn't seem right. Almost like a patch on reality. She’d have missed it if a bird hadn’t flown out of what seemed to be a solid rock face on a cliffside trail into the canyon. An illusion? “I think I found something. Let’s go.”
“We need Stace and Jackson.”
“Tell them to meet us then. It’s not far.” Red didn’t give him a chance to speak, sprinting down the hill, backpack bouncing on her shoulders. She darted into the center of the camp by the mess lodge and jogged on a dirt path to the canyon. The ground sloped as the trail curved along a naturally formed terrace.
“I said, wait up!” Vic huffed as he jogged up, Stace and Jackson behind him. The layered rockface rose on their right as they descended.
A sigil glowed bright on the pockmarked stone, four feet above them. Stopping, she reached into her backpack for a squirt gun filled with water infused with cold iron powder. She sprayed the sigil, hoping to neutralize the magic. The illusion held fast. “It’s there.”
Jackson scaled the rocks, pulling himself up on grassy outcroppings, and stuck his head inside the barrier, disappearing to the neck. His head reappeared and he mouthed the words—a door. Stretching his arm seemingly into the rock, he jerked to the side, pulling the unseen entry open. Not a sound escaped the illusion. He hopped back. “I let the sun in and made enough noise to wake the dead. Back up, it’s not a deep cave.”
Taking cover by a boulder, Vic aimed his gun.
She held her breath, hoping Isaac would shriek, caught in bed, dropping the illusion from shock. Only the birds chirped in the trees. Not even a warning shot came out. Fuck it. She’d pull him out of his hiding space.
“Wait!” Stace hissed.
Ignoring the half-fae as much as the jagged rocks cutting at her fingertips, Red climbed and heaved herself into the other side of the illusion. The stake was in her hand before she straightened. Antiques lined the walls as if someone had dumped a Regency parlor in the cave. The casket in the corner summoned her.
She lifted her mother’s ring, channeling her will to rip the lid off. Cursing to see it empty, she whirled around. There wasn’t a trace of an aura in the small cave. He wasn’t hiding. Any vampire would confront a daytime intruder on instinct. Her shoulders drooped. “Isaac isn’t here.”
Vic stepped beside her, firearm raised.
Jackson sniffed, a grin spreading across his face. “I have the scent.”
“You understand the witch stuff. Stay to search the place,” Stace asked, a plea in her voice.
“Call if you find him. If you can,” Red said, knuckles whitening on the stake as her friends left to track her mother’s killer.
“I’ll stay with you,” Vic said.
Small Town Witch: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 5) Page 23