“If he was here, he would already be mooning over you and trying to make with the Sid Vicious charm.” Vic looked at the memo pad by the laptop on the desk. “Looks like Cora Moon has them doing an investigation at a recording studio. Good deed for the neighborhood, or is she getting protection money?”
“Hard to say.” Red shrugged. The Supreme Master Vampire of Los Angeles fed the hungry and homeless in Inglewood, then turned around to torture her own best friend when Delilah had been falsely accused of a coup. Souls were a mixed bag in a demon. She furrowed her brow as she realized something. “It takes away the exclusive fun of us seeing celebrities if they did too.”
“Fuck yes, it does.” He chuckled.
She picked up a newspaper from the couch, then set it on the coffee table, betting it was Lucas who’d left it there. Probably to annoy the older vampire. The entertainment section had fallen onto the floor. Their client, Nevaeh Morgan, smiled in black and white from the pages, under the headline: The Nightmare before A Christmas Carol. She cleaned up the newspaper without skimming the gossip article. She’d had front row seats to the ghostly encounter. She didn’t need to read about it.
It was either inspired to generate clicks online or manipulated to uphold the secrecy of the Black Veil. Mage covens, shifter packs, vampire clans, and other supernatural creatures upheld the conspiracy to hoodwink the human public. Shakespeare’s quote about there being more between heaven and earth was a cliché for a reason. After the fallout from the Blood Alliance’s summit, she figured the vampire authorities were stamping down hard on the media in LA.
“You’ll have to tell me if Nevaeh and DJ Shake are more famous than whoever they see,” she said.
“Fingers crossed it’s just a YouTuber.” Vic pushed the rolling desk chair aside and fired up the desktop computer. He chatted as he typed. “At least I can get this report done quick.”
“Yeah, sounds good.” She pulled out her phone and started writing a text message to Lucas. Finished the job in the Hills. Went fine. Want to come by later?
“Did you hear me?”
She squinted as she tried to remember what he asked. “Oh, yeah, lo mein sounds good.”
“Does everything sound good?” He raised an eyebrow. “I know who you’re thinking of and texting on the clock. I won’t rag on you because you pretty much filled out this form before we left.”
“Standard ghostie. Standard supplies. After the haunted Proctor House, it’s hard to be too impressed by your run-of-the-mill specter.” She shrugged. It wasn’t that the supernatural didn’t scare her, it was just that life as a hunter had raised her standard for spookiness.
“We had some good times in Oklahoma.” Vic looked up at the ceiling with the dreamy expression of a romantic remembering a Parisian night.
“We both nearly died, and a werewolf exploded all over an ice cream parlor.” Red put a hand on her hip. “I couldn’t have frozen yogurt for weeks.”
“I walked away though.” He wrinkled his nose at the keyboard, then resumed typing furiously.
She didn’t reply or look away, hoping he would continue and let some of that grief out.
Of course, he didn’t. Not even to Quinn.
Weeks ago, they might have saved Los Angeles, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t taken hits. She had been claimed by a notorious unsouled vampire, Kristoff Novak. Quinn had been tortured. Then there was Vic...
He had been a regular churchgoer with the kind of faith that could power a cross. When he cleansed a ghost from a room, it didn’t linger around to give hugs. Until tonight. It was something she noted but wouldn’t put into any report.
“You’re getting the usual, then?” Red asked instead of her real questions. They were best friends, but hunters weren’t the touchy-feely type. She could only keep getting him out of the apartment and out of his own head. Staying in LA had its risks, but at least they had a chance to be a part of something for a while. Connect with friends longer than a dinner while passing through the same place on a bounty. Have the time to put their clothes in drawers. She needed the stability, at least.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
Caught in a melancholy stare, she ducked her head and fiddled with her phone. They had ordered enough times from Old Shanghai that her food delivery app already had options in the cart. She snuck a look at her notifications. No reply from Lucas.
Vic had gotten territorial about writing the reports, so she went to clean up the mess of envelopes and paper in the inbox on the desk. She separated them into piles behind the computer. The first was bills for Quinn to pay, then invoices that needed to be filed. The last pile were the random letters that the two vampires received from what she presumed were ye olde pen pals.
Red hid a bill from Vic’s physical therapy. He had been told that Cora Moon was paying for it, but Quinn, filled with guilt, had taken over the payments. Being a member of the Brotherhood of Bards and Heroes didn’t come with health insurance. She shuffled through the next papers, sorting them quickly before she stopped and clutched at the last one. The area for the sender’s address was blank except for a name: Selene. Her lips formed an ‘o’ as it sunk in. That was Lucas’s sire… and ex-girlfriend.
Apparently, he was still in contact with the souled vampire seer. That hadn’t come up in any of their long talks.
Red had opened the door to her life to Lucas, confessing to the monsters she had killed and the amnesia she still couldn’t explain. She tried to rationalize it. She had only fifteen months that she could remember. He had over a hundred and sixty years of stories behind him. That took time. She set down the unopened letter.
“Don’t worry about that crazy desert hermit. She probably just drew a picture of a cat with a man’s face. I would guess in a creepy woodcut style.” Vic rolled away from the computer. “She’s not just a nut, she’s the whole peanut farm. Even if her visions have been occasionally useful.”
“Heh, yeah.” Her laugh sounded dry and short to her own ears.
Red had read about Lucas’s sire. Before she died Selene had been a Hero, one of the special champions trained by Bards to shield humanity from darkness. Heroes were one hell of a step up from common hunters. A portrait of a black-haired woman with far-seeing eyes came to mind. Beautiful even in a low-res photo on Bard Net, the Brotherhood’s ancient web database of notorious demons.
“Let’s hit the road.” Vic passed her in his chair. “Those losers won’t be back until late.”
“Sure, the takeout should come soon anyway.”
“Another re-watch of The Office?” He held the door to the hallway open before locking it behind her.
Red agreed to the TV show choice even as she looked over her shoulder. She tried to ignore her disappointment. Usually, she was happy when a vampire didn’t show up. What a difference time could make.
At their apartment, the Netflix marathon lasted longer than the Chinese takeout. She dozed off. Hearing Vic’s electric wheelchair whirl behind the couch, she turned over on the cushions.
The dream crept up on her like a shadow in the darkness.
She sat up on the couch. The darkened living room had that surreal touch of sparkling twilight. Moonlight and the glow of the TV’s screensaver bathed the furniture. She stretched, wondering if she had gotten the moon phase wrong. Wasn’t it a new moon tonight? Scratching her side, her idle thoughts turned to wishing there were more tasty noodles left in her bowl. She blinked, finally realizing she wasn’t alone.
The white woman on the end of the couch was in a homemade dress that could have been a museum piece, its pattern faded from a lifetime of laboring in fields. Graying hair pulled up in a tight bun, she had a thin, weather beaten face that Charles Dickens would have dubbed sensible. Dour, long wrinkles lined her worried mouth, but her smile warmed it up.
Red wasn’t alarmed to wake up next to a colonial sharecropper. It was a dream after all. Benjamin Franklin might just ride up on a centaur next to tell her that hunger was the best pickle. She smile
d at the bizarre offering from her sleeping subconscious. “Hello, have we met before?”
“We haven’t yet been introduced, ma’am.” The woman spoke with a lilting accent that made Red think of rolling green hills in Appalachia mixed with the flavors of England.
She tried but she couldn’t place the accent. “What’s your name?”
“Kate Batts, they call me, and they call you Red.” She clasped her hands in her lap. The moonlight reflected off shiny burn marks on her arms. Healed in death, the raised skin, like a topographical map, spoke of a dark tale. “You are a mage.”
“I’m barely a witch.” Waving her hand in dismissal, Red shook her head. She could do things like blessings and spirit cleansings, but she barely added more punch to the mix than a muggle like Vic. The good stuff only really popped out when she was facing certain death.
“I was once like you.” Kate sighed, the sound rattling in her thin chest. Even in a dream, the other woman looked so real.
“A witch?”
“Full of fear.” The stranger put a hand over her own heart. “You have the blood of cunning folk in you, old mages and wise witches, yet you resist it something fierce.”
“I don’t have anyone to learn from.” Red looked away, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. When was the dream centaur coming? She didn’t need a random figment of her subconscious criticizing her. “It’s also kind of a sensitive subject.”
She wanted to master her magic but learning about Juniper St. James had dimmed the fire under her butt. Living with the idea of being the doppelgänger of a vampire’s long-dead courtesan was bad enough. Then finding out that Juniper had really been a dark witch who had cut through London on a revenge trip… That was enough to put anyone off the craft.
“You want answers.” Kate gestured to the tidy living room filled with IKEA furniture lit by unnatural moon rays. “You beckoned me to your home, young witch.”
“Beckoned?”
Was this one of those supernatural dreams that Red would have to tell Vic about? Or had her brain found a new wacky trick to make her anxious? Had it been too long since her last panic attack for her subconscious? There were a lot of ways to beckon spirits, and she hadn’t done any of them. Had she accidentally mispronounced some Latin over some mysterious grimoires recently?
“Control over your destiny, that is what you seek. Resisting your power won’t bring you that control.” Kate rubbed the burns on her arms. “Not until you understand how to use it.”
“I don’t want what could come with it.” Red looked down, surprised at the truth coming out. Maybe it was the feeling of being in a dream that made her confess something she would never dare in the light of day. Or maybe it was just the feeling that Kate might understand. She had met more hunters than witches on the road. “Were you the spirit that I saw in Nevaeh’s house?”
“T’was only my shadow. Your spirit gaze is too weak to see for good and true.” She tapped the space between her own eyebrows, smiling gently. “This is the eye you should use.”
The third eye? Hers might as well have been blind. Red only saw nearly transparent blotches of auras, sigils, and other magical residues when she really focused. Or they were really powerful. “How?”
“Like a hound with a raccoon, you sink your teeth deep into this physical realm. The textures, the colors, the passage of time—they blind you, young’un. Your spirit gaze can’t cut through the mundane to the mystical.” Kate leaned in, the flicks of green in her brown eyes becoming clearer. “Visualize that peeper in your brow. Imagine it fluttering open. Close them physical ones if you need to.”
“I’ve tried this before.” Red obeyed even as she groused. She could see vague mists and shadows through her third eye sometimes, but nothing like that kaleidoscope vision of spirits and sigils some mages claimed.
“When you are awake and resisting the call, I reckon. You are on the border to the Dreamland. Your barriers are down.” Kate’s instructions sounded like they were given with a smile, as if she had taught many a novice before. “Stubborn like a mule, you cling to the truths you see, not the ones you feel. Loosen the expectation of what is, and allow yourself to see what could be.”
Red breathed deep and tried to relax. Magecraft started and ended with concentration in order to manipulate esoteric energy. Your intentions had to be clear. No wonder that her magic only obeyed sporadically like a willful teenager. A life spent dodging demons and collecting supernatural bounties made it hard to carve out the time to meditate and hone her focus. As Kate predicted, magic felt so much closer to the surface in this dream. Eyes still closed, she let her spirit gaze open.
The shadows deepened as spectral mists in the living room grew brighter. The mists grew more defined, blazing like neon signs hanging on the walls. Sigils. Symbols of power and intent etched into the ether.
She opened her real eyes. The sigils remained as if snapped onto her vision like a photography filter. The apartment, rented through a Smith and Reaper service for supernaturals, had been charmed to resist fire, burglary, and other threats. The spells never burned so brightly before. She turned to Kate to see how the other woman looked in the spirit gaze.
“You’re curious about my true form.”
Red gasped at the swift transformation.
Radiance shined through Kate’s face, softening the toil lining her features. The rainbow flames swirling at her seven chakras outshone the sigils on the walls. Her green heart chakra pulsed brighter than the others. In the spirit gaze, her burn scars shined like silvery armor. She smiled. The brilliant display disappeared as if she had flipped a switch to leave only the façade of a colonial farm worker behind. “It’s a wee bit distracting. Look to yourself.”
Red glanced down at her own body. “Oh, whoa!”
Her blue throat chakra looked like it needed dusting. The orange sacral chakra glimmered vividly at her navel. Smudges hung over the rest. Chagrined, she covered her dingy solar plexus chakra with her palm. “Looks like I need to sage myself. Maybe take these out for dry cleaning.”
Kate chuckled. “Concentrate on hiding them. You can if you will it so.”
Focusing on pulling a mental curtain over her telltale chakras, Red closed her eyes. Excitement bubbled up. She hadn’t really practiced her magic with anyone else. It was more fun than trying to decipher flowery grimoires. Reopening her eyes, she frowned. A faint glow still radiated from her torso. She poked her stomach. “It’s peeking out.”
Kate shook her head, eyebrows arched in amusement. “No, that is your magic, sister witch.”
“So that’s where it’s been hiding, next to my spleen.” Red squinted at her belly. She concentrated on camouflaging her power, visualizing a curtain closing. It worked! This was so cool.
“You can see and be unseen. This is my gift to ye for freeing Dean.” Kate smiled and gestured around the room. “The knowledge is locked inside of you. I sense a library’s worth. That binding on you is suppressing it, but it’s still there.”
“How do you know this about me?” Red asked, taking the other woman’s hands. They felt real. Another ghost told her once that she had come from a long line of witches. The old pilgrim, John Proctor, hadn’t told her more than that her mother had run away from her own magical talents. The questions had haunted her worse than he had. “Can you see more? What about my family?”
Then Red woke.
She sat straight up. What was that? Had the woman really visited her? Had it been her imagination or an omen? Maybe it was dinner digesting weirdly. She looked around, expecting to see the woman still sitting on the couch.
“Kate?”
Red knew that she should have been creeped out. She’d had a conversation with a ghost that followed her home. Instead, she was simply curious. Looking around the living room, she saw the protection sigils as clearly as the TV screen. She shifted off her spirit gaze. “Wow. Some gift.”
The blinking notification on her phone distracted her. She picked it up fro
m the coffee table, squinting as the artificial light blinded her. It was 5 a.m. She looked at the text message that had come in. It was from Kristoff Novak. Her cheeks warmed. “Oh…”
Kristoff was a wildcard. The undead entrepreneur had bitten and claimed her on the dance floor of his nightclub. Being claimed had the positive effect of keeping other vampires from attacking her. The negative was that by vampire law, he owned her. Novak hadn’t acted like it. He had saved her life even when she’d been investigating him for the murder of a Bard’s daughter. After it all, he simply went back to Portland. Most unsouled vampires would have dragged her back to their lair by now.
Kristoff said he wasn’t like other vampires. He was also another man that her doppelgänger had twisted around her finger back in the Victorian Age. It was complicated. More than complicated.
Red should ignore him. She opened it anyway.
How are you? I am in my cabin on Mount Hood and we had a snowfall tonight. It made me think of you in sunny LA. If you yearn for a white Christmas, you’re always welcome in Oregon.
The text message looked so normal. If a stranger had read it, they wouldn’t have guessed it came from a master vampire who had killed rogue demons to defend her. The text message didn’t unsettle her. Much like the dream, maybe it should have.
It only made her wistful. She checked her other messages. Still no reply from the vampire that she really wanted to hear from.
It felt weird to answer Kristoff’s message, and not just because he didn’t have a soul. Lucas was his sire, and there was little love between them. It didn’t feel like a love triangle on her end because she already made her choice—Lucas. She was still waiting on him to decide about her. The specter of Juniper St. James hung heavier than even the ghosts she had cleansed earlier.
She shot off a quick message to Kristoff. I’m fine. Thanks for the offer, but I am happy spending Christmas on the beach. I have enough ghosts here in LA without going back to Oregon. The second she sent it, she sighed at herself. That was stupid.
The reply came back vampire fast. What’s wrong? Did someone upset you?
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 2