Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Page 2

  Eli knew all of that, but he was too kind to bring it up. Lucky for me, an older hippie couple wandered up to the booth, holding hands, and Eli got sucked into another conversation. I sipped my lemonade and held my tongue.

  A few hours later the sun had dipped all the way behind the downtown skyscrapers, and we began packing up the few remaining sculptures. The art walk ran until ten, but Eli was bartending tonight, so we would throw in the towel early. I added up the day’s figures while Eli dismantled the booth. “Nice haul,” I said appreciatively. We were only boxing up three pieces, having sold nearly a dozen.

  Box in hand, I walked back to my van, the White Whale, with Shadow, while Eli lagged a dozen feet behind, making a great show of heaving the folded table and chairs. He was far enough behind me to have his werewolf strength back, but it was important not to look too powerful in front of the humans. He was maybe having a good time with the farce.

  As Eli loaded the table into the back of my van—we had driven separately so he could go straight to work—I let Shadow into the van’s passenger seat, rolling the windows down so she could sniff the air and eyeball the passing strangers who stared at her. I found myself staring right back and realized my antisocial tendencies were threatening to surface. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold up the Supportive Girlfriend exterior without snapping at someone.

  Well, someone else, if you counted the Botox lady. I sure didn’t.

  Eli had just loaded the gear when a gay couple he’d waited on earlier approached him and began to chat. They seemed like they were settling in to a long discussion of art, and after hours of dealing with people, I didn’t have it in me to join them. There was just too much of a risk that I might have to smile at someone. I reached forward to turn the ignition, planning to wave at Eli as I backed up, but then I realized the van’s rear doors were still open. So I sighed and waited.

  I was mentally reviewing my DVR list, trying to decide what to binge on while Eli was at work, when I noticed a young woman moving down the street toward me. She had a strange, mechanical walk: arms jammed against her sides, head locked in the “forward” position, not bothering to account for anything in her peripheral vision. Next to me, Shadow tensed, her eyes fixed on the girl.

  I leaned forward, reaching under my seat for my handheld Taser. Don’t leave home without it, that was my motto, although the girl didn’t exactly look like a threat: she was younger than me, dressed in a Cal State Long Beach T-shirt and jeans that had been artistically shredded at the knees. As she approached me I could see that her expression was unnaturally blank, her eyes empty and unfocused. And that one of her hands was clenched in a fist.

  With a little effort I extended my normal radius, the sphere of nonmagical space that emits from me, an extra ten feet so it would encompass the girl. I could feel Eli and Shadow, but the girl wasn’t registering any kind of signal, which meant she was human. Shadow must have smelled this at the same time, because her body seemed to relax, her clubbed tail giving me a reassuring thump.

  Human or not, I did feel the tiniest little zing, like when a witch tries to use a spell against me. Witch spells usually flare out in my radius, sort of like a June bug hitting one of those bug zappers. This felt more like a mosquito. I’d known enough vampires to recognize the sensation: this girl had had her mind pressed, which was our term for when a vampire compels someone magically. And I’d just undone it.

  The girl’s vacant expression cleared, and she looked around with confusion. Her forward momentum propelled her the rest of the way to my van door.

  “What was I . . .” she mumbled, her brows furrowing.

  I needed to help this along. “What do you have there?” I asked, pointing to her hand.

  The young woman followed my gaze and raised the hand with the fist, looking at it curiously. She uncurled her fingers and revealed a folded scrap of paper. Shadow let out a sudden growl, trying to climb into my lap to protect me. It confused me for a second, until I registered that the folded paper was splotched with red, as though paint had been sponged on it. Or as though a bloodstained hand had written the note.

  “Shadow, sit,” I ordered, pointing at the passenger seat. She didn’t like it, but she lowered her haunches until they almost touched the car’s seat. “You must have brushed against that painting back there,” I told the wide-eyed girl, nodding over her shoulder at an imaginary artist. “I thought it looked like it might still be wet.”

  It was flimsy as hell, but the girl’s shoulders relaxed a little. Human brains just love having “rational” explanations to cling to, even if they border on ridiculous. Without turning away from her I leaned my body to dig into the small packet of baby wipes I keep between the seats of my van.

  She read the name on the outside of the folded note. “Scarlett Bernard.” She looked up at me, her face a mask of bewilderment. “Are you Scarlett Bernard?”

  “I hope so; I’m wearing her underwear,” I replied. The girl’s expression didn’t change. Tough crowd. “That’s me,” I confirmed. She held out the note, and I held out a wipe. “For your hands.”

  We traded, and I unfolded the note quickly, knowing she was about to ask a lot of questions. There was an address scrawled at the top, 2310 Scarff. In block letters below it, the writer had added, DON’T TELL ANYONE. EVEN ELI.

  I had already opened my mouth to ask where the note came from when I saw the extra scribble at the very bottom of the paper, done in desperate, hurried cursive: please Scar. I snapped my mouth shut. I knew that handwriting.

  Molly.

  Chapter 2

  Once upon a time, I sort of had a fake best friend.

  Okay, that’s not fair. Years ago, when I needed a new place to live, I moved in with a very young-looking vampire named Molly. It was a mutually beneficial thing: I needed a break on rent, and Molly wanted to be near me so she could age. She’d become a vampire back in the nineteenth century, when seventeen was more or less an adult, but her options were extremely limited in modern society. I could help her with that—hanging around a null would let her body age like it was supposed to, at least when she was close to me.

  Molly and I had become friends, although I often thought she wasn’t letting me see much of the real her. She liked to pretend the two of us lived in a fun, Sex and the City–type world where we gossiped and hung out and did girlie things together, and I played along, because . . . well, it was surprisingly comforting. I knew that Molly was also reporting some of my activities to Dashiell, the cardinal vampire of the city, but because she was open about it, this was weirdly okay too.

  But that had been three years ago. I hadn’t heard from Molly since shortly after she’d asked me to move out, when things had gotten awkward. Until I opened the note I hadn’t even known for sure she was still in Los Angeles. It wasn’t like Dashiell and I spent a lot of time chatting about our mutual acquaintances.

  I crumpled the note, my stomach roiling with sudden nerves. Molly had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure there was no record of her contacting me. And there was only one possible reason for doing that: she didn’t want Dashiell to know.

  This scared me more than the blood, more than the prospect of dealing with the confused twenty-year-old in front of me. As long as I’d known her, Molly had been a compliant little vampire. She had always followed all of Dashiell’s rules, and lived very quietly, especially compared to some of the other vampires in this town. Hell, her desire to stay on the fringes of supernatural society, keeping her head down, was most of why she’d kicked me out. And now she wanted to hide something from Dashiell?

  Relieved of the paper, and the only discernible reason for being here, the girl in front of me began to panic. “What . . . where am I?” she said, her head swiveling around.

  “You’re at the downtown art walk, remember?” I said helpfully.

  Her eyes met mine again. “But how did I get here? I was just . . . I was going to a party . . .” Her tone was almost a whine, but I couldn’t really bla
me her. Losing patches of memory is a college female’s worst nightmare.

  “Check your pockets,” I suggested.

  Her hand emerged with a few twenties and a receipt. “It’s a cab company,” she said wonderingly. “But I never take cabs.”

  Luckily Eli chose that moment to come around the side of the van. “Sorry, I kind of got stuck there . . . who’s this?” He looked at the girl, eyebrows raised pleasantly.

  I looked pointedly at the girl. “I’m Britt?” she said hesitantly, as if afraid her recent blackout may have included a name change.

  “Eli,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand. He studied her confused expression for a moment and then turned to me. “Um, can you give me a quick hand in the back?”

  Britt automatically stepped back so I could get out of the van. I left Shadow inside and followed Eli toward the rear doors—and held up a finger for him to wait. I was watching Britt. Now that I’d moved away, she just stood there with her eyebrows knit together, not moving. Which was unusual.

  Vampires usually press humans for two reasons: to make them forget something—like a feeding—or to get them to do a single task. “Get this message to Scarlett Bernard,” for example. But every pressed human I’d encountered had recovered better and faster than Britt. Once the . . . okay, we’ll call them “victims”—had completed their task, they went smoothly back to whatever they had been doing. The human brain is complex and interesting—capable of filling any logical gaps with its own little assumptions. I’d never seen a human victim so untethered after being pressed, and it wasn’t because I’d zapped out the vampire’s influence. If anything, that should have made her recover faster.

  It was like whoever pressed her mind had done it with very little control. A brand-new vampire wouldn’t have had enough power and precision to manipulate a human mind. It must have been someone old enough to press hard, but upset enough not to do it well.

  This was very bad.

  “You seeing this?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Yeah. Who pressed her?”

  “One of the vampires,” I said. It was obvious, but I didn’t want to lie to him more than I had to. I held up the blood-smudged note, not letting him see what was written on it. “It’s a job, probably just a blood spill or something. But I should go take care of it. Good thing we drove separate.”

  I was trying to sound casual, but his frown didn’t budge. Eli had served as my assistant for a few months, and he still tagged along on the occasional job just to hang out with me. The unfortunate part of dating a guy who knows about what I do is that he also knows how it’s supposed to work: usually, I just get a call on my cell from the person with the problem—or possibly one of the Old World leaders, if it’s a really bad crime scene. This cloak-and-dagger thing was uncharted territory.

  “How did they know you were here? Why didn’t they just call?” he asked, not unreasonably.

  I shrugged. “Anyone who knows we’re together could Google art fairs and figure it out. As far as the phone . . . I don’t know, maybe they had a dead battery or something. I’ll be sure to ask, though,” I promised, fighting not to squirm.

  Eli studied my eyes for a moment. “I want to go with you,” he said.

  “You can’t.” I gestured at Britt, who was still standing next to the driver’s door, staring at the side of the van. “I need you to get her home. And then you have to get to work.”

  “I don’t like you walking into some weird situation by yourself,” he said. He was planting his feet, obviously gearing up for a fight.

  “Hey, that’s my job. I do that all the time,” I replied, trying to keep my voice light.

  It was the wrong thing to say. Eli glowered at me. “And I dislike it all the time,” he said, mimicking my tone. “You know how I feel about your safety.”

  I sighed. This again. “My safety is fine. I can take care of myself.”

  He started to argue, and I pointed a finger at him. “Stop. This is the part where you say, ‘I can’t help it, Scarlett, my wolf instincts want to protect you.’ And then I say, ‘Bullshit, Eli, you don’t have wolf instincts this close to me,’ and around we go. But right now, I have a job, and that girl needs your help.”

  We both glanced at Britt, who was still standing there staring into empty space. She didn’t even seem to notice the enormous bargest panting a few inches from her face.

  Eli turned back to me. “You have blades on you?” he asked. He was wavering.

  “Of course,” I said, resisting the urge to add “duh.”

  I loved my handheld Taser, but I could only use it a few times before the battery ran out. I needed a weapon that could hurt someone who might be out of arm’s reach, and I really wasn’t comfortable with guns. Lucky for me, there was a werewolf in Will’s pack who knew everything there was to know about throwing knives.

  I’m the first to admit that “training with knives” sounds cheesy, like a crappy action movie, but working with Marko had proved anything but hokey. I now carried at least two knives—one silver-plated, one not—on my person at all times, usually in my boot sheath. Partly this was to appease my overprotective boyfriend, and partly it was out of fear of Marko—if I ran into him somewhere without a knife on me, he would make me do burpees until I puked. Seriously. It had happened.

  “I still don’t like you charging into—” Eli began, but I stepped forward and planted a kiss on his lips, silencing him.

  “Look,” I said when I pulled back, “I’ll stop by the bar when I’m done, and we can finish this argument then. I don’t know about you, but I remember all my lines.”

  Eli’s lips wobbled as he struggled not to smile. He lost the battle. “You are so frickin’ stubborn,” he said, but there was fondness in his voice.

  Rising to my tiptoes, I brushed another, lighter kiss on his cheek. “Strong-willed. I prefer the term ‘strong-willed.’”

  Then I dashed toward the van door before he could think to ask me for the address.

  A few minutes later, I was driving the White Whale south on a long stretch of Figueroa, fighting the traffic toward USC. Shadow was accustomed to the concept of “bumper-to-bumper,” so she’d gone back to lie on her bed. I tried calling the last number I had for Molly, but it was out of service. Typical vampire. For a moment I considered trying to find a newer number for her, but who would I ask? Dashiell? That would kind of eliminate the whole point of keeping this from him and Eli.

  Suddenly I felt like a moron. I was keeping a secret from my live-in boyfriend and my boss, for a person who had dropped me from her friend list years ago. “What are you doing, Scarlett?” I said out loud. By not telling Eli, I was risking my relationship with him, and by not telling Dashiell, I could conceivably be risking my job. I picked up my cell phone, willing myself to call Dashiell and explain the whole situation. But I hesitated.

  For the past few years, whenever I faced these moral dilemmas I would hear a little voice in the back of my head. What would Jesse want you to do? Jesse Cruz, the ex-LAPD detective who used to be my friend, was one of the few humans in LA who was allowed to know about the Old World, despite not really being connected to it. He also had serious ethics, and I knew damn well that in this situation he would want me to help my friend. Not because she was worth more or less than my other relationships, but because she needed me. The way this was done—pressing Britt, sending the note—it was desperate. Hell, contacting me after three years of radio silence was desperate in itself. Whatever had happened between us, Molly needed me bad.

  I tossed the cell phone back onto the passenger seat, half-certain I would regret this later.

  Even the last bits of cloud-reflected sunlight had been swallowed into the ocean by the time I reached campus, although the streets weren’t exactly dark, thanks to the new-looking streetlights. The buildings on the streets around USC tend to fall into two categories: Some of them are still shitty hovels that have been slapped with just enough paint and landscaping to prevent rich parents from
constantly calling the university to complain about safety. The rest, on the other hand, used to be crappy houses until investors dumped piles of money into renovating them into subdivided apartments that would suit the expensive tastes of Mommy and Daddy’s little princes and princesses. The finished products were astonishingly swanky, considering the inhabitants were eighteen years old and didn’t know how to do their own laundry. Nearly all of the buildings on Scarff fell into the latter category.

  There was no parking right in front of number 2310, but I stopped the van there for a moment anyway, leaning over the passenger seat so I could see the property. It was beautiful, actually, nearly as pretty as the little bungalow house Molly and I had once shared. There was a small, extremely tidy front lawn, enclosed by a wrought iron fence with tall gates. They opened onto a pretty cobblestone path leading to a porch that had been painted with contrasting shades of green and yellow. The building itself was an emerald-green Queen Anne–style Victorian that had been converted into two large units, one on each floor. I had to respect the designer, who’d pulled together a look that felt both secure and classy. The lights downstairs were on, but the upper floor was dark.

  I drove past and parked in the closest street spot I could find, a few hundred feet away. I threw on a denim jacket, pocketed my Taser, and looked at Shadow, who was giving me the same expectant, hopeful look that normal dogs pull out when there are Snausages nearby. I weighed the pros and cons for a moment. Shadow could be a very useful weapon, but I’d gotten the bloody note from Molly forty minutes ago; whatever danger there had been had passed by now. We were in a highly civilian area, and if I was being honest, I had a really bad feeling that I was going to find something horrifying in there. I wasn’t sure how the bargest would handle it. “Sorry, girl,” I said. “You have to stay here.”