Under a Spell

bruise.

Vlad touched two fingers to the wound and winced. “I had just eaten—a lot.” He patted his belly. “I’m still pretty full. Once the blood wears down it’ll go away. Damn that woman. I can’t go out looking like this.”

“Why? All the other vamps on the playground going to make fun of you?”

I thought I heard a low growl from the direction of the couch.

“I don’t remember everything,” I said, curling myself into my robe. “But I do remember the way you went to her after the crash.”

He avoided my gaze, grabbing the remote instead and turning the volume up high.

“So, make any sense of the thing?”

I spun as Will stepped out of my room, jeans on now, T-shirt thrown over one shoulder, towel thrown over the other.

“Of what thing?” I wanted to know

Vlad poked his head over the couch. “Before the pummeling. Lorraine and Kale and that star map thing.” He jutted his chin toward the table.

I leaned over the map and frowned, pushing my finger over charred masses of what had once been star patterns. “It wasn’t like this last night, was it?”

“No,” Will said, closing the distance between us. “Lorraine was doing some spell—well before the group walloping. After, the sodding thing caught fire. She wrote these notes down before I had to save the day with the fire extinguisher and wrestle the otter from the bird.”

“Wait—you were walloped. I was fine. Did I put out the fire?”

Vlad snorted and put the TV on mute again. “No, you were pretty much useless, mate. I put out the fire and saved what was left of Lorraine’s writings. Then we all went to the hospital, this one pitched to the floor.” His eyes cut to me. “Lorraine went into surgery, the doctor said Kale was fine, and she beat me with an otter once we came back home.”

“So just another quiet night at home,” Will said, kicking his feet onto the coffee table and lacing his fingers behind his head.

I took the notes from the table and read out loud. “‘Spell chanted on the seventh calendar day when the zodiac and the stars’—we knew all this. Cathy was found seven days after her abduction. We’re working on the same timeline with Alyssa.” I pushed the burnt star map aside and brushed my hand over the blond tabletop, now marred with black blossoms of charred wood. “We ruined a perfectly good table to figure out information we already knew?”

“Seemed like the information was pretty powerful to you. How’s that goose egg?”

Will rubbed a hand through my hair and I winced when his fingers went over a sore spot. “Ow! What was that?”

“I told you, love. You passed out.”

I shook Will off me and began cleaning the debris from the table. “So we know—again—that Alyssa’s kidnapper and Cathy’s”—I cleared my throat, still somehow unwilling to say the word—“assailant were—or are— using the girls as sacrifices to call on Satan. Both Cathy and Miranda have books of safety spells. Great.” I sat down in a dining room chair. “We are absolutely nowhere.”

“Why is someone trying to sacrifice girls to gain favor with the devil?” Vlad chuckled. “That’s lame.”

I felt myself pale. “I don’t know why I’m asking, but why is that lame?”

Vlad rolled his eyes as if I’d just asked his opinion on Justin Bieber. “Because first of all, no one uses human sacrifice anymore. And everyone knows that blood isn’t used for summoning, it’s used for opening.”

“Uh, opening?” Will asked.

“Blood, fluids, whatever—used for opening portals. Bodies are offered in reverence or thanks.”

“So our dude is thanking your pops for something?”

I pinched my upper lip. “We’re not entirely sure that Satan is my father.”

“Right,” Will said, picking up a magazine. “It could still be a dictionary salesman from Skokie.”

“Anyway, Lorraine specifically said the carving was an incantation. It was a calling.”

“So he used the girl as a bit of lovely stationary and as a thank-you gift? Is that what we’re thinking?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Blood opens a portal. The incantation was a calling of something.”

Will looked from Vlad to me. “Opening the door to hell, kind of like a Pied Piper thing drawing the devil out? That makes sense, right?”

Vlad barked out one of those “as if” laughs.

“Hey, stop with your brooding and moping, and help us, would you?” Will yelled, giving him a thump with the rolled-up magazine.

Another eye roll by Vlad. Wouldn’t kids ever come up with something new?

“Try opening up a portal and then drawing something to it. That’s what your perp is doing,” Vlad said, glaring at us as though it were dead obvious.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

He sniffed. “No one asked me.”

I groaned. “Vlad! Okay, okay, tell me this. If our guy is opening a portal and calling something to it, why is he doing it again?”

“He could be calling something that is only out for a limited time.”

“Like the holiday china you get from Burger King?” Will asked.

Vlad scrunched up his nose. “Kind of like that. Or, it’s not working.”

“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t it work if he’s got the incantation and the girl?”

Vlad launched himself off the couch and into the kitchen, knocking over a series of long-expired condiments before finding himself a blood bag. He pierced it, took a swig and glanced up at it. “Because he just hasn’t found the right girl.”

Will and I exchanged a look as heat walked up my spine, vertebra by vertebra. “This is going to keep going unless we stop it.”

I flopped down onto the couch, feeling incredibly defeated. “We can’t ask Lorraine who or what this witch is trying to summon. She said some of the incantation was wrong on the original—” I swallowed, my throat dry. I didn’t want to say “body,” but that was the image that sparked in my mind’s eye. “It was wrong in the original case.” I paused, considering. “Hey, Vlad, what do you know about a store called Simply Charming?”

Vlad closed his laptop and shot me a narrowed glare. “I know that you can’t get me near that place with a ten-foot pole.”

“Why’s that?” Will wanted to know.

“Because that’s the kind of place where Kale shops and I do not need another wallop to the head anytime soon.”

“Bitches be crazy, right, cuz?” Will said in a spot-on American accent as he gave Vlad a fist bump.

“It’s like I’m in the Twilight Zone,” I muttered.

Simply Charming didn’t stand out on the retail block where it sat, but once we were inside, it was a world unto itself. Will pressed a hand over his nose and leaned down toward me. “Why do all these places smell like crappy incense?”

“Blessed be!” A doughy woman with bottle-red hair came floating toward us in a sea of gypsy style silks. I knew she was one of the knock-off witches that drove Lorraine crazy and I gave a short smile, knowing that Lorraine would innocently turn her into a barnacle if UDA law would allow. “I’m Meadow. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yes, actually, uh, Meadow,” I said, taking the lead. “We’re investigating a case with the SFPD. One of our victims had a book of protection spells in her possession that we believe is from this store.”

The woman clasped her hands in front of her chest and nodded, her cornflower-blue eyes wide but only semi-focused. “We do have a book of protection spells that we keep in stock.”

“Our victim was a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“Oh, no.” Meadow’s hands went to her throat. “That’s awful.”