A Witch Called Red: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 1)

by Sami Valentine

  After being buzzed in, Vic stomped into Quinn Investigations.

  Red followed him into the office which looked mostly clean beyond the stacks of files on the small couch and coffee table. The large window had been repaired. Blue painter’s tape still clung to the frame.

  Quinn sat behind the large desk with two stacks of files in front of him and a filing cabinet pulled close to his rolling chair. Fluorescent lights washed out his blond hair. He stood, pushing the folders aside, his handsome face nearly blank except for a nervous furrow to his brow. “Hey.”

  “Hey…? That’s all I get, after tonight?” Vic snorted. “Come on, Q.”

  “Who do I look like to you?” Red put her hands on her hips. She tilted her head to better show the white bandage on her neck next to the strap of her black tank top. “Because to Kristoff Novak, I look like a long-dead Victorian snack. Guess who got claimed tonight? Hint: it wasn’t Vic.”

  Quinn’s eyes widened.

  “I didn’t even get anyone’s phone number.” Vic groused, but then his lips thinned, and he shook his head. “Dude, you could have given us a heads up! Lucas fought Novak off, but I could have been down an intern tonight.”

  “Where did he find you? At the beach working the Greene case?” Quinn asked, confusion pressing his eyebrows together. “Lucas found you there too?”

  “No,” Red said. "We got word of another victim from the Brotherhood. A Bard’s daughter, dumped behind Club Vltava. Looked like the same MO, from the bite marks to the ouroboros carved into them.”

  Quinn crossed his arms. “What happened with keeping me in the loop?”

  “Don’t play that card, hombre,” Vic said. “We’ll ignore the red-haired mystery in the room for a moment.” He counted off points with his fingers. “One, did you know that Olivia Greene had a snake eating its tail scratched on her? Because you didn’t tell us. That’s the Alaric Order symbol—of which, you may recall, Delilah was once a member. You too. Does a scary vampire society ring any bells?”

  Quinn nodded, shoulders drooping and arms unfolding.

  “Two, you would have known if you just let us crash in your pad. How many times have I passed out on your couch? Which I guess leads me to my last damn point: you didn’t tell me about this doppelgänger bullshit! I get not telling her because it’s freaky, but me?” Vic pointed at himself. “I was the Robin to your Batman.”

  “He’s really the one who’s suffered the most.” Red rolled her eyes.

  Quinn sighed and sat on the corner of his desk. He rubbed his knuckles absently on his white V-neck shirt. “You’re right. Not about Vic.” He furrowed his brow. “But the other points.”

  “Lucas was less cryptic than before, but I only got that I look like his dead ex-girlfriend, and Kristoff is bad news. I don’t know what the hell is going on. It feels like I’m being dumped blindly into some Downton Abbey drama.”

  “I thought I was imagining it when you walked in. I haven’t seen a picture of her in a lifetime. The resemblance is uncanny.” Quinn shook his head. “I was going to find an excuse to send you away before anyone else could see you.”

  “Well, I’ve been seen, but I don’t know what they see.” Red gestured to her face.

  Quinn sighed. “They see a vampire’s courtesan.”

  “What is this, Undead Pretty Woman?” Vic asked.

  Red glanced at him and rolled her eyes, then glowered at Quinn. “Who is Juniper St. James? Because that name came up a lot tonight.”

  “That wasn’t her real name. Just the last one we gave her.” Quinn rubbed his knuckles on his chest like a nervous tick. “I never learned her real one.” The sentence came out like a confession.

  “Go on.” Red rolled her fingers for him to continue.

  “It’s an old story. I’m a villain in it, don’t mistake me.” Quinn furrowed his brow. “Juniper was part of the family, but we were more like the Manson Family than the Brady Bunch.” He looked Red in the eye, his brown eyes filled with guilt, self-loathing, and sorrow. Enough to make her want to take a step back. “Juniper St. James was an accomplished woman despite everything.”

  “Everything?” Red crossed her arms.

  “Everything we did to her,” Quinn said. “Juniper was Lucas’s paramour, but she essentially functioned as the human servant to the four of us. My filing didn’t look like this when she was my secretary.” He looked around the office before his brown eyes flicked back to Red. “She played nursemaid to Justine, ran errands for Delilah. Domestic toils punctuated by mayhem and murder in a glittering cage.”

  “Yeah, so she was there for the golden years of the Bloody Byrnes when the fanged four was in their groove. Where does Novak come in?” Vic asked.

  “Lucas turned Kristoff.”

  Vic and Red looked at each other.

  “What? I thought the sire bond… well, bonded you more?” Vic said.

  Red added, “That fight wasn’t family roughhousing. It was just rough.”

  Quinn shrugged. “It’s complicated. Lucas was never an attentive sire. He wanted a servant, not a true childe.”

  “Let me get this family tree straight,” Red said. “Delilah turned you, you turned Justine, she turned Lucas, and Lucas turned Kristoff. So, Kristoff is like your great-grandson?”

  “Don’t put it like that but, yes. Bored in Prague, Lucas turned Kristoff. I played my own part in that too. I considered myself a master of discord, but even I couldn’t have predicted what was to come. Kristoff was obsessed with Juniper. It doesn’t matter that you aren’t her, that you’re a genetic coincidence. Nostalgia isn’t just for humans.”

  “How do I get unclaimed? Kill him, right? That’s what I did to the King of the Prairie Dead.” Red looked at Vic, but Kristoff Novak’s face rose up in her mind. Her neck throbbed in remembrance even as her stomach clenched at the memory of the strange pleasure in his bite. She wasn’t falling for that weird vampire trick.

  “Killing him would break the claim. Another vampire challenging him and defeating him would also do it. All else fails, we get the marks lasered off you and run.” Vic said, gesturing to his neck.

  “What does he have up his sleeve? Any Gifts?” Red asked, letting the part about the seductive bite go unsaid. All vampires had super speed, strength, and fangs that could induce a thrall with the perks of immortality as a tradeoff for having to drink blood and avoid direct sunlight. A few had gifts like crawling on ceilings, turning into mist, entering homes without permission, and others. “He’s rich, but that isn’t a superpower.”

  “It is for Batman.” Vic nodded. “We can take him down.”

  “It won’t be easy to kill him. Kristoff is representing the Master of Portland while his club is hosting half the events of the summit. He’s stronger than he should be at a hundred and eighteen and has his own crew of minions.” Quinn shook his head, brow furrowing.

  Red stepped away and rubbed her arms. “You’re making it sound like I’m already vampire chow.”

  “Hey, Goonies never say die.” Vic said, lightly punching her shoulder.

  “Kristoff can only buck the rules so much. Vampires don’t have diplomatic immunity.” Quinn tilted his head, a slight wince to his mouth as his brown eyes narrowed. “Theoretically.”

  “The Brotherhood made sure we were sanctioned by Cora,” Red said. “That must count for something. Then the fight got broken up by the French pirate-looking guy, so he’s already had his warning, right?”

  “Michel?” Quinn’s expression darkened at the name. “Did he see you?”

  Red shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I tried to stay out of the action, blend in with the crowd. He was more focused on stopping the fight.”

  “I was upstairs. I don’t even know how Lucas got down there so fast. Or how he knew. Did he hear?” Vic snapped his fingers. “That explains why, when I asked him what his favorite TV show was, he said Juniper and disappeared. I was thinking it was a new Netflix show.”

  “He looked so intense when Kristoff
grabbed me.” Goosebumps rose on her arms as Red remembered Lucas’s gray eyes, dark history in his gaze, honed over lifetimes, directed straight at his progeny.

  Quinn shook his head. “The soul has tempered him, but that instinct to defend is still there.”

  “I’m not her. I might not know who I am, but I know what I’m not.” Red turned away.

  “Damn it, Quinn, you should have fucking told me all this.” Vic banged his fist against his palm. “This whole case is tied up in your twisted undead family, and you can’t drop a clue so I don’t take Red into it? We have a vampire going all serial killer on some models. One of the suspects wants to make my intern his undead bride, and the other is your ex-wife.”

  “I know.” Quinn looked away.

  Vic squared his shoulders as he laid out his demands. “I’m taking that badass California king in your room. Red’s taking the guest room, and you’re putting that hulk body on the sofa.”

  Quinn’s shoulders slumped. He sighed and gestured to the closed door to his private office. “I’ll give you the tour.”

  “I’ll get the bags,” Vic said, flashing Red a grin.

  Red followed Quinn into his basement apartment. Exposed brick walls gave it a cave-like ambiance. The open floor plan put the small quilt-covered leather sofa and leather chair right next to the kitchen with a tiny butcher block island counter separating the space from the countertops.

  “There is only so much apartment to show you.” Quinn pointed to the three doors off the main living area. “My room, bathroom, second room.”

  “Is it okay to have me here?” Red asked.

  Quinn turned to his room. “I need to prepare the beds.”

  Vic had ordered delivery when he went to get their backpacks. Soon after they were dressed in pajamas, the pizza man brought them cheesy pepperoni goodness.

  Quinn slipped away after leaving the food.

  Red and Vic devoured the pizza in silence, huddled over the island counter in the kitchen, more like hyenas hovering over an antelope.

  The weight of the evening pressed on her shoulders. She might have considered herself bisexual, but she hadn’t spent this long thinking about a woman in months. Juniper St. James was the reason Red was in this mess. She scowled.

  “This is fucking weird.” Vic said around a mouthful of pizza. His eyes widened as he swallowed.

  “Ugh, I can see your food.” Red laughed and shook her head. “And yeah, this is Twilight Zone meets Vampire Diaries right now.”

  “Are you going to be okay? This trigger… um, anything?” Vic asked, gripping his empty beer bottle tighter as he shifted on his feet. He was the guy in the chatroom who mocked trigger warnings, but he had seen her panic attacks. He wasn’t comfortable with emotions, but he tried.

  Red smiled through her fatigue. “I’m fine. We’ve been through worse with fewer allies.”

  Vic stretched and yawned. “Good. I am claiming the shower first.”

  “Shoo then!” Red shook her head.

  After putting the empty pizza box by the trash can, Red heated herself a cup of water in Quinn’s microwave. The vampire didn’t seem to have much beyond glass jars of blood in the fridge and loose tea in the cupboard, so she made do with some chamomile.

  She pulled out the small black traveler’s journal that Vic had given her after their first hunt. He’d made it clear that it was a journal and not a diary. He said that every Bard kept field notes. She knew that he still treasured his adopted father’s journals. At first, she hadn’t done more than put short bullet point notes of the monsters they had encountered, but she had started to write more. Each entry seemed to get longer than the last. She was almost running out of space in this one. Tonight’s entry would be a doozy.

  She had been searching for her real life for months; she had found someone else’s instead.

  Writing in her baggy old t-shirt and soft gym shorts, she didn’t hear the door open. She looked up at Quinn. “Oh, hey, you probably want to sleep.”

  “I’m a night owl.” His eyes were as wide as one. He hunched over, trying to take up less space, futile for a man over six feet tall and broad shouldered to boot.

  “Of course. I can get out of your hair anyway.” She noticed him looking at the fridge. “Hey, it’s your kitchen, you can drink in front of me. You only have mugs, so it's not going to look that different from mine.” She raised her mug of lukewarm tea.

  Quinn nodded and went to the fridge, using his back to block her view of him grabbing two jars of blood to mix and pour into a mug he put in the microwave. “Animal blood.” He said nervously over his shoulder.

  “Do you mix them for flavor?” Red closed her notebook and tilted her head. “Like three parts cow, one part chicken?”

  “Modern chickens don’t taste good.” Quinn frowned as he crossed and uncrossed his arms before holding them to the side.

  “Is free range goat where it’s at?” Red smiled, trying to make a joke. She could almost hear the joke crash and burn as Quinn’s expression grew more remote.

  The microwave dinged. Quinn turned to pull out the mug. He sipped it, staring down.

  “Is it uncomfortable to have me here?”

  “You’re a reminder of what I have to atone for.” Quinn gazed at her as if forcing himself to not look away.

  Red bit the inside of her cheek as she struggled for the right words to say in the face of such deep guilt. “Vic said you were a vampire on a mission for redemption.”

  “Redemption...” Quinn shook his head. “Vic talks a lot.”

  “He does. He made it sound like Lucas did too, but I can’t get much out of him. You’re more talkative.”

  “I’ve never heard that before.”

  “Please, tell me something. I need to know.” Red hated the pleading note in her tone. “Whoever Juniper was, she still has enough pull to make two vampires defy a supreme master. I could’ve died tonight.”

  “If seeing you brought up memories of old sins and dark nights for me, I can’t imagine what Lucas sees.” Quinn’s reserved expression grew more contemplative. “He doted on her. I used to mock him for it when he would bring her books and chocolates. Without a soul, I was incapable of such caring, so I saw it as weakness. Lucas wasn’t incapable. He could love, even before, but love becomes twisted without a conscience. He would kill for her—and did. When she was nearly burned at the stake by witch hunters in Prague, Lucas ripped through them. Seeing your face… If I have guilt, he has that and more.”

  Her mouth gaping open, Red didn’t know what question to ask first.

  Juniper was a witch? Could she have been a part of the mysterious line of witches that Red’s mother had supposedly been a part of? What was her real name? How long was she an item with Lucas? What the hell had happened in Prague that had brought her to London in 1900 to die when the Byrnes were cursed with souls?

  She opened her mouth to start interrogating Quinn.

  Vic opened the bathroom door, releasing a cloud of steam, and stuck his head out. His black mullet was toweled off and sticking up every which way. “I’ll miss that water pressure when we leave.”

  Quinn nodded to Red before he disappeared up the stairs, brooding gaze lingering on the blood in his mug. He walked like Atlas with the weight of the world resting on his shoulders.

  “What’s his deal?” Vic stepped out, gripping the wide black towel wrapped around his waist.

  Red scowled at him. He had the worst timing. “I can already tell there isn’t going to be much hot water left.”

  “What’s your deal?”

  She put her empty mug in the small dishwasher. “You can run the dishes when I’m done.”

  She headed in to shower and tried to wash the lingering blood residue off. Shielding the scabbed-over fang marks on her neck with her hand, Red sighed in the hot water as she leaned against the white subway tiles. Her thoughts raced. Breathing deep, she tried to calm her shallow breathing.

  In the action with a case in front of her, Red
kept her head. That fell apart once the quiet set in, and she could let down her guard. The moment when she wasn’t going to die was when she felt like she was. Delayed terror made her shake.

  The panic attacks didn’t start until she had been out of the Eugene hospital for a few weeks. She fooled herself into thinking she’d managed to hide them for a few more. Like a smothering wave, the panic pressed down on her once the job was over. Vic was the one that made her get help.

  Uninsured and paperless, she found it in a moldy Unitarian church basement in Colorado for a few group sessions until a job took them back on the road. They taught her to focus on the little details when she couldn’t control her racing thoughts on everything from her research to-dos, fixing a busted light on the Falcon, and vampires A-Z.