by Ashlyn Chase
Gwyneth opened the door looking well rested and refreshed. Good. She hoped her cousin would be in a receptive mood.
“Mornin’, Morgaine. Would y’all like to come in?”
“Please.”
Gwyneth stepped aside, and Morgaine crossed to the couch in Gwyneth’s living room. “Is Chad here?”
Gwyneth cocked her head. “Chad?”
“Hello, ladies. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Uh, yes.” Morgaine said nervously. “Can you give us a few minutes alone?”
“You want to kick me out of my own apartment?”
“No. We can go to my place if you’d rather not leave.”
“In other words, you just don’t want me eavesdropping.”
“Correct.”
An audible sigh suggested that Chad was fed up. “What makes you think I won’t just follow you and listen in without telling you?”
“Because I’m respectfully asking that you don’t.”
Another loud sigh. “Oh, all right. You’re taking all the fun out of it anyway. I’ll go see what Nathan’s up to.”
“Thanks, Chad.”
Gwyneth’s expression turned to one of concern. “What’s wrong, Morgaine? Y’all look like a pup that was left behind when the family went for a Sunday drive.”
“I’m okay. I’ve just been thinking…”
“Oh. Well, that can’t be good. Y’all want a glass of sweet tea?”
“No, thanks. I’d just like to talk to you for a little while.”
“Of course.” Gwyneth sat on the sofa next to her cousin. “What’s got y’all thinkin’?”
“A couple of things. First, you know how much I rely on you for everything. It sounds as if you’re starting to resent it.”
“I’m sorry, darlin’. I don’t mean to sound that way. I just worry about y’all. What if something happened to me? Back when Konrad and Roz lived here, I know y’all felt safe with them, but now they’re gone.”
Morgaine looked at her lap. “I know. I—oh, Goddess… This isn’t easy. I don’t want you to get mad.”
“Spit it out, Cousin. I’m more apt to get mad if y’all keep dancing around the back door.”
“I need to help Sly… and not just as a friend. But I need your help. Do you know what I mean?”
Gwyneth sat up straighter. “Oh! Y’all are sweet on Sly… More than a little, by the sounds of it. But what about his feelings for his wife? Oh, no wonder you look sadder than a broken swing.”
Morgaine leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Oh well, here goes nothing. “He kissed me.”
Gwyneth cocked her head. “Huh?”
“I know. I was confused too.”
Gwyneth stood abruptly and balled her fists. “Well, now I know why y’all thought I’d get mad. But I’m not mad at y’all, Cousin. I’m mad at him. How dare he say all that stuff and then lead y’all on?”
“I-I don’t think he’s leading me on. Look, if you’ll sit down and try to stay calm for a few minutes, maybe I can explain it.”
Gwyneth dropped back down onto the sofa. “Fine. Try to explain, ’cause it sure don’t make no sense to me.”
“After you went back upstairs the other night, I stayed a little longer.”
“I noticed that. I was thinkin’ that was a good sign. It meant you were feelin’ okay outside your comfort zone—especially seein’ as how his place is always so damn dark.”
Morgaine smiled. “Yeah, we talked about how we enjoyed spending time together, even though there’s only a window of a few hours in the evening when we’re both awake.”
“And that’s when he kissed ya?”
“No. Yes. I mean, after that.”
“So what kind of kiss was it? Was it a peck, like kissin’ Uncle Clarence?”
Morgaine shook her head.
Gwyneth’s eyes widened. “A passionate tongue kiss?”
“Uh…” Morgaine shrugged. “It was nice. Soft. Sweet. Kind. Loving…”
Gwyneth stood again. “Then he did lead y’all on. I have a mind to go down there and—”
“No!” Morgaine put her hand on Gwyneth’s arm. “Please, sit down. There’s more I want to say.”
Gwyneth lowered herself slowly and perched on the edge of the couch, apparently ready to jump up again at any second if she didn’t like the way the conversation was going.
“We promised to help Sly, and I want to. Very much. I think if he and I keep getting to know each other better, maybe it will grow into something, and then you won’t always be stuck with me. You have all kinds of opportunities to find nice guys. You can go out and socialize. You’re so beautiful—”
Gwyneth raised her hand. “Y’all can stop now. I know what you’re sayin’.”
Morgaine studied her hopefully. It was hard to read what Gwyneth meant by that from her expression. “And?”
“And, I’ll help. If y’all want Sly, I can teach y’all about flirtin’ so he gets the message without feelin’ like he’s been hit over the head with a brick.”
Morgaine laughed. “I wasn’t asking you to help me flirt. I have the feeling he likes that I don’t do that. I want your help finding a way to bring Sly back to the land of the living. If that means finding that cure for vampirism, I’ll need your help. If that means defeating his maker, I’ll need your help. Basically, whatever we do to help him will be dangerous, but if we do it together, we have a chance.”
“And if there’s a chance for more, y’all would like to be with him?”
“Yes.”
“And y’all aren’t scared?”
“I’m terrified.”
Gwyneth smiled. “Good.”
“Good that I’m terrified?”
“Good that y’all are terrified and willin’ to try anyway.” She nodded once, firmly. “I’m in. Now what do we do first?”
“Let’s see if we can find his maker now that it’s daylight. Bring your camera.”
“Y’all are goin’ with me? I thought I was goin’ alone and y’all would astral project.”
“No. If I want to be Sly’s girlfriend, I have to stick my neck out for him. And if you’re kind enough to help me, I need to be there to protect you.”
Gwyneth put her arms around Morgaine and hugged her. “I always knew this day would come. I’m prouder of y’all than I’d be of a prize pig at the fair—oh, sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like I was comparing you to a pig. Y’all know what I mean.”
Morgaine grinned. “Yes, I know.”
* * * *
The witches located the basement apartment in the block where their compass had pointed. Morgaine set down her heavy canvas bag on the sidewalk.
Gwyneth studied the mailbox. “V. Malvant. That’s a strange name.”
Morgaine shivered and hugged herself. “There’s something evil in there. I can feel a dark, twisted energy. Can you?”
Gwyneth closed her eyes. “Eek… now that y’all mention it, yeah. It’s like barbed wire. All sharp and twisted.”
Morgaine nodded and lowered her voice. “We need to be careful. Even though he should be completely unconscious and vulnerable, nothing says he might not have some kind of magickal alarm system.”
“So that’s why we’re gonna astral project to get in there, right?”
“We can do that first, but eventually we’ll have to find a physical way in. The more we know about him and his lair, the better.”
“Know thine enemy an’ all that, right?”
“Right. Now, according to the compass, there’s an alley entrance too. When we actually break in, we should probably do it from the alley. I’m thinking we should astral project from there too. That way we’ll see exactly what we’re getting into.”
“So, let’s git back there so we can take him from behind. Ugh, that don’t sound right.”
“We’re attacking his flank. Does that sound better?”
Gwyneth breathed a sigh of relief. “Much better.”
“Can you take the bag? M
y hands are sweating.”
Gwyneth hefted the heavy bag with an “Oomph,” and the two women strolled to the side street and around the corner. As they entered the alley, Morgaine smelled garbage and urine. Disgusting. She stopped and her chest fluttered. Maybe this was a bad idea.
Their alley didn’t smell like that. Of course, they’d had a werewolf and a vampire guarding the place for several years.
She reflected on how weird that was. She was more afraid of open spaces and panic attacks than she was of a werewolf and a vampire. Truth be told, she’d feel a whole lot better with her vampire and werewolf friends guarding her right now. At least it wasn’t dark out, and she trusted her cousin to get her back to her own apartment safely in case she had to flee. She took a few deep breaths.
Since all the buildings on the block were connected, they counted the same number of buildings along the back and matched up the architecture. By that process, they had no difficulty finding the maker’s apartment again. He had only one small barred window. A few steps led up to the back door. Morgaine felt the same malevolent energy, but she didn’t detect any kind of magickal protection. Thank the Goddess.
“Back in the day, this musta been the servant’s entrance,” Gwyneth said.
“You’re probably right. The back of the building was where the kitchen was usually located, with the parlor in front.”
“That must be why the alley smells like garbage. But nothin’ excuses the outhouse smell. I’m guessin’ that might be from a homeless person.”
“In this neighborhood?”
“They’re all over the city, Morgaine. If I was homeless and had my druthers, I’d keep my cardboard box in a nice area like this.”
Morgaine shuddered. “I can’t imagine it.”
“That’s your agga… agriv…”
“Agoraphobia.”
“Yeah, that.”
Morgaine nodded but tried not to dwell on the thought. They had a job to do, and she wouldn’t be able to do it if she stood there frozen.
She reached out and grabbed Gwyneth’s hand. “I need your strength, right now.”
Gwyneth squeezed Morgaine’s fingers. “You got it, Cousin. It’s time we get this cow to town.”
“Huh?”
“Y’all would say, ‘Get this show on the road,’ I think.”
“Oh. Yeah, let’s do that.”
Gwyneth shrugged the bag off her shoulder, and it lay in the alley. “Don’t y’all want me to go alone first?”
Morgaine gulped and shook her head. “No. I can do this.” She squared her shoulders, closed her eyes, breathed deeply a few times, and went into her trance. She let her spirit soar above her body. Still holding Gwyneth’s hand, she inserted her energy into the building.
Once inside, she stood in a hallway with a view of the front door and a banister to the right. A door on her immediate right probably led to the cellar. The building was set up much like her own, except narrower. Probably only a single-family home with a basement apartment.
She moved through the door to the right. Suddenly Morgaine froze. She was in total darkness. Her throat constricted.
I… I can’t do this! Morgaine ripped her spirit out of the building and back into her body so fast her head spun. She tried to run, but her feet wouldn’t move. Somehow, she lost her balance, let go of Gwyneth’s hand, and fell on her ass. “Dear Lord and Lady!”
* * * *
“I do declare!” Gwyneth stood over Morgaine as her cousin breathed into a paper bag. Gwyneth had helped Morgaine over to the next apartment’s concrete steps, and they were partially hidden from the maker’s apartment by a parked car.
Morgaine’s breathing finally slowed and she said, “I felt a panic attack coming on. What did you want me to do? Lose my shit in there?”
“You wasn’t even in there. Not for real. It woulda made a mess in your panties though.”
Morgaine rolled her eyes. “It’s just an expression.”
“Just tell yourself it’s not real.”
“It was real enough. Look, sometimes I have panic attacks for no goddamn reason at all. Suddenly I’m in a vampire lair in total blackness—and, surprise, surprise, I freak out. You would’ve too.”
“Nope. I didn’t inherit the freak-out gene. Didn’t y’all say your mamma thought she was goin’ crazy a few times?”
“Yeah.” Morgaine hung her head. “That’s why she moved to a big city. Too many small-town people knew her business.”
Gwyneth sat beside Morgaine on the steps. She patted Morgaine’s arm as if comforting a child. “Don’t pay it no never mind. Y’all are perfectly safe. Ya hear?”
“I-I guess so.”
Gwyneth let out a big sigh. “So, this is kind of a pickle. If all went well with the astral projection and there was no magickal alarms or booby traps, we was plannin’ on going in for real.”
“I don’t think that’ll happen.”
“Why not? I can understand y’all not wantin’ to, but I can still go.”
Morgaine grabbed her wrist. “You can’t go in there by yourself! That’s really crazy.”
“I’ll be fine. As long as it’s daylight, he’s dead to the world… so to speak. Plus, we lugged all these supplies down here. Flashlights, candles, matches, a wooden stake, a camera…”
“So? We’ll just take them back home.”
“Do y’all really want to give up on Sly? ’Cause if you do, I doubt his maker—or V. Malvant, as we now know he’s called—will give up.”
Morgaine braced her elbows on her knees and covered her head with her hands as if she was expecting bombs overhead.
Gwyneth sat quietly and let that sink in for a bit.
At last, Morgaine sighed. “I’d still like to help Sly, but…”
“But what? Y’all are a powerful witch, Morgaine. If anythin’, V. Malvant should be afraid of you!”
Morgaine chuckled. “Yeah, and a few minutes ago the big, powerful witch was breathing into a paper bag.”
“Look, y’all can stand outside with the door open, and I can go inside. If anything happens you can hear me. But nothin’s gonna happen!”
“I can’t let you go alone.”
“Then are we both goin’ in, or are we givin’ up?”
Morgaine glanced over at the next apartment where the vampire lay dormant. “I’ll try it. If I start to flip out—”
“Y’all won’t flip out because there are only two options. Help Sly, or don’t help Sly. And if he means so much to y’all, we’ll help him.”
“He means the world to me, but I don’t get why you’re doing this.”
“Because you mean the world to me. Even though we’ve had our differences, we’re kin. And I want y’all to be happy.”
Morgaine smiled at her. “I love you, Gwyneth. You know that, right?”
“A’ course I do. And I love y’all too, knucklebrain.”
Chapter 8
Jules Vernon glanced out the window and spotted the pretty Asian woman he had been expecting. While she pulled up to the curb in the moving van, he hopped up onto the ledge of his giant fish tank and watched the water sluice off his tail. As soon as his lower body shifted back to legs, he jumped down, grabbed the towel on the shelf beside him, dried off, and put on his robe.
Watching her out the window again, he was happy to see Lillian Chou helping the movers carry some of her things upstairs to her new apartment. Good. She wasn’t lazy. Perhaps she wouldn’t be high maintenance and could fix a leaky faucet herself.
He strode to the bedroom to get dressed so he could greet her and fill her in on some of the finer points of living in their neighborhood.
So far, Jules had been lucky. Nothing in the old building had broken, and no one had needed much of anything. But to get the job as the building’s super, he’d had to pretend to be handy. God forbid something really went wrong.
She had received her keys from him when she’d seen the place and given him the security deposit and first month’s rent in lovel
y, spendable cash. How was he supposed to check references with a thick wad of crisp Benjamins in front of him? Besides, she looked nice enough. Who needed a background check when the babe had a great backside?
Jules zipped up his blue jeans and threw on a dark green T-shirt that brought out the color of his green eyes. Women often commented on his eyes.
A quick look in the mirror, a fluff of his black hair, and he was ready to greet his new tenant. Almost… he grabbed the air freshener to mask the fishy smell in his apartment and sprayed it all around like a cloud of perfume. Just for good measure, he walked through it and scented himself with April freshness.
When he opened his door to the hallway, he had to wait for the movers to struggle by with her heavy wrought-iron bed. It reminded him of some of the balcony railings in New Orleans. Ornate scrolls imparted a feminine vibe. He fantasized himself handcuffed to those iron rails and almost chuckled. He was such a naughty fish.
Lillian, or Lily, as she had told him to call her, was hauling a suitcase up the stairs, so Jules trotted down to meet her and take it up the rest of the way.
“Hello, Lily. Welcome.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Jules,” she said when he grasped the heavy bag. “I am paying the movers by the hour, so I save money by helping.”
She had a hint of an Asian accent, but her English was quite good. She said she had lived in San Francisco for several years before moving to Boston.
“So, it’s just you and the movers? No friends or family signed up to help today?”
“No. My family is all in San Francisco. I’m so new to this city I have no friends and only one or two potential clients, so I had to hire help.”
“Listen, I may have forgotten to tell you something important when you came to look at the place. Our landlord is a recognizable celebrity and doesn’t want his whereabouts known.”
“A celebrity? Who is he? A rock star?”
“No, bigger than that—at least in Boston. It’s Jason Falco.”
“Who’s that?”
Jules’s eyebrows shot up. “Only the star pitcher of the Boston Bullets.”
