“You’re right,” Remy said.
“So how are we going to approach this?” Annika asked. “We’re just going to walk up and knock on the door of a strange vampire who didn’t even want witches to know he existed?”
“I think that’s the plan, Nikka,” Remy said. “Unless you have a better one.”
“No, I don’t know what else we could do. I mean we could break in and surround his coffin or whatever. Like, take him by surprise.”
“Um,” Remy said.
“I’m just kidding. As far as I know, they don’t even really sleep in coffins. Well, except the goth ones. Those guys milk it for all it’s worth.”
“How do you know so much about vampires?” Remy asked. “You’ve never talked about this stuff before.”
“I was obsessed for a little while in high school. I didn’t get over it fast when Kyle’s family left.”
“Oh, that Kyle,” Remy said, and I could almost see the lightbulb go off over his head. “Yeah, it took me a minute, but now I know who you’re talking about. How is he? That was a long time ago.”
“I didn’t spend much time with him, but he seemed good. As you know, he’s living in a village where they don’t hunt humans. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Nikka?” Remy picked up on it too.
“There was something different about her voice when she talked about Kyle. It wasn’t a bad thing, though. She seemed lighter. I guess I hadn’t noticed how heavy her voice had become lately, or perhaps I’d subconsciously dismissed it as her almost dying recently.”
“What?”
“Is there more?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t want to lie and say that there isn’t, but I don’t really know what’s going on. I want to get Brighton cured, and then I’ll worry about my love life.”
“It’s okay,” Remy said. “No one in this car is going to think badly of you if do what you have to do to be happy.” He offered her a reassuring smile.
“I will.”
Meri appeared from underneath the passenger seat where he’d been hiding. He jumped up from the floor and sat in my lap.
“I’m totally going to judge her.”
“Meri,” I scolded.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “Like I care who she rubs herself against. Whatever.”
“Okay,” I said. “What are you doing hiding in the car?”
“I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to be involved in this, but I couldn’t just leave you. So, here I am.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I said.
“Whatever.”
I gave him a scratch between his ears and then under his chin. By the time we got to the address on the card, he was purring loudly and half asleep. Even when his backside was being surly as heck, it was easy to love the little guy, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. He’d just have said something snarky.
“Wow, does anyone else feel like they’re being watched?” Annika asked as Remy parked the car on the street in front of the house.
“Yeah, that’s pretty intense,” I said. “Maybe because he’s a predator and we’re picking up on it. Some sort of instinct that’s stronger in us because we’re witches?”
“If we feel that way, it’s because we’re the prey, though. Right?”
As Annika asked it, a chill ran up my spine. “I can’t believe your grandmother allowed something like this in her town. How has no one noticed this?”
“Look at this place,” Remy said. “It reminds me of your house before you got to Coventry, but on the other side of town.”
He was right. The house was isolated. There weren’t any other houses or businesses close by. There’d have been no reason for anyone to be out there.
“Let’s just knock,” I said feeling a sense of dread clench in my chest.
It was bad enough that it felt like we were being watched. What was worse was the sensation of walking into a trap. Everything in me wanted to flee, but I tried to be brave. Three witches could handle one vampire.
“Right. Let’s fricking do this,” Annika said. “Who knows? Maybe this guy will be as cool as Kyle.”
There was a doorbell, but to no one’s surprise, it did nothing. Our next option was a big bronze knocker in the middle of the large oak door.
I reached out and clanged the knocker against the metal disk under it. The whole door shook, and I could swear the porch underneath us did as well. I worried for a moment that the old, dilapidated building would crumble around us.
But there was nothing. I knocked again.
“Maybe Ralph was wrong,” Remy offered. “Or perhaps, we should just go in.”
“Third time’s the charm,” I said just before banging the brass door knocker one more time.
That time, we heard the distinct sound of stomping coming from inside the house. It grew closer and closer until the front door finally swung open.
Standing before us was an unusually tall man with pale skin and blue eyes that were almost completely white. I imagined that in low light, they probably did look as if he had no irises. It was unnerving. Especially when he turned his cold, angry gaze at me.
“What is this?” he asked.
The vampire took a big step forward and crowded us away from the door. We had no choice but to move close to the edge of the dilapidated porch. I wasn’t expecting him to step outside, but that seemed silly in hindsight. Kyle had walked around during the day just fine. Obviously, sunshine wasn’t harmful to vampires. It was not a comforting thought.
Once again, Meri put himself between me and the thing he interpreted as a threat. For all his snark, he was the most loyal and protective animal I’d ever met.
“What is the meaning of this?” The vampire asked again when none of us spoke.
“We were hoping for a favor,” Remy said.
He took a step back toward the vampire. Remy’s head was held high and his chest was out. He was asserting dominance to protect me and his favorite cousin. Remy rarely acted that way, and it made me smile until I realized it was because he knew the vampire before us was a real threat.
My stomach clenched. We were in danger. But surely, not even a vampire would be stupid enough to hurt Amelda’s grandchildren. The witches of Coventry would hunt him down like a dog, but did this vampire even care?
“Why would I do a favor for you?”
“My name is Remy,” he said and extended his hand to the vampire. “This is my fiancée, Brighton, and my cousin, Annika.”
“I know who you are. You are Amelda’s grandchildren. Which is the only reason I am tolerating this intrusion.”
“You might have noticed the town very recently had an issue with some members of the living dead. Well, zombies more specifically,” Remy said and cleared his throat. “I apologize if that came off as rude.”
“I did notice, but I had nothing to do with that,” the vampire said. “Why would that offend me?”
“Because you’re a vampire,” Annika said plainly. “That’s why we’re here.”
His eyes narrowed and he stroked his smooth, porcelain jaw for a moment. He appeared to be thinking about his next move, and we all just stood and waited.
“Did Amelda send you? Does she know?”
“She didn’t send us,” Remy said. “And I doubt she knows. If she does, it apparently doesn’t concern her. As far as we knew, there were no vampires living in Coventry.”
“Well, now the three of you know. By the end of the day, everyone will know.”
“We’re not going to tell another soul,” Remy said. “We really do need your help, though. We’ll keep your secret.”
“What help could I possibly be to a trio of witches and their familiar?”
So Remy told the vampire the story of how I came to be cursed. He explained how they needed the blood of a vampire to save me but did not mention Kyle, the council, or the small town of vampires nearby.
“What is your name?” Annika asked. “You know who we are, but we don’
t know your name.”
Again, the vampire’s eyes narrowed, and he seemed to think over her question. Or perhaps he was mulling over all of it.
“My name is Julian. That’s all you need to know,” he said curtly.
“It is nice to meet you, Julian,” Remy said. “I wish you didn’t feel like you had to hide like this. The witches of Coventry are a welcoming bunch.”
I almost giggle-snorted at that. Remy and Annika were certainly welcoming but none of the other Skeenbauer witches were. I was pretty sure that Amelda actually wanted to kill me for a while.
“What do you want?” Julian asked again.
This time, he crossed his arms over his chest and let out a huge sigh. He seemed annoyed, but I finally got the sinking feeling that annoyed could quickly turn deadly. It started to sink in that we’d made a mistake coming to him. What would he do to protect his secret? Perhaps he’d just flee Coventry in the night, but what if he wanted to stay? What if all he needed to do to keep his secret home in our little town was dispose of the three meddling witches standing on his front porch.
“We need some of your blood,” Remy said. “Brighton was hit with a very bad necromantic curse when that whole zombie thing was going on, and the only way we’ve come up with to cure her is with vampire blood. She needs it to counteract the zombie curse.”
“What?” Julian asked, and I watched as his eyes turned from almost white to a dark shade of blue. There was fury there brewing behind them. “You think I’m going to give you my blood? Why would I do that?”
“To help cure someone who needs it,” Annika said as calmly as she could, but I could tell she was panicking a little. “She’ll die without the blood.”
“That sounds like a you problem,” Julian said while glaring at me directly.
In a flash he was gone, and the front door slammed so hard that the porch shook. Vampires could move fast, and I wasn’t sure if he’d done it because he couldn’t stand the thought of spending another second with us. Or had he done it as a warning?
Remy took a step forward like he was going to knock again. I threaded my fingers through his and pulled him toward the steps leading off the porch.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go back to my house.”
“We went through all of that to get you a cure,” Remy said. “We can’t just leave because the guy is a jerk.”
“We have to, honey. We can’t make him give up his blood. Did you see his face? He was about to go into a rage. We shouldn’t mess with him anymore.”
We all piled back into the car and Remy drove us back to Hangman’s House. It was a nearly silent drive. The only sound was Meri purring in my lap. He was going out of his way to comfort me, and that had me worried. If he was worried, I was worried too.
Brody didn’t come out of the attic when we got home, and nobody had the heart to go up and bother him. He’d seemed so upset before. I couldn’t imagine what kind of mood he’d be in when he found out the vampire had slammed the door in our faces.
“I’m going to make some sandwiches,” I said.
“We need to get to work finding another vampire,” Remy said.
“It will be all right,” I said. “Let’s just see what Kyle can do.”
“We cannot just leave this to chance,” Remy said.
“What else are we going to do?” I asked. “We can’t keep tracking down vampires who don’t want to be found and knocking on their doors. One of them is going to get way more upset than Julian did.”
So we didn’t look for anymore vampires. I could tell it bothered Remy, but he decided to focus on me instead. We spent the afternoon watching movies and relaxing. I was feeling better after having a dose of vampire blood, but Remy and Annika insisted that I rest.
When dinnertime rolled around, we ordered pizza. Remy went out to pick it up, and he even came back with a bottle of wine. He also came back with some bad news.
Chapter Four
The gossip had already reached the pizza joint even though the body was still lying on the street. Someone was dead, and I had to know.
We all got back in the car. Everybody except Brody. He’d come down briefly to grab a soda from the fridge, but then disappeared back into the library.
Remy drove us to the square where the body was supposed to be located. The rumors were true. There was a dead woman laid out at the feet of the founder’s statue.
She was so white that you’d have thought she was a ghost, and I could see as we approached that there were two puncture wounds in the side of her neck.
Councilwoman Vivian Landers had been attacked on her way out of the courthouse. She’d been walking to her car and someone, it appeared to be a vampire, had killed her.
“But this is impossible,” one of the other councilmen said.
The Coventry Town Council was assembled around the body. The human members all looked terrified.
“Maybe she wasn’t attacked on the way out,” one of them offered. “Did anyone see her come back from lunch? Maybe she was dumped here after we all left for the day? That’s got to be it, right? There’s no way she was killed by an actual… They just don’t exist.”
“We’ve gone long enough without a sheriff,” Councilwoman Taylor said. “We’ve interviewed a dozen candidates over these months, and I think it’s time we finally hire one of them. Everything was fine for a while, but this is two murders in how many weeks?”
The other councilmembers nodded their heads in agreement. There were only two witch members of the council present. The others were off cleaning up the zombie mess. One of them stepped away from the crowd and called someone on her phone. I assumed it was Amelda. While she wasn’t on the council officially, Amelda was the head of the biggest coven in the area. That meant more to the witches than the council.
She nodded her head yes and then hung up the phone. After rejoining the group, Maribel whispered something to the other witch and then they joined the humans.
Remy, Annika, and I stepped closer to the gathering to listen in. While people were busy watching Maribel, I quickly snapped some photos with my phone. I didn’t want pictures of a dead body on my phone, but I figured we could use them later.
“The rest of the council has given their approval to hire Mr. Black to be sheriff of Coventry on a trial basis. Do we need to hold another vote?” Ava Taylor asked.
“No,” the group said.
“We’re in agreement then,” Ava said.
“I’ll call him and see how fast he can get to Coventry. I know he was ready to go and waiting for our decision,” another said.
A minute later, one of the deputy cruisers pulled up. Deputy Lundgren stepped out and walked quickly up to the body. “I’ve made an arrest,” he said.
There was a slight air of pride to his words. He was normally a pretty quiet young man, but I had to wonder if not being promoted to sheriff had made him feel as though he had something to prove.
“Who did you arrest?” Annika stepped forward.
She had a look on her face that conveyed she already knew the answer. It took me a moment, but I put the pieces together. Kyle had been in Coventry. He’d been somewhere nearby.
But the humans didn’t know he was a vampire. So there had to be something more. There was something else that tied him to the dead woman.
“A man named Kyle Davorin,” Deputy Lundgren said.
Annika’s face blanched, but she turned away before Lundgren saw. I decided I would ask why he’d arrested Annika’s friend.
“What lead to such a speedy arrest?” I asked.
“Sorry, Brighton. This is an ongoing investigation, and I’m not at liberty to discuss the facts of the case.”
Oh, geez.
“You’re not going to tell us anything?” Annika sniped at Lundgren.
“Why would I?” Lundgren asked. “Look, I like you guys. I really do, but you have a reputation around here for getting involved in matters that should be left to law enforcement. You need to leave this one alon
e.”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Annika said. “I used to babysit you.”
“I’m still not going to tell you anything,” Lundgren said.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Annika turned on her heels and started back toward the car. I wasn’t really done with the crime scene, but what could I do? There were too many people standing there for me to go poking around the body. I’d just have to hope the pictures were enough, and perhaps we could come back later, after the small crowd had dispersed, and take a look around.
I transferred the photos onto my computer the second we got home. As far as I could tell, there was no evidence on them. The bite looked like a vampire bite, but I hoped the regular folks of Coventry would keep thinking it was just a creative murderer or possibly some sort of animal attack.
Remy and Annika looked at the photos too, and they didn’t find anything either. I was starting to feel a little queasy looking at the pictures.
“You should delete those,” Brody said. “You don’t need pictures like that.”
He’d come down the stairs and was standing behind the three of us. We’d been so engrossed in the photos, we hadn’t heard him. It actually startled me a little.
“We might need them,” I said.
“You look like you’re going to be sick, Brighton. Come on. There’s nothing on those photos that will help you. You guys are just torturing yourselves.”
“I think we should keep them for a while. I’ll close them down, and perhaps I’ll come back to it later.”
“If you can’t do it, I’ll help you.”
Brody shouldered Annika out of the way, and before I could stop him, he deleted the file with the photos and emptied the trash bin on my computer. I knew his heart was in the right place, but I couldn’t believe he’d done that.
“Hey,” Annika protested.
“You’ve still got them on your phone, right?” Remy asked.
“No, I deleted them as soon as I did the transfer. I hate having stuff like that on my phone because someone could accidentally see it.”
“There was no evidence on those photos, was there?” Brody asked again.
“There wasn’t,” I relented, “But still.”
Sweep - Stakes Page 3