Under a Spell

“Isn’t it weird for a foreign exchange student to be somewhere for two years?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess not.”

Nina tossed the book aside and grabbed another one from my lap. “So, what brought on the three a.m. walk down memory lane?”

I sighed, leaning back on my palms. “Nothing. I guess I just thought there might be some kind of clue, something that would point me in the right direction. I filled Nina in on the day’s activities—including my chat with Lorraine and the dozens of glowing pentagrams.

Nina shivered. “Those witchcraft things always creep me out with their symbols and their chalk and stuff.”

I couldn’t help grinning, watching my undead roommate flip yearbook pages, the tip of her tongue playing with the point of her angled fang as she fretted over witchcraft.

“Doesn’t vampire trump witch?”

Nina cocked a brow. “Vampire trumps everything, toots. Except for sunlight. But we do what we do”—she splayed a hand elegantly against her pale chest—“because we have to. Essentially, we’re not born bad, we’re made bad.”

I squeezed Nina’s bare knee. “You’re not bad.”

“But witches?” Her upper lip curled into a disgusted snarl. “They choose to be bad.”

“Some of them.”

Nina cut her eyes to me. “Tell that to my nephew who practically got shish-kabobed today in the finance meeting.”

“Kale’s still mad?”

Nina flipped a page. “Madder. She hit the roof— el kabob-o—because she saw Vlad talking to a Kishi demon in the waiting room.”

“Kishi demons tend to eat the faces off the men who engage them.”

Nina shrugged. “Not punishment enough in Kale’s eyes. So you’re strolling down memory lane, looking for the pentagram-drawing club?”

I closed the yearbook on a sigh. “I guess there’s nothing in here. And you were right. I want to find Alyssa. I just keep feeling like I should be doing more than sitting around looking for clues. I should be out looking for her.”

“And Sampson said stay put. Look for the coven only. Check yes for coven, no for no coven.”

“And then what?”

“And then UDA goes in and tries to make them compliant.”

“But they could be murderous witches!”

Nina fixed her eyes on mine. “Check yes for coven, no for no coven. Even if they’re murderous, it’s not your investigation.”

I shrugged.

“It’s Alex’s. He does the normal, you do the para. Right?”

I shrugged again, looked away. “Like you’re such a rule follower.”

Nina cocked an eyebrow, then produced a blood bag from her robe pocket and pierced it with a fang. “I like the deeply contemplative senior pic,” she said, holding it up for my inspection. “It looks like you’re considering whether you should read Tolstoy or Nabokov next.”

“Probably more like Seventeen or Cosmo Girl—I wasn’t that deep. Or that smart. The only chick who read Tolstoy—and paid for it dearly—was Suri Lytton.”

“Suri? Like Suri Cruise?”

“No, like the name Suri existed independent of the late Cruises. Look her up; she’s probably right next to me.”

Nina looked back at the book and frowned. “Nope. No Suri. Maybe she was younger?”

“No, we sat next to each other in every class. She’s got to be in there.”

Nina flipped back to the index. “Not here either.”

I opened my book, thumbed a few pages, then pointed. “See, right here next to me. Junior year.”

“And not here senior year.”

I flopped back onto the carpet and yawned. “I don’t know, I can’t remember. I have to get more information.”

Nina’s head bobbed over me, her long black hair swishing over my cheeks. She grinned, her fangs pressing against her lower lip. “Spy trip?”

I bit my cheek to hold back my grin. “I need to get the police reports from Alex.”

“Didn’t Sampson give you a copy?”

“Of the preliminary report, but I know there’s more.” I pinched my bottom lip. “But how am I going to get it? Last time I broke into the police station—”

“You broke out with your left arm handcuffed to a desk chair.”

“Yeah, that really slowed me down. We need someone here. We need someone who can get into the computer system. Someone who’s good with technology and has no moral compass.”

As if on cue, the front door slammed and we heard Vlad shrugging out of his duster and unloading his keys onto the counter.

Nina waggled her brows. “I think we’ve found our morally bankrupt companion.”

“Vlad!” Nina and I went tearing into the living room, catching Vlad wide eyed, a half-smashed blood bag in one hand, a tiny trickle of velvet red dribbling down his chin. He caught it deftly with the tip of his tongue and my stomach lurched. “What?”

“Can you help me out with something?”

I yelped as Nina body checked me, shoving me aside. “Here is your mission should you choose to accept it,” she said, hands on hips, legs akimbo. “And you have to accept it or we’re kicking you out. You are to break in to the SFPD computers and filch a couple of case files for us.”

“Please?” I said, poking my head over Nina’s shoulder.

Vlad regarded us coolly, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and cocked out a hip. “So you’re asking me to break into the city’s computer system.”

“It’s a matter of life and death.”

“It’s illegal,” he said, as though he had suddenly sprung a conscience.

I gaped. “You care?”

“No, I just want to make sure you know what I’m risking.”

“Can you do it?” Nina wanted to know.

Vlad scoffed. “Of course I can.”

He crossed the room to his laptop, and I nipped at his heels behind him. “You can do it without anyone knowing, right? The police”—Alex, I thought—“absolutely can’t know. Will they be able to trace this back to us?”

Vlad sat down, minimized the CGI vamps in the middle of his BloodLust game, and glared at me. “I need some space. You need some toothpaste.”

I snarled, backed away, and did one of those huff-breaths into my cupped hands. I was a little dragon-breathy. But then again, it was nearing 4 AM.

As Vlad’s long, thin fingers weaved deftly over his keyboard, my heart thumped, the adrenaline shooting like ice water through my veins. I paced, then finally grabbed my shoulder bag and upturned it on the table, spreading out the preliminary files that Sampson had given me, the receipt, my sparkly unicorn notebook containing all my notes, and an etching of the protection symbol carved into the desk. I sat down, grabbed a pen, and waited for Vlad to feed me information. Instead, he poked his face around the side of his laptop screen and narrowed his coal black eyes at me. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting. You find the files, shoot me any pertinent information and I’m here”—I waggled my pen—“waiting for it.”

Nina came up on my left, her arms wrapped around her as if she was chilled. “Are you sure about this?”