Charming People

by A. L. Tyler

  I reached for the wall and shut off the lights.

  I couldn’t see Nick, but I heard the light huff of his laugh. His next move was going to be an interrogation lamp, so I beat him to the punch and brought out my cell phone.

  Pulling up the picture I’d found in the library, I held it before his face.

  “Samson Grift,” I said.

  Nick’s expression didn’t change, and I considered it a bad sign. He was wearing his work mask. “You’re still focused on Samson Grift.”

  “I would need higher clearance to get to this picture if it was Samson Grift, or someone made a big mistake,” I said. “This is a picture of my father, Samuel Driftwood, standing in Felony Red’s bar between you and your friend Robert with the bad memory.”

  Nick took the phone from my hand, gazing down at the old photograph. He slowly reached to the wall and turned the lights back on. “Someone made a mistake, Jette. I don’t know what else to tell you. This man is Samson Grift.”

  I grabbed my phone back, looking again, but every time I did, I became more confident. “You’re lying to me.”

  “I’m not. This was all about Grift?”

  I closed my eyes, once again doubting myself in the face of his patient understanding. “This is important to me, Nick.”

  He had his arms crossed, but it was more like he was hugging himself. Trying to make himself smaller, and less intimidating.

  I knew most of his tricks, but I feared I didn’t know enough of them.

  “I can see that,” he said. He reached out one hand to touch my shoulder, and when I didn’t pull away, he slid his touch up to my neck. He gently stroked his thumb through my hair, and I saw nothing but sincerity in his eyes.

  He started to pull me closer.

  “I can’t let it go,” I said. “I have to know. Robert said there was a box, buried in the flower bed behind my house—”

  Nick bowed his head just before kissing me, sighing in exasperation. “There aren’t any flower beds behind your house.”

  “I think he meant my childhood house. There was a flower bed, where we planted these sunflowers that you could see from the beach—”

  “Fine.” He took a deep breath. “I will go with you myself and dig it up, right after we finish here. I don’t know what else I can do to convince you. I’m on your side. I want to help you figure this out, but from what I know, there’s nothing to figure out.”

  His frustration burned in his eyes, and it wasn’t entirely about my fascination with Grift, either. His fingers were toying with my hair, and it felt amazing. This time, I let him draw me in.

  And something still felt wrong.

  “Agents.”

  I almost slipped on the bathroom tiles stepping away from Nick. He reached for the door handle, throwing his jacket over his free arm.

  Skyla’s face was pale as she pointed toward the hall. Nick disappeared in a blur and the door to the bedroom slammed open. It took me a moment to catch up with what had happened as Skyla fought her anxiety to speak.

  “It just came under the door. But no one should be able to leave their rooms, right? How could someone do this if they couldn’t leave their room?”

  I saw lying on the floor, a simple piece of white paper. A note.

  Skyla, don’t be afraid. You won’t be harmed.

  Chapter 21

  Nick had his gun drawn, standing just outside the door. “Jette?”

  I stepped over the note, careful not to touch it. The hallway was empty.

  “Is there someone here that I can’t see?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I’ll remind you that this isn’t an optimal environment for my gift,” I said. “But no. Not that I can hear. Is it possible someone left their room without setting off the wards?”

  “No,” he growled. He slowly turned back to our room, staring at Skyla.

  “If no one left their room,” she asked, “then why aren’t you trying to figure out who else is in the house?”

  The very thought made my skin crawl.

  Nick, however, was thinking something entirely different. He leveled his gun on Skyla. “You were trying to get me out of the room. No one could have run away that quickly and made no noise at all, and if they could have, my very talented consultant would have heard whatever trick they were using.”

  Skyla crossed her arms. “I didn’t write the note. It wasn’t me.”

  I looked down the hall in both directions. No one. The thought that Skyla had killed her mother, and the tears, and the dress, the screaming... It filled me with a rage I didn’t quite understand.

  “We’ll see about that.” I bent down over the note, listening hard, but I couldn’t hear anything. It didn’t mean anything. I already knew I was dealing with someone particularly adept at hiding a magical signature.

  I tried to pull at the invisible threads, but there weren’t any. The paper seemed clean, and I took the chance.

  “Jette—” Nick hesitated just as I reached for it.

  I took it in my hand and stood up, frowning at Skyla.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, her eyes alight with fear.

  “I’m going to make it tell me where it came from,” I said. “It’s complicated, but it’s commonly used in interrogation when the Bleak wants to turn the screws on a forger. These are hand-written words, and that’s enough for me to work with.”

  Whoever had sent that note had finally stepped in it. I placed it horizontally between my palms and focused on the words: the peaks and the rounds, the dots and crosses.

  It tugged, and I let it go, fully expecting it to fly right at Skyla.

  Instead, it zoomed out of the room and down the hall.

  “I told you so,” Skyla said.

  Nick and I shared a confused look.

  “Follow that paper!” I said.

  Nick nodded at Skyla as I took off down the hall. “You’re coming with us. Protocol.”

  The paper floated and flitted like a butterfly, and I knew something was wrong.

  “Why is it slowing down?” Nick demanded.

  I shook my head in dismay. No...

  The sound of building drums hit my ears. The paper was hexed.

  “No, no, no... keep going! Keep going!”

  We turned a third corner. The paper burst into flames, turning to ashes on the carpet.

  “No!” I yelled. “Fuck!”

  I bowed over the ashes, lowering my hand and trying to refocus the spell. If there was something—anything—left, then I was going to make it fly again. But there was nothing.

  I was on my knees, wishing over ashes, and once again bested. I wanted to rip my hair out.

  “Where was it going?” I asked in desperation. “Nick, who’s room is over here?”

  “All of them,” he said miserably. He nodded to the end of the hall. “Amos’ room is right there. Rogers is down two more corridors. It’s the long way, but we can get to Cal’s room from here, too.”

  “Damn it!” I hissed. “Shit!”

  Skyla stood to the side, arms crossed and looking strikingly unfazed.

  Nick still had his gun out and ready. “I would ask you if Amos has the skill to do this, but I know you would cover for him.”

  “You’re right,” she shrugged. I gave her a long look. “What? He’s right. I would bury a body for Amos, and that was before I knew we were blood. I’m just happy the psycho—whoever it is—isn’t after me.”

  “Points for honesty.” Nick holstered his gun. “Jette, get up.”

  “Wait.” I lowered myself to the ashes one more time. Something was making noise.

  Building drums, but these were different. And they weren’t coming from the ashes.

  I looked sharply up, flying to my feet and racing toward the door at the end of the hall. “Amos!”

  I blasted the door and Nick’s wards with a fireball. The sound was deafening. I charged through flying fragments of wood and plaster to get to him.

  Amos laid sprawled on the floo
r, the hex wrapped around his throat and slowly choking the life from him as his eyes bulged horrifically. I couldn’t hear the spell over the sound of Nick’s alarming wards, so I took it apart—all of it. Everything I could reach.

  I grabbed Amos’ hand as Skyla and Nick arrived next to me, squeezing it tight as I silenced every sound around me in my mind: the blaring alarms, the crashing cans, the piano solo, flapping wings—

  “Get back!” I screamed it at Nick, louder than was necessary, but the room was howling at me and I couldn’t hear what I was ripping apart. Nick and his wards and enchantments were going to suffer friendly fire if he didn’t back off.

  —wailing cats and breaking dishes, ringing bells, car horns, and finally, finally... Drums.

  Quiet, quiet... The sound lessened and Amos gasped for breath. Good, good, quiet...

  The room went silent around me. I was gripping Amos’ hand a little too hard, so I dropped it. Skyla was bent over him, hugging him and sobbing as he regained consciousness.

  “He thought she would be in this room. He didn’t want her to worry,” I said. I tried not to smile because I knew what it meant: game over. “Whoever sent the note—however they did it—they thought the two of them would be in the room together. We finally got the asshole, Nick. He isn’t omniscient, and he isn’t leaving his room to do this. The new wards have him trapped. He won’t even know that this curse failed. He won’t even know that we know. We got him.”

  Nick grabbed my arm, helping me to stand. “We need to get them to a room. A new room.”

  Down two hallways and Nick was redoing his wards, this time with more pointed protections. He pulled one of the confiscated phones from his pocket and dialed it, setting it on the bed as he answered the call and looked back and forth between Skyla and Amos.

  “That line stays open,” he commanded. “I’m locking you in while Jette makes a counter-hex for whatever she just heard.”

  Skyla gave a curt nod, sitting next to Amos on the bed. “Yes. Yes. Go. Thank you.”

  Nick shut the door.

  I shook my head. “It’s got to be Rogers. Cal passed your interrogation.”

  Nick glanced at me, disappointed. “I botched the interrogation.”

  “What?”

  “I asked him if he killed Axel,” Nick said. “Not if he hexed Axel, and as we’ve discussed, Axel didn’t die of claustrophobia. He died of dismemberment and blood loss. You of all people should know that it takes the right questions, even for a vampire. ANd even then, Skyla and Amos could be in this together. This whole thing could have been orchestrated to throw us off.”

  “They wouldn’t—”

  “They just inherited more money than most people can conceive of,” Nick reminded me. “As motives go, that’s pretty big.”

  I scoffed. “So this got us nowhere? Nothing? Everyone is still a suspect?”

  “Everyone,” Nick said. “But we’ll know in the morning. If it was Rogers or Cal, one of them is going to be surprised to find out Amos survived the night.” He raised his chin. “You did good, Agent Driftwood.”

  “Screw you, Agent Warren. Screw you.”

  He didn’t take the setup. Only if I’m lucky. But it was there, is his eyes.

  It felt good to be ahead of the suspect finally, and he wanted to celebrate. The Cryptocrix might have been partly to blame, but mostly I blamed vampirism in general.

  This was a cat and mouse game. Predator and prey. They loved that sort of thing, and I had to admit I felt a little amped up, too.

  Nick pulled a flask of blood from his coat pocket and smiled through a swig as I tried not to be too disgusted.

  Well. No celebrating until teeth are brushed, then.

  “Come on.” He nodded down the hall and started to walk.

  “Where?”

  “I’m checking rooms. Are you tired?”

  Was he kidding? “No. Not anymore.”

  “Good.” He winked over his shoulder.

  Cal and Rogers’ wards were undisturbed. I was forced to admit that the paper might have a spell put on it that could have escaped by other means: through an air vent, or a small crack in a wall somewhere. But the fact that the hexer was changing means to choking instead of claustrophobia did suggest we’d plugged the hole on the immediate threat. Nick added new alarms to alert us of any hexes or curses triggered within the rooms.

  “One more stop.” Back in our room. Nick finished his flask...

  And brushed his teeth. I was weirdly turned on by it.

  You need to sleep, Agent Driftwood.

  Nick came back out into the room. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting.

  He nodded toward the door. “Come on.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “Library,” he said. “Anti-hex. The job comes first.”

  Seriously? “Right. The job.”

  He escorted me to the library. I started looking up anti-hex materials for choking, and he took a seat at a computer terminal three workstations away.

  “You’re staying?” I asked.

  The amber light played nicely on his hair as the dark windows beyond framed him. “I need to check in with my contacts.”

  I buried my nose in books and supply closets, pulling what needed. It was easier than I thought it would be. Our killer was cornered now. The two curses were closely related, and it was enough for me to find an enchantment that would render the guilty totem inert.

  Nick came up behind me as I returned to my desk after dimming the lights for the final steps. Standing behind me, he put both hands on my hips before trailing them down to my hips. “There’s something I need to show you.”

  I cleared my throat, head spinning. “I need to concentrate.”

  “Right.” He took his hands away.

  I lit my circle of sage, focusing all of my remaining energy on the symbols I had carved into a wood block in the middle.

  Consummavi.

  The block glowed and then caught fire. I extinguished it with a white cloth. It was done.

  I felt like I could finally breathe again. We were safe. Finally.

  Nick’s hands returned to my hips. His lips brushed my ear.

  “You wanted to show me something?” I asked.

  His breath was cold against my neck. “The rain. It finally stopped.”

  My eyes flashed to the windows. It took me a moment to clear my head and ignore the noise of the magic in the house, but he was right. The sound of the rain was gone.

  I leaned my head back against his shoulder. “Thank. The. Gods.”

  “That wasn’t what I wanted to show you.”

  “No?” I turned around, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  He evaded my kiss. “No. What I wanted to show you is over on my computer.”

  “Nick,” I said. “I’m going to pass out any second. This is your chance. Your last chance, before I become comatose and wake up to a really ugly Bleak presence and a formal interrogation and I’m betting a metric buttload of paperwork.”

  “A buttload?”

  “Hmm. Two ass-tons.”

  “This will only take a minute.”

  He led me over to to the computer screen. The lights in the library were still dim as we stood before the monitor. Nick was logged in under the highest security clearance I had ever seen.

  “I’m not supposed to—”

  “Shh.” He leaned around me, taking command of the mouse as he pulled up two mugshots, side by side. “No one will ever know. I trust you.”

  I raised a hand to cover my mouth. Samson Grift. Samuel Driftwood.

  They did look similar. Strikingly similar, even, but now I could see it. Grift’s nose was wider. My father’s ears stuck out more, and the corner of Grift’s mouth stuck up at an odd angle. It was like he was suppressing a grin, and I knew that look...

  I brought the photo up on my phone. “It’s Samson Grift.”

  “I want you to take a picture,” Nick said, his mouth once again teasingly close to my ear. “Som
ething you can look at if you ever doubt again.”

  “We would both be in so much trouble if—”

  “I trust you.” He took the phone from my hand, taking a picture of each profile himself before handing it back to me.

  He kissed my neck, and I braced myself against the desk when my knees threatened to turn to jelly.

  “I want to do more,” I breathed. “More than kissing.”

  He breathed a laugh. “Not here. Not now. Trust me.”

  “I’m saying yes—”

  “And I’m saying you haven’t slept or eaten in a while. We’re on watch for a murderer. And it’s hardly wise to make a decision like that while in the throes of passion.”

  “That’s exactly the time—”

  He put a finger on my lips to silence my protest before kissing me. I wrapped my fingers into his hair. I wanted to convince him. I tried to forget all reason and lose myself in the feeling of him pressed against me.

  The latter won out. He let me unbutton his shirt.

  BAM!

  The glass window pane that separated us from the wolves shattered.

  Chapter 22

  Nick’s face filled with anger, confusion, and fear. In a fraction of a second that felt like an eternity, we locked eyes, two inches away from each other.

  Then he pulled his gun, pivoting toward the library doors as they slammed shut. The sound of the locks clicking shut echoed through the spacious room, audible even through the cacophony of magic. Wards, weak by comparison to the work on the building exterior, rang to life.

  Nick tried to force the door before turning away, eyes searching the room before they landed heavy on me. We weren’t getting out of the library that way.

  Paws crunched on broken glass, punctuating the chiming disintegration of the magic that had restrained them from entering.

  Think! The wolves’ confusion wasn’t going to last long. I kept my voice low, closing my eyes to focus my thoughts. “Don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t talk. They hunt by sight. Follow me.”

  It felt like an eternity before my hands contacted the floor. Nick tried to go faster, but a loud snarl from near the window made him freeze in place for several seconds. They knew he was touched by a magic curse—his vampirism—and every time he tried to tap one of his supernatural abilities, they would know.