Shadow Hunt

by Melissa F. Olson

  Panicked, I wove my way through the crowd toward the nearest hallway. There were several closed doors, but one of them was standing open, and I could see a tiled floor and a toilet. I beelined toward it, not even pausing to flick on the light. I practically dove for the toilet.

  I don’t know how much time passed while I was throwing up, but after a while the light snapped on, and I blearily lifted my head, expecting to see Molly. Instead, a Native American woman with a long gray braid was scowling at me with her hands on her hips, as though I’d burst in on her in the bathroom and not the other way around. “You could at least close the door if you’re gonna do that,” she snapped. “Or do you get off on people walking in on you puking?”

  I fell back on my butt. The vomiting was done, I thought, but I didn’t have the strength to get up yet. The older woman closed the bathroom door and practically stomped over to the toilet. She “hmphed” and hit the flush lever, then unceremoniously lifted her dress and plopped down to urinate. I scooted away, embarrassed.

  She snorted. “Oh, sure, you’re happy to let the whole world see you puke, but one old woman peeing is an outrage.” She was probably only in her late fifties, and moved like she was ready to play college football, so the “old woman” thing was just perturbing. “How far along are you?” she demanded.

  I looked back, surprised. “What?”

  “How far along?” she repeated. “Six, eight weeks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She stood up, flushed the toilet, and went to the sink. “You don’t even know how far along you are?” she said scornfully.

  Okay, she was starting to piss me off. And it was only then, when I stopped thinking about the nausea and really focused on her, that I realized the woman was registering in my radius. She was a witch, but there was something weird about her magic. It was extremely faint. In fact, I’d have guessed it was just dormant witchblood, except I can’t feel that at all.

  “You girls these days,” she groused to herself, scrubbing her hands with expensive-looking lavender soap. “Half of you act like no one in the world has ever had a baby before you, and the other half tries to pretend like nothing is happening.”

  That was enough. Using the tub for support, I climbed to my feet, glaring at her. “Listen up, old woman. I’m sorry I startled you, but you’re obviously not in a position to lecture me about etiquette, and I don’t owe you any personal details about my life. Back the fuck off.”

  For the first time, a tiny smile appeared on the woman’s creased face. She wiped her hands on a towel and thrust the right one at me. “I’m Blossom,” she said. “John’s mother.”

  “Scarlett.” I shook her hand.

  “You want me to get your partner for you?” she asked, nodding at the door.

  I was confused for a second, then got it. “Molly? Oh, uh, no. She’s just my friend.”

  “Is your baby daddy here?” She looked pointedly at my stomach.

  “He’s dead,” I said flatly.

  “Oh.” She leaned back against the counter, looking . . . well, not contrite, exactly, but thoughtful.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” I said sarcastically. “Perhaps you’d like to discuss my history with yeast infections, or the times I’ve been groped on public transportation. My parents were murdered; wanna talk about that?”

  Now the old lady grinned at me approvingly. “I like you,” she said. “The rest of these white people are scared of me. But you push back.”

  I went to the sink and rinsed out my mouth. “The old witch likes me,” I muttered. “Lucky me.”

  I turned toward the door, but Blossom stepped in front of it, looking wary. “Why’d you call me that?”

  “Old?” I asked, just to be a dick.

  She waved a hand. “The other thing.”

  I lowered my voice. “Because you’ve got witchblood.” I watched her face for recognition—and got it. “You don’t practice magic, and you haven’t for a very long time. But you activated it, when you were a girl. It’s still inside you.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped open. “How do you know that?”

  Shit. I’d opened my big mouth to show off, and now I was stuck. This woman already knew I was pregnant; if she found out I was a null too . . .

  I took a leap. “Sam told me,” I said at last. “I knew her in LA.”

  Blossom’s face slowly relaxed, although she still looked wary. “I didn’t think she knew.” When I didn’t say anything else, she shook her head. “John must have told her.” Suddenly anxious, she met my eyes. “You won’t tell anyone?”

  “If you don’t mention that I’m pregnant,” I said sweetly.

  That approving grin again. “Deal.” Blossom stepped away from the door, waving me on. “Go get some crackers or something.” I sidled around her and escaped through the door.

  What was it with everyone and the damned crackers?

  Chapter 10

  When I went back into the hallway, I felt a familiar sensation in my radius, sort of like light being bent through a crystal. I turned around just as a line of children stampeded through the room, laughing as they knocked into grown-ups and furniture. “Charlie!” Lex called, a little stern. “Come here, please.”

  A small girl near the back peeled off from the group and turned to face us, pushing long, dark hair out of her face. My breath caught. She was probably around four, wearing a green sundress and Chuck Taylor sneakers spattered with paint in primary colors. She gazed up at Lex with bright blue eyes. Except for the darker hair and olive skin, she could have been Lex’s younger clone.

  Then the little girl frowned, tilting her head sideways as her eyes took in the rest of us. “Hi, Auntie,” she said, drawing closer. Her eyes landed on Molly, widening with interest. “Hey, you’re different. Like Uncle Quinn.”

  “Charlie, this is Miss Molly,” Lex said. Molly held out a hand for the girl to shake. Charlie took it, looking amused at the adult ritual. “And this is Miss Scarlett,” Lex said, pointing at me.

  For the first time, the girl turned all her attention to me. “You’re pretty,” she said.

  I blinked. “Thank you. I think you’re very pretty, too.” Wait, that was wrong, wasn’t it? I’d read somewhere that we were supposed to praise little girls for their accomplishments, not their looks. Goddammit, I’d messed this up already.

  Charlie was still studying me. I felt incredibly awkward, like everyone in the whole room must be staring at my embarrassing attempts to connect with a child, but really it was only Lex and Molly.

  The little girl grabbed my hand and tugged down. Obediently, I knelt on the floor in front of her, Lex hovering anxiously over us. Charlie’s face screwed up with concentration, and she pushed hair away from my face and leaned toward me so she could whisper in my ear. “Why do you feel different?”

  “Because I’m like you,” I said quietly. “Those feelings you get around certain people? I get them, too.”

  Charlie looked startled and glanced up at her aunt. “My daddy says I’m not supposed to talk about them,” she said, just loud enough for Lex to hear.

  “It’s okay, Charlie,” Lex assured her. “It’s safe to trust Miss Scarlett.”

  The little girl studied her aunt for a moment, as if she thought Lex might be testing her. Then she shrugged and turned back to me.

  “Why do we get them?” she asked.

  I glanced up at Lex, who was chewing on her lower lip as she watched us. Until she was older, it wasn’t safe for Charlie to know about the Old World—she wouldn’t understand that she needed to keep it a secret, which could put her friends or family in danger. “Because we’re very special,” I told Charlie. “When you get older, you’ll learn more about what those feelings mean.”

  Her face brightened. “’Cause you’ll teach me?”

  There was suddenly a lump in my throat. Stupid hormones. Lex started to say something, to make an excuse for me, but I said to Charlie, “It might be me, or it might be your au
nt Lex.”

  With no further ado, Charlie climbed into my lap, her tanned arms loose around my shoulders. I held very still, like a butterfly had just landed on my arm. Small hands picked up a strand of my hair and began twisting and curling it around her finger. “Auntie Lex feels different too,” Charlie confided, low enough so Lex couldn’t hear.

  I nodded. “She’s very strong.”

  “’Cause she was a soldier.”

  Well . . . close enough. “Right.”

  “When I grow up, I might be a soldier, too,” Charlie went on. “But I’m definitely gonna be a paleontologist. And have a lemonade stand. And I’ll ride horses and have six dogs. That’s more than Aunt Lex has, but she has cats, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like cats.”

  “Me either,” I told her. Nearby, Lex’s phone buzzed, and she stepped a few feet away to answer it.

  Molly was still watching Charlie and me, looking amused. I tried to think of something else to say. “I have a dog too,” I finally offered. “Her name is Shadow. She’s really big.”

  “And really ugly,” Molly added.

  I glared up at her, but she just lifted an eyebrow to say, Well, she is.

  “Can I see a picture on your phone?” Charlie asked me eagerly.

  I started to reach for the phone in my pocket, but remembered it was the burner. “I don’t have any on my phone right now,” I told her regretfully.

  “Oh.” She looked at me with disappointment and judgment. Ah. So there was some of her aunt in her too.

  Luckily, at that moment Lex hung up the phone and turned back to us. “We’re on,” she said to me. “She’s expecting you.”

  I nodded. “Charlie,” Lex said, “Miss Scarlett and I need to leave now.”

  Charlie looked up with obvious displeasure, squeezing the strands of my hair closer, like she was protecting them. “But she’s like me!”

  “I know. We still need to leave, though. Besides, it’s almost your bedtime.”

  Charlie pouted, but turned back to me. “Do you have FaceTime?” she demanded.

  That threw me for a second. I hadn’t realized four-year-olds were aware of FaceTime. But then again, what the hell did I know about kids? “Um, yes. I do.”

  “So we’ll talk on FaceTime,” Charlie decided. “That’s what I do with Gramma Blossom, or with Auntie when she has to be gone for days.”

  “Okay,” I said, bewildered. “We can FaceTime.”

  “Then you can go, I guess.” Charlie released her death grip on my hair and climbed out of my lap. “Bye!” she yelled over her shoulder, racing off to find the rest of the kids.

  I blinked. What had just happened?

  Molly was grinning as she held out a hand to me. “So that was Charlie,” Lex said, with a smile I hadn’t seen from her before. It was proud and a little embarrassed and sort of fierce. Like a mom. “She’s kind of a force of nature,” Lex added.

  “Yeah.” I used Molly’s hand to pull myself up. “I’m getting that.”

  The sun had gone down while we were at dinner. Lex drove us back to the Pearl Street Mall area, parking near a funny little coffee shop with a weird setup. Most of the coffee shops I’d been to shared the same basic layout—one big room with a counter somewhere—but the front doors at Magic Beans opened into a short hallway with multiple doors leading off in different directions. There were Day-Glo arrows painted on the floor that eventually led us toward a counter, where a bored-looking teenage boy looked up from a textbook. “Oh. Hey, Lex, hey, Quinn,” he said.

  “Is Maven around?” Lex asked.

  “She’s waiting for you in the back,” he replied. “Do you guys want coffee?”

  “Sure,” Lex said, looking at Molly and me. We both nodded.

  “Make it four,” Quinn said, looking suddenly enthusiastic.

  “Whoa, Mr. Quinn drinking the coffee. Crazy,” the kid said in a monotone, and I suddenly remembered that marijuana was legal in Colorado.

  He handed out the full cups, and Quinn took a couple of sips, looking fascinated. “Huh,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t remember it being so . . . gross.”

  “You get used to it,” I told him.

  He put the cup down on the counter. “Or not.”

  “Ready?” Lex asked me.

  I nodded and she looked at Molly. “Wait here, please. Just as a security thing.”

  Molly rolled her eyes, but gave Lex a little salute. “I’ll stay out here, too,” Quinn said, locking eyes with Lex. “Give you guys some privacy.”

  I pulled in my radius as we entered a large room with a concrete floor and a small stage. Folding chairs were set out around a card table, and a young woman was perched on a chair with one foot folded under her. Maven was very young-looking, with a fashion sense I would describe as eclectic, if I needed to be polite: she wore a baggy denim dress that hung to the floor, along with huge, eighties-style glasses that somehow clashed with her bright orange hair. And she had layers and layers of cheap costume jewelry that reminded me of Mardi Gras beads.

  Lex introduced me, and Maven gestured for us to sit. I took the seat farthest from her so I could keep her out of my cinched-in radius.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” I said formally.

  She smiled. “You certainly piqued my interest,” she said, her diction completely at odds with her appearance. She sounded like people in old movies, with that fancy, mid-Atlantic kind of accent. She waved at me. “It’s all right—you can release it. I wouldn’t mind being human for a little while.”

  Surprised, I released my grip on my radius. Maven gasped, clutching at her chest as her heart started beating and her lungs struggled with the sudden need for air. Vampires usually do those things anyway, to blend in and to speak, but they don’t have to devote energy to it, any more than I have to devote energy to walking on my tiptoes.

  So Maven’s shocked reaction was typical of most vampires, but for once, I was equally floored. When a vampire is in my radius, I get a vague sense of their power and age. Dashiell was powerful, but not very old. Molly had average power, average age. Quinn was young, and a little stronger than most vampires his age.

  But this woman . . . “Holy shit,” I breathed out, feeling the sudden compulsion to stand up and curtsy. She really was the oldest vampire I’d ever felt, at least a thousand years old. A thousand years old.

  And she had every bit of power those years afforded.

  Chapter 11

  There was a long silence. Lex perched on the edge of her seat, looking back and forth between us like she didn’t know who to protect from whom. It would have been funny if I wasn’t so gobsmacked. Wait, had I really just used the word gobsmacked?

  “It’s okay,” Maven gasped, smiling at Lex. “We just need a moment.”

  After a few minutes, we were both more or less recovered, although I now had a thousand questions. This woman was powerful as hell. What was she doing in Boulder, Colorado? She could literally be running the world.

  Stay on task, Scarlett. I took a sip of my coffee, and Maven’s nostrils flared.

  “May I?” she said hopefully.

  “Um, yeah. Of course.” I slid the cup over to her, and she took a tiny sip, looking intensely thoughtful.

  “Hmm,” she said, nodding her head a little. “I usually keep a cup lying around as though it’s mine, but I’ve never actually tasted this stuff.”

  “Have you been around nulls before?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes. She wouldn’t be much help to me if I was the first null she’d encountered in all that time.

  “Yes, but it’s been decades, and coffee wasn’t what it is now. Lex,” she said, turning to face the boundary witch. “Can you go get me a frappe . . . and an espresso, and maybe some of those scones we just baked?”

  Lex paused, looking wary, and I couldn’t entirely blame her. Her one job here was to protect Maven, which she couldn’t do from another room. She sort of trusted me, but leaving Maven unguarded with a null went against all her
instincts. “I don’t think—”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured her. I trusted Lex. And now that I’d met Charlie . . . well, whatever Maven told me was going to apply to her too someday. To Maven, I said, “My friend Molly is waiting outside. Why don’t I text her to bring it in?” Lex shot me a grateful look.

  After the text was sent, Maven raised her eyebrows at me. “So. What was it you needed to ask me?”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay. I don’t know very much about the history of nulls. Dashiell, my cardinal vampire, is relatively young. Most of the leadership in LA is young.” This was common knowledge, and Maven nodded, gesturing for me to continue. “Everything I’ve ever heard, however, suggests that nulls can’t have kids. I want to know if that’s true.” I had a further explanation ready—the thing about a boyfriend who wanted to have kids someday—but I decided to keep it as simple as possible.

  “Ah.” Maven sat back in her chair, regarding me. I tried not to squirm.

  “You’re pregnant,” she said softly.

  I winced, and Lex’s gaze shot toward me, her eyes widening.

  Before I could answer, Molly walked into the room carrying a small round tray of beverages and scones. Her path brought her straight into my radius. “Hi,” she said cheerfully to the other vampire. “I’m Molly. Love your dress.”

  Maven blinked, then looked down at herself and back up in a thoroughly human gesture. “Thank you.”

  Molly glanced at Lex and me, trying to gauge the mood. “Is . . . everything okay?” she asked.

  “Um . . .” Of course, it had occurred to me that Maven might figure it out. Not because she could smell it on me or anything—even if vampires could smell pregnancy, like dogs, it wouldn’t apply to a null—but because I’d come on such short notice, in secret, and I looked very much like I’d spent the last week vomiting.