Charming People

by A. L. Tyler

  “No.” Nick shook his head. “She’s gone. Remember her as she was.”

  Rogers’ cheeks looked thinner, and his forehead wrinkled as he brought a hand to his mouth, nodding to himself. He looked like he’d aged a decade in minutes. “What kind of hex?”

  I tried not to cringe at my ineptitude. “North American in origin.”

  Rogers’ eyebrows shot up. His voice was barely a whisper. “North American?”

  I nodded and took a deep breath. “Probably.”

  “Probably?” He looked to Nick. “What the hell have you been doing all night? Warren, people are dying—!”

  Nick didn’t bat an eye at the accusation. He was fantastic at toeing the company line.

  “I assure you, we’re doing everything we can with the time and resources we have,” he said, clasping his hands. “I need to know if Shaina said anything to you. Everything that happened behind this closed door.”

  Rogers’ eye twitched. He shuffled uncomfortably in his robe, and the anger he felt for our perceived incompetence was written in every line etched on his face. He leaned forward to rest his face in his hands again. I swallowed the uncomfortable knot in my throat, looking away as I feared he would burst into fresh tears.

  Shaina’s shoes were still by the bed. A stack of her clothes was neatly folded on a nearby chair, and a pair of earring rested on the nightstand.

  Rogers cleared his throat, pressing his palms together. He was fighting to keep his voice even. “She was convinced that it was in the wine.”

  Nick glanced toward me. I didn’t want to contradict a grieving man.

  I kept my eyes on Nick instead. “It wasn’t in the wine. I tested it.”

  He focused on Rogers. “Why the wine?”

  Rogers didn’t blink. “She opened the wine, and she left the room, and when she came back, she thought something was different.”

  “What?”

  Rogers sat back in his chair. “Something. You should look into Cal.”

  I tilted my head in confusion. “Cal?”

  “Why Cal?” Nick’s voice took on a hard edge.

  “Shaina thought she saw him walking out the far door of the kitchen when she walked back in.” Rogers shrugged.

  I held up a hand to stop Nick. The shake in his shoulder told me he’d barely suppressed a glare. I didn’t care. “She didn’t mention that last night.”

  “She didn’t mention it until we were in this room,” Rogers’ lip curled when he looked at me. “That is what Agent Warren asked, Ms. Driftwood. For everything that happened in this room. She said something about it as I was going to sleep. She was rather tired herself, and I might have called for you, but the spell I use was already taking effect. Even in her compromised state, Shaina wasn’t one to point a finger unless she was sure.”

  Nick crossed his arms. “Let’s assume for a moment that it was Cal. I’m not saying it was, but why would he go after Shaina? How did he kill Axel and manage to get back on the boat?”

  Rogers’ eyes wandered, and he shook his head a little. “I don’t know. I’m just asking you to look into it. There’s a murderer in this house, Warren, please—look into it.”

  Nick gave an almost imperceptible nod. He glanced at me before turning to go. When the door shut behind us and the wards were back in place, he started talking fast.

  “Do you know how to handle dead devil?”

  “What?”

  “The plant. Do you know how to handle it?”

  I shrugged. I’d read about it extensively, but only because it was unusual. “In theory, I guess—”

  “I need you to use it to strip my enchantments.”

  “Whoa.” I stopped walking. Nick didn’t, and I had to run to catch up to him as he turned a corner. “As much as I do trust you, I don’t think that’s a good idea...”

  “I’ll get the permissions. This is important enough. I need to perform an interrogation, and I need my hypnotism back to do it.”

  “Nick.”

  He stopped to look back at me.

  “The elixir you’re talking about is very difficult to make, and that’s assuming Axel has the rest of the ingredients—”

  “He does.”

  “You’re assuming I make it correctly and I’m able to lift the restrictions on your hypnotism.” I crossed my arms. “And even then, it isn’t permanently curative. It’s temporary. You’ll have ten minutes, max, and that’s assuming a lot about what Axel has on hand. That’s a lot of interrogating to do in ten minutes, and you can’t take more. This stuff accumulates in your system, even after the effects wear off, and it’ll start stripping your humanity and vampirism next. It’ll kill you.”

  He smirked in his arrogant way. “Ten minutes is all I need to interrogate Cal.”

  My heart fell. “You’re trusting Rogers.”

  “I’m trusting that Rogers knows a lot about hexes. He didn’t want to delve into it for a reason.”

  I nodded. “You think it might be triggered by suspicion. Spoken, or even thought. Yes, it could be set up that way. Axel’s paranoia was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Shaina went down when she started to strongly suspect him, too. He might have gone after Molly because she was dishonoring Natalie’s memory. That’s why Rogers was vague.”

  Nick gave me a small nod, frowning again. “How long?”

  “Twelve hours,” I said. “Give or take. Before nightfall, and as both Shaina and Axel felt the need to leave after sundown, I think that has something to do with the hex. We probably don’t need to worry about runners until then.”

  Nick nodded. “The killer didn’t anticipate this storm but knew the wolves would be active at night. Good observation, Driftwood.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  He glanced up from the text he’d started to compose on his phone. “It’s your name.”

  “It sounds especially condescending when you’re in charge of me.”

  He lifted his chin, the corner of his mouth twitching as his eyes wandered over me. “You are very moody when you’re tired. Humans in general, but you especially.”

  I tried to ignore the look in his eyes. “You’re a jerk if you think this is cute. Stop acting like you’re my superior.”

  “I am your superior. In more than one way.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Stop enjoying it.”

  “My enjoyment here is entirely up to you,” he smiled devilishly. “Stop making yourself so enjoyable, Agent Driftwood.”

  Nick dialed my safety line. I answered the call as he set off to make the rounds, warding the bedrooms to slow the occupants in case anyone tried to leave. I set off to gather some of the most dangerous plants to ever grace the planet, trying to ignore the more significant problem with Nick’s plan.

  Done incorrectly, dead devil elixir would turn him into a full-fledged vampire, and they well known for one thing: bloodlust.

  THE RAIN AGAINST THE windows in the conservatory and the overcast skies gave everything an odd sound and glow reminiscent of static on Nick’s old tube television. The white noise tuned out the sounds that usually nagged for my attention.

  Given the direction my thoughts were going, I would have rather had the distraction.

  My knowledge of vampires—in their pure, unadulterated form—was limited to what I’d read in school and seen in some case report photos.

  They were brutally hungry.

  It was nothing like the movies. If anything, Hollywood vampires were more akin to the Bleak’s enchantment-bound agents.

  The bodies left behind by a natural vampire out to feed were numerous and shredded. It wasn’t romantic or graceful. It was more like a fox let into a henhouse.

  Bodies everywhere, teeth marks everywhere, blood everywhere... Killing beyond what the animal could naturally eat in a sitting. Once the prey started to panic with no sure avenue of escape, killing became a game.

  No. I wasn’t looking forward to what could happen when Nick unbound himself.

  At the same time, the cons
equences were hardly any worse than things already were. People were literally feeding themselves to the wolves, and without knowing the exact hex at work, I was guessing blind as to how to stop it.

  Wolves outside. Vampire inside.

  I scanned the ingredient list I’d copied from the library and went to the plants one by one.

  Dead devil. Blue pane. Capped elf...

  I frowned, going back to the shriveled leaves of the blue pane vines. They didn’t look right. A quick manual reference later told me they needed sunlight.

  A lot of it.

  And I needed more than they had.

  I chewed my lip; Nick wasn’t going to be happy. I hated to admit that I was relieved. Even setting aside the effect the potion would have on Nick, harvesting dead devil, which could kill if one so much as looked at it, was no small task.

  No time. I grabbed what I needed for the other potions—my best guesses to unweave any potential hexes on the remaining guests—and went back to the workstations in the library.

  I flicked through the pictures of the spell measurements and instructions I’d put on my phone, cutting herbs and counting grains of amethyst and poppy seeds.

  ...Exactly sixty-seven... And who the hell figured that out the first time? The spell called for a once-living stone. I went to the exotics cabinet to fetch a coral, fossil, or petrified wood. I dragged my hand down the small, carefully labeled drawers My eyes landed on two words that made me pause.

  Nicholas Warren.

  My hand stopped. I hesitated, knowing what was in that drawer and wishing I’d never found it, because Axel thought of everything. He was a caretaker for excellent artifacts, and Nick was nothing if not excellent.

  I closed my eyes and slid it open, pulling out a small corked vial. The liquid inside was dark and syrupy. Even magic couldn’t fully forestall the effects of time, but I knew it was blood. The aged label peeled off as I turned it in my hand.

  Cryptocrix Blood. 30 seconds.

  He had done it. Really done it. Axel Hayden must’ve been insane, because practicing magic from the Cryptocrix Hippocrypha was a capital offense. The spells it performed were absolute and unforgiving. This blood would do to Nick exactly what I’d worried I would do accidentally.

  If he drank it, he wouldn’t just lose the binding restrictions the Bleak used to muzzle him. He would lose it all.

  Thirty seconds. Just long enough for a fatally wounded vampire to heal himself to health. I knew why Axel had done it, but the risks seemed too great. Thirty seconds was hours to a vampire.

  I sighed out loud.

  Nick’s voice came over the open line. “Everything okay?”

  I pursed my lips and tilted my head. “Yeah. Everything’s fine. I need to speak to you.”

  Two seconds later he was standing in front of me. I could practically hear the clock ticking in my head, because—as a vampire—he could have dropped every remaining survivor in the time it took him to respond. And under the influence of whatever spell Axel had pulled out of the Cryptocrix, he might actually do it. “Everything’s not fine.”

  “We don’t have enough blue pane,” I said flatly.

  “Blue pane?”

  I glanced up. “For the dead devil elixir. We’re fine on the rest, but the blue pane is wilting. The storms haven’t allowed it enough sunlight.”

  Nick laid both palms flat on the desk, leaning forward and looking down. His shoulders were tense.

  I clutched the bottle in my palm. “But...”

  I paused, looking for the right words.

  “But?” Nick asked firmly.

  Fresh thunder rolled across the island. The storm was intensifying again. Outside the windows, I caught a glimpse of a wolf shaking the rain from his large, loose pelt.

  Axel was right. One did get used to it, but it wasn’t any less unnerving. The contents of that animal’s stomach was on my mind.

  I looked frankly at Nick, unfurling my palm. “Axel had something on hand. Cryptocrix blood.”

  He breathed a deep sigh of relief and slammed a fist onto the desk in victory. All of my work jumped an inch into the air.

  I was going to have to recount my poppy seeds. “You understand this will make you feral, right? It isn’t just some magic pill that gives you back what you lost. It will also take away your humanity. Your control.”

  Nick’s lips twitched at a smile. “You’re worried I can’t handle it. I survived in that condition for more than two decades. I know what I’m doing.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me, but he was right. Of course he would have experienced it—before he joined the Bleak.

  On top of the questions I had about the lies he might or might not have told me, I wondered what his body count was. I didn’t want to know.

  He might lie about it if I asked, anyway.

  Nick tilted his head, almost imperceptibly, as he took in my surprise. “You’re right to question if it’s wise. It isn’t easy to deny oneself in that condition. That’s why I have a plan. We’re going to take everyone down to the Vault. Everyone will go in, except for me, and I’ll question Cal over the threshold. I wouldn’t be able to breach it, even if I tried. Everyone will be safe. I’m not taking any further chances.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded. It was a good plan, even as much as I wanted it to suck. “There’s one more thing. There’s only enough for thirty seconds.”

  Nick moved his hands to his belt in one sharp gesture. “That’s hardly enough for an interrogation.”

  “It’s what we have.” I shrugged. “It’s all we have. I can’t make more, Nick. These potents are stored in the Vault, and it won’t let me in to make something like this. I don’t even know how Axel managed to make it.”

  He gave a grim nod, looking over the implements I had on the table. He looked like he wanted to chew me out in a futile effort to find a different solution. He stalked away without another word.

  I couldn’t blame him. The situation was dire. He was pissed.

  I was pissed. I was better than this, but I was out of practice and unprepared. And tired. And hungry.

  There was no way of knowing if anyone was hexed until it was too late, and even if we weren’t hexed, there was apparently a master poisoner among us. Admittedly, the histories I’d read on the surviving guests didn’t indicate anyone, but Axel had an advanced knowledge of the alchemy required to brew up what had killed Molly...

  But if I had to guess, it would be Cal. He was a scientist, and gods knew what he’d been up to in all of his adventures.

  Nick’s voice came over the phone, stern and grating. “Finish the other potions. We’re going to the Vault when you’re done.”

  This time, I fought to keep my sigh silent. No pressure.

  Chapter 19

  “So, you’re telling me you want to set a vampire loose inside the house?” Skyla demanded.

  “This is completely preposterous!” Cal said, cheeks ruddy and shaking. “Why would you do such a ridiculously stupid thing on my account? If you’re going to interrogate me, I demand that you interrogate everyone.”

  We stood in the dark hallway at the threshold of the Vault. I was fighting the urge to bite my nails, but only because I didn’t know what kind of potion trace remained on my hands. Right then, I would have taken any vice to soothe my nerves.

  Hell, even the poisoned wine was starting to sound tempting.

  Nick stood his ground. “There’s an unknown and undetectable hex at work here, and no one has eaten in more than a day because we don’t know if the food is safe. We can’t leave, and no one is going to arrive here for another two days at least. They are mounting a rescue mission to get across the channel faster, but that doesn’t solve the problem of the wolves once they get here. It also doesn’t help prevent any further casualties.”

  And night was nearly upon us again. At least Nick had allowed me a two-hour nap while my potions were curing.

  “I apologize, Cal, but I’m not sorry,” Nick finished. “You have been accused
directly. This has to end.”

  “Accused by who?” he blustered.

  Amos had a protective arm around Skyla’s shoulders. Nick stood at his full height, arms crossed, and I felt much smaller than usual standing next to him.

  With weary, red eyes and hunched shoulders, Rogers didn’t shy away from the confrontation. “It was me. She was ripped to pieces by the wolves. It was me.”

  Cal gave him a long stare. His head tilted in disbelief in the long beat of silence that followed. “After all this time. You disappoint me, Woodrow.” Cal took the door handle and strode into the Vault. “I came here with no ill intent toward my brother, his mistress, or your fiancee, Rogers. Question me if you must, but I assure you, this is a waste of time.”

  I glanced at Nick, once again doubting if this was a good idea. His resolve was as solid as a brick wall.

  “Rogers,” he said, gesturing to the door. “Amos. Skyla.”

  One by one, they entered the Vault. When it was finally my turn, my palms were slick with cold sweat. My mouth was dry.

  “Agent Driftwood.”

  I glared at him before I took the handle, my clammy skin against the hard, twisted, wrought-iron rung, and pulled.

  And the door didn’t budge.

  I exhaled a shaky breath as Nick did a double take.

  What the...?

  “Jette?”

  I shook my head in disbelief. I wiped my hands on the side of my jeans, trying to clear my head.

  This is exactly what I need right now—an accusation of ill intent coming from a door!

  “What were you just thinking about?”

  “Nothing,” I snapped a little too harshly. I tried to calm my racing thoughts. “I’m thinking about what a terrible idea this is.”

  His voice was calm. Almost soothing. “Do you have a better idea?”

  I clenched my jaw. “No.”

  “Look at me.”

  I took a deep breath before complying. His hazel eyes were steady on my face, and I was uncomfortably aware of exactly how much sweat had soaked into my hairline when he reached up to gently stroke my cheek.

  “Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  Is he lying?