The vampire cocked her head at a weird angle, like something a bird could do but not a human. She spotted the human in the ring with her, and pointed to the woman. “She was wearing them when she came to steal my land. I took them and I took her, but . . .” Bloody tears welled in her eyes. “But I lost one.” The vamp bent over Evelyn. Faster than Liz’s eyes could follow, the vamp yanked the woman into her arms, shoved her head back, and bit down on her neck. And started sucking. On the vamp’s feet were a pair of old, tattered, lace-up short boots from the nineteen hundreds. They had once been very fancy shoes. On the blanket beside her were other shoes, all expensive—made with lace, and woven with beads, satins, and tooled leathers.
Liz, still frozen in place, analyzed the vamp and their quarry. Evelyn was emaciated and paler than the moonlight, her skin a grayish hue. Black circles ringed her eyes. Her veins were dark blue in her pale skin, and her tendons stood out starkly in the dim light. She looked as if she’d had no food or drink in days, probably since she’d been abducted. Humans could live for forty-eight to seventy-two hours without fluid. That time period was based on their being healthy to start with, and not if they were being used as a juice box by a vamp. Evelyn moaned, a harsh sound full of desire and need. She was blood-drunk—the chemicals in vampire saliva and blood, and a vamp’s ability to mesmerize victims, were working like a drug on her mind. She had no idea where she was or what was happening. She wouldn’t be helping to save herself.
And she was caught in a magical trap with an insane vampire with a shoe fetish. In the circle, the vamp withdrew her fangs, curled around her prey, and closed her eyes.
Cia whispered softly, “If Evelyn dies, will she rise as an unwilling, insane vampire?” Liz didn’t reply, and Cia said, “We have to
Without thinking, Liz said, “Think she’d trade Evelyn for the other boot?”
Cia giggled, a slightly hysterical sound, cut off quickly. She pressed her hands to her mouth, as if to shut down the inappropriate laughter.
Liz shook her head, pushing away the horror and the realization that there was an important truth she had kept from her twin. Earlier it hadn’t mattered. Now it did, and Cia would be pissed. Her mouth dry, Liz took the plunge, saying, “We could . . . call Jane.”
“She’s in New Orleans. She’s too far away. We need to figure out who the vamp is and who to call to take care of this. Unwilling feeding, kidnap. It’s got to be against vampire law.”
“No. Jane’s in town. She’s here.”
Cia’s eyes found her across the circles, the feeding vampire, and her victim. “What did you say?”
“I said, Jane’s in town. For the inquiry into Evangelina’s death.”
Cia’s hair rose in an unseen wind. At the sight of it, chills ran down Liz’s arms and into the ground through her icy fingertips. “And you didn’t think I needed to know this?” Cia asked, her words low, full of threat.
“Do you remember taking the heavy dishpan out of my arms this morning?”
“
“And right now the moon is full. And you’re more powerful but less stable. So, just like you took the dishpan, I kept the news off and you busy so you wouldn’t have to deal with it right now. I was trying to help.” Cia didn’t reply. Liz said, “We’ve got two problems here. One—a blood witch who helped to kidnap a human female. Two—a vampire snacking on that human female. It’s our responsibility to take care of the witch. Jane takes care of vampires. It’s her job, and as the Enforcer for the master of the southeastern USA, it’s her responsibility.”
The power wind lifting Cia’s hair settled slowly, the dark red strands falling around her shoulders, which slumped. Her eyes filled with tears as she came back to herself, found her center, and put it all together. “Ohhh . . . damn,” she muttered. She took a ragged breath. “Evangelina was our responsibility, but we let Jane handle it. We were cowards. It was our job and we . . . let Jane . . .” Cia took a slow breath, Liz mirroring the action. Liz could almost see the moon power waver across the circle between them. “We let her kill our sister for us.”
Cia lifted a hand and pointed at the
Liz felt the power of the mountain shoot up through the ground and the moon power smash into the earth, securing the
“Something about this place,” Cia said, rubbing her upper arms against the chill.
“Yeah. This was too easy.”
“We actually transported a vampire and her victim out of her lair and into our circle with a simple
“Me neither.” They had until sunrise to figure out what to do. At sunrise the vamp would burn to death. And from the look of her, by sunrise, Evelyn would be long dead.
Thoughtfully, Cia closed the outer circle, and the twins walked to the car.
Back at the Subaru, they had a good signal and Liz dialed Jane on her cell. Cia went to work on her tablet, researching the property they were on to see if she could discover why the power levels were so strong.
“Yellowrock,” she answered.
“It’s Liz.” Jane didn’t say anything. Jane didn’t say much of anything at the best of times, and this couldn’t be one of them. “I know we need to talk about Evie, and about family and about . . . stuff, and all, but, well, Cia and I were hired to do a finding spell for a missing woman, who turned out to have been kidnapped in the middle of a blood magic spell, and now we have a psychotic vampire and her kidnapped dinner—that missing human woman— stuck in a
Jane chuckled. She actually laughed. “Why is this funny?” Liz demanded.
“You Everharts are . . . interesting.” Which was marginally better than other things Jane might have said.
“Fine. You have any advice?”
“Yeah. Send your GPS to my cell. Stay put. Asheville’s heir and I’ll be there as fast as we can.”
“Liz? Don’t hang up,” Cia said, holding her hand out for the phone. Liz passed it to her, and Cia said, “Jane, we’re on a site that used to be called Mayhew Downs, about a hundred twenty years ago. That didn’t seem important until our magic was a lot more powerful than it should have been. So I went back online to the history site and discovered that there was this big mystery about the town in the 1890s. The town was fine one day. By the next week, all the inhabitants had disappeared. Which is weird, right?”
Liz heard Jane grunt an affirmative.
“So I looked through all the daguerreotypes on the site and one shows the mayor and his wife—who is a dead ringer—pardon the pun—for the vampire trapped in our circle.”
“Hold.” The cell muted. When it came back on, the background noise had changed and they were clearly on speakerphone. Jane asked, “How did you get directed to that mountain?”
“By a Christian Louboutin boot, a five-inch spike-heeled black suede with fringe down the back seam. Size six and a half. It’s a right boot, and it was left in the middle of the missing woman’s apartment,” Liz said.
“Huh. And how do you know the spell that took her was a blood ceremony?”
“Blood magic charms in her bedroom.”
“Hold,” she said again. A moment later Jane came back on and practically snarled, “Do not get out of the car. Do not go back to the circle. Send me the coordinates. We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
The connection ended, and Liz sent the directions before putting her phone away. Outside, the black of night was filled with shifting shadows and a pale gray fog. “Did the vamp empty the town?” Liz asked, as much to hold off the night as to communicate with her twin. “Where did all the people go? And why?”
“I don’t know, but I have a feeling it has something to do with why our magic was so strong tonight.” Cia reached over and took her sister’s hand.
A little over ninety minutes later, Cia nudged her and Liz came awake with a start. “Lights.” Three, no, four sets of headlights were winding up the mountain, a line of cars that—even in the dark— looked heavy and powerful. “Is that what I think it is?” Liz asked.
Cia said nothing, but her grip on Liz’s hand tightened.
