After taking a right turn, I found it halfway down a staff hallway. It was dark and quiet inside the office, and unfortunately, it was locked. The office directly across from his looked like it wasn’t currently being used by a member of staff, so that was helpful. Unfortunately, the professors on either side of him hadn’t followed his lead in hunting rare manuscripts. They were inside their rooms, tapping away on their keyboards.
Luckily, this hallway was out of view of the lobby and the receptionist. I could probably get inside before anyone noticed, if I was quiet. Just as I pulled my lock picking kit from my pocket, Nathan Whitman exited the office on my right. I froze, wrapping my fingers around my kit to hide it from view, hoping he hadn’t seen the metal throngs.
“Zoe?” He shut the door behind him, a lopsided smile spreading across his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh hi. Nathan.” I swallowed hard. I needed to come up with an explanation fast for why I was lurking in the halls of a university that I didn’t attend. “Why are you in this building? I thought you were a computer science major?”
“You remembered.” He blinded me with the brilliance of his smile, and something squeezed in my chest—guilt. I hoped he didn’t take my comment the wrong way. I liked Nathan. I really did. But just not like that. “I am, but Professor Louis is heading up the committee for the Relay for Life, and I’m helping organize it.”
Of course he was. This guy probably rescued puppies in his spare time, too.
“That’s awesome,” I said, still holding tight onto the lock pick. “Good for you.”
“So…” He dropped his voice low before pointing at my hand. The one that was very much still hovering by Professor Wagner’s doorknob. “You look like you’re trying to break into Professor Wagner’s office. What’s up with that?”
Heat rushed into my cheeks. Caught red-handed, just like my father. Might as well explain as best I could. “Remember when Alice showed up at the bar last night? Professor Wagner is her husband. Apparently, he’s gone missing, and she thinks it has something to do with…well, you know.”
“Ghost stuff,” he said with a faux-serious nod.
“They’re demons. Not ghosts. But close enough.” I sighed and flicked my gaze around the hallway. “I thought if I took a look around his office, I might be able to find something that could help track him down. Please don’t report me to the university. I’m just trying to do a job and earn some money that I really, really need right now.”
“Zoe.” He gave me a strange look, shifting closer and bringing the scent of oranges and musky cologne along with him. He reached out and pushed a strand of my wavy hair behind my ear. “I would never report you. In fact, what can I do to help?”
“You don’t care that I’m trying to break into a professor’s office?” I took a step back to put some distance between us.
“Why would I care? You’re just trying to find him for his worried wife, aren’t you?”
Well, yes. Technically. But really, I was just trying to save my own ass. I needed the money. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure I’d be doing this right now. There were far more important things on my plate. Like dead pathologists, angry coven leaders, potentially evil vampires, and a stalker outside of my window.
But I couldn’t explain all that to Nathan Whitman.
“Okay, I could really use a lookout. Could you stand out here in the hallway and distract anyone who comes by?” I asked. “You don’t need to do anything other than keep them from spotting me inside.”
“Easy.” He shot me that full-faced smile again, making me want to reach out and give him a friendly hug. Nathan was a good guy, and he’d always done whatever he could to help me out. I’d never had a brother, but if I had, I imagined he’d be a lot like Nathan Whitman.
“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “Well, here goes nothing.”
I slid inside the room and quietly shut the door behind me. The click echoed loud in my ears, but the pounding of footsteps didn’t follow. Okay, I’d gotten inside. Now, I just needed to stay out of sight. With slow and careful steps, I eased further into the office. The walls were lined with wooden shelves packed to the brim with every book I could imagine and more. His desk squatted in the very center of the room, hidden beneath mounds of paper. Some of the pages looked white and new and crisp while others appeared to be decomposing right before my eyes with their brown jagged edges and faded text.
Needless to say, this place was a wreck and a researcher’s wet dream, full of so much information that I didn’t know where to start.
There wasn’t a computer, though there was a small square patch on the desk where a laptop could have sat. Professor Wagner must have taken it with him wherever he’d gone. That was a good sign, at least. It suggested that he’d left willingly rather than been taken away, which was another point in the grimoire-hunting column.
With my fingers trailing along the stack of papers, I moved around the side of the desk and eased into the leather chair. The hinges squeaked, and the chair tipped sideways, causing me to crash hard onto the floor. Pain exploded in my hip, and I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out.
Shit. That was loud. Had anyone heard me?
I didn’t dare move for fear of being discovered. As I sat waiting for the inevitable fall of footsteps outside of the door, my eyes caught on a marking underneath the desk. A rune. One I’d never seen before. Unlike most bone spells, this hadn’t been drawn with chalk. It had been carved into the floor with a knife.
So, was it even a bone spell? Which begged the question—what kind of warlock was Professor Wagner?
I reached out to touch the engraving and pain exploded in my mind. With a sharp breath, I yanked my fingers back, holding them tight to my chest. Touching a rune shouldn’t hurt. That wasn’t how the magic was supposed to work.
So, what the hell was that?
There was a light knock on the door. Shit. Someone must be coming, and I’d barely had ten minutes to look around. I hadn’t come all this way just for nothing, and even though I’d found a mysterious rune, I didn’t know anything more than I had before. Quickly, I took my phone out of my pocket and snapped a shot of the carving before grabbing the top few papers on Professor Wagner’s desk, including what looked to be some drawings of a map, and shoving them into my bag.
They were the last papers he’d been looking at. Maybe they held a clue.
When I slipped out into the hallway, no one was there. Not even Nathan. He must have lured whoever it was away from the door. I’d have to find a way to thank him somehow.
For a moment, I waited with breath held tight in my throat. No one appeared. Maybe Nathan was giving me more time to look around. But that thought flew right out the window when a piercing scream ripped through the air. So loud and so harsh that it echoed through the hallway, shooting deep, dark dread through my core.
Chapter 9
“What’s going on?” I asked when I found Nathan standing with a crowd of students two hallways over from Professor Wagner’s office. They were all staring quietly at the ground before them, but the cluster of bodies was too thick for me to see what had caught everyone’s attention. Or what had caused the scream.
He turned to me, his face grim, his lips pressed together so tight they’d gone pale. Nathan, the lighthearted lovable guy looked like he’d just found out demons were real. It made my blood run cold.
“Someone’s dead,” he said.
My chest constricted. “Dead? Is it Professor Wagner?”
“What?” He looked confused until realization dawned. “Oh. No. It isn’t him. It’s a student. A girl I know. Knew. She was going to run in the Relay for Life. But now…”
Well, shit. That was rough, and I wished I knew what to say. Someone should be here to comfort him now, but the logical side of my brain told me I needed to get out of this building stat. For one thing, I wasn’t a student at Boston University. I didn’t know what had happened to this girl, but the police might start asking questions
when they arrived.
If anyone thought my presence here was odd, they might decide to search my belongings. And then they’d find stolen documents from Professor Wagner’s office along with a kit to pick locks. Not only that, but the coven might find it alarming if I was found at the scene of yet another death. I only had one shot to clear my name.
“I’m so sorry, Nathan.” I started to back away, my eyes locked on the nearest exit. “Thanks for your help, but I think I’m going to get out of here if that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah, of course. I understand.” Without even a glance in my direction, he stepped further into the crowd. For a moment, the students shifted just enough for me to get a glimpse of the body on the ground. My neck prickled with unease. It was a girl no older than me, her freckled limbs twisted strangely across the white tiles. Her eyes were open wide as they stared up at the ceiling, unseeing. But that wasn’t what startled me, wasn’t what sent goosebumps stampeding across my skin.
I’d seen that girl’s face before.
She was the redhead from the vampire club last night.
Dorian arrived at the scene at a startling speed, almost as if he’d been waiting for my call. I’d asked him not to mention this to the other Enforcers yet because…really, making them even more suspicious than they already were wasn’t exactly a smart move. I was trying to clear my name. Not put myself behind bars.
He’d donned his trench coat, sunglasses, and hat again, and he was impossible not to notice, towering over everyone else like a mighty tree. “Zoe. What kind of shit have you gotten yourself into this time?”
I pulled him away from the crowd, toward the back exit just in case. The cops still hadn’t shown up yet. Everyone seemed kind of dazed and unsure of what to do. From what I’d been able to learn, a group of students had found her on the way to their next class, dead and twisted just as she was now. No one had seen anything or anyone. If she’d been attacked, it hadn’t been noticed.
“I didn’t get myself into anything,” I said quietly. “A girl was found dead.”
“I can see that,” he said with a frown. “But as sad as that is, I don’t see what that has to do with me. Did someone spot some foul play of the supernatural variety?”
“No, look at her,” I said. “She was at Slayerville last night. I saw her. With the two vampires who were feeding on Laura.”
He lifted his eyes and stared at the body for a long while before nodding. “You’re right. That’s her. But a lot of people go to that club. It doesn’t mean anything, Zoe. In fact, my guess is she took too many drugs, and it got to her today. Probably her heart.”
I hated that his words made sense. There was nothing to suggest she’d had a tango with a demon or a vampire, but a little voice inside of me wouldn’t let this one go. Something felt wrong even though I lacked concrete proof. It was my witch’s intuition acting up. I was sure of it.
“Don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence?” I asked in a whisper when several solemn staff members joined the worried crowd. “We saw that girl last night. And now she shows up dead the next day, exactly where I happen to be?”
“Speaking of, why are you here? You’re not a student,” Dorian said, clocking on to the fact that I didn’t belong in these halls any more than he did.
“I’m doing a job for someone,” I said, glancing away.
He dragged his hand down his face, sighing loudly. “ For fuck’s sake. Please don’t tell me you’re out here on a con. There’s only so much I can do to protect you, and you should be keeping your toes inside the lines as much as possible right now.”
He was right, but the way he talked down to me got my hackles up once again. “Thanks for jumping to the worst conclusion imaginable.”
“It could be worse,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I could think you’re the killer. Like you said, you just happened to show up when someone else died. Talk about coincidences. This is one.”
I curled my hands into fists and stood taller. “You’re just saying that to piss me off.”
“Damn straight.” He curled his lips into a devilish smile. “And it looks like it’s working.”
“It’s impossible not to get pissed off when I have to look at your stupid smug face.”
“Hey, princess,” he said, arching his eyebrows. “You’re the one who called me. Not the other way around.”
“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. Stalky McStalkerson.” I shoved my finger into his chest, stumbling when it almost snapped in half. The guy was a brick, a steel cage instead of flesh and bone. I swallowed hard, taking a step back to put some distance between us, veins in my neck thrumming from the speed of my heart.
“Really good comeback, Zoe,” he said. “Very mature.”
A ripple went through the crowd, momentarily distracting me from Dorian and his infuriating attitude. There were a few gasps, a few cries of alarm, and more than a few clicks of phones as students took photos of something just out of sight. Frowning, I left Dorian to grumble to himself so I could get a better look at what had caused so much alarm. If he didn’t want to believe me, fine. I’d check this out all by myself.
When I got to the front of the crowd, I sucked in a sharp breath. Someone had rolled the girl over onto her back, and in the process, had revealed the floor underneath her. A mark had been carved into the tile, the grooves etched with bones.
It was a summoning rune. The kind that brought a demon into this realm.
“Someone is trying to frame me,” I said as I paced back and forth in my apartment. Dorian sat on the couch, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked bizarre perched there on the flowery fabric, taking up more than half the space. At least he’d taken off his trench coat and hat. “There’s no other explanation for why that girl would have died right then and there. Besides, that’s not even how a bone mage draws a summoning rune, so it’s clearly someone who doesn’t know much about our world. Where was the charcoal? Why the hell did they carve it into the floor?”
“It certainly seems that way. That wasn’t a real rune, as far as I could tell,” he said with a nod. “So, the first thing I have to ask is, do any of your victims know that you conned them?”
“Victims?” I made a face. “Come on, now. That’s a bit dramatic. And no, I don’t think any of them ever found out. Not that I know of anyway.”
“Might be worth making a list so we can check.”
I paused in my pacing. “You don’t honestly believe someone is going around killing people just because I conned them out of two hundred bucks?”
“Not really,” he admitted with a sigh. “Do you have any other enemies? Besides me, of course.”
“Very funny.” I plopped into the recliner and dropped my head into my hands. “Honestly, no. I might not be the best person in the world, but I don’t have any enemies.”
“Besides me.” His lips quirked.
“Yes. Besides you.” A small smile lifted up the corners of my lips. Even though Dorian drove me crazy most of the time, I was relieved he was here with me now. He might be dangerous—I still wasn’t sure—but at least if he was dangerous, he was on my side. Mostly on my side anyway.
“So,” he said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “You going to tell me about this case that sent you to the university?”
“Missing warlock.” I shifted closer, my knees grazing against his and our heads coming together. “His wife showed up at the bar last night asking me to look into it. And before you say anything, the reason I took it on in the middle of this is because I really need the cash. It’s hard to keep food on the table working at a dive bar.”
“No judgement.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “So, that’s why you wanted to go to Bubbles & Trouble last night. You thought he might be skipping out on married life. Out seeing the sights, so to speak.”
I gave him a look.
“Hey now.” He help up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the guy going to warlock strip bars.”
“Oh, right. Like you’ve never been,” I said with a laugh.
“Actually, I haven’t.” Dorian met my gaze, his eyes churning with something I couldn’t read. Something dark, something dangerous. His tongue darted out to lick his lips, and my legs slightly parted as I felt my body lean even closer, as if an invisible string were tied between us. Tension sparked in the air, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
Dorian glanced away. “Enough about that. Continue with your story.”
“Right.” My body shuddered as I finally felt the air return to my lungs. “Anyway, someone didn’t let me go last night. Since the bar is closed during the day, I thought I’d check Wagner’s office first. I didn’t actually get much time to look around, but I did find out that he has a tendency to rush off on grimoire-hunting quests.”
“Oh, he’s one of those.” Dorian paused, his expression thoughtful, as if he were weighing all this new information in his head. “Did you tell anyone you were going to the university today?”
Frowning, I shook my head. “Just Laura.”
“Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone else?”
“No, just Laura.” A snake squeezed my heart at the dark look on Dorian’s face. “Why? You can’t possibly think she’d go and tell someone about this? You don’t know her. She would never do such a thing.”
“I think…” He tapped his finger against his knee, the one that still touched mine. “There is something we need to do before we make another move. And you can’t tell a single soul, not even Laura. Otherwise, things could get worse before they get better.”
My heart thumped hard. “You’re freaking me out, Dorian.”
“Good.” He gave me a grim smile. “Sometimes bloodsuckers create links with their blood bags when they feed. They can feel what they feel, see what they see, taste what they taste.”
My blood ran cold. “You’re saying those vampires linked with Laura when they fed on her last night. And they heard me tell her I was going to the university today.”
Witch's Curse (The Bone Coven Chronicles Book 1) Page 7
