by C. T. Phipps
Gerald looked at her then me. “Okay.”
I blinked. “Okay?”
“Oh, that was easy!” Emma piped in. “Again.”
“Okay,” Gerald said, nodding. “We’re all here to try and solve a murder.”
“Yes!” Emma said, giving an entirely inappropriate fist-bump.
“What is wrong with this town?” I muttered under my breath and reluctantly returned Emma’s fist bump. “Seriously, this is not natural behavior from law enforcement.”
“If you read me,” Gerald said.
“Wait, what?” I asked, suddenly drawn back to the vampire.
“Well, I’m not going to just let you tamper with evidence,” Gerald said, extending his hand again. “However, if you can prove to me you actually have psychic powers, then I have no reason to deny you access to the body.”
“Except all the many, many good reasons,” I said, uncomfortable.
“Jane!” Emma said.
“Sorry,” I said, grimacing. “It’s just, uh, I’ve never tried to read a vampire before. Is it even possible, reading a vampire? I mean, you’re people and not objects.”
“We qualify as dead,” Gerald said, his voice low. “Assuming your power is psychometry.”
“What?” Emma said.
“Object-reading,” I said. “My cousin Juniper has the ability to take photos with her mind and send them to the nearest camera. Thoughtography is what it’s called. Which, given that everyone has cellphones, is like the most useless power ever.”
Gerald shook his head. “Oh no, I know vampires who have telepyrosis powers. What Stephen King called pyrokinesis.”
“That seems pretty damn useful,” I said. “You know, if you’re psycho.”
“Vampires are burned by flame and scared to death of it,” Gerald said. “It means he can’t use his own power…well, couldn’t. He burned to death last month.”
“Yeesh,” I said, grimacing. “I mean, sorry. That must have been hard.”
“Not really,” Gerald said, still holding out his hand. “He was one of the witnesses who banished me from New Detroit. I mean, I like maple syrup and trees as much as the next vampire, which is to say not at all, but this isn’t exactly where I was meant to be.”
Banished? This just got weirder and weirder. I wondered if he’d meant to tell me this much. “Okay, I’ll read you. Just promise not to kill me if I find out any deep, dark vampire secrets.”
“Oh, not in the sheriff’s station!” Gerald said, cheerfully.
I stared at him, not taking his hand.
“Joke,” Gerald said, helpfully.
“Right,” I said, taking his hand and trying to read it. “Real funny.”
I was almost immediately overwhelmed by visions of blood, fear, and terror. I saw a younger Gerald Pasteur in the ’80s getting grabbed by a beautiful woman who drained him dry then locked him up with his family to feed on them. All because Gerald hadn’t been able to save the vampire’s lover from an overdose. I saw him wandering in the fringes of society, trying to save more lives than he took as he struggled with his hunger. I saw him banished for some crime I couldn’t see in his soul, the shame too great, only to end up working here.
I tried to focus on the image of Victoria in his mind, but I could feel him resisting. In the end, that resistance actually made it easier to think of her. I saw the beautiful golden-haired werewolf, wearing her signature blue jacket over an elegant silk blouse and white dress. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in a town of incredibly beautiful women. Gerald had agreed and Victoria had been willing to allow him to drink her blood in exchange for samples of his. Also, other things.
“Ugh,” I pulled away, disgusted. “Jesus, you were giving her vampire blood for sex?”
“What the fuck!” Emma said, horrified.
Gerald looked down. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I thought…I thought we had a connection.”
“Getting high?” I snapped. “Maybe you did it!”
“I didn’t!” Gerald said, holding out his hand. “Go ahead and read it.”
“I don’t want to touch you!” I said, about ready to turn him in. Certainly this looked better for my brother since we now had a vampire suspect. Then I realized I was willing to use racism and felt ashamed.
“Disgusting undead—” Emma started to speak, standing between Gerald and her sister’s corpse.
I grabbed his hand. “Just shut up and don’t try to hide anything from me.”
Gerald didn’t resist and I got the rest of what I was looking for. This wasn’t like reading an object; he could steer the conversation and the power of the vision. Nevertheless, I felt what I felt and soon caught a vision that told me everything I needed to know.
Their last meeting.
Victoria was standing in this very room, her arms crossed and all the warmth gone from her demeanor. She was wearing a beret and a red dress and stockings that were an eclectic fashion choice for Bright Falls. “What?”
“We shouldn’t see each other anymore,” Gerald said, his voice low and filled with guilt.
“We’re having sex,” Victoria said, her voice sounding a lot more contemptuous than Gerald had ever mentioned. “That’s not ‘seeing each other’.”
“Nevertheless, it’s wrong,” Gerald said. “I apologize for doing what I did.”
Victoria snorted. “You did what I wanted you to. However, if you don’t want this anymore then that’s your business. Plenty more where you came from.”
Victoria gestured down to her body as if she was displaying a new car. Wow, it was wrong to think of her that way, but she really was a she-wolf in more than just the literal sense.
“I also can’t give you any more blood,” Gerald said, his voice soft and cold.
“The hell you can’t!” Victoria said, walking up to him. “I have customers.”
“You said that was for your mother to help with her depression!” Gerald said back.
“And you believed me!” Victoria said, shaking her head. “Do not get all morally judgmental with me, leech!”
Wow, that was the equivalent of the n-word for vampires.
“You need to get out,” Gerald said, his voice low and cold. “Clearly I misjudged you.”
“Oh boo-hoo, the vampire lonely for attention who doesn’t want to use his powers or hurt people. Stop being such a walking cliché,” Victoria said, getting up in his face and displaying some fang. “I’m not leaving without what I came for, though.”
I felt Gerald’s attraction for Victoria, something really weird and off-putting, but also his disappointment. He really had thought they’d shared something and I just wanted to roll my eyes at that. There was something else, though. It was more than physical attraction—a persistent need to obey.
“No,” Gerald said.
That was when Victoria pulled out a little cloth doll wearing a Doctor Barbie white medical coat with hair nailed to it. Victoria took a little wooden toothpick and then jabbed it into the chest of the doll. Gerald crumpled to his knees as I felt the immense pain he did, followed by paralysis. Victoria then put the doll to one side, grabbed three syringes, and stuck them into Gerald’s neck to take as much blood as she could sell. Leaving him “staked” for the rest of the night.
I pulled away. “Okay, that just comes off as motive.”
“What did you see?” Emma asked, her voice rising as her eyes turned a predatory yellow with claws extending from her hands.
“I’d never hurt her,” Gerald said.
Surprisingly, in that moment I knew he was right. Not because he loved Victoria, though, but because I’d sensed just how sad and lonely the vampire’s life was. “No, you wouldn’t. Because of that vampire who created you. She forced you to hurt people and you’d never hurt anyone willingly. You might have done it involuntarily, though.”
Gerald looked like he’d been hit with a car. He then sank his shoulders and took a deep breath. “You’re right. That’s part of the reason why I was ban
ished. I never wanted anyone to have control over my mind again, and that’s not an option among vampires.”
I remembered something from his memories: helping another vampire escape from her creator. He was going to use her as a slave to satisfy his needs. Gerald had staked the other vampire and sent him on a one-way ticket to Dubai in a wooden crate. So I guess Gerald wasn’t just a teenager-loving creeper.
“Also,” Gerald said, “where was Victoria murdered?”
“Across town in Darkwater Preserve,” Emma said. “Which…oh, right, vampire. You couldn’t be out in the sunny woods.”
Damn, didn’t I feel stupid.
“You’re still way too close to this,” I said, shaking my head. “Also, what you did was against the law.”
“I never touched her until she was eighteen and I was merely twenty-three when I was changed,” Gerald said. “But you’re right.”
I wasn’t sure it mattered if vampires looked twenty-three when they were actually in their fifties. Then again, I’d always found all of those vampire romance novels creepy. I didn’t think two-hundred-year-old guys were hooking up with girls like Victoria and me for conversation.
Emma growled at me. “So are we killing him or not?”
“Killing him? Goddess, no!” I said, trying to think of something to say other than ‘Down, girl.’ “He’s not a murderer. Well, sort of. He’s just…he’s not Victoria’s killer. Gerald, you still need to tell everything you know to Sheriff O’Henry or Agent Timmons or both. My brother is not going down for this and I’m pretty sure you’ll be the next suspect.”
“Thank you,” Gerald said, puffing up a bit. “That’s kind of you, considering.”
“It’s not kind,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It’s me wanting to actually find my friend’s sister’s killer.”
Wow, that didn’t sound sympathetic at all.
I tried to figure what else to say then shook my head. “Now open up the body bag and let me see if I can find out who really killed Victoria O’Henry.”
“I understand,” Gerald said, walking over to the tray.
I looked at Emma. “Did you know your sister was a witch?”
Emma’s eyes returned to normal as did her fingernails. “What?”
“Yeah, full-on Voodoo doll stuff. Enough to make a vampire into her own personal pin cushion.”
Emma looked as stunned as I felt. “No. That kind of magic would get her killed.”
“Wait, what?”
Emma nodded. “Grandpa Marcus has decreed any study of witchcraft in the family is punishable by death.”
That was when Gerald finished unzipping the body bag and I got my first glimpse of Victoria’s corpse.
I almost threw up.
Chapter Five
I’d seen dead things before in the woods on runs with my family. I’d been to shifter funerals before, too, that involved the bodies being burned on pyres throughout the night while all of the clans attended. Sort of like they did Qui Gon in The Phantom Menace despite the fact that Jedi were supposed to disappear after death.
This, however, was something different. Victoria’s face and shoulders were perfect—so perfect that she looked like she might sit up like Gerald had. However, there would be no resurrection for the queen of Bright Falls High.
Her heart had been torn out.
I wasn’t speaking metaphorically, either. There was a big honking hole in the right side of her chest. I’d read enough murder mysteries to know the heart wasn’t that easily penetrated. My father had made me take self-defense classes that told me a wooden stake wouldn’t easily get through a vampire’s heart (wow, we were racist in this town) but it was easy for a shifter to shove a claw in if they were the right kind of predator.
That only narrowed it to five hundred or so suspects.
Great.
“Oh, Vicki!” Emma said, sounding on the verge of tears.
“I’m sorry,” Gerald said.
“You shut up!” Emma said, switching her emotions like a light.
“Well, now we know my brother didn’t do it,” I said, looking around. “He’s a human being. He couldn’t have done this. Why are they even arresting him? Is this a frame-up job?”
“No,” Gerald said, pointing to the wound. “This was done with a serrated knife. It’s not a natural attack at all, but was meant to look like one. I should—”
“Uh,” I interrupted, realizing he was probably going to go into full medical-examiner mode. A job he was really unqualified for given his relationship to Victoria. I intended to tell Clara and Agent Timmons everything I knew as soon as they were nearby, but I wanted to get a read off of Victoria first.
Maybe Gerald hadn’t killed her, but he probably knew things that could lead to the real killer and I didn’t want him deciding it’d be better to cover up any of his involvement. What was weird was that, being inside his head, I didn’t think of him as an evil man despite all the horrible stuff he’d been forced to do as a vampire. But good people didn’t seduce teenagers half their age nor allow their blood to be sold as drugs.
I wasn’t a connoisseur of controlled substances like my brother claimed to be, though I was the Moon Goddess if he’d tried anything harder than Ecstasy, but I knew vampire blood could be sold for five hundred dollars a hit to the people stupid and rich enough to try it. It made you stronger, smarter, faster, and feel like God if HBO’s Vice was telling the truth about it. I doubted Victoria could have sold it for that much around here but it was strange to imagine she’d needed much money. Her family already owned the town, after all. So why become a drug dealer? And where had she learned magic? You couldn’t learn it off the internet. Believe me, I’d tried.
“You should step away from the body and let her do her work,” Emma said, stepping between Gerald and the body.
“Right,” Gerald said, moving to the other side of the room. “You may not believe this, but I want to see her murder solved too.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” Emma said.
I walked over to the body and stared at Victoria’s cold, still form. “Okay, here goes nothing.”
I wasn’t exactly scared, but I wasn’t looking forward to reading the body either. Reading Gerald had been a pretty heavy experience and he wasn’t someone who’d been stabbed to death before being eviscerated. Oh hell, I was afraid of going through whatever Victoria had experienced, even second hand.
“You can do it,” Emma said. “This is for Victoria.”
That really wasn’t helping matters.
“Right, for Victoria,” I said, grabbing the dead woman’s hand and trying to read her.
A moment passed.
Nada.
“Jane?” Emma asked.
“Gimme a second,” I said, trying harder to get something off her body. Usually I could pick up impressions off objects that had even a little contact with humans. I could get a vibe of what the factory operator had thought about his job when he packaged a doll if I tried hard enough. Here? Nothing. It was like Victoria was empty of anything resembling a psychic connection to her previous life.
“What’s wrong?” Emma asked, her voice low.
I let go of Victoria’s hand. “There’s nothing to read. It’s like she’s been wiped clean of anything psychic mojo-ey. Okay, bad choice of words, but it’s beyond that. There’s nothing there.”
I was reminded of Mortal Kombat, of all things. I used to play the game religiously on the old arcade machine at the pizzeria. One of the ways the main villain could kill someone in that game was to steal their soul. While I wasn’t going to bring that up with Emma, it felt almost like that here. Whatever had been Victoria was gone from her body with no trace left behind.
“Dammit,” Emma said, looking down. “It’s all for nothing then.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said, stepping away from her body. “We’ve found some clues.”
Perhaps realizing he was the biggest clue we’d found, Gerald went to the table and picked up a box on the s
helf underneath the table Victoria’s body rested on. He then dumped out the contents on the second table beside him. A bunch of plastic bags containing items were inside.
“Maybe these can help,” Gerald said.
“Her personal effects?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gerald said. “At least, I presume so.”
“Right,” I said, remembering he’d just woken up.
There wasn’t actually all that much to read. There was her blood-stained clothes, some condoms, a pack of cigarettes, crystalized vampire blood, some cash, credit cards, the doll I’d seen in my vision with Gerald, a purse, and a plain gold ring with Arabic writing on the side. The last drew my attention and I reached over to hold the bag. I didn’t expect to be able to feel anything through the plastic, but no sooner did my hand touch it than I received a powerful vision.
I saw Victoria once more, this time wearing a black leather skirt, black bikini top, fishnets, a midnight-colored wig, and stiletto heels. She was really rocking the goth-club-girl look and I admired her ability to pull it off even if it seemed like she was the party’s entertainment more than a guest. Victoria was holding the ring in her hand and putting it on her ring finger, as if she was trying on an engagement ring.
The room around her was wooden with calendars of girls on the walls and some kind of office. The song, “Oh Lucretia, My Reflection” by Sisters of Mercy was playing in the background and I could smell cigarette smoke in the air. My vision eventually expanded to see Lucien Lyons sitting on top of a wooden desk with a cold expression on his face.
Lucien Lyons was beautiful. Not the first word you usually associated with the town’s biggest criminal. Whereas most shifter men looked like Vikings, he was slim and pretty with silver hair as well as abs a fitness model would have been proud of. I didn’t have trouble making out the latter because he wasn’t wearing a shirt along with his blue jeans.
Lucien also had a number of tattoos on his body with an ankh over his right pec and a sword across his belly being the most prominent. He was about twenty-five and had been my sister’s crush when she’d been a freshman. You know, before he’d somehow ended up taking over organized crime in the city. Actually, that might have made him more attractive knowing my sister’s tastes.
