Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1)

by Melissa F. Olson

  He leaned forward to brush a gentle kiss across my lips. “Yeah. We are,” he said.

  My heart shattered. I had thought I was already crying, but for a moment there, I lost control completely. Sobbing, snotty nose, can’t catch your breath, the whole ugly-cry package. Eli pulled me to my feet and put his arms around me, and I clung to him in that horrible, awkward-desperate way you hug someone for the last time. I felt his tears drop into my hair.

  I don’t know how long that moment went on. I lost all grip on time.

  In the back of my mind, though, as grief-stricken as I felt . . . I knew it was the right thing for both of us. People who get into relationships aren’t supposed to stop growing; they’re supposed to grow together. Eli and I hadn’t done that. Maybe it was because he was older than me, or maybe it was just our natures, but I had grown in one direction, and he in another. A divide had spread between the two of us, and I could no more bridge it than I could rewire my DNA. And at the end of the day, I didn’t want to change who I was. I kind of liked her.

  When I finally did catch my breath, we managed to stand there and work out a couple of details. I would keep the guest cottage, because I needed it for Shadow. Eli would stay with friends tonight, and call me in a day or two about getting the rest of his stuff.

  There was more we would need to discuss, of course, because you can’t disassemble three years of living together in five minutes. But I don’t think either of us could stand to rummage any deeper into such a new wound.

  He kissed me one last time, a quick brush across my lips, and then Eli turned and left.

  By the time Jesse came outside to check on me, the tears had slowed to a trickle. I didn’t look at him, just sat with my shoulders hunched and my hands clenched into balls so they wouldn’t tremble. “Scarlett?” Jesse said cautiously. “Are you okay?”

  “We broke up,” I whispered, still staring ahead into the dim light from the street, where I’d last seen Eli’s taillights. “It’s over.” I buried my face in my hands. “I’m so tired.”

  Without a word, Jesse leaned over and took my hands, pulling me to my feet. He hugged me, and kept his arm around me as he walked me back inside. There wasn’t anything else to say.

  Chapter 47

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Dashiell said, in that mysterious vampire way where he sounds grandiose without sounding like he’s trying to be grandiose, “we will begin tonight’s proceedings with the trial you have all been talking about for the last two days.” A small, indulgent smile, and Dashiell nodded to Lawrence before resuming his seat between Kirsten and Will. That’s one thing you had to say for Dashiell: he didn’t draw things out, even with a captive audience.

  The vampire toady didn’t even need to consult his iPad. “Molly of Wales,” he announced in a booming voice. A ripple of whispers rolled through the crowd, “stands accused of risking exposure to the humans,” Lawrence finished. From behind Kirsten and Will, Molly stepped out of the wings, looking nervous.

  We’d planned this blocking carefully. Molly wasn’t brought forth in chains, or held at gunpoint. In fact, the city’s most powerful people had allowed her come in at their backs. It was a sign of support.

  The whispers in the crowd turned into full-on agitation. Dashiell held up a single hand, and the audience went silent. “This trial will proceed as any other,” he said in a firm voice. “Please remain silent.”

  Molly crossed the stage and sat down next to me at the table. I wanted to squeeze her hand, or at least give her a reassuring smile, but we’d talked beforehand about why that was not a great idea. Even though I wasn’t voting, I didn’t want to appear to be playing favorites.

  “Molly,” Dashiell continued, “you have been accused of murdering eight of the human women you were living with, and turning four others without consent from myself, thus risking our exposure to the normal world. What do you say to these charges?”

  Molly leaned forward, looking very young and very human. And very nervous. “It’s true that I was living with human girls,” she said, the mic picking up the quaver in her voice. “But I loved them. We were going to university together, and they were my friends.”

  “Did you kill them?” Dashiell asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and another roll of surprise rolled through the audience. “But I was forced.”

  Gasps. Actual shouts of disbelief. Growling from the werewolves. And then things pretty much just got more dramatic from there.

  With prompts from Dashiell, Molly walked the audience through the whole story. When she was done, she stayed right where she was as Kirsten testified about the existence of boundary witches, and Jesse, who was wearing a special witch bag that protected him from Kirsten’s wards again, came onstage. Staying well away from me, he explained his involvement and actions in a classic cop tone, like he was filing a verbal report. The audience ate up every word at first, but as the drama faded and explanations wore on, they began to gradually get just a little bit bored. This, too, was according to plan. Drown them in information, in proof, until the truth was so obvious that no one would bother denying it.

  Just when we started losing the audience’s attention, we did the big reveal: Katia came onstage in a wheelchair, with Allison “Lex” Luther pushing her. Maven, who was Lex’s cardinal vampire the way Dashiell was ours, had signed off on this whole spectacle as long as Lex didn’t identify who or what she was to the LA Old World.

  Katia confessed to everything, including pressing Molly the moment she woke up that night. She confirmed Oskar’s plans, his reasons for wanting to frame Molly. When she got to the part about helping him steal the bodies of the four new vampires, she teared up a little, but pushed through.

  During our pre-Trials meeting, Jesse, Kirsten, Will, Dashiell and I had voted on whether we should let her go to Colorado with Lex. Jesse, Kirsten, and I voted in Katia’s favor, and although they’d voted against, Will and Dashiell agreed to honor our majority. Now I saw Lex give Katia’s shoulder a quick squeeze, worry etched on her face. I kind of thought the two of them were going to be okay.

  After Katia left the stage, I could tell that the mood in the room had shifted. The crowd was getting restless. And, wonder of wonders, they were ready to move on. To them, this whole “Molly Goes Dark Side” saga had had a disappointingly anticlimactic ending, and now everyone was over it and looking ahead to the parties.

  It was both aggravating and magnificent.

  Manuela wasn’t in the front row tonight. That afternoon Jesse and I had gone to her condo to personally explain that her stepdaughter was a new vampire. It was a very difficult conversation, which still hurt to think about. But she hadn’t come to glare at me tonight, and I was grateful.

  When all the testimonies were finished, Dashiell, Will, and Kirsten made a show of whispering amongst themselves for a moment, pretending they hadn’t already decided on Molly’s sentence. When they straightened up, the crowd’s wandering attention returned to Dashiell, who said in his unintentionally grandiose way, “We agree that it was a mistake for you to move in with human women, and you are therefore partly to blame for what happened to them. However,” he added, “we absolve you of responsibility for the murders themselves and the resulting risk of national exposure. Because of the terrible physical abuse you suffered, and because you and your . . . helpers”—in the wings behind him, Jesse winked at us—“were able to neutralize the negative publicity and keep our existence concealed, we’re willing to sentence you to time served. Next case, please.”

  Now, I squeezed her hand.

  Epilogue

  “Where do you want these?” Jesse asked, bending backward a little so he could see over the top box on his stack.

  “Uh . . . living room for now,” I said, which was how I had answered the last three times, too. Molly’s new bedroom—the cell formerly known as Shadow’s—was really too small to support even her few belongings, when you factored in a bed. On the plus side, it was completely sunlight proof, and rent was ch
eap. Also, her last residence had burned to the ground. It really cuts back on possessions.

  “Did you switch out the doorknob yet?” I asked him, putting familiar dishes on the shelf above the sink. This was the stuff from Molly’s old house in Hollywood. Handling it again was bittersweet.

  “Yeeeees,” he drawled. “Molly can now lock us out, and we cannot lock her in. Did you order the pizza yet?”

  “Nooo,” I said back, imitating his tone. “I figured the divorced guy coming out of the months-long depression would know the best place for pizza.”

  Jesse considered that for a second, and then he gave me a regal bow. “Touché.”

  “Thank you so much for helping with these, Jesse,” Molly said warmly, from behind a stack of boxes that was twice as tall as his. Vampire strength is fun. She set them down well out of my radius and straightened up, tossing her new, short blonde curls out of her face. I hadn’t asked about the hair. I figured she’d explain it if she wanted to. “I didn’t realize there was so much stuff still in storage.”

  “Well, we can use the furniture,” I said, pausing in my unpacking. Eli had taken the pieces that belonged to him: the kitchen table and chairs, the work desk, a loveseat. Even the soft blankets we had used when we watched movies together.

  “You gonna cry again?” Jesse asked, but his voice was gentle. “I can get some tissues if you’re gonna cry again.”

  I looked at the plate in my hand. “Don’t throw it at him,” Molly advised. “I really like that set.”

  I put the plate down carefully, picked up an oven mitt, and chucked it at Jesse’s head. He ducked it easily. “Go outside and throw the ball for Shadow, please,” I instructed. “And let me know if Lex calls you back.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Jesse had been checking in with the Colorado boundary witch every few days, since she and Katia returned from freeing Oskar’s current stable of prostitutes in Reno. Dashiell had been having a lot of conversations with Lex’s boss, Maven, both about the liberated vampires and about Katia’s rehabilitation and future. I got the occasional “official” update, but Jesse and I liked to keep on top of how Katia was actually doing, and talking to Lex was the best route.

  Jesse had also been checking cell phone records for Frederic and the others, but we would probably never know who had lined up to help Oskar take down our Old World structure. Both Dashiell and Will had their suspects, and they would take care of them in their own ways. I probably should have been bothered by it, but honestly, I wasn’t too concerned. Or rather, I recognized that the problem wasn’t mine to fix. Dashiell and Will would need to get their houses in order, and they would let me know if there was any way I could help. That was enough.

  After the front door slammed behind Jesse, Molly reached over to touch my shoulder. “Have you heard from him at all?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Will said that after the full moon last week, he’s taking a couple weeks off work. Going camping, or something. We’re both trying to give each other . . . space.”

  “And Jesse?” Molly said. “Are you guys . . .” She trailed off. I stared at her, not getting it. “Banging?” she added brightly.

  I rolled my eyes. “I can’t tell you how much we are not,” I told her. “He’s raw from his divorce; I just broke up with Eli. You’re gonna have to ship someone else, Molls.” She pouted. “On the bright side,” I added, “we’ve kind of found a nice friend rhythm. It’s working for us.”

  And it was. Jesse and I had never really done the friendship thing properly. By the time we’d learned to trust each other, back at the beginning of our relationship, he’d had a crush on me. And, okay, I was harboring a little something for him too. And then it just got more complicated from there. But now, years later, we’d finally figured out how to hang out together. It was nice, having someone in my life I knew I could count on, no romantic strings attached.

  Molly came up behind me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders in a hug. “That’s good.”

  Well. Someone else.

  After the Trials were over, I had invited her over to ask if she wanted to move in with me and Shadow in the little cottage. I could put a crate in my bedroom for Shadow—I’d need to have it specially built, but it was possible—and the second “bedroom” could be Molly’s. It was tiny, but she didn’t need to put much in there.

  I didn’t want to rekindle our friendship on a lie, though, so before asking, I had sat her down and told her the truth: I’d known that Lee Harrison was coming into the room, and I’d egged on Oskar to admit how little he cared about the MC so Lee would kill him.

  She’d gone silent, staring at me so long that one of my hands automatically twitched toward the knife in my boot. Was she going to come after me? God, I hoped not.

  Finally, Molly said in a low, resigned voice, “It’s okay, Scarlett. You didn’t kill him; you just gave him rope to hang himself. I can’t blame you for that.”

  “Really?” I said, hope lifting my chest.

  She nodded. “Now that I have some distance from the situation, I can see what he’d become.” She closed her eyes, and I knew memories were flitting around in her head. Old, bittersweet memories. “He wasn’t always like that, you know,” she said softly. “Back then it was common to view women as possessions, and Oskar wasn’t any worse than any other young man his age. He was always arrogant, but he was also kind, once.” Her head dropped into her hands, and although I generally suck at feelings, I understood she wanted to talk for a moment about Oskar when he was still good.

  “How did you meet?” I asked, the first question that popped in my head.

  Her face lifted, and she brushed away tears. She gave me a shaky smile. “I lived out on a farm, but my father and I would go into town each spring to sell our calves. I bumped into Oskar there. He was a shopkeeper’s son, but he was very taken with me.”

  “Did you love him?” I regretted the question the instant it was out, but she didn’t seem offended. She just considered it for a long moment.

  “I thought I did,” she began slowly. “Now I suspect that I was just very young. I ignored his flaws, because he paid attention to me and he was courteous, and I wanted to get off the farm.” She shrugged, smiling again. “Oh, I was so happy when he began inviting me into town, escorting me to dances, to the theater. I felt like a princess.” The smile dropped off her face. “That was most likely how Alonzo first saw me. Anyway.” She straightened up, smoothed down her black pleated skirt.

  “I’m so sorry, Molls.”

  She shook her head. “I still can’t believe how much Alonzo twisted him,” she whispered. “Maybe if I’d . . .” She gestured helplessly. “I don’t know. Said something differently.”

  “He wasn’t going to change. He didn’t even want to.”

  In that moment, I knew she was thinking of those girls: the ones she’d killed, the other ones she’d almost sentenced to a terrible fate. I’d hugged her, and then asked her to move in.

  Now, I finished the box of dishes and opened up one that said Blu-rays, rolling my eyes at all the Julia Roberts. Before I could lift out any movies, however, Jesse came back inside, holding up his phone. “That was her,” he said, eyes bright with excitement. And maybe a bit of anxiety.

  “Lex?”

  He shook his head. “Kirsten. It’s time.”

  Oh. Right. I just nodded, butterflies spontaneously moving into my stomach. “You sure you don’t want me to come?” Molly said, worry in her voice.

  “No. The more people there, the more hyped up everyone’s gonna be,” I assured her. “Besides, Dashiell flew in Stephanie Noring, that doctor from Minnesota. We got this. Everything’s going to be okay for Team Null and Void.”

  Jesse gave me a good-natured smack on the arm. The good arm, not the one with the bandage.

  Kirsten hadn’t wanted me to try changing Hayne back to human right away. She had insisted that he take a couple of weeks to actually try being a vampire, which came with its own undeniable perks:
no more aging, no more pain from old injuries, no more fear that he would be easily overpowered by one of Dashiell’s enemies.

  Hayne had taken the two weeks, complaining for every minute of it, and at the end of them, he’d got down on one knee and re-proposed to Kirsten, begging her to let him come back to both her and humanity. Kirsten had laughed and cried a little and called me to set up a time.

  I’d gotten the whole story from Abby—she’d given me official permission to call her that—who seemed to have developed a reluctant . . . well, respect is too strong of a word for how she felt about me. Let’s say I was growing on her. The handful of conversations we’d had since the night Hayne died had been a magnitude friendlier than all the conversations we’d had before it.

  Damn if I wasn’t actually acquiring something close to friends.

  I went through the open front door. “Shadow!” I yelled. “Time to go!”

  The bargest woofed and trotted over from the far edge of the property, where she’d probably found a rabbit to chase. She beat Jesse and me to the van, wagging her tail impatiently until I opened the back for her to jump in. I climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “You ready for this?” Jesse asked, buckling his seat belt. “Seriously. The last two times . . . didn’t go so well.”

  I gave him an exaggerated wink, faking a confidence I didn’t necessarily feel. The truth was, I was terrified. There was a lot riding on tonight. If I could “cure” Hayne, and the consequences weren’t too terrible, I was planning to offer the same to the four women Molly and I had rescued. If I could cure them too, I could undo at least a little of the pain Oskar had caused. Louisa and the others could be returned to their families. “That was Old Scarlett,” I informed him. “Things are different now.”

  Jesse turned the radio to his favorite preset and leaned back in the passenger seat. “Can’t argue with that.”