“You have no daughter,” Yale said again, more forcefully. “Say it, Coral. There is no Ruby.”
“Asshole,” Jasmine said, snarling. “I’m going to stake the bastard myself.”
Coral mumbled something under her breath.
“Mom!” Ruby cried, aghast.
“Say it again, Coral.” Yale spoke softly, as if he might be whispering sweet nothings to a lover. “I have no daughter.”
“I have no daughter …” Coral whispered. She choked on the words as though they’d been torn from her throat. From her very soul.
Yale chuckled, completely satisfied with himself. Then he shifted forward onto the balls of his feet, licking Coral’s neck.
“Mom!” Ruby cried, gripping her mother’s arm and shaking her like a rag doll. “Mom!”
Magic streaked through the reconstruction. Yale and Ruby disappeared.
Coral sat on the swing, sightlessly staring out at the playground. The bite mark on her neck was slowly fading. By the time she got home that day, there wouldn’t have been any evidence of the attack.
I imagined her wandering to the townhouse, visualizing her barely making it in the door, falling asleep on the couch. Then waking up, confused. Picking up the toys and the pictures of a copper-haired girl, shutting them away in the pink and purple bedroom.
Then … nothing. Coral had stopped eating. And she’d started hurting herself.
The magic in the circle dissipated.
I almost stumbled, shocked out of the scene I’d been visualizing. The heartbreaking aftermath of Yale’s terrible deed.
“We need to get this to the reader,” I said, grounding myself in the present and the next logical steps in the investigation.
“We need to contact Kett,” Jasmine said.
“Of course.” I allowed the circle to fall dormant while retrieving two oyster-shell cubes from my bag. “But did you hear Yale’s repetitive use of names? He’s brainwashed Coral. And before anything else, Nevada needs to know.” I placed the first cube in the center of my circle, directly underneath the swing where Coral had been sitting. “She said she didn’t recognize the magic used on Coral. So she hasn’t dealt with vampire ensnarement before. Or whatever that was. Did you know they could do that? Wipe out long-term memory?”
Jasmine didn’t answer.
Crouching next to the cube so that I could channel the reconstruction into it, I glanced up at her. She wasn’t listening to me at all. She’d pulled out her phone and started texting.
“Jasmine!” I snapped sharply. “Not while you’re in a circle.”
She froze, her thumb hovering over the screen.
“And not next to a reconstruction.” Magic delighted in frying electronics — especially my magic.
Jasmine grimaced as she shoved her phone in her pocket. “Fine. Just be quick about it.”
I touched my fingers to the edges of the cube, capturing the reconstruction within it. Then, taking my time as Jasmine paced the edge of my circle, I duplicated the magic into a second cube. One for the reader and one for us.
“Fine!” Jasmine unexpectedly shouted, throwing her hands up in the air as if we’d been having an argument. “You text him! It’s better coming from you, anyway. He’ll think I’m playing games.”
I tucked the cubes into my bag, then snuffed out my candles without responding — mostly because I wasn’t certain what Jasmine needed me to say in order to soothe her. She seemed fixated on Kett, rather than Yale.
My cousin scrubbed her foot across the line I’d etched in the sand, breaking the outer circle. Then, still not offering any clarification about her outburst, she collected her premade spells. Even if they weren’t reusable or rechargeable, as I had guessed, it was sloppy to leave such things behind.
Waiting for the wax to harden before I packed my candles away, I crisscrossed through the playground area, looking for any other residual magic. But even following the path along which I expected Yale must have taken Ruby, I found nothing. Vampires didn’t exude their magic the same way other Adepts did, but I was hoping that by moving as swiftly as he did, Yale might have left a trace.
Jasmine intercepted me as I crossed back to collect my candles, throwing her arm around my shoulders and pressing her face into my neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice muffled by my silk scarf. “I’m just hungry.”
I rubbed her back soothingly. “We’ll get some food at the hotel.”
“After we drop the reconstruction off,” she said, assuring me that she was actively straightening out her priorities.
“I’ll text Kett in the taxi,” I said.
Jasmine stepped back from our embrace, nodding.
“And hey, bonus. You’ve already done all the background work on the perpetrator. So tracking his movements last December is going to be simple. Especially because we know he was in Chicago.”
Jasmine smiled, the expression edged in anger and full of anticipated vengeance. But at least it was a smile.
Returning to Coral Cameron’s house, Jasmine and I found the reader and her cohorts still huddled together in the living room, trying to help the brainwashed witch while Jon made another pot of tea in the kitchen.
“Vampire,” I said. I pulled the reconstruction out of my bag and handed it to Nevada.
Lavender scoffed. “Capable of this level of damage? I seriously doubt it.”
Jasmine and I ignored the witch. Despite my own private concerns with the collection, Lavender was now being beyond moronic, especially when presented with a reconstruction from a witch with my reputation.
The reader set the softly glowing cube down on the coffee table, glancing at her two companions expectantly. Shadow and the purple-haired witch settled down beside her, focusing on watching the scene I’d collected in the park without further ridiculous comments. Evidently, they didn’t require my assistance to trigger the reconstruction.
“Coral needs to be admitted to the Academy hospital for treatment,” Nevada said. Her voice was remote as she watched Ruby Cameron’s kidnapping play out in her mind’s eye.
“I’ll make arrangements,” Jasmine said, pulling out her phone.
“Already done.” Lavender straightened as she stepped away from the cube. If the short but heart-wrenching scene collected within it had affected the witch, she certainly wasn’t betraying any emotion to that effect.
“That wasn’t your place.” Jasmine narrowed her eyes at the junior witch. “Was it?”
Lavender squared her shoulders. “It’s my team.”
“Yet I’m the lead investigator,” Jasmine said.
Nevada looked up from the cube, shaking her head with disbelief. “The combination of his venom and whatever mind magic he wields is like using a blunt knife to slice a tomato.”
Jon appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, wringing his hands in a tea towel.
Jasmine immediately turned her attention to him. “I’ll send in a report to the Convocation, but I can tell you that the vampire’s name is Yale. We have a lead on his current whereabouts.”
Jon sighed with relief.
Lavender snorted, muttering under her breath, “That’s something, at least.”
On our quick dash back from the park, Jasmine and I had decided we wouldn’t go into details about our connection to Yale. Wary of creating a larger incident between the Convocation and the Conclave, we needed to contact Kett first. Almost as important, though, revealing what we knew of Yale would force us to address the fact that we hadn’t reported Jasmine’s kidnapping — and my subsequently destroying two vampires, even if involuntarily — to the Convocation. But since that information couldn’t be used to cure Coral’s condition or to solve Ruby’s kidnapping, we would keep it to ourselves for the moment.
As lead investigator, Jasmine called the shots and made the reports. But she was under no obligation to reveal outside information to a junior specialist team.
Jasmine took a few minutes to exchange contact information with Jon,
promising to keep him updated regarding the investigation. While she did, Lavender — who I had decided was far too powerful for either her age or her disposition — chalked a simple circle in the living room. Then she transported the four of them — herself, Coral, Nevada, and Shadow, who still hadn’t spoken a word — back to the Academy.
With the case barely uncovered and nowhere close to being solved, none of us bothered with thanks or goodbyes.
Leaving Jon alone in his sister’s house, Jasmine called a cab. She was already glued to her laptop before it arrived, combing through the information she’d gathered on Yale when she was actively tracking him in January.
Settled into the cab and on the way to the hotel, I pulled out my phone and tried to formulate a text to Kett. Since I’d last seen him in the ballroom at Fairchild Manor, we’d only exchanged occasional texts. Surrounded by buildings of varying heights and representing multiple eras of architecture, I scanned through our previous messages as the cab negotiated Chicago’s impressively slow crawl of rush-hour traffic. I hadn’t heard from the vampire in three days, when he had texted to randomly ask me if I wore so much navy because it was my favorite color. I replied that I liked blue in general. And he had dropped the conversation.
Not exactly a life-altering exchange. And now I was getting him involved in witch business. Again. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Kett, but the executioner’s involvement was a double-edged sword. For Jasmine. And possibly Declan.
Only a block from the hotel, which I belatedly realized we could have walked to from Coral’s house, I settled on how to word the text.
We’re in Chicago on an investigation for the Convocation. I have reconstructed the scene of a nine-year-old witch being taken from her mother, whose mind has been severely damaged by the kidnapper.
I hit send, wanting to separate my thoughts … and my accusations.
The child was abducted by Yale. Last December. Her whereabouts, or whether or not she is still alive, are currently unknown.
I sent the second message, then paused. Too many other things needed to be addressed, quickly and without overt emotion. I settled on asking a simple question.
Are you in London?
If Kett was in London, I was hopeful that he would be able to go to Yale, drink his blood, and discover what had happened to Ruby. Assuming that the executioner’s brand of telepathy could pinpoint a specific event or time. During my sketchy Academy training on vampires, I’d been taught that their ability to read their victims’ minds was often referred to as ‘blood truth.’ And I had witnessed secondhand Kett’s ability to access Nigel Farris’s memories, before he allowed the beleaguered vampire to sacrifice his immortality to help complete Benjamin Garrick’s transformation.
But I also knew that not all vampires wielded the same magic — or even similar magic, beyond being immortal and needing to consume blood for sustenance. And though Kett had seen Nigel’s maker — Yale — in his blood truth, he hadn’t picked up that Nigel had been turned into a vampire unwillingly. Or at least that was what he claimed.
Whatever the case might have been, Kett would know why I was asking for his location, so there was no point in needless elaboration.
Jasmine shifted her gaze from the computer in her lap to my phone, reading the texts on my screen. She nodded. “You don’t think he’ll bring him, do you?”
“I hope not.”
The hotel came into sight on our far right — a breathtaking monolith of brick and sandstone, replete with columns, relief sculpture, and other classical details. The cab driver slowly forced his way through the crawling traffic toward the guest drop-off area underneath a burgundy-and-gold metal marquee that bore the logo of the Chicago Hilton.
Jasmine hit a key on her computer with vehement satisfaction, then closed her laptop to peer up at the hotel through my side window. “Beaux-Arts architecture,” she said smugly. “And, now that the Conclave will be footing the bill, I just upgraded our suite. Two bedrooms with a parlor, overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan.”
Shaking my head, I laughed under my breath at her audacity. The hotel was gorgeous, though.
My phone vibrated in my hand, reminding me that I shouldn’t have been holding onto it. I tapped the screen to read the incoming text.
>I’m not in London. But even if I were, it wouldn’t matter. Yale is difficult to compel.
“Damn,” Jasmine muttered, reading the text at the same time as me.
>I’m nine hours away.
We’re staying at the Hilton Chicago.
>Text me if Jasmine finds anything that directs you out of the city.
I angled the phone toward my cousin.
She snorted, but it was a pleased sound. The executioner of the Conclave might not have thought that Jasmine had the power or the temperament to be remade into a vampire, but he still valued her investigative skills.
The cab inched along, finally stopping before a front entrance dominated by gold-tinted metal and glass. A doorman leaped forward to open my door, while Jasmine handed her credit card and a ten-dollar bill to the cabbie.
“Tap?” the cab asked.
Jasmine leaned forward, intrigued. “You have that ability remotely now?”
“New machine,” the cabbie said, eagerly showing off his technology.
I gathered the grocery bags, climbing out of the taxi before I accidentally shorted out any of those electronics.
“Do you have other bags, miss? Or more parcels?” the doorman asked.
I smiled politely. “We had our suitcases dropped off earlier.”
“Ah, yes. I’ll have them directed to your room. What name are you registered under?”
“Fairchild. Jasmine Fairchild.”
He twisted away, crossing purposefully back through the entrance while another doorman held the door open for me.
By the doorman’s ‘parcel’ comment, I gathered that it looked as if I’d been shopping, rather than reconstructing the kidnapping of a young witch. The smooth French twist and simply tailored clothing I favored probably gave the wrong impression, and for a brief moment, I felt like correcting his assumption. Instead, I settled my overly large bag over my shoulder, turning to Jasmine as she climbed out of the cab behind me.
“We already know where Yale was in January,” I said, not elaborating that the ruddy-haired vampire’s whereabouts included kidnapping Jasmine. “Had you been tracking him for long before that?”
“Not long.” Jasmine twisted her lips sourly. “It was the hotel charge in Litchfield that really drew my attention.”
“Which is what he wanted,” I said, rehashing the events that we’d been too wrapped up in to fully address at the time. “Because they certainly weren’t staying there.”
Jasmine nodded ruefully, seemingly open to having the discussion, though she’d been reticent to talk about any of it. I hadn’t wanted to push and possibly force her to relive the trauma. But now doing so had suddenly become an unfortunate necessity.
“So you must have gotten their attention somehow before that. Something you did? Or an inquiry you made when you were hunting down Nigel’s maker for Kett?”
Jasmine shook her head doubtfully as we wandered toward the door that the second doorman was still holding open for us. The pressed exterior concrete gave way to luxuriously thick carpet as we crossed through the grand entranceway of the hotel.
“You were in New York in December, before spending Christmas in Mexico with Declan … and Copper?” I stumbled over the witch’s name. Though I hadn’t met or even spoken to Declan’s love interest.
Jasmine side-eyed me with a smirk. She hadn’t bothered putting her laptop in her leather satchel, simply tucking it underneath her arm. It wasn’t likely to be closed long enough to justify packing it away.
“Yep.”
“With Kett.”
She nodded, but her steps slowed as we approached a bank of elevators. She echoed me thoughtfully. “With Kett.”
Following the prompts of th
e discreet signage indicating the route to our check-in, I pressed the up button to call an elevator.
“The rogue vampires were tracking the executioner of the Conclave,” Jasmine hissed triumphantly. “It wasn’t about me or Nigel at all.”
“That makes more sense,” I said, thoughtfully. “If Jasper had been involved in your abduction, then I might have thought differently.”
The elevator doors slid open and we stepped in. I selected the lobby level. Despite the upgrade that Jasmine had done online, we still needed to pick up room keys.
“Yale must have seen me with Kett in New York,” Jasmine said. “Though I’m not sure how, or where or when. It’s not like we left the hotel … much …”
She trailed off as if just realizing she shouldn’t be proclaiming how much time she’d spent in hotel rooms with Kett. At least not to me.
“Well,” I said wryly. “You had to check in … and out, at least.”
She laughed. “Right. It’s just that a part of me had been thinking all this time that I’d screwed up, that I’d alerted Yale to my investigation somehow. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The asshole isn’t going to get away a second time.”
“Well, let’s confirm he was in Chicago before we start sharpening the silver stakes.”
Jasmine turned to me. “Wisteria, you didn’t screw up the reconstruction.”
“Actually, I’m more worried about what the hell it all means if I didn’t screw up.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.” Jasmine flashed a grin my way, then practically skipped out of the elevator before the doors had even finished sliding open.
I followed at a slower pace. It was hard to feel lighthearted under the weight of all the possibilities of what could have happened to Ruby Cameron, whether we figured it out or not. If Yale had killed the girl, the executioner of the Conclave would end his immortal existence and present his head to the Convocation. Or risk setting back the fragile understanding the vampires held with the rest of the Adept, maybe by hundreds of years. Though they were immortal, vampires were few in number. If other Adepts banded together to end their existence, they’d easily be wiped off the face of the earth in a matter of weeks. Quicker if the guardian dragons got involved.
Unleashing Echoes (Reconstructionist 3) Page 5
