Erin scanned a keycard to gain access to the building and we stepped inside. She led me to an elevator and pressed the button for the third floor.
Their vault was number 319. Like all of the units on this floor, it had a normal-sized door rather than one of those garage doors. She opened it to reveal what basically looked like a small carnival’s storage closet. There were collapsed tents in various colors, a few actual cauldrons stacked to one side, and several collapsible tables and chairs piled against the wall.
Erin reached behind the cauldrons and retrieved a metal box the size of an office storage box and set it on top of a filing cabinet that was next to the cauldrons.
“Barry’s spellbooks are in here.” She tapped the metal box and then sifted through her keychain until she found the right key.
I stepped over a shoebox of half-used candles so I was standing beside Erin as she unlocked the box.
Inside were two well-used notebooks. The plastic-covered, college-ruled kind. I’d expected leather-bound books or something far more arcane. Then again, we were standing in a storage unit, not some secret cavern. Erin shifted them around in a panic, lifting them up and leafing through them.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“There should be three,” she said, digging through the box like she might find another notebook hiding in the corner. She felt along the bottom of the box but came up empty. Finally, she huffed out a breath. “Well, that’s great. These are his basic spellbooks. The missing one was red and had the notes of his death magic. It was his last spellbook, the one he used while he was dying.”
“And that one’s gone,” I said. Whoever was using Barry’s magic as a framework for their murders had clearly taken the book with his “how to skeletonize vampires for fun and profit” spell inside.
Erin handed me the notebooks and then started checking around the floor, like it might have fallen out of the box and landed behind something. She felt around behind the file cabinet and moved a few boxes, to no avail. The third spellbook was gone.
I flipped through the yellow notebook. It looked more like a recipe book than a spellbook. “Those were his potions,” Erin said, glancing at the pages. “Evan loved working with Barry on potions. He had a knack for them. Made potions that were potent and unique.”
I stopped on a random page and found a recipe for a sleeping potion. The next page held ingredients for an energy potion. Personally, I preferred coffee and gin.
I continued flipping through and landed on a page with a stamina potion. I was about to write off the book as useless and hand it back to Erin, who could actually make the potions, when I spotted something written in a bottom corner. My heart pounded as I stared at the words scrawled in messy ballpoint pen: the name “Ray,” and beneath it, an address.
A very familiar address.
It was the location of Neha’s old lab, where she and Ray had concocted party drugs they sold to fund their preternatural endeavors. Neha had worked to Cure vampirism, and Ray had tried to create werewolves with a serum. (Werewolves don’t exist, at least not in nature. Ray managed to make a few, most of whom were now dead.)
I turned the pages with renewed interest, searching for potions that might turn humans into monsters. I found nothing like that, although I did find several potions labeled with numbers rather than descriptive titles. But the ingredients were similar to those of the other potions, and nothing about them stuck out as obvious “werewolf potions,” or even anything that indicated a radical transformation, to my untrained eye.
And yet, if he’d had the help of a witch in developing his serum, Ray’s ability to make werewolves made a hell of a lot more sense.
“When did Barry die?” I asked.
“March,” Erin said.
I frowned. Ray was still working on his werewolf project in July, four months after Barry’s passing.
“Can someone who’s not a witch make a potion?”
“No,” Erin said. “A potion is still a spell, just one done on the stove. It still requires magic.”
“So, say, your brother Evan can’t give me a recipe for a sleeping spell that I could make at home?”
“Nope. But he could give you a weekly supply. Most potions last three to seven days on the shelf. And Barry was working with some scientist to try and introduce preservatives that would make them last longer. Not sure if he got very far, though. He stopped talking about it a while before he passed. I guess he had more pressing problems.”
Cold washed over me like a wave, and I shivered again. I’d only just started to get warm and now I felt frozen once more. If Barry had gone to Ray looking for help to extend the shelf life of his potions, Ray had probably asked for something in return. Help with his werewolf project, if nothing else.
And maybe… I thought of Lemondrop, the drug that had caused no end of trouble. If that contained magical elements, maybe that was the reason Cazimir was in a coma. Something in the potion had inhibited his ability to wake up as a vampire.
Maybe that was too much to hope for. Magic like that could probably be undone. Whereas if Caz had suffered brain damage—even if Angela could still feel him in there dreaming—he might not recover.
“I need to go run an errand,” I said.
Erin blinked. “At five in the morning?”
“I need to borrow this,” I said.
“For what?”
“I need to check something. I’ll give it back.”
“Okay,” she said, like she was pretty sure I’d lost my mind. “I’ll drive you back to your car.”
Chapter 15
Neha’s apartment was quiet except for the humming appliances and muffled snoring. I crept quietly down the hall toward her bedroom, my sword in hand. I’d run home to grab it before driving to her Bellevue home.
She was sound asleep on her back, her laptop closed on the bed beside her, along with scattered notebooks spread out on top of the covers. Her mouth was open and she snored loudly, in a deep enough sleep that my breaking and entering hadn’t woken her.
I bent over her, sword raised, and shook Neha’s shoulder. She jerked awake, sitting up in a panic. She fumbled behind her and pulled a pistol from under her pillow. She aimed the gun at me, eyes narrowing as she realized it was me.
“What the fuck, Henri?” she demanded. She didn’t lower the gun, so I didn’t lower the sword, but I did straighten my back so I wasn’t hovering over her.
“That’s what I’m here to ask you,” I said. I dropped the notebook, open to the page with Ray’s info, on her bed. She hesitated before picking it up, because she needed to look away to do so. “Did Ray work with a witch to create his serums and drugs?”
Neha grabbed the notebook and then turned her bedside lamp on, lowering the gun as she studied the page. She set it down on her lap with a sigh, keeping a tight hold on her gun.
“He was working with a local witch to help the guy with his potions or something. I didn’t ask questions. I told him I was uncomfortable having a witch in our lab, so they did their work together at his apartment.” She glanced up at me, eyes lingering on the sword. “You can put that down.”
I lowered it but didn’t put it down. “Was there magic in Lemondrop?”
“I have no idea. Lemondrop was Ray’s project,” she said. “But you know how Ray was. Enamored with the supernatural to the end. I told him it was a bad idea to work with a witch at all. When he started synthesizing Lemondrop, he always did so alone, when I was out of the lab. I had suspicions it was not entirely his own creation. I suspect the same is true of his werewolf serum.”
“What about the Cure?” I demanded. “Is that magic, too?”
Neha shook her head. “The Cure is—was—entirely my own work. Magic is unstable and unpredictable. I wanted something that could reliably and consistently turn a vampire back.”
“If you’re lying—“
“I’m not,” she said firmly. Her demeanor and voice were calm and collected, but I could see the fear in her eyes.
I’d always scared her, and that hadn’t changed when she defanged me, as much as she liked to pretend otherwise. “Now, will you please let me go back to sleep?”
I snatched the notebook back. “I need that antidote.”
“I told you, I would need vampire blood to even begin formulating a viable antidote, Henri.”
“I’ll get you the blood,” I hissed. “And when I do, you’re going to turn me back, or I’m going to find fun ways to use your entrails.”
She reached for her gun again and I knocked it off the bed with my sword. It clattered to the floor and I realized belatedly it probably hadn’t been smart to knock a loaded gun around, assuming it was loaded. “I’m done fucking around, Neha. I’ve been mortal for almost a year and I’m getting really damn tired of it. You’re either helping me or you aren’t. And if you aren’t…” I trailed off to let Neha fill in the blank.
“You won’t hurt me,” Neha finally said, but she didn’t sound so sure.
I leaned close so my face was only inches from hers. “You stole my immortality. If you think I won’t happily cut out your heart and eat it the second I know you’re useless to me, you’re mistaken.”
Neha shuddered but collected herself quickly. “Get me the necessary ingredients and I’ll do my best.”
“You’d better. Because I still have friends with fangs, and your gun won’t even faze them.”
I stormed back out of the apartment holding the notebook and my sword. Neha had confirmed my theory about why Lemondrop was so unpredictable and strange. But none of that helped me. I was still stuck in a mortal body, and until Caz woke up, no one would believe it wasn’t the Cure that had left him unconscious.
* * *
Back home, I watched the sunrise over Seattle from my big apartment windows. The sky was a blueish gray that melted into shades of orange and pink until the sun poked out between clouds that slid across the horizon.
I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I was still pale, still too uneasy about direct sunlight to endure it for more than ten minutes at a time. My cheeks looked slightly sunken and my eyes were wild and a little bloodshot. There were dark circles beneath them, and my lips were chapped. I licked them warily, deciding I needed to get some lip balm.
I was beyond exhausted. Vampires needed sleep, too, but they rarely felt so damn tired. Every part of my body felt heavy. I resented the way my stomach growled, and my head felt fuzzy from lack of sleep and caffeine.
I brushed my hair, which was a good several inches longer than it had been over the last ninety years. Vampires’ hair doesn’t grow. Now mine did. I felt so unlike myself.
I pushed my tongue against incisors that were too short and far from sharp enough to be fangs.
I’d gotten accustomed to mortality, to the routine. Get up, shower, eat, go to work, eat, come home, sleep, rinse, repeat. I’d lost the urgency to fix my situation, tamped down the ever-present desire and tried to bide my time.
But what I’d told Neha was true—I was done.
I needed to get my immortality back and to be myself again. Not in six months, not in six years, but now.
And I was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen.
Chapter 16
That night, after sleeping most of the day, I waited at the corner of Market and 22nd Ave in Ballard, next to a coffee shop that was crowded with people even at nine o’clock at night. I hugged the shadows and kept to myself, waiting for Angela. She stopped when she reached me. She didn’t turn toward me but her eyes rolled in my direction. We stood in silence for a long moment. She put her hands in the pockets of her black coat and looked straight ahead.
“No,” she said finally, answering my silent question. I’d meant to wait to ask it, to plead my case first, but the thought was at the forefront of my mind and too loud for her not to hear. I wanted to be a vampire again so desperately, and Angela could turn me, if she was willing.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Do you know what I usually do to mortals who ask that of me?” She tilted her head and stared at me with eyes that were inhumanly cold.
I swallowed down my fear, refusing to choke on it. My heart pounded without my permission, letting Angela know a small part of me was afraid. “I’m not usual.”
Her expression darkened. I took an automatic step back, blood thrumming in my ears. I’d known asking her was a long shot, and that she might kill me for daring to ask, but it was a risk I was willing to take.
I knew Angela was reluctant to turn others, especially since her first fledgling had gone mad and tried to kill all of the vampires in New York City in the 1800s. He’d been the worst kind of Weeper: one so regretful of what he was that he was determined to destroy all vampirekind. At least most of them only wanted their humanity back. Elijah had been a different kind of Blood Traitor, one who was stopped only when he tried to murder a savvy group of vampires en masse by burning down their hotel.
Not unlike the mortal idiots who’d set fire to the Factory.
“Mortals set fire to the Factory?” Angela asked. Her pale face betrayed no emotion and no sign that she’d heard my thoughts about her mad fledgling. She probably had, but I was glad she wasn’t going to force an awkward conversation about it.
“You didn’t hear?”
Angela shrugged. “I haven’t had time to seek out the local gossip. And Ryuto couldn’t care less about anyone except his beloved.”
“I don’t blame him,” I said. When I’d been a vampire, I kept up on the vampire drama via my job bartending at Underground, but otherwise hadn’t sought out news or rumors or gossip. It didn’t really matter to me what the other vampires in the city were doing, so long as they weren’t leaving dry corpses around for mortals to find.
“You won’t even consider turning me?”
Angela swiveled her head, her pale face staring at me as though I’d asked her to take me to the moon. “No.”
“Why the hell not? I’ve been a vampire before. You know I won’t… you know…”
“Go crazy and try to eradicate our kind?” she asked. If she was bothered by speaking of Elijah, she didn’t show it. “No. You probably won’t. But that is not the only factor to consider.”
I sighed. The chill in the October air was starting to get to me, and I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. I’d been turned in January and I’d been too stubborn to bother getting myself winter clothes until the worst of the season had passed. I didn’t want to be mortal long enough to face another winter where I needed gloves and parka vests.
“So what are the factors, then? Let me at least try to convince you.”
“There’s no need, Henri. I’m not changing my mind. You have a path to immortality. I’m not it.” She smiled mischievously, making sure to show fang. Longing filled me at the sight of them.
“What path? No one will help me. You know they won’t! You can read my damn mind.”
“Only your thoughts. Everyone ascribes too much power to my ability.”
“Same thing,” I said. “You know I’ve tried everything. So why not you? You’ve done it before and know what you’re doing, and you’re powerful enough for it to work.” I stared at the pale face that could be my salvation if only she’d see it. Angela and I had crossed paths enough times that we knew each other reasonably well. She knew I wasn’t going to resent being immortal, or hate having to live on blood. She knew I’d thrived as a vampire. What more could anyone ask for in a fledgling?
“You don’t want the blood from me,” she said firmly.
“Yes, damn it, I really, really do.”
Angela was slightly shorter than me, but when she stepped closer, our faces met directly. She was only inches away. I felt my heart pound in excitement and—if I’m honest—a little bit of primal fear. Angela did not look human. She was too pale, her movements too exact. The way she tilted her head like some ancient monster to assess me had a predatory quality. The way her eyes bore into my head was unsettling. She was pretern
aturally beautiful, a monster carved of marble and made flesh. She brushed hair off my throat with her cool fingers and I wanted nothing more than for her to lean forward and sink her fangs into my neck.
But she didn’t.
“You don’t want to be beholden to me, Henrietta.”
“Then don’t make me beholden. Give it to me freely.”
Vampires aren’t magically obligated to their sires in any way, despite what the stories often say. And I’d been a vampire before. There was no learning curve for me. She could turn me and walk away in good conscience, without fearing she’d left me unprepared for the life of a blood-drinking immortal. That wasn’t always true. New vampires needed to learn their limits, their abilities, and most importantly, how to manage and satiate their bloodlust. I was well practiced in all of the above. I just needed the fangs.
“You’re already beholden.”
I snorted. “To who? Sean? He won’t do it, so fuck him.”
Angela gave me an odd look. She bent even closer and I dared to hope, closing my eyes and waiting for the jolt of pain. But instead of teeth in my neck, her lips grazed my cheek. She pulled back and a cold finger slid down my face.
“You do thrive this way, as well,” she said. I opened my mouth to argue. I was surviving, and there was a damn big difference.
She cut me off. “Enjoy the parts of it you can for now. Food, drink, sun… You’ll miss it soon enough.”
“Goddamn it,” I said. “It’s so easy for you to stand there and act like I should be grateful for this curse. If this happened to you, you’d shit yourself in fear.”
Angela smiled. It was the first time her smile looked genuine. “No doubt. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need blood.”
She moved down the street so quickly, I caught sight of her rusty blonde mane in a crowd halfway down Market a second later, and then she vanished altogether.
I let out a breath and slumped against the wall, defeated. Everyone insisted I’d find my way back, and yet all of them refused to help. How the hell was I supposed to get my immortality back when everyone insisted I’d find some magical path instead of just giving me what I needed? Any of them could have ended this curse months ago if they’d wanted to.
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