by Izzy Shows
“Are you telling me that, or yourself?” I asked, keeping my voice as soft and soothing as I could.
“It’s what happened!”
“No, Emma, no it isn’t,” I said. I sighed and sat down on the couch beside her, something that I rarely did. I didn’t like being in close physical proximity to anyone, but it seemed to me that I needed to use her attachment to my benefit. She felt like she could trust me. It was obvious enough by the way she’d come to my house and taken a drink from me without asking any questions after I’d killed a man.
I tried not to think too hard about that last bit, about the fact that I had killed a fair share since the first time. It had become a necessity, there didn’t seem to be a way to rehabilitate a monster, no matter that I had tried in the beginning. The scar on my right side was proof of that.
“I didn’t see anything.” I could barely hear what she said.
“It’s OK, Emma, nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re safe now.” I touched her arm to reassure her.
She looked up at me with watery eyes. “No one’s going to get in here, right? They can’t find me here?”
I didn’t have to ask who ‘they’ were. She was talking about the vampires, already terrified of the world around her. I felt bad that she had to bear the burden of knowing this secret—it’s the kind of thing, that once you know about it, once you see it, you’re suddenly aware of it everywhere. The veil can’t be dropped once it’s lifted.
“No one is going to get you here.” I felt confident of that. I had kept Aidan’s wards and implemented some of my own, though they were nowhere near as good. But I needed to learn, and the only real way to learn was by doing.
There was no way anyone was coming through that door, not without a shit ton of force.
“How did you do it?” Her voice was so quiet, and she looked away from me again.
I frowned, not sure how to answer that one. “It’s just…something I can do,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets.
“You must never be afraid of anything!”
“Of course I’m afraid of things. I’m afraid every day.” I laughed at the idea of being fearless. Brave, maybe, though I doubted that. Fearless was what got people killed, fearless was what had got Aidan killed. If he’d listened to me, if he’d had a proper amount of fear and respect for the necromancers we’d gone up against, then maybe he would be alive today.
I didn’t want to die, so I let myself feel the fear every day. It was only when I was about to battle that I pushed it away so that it wouldn’t distract me.
She seemed comforted to hear that I was afraid of things, and that made sense. It seemed she had made me into something of a hero in her head, and if a hero could be afraid than it was OK for her to be afraid. She was rationalising it all in her head.
“Can you take it away?” she asked.
“Take what away?” I was genuinely confused.
“My memories. Can you make me forget that it ever happened, that I saw any of it, forget that we had this conversation?”
I stared at her, my eyes almost popping out of my head. I stood up abruptly, beginning to pace. What she asked of me couldn’t be done—well OK, it could be done, technically speaking. But I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t mess around with someone’s head and make them forget that something had happened, give them fake memories to live with. Because I’d have to do that if I took this memory away, I’d have to make her think that she’d been mugged, that some random person had come along and scared the mugger away, and she’d gone home shaken but overall just fine.
I couldn’t do that. I didn’t trust myself to be inside someone’s head.
Not to mention it was illegal.
I was not a part of the Order, they still didn’t know that I existed. I kept a low enough profile, no one in town even knew who I was, and Aidan had died before he could report me. I had yet to meet another Wizard, but even I knew that luck wouldn’t last for long. Someone was going to find me eventually, and then I’d have to face the Order and whatever they decided to do to me.
I didn’t know all the rules, I didn’t know if killing monsters to keep mundanes safe was allowed, but it wasn’t something I was willing to pass on. I knew that mind magic was illegal, Aidan had said so, and I wasn’t going to do it.
“No, I can’t do that,” I said, waving a hand at her. “I don’t have the ability.” I knew it sounded harsh but it had to be.
It was a lie, but not one she would recognise. She didn’t know what I could and couldn’t do.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
“You would trust me to do that, though? You would trust me inside your head?” I was incredulous.
“Of course,” she said, without missing a beat. “You saved me.”
“But that isn’t enough!” I stared at her. “You can’t trust someone simply based on that! You don’t know me from Eve, you don’t know what I could do to you. You don’t even know why I saved you. And why did you agree to come here? I could have been bringing you back here to kill you myself.”
She flinched. “You’re a kind person, I can see that. You wouldn’t have saved me just to kill me.”
Well, she was right about that, but it still didn’t make sense that she would know that. She couldn’t know that. She had blindly put her trust in me.
“Promise me you won’t do this with anyone else,” I said. “Tell me you will be more careful in your normal life.”
I didn’t know why it was so important to me, but it was. I had saved her, I had brought her home to make sure she was OK, she had become a person to me now, and I didn’t want her to throw all of that away by being too trusting.
“How could I? How will I ever know who is a monster and who is a man?” She looked up at me with pleading eyes.
I sighed, shoulders drooping. “You have to make judgement calls. It’s not easy. Not everyone who is bad looks it or acts like it, and not every jerk is a vampire waiting to bite your neck.” I didn’t know how to be gentle in delivering that information. “I don’t know what it’s like for…people like you.” I almost said mundanes. “But for me, I can feel the darkness inside of them. I get thrown off when they look too much like normal people, I almost was tonight. But…it’s like the hair standing up on your arms, the gooseflesh, the way you feel that prickle at the back of your neck. You know that feeling, Emma. Everyone does.”
Aidan had told me once that everyone had a little bit of magic in them, and I knew from talking to people that it was true. Almost everyone has had an experience where they knew someone was looking at them, they could feel their eyes on them. Everyone has had a gut feeling telling them that a situation is bad and they should get out of there. It wasn’t a unique talent to the magically inclined.
She nodded her head. “I suppose you’re right.”
I sat down beside her again. “You can do it, Emma. I believe in you.”
She smiled weakly at me. “Thank you. I…I’ll try.”
I nodded, looking away from her. “There’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“You can’t tell anyone about this, not for the rest of your life. It will haunt you, you will have nightmares. But no one can ever know.”
3
I brought her home, sent up a silent prayer to the Gods that she would keep her mouth shut, and went home.
I discarded my gear, hanging up the thigh holster, putting away my wands, and took off the rings and chain. I left the cuff on. It covered Mal’s brand, and was always on my arm so no one could see it.
Sitting on the couch, I grabbed my phone off the table, flipped it open, and dialled Finn’s number. He picked up on the second ring.
“What’s up?”
“What a fantastic greeting. You want to hang out? It’s been a minute,” I glanced at the fireplace as I spoke. The interaction with Emma had left me a little jarred, a little anxious, and Finn’s presence would calm me down.
“Love to! Fifteen?”
&
nbsp; “See you then,” I said with a small smile.
Finn and I had been friends for over a year and a half now, the longest friendship I had ever kept. Dealing with the supernatural together tends to do that to a friendship; keep you together. It was an excuse, one that I clung to now and again. It was still hard to admit that this friendship was working, that it was easy, that I could be the type of person that didn’t drive everyone away.
Then again, eventually was always around the next corner.
I fixed myself another drink while I waited for Finn to get there, brooding over the evening’s events.
Emma was a liability, one that was likely going to bite me in the backside sooner rather than later. No one keeps their mouth shut, no matter what they promise, and to be honest I didn’t expect her to. I knew that she was going to tell a friend or a family member, maybe she would blurt it out to her boss when she was too stressed out to keep it in any longer. But she was going to tell, and I would have to deal with it then. The likelihood was no one would believe her, but I’d have to keep my eye on her regardless to make sure nothing spread around.
One more responsibility to add to my plate.
A knock at the door announced Finn’s arrival and I got to my feet, placing the drink on the coffee table. I passed my hand along the wood of the repaired door, murmuring the enchantments before I opened it to let him in. I stepped back, waiting for him to cross the threshold, then shut the door and set the enchantments again.
I rarely invited anyone in. There was a part of me that was afraid someone would show up wearing a friend’s face to kill me. There was another, more rational part of me that had to deal with Mal coming over now and again and not giving a demon permission to use power inside my home. But that wasn’t the case here.
He smiled at me as he came in, his warm brown skin tanned from the summer’s sun giving him a cheery appearance.
“How’ve you been?” I asked, breaching the silence.
“It’s good, it’s good. Boys are falling into line, I’ve only had one question my authority recently, which overall is good.”
“Want something to drink?”
“Yes.”
I grinned, walking to the kitchen and grabbing the whisky. I poured a drink and carried it out to him. “What about Shawn? How’s he doing?”
“You only saw him, what, a week ago?” He’d got in his sly dig at my expense. “He’s good. Working out a lot, he’s busy at the hospital. He’s mentioned wanting to see you more a few times.”
I nodded. “Yeah, he’d be a good friend, I like him. But he doesn’t know about this yet, and it just makes me nervous to have to worry about slipping up.”
“All right. So, how goes it?” He took the drink and sipped on it.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Could be better, could be worse.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to tell me what you’ve been up to?”
“Because you give me such a detailed report, hm?”
“Oh, please, my job is boring in comparison to yours. I get the odd murder now and again, not that I want more, but overall there is little of note going on…” His voice trailed off and he frowned.
“Now, why do I get the feeling that wasn’t quite true?” I asked, smiling.
He glared at me. “No, you first. I want to hear all about the vigilante work you’ve been up to.” He gestured for me to have a seat across from him. I rolled my eyes. It was my house, not his, though I still sit down.
I grabbed my drink off the coffee table and took a swig of it.
“This and that. We had someone selling love potions to mundanes, real ones, and that was a small catastrophe. Hard to keep the lid on things when not everyone in the community sees the importance of it,” I said with pursed lips. “A few attacks, but nothing I couldn’t handle on my own.” I levelled a look at him, knowing that was why he was asking. I hadn’t called him in back when the necromancers attacked, he’d had to hear about it through his police network instead of from me, and he’d been royally pissed off.
It was warranted, I knew, but it didn’t mean that he had the right to look over my shoulder ever since. That was why I left out the details of the attacks, the nature of the fighting. The less he knew, the less likely he’d want to be involved.
He nodded his head, accepting my response.
“How do you live here?” He swiftly changed the topic, gesturing about at the house.
My eyebrows perked up, surprised that he had chosen that question. It was odd, considering how long I’d been living here now.
“I pay the bills, no one asks any questions.”
“No family has come by?”
I pursed my lips, quelling the desire to yell at him for broaching a topic that was still sensitive for me. I didn’t want to talk about Aidan, and this conversation was edging close.
“No, no family. I don’t know that he had any surviving family, but it seems no one knows that he’s…passed. No one’s come by in the absence of communication from him,” I said.
“Don’t you think it’s a little unfair of you to keep going like this? What if he does have family and they don’t know what’s happened to him? I would want to know.”
I ground my teeth. “You were the one who said we couldn’t ID his body. I didn’t have any connections to him, my word wouldn’t mean shit, and he had no identification on him when he passed. He went down as an unidentified body, and as much as that’s crappy, there’s nothing we could do. Nothing we can do.”
He nodded. “I know, I know, you’re right.” He sighed. “I just…I would want to know if something happened to a family member, and I wish there was a way we could figure it out. You haven’t found any papers or pictures or anything here?”
I shook my head. “He was isolated, it seems.”
It was sad to think about. I hadn’t rifled, not really, but it’s hard not to look at things as you’re moving them around. There hadn’t been even one family portrait, no pictures of him with a girlfriend, nothing that would indicate friendship or a single person who would have cared that he was gone. Except for me, I cared. I cared every day that he had died, that was why I had erected a tombstone and insisted he be buried here. I had not been willing to have an unmarked grave go in a cemetery. Finn had pulled strings for me.
We were both silent for a moment, letting that topic fall between us like a stone in a river.
Good, I didn’t want to talk about him.
“Believe it or not, I was hoping you would call,” he said, leaning forward. “I have something I wanted to talk about with you.”
“Oh?” I squinted at him. “Why do I feel like I just got called into the principal’s office?” I forced myself not to shift nervously in my seat.
“Nothing like that.” He chuckled. “I want your help on a case.”
My eyebrows jumped up near my hairline. “What help could I possibly be on a case?”
“Well, as I’ve told you multiple times, you’ve got good instincts and you can get to the bottom of things quickly. It’s a little unnerving how often you guess that someone’s lying, and that’s a lot of help when we’re going through people. But the more important part, is it’s your kind of case.” He kept his eyes on me as he spoke, I don’t know what he was watching for but I made sure to keep my face void of any emotion. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.
“My kind of case?” I asked slowly, and suddenly aware that I was all kinds of nervous. Tense, ready to spring away from anything that moved. I didn’t like where this conversation was going. I didn’t want to work on an actual police case, that felt like so much more responsibility than I was willing or able to handle.
“I have five bodies,” he said. As ever, straight to the point.
I blanched, looking away from him. “That’s horrible, but I still don’t see how it has anything to do with me.”
“They’ve all been drained of blood, Blair.”
My eyes jerked back to his, heart pounding now as
I took in his words. Drained of blood. “What do you mean?” My voice was soft.
“I mean, not a single drop of blood in any of the bodies. And there’s more, they’re all beheaded. We can’t tell if someone took a hack saw to them or—and this is what I think—if their heads were ripped off,” he said.
“Ripped off?” I felt like an echo.
“That’s what I said.”
I nodded, shifting my gaze to the fireplace as I took in the information in. There was comfort to be found in the crackling fire most of the time, though now I didn’t gather any from it. Finn had a serial killer on his hands, the fourth body had made it so. Five bodies, that was terrifying. And I hadn’t heard a word about it, which meant it was being kept quiet.
That made sense, the government never wants you to know if they don’t have a handle on things, this would only get out to the media if someone let it slip or if they had figured something out. The fact that it wasn’t out right now meant they didn’t have squat. But still, the people had a right to know, a right to keep themselves safe.
Thoughts flew through my mind at an impossible rate.
I had interrupted a vampire attack tonight, saved a woman’s life, and now Finn was coming to me and telling me there were five bodies drained of blood—that could not be a coincidence.
I nodded absentmindedly, realising now that I would have to take the case. There was no way the regular police would be able to handle a vampire, and if we were lucky we would only be dealing with the one vampire. One vampire who went rabid wasn’t the worst thing in the world, not that it was good by any stretch of the word, but much preferable to Dudley having decided he didn’t need to control his boys anymore.
“I’ve brought some of the force in on the secret, Blair.”
Eyes flaring, I looked back at him again. “You did what?” I was livid.
“I had to. It’s no good us sitting back and watching everything happen, it’s no good for us to just try and figure out a way to spin the situation once it’s over and done with. We must be able to look for things, we must get involved. And I can’t do it on my own, so I told five of my people about it,” he said. He looked guilty, staring down at his hands now when he spoke. He couldn’t meet my eyes.