The metal emergency exit door slammed open. Kett, with a werewolf supported under each arm, wandered out into the alley. The vampire looked completely human for the first time since I’d met him. His skin was practically pink with health, and he was grinning like he’d just had the most amazing orgasm. I instantly wanted to slap the smile from his face — or maybe throw myself at his mercy, I wasn’t sure. The werewolves, Lara and the tall blond whose name I still didn’t know, looked drunk out of their minds, buzz and all.
“Kandy, get them to the car,” Desmond ordered.
She relieved Kett of the burden of the young wolves by coaxing them up the alley. They stayed on their feet, barely.
Kett ran his hand through his hair — another terribly human gesture — and turned a high-wattage smile on me. “I’m glad I didn’t kill you, witch.”
“Half-witch,” Desmond said — for some reason he was stuck on that point — as he pinned me back against the wall. His touch was light but it cleared my head. I’d been listing toward the vampire as if he was exuding some sort of magnetism.
“Oh? Yes, indeed,” Kett graciously acknowledged. “And thank you, alpha, for the gift of your werewolves. They are young and strong. I haven’t fed on such for many a year.”
“We needed you focused on the correct hunt,” Desmond answered, his sneer turning sour around the edges.
“Yes,” Kett agreed good-naturedly. This sexy, languid vibe of his was seriously freaking me out. I avoided eye contact, though he hadn’t taken his gaze off me.
“I’ve claimed a life debt from the half-witch,” Desmond announced.
Kett’s smile fell abruptly away, along with whatever magnetism he’d been exuding. His thoughts were once again hidden behind his icy mask in an immediate and complete transformation. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.
“Difficult magic,” the vampire said. “Not for the light of heart.” Me, he meant. Not for me.
“We sealed the bond without concern. The half-witch will deliver me to the killer. Once Hudson is avenged, the debt will lift.”
“If the terms were clear, and I hope for both of your sakes that they were, then all will be well.”
“And if the terms weren’t clear?” I squeaked just a little, but at least I’d found my voice. Nothing had been clear to me for days now.
Kett eyed me coolly. I was once again just an interesting bug to him. “I’m sure the Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack knows what he’s doing, one way or the other.”
The werecat and the vampire locked gazes, neither saying anything further. After a few moments of this stare-off, I wondered if I could just wander away unnoticed.
Then Kett nodded as if they’d been speaking the whole time. He looked away. “She isn’t under my protection.”
“Then you have no say,” Desmond said.
“No, but the wards on her home speak of great power.”
“I have no fear of witches,” Desmond snorted.
“You are young,” Kett answered without the heat of any accusation.
They both turned to look at me. Okay, I had wandered off a bit, just to see if they’d notice. They did, damn them.
“The witch knows the magic that raised the dead werewolf,” Kett said, far too casually for someone delivering a death sentence. Bastard.
I groaned and closed my eyes. Noticed, did he? Damn. I’d hoped to slip away and sort through everything in my head for a day or two. Okay, maybe a week — and my Gran’s return.
I opened my eyes and offered what was meant to be a charming smile. It felt shaky across my stiff face.
That freaky green glow rolled over Desmond’s eyes as he returned my smile with a nasty one. “Oh, there will be blood tonight,” he whispered.
As his magic brushed over me, I shivered as if it had been an actual breeze — though warm, not cold, so that my reaction had nothing to do with temperature.
There always was blood in the deep, dark depths of despair and tragedy, wasn’t there?
∞
It was Rusty’s practically dormant necromancy I’d sensed in the morgue, before and after the zombie rose. I was actually having a difficult time shaking off the residual of it, still coating my throat and nostrils even heavier than the actual smell of the morgue. I’d cleared that scent out after only a few fresh breaths of alley air.
Rusty’s magic didn’t feel evil. Just twisted in a way I’d never felt from him before, which gave me pause and stopped me from naming him.
I slumped against the cement wall I’d been skirting in my attempt to exit the alley unnoticed. Kett and Desmond closed the distance between us in a single step each. I turned my face away from Desmond’s glowing green eyes and Kett’s impassive expectancy.
Kandy had returned from the car, which I guessed was parked nearby. She stood off to one side, flexing and massaging her hand. I realized she was pushing claws through the tips of her human fingers, as if practicing the technique. I wondered if it hurt.
Desmond growled, low and quiet. It was a warning sort of noise like a cat might make. A very large cat.
“What if I’m wrong?” I asked no one in particular.
“You recognized the magic, though?” Kett reconfirmed.
“Yes, but it felt twisted, not evil. Not like the trinkets.”
“Have you ever been around the caster when he or she raised the dead?”
I locked eyes with Kett, looking for some understanding from him. I didn’t want to get a friend killed. “The caster shouldn’t have been capable of such a thing.”
“The same caster who’s been killing werewolves and siphoning off their power?” Desmond asked, rather rhetorically. Between blood lust and feeding, Kett and Desmond had obviously had time to chat.
“You’re saying he’s stolen the power?”
Desmond threw his hands up in the air, then spun to walk away down the alley. “You deal with her,” he growled at the vampire. “You just tried to rip out her throat, but she obviously trusts you more than me.”
“I don’t trust either of you!” I yelled after Desmond, but he didn’t turn back. Kandy followed him without looking at me. Once again leaving me alone with a vampire … now in a slowly darkening alley. The sun would be setting soon. The location was new, but the trepidation was old hat.
“We can’t seek justice without proof, Jade. Especially because this is an interspecies conflict, which is also one of the reasons Desmond asked me to continue to aid in the investigation after I’d ruled out vampire involvement.”
“That’s a good thing, is it?”
“Yes,” Kett answered with a sigh. He then tousled his blond hair until it was more bed head than slick skier. Magic glinted off his skin in tiny gleams of color now. I wondered if the werewolf blood strengthened him even further because of its magical potency. I wondered if repeated ingestions would actually alter his own magic.
“Why do you act more human after you’ve fed? I understand the change in skin and eye tone, but why the personality change?”
Kett stilled. “I was unaware I was less … human … between feedings. Thank you for sharing your observation, I’ll take it into consideration during our further interactions.”
I thought maybe I’d hurt his feelings. Feelings I’d been previously unaware he even had. “Maybe I’m just getting to know you better,” I said. It was a lame recovery effort, but I so hated having people pissed at me. I’m a fixer.
Kett narrowed his eyes at me, “The magic?”
Right, so he’d noticed the stalling. I closed my eyes again, but it didn’t make any difference. I could still feel him staring right through me, his gaze eating into my soul. I could also feel his magic — along with the magic of the shapeshifters waiting around the corner, all of it looming over me — just as well with my eyes closed as open. “You’ll wait for actual evidence before the murder and mayhem commences?”
“As I indicated earlier.”
I was obligate
d to answer. I could almost feel the life debt bond forcing the name from my mouth. “Rusty.”
“Rusty is a necromancer?”
Um, yeah? Hence the raising of a dead body? I quashed my need to deflect through sarcasm — especially since it was rare for a necromancer to be male — and answered the vampire politely, “His mother is.”
“And this Rusty has some sort of latent ability?”
“An affinity. But it’s spotty, unfocused, and really nowhere near powerful.”
“Powerful enough.” Kett touched the side of his smooth, unblemished neck. Reassuring himself he wasn’t still missing a chunk of flesh, I guessed. His regeneration was terrifying. I wondered if this would all be old news and everyday to me soon. I shuddered at the thought of such a life, jaded by fantastical magic. That drew Kett’s attention. “What are you waiting for, witch?”
“I was hoping for a nap.”
“The shifters will drive.”
“Are you two telepathically linked or something?”
“Certainly not.” Kett seemed a little over-the-top enraged at this suggestion — in his completely offish, icy way. “I’m simply not stupid. They always travel in multiple vehicles. They are pack.” Pack, I gathered from his tone, was a loathsome thing to be.
“For protection?”
Kett shrugged one shoulder and strode off down the alley. Then he almost immediately stepped back and forced me to follow alongside of him. Geez, he didn’t even give me a second to straighten off the wall. “For hunting, Jade. They are a pack even though he leads them. He might hunt alone if he wishes, but the rest hunt as a pack. Something you might have remembered in the dance club.”
“I’m not the bad guy here.”
Kett continued through the mouth of the alley and crossed toward the parking lot. Every time I matched his stride, he sped up a little more, as if it pleased him to drag me just a little bit. It appeared that dominance games weren’t just for werewolves. “You play with magic. That makes you irresponsible. You don’t know your own strength, and you leave magical objects hanging around for anyone to take or manipulate.”
“Trinkets,” I spat.
“Not just trinkets,” Kett snarled, as he whirled on me. We were standing in the middle of two rows of parked cars, with more vehicles stretching in every direction. It was a big hospital. To the passing humans, we probably looked like two very blond lovers having a spat after visiting a loved one.
“That knife severed the zombie’s magic like slicing through butter.”
“Everyone knows that if you destroy a zombie’s brain you kill it —”
“Myth,” the vampire spat. “You cut off the magic of the necromancer. And that necklace you wear like it’s just a pretty thing you’ve flung around your neck? It’s some sort of shielding device —”
“Maybe I’m naturally resistant —”
“No witch should be able to stand before me. And that bruise on your neck? Not only does it speak of a nasty injury, but it showed up within minutes. Bruises indicate the body’s attempt to —”
“That’s enough,” I screamed. Kett seemed shocked and surprised, as if we’d just been having a chat. “You have all the answers and I have none,” I said darkly. “I get it.”
“Perhaps you aren’t asking the correct questions.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to know.”
His face took on that impassive quality again. I glared at him, my fists clenched and chin jutting.
A too-large-for-the-lot SUV pulled up. Kandy was driving. An identical vehicle idled a few feet behind, Desmond at the wheel. He was smirking. Both SUVs were luxury vehicles of some expensive make. I couldn’t be bothered to care.
I yanked open the front passenger door of Kandy’s SUV, snarling at Kett as I climbed in. “Get your own ride.”
Kandy pulled forward toward the exit as I violently snapped on my seat belt. Kett stared after us. I could see him in my sideview mirror.
“I’ve never seen a vampire speechless before,” Kandy said with an appreciative chuckle.
“You’re not in my friendly book either. Where was the car this morning when you made me walk in the rain?”
“Not everything is about you.”
“But that was calculated. To wear me down? To confuse me? Make me uncomfortable? Upset me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the West End. Over Burrard Bridge, loop right. He lives just off Denman.”
Kandy’s eyes flashed green and she grinned rather maniacally, as if she was already anticipating the hunt, as Kett had called it.
I looked away and hoped I was doing the right thing. Everything was all twisted in my head. I had a feeling — like the earlier walk in the rain — that all this was calculated to put me off, keeping me moving but confused. To what ultimate end, I had no idea. Maybe they did it on purpose, the vampire and the shifters. Maybe I was part of the hunt as well.
I closed my eyes and tried to nap. Tried to at least clear my head before I accused a friend of murder.
I wondered if I should text Sienna. I wondered if Kandy would stop me if I tried.
I stopped wondering and started focusing on the cool of the window glass as I pressed my temple against it. That soothed me, though only a little.
CHAPTER TEN
Rusty lived in a fifteen-or-so storey building on the corner of Bidwell and Burnaby Street. He had a peek-a-boo view of English Bay, and the annual Festival of Lights firework celebration in the summer was spectacular from his rooftop.
Not that I’d known him long enough to be invited more than once.
It was an older building with no amenities other than a laundry room, but his rent was still reasonable in a city where real estate was out of control.
As the shifters illegally parked in permit-only spaces, I realized that I wasn’t entirely aware of what Rusty did for work. He traded stocks or played the market, but I wasn’t sure if he had any clients, or if he was working off an inheritance or what. And now I was leading predators to his doorstep … not that there was any correlation between those two things, just … I was really unsure and numb. But the taste of his magic in the morgue had been unmistakable. As far as I could tell in my limited experience, such things were as individual as scent. My mother’s and grandmother’s magic, for instance, tasted different even though they were blood related. They both had that witchy, earthy base, and the layer that marked them as blood kin, but the spicing was different. I’d never met Rusty’s mother; I wondered how similar her magic tasted to Rusty’s.
“What if I’m wrong?” I whispered as I looked up at the building from the sidewalk. “Maybe it’s someone blood related —”
“We’ll figure that out pretty quickly, won’t we?” Kandy gave me a nudge with her shoulder toward the building’s front door.
Rusty lived up on the fourth floor, and a quick glance up at his balcony only confirmed that his curtains were drawn. I couldn’t remember if he usually opened them during the day.
I found myself staring at the buzzer panel. It wasn’t listed by apartment number, but I finally remembered Rusty’s last name. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen it written down anywhere before. Rusty didn’t answer the buzzer. I waited and tried again.
“Maybe … I could call,” I said, my voice sounded hollow even to my own ears. Desmond reached past me and snapped the lock on the glass front door with a simple twist of his thumb and forefinger. He tossed the broken dead bolt in a nearby planter and held the door open for me.
I thought about just giving them the apartment number and walking away. I was currently surrounded by four shapeshifters and a vampire. I had no doubt I was a prisoner. I just hadn’t tested the stretch of my cage yet. Honestly, I was scared to do so.
“What’s your name?” I asked the tall blond werewolf. He’d recovered enough from the vampire’s bite to follow us from the second SUV.
He looked wan, as did Lara, who was huddled in a short-cropped, burgundy leather coat beside him. On a better day, I would have lusted after that coat, and the matching lip gloss she wore. The young werewolf looked at Desmond, who nodded his head almost imperceptibly.
“Jeremy,” he answered.
“All right, then. I thought it good to know all the names of the people who are probably going to kill my friend, and then me. Maybe with luck, I’ll manage some sort of death curse with my final breath.”
Jeremy glanced at Desmond with some questioning concern, but I turned away and walked into the apartment entranceway before the conversation could continue. I didn’t want their platitudes or cajoling — or maybe even torture — if I balked further.
The building manager’s door stood to the left. Two elevators were directly in front of the entrance doors. I opted for the stairs, not wanting to be crushed into an elevator with this group. I was fairly certain I would hyperventilate, and showing them more weakness wasn’t high on my to-do list.
I could practically feel Desmond’s breath on my neck as I climbed the four flights of stairs, though given how similar in height we were, that should have been physically impossible. It was Kandy’s hand that reached out for the fourth-floor door when I paused at it.
Kandy entered the hall ahead of me, holding me back as if she was protecting me or something. Then she turned and nodded to me. I led them to apartment 403. The varnish had worn away from around the door handle and the mail slot, and the door had a peephole. I really hoped Rusty used it when I knocked. The muddy teal carpet was worn but not shabby underneath my feet. Why was I noticing such stupid things?
Rusty had a one-bedroom corner suite, maybe 550 square feet if I was estimating generously. The shifters and Kett stepped off to the left, so Rusty couldn’t see them through the peephole. They lined themselves along the short, perpendicular wall that ran between Rusty’s door and his south neighbor’s. Kandy was right next to the door, her hand hovering over the knob.
I knocked.
No one answered.
“Rusty? Sienna?” I called, though not terribly loudly. I knocked again.
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic Page 14