"Let's go," Didi said, getting out of the car.
I undid my seatbelt and just before I shut the door, Fred said to me, "And take care of yourself, too."
I nodded, but the solemn nature of his words made me nervous.
It struck me that if Gerald and those kids had managed to figure out how to do enough dark magic to get everyone in the Other World all riled up, then they might have more magic than Didi and me--especially since I wasn't one hundred percent healed. Didi was already crossing the street. I rushed after her. My heart pounded in my chest with fear.
Didi and I headed up the driveway with our wands in hand. I wished I'd thought this through before we left the tea shop. It didn't even occur to me that we might be driving to danger. My brain just wouldn't let me think that Gerald, even though I didn't really know him, was some sort of black magic stealing murderer.
"What are you thinking?" Didi asked.
"That it was stupid to come without Mom," I said. I stopped Didi from going onto the porch. "Maybe we should go home and get her?"
"There's no time," she said. "Besides, I get the vibe that our powers are bringing some heat down on Mom. Maybe it's better to keep her out of this."
I nodded. "What's the plan?"
"Get him to confess and haul him off to the Other World for them to deal with," Didi said.
"They can do that?" I asked.
"Olivia said they intended to bring the guilty party to the Council, so I figured it would be better for us to bring the guilty party before--"
"Before someone brought us there."
"Exactly," she whispered.
"No time like the present then," I said as I led the way to the door. Then, I took a deep breath and knocked.
We both listened and waited. There was a lot of shuffling going on in there. When the door finally opened, I expected to see Gerald, but instead, some surfer looking dude greeted us.
"Hey!" he said.
For a second, he sounded like he recognized me, but since we'd never met I erased that thought.
"Is Gerald home?" I asked. It hadn't occurred to me that Gerald had a roommate. You'd think if a guy could steal black magic, he could manage the rent on his own.
"Oh," surfer dude said. "No. He's not home. He left town upset. He won't be back."
"You're lying," Didi said.
"No I'm not," he countered.
"Yes, you are, and there's no point arguing about it. Where's Gerald?" Didi asked.
"I don't know," surfer dude said.
Didi looked closer at him.
"What are you doing?" he asked, stepping back.
Didi stepped forward, grabbed the guy by the scruff of his shirt, and pulled him closer to her.
Surfer dude and I were both shocked at her move. But my sister's face didn't look threatening, and she didn't ask him anything. She stared at him.
"Your eyes," she said.
I looked at surfer dude's eyes, and I noticed they were just like Gerald's. They had the same purple tinge. I wondered if that was what Elizabeth Taylor's eyes had looked like in person. They said she had violet eyes, but I never really thought so in photographs.
"You're him," Didi said.
It took me a moment to realize what she meant. She was saying that the surfer dude was Gerald.
"No, I'm not," surfer dude said, pulling away from her.
"Now I know for sure you're him," Didi said.
She must've been fishing, and she'd just caught a big fish. Didi pushed her way into the house. I was surprised how passive he was. He held his hands up in surrender.
"I don't want any trouble," he said. "I can explain. Just watch."
He backed up a few more steps with his hands still raised in surrender, and then his body started to move. It was almost as if his blood was boiling under his skin, but then I noticed his hair had changed color to brown, and his thighs were expanding like Didi's had when our magic had worn off.
Had he done this with a spell? Didi and I watched as surfer dude morphed into an overweight man with pasty skin, scraggly beard, and receding hairline. He sort of looked like a real-life version of the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons.
"I don't want any trouble," he said. "This has gotten way out of control."
I looked around his house, and it looked like he was packing. "Are you planning a trip?"
"This cowboy is getting out of Dodge. And if you're smart you will too," he said, grabbing a bunch of stuff off a nearby shelf and shoving it into a box.
"Are those VHS tapes?" I asked.
"Hey, you can't get these old English versions of Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years on DVD or streaming, you know."
"What's that?" I asked.
"A Japanese anime," he said.
"So you're the one who came up with the name Seldon Crisis for the band," I said.
"You caught that. No one really gets it. It's like those goth kids don't read sci-fi. Only fantasy, which I read, too. But the Foundation Series is a classic!"
"I didn't like the last one," I said.
He shook his head. "Two people arguing in a spaceship. I got enough of that going on vacation with my folks."
"So why did you steal the dark magic?" Didi asked.
"I didn't!" he said. "I was just here getting high with those kids, and I told them that I'd hooked up with Evelyn."
"Really? You were bragging about hook-ups with high schoolers?" I asked.
"I know, but I don't get a lot of chicks, and I thought she was going to be way cooler. She's kind of snobby in real life. But I'd loved her ever since I'd skipped middle school to see Pirate's Magic on opening day."
"That movie came out over twenty-five years ago," Didi said.
"Sure, I'm young for a vampire, but I'm older than you two witches," Gerald said.
"You're a vampire?" I asked.
"How did you know we were witches?" Didi asked.
"I didn't at first, but then I heard all the talk in the Other World about these new witches in Beverly Hills. Then I put two and two together about your mom's tea shop. Everybody knows about your mom in the Other World. It's legendary that she'd humble herself to be a lowly fortuneteller to prove she wasn't evil. I guess that's why you two got into the private eye game. But that's not really working out for you, is it?"
"It's working out just fine," I said.
"I don't think what everyone's saying about you two is true. Those kids I tutored excavated dead bodies. I think it's them. But I'm not going to stick around to see what happens. This is just getting way too crazy around here--especially after that old guy came and visited me last night. He's way into you two."
"You're going to have to be a lot clearer," Didi said.
"I've got no time for this. Everybody's leaving. Nobody wants to be around when whatever it is that we can all feel is happening is going to happen. Everyone within the whole Southern California area is going to be hauled before the Council. You guys should leave. If you're not here when it happens, that'll prove your innocence."
"But we hear that somebody's planning to kill someone with this dark magic," Didi said. "Or there's rumor that's what's going on."
"You should save yourself," he said.
"You should tell us everything you know," Didi countered.
"I'd love to help you, but..." Gerald paused and looked around at the mounds of scattered boxes. "I should just come back to this stuff. Sure, there's a high possibility that none of this will be here, but if you guys go back to Beverly Hills, it might survive. Maybe I'll just take these," he said, grabbing the Captain Harlock VHS box.
Didi stepped between him and the door and pulled out her wand.
Gerald morphed into Dracula--over six-foot tall, pale-faced and menacing. He bared his fangs. I rushed over to my sister and whipped out my wand. It looked like we were in for a fight.
"I don't want to drain you dry. But I will if I have to," he said, stepping forward.
"I don't want to put you in the hospital li
ke I did with Wilder, but I'll do worse if I have to," I said, stepping back.
He continued to advance, and Didi and I retreated until our back was against the door. This reminded me of that nightmare scenario we'd had during the final stages of our trial with the Council. That hadn't gone well for us. This might be even worse.
Gerald closed the distance between us and put a hand on each of our shoulders. He didn't even do it aggressively.
Didi and I exchanged looks.
Gerald grunted as his expression turned constipated.
"Ew!" I said, pushing his hands off us. "Stop whatever perv-y thing you're trying to do."
"It's not perv-y. I was trying to drain you."
"I's not working, so stop making that gross face," Didi said.
"I can't believe that didn't work."
"Did it work on Damien?" I asked.
He exhaled. "I didn't drain him dry. I only drained those kids a little."
"You shouldn't be draining anybody," I said. Although, I was puzzled about the whole draining thing. "Why don't you use your fangs?"
"I figured I was the first vampire you'd ever met," he said. "The fang and drinking blood thing is just in the movies. Although, there are some vampires who do that. They're really old and kind of evolved on their own. Sort of like the Korowai."
"What's the Korowai?" Didi asked.
"They're a who. I saw a documentary about them on television. You know, before I knew that vampires were real, I would have thought any culture that believed in magic and practiced stuff like cannibalism was beneath us. But I didn't know they had a lot of stuff right. Goes to show, it's best not to judge others."
I wished people would stop judging Didi and me, but maybe I was guilty of that same thing, too.
Gerald morphed back into his regular chubby self and slumped onto the couch.
"You guys can't feel it, can you?" he asked.
I knew he was talking about the dark magic rising that had all the other witches in a tizzy. It worried me that I couldn't feel it.
"You need to tell us what you know," Didi said. "Starting with how much you drained from Damien. You might not think you killed him, but you could've done it."
Gerald let out an exasperated sigh. "I may be young for a vampire, but I've been doing this for over thirty years. I specifically pick young people to feed from, because they heal up almost completely. Especially if you don't take much. Which I don't, because I'm not a jerk. This whole vampire thing isn't fun at all. I thought it was going to be like that Blade comic book, but I can morph into somebody cool for like a couple hours at a time and then I go back to being my same fat self."
"You're not fat," I said. And then, realizing that I'd made a statement that made it sound like being fat was a bad thing when I'd vowed a second ago to be less judge-y, I added, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"Seinfeld," he said with disgust. "Mainstream pablum."
Sheesh.
"Tell us about Damien and the other kids," Didi said.
"I tutor high school students so I can meet young kids 'to feed on', as the old school vamps say. The kids heal fast. I don't steal their whole lives away like other vampires do. They're perfectly fine."
"You've already said that," I pointed out.
"And you're lying," Didi added.
"It might shorten their lives just a little bit, but sometimes they heal completely," he said. His eyebrows lifted as if to check whether or not he was right.
"Yes, that can be true," Didi said.
"So that's part of your magic. Spotting lies."
Didi nodded.
"You're like Wonder Woman. Way cool," he said. "That kind of power doesn't seem like it's on the dark side."
"That's because it's not," Didi said.
Gerald's hands shot up in surrender. "Hey! I'm on your side."
I realized Didi still had her wand in her hand, and she'd inadvertently shaken it at him.
"Careful with that thing," I said to Didi, motioning with my head to her wand.
"Sorry," she said. She put her arm at her side, but didn't put away her wand. I did the same. I couldn't be sure that Gerald wasn't going to take off.
We continued to question him, and he told us how he'd seen Evelyn Carson Barber on the street, had morphed into someone he thought she'd like, and then went out on a date with her. When she invited him back to his place, he had to split fast, because he'd morphed back to his regular self. But he hadn't realized she was a witch until he saw her spell book. The next day when he was tutoring Damien and the other kids, he mentioned it. He hadn't even realized that they'd broken into her house and stolen it until they told him a few days later.
We pressed him for the exact date.
"It was a little bit before the digging up the grave thing. Who would've thought those kids would plan to break into a grave to harness the magic left over in the remains. That's obscure, and I know obscure," he said.
"Any idea how they knew to do that?" Didi asked.
"I assume they found it out online. That's how kids these days seem to find out everything. Remember libraries and microfiche?"
"Did they know about you being a vampire?" Didi asked.
Gerald shook his head no.
Didi let out an exasperated sigh. "We're getting nowhere. Do you know what kind of spells they wanted to do?"
"I though they wanted to do love spells and teenage stuff. I didn't know they'd dig up dead bodies and try to kill someone."
"Do you have any guesses as to who might've killed Damien?" I asked.
"I thought there might've been a chance that he'd killed himself. He was really upset over his parents' divorce. The other three kids weren't into the whole magic thing as much as he was. But I could be wrong about that. I wouldn't have guessed any of those kids would have done something like murder until the whole grave-robbing thing. So if it was one of them, I'd pick Wilder. Did you know he's not even in high school? He's just trying to get with chicks. I should've drained that kid, but I didn't, because..." Gerald paused and shrugged his shoulders.
"You didn't want to be evil," I said.
"No offense."
"We're not evil," Didi said.
"We'll know soon," he said.
This really wasn't going the way we'd hoped. We'd been here almost forty minutes, and we didn't have a clue.
"Can I go now? For all I know it's the apocalypse here, and I'm just sitting around," Gerald said.
"You can go," Didi said.
"In case the world doesn't end, or LA doesn't get blown away, can you guys lock the door when you leave?" he asked. "I like the weather here, and my SAT tutoring business is doing great. I hope whatever is happening doesn't pull a prest-o change-o on the whole town. Seldon Crisis is really starting to take off."
"So you really tutor and play drums?" I asked.
"Yes, I got a perfect score on my SATs and played jazz band in high school. You know, just because I'm not some hot guy, doesn't mean I'm not cool," he said.
Had I done it again? Had I been judge-y? Was that part of being evil? Maybe I could be friends with Gerald.
"Well, if LA doesn't suffer any permanent destruction..." I started.
"I'm not really into witches--especially ones that I can't feed off of. But you're sweet," he said, and then he grabbed his box of Captain Harlock VHS tapes and left.
Ouch.
End of the Line
"There's got to be something we're missing," Didi said. We were still standing in Gerald's house.
"Maybe if we get back in the car, it'll take us to where we need to go," I said.
"Maybe," she said. "But Gerald was right. None of the kids besides Damien really seemed all that into magic."
"Maybe they got into it after. You know, like a drunk with power thing," I said. "We haven't really talked to Scarlet on her own."
"Yeah, she wasn't the one lying to us."
"Poppy?"
Didi shrugged.
We left Gerald's apa
rtment. I was tempted to leave the door unlocked, but I didn't want to be evil.
When we got to the car, Fred jumped into the front seat to greet us.
"You've returned unscathed, my love," he said. He turned to me and put his hand on my arm. "Thank you for keeping her safe."
"Get in the backseat, Fred, we're in a hurry," Didi said.
I checked my watchjust about noon. "We can go to the high school and try to find them."
"I guess that's our best bet." Didi sighed. "Time is running out."
We rushed to the high school, but the car didn't seem to drive itself. Were we going the wrong way?
"Should I try the spell again?" I asked.
"You might as well," Didi said.
I tried, but it didn't seem to have any effect. My head throbbed. I worried that maybe I'd already overdone it with the little bit of magic that I'd done today.
We reached the school and illegally parked in the red zone. We didn't have time.
"Fred, make sure we don't get a ticket," Didi said.
"I will do as you wish, my love," Fred said. "But if you could endeavor to explain to me what a ticket is that would be most helpful."
Olivia hooted.
Didi closed the door, making sure to leave the window open enough to let air into the car.
"Just make sure nobody puts anything on our car," I said.
Didi had almost reached the school. I ran after her. "Deeds, how we can find them?"
"I don't know," she said, opening the door and stepping inside. She looked at her wand and said, "Find them."
We both stood and waited, but nothing happened.
"Is your magic on the fritz, too?"
"Is yours?" she asked.
"I couldn't make this spell work in the car," I said. "But my head is hurting pretty bad."
"Maybe it's just sprained."
I spotted that model-like blonde student that I'd seen before. She was walking to a classroom at the other end of the hall.
"Elle!" I yelled after her. She stopped and turned. I rushed up to her.
"My name's Dakota," she said. "I don't know why older folks call me that. I'm named after Dakota Fanning. Her sister wasn't as famous when I was born."
Whoa! That meant she was only like, fourteen years old, and she knew how to do her eyeliner better than I did. She was way too young to know who Elle MacPherson was, and she'd been named after Dakota Fanning. This moment made me feel both inadequate and old.
Potions Eleven: A Paranormal Witch Cozy (Fair Witch Sisters Mysteries Book 2) Page 14