Some people are so rude.
“It’s been a long day,” I answered. “I’m a little wound-up.”
“I can imagine,” Rubix answered. “What Gayle Mangrove did to your home is the talk of the supernatural community. I’ve already gotten three phone calls about it.”
“Really?” I asked, honestly shocked. “It just happened.”
“Well, you know what they say about gossip,” Rubix said, shrugging. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“I don’t think that’s the right way to use that saying,” I answered, standing from the chair she’d motioned for me to sit on when I entered her home and walking over toward her. Usually, I would have rushed away from a vampire, especially a vampire queen, as quickly as my feet would take me. I didn’t have that luxury now, though. My family was at stake. My home was at stake. I couldn’t run from this. I was going to have to face it head-on.
“Who can keep track of every little saying these mayfly humans come up with?” Rubix said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the idea. “In a hundred years, it’ll be something else.”
“Probably,” I answered. “But I feel like we’re getting off topic, and I don’t have a lot of time for that.”
“Right. You have a flower to outrun,” Rubix said. “Which is a sentence I never thought anyone would have to say.”
“Life’s weird like that. It’ll take you places you never imagined it could,” I answered, knowing the sentiment far too well.
“As someone who had already built an empire by the time your ancestor plunged his witchy flag into these mountains, trust me, I know that.” Rubix shook her head, dark bangs moving a little as a smile spread across her striking, pale face. “It always strikes me as crazy. You covens fighting over who has seniority, who deserves to be at the top. Don’t you realize just how little time you have on this rock? Don’t you understand what it would mean if you could put all of your nonsense aside? Don’t you get how much better this place could be if you were made to work together?”
Something about the way she phrased that irked me a little, and I wasn’t about to let her get away with it. “You keep telling me how long you’ve been around, Queen Rubix,” I said, glaring right at her. “You would think, after all this time, you’d understand that no witch can be made to do anything.”
That might have seemed a bit harsh, but I knew what she was up to. Queen Rubix was trying to assert her superiority over not only me but over the race of witches as a whole.
“Well, as you said, Izzy Lockheart, life is a strange thing. Perhaps none of us are exactly sure of our limitations,” Rubix said.
“Why am I here, Your Majesty?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest and shaking my head. “I came to you to ask you a few questions, and you told me you needed to discuss something. Like I said, I have precious little time. So, if you don’t mind, can we get to the meat of this issue?”
“I like your directness,” she said. “If I had seen that in one of my own girls, I wouldn’t be in the position I am right now.”
“And what position is that?” I asked, arching a single eyebrow at the woman.
“It’s come to my attention that you’re looking for Wes,” she said, swallowing hard. “You and I have that in common.”
My heart dropped. If Queen Rubix was looking for Wes, then it meant she didn’t know where he was. It meant that she couldn’t help me and that I had come here for nothing. It meant I was back to the start, and worst of all, that I had wasted an entire day, a day I couldn’t afford to waste, trying to get to the bottom of this.
“He’s connected to all of this,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and my spirits up enough so that it didn’t affect the rhythm of my heart. The last thing I needed was to let the queen of the vampires know that I was even further over a barrel than she already assumed.
“So I’ve heard,” she responded.
“You seem to hear a lot,” Riley said from beside me.
“I don’t expect you to be aware of this as a human, but there’s nothing that happens on this mountain that I don’t know about,” Rubix said, nearly purring at the man. “I could tell you what you had for breakfast two weeks ago.”
“That sounds like a boring bit of intel to carry,” Riley shot back without missing a beat. “It also seems like a curious assertion from someone who just admitted to not knowing where her own subject is at the moment.”
A defiant smile crept across my face. Riley wasn’t afraid of this woman. She might have been an immortal creature with immense powers, but he was a Southerner, a mountain man, and a police officer. He wasn’t going to let himself be pushed around, and neither was I.
“Alas, that’s the one blind spot, it would seem,” Queen Rubix said, slumping against an ornately decorative wall. “And he isn’t just my subject.” She shook her head. “That’s the issue I’m having.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, remembering what Rubix had said just a few moments ago about being in an unwanted situation.
“Wes is the sire of my sire,” she said. “That puts him in a very elite line of succession.”
“Line of succession?” I asked, my eyes growing wide. “As in, succession to the throne?”
“Exactly,” she answered. “You see, only vampires who are in my direct line and fewer than three generations away from me are eligible to succeed me as ruler of this place.” She nodded hard. “I had chosen Wes to take that honor.”
“Wes?” Riley balked. “But he’s ridiculous!”
“Enough!” I said in a hushed whisper. I knew Queen Rubix would be able to hear me, but I couldn’t let Riley insult her. There was a difference between gently reminding the woman that we weren’t going to take whatever she wanted to give us lying down and overtly questioning her competency as a leader, and that’s exactly what Riley was doing when he made that comment about Wes.
“I’m sure Wes has more than a few commendable attributes,” I said, looking at Riley tersely.
“No. Your friend is right to have doubts,” Rubix said, surprising me. “Wes isn’t exactly what would come to mind when one thinks of a king, but he takes orders well, he cares about the community, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.” She shrugged. “More than that, I’m immortal. I’m not going to die anytime soon. If I’m lucky, I won’t ever die and this whole idea of a successor will be little more than a necessary backup plan in case of a tragedy that never happens.” She cleared her throat. “Still, as my theoretical replacement, he holds a special place here. The fact that he’s disappeared is nothing short of an emergency.”
“Disappeared?” I asked, sighing loudly. “He never came home from the big box store, did he?”
“He didn’t,” Queen Rubix answered. “I forced him to take that job because I thought the manual labor and long hours would teach him more in the way of respect and humility. I’m beginning to think that might have been a mistake, though.”
“The job isn’t why he’s gone,” I said. “What sort of relationship did he have with Crystal Mangrove?”
“Relationship?” Queen Rubix asked, sighing as she shook her head. “Certainly, any successor of mine would know better than to get himself involved with a witch. Why, the last time he had any connection to a witch was—”
“With me. I get it,” I said, interrupting Rubix before she could finish the sentence. “In any event, I’m sorry to tell you that your golden boy has been lying to you. He’s been in contact with Crystal for the last few weeks. In fact, the reason he ran away from us in the big box store was because Crystal told him to when she called me.”
“Is that so?” Queen Rubix asked as the oven dinged. She walked over to it and opened it up. “Would you have any idea why she might tell him to run from you?” She pulled a tray of food from the oven. Looking it over, I saw that it was a platter of baked spaghetti studded with cut-up hot dogs. It wasn’t exactly the sort of meal you’d expect to see a queen eating, much less a vampire queen. Still
, something pinged at me.
“I–I really don’t,” I said, swallowing hard and grabbing Riley’s hand. “Look, I appreciate your help, but I can see now that you’ve been victimized in all of this just as much as I have. I promise, Queen Rubix, if I find out any information about where either of them is, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.”
“That would be much appreciated,” she answered, nodding at me. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to dig in.”
“To spaghetti and weenies?” Riley asked, his eyes narrowing. Obviously, he had the same thought I did about all of this.
“It’s been infused with animal blood,” she said, smiling.
“Of course, it has,” Riley said, his mouth turning down distastefully.
“We’ll leave you to it then,” I said. Running a hand through my hair, I covertly pulled out one of my earrings and let it fall unseen to the floor. “Thank you again, Queen. We’ll see ourselves out.”
“Certainly,” Queen Rubix said.
Pulling Riley hard, I rushed out of the house and toward the squad car.
Riley looked over at me. “You know you left one of your—”
“Be quiet!” I shot back. Pulling my hand from his, I twisted my fingers and cast a spell. Suddenly, a mirror image of Riley and me appeared before us. They started talking about how nice the weather was tonight and about how much we were looking forward to the next episode of The Voice.
“What in all the Great Smokies is that?” Riley asked, jumping back and staring at the second set of us. “It looks just like us.”
“That’s because it is us,” I said. “At least, it’s a duplicate image of us. I needed to talk with you, and as you know, vampires have great hearing. The idea of our going silent would be too curious to the queen. She’d know something was up. So, I had to create these two, give them a few boring subjects of conversation, and let them rave and rant about them so that Queen Rubix would hear that instead of what I had to tell you.”
“I don’t think The Voice is boring,” Riley muttered.
“That dish,” I said, shaking my head. “The spaghetti and hot dogs, I’ve seen it before. I’ve made it before, for Wes. It’s his favorite meal.”
“Well, that’s just sad,” Riley said. “Out of all the foods in the world, his favorite is spaghetti and hot dogs?”
“That’s not the point,” I said loudly. “Even if it is correct. The point is, Queen Rubix obviously isn’t making that for herself. She’s lying to us about not knowing where Wes is. She obviously knows exactly where he is. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in that house somewhere.”
“Are you serious?” Riley asked, his eyes widening.
“I certainly am,” I answered. “That’s why I left my earring there. I’m going to prove it.”
21
“Seriously?” Charlotte asked, looking over at me with huge, but strangely excited, eyes. I’d just laid my plan out to her and Savannah. Lucas Mangrove and Riley were there, as well. Seeing as how I’d already told my plan to Riley and Lucas was more of an extra in terms of the team, I didn’t really direct much of my attention to them. “And here I always thought I was the crazy one.”
“You definitely are the crazy one,” Savannah said to Charlotte. “Izzy just seems to be ready to follow in your footsteps.”
“Ha-ha,” Charlotte said sarcastically. “All jokes aside, this is crazy, and you know it, Izzy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have waited until Grandma left to say something about it.”
As usual, Charlotte had a point. Grandma Winnie had been on her way out the door when Riley and I got here, and I made no attempt to stop her. I knew she’d forbid me from doing what I’d just suggested. I knew she’d tell me it was insane and that doing something like this would all but ensure war with the vampires if we got caught. I also knew she would be right. But Grandma Winnie definitely wouldn’t take into consideration the most important part of this plan. We definitely weren’t going to get caught.
“I know it’s a bit outside the box,” I said.
“Outside the box wouldn’t start this,” Charlotte said. “You left an earring in the queen of the vampires’ house to serve as a magical anchor so that you could use it to break back into her house and find your ex-boyfriend . . . who you think is hiding in there because of a plate of spaghetti and hot dogs. You, my dear, are so far outside the box that you can’t even see it. The box is nothing more than a far-off idea to you at this point.”
“So, what would you have us do?” I asked, planting my hands on my hips and leveling a stare at Charlotte. “Did you see the flower on the front step? It’s down to a single petal. That’s all that stands between us and losing a person important to us, and that one petal won’t last too long.” I pointed to the window, at the sun rising in the distance. “Besides, it’s morning. Queen Rubix is probably asleep by now.”
“Probably?” Charlotte balked. “You want to risk an all-out supernatural war on probably?”
“Of course not,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t want any of this to happen, but we are where we are. Gayle Mangrove is super-duper powerful, Lucas is still spelled to the point of not being able to tell us why, and we’ve been tossed off the mountain where every one of us have lived since we were babies, and that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that Gayle is capable of doing anything to us. We have to figure this out. We have to know why all of this is happening if we have a chance at stopping it.”
“If that will even give us a chance at stopping it,” Charlotte said, turning her attention over to Lucas. “Are we even on the right path? Is Crystal’s disappearance connected to the fact that Gayle is, like, sickeningly powerful?”
Lucas took a deep breath. He pursed his lips and then opened them. As he started to speak, his words morphed into a long, unintelligible line of nonsense.
“Well, that’s inconvenient,” Charlotte muttered.
“Can’t you just shake your head or something?” I asked, wondering if that might serve as a workaround.
“No,” Savannah lamented, looking over at the red-haired warlock. “We already tried that. It worked at first, but then it just started hurting him. It’s like the spell his grandmother put on him is capable of learning and adapting.”
“Doubly convenient,” Charlotte muttered.
“Wait,” I said, walking toward Lucas. “I think I might have an idea.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Charlotte muttered.
“Now who’s trying to make jokes?” I shot back at her. “I was thinking that you could ask the question to me, Charlotte, and then I can ask a different yes or no question to Lucas.”
“What good is that going to do?” Charlotte asked, shaking her head. “If he’s answering some nonsensical question, then why—” Her mouth fell open for a split second. “Oh, I get it. He’ll answer your question as though he’s answering mine.”
“There we go,” I said, nodding firmly. “I knew you’d get there eventually.”
“So, let’s say I ask you if Gayle’s new power surge is connected to Crystal’s disappearance,” Charlotte said, looking past me and directly at Lucas.
“Then I would ask Lucas if he preferred football to baseball,” I said, looking over at the redhead myself.
The warlock opened his mouth hesitantly. He twisted his lips, forming the answer nervously. “Y–yes,” he said as a huge smile broke out on his face. “Yes! Yes! Absolutely, yes!” He shook his head. “I can’t believe that worked. You’re a genius!”
“Let’s not oversell it,” I answered. “The nodding thing worked at first, too. I’m sure the spell your grandmother put on you will catch up to this sooner rather than later. So, we need to be as quick as possible.”
I took a deep breath. I now knew that Gayle’s surge in power was directly connected to Crystal’s disappearance. I needed to be deliberate with what questions I asked next, seeing as how I wasn’t sure how many more I was going to get.
“You know what? Switch
with me,” I said, grabbing Charlotte’s shoulders and literally switching our places. Now, Charlotte stood between us, and I was the person who was going to be asking the questions that mattered, with my cousin asking the meaningless follow-up.
“Your grandmother’s disappearance,” I said, looking at Lucas. “It’s connected, too. Isn’t it? Somehow, with each person who leaves, Gayle’s power grows. Is that right?”
Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest, jutted her hip out, and smirked at Lucas.
“Do you have a crush on my sister?” she asked.
“What?” Lucas balked, his cheeks matching his hair in hue and intensity.
“Charlotte! Shut up!” Savannah howled, her own face reddening more and more by the second.
“What?” Charlotte asked. “That’s not even the question he’s really answering. What does it matter?”
“Izzy, will you talk some sense into her?” Savannah asked, pleading in her voice.
“There’s no time for that, Savannah,” I said remorsefully. “We don’t know how much longer he’ll even be able to answer us.” I blinked in Lucas’s direction. “Will you just answer her?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“Yes to whether or not you’ll answer or yes to my fake question?” Charlotte asked.
Lucas looked over at Savannah. “Yes to all the questions,” he said.
“That is interesting,” Charlotte cooed.
“Focus, Charlotte,” I snapped, though I couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between Lucas and Savannah. At a different time, or if Lucas had a different last name, it might have warmed my heart. As it stood, all it did at the moment was concern me even more.
“What’s happening here?” I asked. Then, almost immediately, I realized that Lucas wouldn’t be able to answer that. We were limited to yes or no questions here. So I was going to have to make a couple of assumptions myself. Shaking my head, I continued. “Your grandmother Eloise said your family was in a particularly vulnerable state,” I said, remembering the speech she gave when she put that horrid flower on our doorstep. “That has to do with all of this, too. Doesn’t it?”
Valleys, Vittles, and Vanishings Page 9
