by Alex Owens
“Why was Gregor giving you a hard time?” I asked.
Clive pulled me up into his arms, cradling my naked body against his. Then he covered us with a thick, soft blanket. “Well, when you went down, I might have overreacted... I accused him of taking too much of your blood.”
“Oh, and what did he say to that.” I asked, trying not to smile.
“I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I punched him in the face.” Clive held up his bruised and bloody hand, already healing itself.
My mouth fell open and I had no idea what to say. He’d punched his blood brother, his sometimes-lover, square in the face... over me?
I knew Clive could be ruthless and brutal, but I’d never know him to be impulsive. Most vamps were just the opposite. They’d learned how to play the long game quite well over the years. Not doing so could result in a very short immortality.
“And then?” I managed to spit out.
“And then he laughed in my face. Said that with ass that good, no wonder I was barking like a hound dog.” Clive couldn’t look me in the eye.
“Why that little goat-fucker!” I sat up, quick enough that my head swam.
I may very well be a fine piece of ass, but no one was allowed to call me that to my face, even if I was unconscious. I’d be giving him a swift kick to the balls as soon as I saw him. Maybe two.
Clive read my mind and pulled me back close, “No need, I handled that too.”
He held up his other bloodied hand and I couldn’t help but find him adorable.
“And you’re telling me that Gregor didn’t even try to hit you back?” I said.
“He didn’t have to, his parting shot came in the form of an insult; at least he meant it as an insult. I don’t see it that way.” Clive pulled me a little tighter and kissed my forehead.
I couldn’t breathe—metaphorically speaking, of course. Not because of how tightly he held me, but because conflicting emotions started battling it out in my head. Clive cared for me. He worried about me. He wanted to protect me. The route our relationship was taking should have scared the bejesus out of me, and to some extent it did, but the other side of me rather liked it. But I was still too scared to ask what Gregor had said before he left.
“Don’t you want to know?” Clive asked, turning my face so that I couldn’t hide my expression.
I nibbled on my lip, but finally responded. “Yes. Maybe, I don’t know, do I?”
“I’m not going to tell you then. You’ll have to beg it out of me. Or earn it.” Clive waggled his eyebrows and popped his chest muscles.
Damn, even acting like a goober, he still looked like a God incarnate.
“You’ll be holding it in for a while then. I don’t beg.” I said, my face unreadable.
Damn it, I did want to know what Gregor had said. But of course I couldn’t tell Clive that now. He’d never let me hear the end of it.
“By the way, you’re phone’s been buzzing off the hook over there on the floor. I started to answer it, but I didn’t want to leave your side.” The sincerity on Clive’s face was enough to kick-start my cold, dead heart.
“Well, I better see what’s going on. Do you mind?” I nodded to the heap of my stuff in the floor. “I’m still feeling a little out of sorts. My clutch should be somewhere near the dress.”
Clive patted my butt and moved me out of his lap, and back onto the bed. He retrieved my phone, looked at the screen and whistled. “Wow, you have 7 missed calls and thirteen unread text messages.”
My throat constricted and my mouth went dry. I could think of no other reason that someone would be trying to get up with me that urgently— something must have happened to Quinn.
Chapter Thirteen
“Slow down! What do you mean, she’s gone?” I shouted into the phone.
Cass was hysterical on the other end of the line. I could barely make out what she was saying. Between that and the panic racing through my mind, it took me longer than it should to piece everything together. When I did, well, it was not good.
“Take a deep breath and start from the beginning.” I knew it probably wouldn’t work, but I tried to push feelings of calmness through the connection back at Cass. I needed to know everything.
“Okay, so when you got to the house, the back door was open? Then what?” I stood deathly still. Clive hovered around me like a needy cat.
“Dead, how?” the voice coming out of me did not sound like my own. I was on autopilot.
“And no Quinn? You looked everywhere, right? The basement, the garden shed? She’s a smart child, she’d hide if she could.” I wasn’t what one would call a praying person, but that didn’t stop me from pleading silently to whoever might be listening.
“Okay, we’ll be there in...” I paused to turn to Clive.
To him I said, “Can we take the jet? It’s under an hour in flight time, and then another hour’s drive from the airport, right?
He nodded confirmation, but added, “I can check the runway specs of the smaller Melfa airport. That’s ten miles from your house, tops. If the runway can hold the jet, we’ll go there instead. That would save us almost an hour.”
Back to Cass on the phone, “Did you catch all that? Okay. Just try to stay calm and wait for me. Don’t call or talk to anyone, got it?”
As soon as she responded I cut the connection, grabbed my duffle out of Clive’s closet and started slinging my clothes in the bag. While I packed, I filled Clive in on the situation. He alternated between barking out orders on his cell and to trying to comfort me.
But I didn’t need it and I couldn’t take it, at any rate. Somewhere, deep inside of me a switch had been flipped. I wasn’t a freaked out mother, fretting over the “what if’s” and imagining the worst. I wasn’t cracking up or breaking down. I was a machine on a mission—and find Quinn was my only directive.
“We’ll find her, Claire. It will be okay,” Clive said, grabbing changes of clothing and tossing them into the bag I was packing.
“I know,” was my terse reply.
“Stop,” Clive grabbed my hands, “I’m here, I have money, and I know people. Use me, Claire. Don’t shut me out.”
I sighed and broke away from his hold. Catching the pitiful looking on his face, I mentally cursed myself and backtracked, kissing him lightly and whispering, “Thank you.”
“So, give me all the details. The more we know, the quicker we will figure this out,” he said.
I picked up the bag and scanned the room for anything I might have missed. “Okay, but once we’re on the way. I don’t want to waste a second.”
Clive agreed and we practically sprinted to down the long hall, made several turns and finally hit the front door. Clive’s car was waiting, keys in the ignition, in the driveway. He took the bags, threw them in the trunk and hopped behind the wheel. I climbed in the passenger seat, fastened my seatbelt knowing he’d be driving like a bat out of hell, and we were off.
Once we hit the interstate that would dump us at the airport in less than ten minutes, I filled Clive in on the little bit of information that I did know.
“Okay, so Cass said that she pulled up to the house and noticed it was very dark, none of the lights were on, not even the security lights that are on a timer. She thought maybe the power was out, but she could see the lights on at my neighbors up the road, so it didn’t make sense. She got out of her car and went to the back door, you know the slider on the deck? Through the glass she could see Morgan on the floor and she didn’t appear to be moving.”
I almost got choked up right there, but I cleared my throat and detached my emotional connection. There wasn’t time for any of that; it would only weaken me at a time when weakness was no friend if mine.
“So... Morgan?” Clive asked carefully.
“She’s dead. No obvious signs of foul play, other than a scorch mark on her chest. That’s weird, right? Magical maybe?” I was thinking out loud.
“Perhaps. What else? Cass got into the house... I’m assuming t
hat’s how she knew Quinn was missing?”
I nodded, but then realized with his eyes on the road Clive wasn’t exactly looking at me.
“Yes, all of the doors were locked, but she knew where the spare is kept.”
Clive accelerated around a string of slow-moving cars. “Don’t you think it’s odd that Cass finds a dead body and breaks into a crime scene?”
“Maybe, but I’m assuming that she wasn’t positive that Morgan was gone, and... uh, I’m sure she was worried for Quinn. They’re pretty close these days, since I caught Quinn playing that fucking violin—Cass has been testing Quinn for magic on the sly. We need to know what we’re dealing with,” I added.
Clive braked as a car swerved into our line and slowed further.
“Come on!” I yelled at the car, as if it could hear me. “Get over!”
I flicked my fingers at the car, as if I could somehow force it into the next lane. Surprisingly, the car swerved out of our way abruptly. Weird.
“Uh, did you do that?” Clive glanced at me and back to the road.
“I don’t think so. Maybe?” I stammered, wondering if that was even possible. Emotions and feelings, yes. But moving objects at my will? I’d never done it, never tried to do it, but I shouldn’t have assumed it was impossible. Freaky magic was almost my middle name.
Clive brought me back to the present. “So, Cassidy looked everywhere for Quinn and didn’t find her?”
“So she says. She has to be there somewhere? She couldn’t just disappear into thin air, right?” I was asking him to lie to me, even when I knew he wouldn’t.
Clive said nothing. Instead, he flicked on his blinker and pulled onto the ramp that would lead us to the private airport where he kept his jet. Within minutes, we’d arrived, boarded the plane and waited for the pilot to taxi us down the runway.
Stuck in a plane seat, I became more fidgety than ever. I pulled out a notepad and a pen, and started making lists of things to focus my attention. One list for all the places to check for Quinn: basement, garden shed, woods, crawlspace, tree fort. One list for who might be behind it all (very empty at the moment, I had no clue where to start with that one.)
Another list for how we needed to handle Morgan’s body. Should we call the police? I suppose that depended on if we located Quinn quickly. There was no way in the world I’d let myself be tied up hours, or possibly days, in a police investigation while my baby girl was somewhere out in the world without me. Not a chance in hell.
I spent the next hour making more useless lists in order to make myself feel like I was in control of anything. Clive watched me, but said nothing. Smart man.
We’d landed in Norfolk, Virginia and had make the hour’s long drive after all. It seemed the closer, local airport was only equipped for two-seater planes and tiny jets. Like everything Clive related, his jet would never be mistaken for tiny.
We picked up the pre-arranged rental car—I didn’t ask Clive who was the conductor behind our travels plans—I really didn’t care. I’d have taken a ride from Beelzebub himself if it had gotten me one step closer to wrapping my arms around Quinn.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s been a few days and... don’t you think you need to eat while the menu is so wide open?” Clive pulled out of the airport road and onto a busy six lane highway and within minutes we passed several strip malls, gas stations and other poorly lit places where a quick bite to eat might be found.
My stomach felt leaden and I knew there was no way I that I could hunt.
I shook my head. Logically, I knew that he was right. Who knows where the next few hours would find us? Something told me that I might end up needing every ounce of strength I had, but the head never won an argument against the heart. I didn’t want to waste time on my own needs. I just wanted my daughter found, safe and sound.
I expected Clive to protest, but he remained silent, eyes fixed on the road and left me to my own dark thoughts. We did not speak for the next hour, not as he navigated the heavy city traffic, not when we crossed the twenty-mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel, nor for the forty minute drive from the southern tip of the Eastern Shore to where I’d made my home.
Knowing how little we actually knew about what was going on, it was safer not to talk about it. Conjecture led to fear and fear was my own dark place. I would not, could not go there. If I did, I might not come back. He knew it. I knew it.
After a painfully long drive, we finally turned onto the lengthy road home.
It was surreal, pulling up to my own house in the pitch black night, knowing that there was a dead body inside. When I stopped to think who that body was, well, my mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around that idea just yet.
“Has the power been cut?” Clive parked and climbed out of our rental car.
“Looks like it... there isn’t a single light on,” I stood and shivered. “The house looks abandoned.”
Clive approached me and placed his hand on the small of my back. “I’ll look into it after—“
After we’d found the body.
I shivered again, taking the flashlight that Clive held out for me. Then, I took in a deep calming breath and lead him in through the back door. Cass left it unlocked for us, though I was surprised to find that she wasn’t waiting outside. Personally, I wouldn’t have been able to sit beside a dead body for over two hours in the dark, and I’m a freaking ninja compared to her.
We found her, Cass, sitting at the dining room table.
She looked up as we entered, stood and ran to me. I wrapped her in my arms, knowing that she needed to feel connected to another live person in a bad way, and I was as close as she could get. She wasn’t like me; Cass was good and sweet and a little naive. I’m sure Morgan would haunt her nightmares for months to come, and I wished that I could do something to lessen her pain, but I was done needling into other people’s brains for a good, long while.
Finally, Cass spoke. “She’s over there, between the coffee table and the patio doors.”
Still, she didn’t make any move to let me go. I pleaded to Clive with my eyes, because it was my place to see Morgan, not his. He understood and eased Cass over into his own arms, freeing me to go to the body. I squeezed Cass’s arm and mouthed “thank you” to Clive, then stepped away.
I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. I owed Morgan that much; she was my responsibility just as much as Quinn was, and I’d failed her miserably. And besides, how was I supposed to find my daughter if I didn’t inspect the scene?
I took a tentative step towards the living room, shining the beam of the flashlight down to inspect the floor before taking each step. For one, I didn’t want to step onto something that could be a clue, and for two, if we ended up calling the police I didn’t want to contaminate the scene any more so than it already was. Also, I’d always had an irrational fear of stumbling over a dead body. Funny how life works out sometimes.
There she was, her pale body lit only by a streak of moonlight shining through the glass doors. God, just a few days earlier she’d been so full of life, her sweet soul brimming over. And now, she was just an empty shell.
Morgan lay on her back, her arms and legs splayed in a way that told me she fallen backwards and landed in that position. She looked like a discarded doll. Innocent, but forgotten. I felt a tear slip down my face and I brushed it away.
I spied the singe marks that Cass had spoken of upon Morgan’s chest. I leaned closer to inspect it. A center ring of blackness, with wisps streaking out, like rays of the sun. I sniffed the air around the body and didn’t smell smoke or any other indication of actual fire though, which was weird. I filed that into the possible-clue section of my brain.
Nothing else about Morgan’s body seemed amiss. No wounds, no purpling marks, no bruises or gaping holes. Other than her scorched chest, nothing told me how she’d died. I needed to roll the body to make sure the back was also free of injury, but I didn’t want Cass to see me doing it.
I sighed and turne
d to see where Clive and Cass were standing, to see if they could see me in return. But what I saw stopped me completely.
“Hey, you guys can’t see that?” I stood up and waved toward the shimmering text on the living room wall. It danced and waivered freely, like it was not written on the wall, but rather in the air inches in front of it.
Cass and Clive both looked in the direction I’d pointed, squinting and twisting their heads from side to side. After several seconds, both turned back to me and confirmed that they saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“How can you not see that? Three feet tall and two feet wide... glowing neon-green for god’s sake. It looks like the radioactive goo from the Simpsons.” Either they were blind or I was losing my mind.
“Who are the Simpsons?” Clive asked, confused.
“Not important,” Cass replied.
“Ideas then?” I was starting to pace. My baby girl was out there somewhere, and I was stuck staring at some weird invisible message on my wall that only I could see, with the body of my stripper-turned-nanny growing cold at my feet.
I groaned, sat on the coffee table and put my head in my hands. I felt like the whole situation was one big connect-the-dots, only I didn’t have a numbered sheet so there was no way to tell where to start. I just needed something. One. Fecking. Clue.
“I guess... Well, it is possible for a witch to put something there that only another witch could see. It’s actually fairly common practice to keep paranormal things out of the public eye.” Cassidy suggested.
It made sense. And if it was true, it told me that I would soon be hunting a witch. Believe me, Salem’s puritans had nothing on what I was going to do when I found the person responsible for this.
I stepped closer, trying to read the message while it flickered around. I recognized my name at the top, a few lines of scribbles and a signature at the bottom.
“Venna? Like, my ancestor Venna...how is that possible?” I blurted.
