Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1)

by Melissa F. Olson

  If I couldn’t free Molly legally, I was damned well going to have a plan B.

  Chapter 16

  It was ten thirty in the morning when we left the storage facility, which gave us just enough time to get to Dashiell’s Pasadena residence to question Molly at noon. Jesse started in that direction without speaking. I could practically hear his brain churning, though, and I knew he was doing his cop thing, analyzing the case for those little loose threads that could lead to a new angle of investigation. His ability to find those threads was exactly why I needed him, so I kept quiet and petted Shadow for a while, scratching the spot under her hairless ear that always gets itchy.

  “What about talking to the families of the murdered girls?” Jesse said finally. “Could they tell us anything?”

  I thought it over, and shook my head. “I don’t see how. That would blow our chance of keeping things quiet, for one thing. Besides, none of those girls knew what Molly really was.”

  “What about the family who are Friends of the Witches?”

  “Even them. I can call Kirsten to be sure, but my guess is they don’t know Molly’s a vampire. They probably don’t know about vampires, period.”

  He glanced over at me, surprised. “How is that possible? I thought the Friends of the Witches wear those special charms. What do they think they’re being protected from?”

  “Magic,” I said simply. “Bad magic. Families who are active Friends of the Witches know that magic is out there, some of it is dangerous, and the witch bags can help protect them. All of which is true.”

  “But it doesn’t really help us.” Jesse sighed. After a few moments of thought, he said, “I think we missed something.”

  “Where?”

  “Our theory is that the two suspects grabbed those four bodies after the fire started yesterday and took them somewhere to hide for a couple of days, before coming after you.”

  “Right . . .”

  “I see why they would want to stop you, especially before you could have a longer talk with Dashiell. But hiding those girls was a two-person job. So how did they know to find you outside my apartment?” he asked.

  “Oh.” It was a damned good question, and I felt like an idiot for having missed it. After a moment of thought, I said, “Two possibilities. One, the bad guys tracked my van, either with their own tracker or through the GPS system at Dashiell’s.” I paused for a second, then shook my head. “But Abigail Hayne is in charge of the GPS system. She would die before she betrayed Dashiell, and I mean that literally.”

  “Okay, what’s the other possibility?”

  “We’ve been assuming these guys are from outside LA, and I still think that’s true—Kirsten would know if we had a boundary witch in town. But they might be working with someone here. Someone who knew where to find Molly.”

  “Hmm. Any suspects?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in the seat. I could only think of one. “Frederic. When Molly and I got to the storage facility, he seemed a little jumpy. I thought it was just me being a null, but he acted a little bit . . . guilty.” I told him about Frederic disappearing and locking the door so I couldn’t come back in. “He can’t be the vampire bad guy, because he was at the storage facility well before Molly and I got there. But he could be working for them.” Another thought occurred to me. “With or without his knowledge, since the boundary witch can press vampires.”

  “But how would Frederic know where you were going next?” Jesse asked.

  I shrugged. “Every vampire in LA knows that you and I have worked together in the past. And it took me well over an hour to drive back into the city from the storage place. More than enough time for them to figure out where you live.”

  “We should talk to Frederic,” Jesse decided. “He’s the most likely candidate for vampire mole.” A bemused smile crept across his face. “I can’t believe I just said that out loud.”

  “Abigail will know his daytime location,” I said. “But you should probably be the one to ask her.”

  He cut his eyes over to me. “Let me guess: she’s the vice president of your fan club?”

  “Something like that.”

  Dashiell owned a Spanish Revival mansion in Old Pasadena, although since his vampire wife, Beatrice, was actually born in Spain, maybe it wasn’t a revival? Anyway, it was a stunning place, with long, regal columns, a huge open-air atrium in the center, and a library that came straight out of Beauty and the Beast, although Dashiell got really annoyed if you said that out loud. Trust me on this.

  Dashiell’s property was also well fenced, and private enough that Shadow can roam around the yard off-leash. She’s usually happy to do this while I meet with Dashiell, and I think it makes everyone in the house more comfortable too, even the humans. Or maybe especially the humans. A one hundred-eighty-pound dog might be pretty unremarkable to some people, but Shadow’s size is only the first intimidating thing about her.

  “Don’t forget to poop on the tiles,” I stage-whispered as she trotted off. I love Beatrice dearly, but anyone who imports tiles from Spain just for the driveway is kind of asking for it. Shadow’s furry ear flicked backward as if in acknowledgment.

  Jesse was watching her go, her giant paws soundless as she loped. “Do you ever just feel really, really grateful that she’s on our side?” he said quietly.

  “All the time.”

  Theo Hayne met us at the front door, one hand already extended for a quick greeting. Hayne was an enormous black man with scars on his wrists and probing eyes that were well-trained to spot threats. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him in anything but a black polo shirt and black pants. He always reminded me of the actor Idris Elba, or maybe Elba reminded me of Hayne.

  “We have forty-five minutes before the next shift will start to arrive,” he said, walking quickly into the mansion. Jesse and I hurried after him. “Dashiell said you need to be gone by then.”

  I nodded, and we followed him down a long hallway to the east wing of the mansion, until we reached a large but windowless chamber that didn’t seem to match the rest of the building. Most of the mansion was beautifully decorated to match Beatrice’s tastes, but this room was as modern and functional as the rest of place was classic and refined. It was packed—with great efficiency—nearly full with computers, monitors, and a bunch of sleek, new-looking equipment that I didn’t even recognize. Then again, I’d only been in this part of the building a few times, for meetings with Abigail.

  Speak of the devil. As soon as Theo Hayne ushered us through the doorway, Abigail looked up from her massive desk at the back of the room to scowl at me, as though we were tearing her away from crucial, life-threatening work to do our laundry. I should have let Jesse enter the room first, I thought. At least he was easy on the eyes.

  A muscular woman of about thirty-five, Abigail looked more like a professional softball player than a computer genius, at least from the waist up. Her thin legs leaned to one side of a wheelchair that was as sleek and modern as the rest of the room. Abigail could stand up and walk for short distances using elbow crutches, but at work she was most comfortable in the chair, and her domain was arranged for it. Hers was the only chair in this part of the room.

  Wheeling forward to meet us, Abigail grunted at me and eyed Jesse appraisingly. “Hi, Abigail. This is—” I began, trying to use my manners.

  “Abigail Hayne,” she said to Jesse, ignoring me. She thrust out her hand, which he stepped forward and shook.

  “Jesse Cruz. Good to meet you.” He glanced around the room. “Never been in this part of the building.”

  “This is the nerve center for all our security,” she said brusquely. “We try to keep tourists out of here.” Her gaze strayed toward me a little pointedly. Hayne was still standing near the door behind us, but I was sure I could hear him smiling.

  “It’s very impressive,” Jesse said, his voice full of sincerity. “Really.” He gave her a thousand-watt smile.

  Abigail regarded him as if she were seeing him for the f
irst time. “Uh, thanks. We can run the whole city from this room. We even keep some vampire bunks in the back in case of emergency.” She jerked her head to the back corner, where there were several long platforms set into the wall. Turning the wheelchair, she pointed to two doors at the back corner opposite the bunks. “The door on the left goes to the west-wing basement, which is where Beatrice and Dashiell have their daytime quarters. You don’t want to go down there—lots of alarms. And things.” Booby traps? I wondered, picturing a Raiders of the Lost Ark–type situation. Now I kind of wanted to go look. “The door on the right leads to the east-wing basement; that’s where we have the cells and some storage.” She turned back toward the wall monitors near us and pointed to the four on the bottom left. Three showed small, empty rooms with only a bed and a sink. The fourth chamber was occupied by a tiny figure, curled into a ball on the bed. I recognized the hair, black streaked with blue. Molly. “She’s our only guest at the moment.”

  Seeing Molly in a prison situation left me momentarily speechless, but Jesse filled in the silence. “Is anyone coming down with us?” he asked Abigail a little awkwardly. I could practically see him trying not to look at the wheelchair.

  Her brother, who was leaning against the wall, quirked his lips in amusement. “No. We need to stay up here and keep watch, in case any of our afternoon staff shows up early. But we’ll both be monitoring from here.”

  “Is it recording?”

  Abigail shook her head and reached down near one leg to tap a large hard drive. “We render our footage once every month, which means the cameras are offline for about an hour, one area at a time. We were due for an update three days from now, but Dashiell has asked me to move it forward.” She sniffed, and I realized that to her, Dashiell’s precautions would look a lot like mistrust. Crap. Abigail already disliked me, both because I constantly messed with her security—they had to redo all the wards and witch bags every time I stopped by—and because she thought I was a huge liability, a security breach just waiting to happen. It also didn’t help that every time I was with Abigail I got nervous and made bad jokes, which she saw as a symptom of my general immaturity/uselessness. And now I was giving her more reasons to be pissy. “You better get down there,” she said in a frosty voice. “You’re already late.”

  Hayne stepped forward. “I have to search you,” he said, a little apologetic.

  He was extremely thorough, but professional about it. Jesse and I had been expecting this and left our weapons in the car, though I felt jittery without my Taser and my knives. The Polaroids and the address book were in the pockets of my excellent new jacket, but Hayne let me keep them after a quick flip-through. He was searching for weapons, or a way to help Molly escape. He wouldn’t have cared if I’d brought Molly porn, so long as there wasn’t a metal file hidden inside it.

  After checking Jesse, Hayne walked us through the door to the east-wing basement. He didn’t speak—he never was a big talker—but at one point he reached over and gave my arm a quick, subtle squeeze without looking at me. I nodded my thanks. Hayne belonged to Dashiell in a lot of ways, but he wasn’t unsympathetic to my situation.

  I had never actually been in the basement of Dashiell’s mansion, and I have to admit that a little part of me had been picturing some sort of medieval dungeon, with torches along the wall, lots of black iron, and, I don’t know, maybe hay on the floor? At any rate, I was disappointed. The basement under the east wing was sparse and efficient but clean, with white drywall and low-pile utility carpeting. It looked like the kind of space where suburban moms would send their kids to roughhouse, knowing there wasn’t much damage they could do.

  I expanded my radius as we walked, hoping to give Molly a few extra seconds to acclimate before we arrived. When we reached the cell door, I sidestepped Hayne, who was fumbling with a set of keys, so I could stand on my tiptoes and look inside the viewing window.

  Most vampires are really rattled when they get close to me—Molly herself once described the sensation as waking up from a coma only to realize you’d been beaten half to death. But Molly had lived with me, so she was more accustomed to daytime wake-ups than most vampires. When I peered through the glass she was already sitting up on the cot, her eyes trained on the door, waiting for us. She gave me a weak smile, which I understood perfectly. Oh, this again. I worked to swallow the lump in my throat. She looked so small.

  Jesse and I crowded inside the tiny room, and Hayne took a step backward. “I have to lock you in,” he said, not unkindly. “I’ll be back at ten to one, and you need to be ready to move.” Nodding briefly at Molly, he turned on his heel. I heard the sound of the heavy-duty bolt grinding over.

  Molly looked past me, forcing more effort into her smile. “Hey, Jesse. Long time no see. Thanks for coming.”

  He reached out a fist, gently bumping it against hers. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  Molly looked at me. “What did I miss?” She was trying to conceal it, but I saw the hope glimmering in her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re here to sneak me out.”

  “Sadly, no. We’ve got some questions. And some news.” I sat down next to her on the bed. Jesse leaned against a wall, trying not to loom over us. “First off, Dashiell believes you were being controlled by someone else,” I told her, and began summarizing the recent events. Molly was so relieved to hear about boundary magic—something she’d heard of, but knew little about, much like myself—that silent tears leaked down her cheeks when I explained it. “So I really didn’t blood-gorge?” she whispered, her fingers encircling my forearm tight enough to bruise. She was human at the moment, too. “Are you sure?”

  I was taken aback. With the exception of the previous night’s freak-out, I’d never seen Molly so intense about anything. “I’m positive you didn’t blood-gorge,” I told her. “And this boundary magic thing is the only alternative that makes sense, so . . . yeah. I’m sure.”

  She released my arm, tears of relief pooling into the collar of her dress. It was the same baggy piece I’d hastily grabbed from her apartment building, although someone had taken away the belt.

  Then she shook herself, and the solace faded out of her expression, replaced by sorrow. “They’re all still dead, though. No matter what happens going forward, they’re all dead because of me.”

  Jesse and I exchanged a look. “Not exactly,” I said. I told Molly about the news report we’d seen on the bodies, that only eight of the twelve had been found.

  She must have put it together a hell of a lot faster than any of the rest of us, because as soon as I explained the numbers, I could practically see her blood pressure drop. Her pale skin turned the color of snow, and her upper body began to rock a little, like a stiff breeze was about to tip her over. “Molly? Are you okay?”

  “Someone’s turning them,” she whispered. “Oh, God. It’s the midnight drain.”

  Chapter 17

  Before I could ask what that meant, one of her hands darted out to touch the wall for support, and the other clapped over her mouth. “I think . . . I’m gonna . . .”

  I stood there, stupidly staring, until Jesse grabbed my elbow and steered me to one side, making way for Molly to stumble past us to the small sink in the corner of the room. She leaned forward and began retching.

  Whoa. I’d seen vampires react badly in my presence—they aren’t used to even very mild shock symptoms, so getting terrible news next to a null was pretty much two kicks in the teeth. But in all the years I’d been around the Old World, I had never seen a vampire throw up, Molly included.

  She was having a hard time with it, too. There was no food in her stomach, of course, but her system was insisting it needed to purge, so dry heaves wracked her thin frame. I hurried over and scooped her black-and-blue hair out of her face, holding it back as she convulsed and spat bile into the sink. When her body finally relaxed, I turned the sturdy faucet handle so she could rinse her mouth and splash water on her face.

  “Are you okay?” came out of my mouth, even though I
knew the question was inane and useless. Of course she wasn’t okay. “I mean, um, can you breathe?”

  Molly nodded, and I let go of her hair so she could straighten up. Keeping a hand on the wall, she tucked herself into the corner next to the sink and slowly let herself slump down to the floor, staring at nothing.

  I just stood there for a moment, suddenly very aware of my physical presence. Should I stand there in the middle of the room? Sit on the bed? Go put my arm around Molly? I had no context for this situation, no frame of reference for how to handle it. After a moment, Jesse went to one side of the bed and perched right on the edge, so I did too, shooting him a grateful smile.

  “Which four?” Molly asked from the floor. Her voice had taken on a hollow, mechanical tone. It was just how she’d sounded back at the house, when she was still covered in tacky blood. “Wait, let me guess. Hailey, for sure. Taylor, Louisa, and . . . probably Harper.”

  I hadn’t remembered their names, but Jesse had read the online news report. He was nodding. “How did you know?” he asked.

  “Because those four are the prettiest.”

  Jesse and I exchanged another look, but he seemed as confused as I was. “What does that mean?” he asked. “And what’s the midnight drain?”

  Molly didn’t answer him. She just leaned sideways to rest her forehead against the wall. “Molls?” I asked. “We can’t help you if you don’t talk to us.”

  She turned, her eyes still wide with shock. “Help me?” she echoed.

  “Of course.” I put a little force into the words. “Listen to me. With a boundary witch running around the city, Dashiell doesn’t know who he can trust. Jesse and I need to find whoever’s really behind this, or . . .” I forced myself to push on. “Or Dashiell’s going to let you take the fall.”

  That didn’t have the effect I’d expected. She just shrugged, looking completely unsurprised. No, not just that, she looked . . . detached. Uncaring. “Dashiell has always cared more about appearances than justice,” she said in a wooden voice. “Twelve murdered or missing girls on the news, plus the Trials tonight? Of course he’s going to set me up.” Her eyes cut back over to me. “The irony is not lost on me, you know,” she added. I winced. Molly had evicted me because I kept getting involved in dangerous messes, and now here she was in a mess of her very own. “Not that it matters now.”