Fate

by Nadine Nightingale

  Heavy footsteps resonate down the hallway. “Alex?”

  I shove the paper in my pocket, hiding it from my brother’s sight. Don’t ask me why. I just don’t want him to see it.

  “Did you find anything?” he asks, moving closer.

  The weightless paper burns a hole in my pocket. “No.” I clear my throat. “Not yet.”

  For a second there, his eyes gleam with skepticism. He quickly discards his doubts. “Let’s take a look around before the cops show.”

  “Where’s B?” The mamba appeared shaken to the very core. Leaving her without supervision is a bit reckless.

  He scrubs his fingers through his untamable hair. “She’s waiting in the car.” His voice alone tells me she isn’t holding up very well.

  Neither am I, by the way.

  Jesse searches through the suitcases when the note, in my pocket, drains me of all energy. “Hey.” He looks up. “I’m gonna check on Bonnie, okay?”

  “Be right there.”

  “Take your time.” I sure need some to wrap my head around the fact our only hope to find Manda is dead.

  Chapter 16

  That damn note means nothing. On the first day, she saved his soul? C’mon, that’s a coincidence. She isn’t Manda. His isn’t my soul. Sure, it’s weird I didn’t go to hell, but Manda said it herself. There’s no way out of a deal with hell. She couldn’t have—

  “You might think you saved her, but it’s really her who’s saving you,” little Elsa’s voice thunders through my mind.

  Bullshit. Manda isn’t stupid enough to try something so reckless. She’d never risk her own life just so I wouldn’t go to hell, right?

  Wrong. She took a damn bullet for me. And there’s the fact she said she’d fight Lucifer himself for my soul. Did she…could she—

  No. Manda’s disappearance has nothing to do with my not going to hell. It can’t. Please, God…tell me she didn’t—

  “Alex?” Jesse cuts through my thoughts. “Do you agree?”

  “Agree with what?” I have no clue what he’s talking about.

  Eyes narrowed, he casts me a worried look. “JJ and Bay,” he adds.

  “What about them?” My body might have been here at Green House, but my mind was somewhere else completely.

  Frustration seeps into my little brother’s expression. “Have you even listened to what I said?”

  No. “Sorry, I’m…tired.” Universal excuse. Works every time.

  B puts her coffee mug down. She’s still shaken from the gruesome scene we found earlier. Removed eyeballs and ripped off arms are pretty hard to swallow. Even for agents who’ve worked this job for years. “Your brother wants to send them to Cassadaga.” She shrugs a lazy shoulder. “I told him it was a stupid idea. He won’t listen to me.”

  “Why?” Jesse mutters. “They’re already on their way to Manda’s mother. They texted earlier saying they’d be there in a little less than an hour. What’s the harm in sending them to Cassadaga?”

  “They’re wasting their time.” Manda isn’t hiding at her mother’s place. She’s locked away in a supernatural prison cell. Something tells me Melinda and her son aren’t in Florida either.

  Jesse frowns. “At Manda’s mom’s or in Cassadaga?”

  Probably both. “At Manda’s mom’s.” I always knew Amanda Bishop would never voluntarily seek out her mother. The woman is…there are no words to describe Maria Bishop. But if this was a fairytale, she’d play the role of Snow White’s evil stepmother. You know the one who asked the hunter to take her child to the woods to rip her heart out.

  ****

  The night started like any other since I’d aimed the muzzle of my Berretta at Manda’s head. I’d waited for my brother to sleep, grabbed my car keys, and hit the road. Driving around aimlessly, looking for a shithole where I could drink my sorrows away became my nightly goal. Bars, clubs—anything serving booze was good enough for me.

  That night, I ended up in a cheap “even the devil wouldn’t drink here” strip club. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the coke lines they sniffed at the table behind me, or the fucked-up truckers drooling over the naked bodies of worn-out dancers. I was a man on a mission. The Drink Amanda Bishop out of My System mission.

  Forgetting the witch who played me was impossible. I tried and failed. But I quickly learned enough bourbon could ease the pain of her betrayal, stitch up the hole she left in my chest. Even if just for a little while.

  Aerosmith’s “Cryin’ ” blasted through the speakers. The song resonated with my soul. So much so, I couldn’t help but wonder if Steven Tyler had been in love with Amanda Bishop, too.

  The night moved on, but I remained stuck in time, reliving the moment I learned the truth about the girl I saved in a dark alley, over and over. God, I will never forget how I’d opened that letter, addressed to me and me only. The pictures inside had been gruesome—a body shredded to pieces—what was worse though was the note attached to it. Amanda Caroline Bishop, it read. Descendant of Bridget Bishop, the first witch to die during the Salem Witch Trials. I’m sure you recognize her victim. You broke his nose.

  At first, I thought it was a vicious joke. Someone—maybe Jesse—trying to mess with me. Manda wasn’t a witch. Jesse and I sensed these creatures effortlessly. A tingle on the back of our necks gave their true identities away. The tingle I felt when Manda was around was nowhere near my neck. It was a flutter in my stomach, making me hot and cold at the same time.

  I’d made some calls just to be sure my hunter senses weren’t clouded by her pretty face. What I’d found out blew up my whole fucking world. “It’s true,” Carter had said. “Amanda Bishop is the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Bridget Bishop. I’m going to e-mail you a pic of her driver’s license.”

  In retrospect, I wished I hadn’t opened that goddamn e-mail. I wished it hadn’t been Manda’s sparkling emerald eyes gazing back at me. I wished—

  Wishes were nothing but hopeless prayers. And I was over them. Like I was over the witch who lied to me whenever she opened her alluring mouth.

  I had five…okay, more like fifteen shots, flirted with one of the strippers who didn’t rock Manda’s endless legs, her wavy blonde thatch, or her smart-ass attitude, and started to feel all around less fucked up when a woman with long, ginger hair appeared next to me.

  “Alexander Remington?” Her voice was like honey, sweet and captivating.

  I didn’t feel like company. Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off the forty-something woman. She looked uncannily familiar. I was almost certain we met before. “Who’s asking?” I sounded like a drunk shithead. I was a drunk shithead.

  Ankles crossed, she leaned against the sticky counter. Her silk blouse, the pearl earrings, and the glamourous watch around her wrist didn’t belong in a place like this. She’d be lucky if she got out of here without being mugged—or worse—by one of the assholes at the coke table. “We need to talk,” she said, casually.

  The nagging suspicion she deliberately dodged the Who Are You question chewed at me. “Sorry,” I muttered, gaze locked on my empty short glass. “Not in the talking mood.”

  A sigh of disapproval roared out of her. “I can certainly see why my daughter is so infatuated with you.”

  I looked up. “Come again?”

  She lifted her chin with confidence, reminding me of the one person I was dying to forget. “My name is Maria Bishop,” she announced, matter-of-factly. “And we need to talk about Amanda.”

  Three things happened at the same time. One: the sensation washing down my spine when she appeared made sense. Because if she was Amanda’s mother, she was also a witch. Two: I came to the conclusion I was a rotten hunter when wasted. Three: I almost fell off the barstool. I mean what in the name of God was Manda’s mother doing here? Did Amanda send her? Was this an I’m-going-to-kill-you-for-threatening-my-little-girl visit?

  “Alexander?” My name rolled off her tongue like acid. “I’ve come a long way to have this talk with you. The least
you could do is have the courtesy to listen.”

  “What do you want?” I hissed, overwhelmed by the reality that I sat face to face with Maria Bishop—Amanda’s mother—the woman I thought was dead because her daughter never once spoke about her.

  Maria scanned the strip club. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

  I was drunk, not stupid. Walking out of here with a Bishop witch was suicidal, and I wasn’t ready to die just yet. “No thanks.”

  I fished a fifty-dollar bill out of my pocket and slammed it onto the counter, all set to run for the hills.

  I made it to the exit when she caught up with me. “You’re a hunter.” She seized hold of my jacket. “An Arrow of Artemis. You have an obligation to humanity. Are you really the kind of man to run in the face of the impending apocalypse?”

  The impending apocalypse? Now I know where Manda gets her melodramatic streak. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, lady.”

  She frowned. “Please”—she tilted her chin at an empty table, next to the exit—“hear me out? You own it to yourself and your legacy.”

  To this very day, I’m not sure why I agreed to listen to her. Maybe curiosity forced my feet toward the table. Or maybe the hollowness in my heart sat my ass down. Either way, I should have walked out of that damn strip club and never looked back.

  But I didn’t.

  “You might find it odd I’m here,” she started.

  “Odd?” I laughed. “Doesn’t quite cut it, lady.”

  She dragged out a sharp exhale. “I need your help, Alexander.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have had that last drink. It made me hear things. Weird, creepy, impossible things. “I beg your pardon?” Maria Bishop couldn’t have possibly asked me for help. She’s a witch. They didn’t go around asking hunters for favors.

  Her teal blue eyes stayed on me. “I wish there was an easy way to say this…” She shook her head. “There really isn’t.”

  My stomach twisted. I had no idea what she wanted. Yet I couldn’t shake the dreadful feeling any second the world would blow up right under my feet. “No offense,” I muttered, trying to sound less petrified than I was. “But could you stop speaking in riddles and tell me what you want from me?” Before I send you to purgatory, rested on the tip of my tongue. But that was still Manda’s mother sitting across from me. The mother of the girl I’d spent the last three months with, the one that had stolen my heart only to throw it into blazing flames of lies and deceit.

  She met my gaze. “I need you to kill my daughter,” she blurted out, as if she had asked me to do some grocery shopping for her.

  I laughed so hard my stomach started aching. No way in hell Maria Bishop just seriously asked me to kill her child. No mother—not even a witch—would ask a hunter to murder her daughter. That was just insane.

  Then I looked into her cold eyes and understood Maria Bishop was beyond serious. “Let me tell you about Amanda’s fate,” she went on. “I assure you when I’m done, you will see why she needs to die.”

  Frozen, I sat there and listened to the tale of a mother who had asked me to put a bullet in her daughter’s brain. She painted a picture of doom and darkness, of a world in which the witch I let live would move on to become the queen of darkness. “She’s going to raise hell, Alexander. You have to stop her.”

  “No.”

  She squinted. “No?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to be your executioner.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t understand, she—”

  “Oh, I understand.” I looked the woman over, poison in my veins. “I understand you are throwing your own flesh and blood to the wolves. I understand you’re ready to send Manda to purgatory for no other reason than a stupid vision you had when she wasn’t even born.”

  Maria Bishop’s face turned to granite. “You understand nothing. Amanda will bring upon the apocalypse and if you don’t stop her, the blood of her countless victims will be on your hands, too.”

  I was ready to get up and leave. I needed to know just one thing first. “Why me? Why don’t you do it yourself?” I had the nagging suspicion she wouldn’t mind driving a knife through Manda’s heart.

  “She trusts you.”

  My brows flew up. “Seriously?” Manda was a witch, a damn smart one. She trusted no one. Least of all me—a hunter who had a gun to her head.

  “She loves you.”

  Whoa, the woman was madder than I thought. Amanda Bishop only loved herself. Me? I was just a game for her. The let’s-see-if-I-can-seduce-a-hunter game. She exceled at it.

  I rose from the chair. “You’re a damn witch. I’m sure you can think of a few ways to get rid of her.” What the hell? Did I just encourage her to kill Manda herself?

  “Magic can’t touch her,” she yelled after me.

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “She’s an untouchable,” Maria added, desperation in her voice.

  I wanted to know what an untouchable was, but I could no longer listen to the abomination who dared to call herself a mother. So I stomped out of the strip club and started down the rabbit hole that would eventually lead me to hell.

  ****

  “Alex?” B’s nails dig into my shoulders. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I—” Just remembered the night I first met Maria Bishop? Nope. I’m not going to open that can of worms. It would lead to questions I couldn’t answer. Like why did you really sell your soul?

  Luckily, B has more pressing matters. “Tell him. Tell him how dangerous it is to send Bay and JJ to Cassadaga. The witches there don’t take hunters lightly.”

  “She’s right,” I say, banishing the painful memories.

  Jesse jumps up. “But—”

  “But so is he,” I assure Bonnie. “Maybe someone in Cassadaga knows why our only lead to Manda is dead.” Or what the note is all about. “We have to try, B.”

  She crosses her arms. “What if they get killed?”

  “They won’t.” JJ is one of the best hunters in the States. She can handle everything. I should know; she kicked my ass several times.

  “Whatever,” B grumbles. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

  Jesse grins victoriously. “I’m gonna call them.”

  He moves toward the kitchen when someone unlocks the apartment door.

  B is on her feet in a nanosecond. “Amanda?” Her face falls. Clearly, it’s not Manda, trying to get in. “What the hell are you doing here?” she barks.

  “I live here,” the girl retorts.

  The ominous roommate, I assume. The girl is the last person I’d expected to share an apartment with Amanda and Bonnie. She wears a long, black, turtleneck dress, and a massive gold cross dangles from her neck. She looks like a preacher’s daughter compared to the two witches.

  B slams her hands on her hips. “I thought you moved in with Jules?”

  The chick pushes past B. “And I thought you and your killer friend were on the run.”

  “How dare you—”

  “Oh, my goodness,” the roommate shrieks as she spots my brother and me. “Two, Bonnie? Really? Isn’t it bad enough you turned our apartment into a brothel? Do you have to add swinger club to the description?”

  B is about two seconds away from killing her. I gotta stop her before she, too, ends up in a prison cell. “We’re FBI,” I say, showing her my badge. “Mrs. Lacroix is helping us with a case.”

  The Nun, as B calls her, cocks a brow. “Are you here for her whore of a friend?”

  Whoa, did she just call Manda a whore? Maybe I should let the mamba kill her. “We can’t talk about the case,” I force out, my voice sharp and merciless. “But we’d certainly appreciate some privacy.”

  The Nun’s gaze darts from me to Jesse, and back. “I wasn’t going to stay near the best friend of a murderer, anyway.” That said she marches to her room and disappears inside.

  “She’s—”

  “The nightmare of my existence.” B pauses. “But t
here’s something different about her.”

  “What?” I inquire.

  The mamba gawks at the Nun’s door. “I’m not sure yet.”

  Chapter 17

  Carter texted a little less than an hour ago. His plane—a private FBI jet—landed at JFK despite the heavy snowstorm tying up most of the air traffic. Perks of working for the government. They play by their own set of rules.

  We’re about to meet at a small coffee shop near Green House. Bonnie recommended it. We’d all rather stay at her apartment, but her odd roommate is still hiding out in her room. We can hardly talk about Manda in her proximity. The Nun is convinced Manda murdered that Jules chick—a friend of the Nun. Apparently, they got into it because of Pony-Boy—the douchebag Amanda dated while at NYU. The mamba summarized the whole drama for us. Turns out, B set Manda up for a date with Pony-Boy; his real name is DeLuca. Just for the record, I don’t give a fuck about the asshole’s name. Anyway, Manda resisted. B persisted. They hooked up and had somewhat of a casual sexual relationship. I asked the mamba to skip the details. Just the thought of Manda with someone else kills me. I really don’t need graphic images to spend the rest of my life wishing I could decapitate the bastard for touching her. Long story short, we had to find another location to meet Carter.

  “It’s freezing,” B complains as we head down Seventh Street into the heart of East Village—a hot spot for funky restaurants as well as old-school record stores.

  Jesse inches closer, shielding her fragile body from the snow masses blowing at us. Damn, I think I was teleported into one of those cheesy high school flicks. Any second he’s going to offer her his—

  “Want my jacket?”

  She casts him a sidelong glance. “And you’re going to walk in your shirt? Brilliant idea, Little Remington.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he grumbles.

  A smile tugs at her lips. “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.” The only person who gets away with calling him Little Remington is Manda. She nicknamed him the night I saved her, right after Jesse invited her to join us for a drink.