by CJ Flynn
“I want to know why you didn't tell Camilla or Liam about the woman in Ben's apartment.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Tell me anyway,” I said.
“I didn’t think it wise. I do not have a good working relationship with vampires, and when dealing with them, I find it best to keep an ace in my pocket. If they don’t know about the woman, they can’t find her first.”
She looked across the table at me and raised her eyebrows. “Why didn’t you tell them? You had all the information I did.”
“I've learned that it's not always best to share every last detail,” I replied. “I wanted to see how this played out, find out why you were hiding it.”
“My ability sometimes gives me clues about the person whose actions I see. She didn't feel quite human, and I wanted to see if I could learn more. If it's the same woman in the video, then I'll know what I felt. She was human, but her conscience was absent.”
“Makes sense to me.” I took the seat across from her, my back to the sapphire blue expanse of ocean just fifteen yards from our deck. I slid the thumb drive across the table and she caught it.
“What's this?” she asked.
“Something from Ernie Haden. There's a password, but he doesn't have it. Can your partner get in there?”
“Is this about Ben?”
I shook my head. “No. I'll pay you for your work out of my own pocket.”
“We can do that. As soon as I get back to New York.”
“As soon as you get back?” I asked, puzzled.
Sloane nodded. “You heard what Daniel said last night. This is officially vampire business now. Not my gig anymore. I don't work for them, and they didn't hire me. It's hard not to cross paths sometimes, but once things step into vamp law, I'm out. I'll leave tonight, as soon as I see that footage, and then we'll get your jump drive taken care of.”
* * *
A courier delivered a locked tablet to us shortly after nightfall, and the three of us crowded around it to watch the footage. The camera was corner-mounted, facing the middle of the long bar that stretched nearly the length of one side of the place. Seated at the fifth stool from the front door was Ben.
He looked haggard, even in the low-resolution footage. His clothes were wrinkled and his shoulders slumped as he turned a whiskey glass around in circles on the bar. The frames skimmed forward, slowing down about thirty minutes later, when a blonde appeared from the edge of the screen and settled on the stool next to Ben.
He talked to her first, and she smiled at whatever he said. He didn't speak for a moment, but finally, he laughed too and the smile that spread across his face chased away some of the exhaustion that had been there.
There was more silent laughter and then something the blonde said made Ben shake his head. She put her hand on his arm and motioned for the bartender to bring another round of drinks.
More fast-forwarding. Almost two hours. There were a few glasses lined up in front of them, and Ben's stool was much closer to the woman. She was leaning on him now, and the bartender was sliding a card slip across the bar. He signed it, she kissed him, and they stood up and left.
Daniel shut off the tablet and frowned. “I have no idea who she is.”
“I do,” Sloane said. “She's the woman from his apartment. Maybe a day or two before the Elridges hired me. Which places her in New York sometime around January third.“
“What woman?” Daniel asked.
Sloane explained what she had seen when we'd checked out Ben's place. I stared at the blank tablet as she talked, trying to make sense of what I'd seen.
In that last frame, with his hand at the small of her back, and her blonde hair brushing his fingertips... he'd looked happy.
Chapter 5
We left Florida the next night, and I managed to hide out in my room for the full twenty-four hours prior to departure. Sloane had taken the jump drive and was searching out any other security footage we could find. There weren't exactly cameras on every corner, so she was digging pretty deep. Daniel had passed along his information to Camilla, but hadn't heard anything back on the next action to take. Sorrell was busy anointing his new queen—no time for a lost human seduced by an ex-cheerleader.
I struggled to process the footage I'd seen of Ben, and I couldn't get that last image of him out of my head. My mind rolled back to the night after Christmas, less than two weeks prior, when I'd come back from France. Harding had been dead less than twenty-four hours. Daniel, my only remaining friend inside Sorrell's organization, had shown me the tiniest bit of humanity, and I'd let myself get carried away. I knew I had fucked something up immediately, and even though there was no way Ben knew what had happened, I couldn't help but feel that the blonde was some sort of karmic retribution.
I was back in Park Falls within an hour of landing. Laura's car was in the driveway of my house—the house I had spent most of my life in, where my grandparents had cooked together almost every night of the week, and where I had spent most of my childhood. It didn't feel like home anymore, but neither did anywhere else.
I stepped onto the porch and looked back at the barn-turned-garage that occupied a good stretch of the backyard. It needed a new roof, and one of the doors was off-kilter. The whole place was starting to need the kind of work I couldn't give it.
My head pounded. I wanted more sleep.
That video. My logical, Ph.D. brain knew that I didn't have all the facts. It looked like payback, alright, but that didn't mean it was. We knew the woman was under the influence. Was Ben? He was inebriated. Had he been drugged? Or was it just too much scotch? What had she said to him to make him leave with her? In all the years I had known Ben, he had not been a barhopping kind of guy. He'd met his past girlfriends through clients, or at writing conferences.
Nothing was even remotely resembling an equation yet, let alone a solution. I needed more info, and I had to find a route that didn't involve Sloane. Or Daniel.
I wiped my hands across my face and took a few deep breaths. It was nearly midnight, and I wasn't sure if Laura would be awake or not. I opened the kitchen door and stepped onto the same exact rug that had existed in that very spot for at least two decades.
“I'm in here,” Laura called.
I followed her voice to the living room, where she was snuggled up with a blanket and Netflix. She paused her movie and stood up from the couch.
There was the briefest hesitation before she wrapped her arms around me. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I know you'll find him.”
“I hope so,” I replied, returning a squeeze before pulling back.
“I wish you would have told me sooner,” she said, crossing back to the couch and perching on the edge of the cushion. “I probably couldn't have done much, but I would have done anything I could.”
“I know you want to help,” I replied, giving her a small smile. “I just wasn’t ready to burden you with anything else.”
Laura looked exhausted. She was ten weeks pregnant and had been through hell and back since learning of Harding's death. We'd spent nearly an entire week holed up together, and I had listened as she'd worked through her initial grief over Harding. She still had a very long road ahead of her, but there was a little hope in her that wasn't there a few days ago. She settled against the back of the couch and put her hand on her belly.
“How are you?” I asked.
She gave me a tired smile. “It's been a good day. Best I remember in what feels like forever.”
“Really?” I asked. “Why?”
She shook her head. “I'm not ready to talk about it yet, but soon. I want to talk to you first. Tell me what you know.”
I sat down in the blue recliner that my grandfather had purchased as soon as he'd found his first gray hair. The fabric was worn and almost smooth in spots. I closed my eyes, trying to organize my thoughts. I laid everything out for her, before letting myself blink.
She stared down at the coffee table as if everything I'd just told her was resting there. After a
few moments, she looked up, her eyebrows knit in concentration. “Can't you trace them?”
“Who?” I asked.
“The blonde woman. And maybe even Ben? I mean... I don't know. If someone is being affected by a vampire, then couldn't that leave something like an energy signature?”
I stared at her. When I'd first tried to explain my auras to her, I'd used the word “energy”. She'd been very skeptical then, but I couldn't figure out another way to explain it.
“An energy signature? Like in Star Trek?”
She glared at me. “No. We're not talking about space ships. But think about it.”
Her words made perfect sense to me. If I was able to see someone's core energy, then it made sense that I could see if they'd left some behind. There was a decent chance I knew his actual kidnapper, and if I'd met them, I could trace them anywhere in the world. If they'd left something behind on the blonde, I'd find her too.
“It's worth a shot.”
“Really?” Laura asked, looking surprised.
“Absolutely. We need something more to go on, and everything deserves a look. Can't hurt to try.”
“What happens if you find something?” asked Laura.
“Well, then we go after him.”
“You'll go after him? Do you really think that's the best move? The Elridges have hired a professional, and if there really is a vampire involved, they'll devote resources to it, won't they?”
“Who do you think would be included in that?” I replied. “It's basically my job title. Tracer.”
Laura sighed. “Right. But you're too close, Allie. It might be time to step back from this, and let other people work. You need to process this. The last time you two spoke wasn't exactly a touching love scene. How do you know he didn't mean what he said?”
I let my thoughts travel back to that morning. We were fighting. Ben wanted me to walk away from Sorrell's organization, and get married. I wasn't ready—I was starting to doubt I ever could be—and I wanted to finish what I'd started. I'd gone after Lillith because I had followed her cronies and their trail of blood for a year. I'd seen destruction and too much death, and I wanted to see it end.
I thought it finally had, but I was wrong. That scant two days in Florida felt like a lifetime ago. I'd left my stepmother's with the tiniest sliver of hope that I wasn't as alone as I’d thought.
But I still didn't know where Ben and I fit together.
I blew out a breath. “I don't know, Laura. I don't have any idea what his thoughts are. I don't know what mine are half the time. But this is what I'm good at. I can do this. I can find him.”
Chapter 6
I was up and out of the house early the next day to get my car warmed up. Laura had decided that I needed new clothes to take my mind off things for a while and I was in a mood to indulge the pregnant lady.
Before I could even get the key in the ignition, however, a woman with tawny skin and a mane of dark brown hair crept from behind my garage. I let my gaze shift and saw a green aura so brilliant it ringed her irises.
“Hello,” I said, keeping the car door between us. I hadn't met enough witches to know whether or not she could be trusted.
“Hello. I am Eba, and I have a message for you. From Ernie Haden. He did not wish to use any easily traceable means of communication.” She held out a small, thin envelope. Its only marking was a smudge of green wax.
“How do you know who I am?” I asked.
The witch grinned. “He gave me a picture, of course. Take the message, Allie. I will not hurt you. ”
I reached out to take it, but didn't drop her gaze. She released it into my hand and gave a curt nod before retreating behind the garage again.
The whole creeping around the garage thing had happened to me before. I was starting to think it was a vulnerability.
I closed the door to my car and went back into the house, anxious to read the message from Haden, but apprehensive to read it out in the open.
Laura was still upstairs in the shower, so I leaned against the counter and broke the seal on the envelope. There was a single piece of paper inside, folded in half. When I opened the paper, the message contained just two sentences.
Word on the ground that Imala has escaped exile. Last seen: 12/30, private airfield in Tallahassee.
I read the letter several times before folding it and walking to the living room. I opened the flue, tossed in the note, and set a lit match to it. Only after the paper had turned to fine, gray ash did I let myself absorb the information Haden had sent me.
Imala. The vampire who had killed Harding.
I took a deep breath and went upstairs, knowing that I needed more information before I could act. I locked myself in my bedroom and sat down in the middle of the bed. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the auras of the people I had met. Imala's energy was burned into my brain; perhaps Laura's idea wasn't far off at all.
I sought her out, expecting that her aura would light up within moments. But there was nothing.
I pushed harder into the ether, letting its strange buzz fill my brain.
There. A flicker. I let my mind trace over the red light that glimmered in Savannah. It wasn't her, though. I knew that immediately. The flicker was strong, but it wasn't full of life energy, like every other aura was. My brain raked over that aura, trying desperately to puzzle it out.
A knock at my door pulled me from my search and I shook myself. My vision cleared and I stood up from my bed. I opened the door to find Laura, already wearing a long, black coat and gray snow boots.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
I’d completely forgotten about shopping in the short time since Ernie’s message had arrived. I ran my fingers through my hair and let out a deep sigh. “Not really,” I replied. “You were right. About the signature. I found a signature.”
“The blonde woman? That's good right?” Laura asked.
I shook my head. “No. I didn't find her. Someone else.” I took a deep breath. I knew what I was about to tell her might tear apart everything we had worked on in the past couple of weeks. “Imala has escaped, and I found an energy trace she left behind. But it's not her. Imala is nowhere to be found.”
Laura stared at me, her face ghostly white. She knew that name, would probably remember it to her dying day. “Imala? You think she has something to do with this?”
“I know it in my bones.”
* * *
I asked Daniel to meet me in a neutral location, which unfortunately turned out to be a bar in a part of town I didn't usually go to. He was camped out in a booth, and managed to look both imposing and completely comfortable.
I slid in across from him and set my bag on the table, using it as a shield between myself and the rest of the room.
A college kid in torn jeans and a black t-shirt stopped by our booth. “Are you ready to order?”
Daniel waved him off. “We haven’t decided yet.”
I smiled. “Just a few minutes, please.”
“I’ll be back,” the waiter replied, before leaving.
“Thanks for meeting me,” I said, looking down at the tabletop. I still wasn't sure who to trust in all this. I knew that Daniel was someone I could trust, to a point, but I didn't trust his boss. Sorrell and I had a working relationship, and he seemed to find me curious, but I had never felt warm fuzzies for him.
Daniel shrugged. “It was not a problem. What do you need?”
I told him about Haden's message, and about what I had found in Savannah.
He frowned. “It is clear that Imala is up to something. We do not yet know if it's related to Benjamin, but clearly, she is in violation of her terms of surrender. We will trace her to Savannah, and return her to Montana.”
“Don't you need to run all that by Sorrell?”
“We do not need his permission. He has requested regular updates, but given me freedom to make choices about how we handle Benjamin’s disappearance. I will notify him of Imala’s escape from Montana, and our pl
an to track her.”
The waiter stopped by again, an extremely annoyed look on his face. There were several customers standing around the bar, and a few more near the door. “Can I get you guys anything or are you just going to take up space and scare away the other customers?” He raised his eyebrows at Daniel.
I noticed for the first time that we were surrounded by a ring of empty tables and blushed.
“Two scotches,” Daniel replied, holding up two fingers. “Neat.”
The waiter rolled his eyes before heading back to the bar. “Seriously? You needed time to decide that?” He walked off again, and motioned to a few of the people near the bar that they were welcome to take seats.
