Wicked Hour

by Chloe Neill

  “And what did you tell him?” Theo asked.

  “I played it off at first, said I didn’t do any real magic, and then that I wasn’t licensed. He didn’t believe any of it. Said he could feel my magic. I said fine, even if I did magic, I didn’t do dark magic. I wouldn’t make a compulsion spell. Couldn’t do it, as I didn’t even stock those kinds of ingredients. So I asked him what the issue was, if there was any other way around it.”

  “Because you wanted to sell him some real magic,” I said, my irritation rising.

  “Because I want to pay my rent,” Paloma countered. “He said someone was hurting his family, and he wanted to stop it. So I made the potion, told him to follow the instructions and say the incantation.”

  “So you gave him the potion that night?” Theo asked.

  “No, he had to come back for it. I had the ingredients on hand, but you still have to be careful in the making. There are steps you have to take, stages you have to follow. You can’t just dump everything in and expect to get a good result.”

  “How long until it was done?” Theo asked.

  “Maybe a week?” A faint flush rose on her cheeks. “It was done faster than that, but he hadn’t been able to get all the money together, so I held it.”

  “Do you know where he got the money he used to pay for it?”

  “No. Why? Should I?”

  Not if you were willfully oblivious, I thought. “So you gave him a weapon.”

  “I gave him the magic he paid for. I didn’t have control over what he did with it afterward.”

  But her eyes skittered away from mine, focused on a stack of papers on the corner of her desk. She wasn’t telling the truth, or at least not all of it. But we’d get to that. . . .

  “How did he pick it up?” Theo asked.

  “He came back to the store with three of his friends. Beyo and”—she squeezed her eyes closed, as if trying to remember—“I’m not actually sure of the others’ names.”

  “John and Marcus?” I offered.

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you know about the Sons of Aeneas?” I asked.

  Her eyes widened. “The cult? I had a treatise on them—a little paperback. I keep some materials on the occult—kind of a ‘true crime but paranormal’ version. We get a lot of demand for that around Halloween. Mostly kids looking to be entertained.”

  She sounded so absolutely certain of it that I both pitied and disdained her. She’d armed Zane, and who knew who else, with weapons as sharp as any blade, as powerful as any gun.

  “Can we see it?” Theo asked.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “I’ll go get it.” Then she squeezed around the desk and our chairs and into the hallway.

  “Odds it’s gone?” Theo asked. “Pilfered by Zane and the others?”

  “High,” I said. “Nice little bit of background for his growing obsession.”

  “Yeah,” he said, then looked up when she entered again.

  “It’s gone,” she said as she stepped back into the room. She was wringing her hands, working her fingers over and over as if that would solve her problems.

  “Oh, my god, shock,” Theo murmured.

  “Zane or the others probably took it,” I said. “What do you know about it?”

  “Not much, other than what’s on the cover.” She wedged behind her desk again. “It’s a small book, paperback sized but much thinner. Blue-and-yellow border on the cover. It’s from a press in North Carolina. They did an entire series on cults and paranormal groups in the late seventies, and they’ve been reprinting them since. I think the Sons of Aeneas must have been around that time period, because there was one of those ‘ripped from the headlines’ type stickers on the book. Like, ‘Hey, check this out. It’s going on right now. You just heard about it on the news’ or whatever.”

  “But you don’t know what they did?”

  “No. I didn’t read it.”

  Another irony—that the woman who operated the magic store seemed to have very little understanding of how it actually worked.

  “Did Zane talk to you about the SOA? Or anyone else?”

  “Not to me, and not that I’m aware of to anyone else.”

  “Do you know Loren?” I asked.

  She swallowed, began to shuffle a stack of papers into a precisely aligned block. “The clan leader who died? Why do you ask?”

  I glanced at Theo, got his small nod. He’d also seen she wasn’t telling the truth. I watched her until the silence stretched taut and tense as a wire. I was tempted to push a little magic into the air, use my own glamour just to nudge her along. But it proved unnecessary.

  “I knew him,” she said.

  “You don’t say,” Theo said, tone flat as the documents she’d just organized.

  This time, her eyes went hard. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me or who I am.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “We just know you’re selling unlicensed magic, and because of that magic, one shifter’s dead and others have been injured.”

  “I didn’t know they’d become monsters.”

  “You’ve said that,” Theo said. “But you knew they were angry, that they wanted to be stronger, that they wanted to hurt someone. And you sold them the weapon they used.”

  “It was just a potion.”

  “It was a weaponized potion,” I said. “You knew exactly what they were going to use it for. You might not have known the mechanism—that they’d become monsters—but you knew they wanted to punish someone.”

  Tears welled, and she looked away, face tight with anger. “A few years ago,” she said, “I had a friend in the compound. We’d have dinner every couple of weeks, maybe play cards or fish. I was walking back to my car one night, and Loren found me. He said he saw me across the yard, wanted to make sure I got back to my car safely. And when I did and tried to unlock it, he cornered me against the door. Said I was beautiful, and I deserved better than someone who made me walk around by myself after dark. ‘There are wolves in the woods,’ he said.”

  She nibbled at the edge of her lip, as if working over the words, then looked back at us. This time, a tear tracked down her cheek. “He put his hands on me, moved in to kiss me. Slid a hand up my skirt and . . .” She cleared her throat. “He assaulted me. I managed to get the door unlocked, told him to get his hands off me or I’d scream. He raised his hands and stepped away, smiling the whole time. I left the resort, had to stop on the old main road to be sick.”

  She swiped beneath both eyes. “I made it home, lost it. And I haven’t been back to the resort since.”

  Theo leaned forward. “I’m very sorry that happened to you. He had no right to do it, and he should have been punished for his behavior.”

  “Yeah, well. I told the sheriff. He said he’d talk to Loren, and did, and Loren told him it was just a misunderstanding. He told the sheriff he’d been worried about me and had a witness who’d confirm he’d walked me back to the car, said good night, and that was it. The sheriff recommended I let it drop.”

  “I’m sorry for that, too,” Theo said.

  “People looked at me funny for a good month afterward. I just said I’d had a nightmare and got confused, and it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t talk to him again after that. But I heard rumors that I wasn’t the only one he approached. Zane told me what he’d done to Paisley. That he’d killed her. So I gave him what he asked for.”

  “And you didn’t tell us about that last time because you didn’t want them to get into trouble?” I guessed.

  She blew out a breath, took in another, then squared her shoulders and looked at me. “I’m not licensed to make the magic, and I wasn’t exactly sad to hear Loren was dead. Is that what you want me to confess?”

  “We don’t hand out absolution, Paloma. We’re just trying to find the truth.” And a solution to the
problem, I thought. “Is there some kind of antidote?”

  She just looked at me, expression blank. “An antidote?”

  “Isn’t there usually some way to reverse the effect? To get the shifters back to their normal condition, normal state?”

  “Maybe theoretically. But like I said, I’m not a practitioner. Not really. I just dabble now and again. I don’t keep grimoires or spell books in here. I just pick up things here and there—a charm on a message board online or whatever—and work from that.”

  “Do you have any of the potion left?” I asked. If there was any chance to correct the magic, we’d probably need it.

  “No,” she said, and again seemed confused by the question. “Why would I have kept any? I made it for them.”

  That was as much bafflement as I could stand.

  Anger rode heavy in my blood, pushing the monster to the surface and sending its anger spilling over mine. But mine was stronger, hotter, more bitter.

  I was out of my chair and heading for the door in seconds.

  “You know how to reach us if you think of anything else,” I heard Theo say behind me. “Here’s my card. If they come back, lock yourself in back here and call me, okay?”

  I didn’t hear her response, and I walked outside, the bell ringing on the door as I let it shut behind me.

  Once outside, I closed my eyes and gulped in fresh air. Even the whisper of broken magic that remained out here was better than the sad miasma inside.

  I belatedly realized that I stood alone, that there were no more humans on the street, no law enforcement. If the sheriff had bothered to investigate the incident, he’d already packed up and moved on.

  The bell on the door rang again. “You okay?” Theo asked when he reached me.

  “I will be,” I said, and opened my eyes. “Sorry I bailed. I reached my limit, and it was stifling in there. There’s magic,” I added, given his confused look. “She’s lying about only dabbling in it. There were layers upon layers of old magic. I didn’t sense it until we were in the back room, so I assume that’s where she’s working.”

  Theo whistled. “Any of it dark?”

  “I don’t think so, but that’s not really my expertise. Either way, the Order will have plenty to discuss with her. She was victimized, and Loren should have been punished. But not this way. And not by building lies upon lies. Are you going to turn her in?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said slowly, as if savoring the words. “I don’t generally like to be a narc, but in this particular case, I’m going to look forward to that contact. In fact . . . ,” he began, then pulled out his screen, tapped out a message. “And done,” he said after a moment, putting his screen away again. “I imagine she’ll be hearing from the Order very soon.”

  “She may run for it.”

  “She may,” he said. “But that kind of magic can be traced, at least according to the Order. She won’t be able to pretend anymore.”

  “Good,” I said. “And I forgot to ask. Did you win the auction for the comic book?”

  “I did,” he said. “All in all, a pretty interesting week.”

  A vehicle pulled up, and we both turned, ready to respond to an attack. But it was Connor in the SUV. We climbed inside.

  “Any luck in the search of the environs?” I asked.

  “Not according to Georgia,” Connor said, then pointed to the go-cups tucked into the drink holders. “I got you both a coffee. Figured you could use a boost. There’s also muffins.”

  “Not going to argue,” Theo said, pulling one of the cups from a drink holder and taking a plastic-wrapped muffin bigger than my fist.

  I took a sip of coffee, then rested my head back on the seat. “Oh yeah. That hits just the right spot.”

  “No comment,” Theo said from the backseat. “But also yes. Thanks, man.”

  “No problem.”

  We sat in the vehicle for a moment, sampling our drinks.

  “This is the best coffee I’ve had in a long time,” Theo said.

  “Same.” I slid Connor a glance. “And it only took being attacked, defamed, and threatened to get it. The least you could have done was get this for me three days ago.”

  His eyes glittered with humor. “I wasn’t aware you were cheap enough to be bought with a cup of coffee.”

  “It’s spectacular coffee,” I said. “So not entirely cheap. But also yes,” I said, repeating Theo’s phrase and settling in for a little bliss.

  * * *

  * * *

  Theo updated Connor as we drove back to the resort, explained what the spellseller had said.

  “Loren was an asshole,” Connor said, turning into the parking space in front of the cabin. “And Cash should have handled him or called someone who would.”

  I turned around to look at Theo. “The clan and the sheriff have a financial arrangement. The clan helps fund his election campaigns, and he doesn’t mess around in clan business.”

  “Gross” was Theo’s assessment. I agreed.

  “I don’t like Paloma,” I said, “and I don’t respect her. She may have been victimized, and that was wrong. But she knew exactly what she was doing here. And there’s something pitiable about the way she thinks about magic and revenge—that she never had any choices.”

  “That nothing was her fault or her responsibility,” Theo said.

  “Yeah. Exactly.” There seemed to be a lot of that going around.

  * * *

  * * *

  We found Georgia sitting at the kitchen island with Lulu, who balanced a sketch pad in the crook of her arm, was drawing a cluster of pinecones and birch bark she’d arranged on the kitchen island.

  “I was just chatting with your sassy roommate,” Georgia said with a smile.

  “Her,” I asked with a grin, “or the cat?”

  Georgia’s smile faded. “That cat’s a goddamn menace.”

  Connor smirked at me, and I just rolled my eyes.

  “You pronounced ‘majestic’ incorrectly,” Lulu said, smirking as she swept pencil across paper in long, fluid strokes.

  I sat down at the island to finish my muffin, lost half of it to Lulu, who nipped a chunk before I could slap her hand away.

  “Beyo?” Connor asked.

  “Cleaned up, unconscious, and under guard,” Georgia said. “He’s in one of the empty cabins. When he wakes up, he’ll be restrained. We’ll let you know so you can talk to him.”

  “Good,” Connor said with a nod, nipped another chunk of my muffin.

  “Dude.”

  “I didn’t get one for myself.”

  Georgia smiled, seemed to enjoy the byplay. But the smile faded quickly enough, and she looked at me. “What did you learn?”

  I gave the replay this time, telling Georgia about the cult and the magic. “Zane learned about the SOA, found her, paid her to make the spell. She knew they wanted to take on Loren, and claims he assaulted her, so she didn’t ask any questions. Says she didn’t know they’d turn into something, just thought they’d get stronger.”

  “This cult ring any bells for you?” Connor asked.

  “This wouldn’t be the first time humans tried to turn themselves into werewolves. I don’t know of any times it was actually successful—that someone transformed or became this hybrid you’ve mentioned.”

  “Maybe that’s one reason it’s all gone wrong,” I said. “I mean, not just because the magic may not be good in the first place, but because they aren’t humans. They’re shifters. It would have affected them differently.”

  “I bet you’re right,” Connor said.

  “We need to update the clan,” Georgia said.

  Connor looked at her for a quiet moment. “You know there’s a good chance Cash won’t believe us. That we will lay out for him exactly what his shifters have been doing, and why, and he’ll continue with his denial.�
��

  Georgia looked away, irritated by the words or the fact that she knew he was right. “The truth will out. And we’ll see what happens then.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Georgia left to request an audience. Ironic, given she was an elder as well, but Cash and Everett apparently had some superior claim to that title. Based on what I’d seen so far, that seemed mostly the case because they had Y chromosomes.

  “I’d like a favor,” I told Connor when we were alone again in the cabin. Lulu planned to binge-watch a fashion competition in the RV, and Theo was cleaning his service weapon. Just in case.

  “Anything.”

  I smiled at the quickness of his answer. “For the last few days, whenever we’ve been around Cash, I’ve played the guest, the girlfriend, the colleague—and that’s fine. I’m comfortable being all those things. But I’m not just any of those things, so I’ve been playing this . . . role . . . for their benefit.

  “And what’s beneath the role?”

  “Vampire. Not of the biting variety,” I said, “given the clan has already seen the aftereffects of that. But the fighter. The swagger. I think it’s time to show that side to the clan.”

  He watched me for a moment, considering. “We’ll piss people off.”

  “Only if we’re lucky,” I said with a grin. “Like you said, the clan needs a little airing out. A disruption. Maybe a vampire in regalia will wake them up a little. And besides—you may be required by the Obsideo to solve their crisis, but they can’t keep you from doing it on your own terms, right?”

  “You have a point,” he said. “And not just the katana.”

  “Or the fangs.”

  “Or,” he said with a smile, “you be the vampire and I’ll be the alpha, and we’ll see what happens.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I hadn’t brought many clothes, but I didn’t need a closetful.

  Black jeans. Black tank. Black boots. Simple, dark, powerful. I unraveled my braid, tossed my head, and shook out my hair. When I flipped my hair back, it made a long and wavy halo of soft gold around my shoulders. Lipstick of deep crimson, and my sword in hand. No scabbard, no belt. Just gleaming steel.