Cursed

I look to see Zack outside. I place Alan’s phone on top of the papers and then use it to dial Zack’s cell. “I’m with Alan in his office. I’ve already started. I don’t want you to be affected by what I’m doing.”

“Want me to stay outside?”

“There’s a waiting room. You’ll be safe behind closed doors. Alan will buzz you in. Keep this line open. I’ll put us on speaker. You can listen in.”

Zack agrees.

I turn to Alan. “Let my friend in.”

Alan reaches under his desk. The front door buzzes open. Seconds later I hear Zack’s footsteps.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

“Door’s closed.” Zack’s voice comes through the speaker. I can hear him pacing on the other side of it. “What have you got so far?”

“Not much. We’re just getting started.” I turn my attention back to Alan. “Did you have anything to do with Isabella Mancini’s disappearance?”

“No.”

“What about the disappearances of Amy Patterson or Evan Porter?”

“No. I told you.”

“And yet they all have one thing in common. Green Leaf. And you.”

Alan shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

He doesn’t. His expression is both troubled and sincere.

Zack’s voice comes through the telephone’s speaker. “What’s going on, Emma? I thought you said he wouldn’t be able to lie.”

“He can’t.” I peer closely at Alan. “You know Michael loves Isabella. If you’re holding anything back—”

“Of course I’m not holding anything back. I’d do anything for Michael. Anything.”

There it is. The truth in his statement strikes me like a slap in the face. We’ve made a mistake. I turn off the speaker and pick up the telephone receiver. “It’s not Alan.”

“So what do we do now?” Zack’s expression reflects the same frustration I’m feeling.

“I wish I knew.” Selfishly, I think about Liz first, then Dexter. “I hate to say it. Hate to even think it. Could Evan, Amy, and Isabella already be dead?”

Alan stirs in his chair. “Of course Isabella’s dead. She’s a vampire.”

I snap my attention back to him. “You know Isabella is a vampire?”

“Yes.”

I immediately replace the phone, reactivate the speaker. “Michael told you?”

Alan shakes his head. “Not Michael, my mother.”

“Your mother?” The revelation comes out of left field. Then I realize she probably learned of this from someone else.

Zack’s thinking the same thing.

“Barakov,” he spits out. “He’s the one. Ask him.”

“Was it your stepfather?”

I watch Alan’s face. “Barakov—Alexander—didn’t take them.”

Alan’s shoulders slump. His hands rise to cover his face.

A strange sensation washes over me. The gut instinct that the pieces are about to fall into place.

“He’s not involved?” I ask.

He answers with one word. “No.”

“But you know who is?”

I hold my breath.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

He glances around. A sign of resistance. We’re wading through territory he’s kept deeply suppressed.

I realize I may already have the answer. “Your mother?”

Alan nods, his face crumpling in shame and pain. Eyes fill with tears, not just of sadness, of anger.

“What’s happening?” Zack asks.

I fall back into the chair across from Alan. “He’s nodding. Barbara Pierce is the one behind all of this.”

“She’s saving lives. The vampires—they’re making a noble sacrifice.” He utters the words as if they’re his lifeline, a self-soothing mantra he’s been relying on to justify something horrible, something heinous. He’s holding on to the arms of the chair, knuckles white. “She said I had a choice. I could let Michael go, or I could save him. How could I just let him go?”

I know what it’s like to stand by, watch the worst happen to someone you love, and know there’s not a thing you can do about. I’ve been there more than once. If someone offered me an out, would I have taken it? Possibly.

“Make him explain,” Zack says.

I don’t need to make him. He’s started to tell the truth and he’s on his way to feeling better. Just as I told him he would. He’ll want to get it all out now, even if that means betraying his mother and implicating himself. I feel a rush of empathy. With power comes sacrifice. Alan chose to save Michael, and in doing so, he lost a piece of himself.

Alan stares across the desk at me through haunted eyes. “I want to help. I’ll tell you everything.”

Of course he will. I draw my powers back in and seal the doors shut. We won’t need them anymore. Not with him. I walk over to the office door and open it, surprising Zack on the other side.

“You can come in now.”

Alan doesn’t even wait for introductions. He begins in a barely comprehensible rush. “It’s not her fault. She’s been given no choice. She made a mistake, yes. But now she’s having to pay and pay and pay. That horrible man. Killing all of those people. Making her . . . all for what? Money. She was going crazy. She had to find a better way. And now . . .”

Zack holds up his hand. “Slow down. Let’s start with who’s been killed.”

“Charlotte Barakov, for one. That’s where it started. When Mother hired Davis Mager to get rid of her. It was crazy and stupid, not to mention wrong.” He shakes his head. “But what that man has forced her to do since . . .”

Zack takes a seat on the edge of the desk. “So your mother hired Mager to kill the first Mrs. Barakov, then what? He blackmailed her?”

Alan nods. “Yes. About a year after Mager got rid of Charlotte, he contacted Mother. His daughter was in need of a heart transplant. Only he didn’t want to wait for a voluntary donor. He blackmailed Mother into helping him identify the right person, then into doing the surgery. Naively, she thought that would be the end of it. But it got her in deeper. Gave Mager the idea that they could harvest organs and sell them on the black market. He had connections. At first they targeted the homeless.” He stops abruptly, his eyes darting between Zack and me.

“And?” Zack encourages him to continue with a wave of his hand.

But Alan’s eyes have settled on me. “You didn’t flinch when I mentioned Isabella was a vampire.”

I cross my arms in front of my chest. “No, I didn’t. You said at first they targeted the homeless. Are you telling us at some point Mager and your mother shifted their focus to vampires?”

He nods. “She said she couldn’t live with what she was doing. But she couldn’t get out of it, either. She was getting in deeper and deeper. Then the idea came to her. She knew about Alexander’s experimentation, about his technique. She convinced Mager to invest, to allow her to explore the possibility of using vampires instead of humans. They’re already dead. And their organs regenerate.”

“Your mother and Mager are kidnapping vampires, then harvesting and selling vampire organs?” asks Zack.

“Apparently vampires are universal donors. Mother discovered a vampire organ can be transplanted into a human with no danger of rejection. Mager’s doing the kidnapping.” Alan’s face turns red. “Although it seems Mother has looked through Alexander’s patients’ records from time to time to find ‘prospects.’ Her word, not mine.”

I sit again, trying to absorb what he’s telling me. “And then your mother operates on these prospects against their will?”