Dangerous Hexes

by A. L. Tyler

  “She’s going after Mordley alone. She’s going to get hurt.” Nick opened the door and laid a hand on the security guard’s shoulder.

  I gave him a reprehensive look, and he thought better of altering the man’s memory again.

  “We have everything we need,” Nick said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Chapter 22

  I WAITED UNTIL WE WERE back in the privacy of the car. “She’s clearly had time to plan this out. I say we let her go and hope she takes out Mordley for us. It’s her life, and her revenge. Don’t interfere.”

  Nick gave me a long look before starting the engine. “Millie’s right. The two of you are weirdly similar.”

  Sparks crackled from my fingers, and Nick simultaneously opened the car door and pushed me out. He slid across the bench seat and climbed out after me. Through the glass front of the bank, I saw Alice, the lovesick stalker secretary, give us a funny look.

  Nick was already standing by the car and looking casual as I flailed and got to my feet. “I told you. Do not set this car on fire.”

  I brushed dirt from my shirt, hissing. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” His eyes narrowed. “Millie is on a suicide mission and she’s going to get in over her head.”

  “That is not our problem!”

  “’Not my problem’ is not the kind of person I am. It isn’t the kind of person you should be, either. Do you know where you’d be right now if I decided all the shit with that murder wasn’t my problem? You’d be dead, Driftwood. Be happy I decided it was my problem.”

  I scoffed. This case was never going to end, and I had a developing irrational paranoia that I was going to arrive at Louis Irvine’s bedside five minutes after his expiration. “I have a job and a cat to get back to!”

  “Bobby’s fine. He’s a cat.”

  “His name is Robert.”

  “And your boss is fine with it. I called Beech and he knows all about your internship. Don’t sweat it.”

  It felt like an aneurysm had burst in my brain. “My what now?”

  “You’re on call for some cases, learning federal techniques for evidence handling in the field. This benefits your department because you’ll return and train others—”

  “For the love, Nick!” I had to keep my hands in tight fists to contain the heat. “Did you rewrite him again?”

  “No, I used my existing alias to lie like a normal person.” He flashed a smirk, and in that moment, he looked uncomfortably like the man who had saved me from alley thugs one time. I’d lost my cool. He had the upper hand, and he knew it. “The cat is fine, your job is covered. So unless there’s something else you’re running off to, I don’t see where you’ve got to be.”

  He paused, and I was almost certain he was reading my heartbeat, listening with inhuman ears for the deception in my pulse. My own ears were busy sorting through the tinnitus-like ringing of my own disruptive magic outburst.

  “I know you don’t like Millie. Letting her die when you could stop it seems a little dark for you. Seems like the kind of thing Alex would do to send you pictures after the fact.”

  I swallowed, my blood running cold. Yes, he almost certainly would. Especially after all of this.

  “Is this about Angel?” Nick asked sharply.

  How could I have forgotten? “Yes,” I said mechanically. “It absolutely is. I need to start treatment with Angel. I’m really not looking forward to it.”

  Nick lowered his chin. “It’s about Angel.”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh huh. Okay. Well, Angel is very capable, so I have no problem leaving you with her.” As my door was still open, he walked back around to his side of the car. “Call her and schedule something. We’ll make it happen. Might as well because it’ll take some time to regroup and figure out how we’re going to find Alex. Get in.”

  I got in. Disgruntled, I slammed the door shut behind me. “Now we’re going after Alex?”

  “Two birds with one stone,” Nick said. He didn’t smile. “Unless you can think of a better way to find Millie.”

  I SPENT THE WHOLE DRIVE back to my house in Sargasso convinced that Nick was onto me. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.

  He was Nicolas Warren. He’d taken down more criminal masterminds than most handlers I’d ever read about. He saw my nerves, and he knew I was hiding something. He’d been with me long enough to recognize my mana burn episodes as a tell. Deadly fireworks weren’t exactly subtle, but he’d known me long enough to realize the incidents weren’t always random, either.

  But when we got back to my house, he only hovered for a moment to assure no one was lying in wait.

  “I thought up a lead I need to check out sooner than later,” he said. “You should stay here and rest up. I’ll call in your absence to Beech and pick you up later.”

  I smiled weakly. “Sure.” How much later?

  Nick turned to go.

  I reached out and touched his arm. He glanced back at me.

  “How long, exactly?” I hoped my smile was endearing and innocent. I made a mental note to practice my lying face in the mirror later, because I was going to be needing it. “I’m just feeling a little anxious with the whole Alex thing, and—”

  “I can stay,” Nick said without hesitation.

  “No! No...” I searched for the right words. “You should go. I want this done, and I don’t want to slow you down. I just thought I might get in the bath and take a nap, but I want to be ready when you get back so I don’t slow you down.”

  He looked uncertain. “Definitely not before this evening. We can call it tomorrow morning if you want a night in your own bed. Good?”

  “Good. Thank you, Nick.”

  His lips twitched and I saw a nervous flicker in his eye. “You’re welcome.”

  Robert wound his way around my ankles as Nick pulled away in his old blue Chevelle. He thought he was leaving me to a quiet afternoon of rest and relaxation in the tub.

  Gods help me, all I could think about was how to get to Red Oakes Elder Care in Quiltor faster.

  I picked up Robert and hugged him to my chest as I headed back into the kitchen. Four hours each way meant I would need snacks. I didn’t want to have to stop.

  A full tank of gas.

  Maybe a pillow and a blanket, a change of clothes, toothbrush...

  Adult diapers? Too far, Driftwood.

  Robert followed me around as I collected my travel supplies.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I mumbled at the kitten. “He’s a grown man. He knows my story. This shouldn’t surprise him.”

  Robert flicked an ear as he sat before me. He didn’t blink.

  I stuffed a change of clothes into my bag. “I am an adult. I can do stuff without his permission.”

  “Meow.”

  “Yes, I’ll feed you before I go.”

  “Meow.”

  “I’ll be back tonight.” I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the math. “Tomorrow. Later. Before sunrise—I’ll be back. That’s all that matters.”

  Robert kept staring. I kept packing.

  Marge’s text hit my phone just as I slammed the door shut. It was just after one in the afternoon.

  Nick asked me to keep an eye on you. Is everything okay?

  I sighed. I supposed it was better I told someone. If things went south, at least they’d know where to look for my body.

  I’m on my way to Quiltor. Don’t tell Nick.

  I started my car, but I still waited. As expected, my phone rang.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Five words, and Marge had summed up my life completely. I almost hung up on her because there was nothing else to say. I did not know the answer to that question.

  “I need to find Louis Irvine,” I said, licking my lips. “He’s my only lead on Grift.”

  “And seriously, what are you going to do once you find Grift? What is the point of all of this?”

  I stared out my windshield at Robert as h
e watched me with narrowed eyes from a front window in the house. “Grift is dead, Marge. Louis Irvine might be my last chance to figure out what Robert was trying to tell me.”

  The long pause that followed told me I was probably as crazy as Marge thought.

  “Your cat told you to go looking for this guy? Jette...”

  “The guy I named my cat after thought this guy was my father, but he’s not, but he might have framed him or something, but Nick says he didn’t, but I’m not really sure if Nick is being honest with me.”

  Another long pause. “So now you’re doing overnights with a guy you don’t trust. Has my parade of shitty exes taught you nothing about crap relationships?”

  “For the love.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “There was a time when you trusted Kane.” Her tone had gone as cold as ice, and my palms responded in kind. “And he put God knows how many bullets in you in the end.”

  I blinked in surprise. “This is Nick we’re talking about.”

  “Yeah. And if you have a feeling, you need to trust it. Do you have a feeling?”

  It cut right to the heart of everything. While Marge had a string of exes, I only had one, and I knew plenty about crap relationships and trust. Even as every fiber in my being wanted to trust Nick, I knew something wasn’t right.

  Because it was nice to have someone to take care of you.

  While Millie might as well have been me, Marge knew me too well. She could see the trouble I wanted so badly coming from miles away.

  “I have a feeling,” I admitted. “And I’m going to Quiltor. I will be back by tomorrow morning. If I’m not, tell Nick—this guy I’m going to see is a retired criminal. He’s in a retirement home and I’m not worried. If I don’t come back you can tell Nick. Otherwise, you say nothing.”

  “This sounds like an incredibly bad idea.”

  I knew it was. “Goodbye, Marge!”

  “Jette, no! Criminals don’t have health benefits and they do not retire—”

  I ended the call and took a deep breath. Gripping the steering wheel, I asked myself if I really wanted to drive four hours to meet a guy who probably deserved to be in the custody of the Bleak but who had bribed his way to freedom.

  And the answer was an absolute, unequivocal yes.

  THE RED OAKES ELDER Care facility was located on the edge of town. It backed to a field, and with the sun setting crimson behind the long row of windows in the visitor’s lounge, it felt warm and cozy.

  When Louis Irvine walked in wearing a fluffy blue bathrobe over a plain white shirt and threadbare maroon corduroys, I felt a little bad for my deception.

  “They tell me you’re my granddaughter,” he said with a large smile. He was a heavy-set man with drooping eyelids and thick, bushy brows that reminded me of Robert’s tail. “But I’m pretty sure I don’t have a granddaughter, unless one of my grandsons went and got married without telling me. But I’m an old man and I might be confused. Darling, who are you?”

  He took my hand and patted it gently as we sat down at a table in the corner. The visitor’s room was nearly empty. Based on the noise coming from the cafeteria down the hall and the smells of mashed potatoes and meatloaf, it was dinner time. No one could hear us.

  I returned his smile warmly. “Mr. Irvine—”

  “Please,” he said in his rich, soothing voice. “Call me Lou. Are we related?”

  “Lou,” I said gently. “I just need to ask you some questions about a man you might have known. A man named Samson Grift?”

  Lou’s smile and eyes never faltered as he tilted his head and smiled at me in a grandfatherly way.

  But his hands closed around mine like a painful vice, and he refused to let go.

  “Lou—”

  “I don’t have a gods-damn granddaughter.” Louis Irvine focused in on me with the intensity of an assassin’s laser sight. His voice went low and gravelly. “So who the hell are you? And what do you want?”

  Chapter 23

  “MY NAME IS JETTE DRIFTWOOD,” I said, surprised at my steely tone. I tried—to no avail—to free my hand from his grasp. “Do you know who I am?”

  He wasn’t impressed. “Unless you work for the Bleak, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  His grip was like stone. I looked desperately at the end of the room, debating whether a warning torch was a good idea. The magic was building in my chest as my anxiety piqued.

  Lou’s dark eyes burned into me, and his upper lip curled in a snarl. He rose to leave, and I gasped in relief as my hand came back to me.

  I rose with him. “Mr. Irvine, I do work for the Bleak.”

  He stopped, turning back to me with a wary glare.

  “I’m not here in an official capacity. I need to ask you some questions about a man named Samson Grift. I need you to answer my questions. Or else.”

  He raised his eyebrows. A feat, because it looked like they weighed a ton.

  “Or else? What are you, new?”

  I clenched my teeth to suppress my grimace. What would Alex say?

  I knew what Alex would say. What he would do. And those things didn’t help me.

  What would Nick say? “Lou, you have kids, and we have something in common. Neither of us likes the Bleak or the rules we’re living under. I know you almost went to prison some years ago, and I know what that would have done to your kids, because here’s the thing: my father is in one of the Bleak’s prisons. He’s been there since I was a kid. So I’m asking you, as a person who could have been your kid, can you tell me about Samson Grift? I just want to know my story, and then I’m gone. I swear I’m not here to cause any other trouble. They don’t even know I’m here, so we’ll both go down if this turns sour. Please. I just want some answers. Ten minutes of your time.”

  Lou stared me down. I stared back with desperation.

  He licked his lips, his tone still dour. “Samson Grift was the biggest fucking asshole I ever met. You meet a lot of dirty cops in my line of work, but Grift wasn’t just dirty. That man was rotten to the core. He did things most criminals don’t do, and he was working with a vampire named Nicholas Warren back then. They made quite a pair, the two of them.”

  My legs felt weak. I sat back down.

  Lou looked like he was going to leave for a moment. It seemed that now I had him talking, though, he wanted to continue. He sat down.

  “I knew about Grift before I met him. He was notorious. I should have believed the stories, but I got greedy.” He drummed his fingers on the table, looking sick. “That’s how it always begins, isn’t it? Greed. I wanted more for my kid.”

  I shook my head. “Stories?”

  Lou’s stare was almost too intense. “He was a sadist. He liked hurting people, and not just when they’d slighted him. The guy was known for shooting people’s dogs and threatening their kids. He blackmailed money that people didn’t have.” Lou shook his head. “But he needed some forgeries, and that’s what I did, and he came to me. Just passing through. I guess I was afraid to say no, and I would have felt stupid turning away a payday that big on rumors. I took the job.”

  He swallowed, the late evening sun shinning into his eyes as he gazed out the window.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He turned his gaze slowly back to me. “Warren came first. He searched my house, saying that Grift didn’t like surprises. That was fine. I wasn’t looking for trouble. When Grift came knocking, I thought the rumors must have been fake. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but a little too clean, you know?”

  I did know. Alex had some grooming habits that bordered on OCD. His hair never went more than twelve hours without a wash and his shirts were always professionally cleaned and pressed: he liked to keep a tidy store front so no one would see the corruption in the back. Men in suits with expensive haircuts draw less scrutiny. I sat up a little straighter as Lou went on.

  He sat back, bringing his fingers to his lips in contemplation. “He said he needed government documents. I thought he meant ID
s. Maybe building or travel passes. But what he was after was...” His nervous fingers stopped, and he held his hand open to the heavens. “Well. He wanted human papers. Fake passports. The guy was trafficking ants. I’m no sympathizer, but you know, curiosity—I asked. He needed papers for kids to sell to the Mockers.”

  I slumped back in my chair. I knew what Lou was talking about. I had looked at a set of pictures once—and never again. Those images were forever burned into my brain.

  Lou’s eyes darted away. His jowls quaked as he sternly shook his head. “I opened my big mouth. I asked. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but it’s not something I could do. Not even for the money he was offering, and not even knowing what they particularly wanted with humans or their organs. I don’t fucking know—I said I was out. What he was asking for...” Lou shook his head. “And that’s when he arrested me.”

  I swallowed. My throat had gone dry. “Did Nick—Warren. Did Warren know about this?”

  “I thought you wanted to know about Grift?” Lou looked confused and more than slightly irked. “Yeah, Warren knew. He was there. Rumors said he was always there. Every time his partner took a bribe or threatened someone’s wife or kid or mother. Never said much, but he didn’t have to. Bloodsuckers have a way, you know?”

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to accept it. Was it all just a ploy, as Nick had claimed? Was this why he didn’t want me digging any deeper into Grift?

  Jason Wolff, and his question about whether I considered myself scarier than Nick, were suddenly fresh in my mind.

  My tongue felt too thick for questions, but I managed. “What happened next?”

  Lou grunted. “What the hell do you think happened? I went away. They locked me up in my own mind. I tried to tell them, but I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t take the word of a forger that a handler was planning to commit treason and murder a bunch of kids. Then I was taken out, and dumped on the street, and when I got home I found out that my kid was taking jobs—the kind the Bleak don’t lock you up for, because they’ll kill you instead—to get enough bribe money to get me out.” His eyes never left my face. I could feel the anger and sadness as he leaned in closer. “Thirteen, and he was running messages for the Packs. He witnessed a hit. Thirteen.”