“That was an accident!” Kelly shouted.
“Yeah? Which time?” E snarled.
The girl looked up and fire ripped by E’s head. She caught it, wrapped it around her arm, and put it out all without flinching. I flinched for both of us.
“Maybe you don’t want to piss her off?” I asked gently.
“Please? It’s the only way to get through to her. He’s got her so screwed up she can barely see straight.”
“You don’t understand,” she cried. “He’s the only one that wants me! When they know what I do, what I like, no one will even look at me again. I’m worthless.”
“No, you’re not.” E’s voice was angry. “You only think that because he wants you to. There are other people like you. Even if there wasn’t, wouldn’t you rather be alone than be with someone who treats you the way he does?”
The girl cried for second, mumbling something I couldn’t hear. E could though, or she guessed.
“You can walk away; it’s that simple.”
“I can’t! I’ve tried. He hunts me down, and then he makes me hurt someone. Leave us alone. There won’t be any more fires now, not if I stay with him and keep him happy.”
“Bullshit. It’ll keep happening no matter what he promises or what you do.”
“You don’t know that…” Kelly was trying to convince herself E was wrong, but she wasn’t doing too good of a job.
“Sure I do. I’ve been there. You think he’s all powerful, but he’s not. You’re stronger than him. All you have to do is walk away.”
“Kelly,” a male voice called from the darkness. Shit, the vampire was awake.
“You have to go, both of you; get out of here. I don’t know what he’ll make me do if he finds you.”
“It’s a two-way street, you know that right? He makes you do things, but you can make him do things too. Tell him to leave you alone, and he’ll have to.”
“What are you telling her?” Chris came into the room looking furious. I guess we weren’t going to play pool again anytime soon. “She doesn’t want me to leave. She knows I love her. Right, Kel?”
She looked over at him, sad and confused.
“Come on, your parents shipped you off because they couldn’t stand you, and I was the only one who visited. I rescued you from their bullshit. I took care of you. I bought you whatever you wanted.”
“You bought me drugs, Chris,” she corrected, her tone cold and flat.
“And they made you feel better, didn’t they? Better than any of the crap your shrink gave you.” He walked over to her, taking her hands. She looked away, and he shifted so she had to face him. “We promised we’d stay together no matter what, together forever. Why would you leave me?”
“Maybe she’s tired of you taking her mind? Or of the way you force her to do things she doesn’t want to do,” E said with a snarl. Her voice was so angry, so filled with hate that I realized this wasn’t about Chris and Kelly. It was about E and someone else, someone she’d gotten away from, someone who’d hurt her. He might not have been a vampire, but there was a guy somewhere that was her Chris, and the man in front of us was going to suffer for it.
“Stay out of this. She doesn’t need you. She doesn’t need anyone but me.”
“Not even her mom?” I asked, as much to get to Kelly as to distract E from killing him. “She wants to meet you Kelly. She’s been searching for you for a long time. Whatever you think the world sees when they look at you, she wants you.”
“Yeah, then why did she dump her like a piece of garbage all those years ago?” Chris brought up the obvious, and my palms itched to smack him. Worse, the magic in me was tingling, curious to see if I could control him. It thought I could. In fact, it thought it might be fun.
“She didn’t have a choice. She was young and scared. You know what that’s like don’t you, Kelly? But she started her life over, and now she wants you to be okay. You can be to. Walk out of here with us.”
“I want to but…” she hesitated.
I brushed my arm. There was a feeling on my skin like walking through a cobweb, a light touch. I brushed it away, but there was nothing there. It wasn’t a bug. It was magic.
“I’m staying.” Kelly finished her voice odd.
“Stay the fuck out of her head,” I hissed at Chris.
“Oh please, I’m only helping her remember what she really wants.”
I felt the magic and power in my stomach. It filled me, coming quickly with my anger. I spoke slowly, making my words a command and putting the magic behind them. “Stay out of her head.”
Chris rocked back with the impact, and Kelly shook her head, trying to clear her mind.
“You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore!” she shouted at him.
“Does he do it a lot?” E asked, softly.
“All the time! I never know what’s real. I wake up in places, and I don’t know how I got there. I feel like I’ve burned things, but I can’t be sure. Sometimes it’s like he traps me in my own head. I scream for someone to help me, but no one ever comes.” Tears flowed down her face, but Chris appeared unmoved.
“I’m helping you keep it together. Remember how you used to feel out of control all the time? Like you couldn’t handle things? It’s better now, isn’t it? It’s better when I take over.”
“I…I don’t…” Her voice was so small I could barely hear her. She looked utterly lost and helpless, completely unsure of what was right.
“Remember Kelly, you can be in control the same way he is. Tell him to leave you alone, and he’ll have to,” E said. She wasn’t going to do anything for Kelly, but she would do everything to help her make the choice. I marveled at the inner workings of E’s mind.
“Listen, bitch, she doesn’t want me to leave her alone. Right, Kelly?”
“No,” Kelly said very softly.
“What?” He looked up sharply.
“I need to think. I just need to…” She took a deep breath. “Leave me alone, Chris.”
“No, I love you. I’m not leaving.”
“I said, leave!” she shouted, and I felt the magic behind it. “Leave the room, leave the building, leave me alone damn it!”
He moved like a zombie, slowly shuffling without moving his head, staring straight. Kelly had won her freedom. They would always be bound, but now he wouldn’t be able to walk all over her. A smile grew on my face. I stopped watching him to look at E comforting her. Kelly was going to be okay.
There was a noise from behind me and it hit me, she hadn’t commanded him away, she’d commanded him outside. Outside into the sun. Chris would die if I didn’t stop him. I ran after him and grabbed at his shoulders, but he pushed me off. He was still a vampire, stronger than I’d ever be. I fell into the dust on the floor. I grabbed uselessly at his ankles. Too late I realized I could command Chris to stop. I got up as the light from the front door started to show. I was a step behind him, still gathering my strength when he pulled the door open. For the tiniest instant he was silhouetted in golden afternoon sunlight, and then he exploded into flames. Chunks of body flew everywhere as the fire burned with vengeance. E’s vengeance no doubt, but maybe Kelly’s too. Chris wasn’t just burned by the sun; he was destroyed by it.
Danny had called a vampire extraction team; they stood ten feet away from me. The doorway was framed in thick soot, the last remnants of Chris, as the larger pieces burned to ash. Something smelled rank next to me, and I jerked back from a piece of him smoldering in my hair.
“There’s another bit, on the other side.” Danny had broken through the team of stunned people. He reached up and pulled something that might have been a finger out of my hair. He used too much pressure, and it collapsed into ash. Fine soot coated the side of my face. I deliberately thought about something else. If I thought anymore about how I was covered in Chris’ dead body, I would start screaming, and I might not stop. “You okay with him dying?”
“He was already dead, and it happened fast.” Fast enough that I bar
ely felt it. I heard a shuffling behind me and realized I was alone in that. Kelly looked dazed and weak. Even though she was eight inches shorter, E gently held her up.
“Come into the sunlight,” E said softly to the girl. “You’ve been in the darkness too long.”
E gave her car keys to some lucky guy, then climbed into the back of our car with Kelly. She stayed with her until we got upstairs. When Simon saw the two of them he flinched, making me glad Kelly had someone who understood what she was feeling to help her. Danny and I went into the lieutenant’s office, where Danny explained everything, and I tried to rub the ash and soot off my hands.
“So that’s it.” Lieutenant French needlessly straightened a stack of papers. “You don’t have anything to add, Mors? Anything happen underground that should go on the record?”
I shook my head. What happened in the tunnel didn’t need to go on any record. I stopped, actually I did have something to add.
“I want tomorrow off.” Really I wanted tomorrow off and the next day, and the one after that, and the one after that and on and on until no one exploded on me for a very long time. I would settle for tomorrow. The lieutenant gave it to me with a smile.
I headed back to my desk. E had gone, and Kelly was sitting meekly in my guest chair, tears streaming down her face.
“When’s your birthday?”
“March 10th, why?”
I pulled out the file from Aunt Jo and confirmed what I already knew. “Hold on,” I said to Kelly. I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hello?”
“Joanna? This is Detective Mors. Can you come down to the station? I think I have your daughter sitting next to me.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She hung up without saying goodbye.
Chapter Nineteen
Kelly wasn’t ready to face her adoptive parents yet, but with Aunt Jo sitting next to her, there was no doubt Kelly had a parent beside her. The resemblance was too strong for anyone to miss. Supported by her birth mother, Kelly told us the whole story. We didn’t need her to say much, only enough for the report. She recounted how Chris had changed when he’d become a vampire. He’d been more violent, more angry. She would wake up sure he’d taken her mind. He kept her isolated, first at Vianne’s place, then later in the storage unit.
As we recounted each fire, she told us the matching story of Chris and his motivation. At the bar he burned the man who wouldn’t serve him a beer, at the school it was the locker room where he’d been teased by the jocks. The list read on. Once you knew who was doing it, the reasons were obvious. I could kick myself for investing so much time in the clinic’s abortion protestors when the real culprit had been a kid who was angry at a lecture over his drug use.
Vianne’s attempt to break the bond between the two of them weakened it enough that Kelly could fight what Chris was doing. The two of them had words, and she managed to get away long enough to come to the SIU for help, but a rush of magic had traveled through her into him, waking him. He’d taken her mind and blown up the side of our building. She hadn’t woken up until dawn the next day. She had no memory of going back to the storage unit, no recollection of any of the events between standing outside looking up at our building hoping to get help and when we’d met her.
It was nice and neat for our official report. Chris was dead, and because of how he’d controlled her, Kelly wasn’t going to be on trial for manslaughter by witchcraft. All of the blame went to Chris. He’d been horrible to her, and worse to other people, but I still hated the way it came out.
****
I’d never met the Gibil family. I only knew Anna, but I could guess from the gifts they’d given her (the sports car with vanity plates, the house) that they had money. If there was any doubt, the lawyer and psychologist who arrived with Aunt Jo confirmed it. Kelly might have been a drug addicted runaway, but she was a fire witch, and they were all too willing to come to her rescue. Anna arrived ten minutes later to be the spokesperson for the family at a press conference that was being slapped together downstairs. I managed to grab her before she went into the conference room. She only had one word for me “Convenire.”
The word made me realize it was Friday. I had Saturday off, and the case that haunted me was done. The three facts registered in my mind and kept me going through the rest of the debriefings and reports. I called Jakob and told him I had Saturday off, and if he wanted to come over early tomorrow morning instead of making the drive back to his place, I was up for it. He told me he’d see me then, and I hung up the phone at my desk on a Friday afternoon ready to start my weekend.
My weekend wasn’t sure it wanted to start though. By the time I walked into my apartment, the elation I felt at everything being over had given way to exhaustion. I flipped through my mail moaning that the Herculean task of sorting out my medical bills from last summer’s attack wasn’t over. Worse, the message light on my phone was blinking. I checked the caller id, saw a number I didn’t recognize, and decided to ignore it. It and everything else, whatever the world wanted could go to hell, I was going dancing.
Phoebe picked me up wearing a shirt with a mandarin collar that reminded me of Lynn. She was talking to me, telling me about something that had happened at the high school she worked at, but I wasn’t really listening. Thinking of Lynn had taken me back to Fairy Tails in my head. And of course, as far as my subconscious was concerned, the most interesting thing at Fairy Tails was Amadeus. With my case over, I would probably never see him again. And unless I specifically brought it up, I would probably never hear from Jakob how the encounter with Vianne went. Amadeus could be someplace nursing his wounds, or he could be dead, I’d likely never know.
The thought made me sad, and I immediately questioned myself for it. He was annoying. He tried to pick fights with me. Why in the hell did I care if I never saw him again? I should be glad.
“You okay?” Phoebe asked.
“What? Huh? Sorry Pheebs, I wasn’t listening. It was something about the senior class, right?” I was dressed for dancing in a short dress that flared around my thighs and bared my shoulders. Its cocoa brown color matched my hair and hiding under my coat was practically every piece of shiny silver jewelry I owned. The heavy pendant Anna had formed for me hung low between my breasts, sure to catch everyone’s eye. I was ready to dance, but my head wasn’t there yet.
There was a breeze, a warm summertime with a glass of lemonade breeze that brought a smile to my face. It made me warm all over, pleasantly calm. “Are you reading me?” I asked.
“A little, who’s the guy?”
“Hmmm, someone who might be dead,” I replied. The breeze was still there. “But I doubt it. He’s too annoying to go away so easily. He’s a professional. He was part of the case that ended today.”
“A professional? He looks about nineteen.” Phoebe was a strong enough spirit witch that she could take pictures from my head. Apparently the ones of Amadeus didn’t involve anything that screamed vampire.
“He’s a hundred and something. I bet he’s got a fascinating background actually, what with his French last name and his age, one of those great Louisiana stories that end up in romance novels. Too bad he’s an ass.”
She laughed. “Yeah, in the novels they’re always wonderful guys underneath enough of a bad boy exterior to be fun. So what is he, incubus?”
“Vampire.”
“I didn’t realize we had vampire professionals in town.”
“Only him. And if he’s any indication of what the rest of them are like, he’s more than enough,” I said. We’d pulled up next to the wooden two story building that was every witch’s favorite bar. Phoebe got out of the car and pulled her coat around her as the wind came off the river. We hustled inside. I couldn’t wait to start dancing.
Before we could dance, everyone had to arrive and have a drink or two. Phoebe and I warmed up with hot toddies while the rest of the crew filed into the club. Anna and Rhythm blew into the bar with a warm wind that meant Isaura wasn
’t far behind them. Rhythm was wearing a flimsy toga looking dress with flat sandals that wound up her legs with bright silver straps.
“Don’t muses get cold?” I asked.
“Not really.” She shrugged. “And when we dance, we’ll get warm.”
“Dancing, right. Can we get to that the dancing?” I asked. The group was assembled, and the bar was starting to fill. I wanted to catch some time on the floor before it got too crowded.
“I’d love to, but there’s the little matter of my fundraiser beating the pants off everyone,” Anna declared with a smile. She’d changed from her conservative family spokesperson outfit to the tightest jeans known to man and perhaps the world’s smallest sweater. An open work design in a light beige fabric with split sleeves at the shoulders and a bare midriff, it exposed her model’s figure making the best of her flat stomach and long body. She looked hot, but if Anna didn’t get dancing, she was likely to freeze to death.
“You think so?” Isa asked with a gleam in her eyes. “Come on Pheebs, let’s go get the drinks.”
They walked off together, the air witch’s bouncing curls swirling around her as a purely magical wind lifted the edges of her long skirt. Isaura alone had dressed for the weather in a long skirt, boots, and a cuddly looking sweater. She wasn’t going to be able to dance in that for long, I thought. Then I realized she probably didn’t want to dance too long. I suspected Ben had already beaten any potential dance partners out of her mind. Isaura was here for our company, not whatever stray guy happened to invite her out on the dance floor.
The two of them returned to the table with a tray of drinks and single glass of Champagne.
“Who gets the Champagne?” I asked.
“It’s for the one who raised the most,” Phoebe explained, “but first…” Phoebe raised her glass up high. “To Mallory’s birthday—” She was interrupted by a round of gasps. She silenced them with a nod. “Which she kept from us. Mal, we love you, and next year, we’re going to send a stripper to your office to get you back for not telling us. Happy Birthday.”
We all drank, and I took some good natured ribbing between the birthday wishes.
Fire in Her Blood Page 30