Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Page 11

  “No, I don’t. If you’ve got something to say, Noah, just spit it out.”

  “Fine.” He checked over his shoulder, but the sidewalk was still empty. Turning back to me, he said in a low voice, “Last time you needed my brother to protect you, he had to pull some very shady moves. I’m not an idiot. I know he quit the force because of that. You led him on, and then when everything fell apart for him you were just gone.”

  Ouch. Shadow was looking back and forth between us, and I could see her hackles beginning to rise, so I gently closed the car door. I pushed out a breath before I responded, trying to tamp down my anger. It was true that I hadn’t been there for Jesse, but that was between the two of us. And I had to be careful here—Noah didn’t know about the Old World, and he couldn’t find out.

  “First,” I said, trying to keep my voice relatively low, “you’re going to need to decide if you’re calling me a whore or a bad friend, because if it’s both, I’m going to lose my fucking temper. Second, I don’t need him to protect me. That’s not what this is about.”

  Noah looked skeptical. “Then why are you dragging him into your shit again?”

  “Because he’s smart,” I snapped. “And good to the core, and he has a different perspective on things which I find refreshingly helpful. And because I like having him around.”

  “Okay, whatever,” Noah said with a dismissive grunt. “I just don’t want you using my brother to hurt people, while you stand back and keep your hands clean. Especially if you’re not even gonna fuck him.”

  I recoiled. That last remark was meant to sting, and it did, but I’d be damned if I was going to take shit from someone who had no concept of my life. I checked the sidewalk out of the corner of my eye. Empty except for a couple of homeless people a block down. “Third picket,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “What?” Noah asked in confusion.

  Quick as I could, I bent down and whipped the knife out of my right boot, flinging it at the graffitied fence without even straightening up. I hit the third picket dead center.

  While Noah was gaping at the fence, I snaked out one boot and swept his legs out from under him. He landed heavily, just managing to keep his head from cracking on the sidewalk. While his arms were still flailing, I knelt on his chest and held my second knife to his throat, though not very close. Noah went very still.

  “Fucking aside,” I said, my breath coming hard, “if I need someone hurt, I’ll do it myself. And if you speak to me like that again, you are going to find out what that feels like.”

  Eyes wide, Noah raised his hands and nodded. I stood up, slid the knife back into my right boot sheath, and reached down to Noah. He glared at me for a second, but took my hand and let me pull him to his feet. I had to tilt my head up quite a bit to meet his eyes when he stood, but I held the eye contact. We stood there for a silent moment, glaring at each other.

  “Hey, Scar, I think you dropped this,” came Jesse’s amused voice. In my peripheral vision I could see him standing at the picket fence, tugging my knife free. Without taking my eyes off Noah, I reached out a hand and felt Jesse slap the knife handle into it.

  “Everything okay, big brother?” Jesse said cheerfully. He’d obviously seen the whole thing, and was enjoying the hell out of the moment.

  “Yeah. Fine.” Breaking the eye contact—ha, I won the staring contest—Noah straightened his shirt, brushing sidewalk grit off the back of his pants. “I gotta get going. Good luck with your . . . whatever.”

  “Same to you,” Jesse practically chirped. His grin was as wide as I’d ever seen it.

  In the car, Jesse silently entered the storage facility’s address into his GPS and pulled into traffic. He was waiting for me to speak first, but I could see his lips struggling to contain a smile.

  “I’m sorry,” I said eventually. “That was childish.”

  He gave me a little eh shrug. “How much of that did you hear?” I asked.

  “Refreshingly helpful?”

  I slunk lower in my seat. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” His voice turned serious. “Look. I figured he wanted to do some sort of ‘don’t hurt my brother’ speech, and we might as well get it out of the way. But he took it too far.”

  My eyes lifted. “Yeah?”

  Jesse nodded. “What happened between us back then . . . it hurt me, but I also know it was a hell of a lot more complicated than you using your feminine wiles to Postman Always Rings Twice me. That’s just insulting to both of us. Noah was out of line, and he deserved to have his ass handed to him.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  Jesse’s face lit up again. “But can we talk for a second about how you just knocked down my enormous brother like he was a cardboard cutout? Have you been taking martial arts lessons or something?”

  I settled back in my seat. “Nah. That kind of thing takes years and years to master, and I’m too clumsy to be a quick study. Also, lazy.”

  “So?” His eyebrows were still raised.

  I tried to shrug it off, but it was obvious he was curious as hell. And he’d stuck up for me. He deserved a real answer. “I wanted to be able to protect myself better, and everyone underestimates me anyway, so I decided to cheat,” I explained. “Instead of learning a whole martial arts discipline, I learned a few tricks. Throwing a knife isn’t that complicated; it just requires a little technique and a lot of practice. While I was doing that, I practiced a handful of aikido throws. Plus how to throw a punch and a couple of kicks.” I shrugged. “If I ever went up against someone with serious training, I’d get my ass kicked, but most of the time when someone Old World gets in my radius, they don’t know how to handle themselves physically. They’re used to using werewolf strength or spells or whatever to defend themselves.”

  “Who taught you?”

  I told him about my lessons with Marko, and how I’d had plenty of time to practice because there had been fewer crime scenes to clean up. “Hayne’s been showing me some security stuff, too, like how to look for a bomb under your car or how to cuff somebody.” I shrugged. “I’m still shit at lockpicking, though.”

  “I’m impressed, Scarlett,” Jesse said. I wanted to laugh it off, but his face was serious. “You’ve learned a lot in the past three years.”

  “In some ways,” I said, looking out my window. I was thinking of Eli again. “And in some ways I feel dumber than ever.”

  Chapter 15

  We made a quick stop to fortify with coffee and donuts—Shadow ate six—before we got on the freeway toward Thousand Oaks. As predicted, Jesse hit rush hour traffic, but it was much worse going west to east than in our lane. He managed to keep the car at a nice 45 mph clip. Basically an LA miracle.

  We rode in silence for a while. Exhaustion from the night before was seeping back into me after my little adrenaline rush, and I was content to stare out the window at the miles of passing freeway. The smog doesn’t usually terrorize LA as much in the winter, but it was overcast in a way that seemed to make everything dingy. Or maybe that was my mood talking.

  After half an hour, however, Jesse broke the silence. “How much do you know about Molly’s history?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I confessed. “You remember what it was like when I lived with her. She didn’t like to talk about the past or future, just the now. It was like we were characters in a sitcom who only came to life when the TV was on.”

  “She must have given you some kind of impression,” he insisted. “Maybe not details, but something.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I know she was born in Wales, and she sometimes talked about living on a farm in her human life. I got the impression that her family was poor, with lots of kids.”

  He nodded. “What about after she was turned?”

  “She mentioned living in New York and New Orleans.” I frowned. “Come to think of it, her movements did strike me as a little weird. Vampires prefer cities, for the most part, and they do move around a lot, but it’s usually pretty . . .” I sear
ched for the right word. “Migratory?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Say you’re turned into a vampire in Seattle,” I explained. “You might move down to Portland first, and after a few years go to San Francisco, then San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego. If you dislike a certain place you might not stay there for long, but vampires usually move in a straight line. It’s more efficient, especially since travel is hard for them. You proceed in a line for decades, and then maybe you make a big jump, like to a new continent. But once you get there, you start the line again.”

  “That makes sense,” he said. “So how did Molly break the pattern?”

  “If I’m remembering right, she went from Europe to New York, which is typical, but instead of proceeding in a line, she went to New Orleans, then LA.”

  “Like she was running from something,” Jesse remarked.

  “I guess.”

  “Anything else?”

  I searched my memory. “She never talked about the vampire who made her, but she gave me the impression that he was a serious asshole. He must’ve been, because Molly killed him a couple of decades back. She and Dashiell both verified it.”

  Jesse’s eyes sparked with interest. “Is that common? For vampires to kill their maker?”

  “Not at all. From what I’ve seen, most of them are grateful to their makers, if not outright worshipful. Molly’s must have been a bad dude for her to turn on him. But again, he’s definitely dead.”

  “Hmm.”

  By 9:30 a.m. we were pulling into the storage unit. In the harsh light of day, the place didn’t look quite as nice as it had the night before. There were plenty of cars in the lot now. Despite the risk, I made the decision to bring Shadow inside as my service dog. This was a vampire hangout, which made it very unlikely that the daytime people knew anything about witches, werewolves, or the bargest. Taking her with us seemed like less of a risk than leaving her in the car to scare people who walked past. If someone called the police, we would get into a whole new kind of trouble.

  Inside the lobby, a young Armenian woman stood at the front desk, holding an open book with one hand while she took notes with the other. She wore a pressed white button-down shirt and an engraved name tag that read Anush. She didn’t so much as look up as we approached. I glanced at the title of the book: Writing Your First Screenplay. Oh, Los Angeles, I love you.

  By unspoken agreement, I hung back a bit and let Jesse take the lead. He was better at the whole investigation/talking to strangers thing, and it didn’t hurt that he was . . . aesthetically pleasing. “Hello,” he said to Anush, turning his smile up a few degrees. “We need to get into one of the safety deposit boxes.”

  “Be with you in just a sec,” she said distractedly. At my feet, Shadow let out a loud, almost theatrical yawn. The woman paused and leaned forward to peer over the desk. “Whoa,” she breathed. “That is . . .”

  “The ugliest dog you’ve ever seen?” I suggested. I may have been a tad cranky.

  “Well . . . yeah.” After a quick glance at me, her eyes settled on Jesse—and widened even more. She closed the book and set it down neatly on top of the notes. “What did you say you needed?”

  Jesse held up Molly’s key. “Access to the safety deposit boxes.”

  Dropping her pen, the young woman took the key from Jesse’s hand, her brow furrowing. “This is from the special section.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No, not at all, sir,” she said hurriedly, suddenly very interested in pleasing us. “I just don’t see these very often during the day. If you give me the code word, I’d be glad to help you out.”

  Dashiell had texted this while I was sleeping. “Cymry,” I said, pronouncing it carefully. I’d Googled the word on Jesse’s phone during the drive. It was a Welsh term from the Middle Ages, used to describe the Welsh people. Very Molly.

  Anush smiled brightly. “Thank you, miss. Right this way.”

  She came around the corner and led us down a series of corridors that looked weirdly familiar. Then I remembered I’d seen these doors on the security monitors at the front desk. Duh.

  Anush steered clear of Shadow in a polite way, but the bargest didn’t notice. Shadow was deeply interested in her new surroundings—her nose worked overtime, and her head turned rapidly back and forth to take everything in. Eventually we wound our way to a small vault door, similar to the kind you’d see in any bank. Anush entered a code into a keypad and turned the enormous handle, revealing a room of safety deposit boxes like the ones you see in every bank heist movie. There was a table in the center of the room, and two chairs. No security camera in here. I went and sat down, partly so we weren’t all crowding the small space, and partly because I’m essentially very lazy.

  Anush went straight to Molly’s box, number 3791. There were two keyholes; she inserted a key in one of them and gestured for Jesse to do the same with the other. After they turned the keys, Anush removed hers but didn’t let the door swing open. “Take all the time you need,” she said cordially. “The exit door will be locked on the other side, but there’s a push bar for when you’re ready to leave. Please notify me on your way out, and I’ll come back and turn my side of the lock.” She backed out of the room smiling and practically bowing, her eyes nervously flicking toward Shadow.

  Then we were alone with the box.

  Jesse swung open the door and pulled out the drawer, which he set down on the table in front of me. He dropped into the opposite chair, and we both stared down at the contents. The safety deposit box was about the size of the cardboard boxes that knee-high boots come in, and one-quarter of it was filled with neatly wrapped stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Next to them was a carved oak jewelry box, and next to that was a packet of papers and supplies. There was a little pile of passports right on top. Jesse picked them up right away and took off the rubber band holding them together. He examined a couple of the passports.

  “If these are forgeries, they’re the best I’ve ever seen.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think they’re forgeries.”

  “Pressing government officials is practically a part-time job when you’re a vampire,” I said absently. I was spreading the rest of the spy movie stack across the table. There were deeds to land in a few different countries, plus a number of envelopes that held foreign currencies. I found a small stack of Polaroids and began flipping through them. They were probably from the 1970s, judging by the hair and clothes, but they reminded me a lot of the photos at the Scarff Street house: groups of young women standing together smiling. Molly was in all the shots. I didn’t recognize anyone else, so I passed them to Jesse.

  “Here we go,” I said, picking up a small, no-frills address book. You would think someone who’s been alive for a hundred and fifty years might have a pretty full contact list, but there were only two or three entries under each letter. “Interesting,” I murmured.

  Jesse dropped the photos and leaned over the table, craning his head to see what I was reading. “Just first names,” he observed. “Vampires?”

  “That would be my guess. She probably keeps human phone numbers on her cell like anyone else.” I paged through further and recognized the names of a few of the LA vampires, including Frederic. Next to each name there was a dash and a country or state name: “Naomi - Washington State,” “Livingston - Croatia,” “Morris - South Carolina.”

  “What happens when there are two vampires with the same name?” Jesse asked.

  “A question I pondered for many years. I always figured they’d have a Highlander-style fight to the death, but actually they just identify themselves by their place of birth, like the other entries. See, look.” I pointed to the entries for H, where there were actually three different vampires named Henry. They were marked “Henry - Iceland,” “Henry - Quebec,” and “Henry - Vermont.”

  Underneath the name, there was always an address, though many of them were P.O. boxes. “Don’t vampires move around a lot?” Jesse said. “What are the chances
that any of these are still current?”

  “The address isn’t where the vampire lives; it’s how he or she can be tracked down,” I explained. “Molly told me once that vampires keep a drop site somewhere, like a P.O. box or an abandoned house that they own. That’s how they find each other, when they really want to.” I shook my head. “The problem is that it takes time. If your drop site is in Spain and you’re currently living in Canada . . .”

  “Okay, I can see that. What are the starred names?” He pointed to the entry across from the Henrys: “Georgiana - Pennsylvania,” with an address in New York. Sure enough, there was a star next to it.

  I frowned. “I don’t know. Let’s see how many have them.”

  Jesse produced a small notebook and pen, and we made a list of the starred entries. There were fourteen in all. “They’re all women’s names,” he pointed out. “Her friends?”

  “I don’t know. In theory all the names in the book are her friends. What makes these fourteen different?”

  “Look, some of them have phone numbers.”

  I checked, and he was right—a few of the starred names had a number penciled in at the bottom. Most of them had been erased several times, like Molly had kept them updated. Interesting.

  We spent a few minutes digging through the rest of the box’s contents, but didn’t find anything else that seemed helpful. The jewelry box was full of expensive pieces, some of which looked very old. I doubted any of it could help us exonerate Molly, so I left them where they were. I also ignored the small velvet bag filled with diamonds, and the envelope that held three locks of braided hair, each the length and thickness of a pencil.

  I had brought one of those reusable grocery bags, the kind that can fold up into a tiny pouch, and we packed up the Polaroids and the address book. After a moment of hesitation, I also tossed in one of the passports and three of the stacks of cash.

  Jesse noticed me do it, and I saw understanding cross his face. He made a show of reaching down to pet Shadow, pretending he’d seen nothing.