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

by Sami Valentine

  “What happened?” Red had held the torn sketch of Juniper in her hands at Quinn’s office. Staring at Juniper filled in the blanks on the scrap of cream-colored sketch paper in her mind’s eye.

  “You need to buy me dinner to get the full story.” Kristoff smirked and licked at his bottom lip. He bounced on his heels. “Afterward, I was cocky, as vampires are want to be. She put me in my place. We were friends again after that.”

  “Friends?”

  “Surprisingly, I am capable of having female friends. Stick around, and you’ll meet a few.” He grinned, but his smile fell. “I think we honestly thought we could be friends. Time changed all that.” Kristoff shook his head. “Is this unsettling for you? Learning about a stranger with your face?”

  “You finally figured out we’re different,” Red said.

  “I know you are. I hope your fate is different too.” Kristoff raised his hand, his fingers ghosting over her cheek without touching her. He pulled away. “After she died, they lied about her. She was full of light like you. I don’t want to see that snuffed out.”

  “Don’t mistake me coming here.” Red shivered, telling herself it was nerves. She stepped back. “You might have claimed me, but that doesn’t make me your girlfriend.”

  “I know.” Kristoff smiled down at her. “I won’t bite or undress you until you ask. I know the rules.” He looked over at the portrait, his flirtatious demeanor fading. “It’s trite, but the truth can be. I couldn’t help her at the end, but you might still find me useful. She would want me to help you.”

  “I can accept help, but not with strings attached,” Red said. “Unsouled vampires do terrible things to girls like me. Death and nihilism are the family friendly part of it. I can believe that there is some lingering bond between you two that makes you want to help me.” She shook her head. “That better angel might win out before this is all over, but what about your friends?”

  Red had more questions she wanted to ask, yet they all crowded her throat, choking her. She took a last look at Juniper. The woman might be reaching out through history to her, but the present beckoned. Red also didn’t know how much more she could learn before her brain exploded. She needed real intel, not backstory. “Who else at this Ball might recognize my face?”

  “The supreme wouldn’t, but her second-in-command might. Delilah for sure. A few of my men have seen this portrait, but they’ll be on their best behavior around you.” Kristoff left out the implied or else. “Eight years, Juniper traveled around Europe with the Byrnes. Who knows who she might have met? The August Harvest would have claimed most of them, so we have that on our side.”

  “Will you be on your best behavior?”

  “Have high expectations for me, Red. I’ll exceed them.” Kristoff tilted his head.

  “I’ll keep you to that.” Red raised her chin and tried her best determined face.

  Kristoff’s lips twitched in a repressed smile as he put his hands behind his back. “Let’s see how that photo turned out.”

  “Changing the topic doesn’t mean the interrogation is over. What are the Bloodliners saying about the murders? That’s what you call the unsouled faction, right?” Red followed him, leaving the woman with her face behind.

  “Murders? What should I expect to be charged with?”

  “Fewer than you’ve earned, but at least two.” Red glanced at him as they walked through the winding gallery of detached walls and framed faces. “What does a snake eating its tail mean to you, Mr. Novak?”

  Kristoff snapped his head to the side to look down at her. “The ouroboros. Infinity to some, wholeness to others. It means the Alaric Order to me.”

  “You were inducted into that Order and left. What does it even mean to be inducted? Did you get a sash or something?”

  “It was more like the mafia than the Elks Club.” Kristoff’s lips twitched, and his blue eyes twinkled. “You could say that I became a made man in Paris.”

  “So, how do you go from working for Lucas to the order?”

  “Even vampires have higher authorities. Not long after that picture was taken, I fought in Alaric’s horde as it stormed across Europe. Lucas drank and bitched the whole bloodline war.” Kristoff gritted his teeth, tone growing icy. “You want to know why the Byrnes were the worst of the worst? They came from it. Unsouled vampires are bastards, I’ll give us that. Yet even among the old bloodlines—and I am talking the old and cold—they chilled at the abominations that passed for entertainment in Alaric’s court.”

  “Gotcha, they were monsters to monsters.” Red rubbed her upper arm, suddenly feeling cold even in her hoodie.

  “You won’t have to dig deep to find out about their massacres. Delilah kept her little clan out of his court, but not forever, not when her master called. I left once I had nothing to keep me.” Kristoff looked down. “The chaos of the August Harvest made it easier to leave.”

  They reached the unlabeled door by the white backdrop in silence.

  Kristoff took the camera before opening the door. The scent of chemicals and a red light drifted out.

  Red reached for her silver cross on her hip to flash it at Kristoff as she walked through the door. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “I’m full of ideas, but I know what you did to those minions in the Valley.” Kristoff put the camera on a worktable.

  “Keep that in mind when you start sharing your passion.” Red kept on a deadpan expression even as goosebumps rose on her arms. Her gut told her that he had been honest with her before, but she knew he could choose his words with the best of them when he was concentrating. What would she shake loose when he was distracted by another project?

  “I know how to keep it professional.” He gestured at the trays of chemicals on the table and the hanging photos in different stages of development. “I work mainly in digital now, but there’s still something about a dark room.”

  “How does it work?” Red asked, letting the cross pinned to her hip go slack as she studied his setup of pristine white surfaces and mysterious devices.

  Kristoff led her through unrolling the film to choose the last picture of him. He put the negative carrier into the enlarger to project the photo onto a flat easel.

  After a string of questions about the equipment, Red remembered to get back to the case. “Lucas knows you asked me to the vampire prom.” She tried to imagine what the Halloween Ball would look like—the Met Ball or a gothic Anne Rice fever dream?

  “How did my sire take the news?” Kristoff asked dryly, staring at the film strip under the magnifying lens of the enlarger.

  “Sarcastically and with threats of violence.” Red studied Kristoff as he created the print.

  “Sounds like my sire.” Kristoff shrugged a shoulder, concentrating on his work. “I’ve been in town a month. I’m surprised we’ve only had one fist fight.”

  “You two pissed off Michel and Cora by fighting over me.” Red leaned against the counter to watch him transfer the blank-looking print to the trays of chemical washes.

  “Cora owes me for keeping her peace, and she knows it. Michel on the other hand…” Kristoff shrugged. “I’m surprised we haven’t had a fist fight yet.”

  “You’re good at making friends, I can tell. Why would he recognize my face?”

  “If there was one thing that Juniper had in spades, it was secrets and names. She disappeared after Prague and made a new life. Instead of living with vampires, she staked them.” Kristoff leaned forward. “You can see why I’m fond of you.”

  “Yeah yeah.” Red looked down, biting her bottom lip.

  He leaned back on his heels. “I only know that he saw her, but I have my suspicions. It was a clan battle in a railway station. Michel attacked Lucas to let her escape. I don’t know why. I only know because I jumped in to help my sire. Who knows if Michel will remember that rainy day that he saved a damsel in London? For a vampire like him, it might be quite novel.” Kristoff smiled. “For the record, that took place after the affair began.”
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br />   “Sure, for the record.” Red put her hand on her hip. The interrogation was slipping from her control. “For the record, what was your affiliation with Julia Crispin, Olivia Greene, and Georgia Erickson?”

  “I photographed them all. They were in the marketing campaign for the club opening. Are you saying the other two are dead too?” Kristoff’s brows pressed together.

  “Yes, shortly after their shoots with you. Hence why you’re a person of interest.”

  “I slept with Olivia. But I didn’t see her again after she started dating a guy from a Netflix show. Check her Instagram.” Kristoff shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Honesty was the policy.”

  “You have a way with the ladies, Kristoff. I heard a rumor about some weirdness with Delilah. What's up with that?”

  Kristoff laughed. “That’s an older, longer story, and a gentleman never tells. There’s a reason why both Quinn and Lucas don’t like me very much.”

  “We have a Casanova on our hands.” Red said dryly, putting her palms up in mockery before asking him more about his relationship with Olivia Greene.

  Kristoff answered her dogged questions but sighed at the last one. “Yes, the relationship was over in a week. No, I wasn’t sore about it. It had been a decade since I had been dumped, but technically, I didn’t know we were dating. Check her Instagram. You can see the change in boytoys. Olivia took a selfie every ten minutes.”

  Looking up the woman’s Instagram account, she noticed selfies at Club Vltava, but the rest were with a buff bearded hottie. Red clicked on the Club Vltava hashtag and scrolled through a week’s worth of content to see a video posted on the night that the first victim, Olivia Greene, died.

  She clicked on it to see an old livestream to the club, showcasing the bartenders mixing drinks for the fashionable. She scrolled through the video to see Kristoff sitting at the bar with one of the Kardashian sisters. Red looked up. “I thought you were fucking with me when you put Khloe Kardashian as an alibi.”

  “Khloe has surprisingly good taste in wine.” Kristoff lifted his eyebrows and grinned.

  “I bet,” Red said, noting the time stamp on the video.

  It was the same time that the coroner listed for Olivia’s death. As far as Red knew, bilocation wasn’t a vampire superpower. He could have hired an underling to kill Olivia, she reminded herself. The connection felt weak. Kristoff was here on business, trying to gain favor with Cora Moon. By every account, from Julia’s notes to word on the street, Kristoff had been toeing the line. If he wanted to really get rid of his ex, he could have just had Olivia taken up north to Portland. Less questions in his home territory.

  She frowned, realizing that she didn’t think he had anything to do with Olivia. Playing politics and opening businesses in LA meant blending into the human world. By all accounts, Kristoff had been operating under the radar. Social media aside. Killing an ex-girlfriend with fifty thousand Instagram followers, then letting her be found on the beach, wasn’t blending in.

  Red took a screencap of the livestream and texted it to Vic. She lifted her eyebrows and put her phone in her pocket. “So, you and Olivia were done-zo. Now, what about your photoshoot with Julia Crispin?”

  Directing the interrogation back to Julia while leaving out the Bard’s investigation, Red peppered him with questions about who was there and why to match up against Julia’s notes later. Filtering through were ones about the technique of making the tester print and bathing it in the chemical washes.

  Red bit her cheek as she realized she was leaning over the photo, staring at the developing print, more interested in the dark room than the murder case. She coughed. “This was very fascinating, Kristoff, but this print will take time, and I have a curfew. We need to get back to the case.”

  “I’m an open book.” Kristoff leaned closer.

  Her hoodie pocket vibrated, and she pulled her phone out with a raised finger at Kristoff. “Hey.” She stepped out of the dark room into the brighter gallery. She took a deep breath, blinking to adjust.

  “Red,” Quinn said, wind and static breezing through his phone as if he were cruising down the freeway with his convertible top down. “Another girl was found. She was dumped outside my office, but I found her in time to call an ambulance.”

  “Shit, where is she?”

  He rattled off the name and address of a hospital. “I tried Vic, but he didn’t pick up.”

  “He popped a painkiller. Out like a light.” Red rubbed and stretched her neck. She thought quick. “Another model?”

  “I think so. This girl needs guards.” Quinn said.

  “I’m there.” Red ended the call and tapped to find her rideshare app. She typed in the address, ignoring Kristoff’s eyes on her. She’d had an unsettling—but not exactly unpleasant—interrogation with Kristoff, but more duty called.

  “You don’t need to call a ride,” Kristoff said. “I know the hospital. They have an orderly happy to sell blood bags.”

  “Ew.” Red eyed the surge pricing and thirty-minute wait for a ride. “Fine. We need to hurry.” She quickly texted Vic where she was going and with who, then sent a follow-up: DON’T TELL LUCAS.

  Kristoff’s blue eyes flicked down at her phone with a smirk. “Your secret is safe with me.” He walked to an elevator, blending in with the white walls.

  Red blushed and looked away, following him. “He’s not my keeper.”

  “I like an independent woman.”

  The elevator took them underground to a small garage.

  Kristoff placed a light hand on the small of her back to guide her around a corner to a Mercedes Benz. He lifted his hand to push the remote key control, then opened the passenger side. “Your chariot, my lady.”

  “I’m not a lady. I’m a hunter,” Red said as she slid into the passenger side of the luxury car. She shook her head ruefully. Quinn had asked for guards. He didn’t specify how back up should get there. “You’re dropping me off and heading off, Kristoff.”

  “It will be the best Uber of your life. Five stars.” Kristoff smiled as he slid into the driver's seat and started the car, engine roaring to life with a purr. “You didn’t say yes to my business proposal, but you’ll see that you’ll want me as a client.”

  “Keep your money. I don’t want you as a client.” Red closed the door. “How about I just find whoever killed Julia Crispin and this poor girl? Since you swear it's not you, your name will be clear. Everyone wins.”

  “You don’t have to trust me to make use of me.” Kristoff pulled out of the space. The underground parking garage door opened, and he turned onto the street.

  Red stared at the car window, she focused on the spot where his should be. Only her own reflection faced her. “I can believe in your better angels, Kristoff, but I’m not going to bet on them yet.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  October 29th, 2018, 11:31pm, Culver City Hospital, Los Angeles, California

  Kristoff looked over at her, hands on the wheel as the Mercedes Benz rolled to a stop outside the Culver City Hospital. The glow of the hospital’s lights filtered through the car’s windshield, leaving his face in partial shadow.

  “We’re here.” Even looking out the window, Red was surprised to see the automatic doors of the hospital. Kristoff had been content to play chauffeur and let her zone out. She had been lost in her thoughts once they hit the freeway.

  “I told you. Your best Uber ride. I didn’t talk, and you controlled the radio,” Kristoff said.

  “It’s a change of pace.” Red chuckled as she checked her phone for Quinn’s text with the room number. She looked over at Kristoff in the driver’s seat as she undid her seat belt and opened the door. After all he had shared with her, she didn’t know what to say. “You shared some painful history with me tonight. It couldn’t have been easy, not with this face staring back at you.”

  “It’s a good face.” Kristoff nodded. “You’re more than a doppelgänger. You’re a decent shot.”

  Red bit the inside of her cheek to
suppress a smile. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Novak.”

  Kristoff leaned his head on the head rest and smiled at her. “You can interrogate me anytime.”

  “I just might have to.” Red stood up and out of the car before closing the door.

  The window rolled down, and Kristoff called out, “What about the Halloween Ball, Red?”

  “I’ll let you know if I’m busy that night.” Red waved.

  Kristoff grinned and shook his head before putting the car into drive and speeding out of the hospital parking lot.