break apart once it’s impacted so that it doesn’t exit the victim. Hard enough to protect the inner casing but soft enough, again, to break up and allow that inner casing to light up a vampire from the inside. Do you understand how tall that order is with the equipment I have available to me?”
I stretched my hands toward the ceiling.
“Taller,” he drawled.
Cole had been leaning against the kitchen counter, absently watching the cleaning frenzy on the monitor as we talked. Now he looked at us and said, “You know what this situation calls for?”
Bergman and I shook our heads.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his fist, sat at the table, and offered us his open hand. “Bubble gum.”
We dug in and sat in relative silence except, of course, for the blowing and the popping. Suddenly it came to me. “What if it’s not a bullet?” I asked.
Bergman sat up, a sure sign of interest. Cole blew another bubble, so who knew. I went on. “What if it’s a dart?”
“Nah,” said Bergman. “The needle’s too thin. We need something round enough to contain the pill.”
“Crossbow bolt?” suggested Cole. His eyes went from my face to Bergman’s and back again. “Hey, quit looking so shocked. Just because I have beautiful tresses doesn’t mean there isn’t a working brain underneath. Look at Cassandra.”
We tried. She’d just emerged from the bathroom, so we craned our necks, bending nearly backward to see not only her lovely long locks but also the shining silver medallion she carried on a chain between her outstretched fingers.
“Is it ready?” I asked.
“Quit bouncing, Jaz,” Bergman growled. “You’re going to knock something off the table.”
“Lemme out!” I ordered. Bergman stood up, allowing me to exit stage left. I went to Cassandra and took the medallion in my hands. When she’d put it into the pot along with all the other ingredients, it had just been a plain silver disc. Now she’d imbued it with the powers of the herbs. And magical writings, the words she’d whispered over the pot, had carved themselves into its face.
“Cool,” I whispered. She grinned with pride.
“Do you remember me telling you we needed something that belonged to Pengfei to make the spell work?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
She tapped the side of her head with a newly manicured fingernail. “I think I figured it out. While you were gone, Bergman raised Pengfei’s image on his computer.”
“Under protest,” Bergman cut in.
Cassandra ignored him. “That helped me make a detailed transfer to the
“Okay, but I want to put on the dress first.” I ran into the bedroom, shimmied out of my clothes and into Pengfei’s. They were loose in the bust and tight in the butt, which made me hate her all the more. I hurried back to the living room.
Bergman and Cole had moved to the driver and passenger seats, which they’d turned to face me. Cassandra stood waiting beside Ashley.
“Okay,” I said. “Lay it on me.”
She draped the medallion over my neck.
I looked from her to Cole to Bergman. When all the color left Miles’s face I knew the spell had worked. “Take it off,” he whispered, “before it curses you!”
Ignoring him, I looked at Cassandra expectantly. “Well?”
For an answer she clapped her hands one time, hard, and smiled so big you’d have thought she’d just won the lottery.
Cole popped a bubble. “Hey, Cassandra,” he said. “Can you make me one where I look like Keith Urban?” He glanced at Bergman. “Isn’t he still married to Nicole Kidman? God, what a babe.”
But Bergman seemed to have developed blinders. Cole could’ve been broadcasting from the Space Station for all the attention Miles paid him. His hands jerked, and I realized he’d dug his fingernails into his chair’s armrests up to the first knuckle. He leaned forward, and for a second I thought he was going to lunge out of his seat, rip the medallion off my neck, throw it down, and stomp on it like some enraged second grader. Instead he fell back in the seat, closed his eyes, and took off his glasses. As if that still wasn’t enough to keep the scene before him from playing out behind his eyelids, he turned his seat around.
“Cassandra, you did great!” I said, twirling around so she could get one last look before I dove back into my comfy clothes.
“She’ll probably turn into a pumpkin at midnight,” Bergman muttered.
“All right, that is it!” I strode to Bergman’s chair and spun it around. His eyes opened, startled and a little scared.
