Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Page 19

  Of course, magic tended not to work very well against itself, which was why witches couldn’t usually spell vampires or werewolves at all. I had mentioned this concern to Kirsten too, but she’d assured us that she’d been experimenting on potential wards for months now. She said she’d figured out a way to blend gravitational magic with witch magic, and she was confident that she’d cracked the problem.

  I’d dropped the subject, but inwardly I was still worried, mostly because I couldn’t see how Kirsten could have tested her new spell. How many people could she know who truly intended to commit a murder?

  At any rate, the bad guy wouldn’t be able to send gun-toting humans in here, and hopefully he wouldn’t be able to enter either, not if he was planning to kill someone. But just in case, each of the theater doors was being guarded by one vampire and one werewolf in wolf form. These guards had been carefully selected for their temperament, as well as their willingness to miss the main Trials, and they were being paid very well for their time.

  Kirsten came back inside half an hour later, looking tired but pleased. I wasn’t sure how to ask her if she’d been successful without insulting her, so I just showed her a thumbs-up with my eyebrows raised, from across the ballroom. She grinned and nodded. Then she pointed toward the side door. I turned. Two humans in catering uniforms, who’d been unloading crates of beer, suddenly put down their loads, turned, and beelined for the exit at a near trot. I relaxed. So far, so good.

  “Scarlett!” cried a familiar, cultured voice behind me. I turned to see Beatrice, Dashiell’s wife and the official hostess for the party portion of the Trials. Like everything else in the Old World, this was a calculated decision, like a vampire couple version of good cop/bad cop. Dashiell would be the stern, rule-abiding leader, and his wife would soften the blow by charming and entertaining everyone afterward.

  I truly liked Beatrice, who was one of the few vampires I knew who didn’t hesitate to be near me. She was still smiling as she hit my radius, and adjusted so quickly that I only noticed a slight tottering on her stiletto heels as she lost her supernatural ability to balance. She kissed me on both cheeks. “I like your dress,” I said, making her beam.

  “Thank you, my dear,” she said, looking down at the tight, white sheath. Beatrice was the only person I knew who always dressed like she was at a fancy cocktail party, but for once it was more than appropriate.

  We chatted about the party for a few minutes, Beatrice’s eyes darting around checking on things the whole time. It was so strange to see her actually nervous. I was accustomed to her natural confidence.

  “How’s his mood tonight?” I asked, keeping my voice light. Beatrice wasn’t the kind of wife who gossiped or complained behind her husband’s back, especially considering how much power and influence he had in the city. But she also recognized that Dashiell could be a wee bit abrasive, and there were things that she was allowed to say that he wasn’t. Like “Hey, Scarlett, maybe you should avoid Dashiell for a couple of days. He’s a bit touchy about you.”

  That had only happened a few times. Really.

  “Actually, he seems pretty positive,” she said, her face brightening. “I think he’ll be relieved when the Trials end.”

  Beatrice’s eyes suddenly flicked toward me like she was avoiding something, and I instinctively glanced toward where she had been looking a moment earlier. A plump Latina woman in a black dress was glowering at me like she could set me on fire if she squinted hard enough. I expanded my radius a little, until it encompassed her. She was a witch.

  And Beatrice had tried not to draw my gaze to her. “Who is that?” I asked. “Why is she giving me that look?”

  “Her name is Manuela,” Beatrice said in a low voice. “She has a wife, Daphne. And Daphne’s daughter Louisa was one of Molly’s roommates.”

  I took a subconscious step backward. Louisa was the Friend of the Witches.

  I hadn’t given much thought to the connection; I’d been too focused on Molly. But now that I was looking at the stepmother of one of the girls who’d been taken, guilt and sadness twisted my stomach around like it was being wrung out. Louisa was likely to become a vampire, and her parents had no idea.

  I stepped closer so we wouldn’t be overheard. “Dashiell told you about what’s been going on?”

  She nodded, reaching over to squeeze my forearm lightly. “I’m sure it will all work out,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on the refreshments now that the human help is gone.”

  She was gone before I could respond. I stared at her back for a moment, surprised. Had I just gotten a brush-off from Beatrice? That was a first. Why wouldn’t she want me to talk about Molly? Was she afraid I’d ask her to intervene with Dashiell?

  Or, I told myself, maybe we were just low on wine.

  The rest of the first cocktail hour was surprisingly sedate. As the vampires woke for the night and more people arrived, the room began to naturally divide itself into three factions, as everyone stuck to their own kind. At least a few people were mingling around the food table, though. Damn, this really was like a high school dance.

  As I watched them interact with each other, I saw a couple of glares being traded between the wolves and the vampires, and a lot of smug smiles, too. There was a certain mood of “just wait till the trial starts; you’ll get yours” in the air, and that was just fine with me, because it meant that no one wanted to start anything physical, in case it would affect the outcome of the leaders’ decision. I was more concerned about after the Trials, when the losers would be upset, and the winners would gloat. And everyone would be drinking.

  A very thin, curly haired woman of mixed race wormed through the crowd directly toward me, although it took me a second to recognize her in formalwear. Lizzy was the werewolf pack’s sigma, its weakest member, and one of the three newer wolves whom Eli affectionately called “the pups.” Tonight she was wearing a slinky, dark green dress that ended at midthigh, along with high heels that would have given me airsickness. Werewolf grace does have its benefits.

  “Scarlett! I’ve been looking for you,” she cried, throwing her arms around me. She drew in a long breath through her nose. It usually weirded me out when a werewolf sniffed me like that, but Lizzy was a special case. She had been attacked by the same nova wolf who’d killed Lex’s sister, and for nearly two years after that, she’d been out of her mind. I mean that literally.

  Will knew a somewhat shady doctor who specialized in the Old World, and when it had become apparent Lizzy wasn’t going to recover on her own, he had called Matthias to evaluate her. It was Matthias who’d discovered that the nova wolf attack had induced a sort of magically forced manic depression in the new werewolf, and after a few terrible months of trial and error, he had found a combination of serious drugs that kept Lizzy in balance—although she needed to take them every two hours, thanks to werewolf metabolism. But she was finally stable, and had joined the equivalent of the werewolf freshman class.

  Jesse and I were the ones who’d stopped the nova wolf, and afterward Lizzy had sort of imprinted on me, for lack of a better word. She could smell me as much as she needed to.

  Finally, Lizzy disentangled, pulling back and tugging at her dress hem. “Have you seen Eli?” she asked, looking anxious.

  I felt a stab of guilt. “He’s not coming, Lizzy, sorry,” I told her. “But Will’s here, and all the rest of your pack.” She wrapped her arms around herself, looking uncertain. I turned my body to point to the exit. “And by the women’s bathroom there’s this little room where they used to care for children, with murals on the wall and stuff. We’ve set that aside as a quiet space for anyone who needs to take a breather.”

  Lizzy’s shoulders finally relaxed, and she gave me a nod. “Thanks, Scarlett.”

  “No problem.”

  I had already shifted my weight to move away when she added, “Is it true, about your friend?”

  I stopped. “Is what true?”

  Lizzy looked embarrassed.
“Oh, sorry, I just . . .” She gestured around the room. “Everyone’s talking about it, and I thought it was more polite to just ask the source . . . ? Sorry, maybe not.”

  Following her hand, I looked around the room and realized that, sure enough, half the people here were eyeing me and whispering. I was used to that, to some degree, because having a null in the room was always disruptive in the Old World. But usually they would look away, embarrassed or even a little frightened. Tonight, I was getting angry looks, and not just from Manuela the witch.

  “What exactly is everyone saying?” I murmured to Lizzy.

  “Uh . . .” She twisted her hands together, uncomfortable.

  “It’s okay,” I promised. “You won’t get in trouble for telling me.”

  “Well, the rumor is that your friend, the vampire, killed a whole bunch of college girls, and now you’re trying to convince Dashiell to let her go,” Lizzy said in a rush. “Everyone’s really mad because they think she broke this big rule and now you’re going to help her get away with it.”

  I winced. Not good. “Is it true?” Lizzy added in a soft voice.

  “No. Well, some of it. But I’m not trying to help Molly get away with murder. We’re just looking into all the possibilities before she goes on trial,” I said vaguely. Lizzy nodded, looking uncertain. I wanted to tell her—and everyone else—the whole story, but Dashiell and Will were right. If people found out about the boundary witch, or even the homicidal vampire, in town, it could provoke a serious uprising even now that we had Katia. I prayed that she would wake up in time to testify at Molly’s trial. It might be the only way to set things right.

  A pleasant but loud chime sounded, and the ballroom went quiet. I checked my watch. Eight o’clock. Showtime.

  Chapter 29

  Rod hadn’t driven his motorcycle to the meeting at Echo Park, probably wanting to remain low profile. Jesse trailed the guy’s beat-up sedan toward the entrance to the 101 freeway, wondering what the hell he was doing. Rod was probably just going back to Santa Clarita for some kind of MC meeting, and Jesse was wasting his time. Still, he couldn’t go to the Trials, and he couldn’t think of any other way to help Scarlett and Molly just then, so he kept going. A wild goose chase would be better than sitting around doing nothing.

  But then Rod went south on the 101, the complete wrong direction from Santa Clarita, and Jesse began to trust his own instincts. Although he wished he’d thought to bring snacks.

  It was a short trip on the freeway—Rod exited after less than a mile, and Jesse realized with a degree of panic that he was heading for Union Station. Was the biker fleeing town? Jesse couldn’t see why, unless it was somehow in the call he’d received at their meeting. Had the MC president figured out that Rod was informing to the police and friends?

  But Rod didn’t go into the train station; he just cruised around the parking lot for a bit before stopping behind a Ford SUV. As Jesse watched, the biker glanced around for pedestrians, squatted down, and removed the SUV’s license plates. He tossed them into the back seat of the sedan and took off again. Interesting.

  They got back on the 101, and keeping Rod’s sedan in sight got tricky as hell in the early evening traffic. After more than an hour, the red sedan bumped onto a long stretch of deserted road near Palisades Park, almost all the way to the ocean. Rod turned onto a small dirt road that led into a field of dead grass. Jesse could see several motorcycles and a black SUV already parked along the same turnoff, so he kept driving. Rod may have been too inattentive to notice he was being followed, but his MC buddies might be a little sharper. Jesse pulled over a quarter of a mile down the road and turned around so he could watch the turnoff entrance.

  It was fully dark now, but there was just enough light reflected from the LA smog for Jesse to make out the group of men emerging on foot, crossing the street and tramping into the scrubby trees on the other side of the road from the turnoff. Surprised, Jesse got out of the car and jogged after them, wary of being spotted. When he got to the place where they’d left the road, he crouched low and peered into the trees. There was a faint path, possibly just from the men themselves. The group of trees was too small to be called a forest—more like a little oasis of trees in a desert of beach sand and dead grass. Jesse drew his gun and followed the path for three or four minutes before he saw where the men had exited. Just past it was a wide expanse of sand, with no coverage at all. A hundred yards away, there was a wooden cottage facing the ocean. The small back porch held some sort of gear—Jesse couldn’t make it out from his hiding place—and a back door. Light was spilling through every window, and Jesse saw at least one shape inside the house, moving at an unconcerned pace.

  Jesse couldn’t see any of the men at this distance. Everything was alarmingly silent for about four heartbeats, and then all the lights in the house went off at once. Almost immediately, there was the loud pop and the lightning flash of gunfire, followed by indistinct yelling. Jesse started for the house, but the back door banged open with surprising violence. He dropped to the ground and army-crawled back to the cover of the trees.

  When he turned back to face the scene, there were six flashlight beams headed his way from the porch. Jesse pulled back further, staying low to the ground. He heard laughter, and the sort of tone that signifies men teasing each other.

  “—should have seen the look on Raggers’s face!”

  “Me! I thought you were gonna piss yourself when the big bastard brought his gun up!”

  “How do you think he knew we were there?” wondered a third voice. “We was quiet, yeah?”

  The other voices murmured in agreement. Now they were close enough for Jesse to see that four of the six were carrying something enormous between them. Something rectangular—each of them held a corner—and it seemed heavy, judging by their grunts.

  “You see some of the shit in that place?” said one of the voices. “Kevlar, shotguns, holsters ’n shit. The fuck does this Negro do?”

  “Not much, by the time Lee’s buddy gets through with him,” said another.

  Jesse put it together in an instant. The long black object was a body bag, and it held a large black man who kept weapons in his home.

  Hayne.

  Their progress through the wooded area was slow, but Jesse still only had a second to think. He couldn’t face this many armed men by himself, and he would never be able to make it back to his own car in time to follow them. But he had to try. He whirled around and ran as fast as he could back the way he had come. Despite his best efforts, he made a little bit of noise, but the bikers didn’t notice. They had completed their mission, and now they were bragging and laughing, cocky.

  Jesse made it about forty yards past the SUV, in the direction of his own car, before the bikers broke from the woods. He dove behind a fat clump of wild rye, ducking down just in time to avoid being hit by the men’s powerful flashlights. He was breathing hard—not enough exercise lately—and had to work to control the sound.

  When the lights stopped flashing he peered through the fronds of the giant rye, and saw that the body bag being carried across the road to the SUV had started to squirm. Jesse sighed with relief. Hayne was still alive. A couple of the bikers punched the middle of the bag, and Hayne got the message and went still. Jesse ducked his head back down so the headlights wouldn’t catch him. There was nothing to do now but wait until the SUV drove off and then sprint for his car.

  For the first time since he’d arrive at this location, he tried to think through what was happening. The vampire in charge hadn’t attacked the Trials, not without his boundary witch. Instead, he had sent his human muscle to kidnap one of Dashiell’s assets. Was he hoping Dashiell would make a trade? Jesse doubted it. The invading vampire had to know that Dashiell would never trade even a loyal human for a valuable commodity like a boundary witch. A null, maybe, but Scarlett was safe at the Theatre; she’d left him a message saying she’d made it. So what would kidnapping Hayne accomplish?

  The SUV rolled past
his hiding spot. Jesse counted to twenty and broke cover, running toward his car. By the time he reached the sedan, the SUV’s taillights had long since disappeared around the corner. There was no way he’d be able to follow them in his car.

  Jesse sagged against the driver’s door, cursing. He dug out his phone and noticed a voice mail message from Scarlett. She was calling to let him know there was no cell service in the Los Angeles Theatre, which meant he couldn’t tell Dashiell or the others about Hayne. Shit. Scarlett had said there would be humans-go-away wards around the whole building, which meant he wouldn’t even be able to get close. What a clusterfuck.

  He started to open the car door, but stopped with the door about two inches from the frame. Hadn’t Scarlett said that Hayne wore those little witch bags that protected him from vampires?

  Instead of doubling back, Jesse got into the car and pulled onto Hayne’s actual street. He parked so his headlights illuminated the door, which had been kicked in with a heavy boot—there were tread marks next to the doorframe. The light switch didn’t work, so Jesse used a small penlight on his keychain.

  The house was quite small, and had probably been very neat and sparsely furnished—before the MC guys had trashed it. The bikers hadn’t been in there long enough to do serious damage, but they’d done some cursory dumping of drawers and throwing of cushions, probably trying to make it look like a robbery. Just inside the door, Jesse’s foot crunched on something, and he moved the light to illuminate the crumpled shape of a plastic baby toy. Jesse frowned. Hayne had a kid? Man, he really was out of touch. But there wasn’t much baby paraphernalia, so maybe the kid only lived here part-time. Or maybe it was a niece or nephew who visited often. Whoever it was, at least the kid hadn’t been here when the MC showed up.