Sigils and spells, p.75
Sigils & Spells, page 75
“You … You may go.”
I considered threatening him, but I didn’t want more trouble. Any dispute I took to the town’s magic council would favor the mages. I had violated their space without permission. I had done wrong. I took a deep breath. “Let me know if you hear anything about the Fang Hunter,” I said.
“Of course,” replied Lugnut. His smug smile revealed blackened teeth.
That merciless grin pushed me one inch too far. I stepped closer to him, so that only he could hear my voice. “I will get you back for this. Someday. Somewhere. I will take my revenge. You are a marked man, Lugnut. Mark my words, I Rebel Black of the Black Magnolia coven have made you a marked man.” I vanished in a puff of pink smoke scented with cotton candy to annoy the group. Using my magic to this extent would give me a migraine, but I desperately wanted to show them I had power.
“Witch!” Lugnut hissed.
CHAPTER 8
Tick Tock – 26 hours remaining to stop the Fang Hunter.
As I teleported into my office at Fangsters, Harvey shook his head at me. Because of our connection he experienced every second of my humiliating experience, though not as strongly as I had.
“Oh, be quiet,” I said. “It wasn’t a total loss.”
“Mm hmm.”
“A mage isn’t the Fang Hunter. I’m certain of that now. I can cross the number one suspect off René’s hit list.”
“Mmm.” Harvey nodded slowly.
“I know. I know. I should be careful with my magic levels, but I had to show those twittering mages my power.”
“I saw that. Pink fog that smells like cotton candy. Yup. You sure showed them.”
I firmed my lips and counted to ten.
“Darlin’, I don’t mean to fault you.”
But he so did! I exhaled slowly, a feeble attempt to temper the rage that swirled inside me like a cyclone.
“But” he continued, “you need to look at yourself in the mirror. That show-off blast fried you.”
I put a hand to my hair. Oh, hell in a cauldron. It felt crispy. That wasn’t a good sign. My shoulders ached with tension. My eyes stung. And true to form, a nasty migraine brewed in the top of my head. I groaned. “Maybe,” I said.
“You better lie down before you collapse on the floor.”
Again, the darn rabbit made a good point. I crawled onto the sofa beneath the window and managed to pull the blanket over me before I fell into a deep sleep.
Powerful witches totally control their dreams. Even the average witch next door can exert some will over her night adventures. But not me. Never. Ever. I careened into bedlam.
I found myself in my bedroom, reliving the last time I saw Onyx. Why? I asked my subconscious. Why? Why do I have to do this twice when I didn’t like it the first time? But my subconscious didn’t answer. She’s like that.
Onyx, looking as handsome as ever, stood a foot from me. The golden specks in his obsidian eyes blazed with anger. His predator presence would make any sane mortal shiver even without his rage, but I was far beyond reacting that way to him regardless of his mood. As far as I was concerned, he was a bad houseguest who’d outstayed his visit.
“Just tell them,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice.
“I can’t.” The knot I held so firmly in my stomach twisted. “I can’t. Don’t you understand how blackmail works? Alessandro controls me. My secret cannot be revealed. Not now. Not ever. And he knows it.”
Onyx let my words hang. The air around us smelled deliciously male. Why couldn’t I have an ugly night stalker for Fangster’s head of security, instead of a hot one with deadly charm, enough sex appeal to melt a glacier, and a razor-sharp mind?
He had dark-chocolate-brown eyes that drew me in with a mere glance, a square chin covered with just the right amount of scruff to make my female parts whimper, and chiseled cheekbones a runway model would die for. And that was just his face. He also had broad shoulders, a thin waist, and long legs. The guy belonged on the cover of a romance novel.
While Onyx’s was a man most would drool over, his good looks and vampiric charm didn’t work so well on me. His personality drove me crazy. Even if I learned to ignore his biting sarcasm, horrible taste in music, and peculiar habits he picked up from living in the shadows, I had to work and live with him under the same roof, twenty-four-seven. So I didn’t like-like him.
And yet … and yet, Onyx cared enough to ask me about my problem. That meant something, didn’t it? I thought he disliked me as much as I did him, but maybe, just maybe, he wanted to be my … friend.
Onyx inhaled a sharp breath and spoke in the same exasperated, dismissive voice he used on our students when they didn’t get what he was saying. “This is what I know. A blackmailer controls you only as long as you have a secret. If you reveal it, he loses his power over you. So, the solution is simple. Kick your damned skeleton out of the closet.”
“I. Can’t.”
His eyes softened.
My knees wobbled.
He shook his head. “Think about it. You hold the power to control how your secret is revealed. You can determine who you tell, and how much you reveal. If you take charge of the situation, you can manage how much damage will be done.”
“No. Just, no! You don’t understand. If my secret is revealed, my whole life will be ruined.”
He shook his head. “You’re impossible.”
“You don’t know my secret.”
His mouth hitched on one side. “I know this … What matters most to you is your family. The secret must involve them. I also know they all love you, unconditionally. They will get over whatever transgression you’ve made.” He tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear.
My breath hitched at his touch, and my lips trembled. “You just don’t understand.”
“Then tell me. Make me understand. This control Alessandro has over you is not healthy.”
I blinked back a tear. “Being controlled by a powerful vampire is not something I planned on. I hate it. But … the academy is …” I hesitated, wanting to say good, or maybe professionally challenging, or at least okay, but instead I said, “Interesting.”
Onyx scoffed. “You can’t tell me you would choose to work here.”
“Well …”
“Or choose to be awoken and given orders in the middle of the night by one of the deadliest vampires in all the realms.”
He had me there. Alessandro’s night visits made my skin crawl. “Look, Onyx, I’m enjoying our truce.” Though the word enjoying fell short of addressing the emotional attachment that kept growing between the two of us—or the soul-searing heat neither of us admitted to feeling. “And I respect your advice.” Some of the time. “But I cannot tell the world my secret. Ever!”
“Then Alessandro will command you, forever. It’s your choice.”
“No!” I screamed because I couldn’t let that happen. But I also couldn’t tell Onyx that I had a plan to deal with Alessandro in a witch way. “No,” I said more calmly. “Once I have the school running smoothly, I am confident he will let me move on.”
Onyx’s brows rose. “And I thought you were—” His body froze with his words hanging in the air.
Previously I remembered him saying, “Smart,” but in this dream, he did not. In this dream, he stopped and stared at me with wonder. As if … As if …
“Onyx, what do you want to tell me?”
His body reanimated. “Help,” he said. “I need help.” His image disappeared.
“Onyx!” I screamed.
I woke myself up, gasping for breath. My hands felt clammy and my throat felt drier than the Sahara Desert.
“Interesting,” said Harvey as he hopped onto the sofa to sit beside me. “Onyx used a dream to communicate with you.”
“He did.”
“The dhamphyre is more powerful than I thought.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, refusing to give Onyx a compliment. “He utilized an emotional moment to communicate with me because my senses would be most awake during that time. A strategic move. A smart move. Very Onyx.”
Harvey’s cheeks puffed in and out. “Mmm hm.”
I swiped at the tears on my cheeks. “Onyx is captive, and I have no idea where.”
“At least you know he’s alive,” murmured Harvey.
“But in trouble.” I pulled the blanket closer around my body. “It’s not like Onyx to ask me for help. He would only do that if his life was in danger, and he had no other choice.”
CHAPTER 9
Tick Tock – 25 hours left.
As soon as the sun slid below the coastal mountains, I met with Gavin and René in my office. I motioned for them to take a seat across my desk.
Gavin wore a perfectly pressed police uniform topped with a cop scowl. He nodded and folded his muscular body into a chair.
René, my savant vampire student sank onto the other chair with the grace of an aristocrat at a prestigious gentleman’s club. He appeared to be seventeen, but in real time he was my age, twenty-five, and cut a dashingly handsome figure. His young face dominated by big, brown eyes were outlined by the longest, curly eyelashes I had ever seen. His dark skin had a healthy glow, and he smelled like the night air.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” I said. “The Fang Hunter has Onyx.”
Gavin grunted. “Figured that.”
René cleared his throat. “I’ve organized all the vampires in town. As we speak, search parties scour the grounds for clues. Try not to worry, Ms. Rebel. We will find him.”
Says a dead man. I scoffed. “Thank you for that, and thank you for leaving us a report.” I fingered the file on my desk. “I infiltrated the mage guild today, and long story short—we can rule them out. That leaves Claudia and the stranger.”
Gavin’s denim-blue eyes darkened almost to black like a perfect storm brewing on the horizon. “You didn’t stick to the plan.”
“No, I didn’t.”
He growled and my teaching license on the wall shook. “My pack is roaming the forest trails. Donovan has the shifters covering the mountain and wizards scrying.” He stopped for a moment and looked toward the window. “The local cops are managing all the checkpoints we’ve set up.” His nostrils flared. “And the town witches, well, they’re doing what witches do.”
I made a face at him, knowing he had said that just to annoy me.
René lifted his chin. “When I left the residences, I asked Ice to bring Claudia to us in ten minutes. They should be here any second now. She’s number two on my list.”
Teachers aren’t supposed to have favorites, but if I did, Ice would be one of them. He was a muscle-bound guy of few words with a big heart. His impulsiveness unfortunately got him into a lot of trouble, and that’s how he ended up at Fangsters under my supervision. But, his heart was helping him find his way.
Gavin turned to René. “You do the questioning. I’ll observe.” Then he glanced my way.
“Okay,” I said.
Ice, wearing his trademark gray sweat suit with the word Fangsters, escorted the young woman in. He nodded to me.
According to her student file, Claudia was a two-hundred-year-old vampire who Alessandro turned at the age of eighteen to save her from dying from syphilis. While she had behaved for the first century and a half of her undead life, she had recently got into a lot of trouble.
A few weeks ago, Alessandro had found her feeding on people without their permission in a homeless encampment, telling them it would improve their health. She had been at Fangsters for two weeks, and I had had little interaction with her—on account of always being snowed under paperwork.
I took a moment to study Claudia. Her chubby cheeks had a youthful glow, and her crystal-blue eyes dared me to speak to her, like teenage eyes around all the realms do. Overall, she didn’t give an evil or even menacing vibe. To look at her, you would never guess that she had ever done anything worse than eat too much cake, which puzzled me. Being plump was rare for a vampire. Didn’t their high metabolism keep them thin? Maybe it was optional. I’d have to ask Onyx about that.
Onyx. I swallowed.
Since the last time I saw her she had dyed her short hair black. It had been a lovely shade of pink, and I had no freaking idea what her natural color was, but then again, I’m not sure dead people have a natural color. Anyway, she had gelled her hair to stand on end, and wore a leather dog collar. I sniffed, to let her know I could smell drugs on her, and gave her a prim all-business smile.
She sneered at Ice, “You’re just a gopher on ’roids. Go find yourself someone else to rat out.”
Ice snarled at her and then looked at me. “I’ll stand outside the door. Call me, if you need me, Ms. Rebel.”
“Thank you, Ice.”
As the door closed behind him, I motioned to Claudia to sit in the empty chair Gavin had vacated. He stood by the window.
René turned his full attention to Claudia. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“Let me guess—someone complained about me. Someone is always complaining about me.” She grumbled. “The residences are crammed AF. There’s no bloody privacy in this place. It’s like a prison.”
Not for the first time, I wished I could see the vampire’s lair. Leaning forward, I got right in her face. “Why were you not in your coffin at sunset the last two evenings?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Hah.” She leaned back. “Is that what this is about?”
“Yes. There’s a Fang Hunter on the loose, and we need to account for where everyone slept the night he attacked Xiu.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard about him, the guy who woke up short a fang.” She huffed. “Well, it wasn’t me. You can’t possibly think it was me.” She shriveled up her nose and turned to René. “C’est moi?”
“Where were you?” he asked in a lighter voice, as if he were just making conversation.
Given his soft French accent, I would have told him anything, but Claudia just shrugged in a cold mind-your-effen-business way.
After a couple beats, she huffed and confessed. “Okay, I’ll tell you. I lay with Harrison.”
René arched a trimmed brow. “And if I asked her, she would confirm this?”
“I don’t see why not. There’s no law against co-casketing is there?” She glanced at me and back at René. “Don’t tell me there’s a stupid Fangster rule about where you rest.”
I felt totally beyond my depth. Co-casketing? I’d never heard of such a thing. Gavin hadn’t moved a muscle.
René firmed his jaw. “No, of course not. It’s just not something …”
“That you new vampires do?” Claudia laughed. “A little too intimate?”
“Um,” he muttered.
“Listen, sonny, when you’ve been dead for more than a century, you’ll understand.” She looked at me. “The loneliness gets to you, and it’s nice to fall into the deathly state, in the arms of another.”
“But the smell!” said René. Sweat popped out on his forehead.
“Intimate. You obviously missed the word, René. It is something one does with a lover.” She sighed. “It’s been decades since I lay with Harrison, but it felt right.”
“So,” I said, trying to move the discussion back to more pressing matters than dead bodies wrapped in each other’s arms. “You have no idea who the Fang Hunter is.”
“None.” Her face drew long. “But if I catch him, he or she will be missing more than their teeth.”
René cleared his throat. “I’ll talk with Harrison.”
Claudia shrugged and looked at her perfectly polished black fingernails.
Gavin walked over, “Was anyone missing this morning?”
“No,” René responded. “All fangsters are accounted for but … we have one more missing fang.”
I cringed. “Who?”
“Joy Graves, the oldest of us. We’ve sedated her, because she went ballistic. I hope to be able to question her soon.”
I swallowed. “We’ve ruled out the mages and Claudia. That leaves us with the theory that the Fang Hunter is a stranger. And I have no idea where to start looking for them.”
“What about the staff?” Claudia asked. “They’re as creepy as they come.”
CHAPTER 10
Tick Tock – 6 hours left.
While René and Gavin oversaw the search teams for the Fang Hunter, I spent hours going through the student and staff personnel files thinking that maybe I had missed something, came up with nothing. Yeah, the vampire students had all exhibited less than appropriate behavior during their undead lives, but they did nothing unexpected for night stalkers. There were no signs that any of them would be involved in selling vampire body parts on the black market. It would be not only a morally reprehensible thing for them to do; it would also be plain stupid. Few dared to challenge the number one law of the vampire code—thou shalt not harm another vampire for financial gain.
Just the thought of doing so made me wince. Not because of what the law states, but because of all it doesn’t state. Clearly, vampires considered it fine to harm another vampire for jealousy, or entertainment, but you couldn’t do it if a price tag was involved. I shook my head. Would I ever understand vampire culture? If Onyx was here, he would argue that the undead had come to this decision through living immortal lives that spanned centuries, and therefore it held a wisdom beyond my small mortal brain’s comprehension. I shivered. Even in his absence, the shadow man got under my skin.
Harvey put his paw on my hand. “So, the files on your staff reveal little of interest. What’s your next step?”
“More research,” I groaned and flicked on an Internet search window.
Within the hour my eyes burned from spending so much time on the screen, and as I studied the fang trade my screaming headache intensified.
“But what did you learn?” asked Harvey who snoozed while I worked.
