Dangerous Hexes

by A. L. Tyler

  “Nope.”

  “You said—”

  “I hear a lot of stories. I was a kid during those glory days.”

  I nodded. Grift the ghost was still eluding me.

  “You can’t ask Nick?” Jason took another gulp of his beer.

  I glared up at him. “Nick can’t know I was here.”

  He laughed. “You think you’re scarier than Nick?”

  I raised one hand. Flames lit in my palm, rising a little higher than I intended as the note went sharp on my ears. “Yes.”

  Jason’s expression sobered. “Fine. Look, put that away. I hear a lot of stories about Grift and Warren from back in the day. Warren always did his own thing, but Grift... He was something else. Too many people he caught walked free.” His expression faltered and he looked away. “Dirty cop.”

  “Bribes?” I prompted.

  “That was the rumor. Among other things.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Jason faced me frankly. “People who got in the way of his business had a way of disappearing. Going down for crimes that didn’t make sense.”

  A wave of vertigo overtook me. Was that the connection? Had Samson Grift framed my father? “He framed people?”

  “A lot of people. If you believe the stories.”

  “You believe the stories?”

  “You have someone specific in mind?” Jason pursed his lips, unblinking and fixated on the neutral expression that masked the torment I felt in my heart. When I didn’t answer, he raised his eyebrows and looked down at the bar for a moment. “I’m not a fan of having things in common with the Bleak. That includes calling people guilty on nothing more than suspicion. I don’t want you assuming his guilt based on the stories of some jackass at a bar. But it wouldn’t pain me to know he’d left this Earth. Yes, I believe the stories.”

  I tried to calm my breathing. Jason cracked open a fresh beer and started drinking. “Why?”

  “Because people don’t like to talk about him.” The bottle clinked against the bar as he set it down. “Same way you know when someone’s been kicking a dog, even if you’ve never seen it. People were terrified of him. Especially the ones who had kids back then. They don’t talk about Grift, and they change the subject when his name comes up.” Jason’s lip curled, and his slightly inhuman snarl made me sit back. “Makes me think he targeted people with vulnerabilities.”

  “Anyone who has first-hand knowledge?”

  Jason nodded. He pulled a pen from beneath the bar, grabbed a napkin and started scribbling. “There was a guy who used to come around here, Louis Irvine. Grift caught him red-handed assisting some faction from the Rite. He was let off. Everyone here says the evidence was damning, and you know the Bleak. If it wasn’t a bribe, then what?”

  I nodded. I tried to reel the flames back in and mostly managed. The beer bottled hissed steam when I grabbed it again, but it managed to finish the job of cooling my palm. I tucked the napkin into my bag with my other hand and turned to go. “Thanks.”

  “Hey.”

  I stopped, looking back at Jason. To my surprise, a genuine smile graced his lips.

  “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Special care was paid to my surroundings on my way out of the bar, though.

  Once in my car, exhaustion finally started to set in. I got caffeine via drive-thru and drove home with the windows open and the radio blaring. The air was barely cold enough, but the chill on my cheeks and my whipping hair were enough to keep me awake. I hung my arm lazily out the window, letting the heat and cold of the magic drift away as I drove.

  When I got home, though, I found Nick parked in front of my house. My brain was too addled from sleep deprivation to care.

  I slammed my car door shut as he approached. “Can I help you?”

  “You’ve been out all night,” he said.

  I scoffed. “Not all night. How long have you been here? Where’s Millie?”

  “Millie’s a difficult person to be around for too long,” he said dismissively. “She’s... aggressive. She’s on lockdown back at my apartment. I just wanted to check in on you after your text. I was about to call out a search party.” He must have noted the bags under my eyes. “You’re not me. You can’t stay up all night, every night.”

  “I’m not you,” I conceded, my words hardly intelligible in my ears. “I’m scarier than you. Apparently.”

  He smirked. I wasn’t entirely sure he believed me. “Go to bed, Jette.”

  He didn’t have to ask me twice. I stumbled in, mumbling some lie about taking a drive to clear my head because of the memories of Alex that Millie had stirred up. I immediately regretted the lie, because the words brought those memories. This time, I could feel the burn all the way up my arm, and gods did it hurt.

  I groaned and grabbed the door frame as I dropped my keys over the threshold.

  “Jette?”

  He swept me off my feet, hauling me to the sink to douse my arm.

  “You should call Angel,” he said, forcing my arm under the streaming water. “Maybe you should leave this case to me.”

  I didn’t respond. Nick didn’t push it.

  When the burn subsided, I walked to the couch and collapsed on top of it, pulling a blanket over me.

  Nick walked slowly toward the front door. He hesitated before stopping in front of the couch. “What happened between you and Alex Mordley?”

  “We’ve talked about this before,” I said. “We were friends. That’s all.”

  Again, his eyes slid to the door. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want him to leave, though. I knew what he wanted to ask. He wasn’t a coward, but he was afraid of my answer.

  He just stood there, frozen in conflict, Farrow’s scuffed floorboards under his feet and the dim lights from the kitchen and street lamps outside the windows lighting his face.

  “He never hurt me,” I said deliberately.

  “Were you in love with him?”

  I gazed up at Nick in disbelief.

  “The way you look at Millie,” he said. “She sets you off on a very deep level for someone you’ve never met before.”

  I shifted under my blanket. My head was pounding, I was too tired, and I was ultimately grateful that I had all day to sleep.

  Nick was still standing there, waiting for an answer.

  “I was never in love with him. Maybe I could have been, if we’d both been on the same side of the law.” Who was I kidding? We were just criminals of a different breed. “I never thought of him that way. I did lead him on, but that was before I knew about him. We spent a lot of time alone together. One time he kissed me. Usually I found excuses to make him stop, but he’d been drinking, and... I didn’t want to blow my cover. Things almost went too far.”

  Nick’s expression never faltered. I almost wished it had.

  “The next day, we went out for one of his late-night breakfasts. Those nights...” I closed my eyes and shook my head. I wiped a hand over my face, realizing I would probably sleep in the bathtub, just to be sure. “Alex usually stopped Marcus when he got going, but not that night. He beat people within an inch of their lives for fun, and Alex didn’t stop him. He enjoyed it. They erased everyone’s memories afterward. Alex tried to kiss me later, in the car, and...”

  My breath caught in my throat. My palms ached, but the memories managed to still even the magic in my core. The feel of him pushing me down in the back seat of the car. The smell of the compulsively clean upholstery as I tried to push him back without fracturing the tenuous relationship I’d fostered for months. And beneath it all, the fear that coursed in my veins that night—so thick that I could taste it—as I questioned what he was going to do to me.

  Nick’s voice was quiet. “Jette.”

  I looked straight into his eyes. “He apologized. He knew it upset me. He didn’t let Marcus do it again while I was around, but I knew it still went on. He said he wouldn’t touch me again until he’d convinced me he had
changed. He didn’t touch me again. Then I betrayed him.”

  And the next week, the news story of the mysterious unwitnessed beating death of a waitress at an overnight diner made national headlines. And another the next week. And the next.

  “He is dangerous, Nick,” I said. “And incredibly charming, and smart, and completely, psychotically ruthless. He hadn’t discovered his full potential when I was with him. I still don’t think he’s discovered his depth. And I hurt him. He will do things to get to me—”

  “No,” Nick said. “He won’t.”

  “He will,” I said with finality. “I know him. I’ve seen him for what he really is, and what you said is exactly right. Word will get out. He will come for me. Part of me feels like I deserve it because I created him. And it really does scare the hell out of me.”

  “You didn’t create him.” Nick sat down on the floor at the foot of the couch. “You saw him for what he was, and you did and said what you had to do to survive. Do not blame yourself for his actions. If you had stayed, you might have become one of his victims. Your survival is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I nodded. I knew it was true. But I didn’t feel it was true.

  “That life is behind you now. You’re not a criminal anymore. You’re not that person. You have to let go of that guilt.”

  Confident words from the man who didn’t know what I’d actually been out doing that night. Even as I sat there, letting him harp on my new life in the straight and narrow, my mind was still on Grift.

  Finding him. Facing him. And gods... If he had framed my father...

  If I ever face him...

  I knew the feeling. The pull of the ancient magic, merging with my desires in my veins, seeking that perfect harmony to make my will be done. It was the feeling of taking out Kane for everything that he had done, and with the life I had lived, Grift had done so much more.

  I was still a liar and a thief in my heart. I was going to become a murderer.

  Looking at Nick, though, I had trouble believing he ever could have worked with someone like Grift. Nick was smart. He had to have known what was going on, and that made him at least as dirty as Grift.

  I wanted that fact to absolve me of sneaking around behind his back. It didn’t.

  You have to let go of that guilt. Was he talking about me, or himself?

  Maybe Millie was right. I had a type.

  Chapter 10

  I WOKE UP ON THE COUCH the next morning. There was a fire extinguisher on the floor next to me with a note.

  I had to check in on Millie.

  Call me when you’re up.

  Breakfast on the table.

  I wiped drool off my cheek and got up, wrapping the blanket around me. My mess from the night before—the half-empty donut box and Farrow’s half-sorted piles of memories—were still scattered around. I didn’t care that Nick had seen them. He knew me, and he knew I got sloppy under stress.

  He left a bowl of cereal on the table. I was momentarily happy that he’d forgone the eggs and toast and bacon, and then my pulse started to race again.

  Everything that I’d said the night before came back to me. I got a glass of tap water and sat down, staring at the cereal.

  He had worked closely with Grift, and as vampire years went, not that long ago. We were friends. I was going behind his back. He was trying to save my life. I wasn’t letting him.

  And now, he was handling me with kid gloves, because he was afraid I would have an anxiety attack over seeing eggs and toast on my kitchen table. He might have been right.

  And I’d let him get close enough to figure that out about me.

  I sipped the water, trying to clear my head. I didn’t know how I’d gotten here, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was where I went next.

  Find Grift. Stay on the Bleak’s good side. Don’t get murdered by Alex Mordley.

  Find. Grift. And whatever happened there...

  I’d figure out the rest later.

  So I went upstairs, took a bath, dressed, and took a long look at myself in the mirror. Then I got back in the bath and let the water boil and freeze until I was sure my mana burn was purged. Dressed once more, I went down the stairs, hating the way my steps echoed in the empty house.

  I ate the cereal, and then I called Nick.

  “Warren.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Is Angel around?”

  “You’re ready to talk to Angel. That’s good news.”

  “I’m not—” I sighed. “You just never answer your phone that way.”

  “I always answer the phone that way. You’re just finally getting to see me in my groove.”

  “Your groove?” Sometimes the words coming out of his mouth dated him more than I would have liked.

  “I’m ready to roll when you are. Ready for the address?”

  Nick had pulled George’s last known address from the bank records and cross referenced a few recorded by the Bleak, but George had been lying low since his estrangement from his parents. After making a few phone calls, Nick found George living in a high-end apartment four hours away.

  According to his landlord, he was on vacation. I only hoped he hadn’t been tipped off by a call from the bank about Millie’s theft of her mother’s necklace. A man of those means could disappear for a decade or longer waiting for something as trivial as theft to blow over.

  I popped open an energy drink and shoved three more in my bag before getting in my car. It was going to be a long day.

  GEORGE ROOST’S APARTMENT was in a small town filled with rich eccentrics and retirees. It was a twenty-minute drive through privately owned open space to even get to a gas station or grocery store chain. Each house was located on acreage, except for the quaint apartments on Main Street, which resembled tightly crowded English flats.

  I leaned against my car, staring up at the brick facade of the building and the few artisan businesses on Main. When Nick’s Chevelle parked and he got out, I tried not to stare.

  Millie got out of the passenger seat wearing one of Nick’s button-down shirts. She’d rolled up the sleeves and belted it at the waist to give the illusion that she was wearing a posh dress, but really, she just wasn’t wearing any pants.

  And with her signature long, dark gloves, her legs looked especially nude.

  Nick cleared his throat as he sidled up to me. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “What happened to what she was wearing yesterday?”

  “She spilled wine on it.”

  I cocked my head. “You gave her wine?”

  He looked away. “When I left to check on you, she snooped. She found a bottle I was saving, which is also how she found the clothes. I came home and found her lying on my bed—”

  “Why do you have wine?” I asked. “You’re a vampire. It doesn’t appeal, and there is no cure. You’re never going to want wine.”

  “It’s for guests,” he said, still refusing to look at me.

  “Guests?”

  “I enjoy it... vicariously.”

  I was taken aback. If he meant what I thought he meant, I didn’t want to know. “We discussed this, and we have a rule. I don’t want to know where the blood in the fridge comes from.”

  “You asked. I was discreet.”

  “Again, so sorry about last night,” Millie snapped a pair of sunglasses open before sliding them on. “I thought it was my room.”

  “You’re in the guest room,” Nick growled.

  She smiled at him. “I got lost. Honest mistake. I suppose all of your guests sleep in the guest room, then? Did Jette sleep in that room?”

  I had slept in that room. It didn’t make me like Millie any more than I already did.

  The last time I’d seen Nick so livid, people had actually died. “I don’t like handing people over to the Bleak when they have unfinished business, but for you, I may make an exception.”

  “Oh.” She feigned a pout. “This is nothing that a quick shopping trip can’t fix.”

  “I don’t usually t
ake my prisoners shopping, either.”

  “But for me, you’ll make an exception.” Millie’s smile flared to life once more. She gestured at the apartment. “Shall we, then?”

  Nick hung back with me, letting Millie lead the way.

  “She’s hiding something,” he whispered.

  “Dressed in that? I doubt it.”

  Nick didn’t laugh. “She tried to make it look like she was casually snooping, but she moved things. Things behind locks. Things behind walls.”

  “What are you hiding in the walls?”

  Nick shrugged indifferently.

  I glanced at Millie and quickly away. She was half a flight of stairs ahead of us and bordering on indecency. “She reaches through walls. It’s kind of her thing.”

  Nick glanced at her in annoyance as she pulled at the threatening hem of her makeshift dress. “Not my walls. I have wards, and they don’t appear to work on her.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “She could have left. And she didn’t. At least, not to my knowledge. She wants to be here, and she wants us to be here, too. Watch her.”

  At one time, Nick had possessed a pair of handcuffs capable of removing a witch’s command of magic. I had convinced him to destroy them, and he’d told me I would regret it.

  I was regretting it.

  “Number three?” Millie glanced over her shoulder at Nick.

  He moved to stop her, but a moment too late. She reached through the door and opened it from the inside.

  “That’s not really how we do things.”

  Millie smiled at him. Something changed in Nick’s face. He pulled the door shut again.

  “Fry her if she tries anything. I’m going to speak to the landlord about the key.” Apparently the time for chivalry was done.

  Nick glared at Millie. He disappeared in the blink of an eye. Smirking, Millie turned back to me.

  “He likes to be in charge, doesn’t he?”

  “He is in charge,” I said flatly. “He’s a handler. I’m consulting. You’re a criminal, and he may have just decided he’s done doing you any favors, so—”

  She tilted her head. “Oh, Jette. We both know he’s not the kind of man who can say ‘no’ to women like us.”