Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Read online

  “Do you guys own it?” I asked, meaning the vampires.

  “No, but we keep careful tabs on the family that does. They’re small and local, which makes it easy to press them when we need to. And of course, we’ve got someone on the inside.”

  Molly started to open the door, but I grabbed her arm. “Molls, you can’t say anything about . . . tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “And you can’t let Frederic know that anything’s wrong.”

  She blinked a few times, nodding to herself. “Right. I can do that.”

  Without another word, she got out and marched determinedly toward the entrance. I sighed and looked at Shadow, who was now watching my face intently. “You have to stay, girl,” I told her. I avoided her betrayed expression and followed Molly.

  A disproportionate percentage of LA residents are good-looking, but the Asian man behind the counter was next-level handsome. He was around thirty, with a low ponytail and a tight black T-shirt that outlined muscles I could probably have counted, given a bright light and a couple of beers. I figured him for night security, but as we entered through the glass doors I extended my radius wide enough to reach him. His face went stricken, and I felt the familiar sensation of another vampire in my radius. He doubled over just a bit, reaching for something underneath the counter.

  “He’s turning off the cameras,” Molly murmured to me.

  “That’s Frederic?” I whispered.

  She flashed me a smile. “Not what you were picturing?”

  “Is it racist if I say he doesn’t look like a Frederic?”

  “Not really,” Frederic called, in a voice that suggested he’d heard this a lot. I blushed. Vampires couldn’t use super-hearing around me, so this was a good old-fashioned case of me talking too loud. “My father was German; Mom was Japanese,” he added, still looking me over with great curiosity.

  To cover my embarrassment, I stuck out my hand, over the counter. “Scarlett Bernard.”

  He raised an eyebrow, his eyes flashing between Molly and me, but he accepted the handshake cautiously, as if tasting a foreign food. His expression was openly uncomfortable. A lot of vampires got that way around me. They were used to easily containing whatever emotions they felt, and forgot how to keep their thoughts off their faces. Frederic seemed more unsettled about it than most, though.

  He dropped my hand quickly and looked toward Molly. “What brings you here?” His head tilted slightly toward me, and the unspoken words were obvious: with her. Oh yeah, being a null was fun.

  “Just need a couple of things from the safety deposit box,” she said with a brittle smile.

  My attention was caught by the security monitors behind Frederic. There were more than a dozen, showing empty hallways and corridors in black and white. Three of the screens had gone dark; those had to be connected to the cameras covering the lobby. But there was another monitor in the bottom right, and this one was in color. It was showing a commercial for laundry detergent. “Can I get the second key?” Molly asked.

  Frederic blinked hard but didn’t move. “That’s your reserve, right? Are you running from something?” he blurted, then looked shocked, like he hadn’t intended to say that.

  The first red flag popped up in my head, and I took an instinctive step backward, looking around. There was no movement, no other cars pulling in. Frederic’s hands were resting on the counter, nonthreatening. Why did I suddenly feel watched? Automatically, I let my radius flare out, checking for other people. Nothing registered. I allowed it to resume its normal size.

  “Nah, Scarlett just needs to borrow some cash,” Molly said, more or less calmly. She held out a key on a small leather thong. Her hand was trembling a little. “Can I get the other key? Or do you want to walk us back there?”

  On the bottom monitor, the laundry detergent ad was over, and a woman from the local news appeared at her desk. The tiny screen over her shoulder was filled by a USC logo. “Molly—” I began.

  But it was too late. I felt the new vampire hit my radius, like a cool stone dropping into an aquarium of water. Only this one was powerful. So powerful that I recognized who it was before I could finish turning around.

  A tallish, elegantly dressed man in a dark overcoat stepped through the door we had just entered. With every step he took into my radius, his face clouded over with a little more fury.

  I swallowed, trying to work up enough saliva to speak. “Hi, Dashiell.”

  Chapter 6

  Ignoring me, the cardinal vampire of LA County strode forward with gritted teeth. He seized Molly around her upper arm, hard enough for the fabric of her dress to sink into deep wrinkles. Molly winced. Dashiell may have been human in my radius, but he was still a strong, relatively large man. And she was currently a small woman of about twenty.

  “How did you find us?” I blurted, but he cut me off with a wave.

  “Do not speak,” he snarled, throwing me a glare. “You, I will deal with later.” A chill tingled up my back.

  “Dashiell,” Molly began in a desperate voice, but he was so angry that he shook her, jostling her into silence. I winced, and one hand automatically drifted toward my knife pocket. Dashiell didn’t notice, but Molly did. Her eyes widened and she shook her head slightly. I froze, watching helplessly as Dashiell began dragging her toward the front door.

  Stupidly, I turned to look at Frederic, but he’d vanished into the hallway behind the monitors. What a coward. Behind me, I felt Dashiell and Molly pop out of my radius. I spun around again.

  “She didn’t do it, Dashiell!” I yelled just before he pushed open the glass door.

  He paused, and when he turned, I could see how much he wanted to scream at me. He stalked back over, Molly’s arm still trapped in his punishing grip. When he reached me, he was technically human, but his eyes were cold as dry ice. “She didn’t blood-gorge in my territory?” he said sarcastically. “She didn’t kill a bunch of rich white girls in the middle of the city’s most high-profile university?” Molly flinched away from him, equal parts ashamed and defiant.

  I could have made a case for UCLA being more high-profile, but occasionally even I can make a smart decision. “Someone forced her,” I insisted, my voice sounding weak even to me.

  He blanched for a moment, then shook his head. “Impossible.”

  “How do you know?”

  He gave me an irritated look. “There are two vampires who could force her to do something. The one who made her was beheaded twenty years ago, by her.” He didn’t actually say “you idiot,” but the implication was there. “Then there’s the vampire who holds her troth,” he continued, “and that is me. Are you suggesting I am responsible for this?” His eyes flashed dangerously.

  Troth was an oath of service, made to a cardinal vampire. It was almost impossible to break. “No, but—”

  He pulled his trump card. I should have expected him to have one. “And did you know that one of those girls was a Friend of the Witches?”

  Whatever I was about to yell died before it reached my lips. Molly’s face was as shocked as I felt. Witches are the only Old World species who are allowed to talk a little bit about what they are. Friends of the Witches are human families who have helped the witch community at some point and earned a sort of protected status. They’re like an endangered species in a game park.

  “I didn’t know,” Molly wailed. “She never wore an anti-vampire charm!”

  “Maybe she didn’t think she had to,” Dashiell said coldly. “And now, if I don’t come down hard on Molly, Kirsten will be irate, as she should be. That family was supposed to have protection.” He rounded on me, his hand never leaving Molly’s arm. “And you are never supposed to take the bargest out of LA County. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’d be in if the Luparii found out what you’ve done tonight?”

  Before I could answer, Molly swung her body around to face him. “Please,” she begged, tears running down her cheeks. “Please, let me say goodbye. I’ll go without a fight
. Just let me give her a hug.” Her voice broke, and something about her actually made Dashiell pause for a moment. He wasn’t used to human emotions, which meant he wasn’t entirely immune to a crying young girl.

  Molly saw his hesitation and took advantage, taking one careful step to close the gap between us. Dashiell let her slip her arm out of his grasp, but hovered a foot away.

  Molly threw her arms around my waist, her head turned so her mouth was near my ear. “I love you,” she said simply. Tears stung my eyes, but in my peripheral vision I could still see Dashiell relax just a bit, allowing this. “You gotta be understanding to Eli,” Molly added, in a voice so quiet that I wasn’t sure he would hear her. Then I felt her shove something small into my back pocket. “And one of these days, you should really dig Jesse out of that hole you left him in.”

  I flinched. “That’s enough,” Dashiell snapped. He grabbed Molly’s upper arm again.

  “I made Scarlett help me,” she blurted, startling all three of us. Dashiell and I both stared at her. “I threatened her protégé. Corry,” Molly said, her voice gaining strength. “I said I’d kill the girl if Scarlett didn’t drive me here.”

  Dashiell raised a skeptical eyebrow and turned to me. “Is this true?”

  I stood there with my mouth open, completely trapped. I didn’t want to dig Molly’s grave any deeper, nor did I want to expose her for lying. “What are you going to do to her?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

  “Put her on trial,” he said over his shoulder as he dragged Molly off into the night, tugging her out of my radius. His voice floated back through the door as it swung closed. “You’re lucky I don’t do the same to you.”

  I darted forward, but by the time I made it through the door there was no sign of them. Vampire speed. I looked over my shoulder for Frederic, but he’d completely disappeared. Typical.

  I knew better than to check my pocket immediately. Instead, I walked back out to the van as calmly as I could, noting that there were still no other vehicles in the lot. Had Dashiell parked around back? A few blocks away? Or had he simply run here from Pasadena? It seemed far-fetched, but then again, I didn’t know that much about actual vampire powers. Dashiell kept me in the dark on purpose, although I tried not to take it personally. I was fairly certain that vampires had invented the concept of “need to know basis” long before the military had gotten a hold of it.

  Back in my van, I had to spend a few minutes reassuring the freaked-out bargest, who had seen my exchange with Dashiell from the window. Shadow was extraordinarily protective of me, and there were fresh scratches on the dashboard and the armrests, which meant she’d come close to bursting through the window again. I sighed at the damage, but it was really the least of my concerns.

  Eventually Shadow settled down in the passenger seat, and I leaned back for a moment, thinking. It was oddly reassuring that Dashiell planned to go ahead with a trial. When he’d first walked through the door and hit my radius, I had been sure he was going to kill her on the spot for trying to skip town. Still, that only gave me about twenty hours to figure out who had set Molly up and how.

  It seemed impossible.

  I felt something small and poky in my back pocket and remembered Molly’s hug. Shifting, I reached into the pocket and pulled out the small safety deposit box key that Molly had been about to use. I frowned at it. Was she telling me I should take her stash and leave town? Or was there something in there that would point toward the bad guy? I looked back up at the building, but the front desk stood empty. Frederic probably had a second monitoring system, and was hiding until I drove away with my dog-monster. Smart man. Just to cover my bases, I got out of the van and went up to the door, rattling it in the frame. The electronic lock had been engaged.

  That seemed excessive, and for the first time I wondered if Frederic was the one who’d called Dashiell and warned him Molly and I were going to the storage facility. No, wait. How would he have known? I hadn’t even known we were coming until we were on our way. My van could be GPS-tracked, but it wasn’t like Dashiell or anyone on his team to sit staring at a little blipping screen every night, watching my movements. They had better things to do, and even Dashiell trusted me more than that.

  But somehow he had been informed that I was doing something off-book. How?

  When I figured it out, I slammed my head backward against the headrest, causing Shadow to rise in alarm. Molly had gotten there before me. “Be understanding to Eli,” I said out loud. Of course. My own boyfriend had called Will, who would have immediately called Dashiell. Dashiell would have taken one look at our progress on the freeway and figured out where we were going.

  I automatically reached for my phone so I could yell at Eli, but I stopped myself. He had been worried about his girlfriend’s safety, so he’d done what any wolf would do: checked with the alpha. I couldn’t be mad at him for that. Well, I could, but privately, at least for now.

  What was the other thing Molly had said to me? I looked down at the key in my hand, then up at the empty reception area. And I groaned.

  “Dammit, Molls,” I said out loud.

  Chapter 7

  Jesse leaned heavily on the grocery store cart, tapping out a rhythm on the handle with impatient fingers. The grocery store was surprisingly busy for 9:45 p.m., and of course there were only three checkout aisles open. As the twenty-something girl in front of him loaded bottle after bottle of diet soda on to the conveyer belt, talking on her cell phone the whole time, he was tempted to ram his cart into a display and stomp out of there. To make it even worse, she kept tossing her hair and giving him coquettish eyes over her shoulder. He was too annoyed to admire her multitasking.

  Finally, the girl made enough progress down the line for Jesse to start setting out his own groceries. And that’s when he caught sight of the hardcover book at the top of the stand next to the clerk. His own face stared back at him from the book’s cover.

  “Shit,” Jesse said under his breath.

  The young woman ahead of him glanced over her shoulder again, this time with obvious curiosity, but Jesse just pulled his Dodgers cap lower over his forehead, not meeting her gaze.

  Hopefully the short beard he’d acquired in the last month would provide enough camouflage—the Jesse Cruz on the book cover was clean-cut and well-dressed, leaning against a brick wall with crime scene tape strewn all over it, eyes hooded in a look the photographer had called “broody.” At the photo shoot Jesse had complained that cops would never put crime scene tape on a wall, but no one had listened to him.

  Jesse finished unloading his meager groceries and waited, trying to keep his eyes off the row of books. He couldn’t help but steal quick glances, like a scab that you can’t stop yourself from picking at. There was the cringe-inducing title, Wunderkind: The Rookie Detective Who Caught Two of LA’s Most Notorious Killers, followed by his own name embossed in embarrassingly large letters. Beneath it, in a small, easy-to-overlook font, sat the name of the ghostwriter who’d done basically all of the work: A. P. Cox. Jesse flinched and looked away.

  The young woman was finally done, and Jesse stepped forward, not looking at the clerk, a young Hispanic woman who was a foot shorter and fifty pounds heavier than Jesse. She was giving him the eyeball, but he couldn’t tell if it was because of the book cover, the scruffy look, or his pathetic groceries: Hungry-Man meals and beer. Wait, could it be the smell? Had he showered that morning? The night before? He couldn’t remember. Two days ago, his brother Noah had dragged him out of the apartment to the gym. Surely he’d showered after that . . . right?

  His phone buzzed, startling him. Lately the only people who called were agents and editors, who stuck to business hours, or his family. But it was a little late for his parents, who went to bed early, and Noah had said he had a date tonight. Jesse mumbled an apology and dug the phone out of his pocket. The lawyer’s name was on the screen, so he sighed and answered, ignoring the young woman’s irritated look. “Working late, Esteban?”
/>   “I wasn’t planning on it,” said the lawyer. His tone was just this side of annoyed. “But she has a couple of last-minute requests before we finalize the paperwork.”

  The clerk in front of him pointed at the register, where the total glowed in front of him. Jesse nodded and pulled out cash. He’d learned the hard way that it was hard to stay anonymous if you used a credit card with your name on it. “I told you, Esteban, give her whatever she wants. I don’t care.”

  “This is serious money, Jesse,” the lawyer insisted, but without any heat. This was an old argument, and he knew he wouldn’t win.

  “And Ava earned it,” Jesse replied, holding out his free hand for the change. “I told you, fifty-fifty, plus she gets the car and the condo. Is she asking for more than that?”

  “Jesse, some of that furniture is worth—”

  “I don’t give a shit about the furniture,” Jesse snarled, and in front of him, the clerk shrunk back. He winced and mouthed an apology, but she shook her head, her eyes darting to the rent-a-cop at the store entrance. Jesse sighed and picked up his bags, shifting so he was holding the phone in place with his shoulder. “This conversation is over,” he said into the phone.

  “Yeah, I can tell,” Esteban said shortly. He hung up.

  Jesse stuffed the phone back in his pocket, his teeth clenched together in frustration. He turned back to apologize to the clerk, but now she was standing there with the book in her hands, giving Jesse a look that was right on the brink of “a-ha!” He hurried out the door instead.

  Great. Another Vons he had to avoid now.

  It was only a few blocks back to Jesse’s bunker-like apartment. The place was tiny and utilitarian, but it came with a parking spot and he liked the location: close to Echo Park, an easy drive away from his parents’ place. Jesse had leased the place for almost six years now, even paying rent on it throughout the whole thirteen months of his marriage. In retrospect, maybe some part of him had known his relationship with Ava wasn’t going to last. Why else would he have left himself a bolt-hole?