Reach For Me

by Elizabeth Cole

  It was a room she’d never pay for on her own, but after the shitshow of her life the past few days, Cara felt that she was owed a break. Morningside could afford it, after all. And she didn’t intend to stay in the inn forever. She’d find a cheaper motel in a few days.

  Cara sat on the bed and leaned back against the pillows. Feather pillows. The faint scent of lavender puffed up, and she closed her eyes. Oh, right, this was why people paid big bucks for a nice room. It was totally worth it.

  Her phone beeped. She looked at the text message.

  Hope you’re settling in! Don’t forget that we have a full tea and coffee bar in our lounge. If you pine for a latte but don’t want to be social, just reply with your request and we’ll bring it up!

  This place was way nicer than the highway motel. On an impulse, Cara replied, and then leaned back against the pillows to rest.

  She was startled when she heard a knock on the door. She must have nodded off.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Thalia with your drink!”

  Cara opened the door to find the perky front desk girl holding a small silver tray.

  She beamed as she handed it to Cara. “Chamomile tea, with extra hot water in the carafe. The shortbread cookies are baked daily in house. Enjoy.”

  “This will just get added to my bill?” Cara asked, not seeing a receipt.

  “It’s all included.” Thalia chuckled. “Welcome to Calendar Inn.”

  Cara thanked her. If she was smart, she’d drink her tea, call her mom to sob, and go to sleep early.

  Instead, she ate the cookies, fixed her makeup, and left the inn to find a decent bar. Tea wasn’t going to do it for her tonight.

  It was not a big town, and Cara had little fear of walking alone at night, even though she didn’t know the layout. Still, she was a little unnerved when she thought she caught the sound of someone walking behind her. But when she looked, no one was there.

  She’d hit the first bar she saw, just to get off the street.

  Sadly, she was not in the boozy part of town. Cara kept walking, turning at random whenever she encountered a street that seemed more likely to host retail establishments. Damn, why didn’t she ask Thalia at the desk? Oh, right, she had a phone.

  Her phone had gone dead. Cara grimaced and shoved it back into her pocket.

  Once again, she thought she heard footsteps. And she was no longer entirely sure where she was.

  She walked faster, and just when she thought she might start running in a panic, she heard the faint sounds of music. There was a narrow street up ahead, with a glow emanating from it, almost gold, like magic.

  Cara stopped and turned when she reached it and saw lightbulbs strung across the space at second floor height, illuminating the otherwise sketchy-looking street. There were several doors and a few outside tables and chairs suggesting a restaurant or two, but only one door was propped open, and the music came from there.

  She hurried closer. It was a green painted door, and over it was a sign announcing the By and By Bar.

  Cara expected it to be a dive, but the interior was more cozy than dingy.

  Glancing behind her and seeing only an empty street, Cara tried to shrug off her creeped-out feeling and walked up to the bar.

  The girl behind the bar gave her a lopsided grin. “Evening. ID, please.”

  Cara realized she left her wallet at the hotel. “Oh, no.”

  “Rough night, huh?” The bartender smiled conspiratorially. “Tell you what. I won’t tell if you don’t. Bargain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Just tell me your name so I can make like I did see an ID if the cops come by.”

  “Cara Michaels.”

  “I’m Una. What can I get you?”

  Cara slid onto a bar stool. “Something strong enough to erase a bad memory of a bad decision.”

  “Ooh. Money or a man?”

  “Man.” Cara winced even as she rushed out with, “His name is Mal Salem.”

  “Oh, sweetie. I’ll take care of ya. Hold up.” She turned away from Cara and, like an alchemist with seriously shredded arms, mixed up a drink using about ten different bottles. The result looked something like a latte, creamy and light brown, with a foamy head. The bartender put down a coaster and placed the drink on top. “On the house,” she said.

  “What is this?”

  “I call it an AfterMal.”

  Cara had two options. She could hurl the drink to the floor and break the glass in a tantrum, or she could suck it up.

  She took a cautious sip. It was good. She drank deeper. “Wow,” she said at last. “I’m guessing it’s popular?”

  The bartender gave her a wink. “Sadly, yes. I’ve had a lot of chances to refine it. Lot of customers in need, if you know what I mean.”

  “How many?” Cara asked, hating herself for asking.

  “Enough to require a special drink. Leave it at that. You are not alone, my dear.”

  “You a victim too?”

  Una shook her head. “Strictly an observer of the human plight. Like a priest, I am here to comfort the afflicted.”

  Cara smiled. “Thanks for the comfort. I really needed it.”

  “Live to serve is the bartender’s motto. Take your time with that, it’s not for the faint of heart.” Una tucked a dishrag in her back pocket and moved to the other end of the bar where a man had walked up to order.

  Cara took another sip, mindful of the warning about the drink’s strength. She glanced around the bar. Irish music floated dimly out of the sound system. The Pogues? Maybe. The bar had fewer than a dozen customers, most of them tucked into tall booths, virtually hidden from her, known only by the sound of conversation and occasional laughter. Cara drank more, the alcohol dulling her emotional pain.

  The drink dulled her sense of time too. Or was this the second drink? Cara squinted at a clock on the wall and saw that it was after midnight. Crap, it was a work night, and she wouldn’t even get to bed for another hour. Did she miss dinner again? Or had Una supplied her with bar snacks?

  She was drunk.

  “Una?” she asked. “How far is it to walk to the bed-and-breakfast?”

  “You’re too wobbly to walk it. I can call you a ride.”

  “No, I’m not drunk,” she lied. “But earlier tonight…actually it’s the reason I came in here. I felt like I was being followed.”

  Una’s eyes narrowed, and she suddenly looked dangerous. “Really?”

  “I can’t prove it. I didn’t see anyone, exactly. It’s probably just nerves and—”

  Una put one firm hand on the bar. “Trust your instincts. Cian!” she called out. It sounded like keen. She made a gesture to someone behind Cara, and the bouncer walked up to the bar a moment later. He was a tank on two feet, his shirt straining over a huge torso. His shaved head gleamed in the dim light.

  “S’up, Miss Una?”

  “Cian, my friend Cara needs a ride to her place. She’s at the Calendar Inn. Drive her personally, and wait till she gets in the door, will you?”

  “Pleasure,” he rumbled. “Do I get to teach some asshole a lesson too?”

  “Only if he’s dumb enough to show up with you around,” Una replied.

  “Fingers crossed,” Cian said. “Ok, Miss Cara. Your carriage awaits.”

  The ride only took about five minutes, and Cian barely said a word on the way, instead humming along with the radio.

  He pulled up to the Calendar Inn and looked around. “All quiet, Miss Cara. Want me to walk you up?”

  “No thanks, I can manage. I, er, can’t tip. I’m cashless.”

  He waved it off. “Just following my boss’s orders. You have a good night now.”

  Cara got out and walked up the pretty stone path to the front porch of the inn. Cian watched her go, and she turned to give him a final wave before she went inside.

  She saw that he was holding a phone, but of course she didn’t know what he texted.

  Package has been delivered.r />
  A simple thumbs-up hovered over it.

  Cian texted again. Why did I just do this? She’s not a Salem.

  No, the reply came. But whoever is of interest to the Salems is of interest to us. And we keep our end of bargains.

  Cian nodded once, then glanced at the peaceful scene. Content that he’d held up whatever end of whatever bargain he was hovering on the edge of, he drove back to the By and By.

  Chapter 18

  After Cara had left, Mal went immediately for a beer, ignoring his younger brother’s gaze.

  “Don’t lecture me, ok,” Mal muttered.

  “You like her.”

  “Of course,” said Mal. “She’s nice.”

  “No, I mean you like her.” Lex raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were just being your usual Malefactor, but you act weird around her. Is this not just about getting her in bed?”

  “Don’t tell Dom. Or Lily. And definitely not Cara.”

  “Hey, not my job. I’m just doing lookups.”

  Mal recalled Lex’s recent assignment. “What did you find out?”

  “Lily and I went to the library, and we went through all the old records and books. Not just the files the family put together on Egan House before, but a bunch of books on hellholes in general and spells to seal them. Then we drove to the regular library and looked up the Egan name in the public records. Genealogists have way more resources than even a few years ago! We got a ton of fresh info.”

  “You’re such a dork. What info?”

  Lex seemed to be in a slightly better mood than he’d been in the morning. Maybe he was just excited about research. “One thing I found was that there was a birth record for a daughter. Her name was Marigold. But no death date that I can find. And no general records from a later date that seem to be the same person.”

  “Because she died in that house,” Mal said, believing it without having any evidence to back it up. Demon-hunting was a business that demanded a certain kind of trust in your own instincts.

  His brother chewed his lip. “Then why wasn’t it mentioned in any of the newspaper reports? Her name’s not there at all. And the Egans were rich. That fire was a big story, the first media circus in this area. And a surviving child would have gone for the inheritance, right?”

  “Lex, Marigold is dead. There is the ghost of a little girl over there. If her body wasn’t found in the wreckage, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there to find. Forensic science wasn’t spectacular at the time.”

  “Seems like a pretty big oversight.” Lex sighed. “Oh, that’s not all we found out during our lookup. Lily uncovered an account in the old Salem family files from a hunter who ran into a man named Egan who was caught trying to rob the crypt of a church in Romania.”

  “Let me guess. It was in the district once called Transylvania.”

  His brother grinned at him in approval. “And they always send me to do the lookups! Yes. It was in Transylvania, and our guy Egan was trying to raise a vampire. The hunter stopped that from happening and got the authorities to arrest those involved for desecration. But Egan was able to use his money and influence to get out of the country before things went further. And then he sort of dropped off the map—or at least out of the spotlight of the Salem family hunters. If Lily hadn’t found that old record, we wouldn’t have known.”

  “There are definitely vampires involved in what’s happening with Egan House today.” Mal told his brother about the vampire attack, and his suspicions about Morningside.

  “Dom’s going to be pissed when he hears about this,” Lex muttered. Their brother got very…emotional when vampires were involved. Specifically, he got stabby.

  “Maybe we’ll have it wrapped up by the time he gets back.”

  “Doubt it,” said Lex. “He and Vinny should roll in tomorrow or the next day. When you went MIA, I told him to get back here pronto.”

  Mal looked down at his phone. No word from Cara. If he encountered a vampire while he was out and about, maybe she was in danger too. Then he remembered what the one vamp said.

  “He told me to stay away from Cara.”

  “What?” Lex asked.

  “The vampire I killed. He ordered me to stay away from Cara Michaels. At the time, I was just freaked out by the fact that he knew who Cara was. But now I’m wondering if the vampires have another reason to be watching her.”

  “Well, it seems pretty clear that this Morningside guy is using Cara to rebuild the summoning circle. If the vampires are secretly the ones behind the rebuild, they want Cara alive to complete it.”

  “They’re protecting her? From me?”

  “They might just want to keep her from being distracted. And you do tend to distract the ladies,” Lex pointed out in his mild tone.

  “A vampire stalked and tried to kill me with the goal of keeping Cara’s attention on the project?”

  “Vampires are such assholes,” Lex said. “We should check our supply of stakes and holy water.”

  “I already did. It’s good.”

  Mal looked at his phone again. Nothing. Maybe Cara was still driving. Maybe she was fleeing the state, having given up on him, this town, the whole haunted house, and the entire messed-up situation. He wished he felt better about that possibility.

  “Where do you think she’s going to spend the night?” Mal asked absently.

  “Not with you, player.” Lex stood up. “You should text her and ask. And then wind down and get to your own damn bed, alone. You look like crap and you need to work tomorrow. Hopefully, she’ll show up too.”

  Mal was dead tired. But sleep was hard to come by when he kept thinking of Cara, alone and unprotected…wherever she might be. His text message to her went unread and unanswered.

  In the morning, he was woken up by Behemoth landing squarely on his back.

  Get dressed and follow me, the cat ordered. The night was not without interest.

  Mal shoved the cat off him and struggled into his sweats. It was appallingly early, not even proper dawn.

  He followed the cat outside, seeing Lex already standing near the Salem property line, right where the lawn met the road.

  Lex was staring down at a pile of grey ash, visible in the light of his phone. He announced, “The good news is that the wards against vampires are working perfectly.”

  “I see that,” Mal grunted. The vamp must have incinerated on contact with the invisible boundary that marked the Salem property.

  “The bad news,” Lex continued, “is that a vampire showed up at our place in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah.” There was zero chance of it being coincidence. Mal looked worriedly up toward Egan House, praying that Cara hadn’t been stubborn enough to camp out there again, where there was no anti-vampire protection to speak of.

  “Think the vamp was after Cara or you?” Lex asked.

  “I have no idea. If they’re watching her, they probably know she’s not here anymore. If they’re watching me, one of them might have decided to get a little closer.” In most situations, a vampire would have no problem crossing a property line. They were only forbidden from entering actual homes uninvited. Luckily, the Salems laid down extra protections to extend the zone of safety past the house itself. The vampire was probably really surprised, right before it got really burnt.

  “We have to tell Dom the second he gets back home.”

  Mal sighed. “Yeah. He’s got to know. And Cara should be told, well, something. I’m not sure she believes what I said about vampires, but I’m not about to trust their desire for her to finish the floor to keep her safe.”

  “Yeah, vampires can do carpentry too,” Lex noted in a way that was not at all reassuring.

  “They’re not going to turn Cara into one of them!”

  “Why not?”

  Mal struggled to find an answer.

  Splinters, Behemoth suggested. The undead would not excel at woodwork.

  “This whole conversation is getting bad,” Mal said. “I’m making coffee.”r />
  As soon as it was reasonable, Mal rushed to work, actually arriving before Cara did for once. He waited on the porch of the house, not having a key to unlock the place.

  He watched the clouds in the sky turn pink, then orange, then white as the sun climbed above the horizon.

  When a vehicle pulled up, Mal stood to be ready for when Cara came around the corner. She looked red-eyed and a bit sleepy.

  “Where’d you stay last night?” he asked.

  “I have a room at the Calendar Inn. It’s nice.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “At the prices they charge, I don’t think petty crime will be an issue.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Are you still wearing the necklace?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes,” she said, unwillingly.

  “Good. Don’t wander around at night, ok? In fact, you should come back to the house.”

  “Uh, how about no,” she snapped.

  “Cara, there are vam—” The arrival of the other workers cut him short. “We’ll talk later.”

  “Dream on.”

  Cara steadfastly ignored him for the rest of the day, choosing to lock herself in the parlor and work diligently on the stupid summoning circle, despite all his warnings. Mal tried to talk to her half a dozen times, and each time got shut down before he could even get a word in.

  He planned to get her to listen after the shift ended, but a text from Dom changed that plan too.

  Home. Get over here ASAP.

  Mal sighed. Dom sounded pissed. Whether it was because of Mal’s mistakes, the presence of vampires, or something else, he didn’t know.

  Mal sent a text to Cara, asking her to contact him, and then went home.

  He found his brothers, Vinny, and three cats in the kitchen. The humans sat at the table. The cats had taken over the couch. Piewicket was diligently bathing Pumpkin, so at least something was going well. Pumpkin saw Mal and let out a little squeaky mew.

  The little one thinks you are the person to feed him, Behemoth informed him.

  “In a bit,” Mal said.

  Now.

  “Fine.” He got out the formula and wrapped Pumpkin into a hand towel burrito, the only way he could get the kitten to stay still enough to feed. He tucked the kitten burrito into the crook of his arm and sat down at the table.