Kyle dragged his eyes from the blood. A grin quirked one side of his mouth. All he said was, “KJ.”
“Good. Cuz I don’t want to have to carry that stupid key around.”
She unlatched the padlock and would have helped him sit up but she straightened to find him already tipping the jar to his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Kyle lowered the jar. He looked in at the red clump. He looked at Laylea. “It’s frozen.”
She risked her life to reach over him and grab the spork she’d dropped earlier. She offered it to him. He tilted his head.
She examined the utensil. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Silver.” He held the jar up to his nose to inhale Amanda’s blood instead of Laylea’s pricked thumb.
Laylea looked at the spork and then up at Kyle. “Right.”
She hopped up and trotted over to the kitchen.
Kyle licked at the bloodcicle. Enough melted on his tongue that he felt a rush of energy to his brain. His thoughts felt more his own. He licked again. The plastic ice cream spoon whacked him in the head as he licked at the bloody crystals a third time. He leaned close to the spitting cat to fetch it and bared his teeth at her. He sat back when he saw Laylea watching from the kitchen. The cat just kept hissing and yowling in her prison.
“I think Methuselah there is the real Mrs. Cull’s familiar.” Laylea pulled a box of crackers from a cupboard. “And our landlady was in the midst of transferring to her new body when some mess-up with the gas killed the cat.”
“Mrs. Cull was a body snatcher?” Spoon in hand, Kyle looked down at the other jars, two filled with what he needed, the third smelling of vinegar. He hesitated before scooping a full spoonful of Amanda Cull’s memories. “Landlady Mrs. Cull was just a body double for one of these other two and this blood is from the original.”
Laylea searched the fridge for cheese to go with the crackers. “I would say host instead of body double. And I think the cat is only hosting Amanda. My guess, judging from the notes in her journal, is that Amanda stole Elizabeth’s body and when that grew old, she jumped to Ernestina’s. Ernestina Cull’s body is . . . was Kelly’s landlord.”
Kyle nodded and raised the jar again. And again, he hesitated. “What if it’s lost all its food-for-a-vampire value because it’s frozen? You don’t think I’ll just grab you again then?”
“Do you want to drink your only friend in the universe?” Laylea asked. “And why choose me over the cat? Biting her might get her to shut up.”
Kyle perked up. “Hey, if I drink Mrs. Cull, will I inherit her magic like I inherited Irina’s curse?”
Laylea laughed and trotted back to the closet. “I don’t think Mrs. Cull had any magic. Maybe Amanda was a natural witch, I doubt it, but definitely not Ernestina. She was a grunt witch. She had to work at it.” She pulled a dried scorpion from the shelves and tossed it at the crate. “Look at all the books and talismans and tools. She learned to tap into the magic of the universe but not really all that well. Evidenced by the fact that she got herself stuck in a cat. And even so, the ability to perform magic is genetic, physical. It’s in your DNA and you don’t get to take it with you when you ride a familiar. Drink.”
11
Drunk
Laylea pulled a crumbling photo album from a shelf, one eye on Kyle, one eye on how quickly she could shut herself in if he was right and the frozen blood didn’t satiate him. Kyle tilted the jar.
“Why is she hanging out in the cat?”
“Gah! That’s what you’re drinking the blood to find out. Aren’t you thirsty anymore?”
“I am thirsty. But I never was able to quit cigarettes once I started and now that I have a second chance, I’d like to avoid getting hooked on things that are bad for me.”
“Pretty sure your choice is blood or lie there helpless forever,” she pointed out.
“Sure, but I have a choice of blood now.” He swept a hand over the other two open containers. “If I’m gonna have yet another person’s memories running around in my brain, do I want them to be a body jumping witch’s?”
“Grunt witch.”
“What does it matter?”
“Oh,” Laylea tamped down her response. “It just does.”
“I mean, let’s be honest. If your guess is correct, Amanda seems like she’s a bit of a bitch.”
“I’m a bitch. She’s a megalomaniac.”
“So would I become megalomaniacal?” His brow raised. “Would I double down on murderous intentions? She drugged her downstairs neighbor so they’d die together. Who does that?”
Laylea stepped out of the closet, away from her safety. “Mrs. Cull wasn’t trying to kill Kelly. Read the label on the empty jar.”
Kyle held it up. Kelly Ward.
Laylea said, “She was planning to steal Kelly’s body. But there was too much gas.”
“Because she poked holes all along the gas line, instead of just turning on the burners and the stove.” Kyle finished for her.
Laylea perked up, “You got that from three licks of the good stuff?”
“I got that from you telling me Kelly’s barbecue fork was missing and seeing one out on Mrs. Cull’s porch.”
“Wow.”
“I’m a police detective, Lee. What do you think I do?”
“I think you chauffeur Dee around while she solves crimes and mourns dead people.”
“Really?” He tried to set the blood aside but found he couldn’t. “So, too much gas knocks Mrs. Cull out.”
“Not intentionally. Mrs. Cull—Amanda put herself in a trance so she could transfer her consciousness to her familiar.”
“The cat.”
“Yeah.”
“And the gas knocked out the cat.”
“Yeah. Amanda was riding the cat down to Kelly, who was knocked out by the herbs so she couldn’t resist when Amanda transferred her consciousness out of the cat.”
“Into Kelly’s body,” Kyle clarified.
“Yeah. But the gas knocked Methuselah out before she could get to Kelly. And when Bailey saved the cat—”
“Tell me he gave her mouth to mouth.”
“Ew.” Laylea peered at one of the oldest pictures in the album. A trim young woman in Victorian dress sat up on a chaise lounge. Instead of looking at the camera, this woman gazed down at a small blue-black cat. Because the cat, sitting on the chaise beside the woman, was looking at the camera, you could clearly see the bloodstone charm hanging from a thin leather collar. The same collar and charm hanging from Methuselah’s neck. Whereas the cat trapped in Laylea’s travel crate had two stripes and a white tip to her tail, the cat in the photo had no stripes.
“All I know is when I left it in the bathroom, the cat was not breathing. I went upstairs. Got blown out the window. Which now makes more sense if the actual gas line was punctured.”
Laylea found herself strolling over to the window she’d flown out of. The frame was unscarred. She twitched the curtain aside, blinking at the sunlight. The glass was intact. And there was the fire escape. She’d caught the railing just as her fingers turned into paws. Somehow her momentum had turned her and though she tumbled from the third floor platform to the second, she managed to scramble and tumble her way back into Kelly’s apartment.
“Lee. The sun.” The rays didn’t touch him, but Kyle shied away from them anyway, recalling the smell of his flesh burning before Laylea covered him up that morning.
Laylea dropped the curtain.
“When I got back to Kelly’s bathroom, the cat was breathing. I dragged that little grunt witch all the way down the stairs and out to the sidewalk.” Her mouth felt hairy again just at the thought.
Kyle tried to spit out the taste as the fireworks of her blood shot that visceral memory to the fore.
Laylea removed the legal file from the seat and plopped into the comfy chair. The most important document had been rubber banded to the outside of the string tied envelope. Laylea held it up for Kyle. “This is Ernestina C
ull’s will. The whole building, known as The Ridgeway Arms by the way—”
“There’s actually a plaque on the front side of the building that says so.”
“You and your detecting. Okay, Detective Nellwin, to whom did Ernestina bequeath The Ridgeway Arms?”
Kyle looked at the cat, the empty mason jar, and over to Laylea. “Kelly Ward.”
“That’s right.” Laylea dropped the legal file on the floor. “What I can’t figure out is why the fresh jars are labeled Kelly and not Ernestina. Four one-liter jars prepped with vinegar. Four liters or so of blood in the human body. Transfusion machine in the closet. It all points to Amanda draining Ernestina’s body after taking over Kelly.”
“How do you know what a transfusion machine looks like?”
“There are needles and a pump and hoses and okay, I don’t, I’m just guessing.”
Kyle licked at the red crystals again and felt another small shot of electricity through his veins. “Why save the blood at all? Are you thinking they’re vampires?”
“No. Black magic uses blood. Your victims’ blood for some spells, your own for others. Victim and self have become entwined here in the Cull household.” She threw her head back. “Drink, and we’ll know for sure.”
“You hope.”
Laylea eyed the closet and the back door. It would be closer to yank open the curtains and let the sun shine on in, but Kyle didn’t even have big boy vampire teeth. Maybe he didn’t have true big boy vampire skin either. She grimaced. “I do.”
“Okay.” Kyle took a deep, unnecessary breath and scraped a spoonful of blood out of the glass jar.
Laylea gagged as Kyle dug in. She looked away, examining the patterns on the arm of her chair. The cat crate spilled over to one side, scrabbling along the floor as if it were alive. Laylea imagined the cat-woman inside was pretty anxious to get away from a vampire with a good-guy complex who would soon have his strength back. She glanced at the Elizabeth Cull and Ernestina Cull jars, thinking she should get those back in the freezer before they went bad. How much blood did a newly turned vampire need anyway? She hopped up and headed over to the kitchen.
“How’s it going there, Nellwin?”
Kyle didn’t answer right away. She heard him swallow and gagged up a little of her water.
He handed her a towel. “Mmm,” he said, “blood slushy.”
Laylea leapt away. Her hip jammed into the dining table but she breathed slowly, chanting to herself, stay human, stay human. She reached out and grabbed the towel. “Don’t,” she joked, “don’t ever say that again.”
Kyle set the Amanda Cull jar on the counter beside the crate which he must have put there before fetching a towel from the pantry. He didn’t even remember picking up the cat. Respecting the fear in Laylea’s eyes, he circled the far side of the table to fetch the other jars and lids from his bedside. “Sorry. I guess I’m feeling better.”
The werehuman nodded.
“I don’t think I’ll need all this.” He snuck a taste from both Elizabeth and Ernestina before sealing them up and putting them back in the freezer. Then he picked up Amanda and hopped up on the counter beside the crate.
His feet dangled against the cabinets and Laylea had to restrain herself from telling him not to kick them as her mother had told Bailey countless times. Kyle’s clothes, though dripping, fit the filled out form underneath. His eyes sparked from a face with the normal indications of a skull far beneath the flesh. His skin was almost a richer brown than it had been before but his eyes were drained of color. They reminded her of the corner of the couch back home that sat in the path of the sun from both windows. When you looked at it, you thought it was brown because the rest of the couch was and you remembered it being brown. But it wasn’t really brown anymore.
Kyle swallowed. The jar was still nearly three-quarters full. “We should wash off the runes around the doors and windows. Each uses the Culls’ blood and they’re cursed against anyone not in the family.”
Laylea tossed him the towel. “That doesn’t make sense if they planned to have Kelly take over the place.”
“Apparently the host, while not allowed to make any conscious decisions, has a great deal of influence. And Ernestina was not the sharpest spork in the set, was she, Catmanda?” He stroked the mesh. “We’re also not gonna be able to take her away from the building until we’ve cleaned off the runes.”
“Why do want to take her away?” Laylea kept her eyes on Kyle as she went to fetch the bucket. “Kelly likes her.”
“Kelly likes Methuselah. This isn’t Methuselah anymore. And with Amanda’s crappy karma, I don’t see Orin getting any lovin’ on while she’s around.”
Laylea stopped pouring vinegar into the bucket. “How are you feeling, Kyle?”
“I’m feeling great. Amanda’s memories, and Elizabeth and Ernestina’s, are dripping into my brain like champagne. It’s not like Irina’s at all. They don’t hurt. Irina’s memories sear my soul. Yours make me cringe with guilt. But the Culls deserve to have their lives stolen.” He paused, the muscles of his forehead wrinkling despite his words. “Well, not so much Ernestina.” He giggled. “She thought the blood stuff was icky.”
Laylea tried to spit into the bucket, mixing the anti-blood rune concoction as the brownies had. She found she had no saliva to spare.
Kyle brought her a glass of water. “She’s right. The blood stuff is icky. But it’s a gift for me, Lee. I don’t have to bite people. You were right. I don’t have to be evil. I’ll have to clear out while your brother checks the place for black magic later. But then I can move in here. Kelly will come home from the hospital and find out she owns the place. I’ll pay her rent with the cash hidden in the floor safe under the comfy chair. I can keep an eye on Jeannie and KJ and make sure they’re safe. I can help you with your cases.” He crowed. “I definitely don’t want you cutting my head off, Lee. It gets dark really early now so maybe I can go with you to take Catmanda to The Psychic Eye. You’ll have to tell Kelly Methuselah didn’t survive the blast, of course. She didn’t see the cat before she was transported to the hospital, did she?” He reached into his brain to retrieve Laylea’s memory. Then he caught himself. “No. Can’t do that. Did she see the cat?”
“No. Methuselah was still unconscious when Kelly was taken away.”
“Good.” He took the bucket from Laylea’s feet and slithered past her to add water.
“Why are we taking,” she paused to figure out which name to use but settled on, “the cat to The Psychic Eye?”
“Amanda believes Celia is just a little bit the real thing. A doorwitch. And she despises her.” He left the water running to pull a book from the shelves and toss it to Laylea as he hustled to the vault. “A familiar has to obey the witch who claims her. You want a familiar who chooses you but it doesn’t have to. There’s this little ritual, spelled out in there,” he leaned out of the closet to gesture at the book, “and the witch gives the familiar a collar or a jess or an ear tag, whatever, with a charm or token—or if you want to go classic, a bell—that belongs to the witch. Then the familiar belongs to the witch. It has to obey her.” Kyle jogged from door to door cutting cat toys from the knobs.
“Or him.”
“A guy can be a witch?” He pulled a bin from under the sink and shoved all of the toys and scratchers and totems down in amongst the other trash. “He wouldn’t be called a wizard, or mage, or warlock?”
“No. It’s witch. They’re all witches.” Laylea passed Kyle on her way into the kitchen. She turned off the steaming water. “Kyle, do you want to lie down again for a little bit?”
“No.” He set the can down and reached up to grab a book of matches from the shelf over the back door. “I’m feeling great. We’re gonna want to get rid of that mattress. No way anyone could sleep on it after the amount of me that’s been soaked into it. I’ll help you drag it outside when the sun goes down.”
Kyle struck a match, tucked it into the book, and tossed the whole thing into the ca
n. He tripped backwards when flames surged up.
“Ha ha! I guess vampires don’t like fire very much.” He looked up at Laylea, his feet planted now. “Or is that a general wyrdo thing?”
“Witches don’t like it. But then there’s that whole burning them thing that went down. I’m cool with a safe controlled outdoor campfire.”
Like a spark jumping from a campfire, Kyle felt his entire nervous system flare.
Every muscle in his body tensed. His arms flew wide, fingers spread. Head thrown back with his face in a silent rictus of pain, his chest lifted so high, Laylea imagined his feet rose off the ground. He chewed at the air until he was able to pull a lungful screeching down his windpipe.
With the air came all the dark memories Laylea tried to hide even from herself.
His chest jerked in, throwing his arms forward as if he were reaching for Laylea. His eyes, bleeding tears locked onto hers. He pinned her with his terror.
And she knew he knew.
“Don’t let Bailey bell me!”
12
Perchance to Dream
Then Kyle collapsed. His body flopped to the ground, missing the convenient mattress by just three inches. His skull bounced off the newly scrubbed wood with a splash.
Laylea watched him for a moment in case the weasel went pop but he remained boneless and brainless on the floor. It felt like a spark had gone out of the room. But not all sparks. She hefted the bucket of rune cleaning water out of the sink and hauled it over to the flaming trash can. Her size did her no favors but she managed to dampen the flames. Another bucket and some karmic spit for good measure put the fire out.
Then she gathered the dried blankets and sheets she’d fetched earlier and moved them to the floor under the window. She wrestled and rolled the big man over onto them. She wrapped the chain around his chest and pulled it tight. Then she moved from window to window, twitching the curtains aside in just the right way to frame Kyle’s body in sunlight.
Amanda Cull went back into the freezer beside her descendants. The legal folder, journal, photo album, and books went back into the closet along with the second bloodstone charm. The cat and her bloodstone came off the counter. Laylea set her in sight of Kyle.
Laylea: A Wyrdos Tale Page 8
