“I can’t believe you let me forget. We can’t watch yet.” Vic wagged his finger and turning to Lucas. “I have a theory about the Whos in Whoville.”
She groaned. “Not the ‘Whos are Cannibals’ theory.”
“Yes, the very same.” He crowed, finger in the air.
Brows lifting, Lucas sat next to Red, leaning forward to listen. “Okay, I’ll bite on this one, mate.”
“I’ve met a few cannibals.” Quinn commented from the recliner, sipping a mug filled with blood. His face was stoic over the prancing puppies decorating the ceramic. “They didn’t sing much.”
“The Whos are not cannibals, they are a wholesome Christmas people,” she insisted, jabbing her fork towards Vic.
“This is the traditional rendition of a cartoon conspiracy, Red. Don’t spoil it for them. The working title is ‘The Harvest of the Seussi-bals.’” Vic launched into his theory, pausing the video to point out the hidden clues.
Smiling, Red let herself absorb that cozy feeling of home. She never thought home would look like cookies, cartoons, and souled vampires. Whoever she had been before, this was her life now. Reincarnation, doppelgänger, or heir to a bloodline of evil witches—she could still be whoever she wanted to be. She was a hunter. This was the life she chose.
Sighing happily, she went to the kitchen to make some more cocoa. Her cellphone vibrated in her pocket as she waited for the kettle. Pulling it out, the preview of the text made her gulp. Her hovering thumb tensed over the screen.
You have been summoned by the Dark Veil Assurance.
Red was going to need something stronger than cocoa.
Epilogue
December 25th, 5:55PM, the Oregon Coast, United States
Stace Bonner shivered, stepping onto the cheerful yellow linoleum. Biting winds followed her inside the kitchen. They howled in the gap as she closed the door.
Shaking off her rain-dampened dark curls, she placed the cold house key on the counter. Nana Sanchez always left it in the same spot. Ever since they were teens, it was always by the lawn flamingo guarding the back steps. Stace rubbed her hands to shake off the chill. She narrowed her eyes at the friend who was supposed to meet her at the curb. He wasn’t even in his coat yet!
Annoyingly coatless, Zach Sanchez sat hunched over a laptop at the table. He looked unusually pale in the computer’s light. His finger hovered over the touchpad in deliberation.
Stace planted a hand on her white raincoat-covered hip. Pink sparkles glittered on her fingers. They needed to get on the road now if they were going to beat the storm battering the coast. “Are you seriously checking your email right now?”
Jumping in his seat and twisting to clutch the chair back, Zach blinked at her. His brown eyes were red-rimmed and wet. Running a hand through short dark hair, he caught his breath. “Shit, I—“
“You okay?” She tilted her head, letting her hand fall from her hip, taking in the scene. The kitchen lights were dimmed, and his black sweater was the opposite of festive. It looked like his hometown holiday had been grimmer than hers. “We gotta start back to Portland before your Nana comes back from Mass to bribe us with more tamales to stay. I only just escaped my Aunt Gina.”
He turned back to his laptop and tapped the touchpad. “You have to see what I found. It was on a thumb drive in my old room.”
“It better be good. We’re going to hit rush hour by the....” She went to look over his shoulder. Her words dried up in her throat, she hadn’t seen the face on the screen since the funeral years ago. Not enough was found to fill the casket, but it was buried anyway. She put flowers at the grave on All Souls Day before the first freeze of the season. Fingers raising to her mouth, her eyes grew hot with tears.
“It’s—“ Zach began. A nearby car alarm sounded, obscuring his words. He hung his head, waiting for the sound to pass.
Stace’s heart broke for him as he tried to collect himself.
His long eyelashes framed a vulnerable gaze. “I’m sorry that I didn’t want to talk about her before. Sometimes I do want to go back to high school. It just still hurts. I never wanted to believe she was dead. We grew up together. I didn’t want to grieve, I wanted to find her, you know. Accepting she was really gone was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do. I shut down.”
“Then this is all that is left of…” Grief kept the name lodged in her throat. It stung her to even think it. She leaned closer to the laptop.
Familiar green eyes stared back from the paused video. Head ducked shyly; loose red hair fell over the teenage girl’s face as she sat at a booth at Lili’s Diner.
Captured on video, a younger Stace reached into the frame to snatch a French fry off the other girl’s plate. Older and harder than the version of herself on the screen, she couldn’t help but be taken back to high school. They had spent so much time in that red booth. It still had their names tagged on the underside of the table. “How did you find this?”
“The newspaper posted an old clipping online of that play she was in. Remember? We had to run lines that whole month with her.” His brow knotted as he swallowed thickly. He shook his head and cleared his throat. “It got me thinking that we couldn’t have lost every picture in the house fire. Insomnia hit and I found this in the closet.” Taking her hand, he sent a soothing wave of comfort. His empath powers amplified the feeling. “Brace yourself.”
“Hey, I want to feel this. Unfiltered.” Stace shook her head before clicking play on the video. Goosebumps rose on her arms. She focused on her lost friend on the screen. It had been nearly a decade, but she never forgot the night that their lives changed forever. She still had nightmares about it.
An old pop song played in the background as the ambient restaurant chatter came through the speakers. Ancient history rolled on the screen. Holding the camera, a younger Zach turned the lens on himself. The spiked dog collar and eyeliner timestamped the video firmly in his goth phase. He laid the drama on thick in his narration. “We are entering our junior year of the Thunderdome that is high school. As a serious documentarian, I must chronicle our epic coming of age in this crazy-ass town.” He turned the camera first to a teenage Stace who was pulling out her retainer to eat a fry. “Our Hero, Stacey Adaeze Bonner, is at the center of this tale.”
“Hey!” Squeaking, she spun away in her seat. “Delete this!”
Watching the younger version of herself on the video, she smiled through her tears. She had hated that retainer. Someone should have told her that her fairy teeth were going to come in soon. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Zach squeezed her hand as the video played. His damp eyes glimmered in the glow of the computer screen. The empath was the one who needed comfort now. “This is the best part.”
The camera unfocused for a moment as a quick visible hand fumbled to adjust the setting. A blushing pale face came into view. The teenager tried to hide behind red hair.
“As a modern witch of the new millennium, what do you want to share for the ages, Em—“
“No one calls me by my full name.” The redhead giggled. “Not even my mom.”
He faltered, interrupted before he could finish the solemn recitation. He adjusted the camera in his grip. “Whatever, woman of mystery, answer the question.”
“I don’t want to be in a video.” She covered her face, the nervous snickers escaping behind her fingers. Her peeking eyes pleaded for rescue.
“I’m serious, this is like a time capsule!” The scold came from off-screen. “Don’t you want to remember?”
A wide smile stretched over the girl’s face. She bounced in her seat, leaning closer to the lens. “How could I forget any of it? Cutting class to patrol the cemetery for gnomes or the time we had to stake the gym teacher—yeah, those times are firmly lodged in my memory banks.” She sighed happily; her green eyes twinkled as she leaned back in the red vinyl booth.
“But we could forget!” He insisted earnestly out of the frame, the camera shaking from his vehemence. “You know how t
hese little apocalypses pile up and next thing you know, you’re thirty. Practically dead.”
Eyebrow quirking at the bizarre notion, the red-haired girl laughed, wobbling on the booth bench as teenage Zach nagged at her to stop. Immortalized on film, she looked so full of life that it hurt to look at the screen. This girl would never see thirty. She grew serious and nodded. “I’ll remember the important stuff. I promise.”
The screen darkened as the battery died on the laptop. Standing, he wiped his eyes. “Worth waiting?”
Stace hugged him and closed her eyes, face pressed against his black sweater. An old friend’s grin rose behind her eyelids. She held Zach tighter. “This was the best Christmas gift ever.”
* * *
THE RED WITCH CHRONICLES CONTINUES IN WITCH GONE VIRAL.
Find Witch Gone Viral and the entire series order at samivalentine.com/books. Continue reading to find a bonus short story!
Trespassers
December 30th, 7pm, Culver City, Los Angeles, California
“What is a manananggal?” Looking up from his wheelchair, Vic Constantine tossed Red the question like a flyball.
They waited by the pickup counter at the New Delhi Kitchen. A dinner rush was in full swing at the bustling Indian restaurant. Normies talked about holiday family dramas and New Year’s Resolutions, drowning out the hunters’ paranormal chatter.
She furrowed her brow, trying to place the strange name. Once she had asked him to sponsor her in the Hunter’s Challenge to join the Brotherhood, he had taken it as an invitation to toss pop quizzes at random. Usually, she had an answer yet all she could focus on was her stomach growling from the delicious curry smells coming from restaurant tables. “No clue.”
“Bloodsucker from the Philippines. Splits in half. Gotta use garlic and salt on it. Extinct in this dimension.”
“Extinct? Then why le—” Red started to say, then interrupted herself. “This dimension?”
“Science hasn’t caught up to supernatural theory and lore when it comes to multiverses, vortexes, time wobbles, other dimensions. It’s a big scary world out there,” he said dryly, checking his Batman watch. “I’m hoping my samosas are still in this one.”
“Will that be on the test?” Red frowned. The written portion of the Hunter’s Challenge was supposed to be intense but that was next level weird. She had read about those myths but figured most were just that—myths. “Now I think I’m looking forward to the practical more.”
“That should be a cakewalk after my tutelage.” Pausing as if for applause, Vic gestured to the green trucker hat on his shoulder length black mullet, AC/DC shirt and his denim covered legs. He quirked a sardonic eyebrow at her lack of response. “It’d be even easier if you played around with your magic more.”
Red bit her lip to keep in a sigh. Magic only got her in trouble lately. It had been five days since she was sent summons for a Blood Alliance tribunal in late January. A tango with a dark witch left her on the wrong side of a Dark Veil breech. Even banished to hell, Nevaeh Morgan still managed to fuck with Red’s life. Magic for personal gain and twisted desires set Nevaeh on her fatal path. Then add all the fallout at Halloween from Red being a dead ringer for a black magic using courtesan from Victorian times… It made her leery about her powers.
“I’ll pass the challenge as a hunter, not a witch. I’m better at that, anyway.”
Vic shot her a look that spoke volumes about how much shit he thought she was full of right then. A waitress walking out of the kitchen with a steaming tray of tikka marsala stole his attention until he shook his head. “This isn’t because of Lucas?”
She blinked at him, more confused about this question than the one about the extinct demon. The meaning sunk in. She rolled her eyes.
Her souled vampiric coworker and occasional snuggle bunny, Lucas left for a desert motorcycle trip without much explanation beyond needing to clear his head. Sure, he wasn’t excited about witchcraft, his last relationship with a witch ended with her dying, so it made sense. It hadn’t affected Red’s decision.
“No. I’m a little insulted you’d think that.”
“Well, what is it? You were gungho about it before.” He pitched his voice higher in an impression of her. “My mom might have been a great witch, I need to impress her when we finally meet.”
“One, I don’t sound like that and two, I just saw a different side to the craft. It’s not something to play with,” Red said, walking to the pickup counter, grateful that their order was ready.
They left the New Delhi Kitchen for the chilly sidewalk. It was the day before New Year’s Eve and winter had finally come to Los Angeles. The stunned TV meteorologist hadn’t seemed to believe the forecast when he said they might have rain. She wasn’t looking forward to it. Angelenos couldn’t drive in a drizzle. After walking to the back of the strip mall, they entered the hallway containing a profitable massage therapist and the less profitable Quinn Investigations.
The agency door was open and ready for walk-in clients. They specialized in the supernatural, but it seemed like the demons were hibernating after Christmas. She was cool with it. It gave them time to continue organizing the years of Lucas’s poor filing. He was a better hunter than a secretary.
Quinn Byrnes sat at the front desk by the wide windows to the parking lot. He used a finger on each hand to hen peck type on his keyboard, computer glasses drooping down his nose. The glow of the screen highlighted his pale features, seething over the screen. He pushed the device away with a huff and pulled off his glasses, fangs peeking from his lips. Typically, emotive as a rock, technology could rile him up more than demons.
“What did I say about computers?” Vic asked, rolling past the couch and table for clients to go to Quinn.
“Wait for you.” The vampire rubbed his brown eyes, bowing his spiky blond hair, broad shoulders hunched. He had lived over three hundred years but insisted that this era was the most confusing.
Red would sympathize more, but she was too hungry. She sat down on the couch away from the others to dig into her food. Despite what she said to Vic, she had been practicing with simple exercises to float feathers. She raised one a few inches at midnight and didn’t wake until noon today. It was a good thing she worked nights. Part of why she couldn’t trust her magic. It was unreliable most of the time. When practicing, she ended up churning up her energy and unbalancing herself, pigging out on brownies, with little to show for it.
“And what are we trying to do?” Vic asked Quinn like a teacher addressing a kindergartener.
“Connect a video conference with Cora. She has a job for us.” Quinn grumbled. “It’s telling me that I don’t have a web camera. I do.”
Vic patted his shoulder. “I know you do, dude. More on over.” He started clicking the touchpad and typing quickly.
Red brought over her chicken kebab wrapped in foil and munched behind the guys as they fussed over the laptop.
The video conference app opened and Cora Moon, Supreme Master Vampire of Los Angeles, appeared on the screen. She adjusted a headband covered in yellow crystals on her lush black afro absently and scrolled through a cellphone. The logo for Moon Enterprises, the public face of her operations, was printed on her yoga top.
Quinn’s heavy brow puckered, and he frowned at Vic. “How did you—? I did that same exact thing.”
“Oh, you’re here,” Cora said, putting down her phone. Her cheerful tone grew forced. “You’re all here.”
Red waved her kebab in a sheepish hello as Vic saluted the Supreme. Most master vampires made her want to run, but Cora had a soul and the philanthropic background to match. Still after the trouble with the Black Veil, Red probably wasn’t her favorite human right now.
Thank goodness she was next to Vic.
“So, Cora,” he asked. “You do Hot Yoga. I’ve always wondered, can only hot people go?”
“Every body is beautiful.” The Supreme declared lightly before her tone flattened. “Quinn, I have other business, so I’ll
make it quick. I need you to check out a warehouse by the San Bernardino Airport. I’ve already emailed the address. You’ll get a bonus on top of your usual retainer if this can be done tonight. I hope you still have those cop uniforms that I lent you.”
“Fresh from the dry cleaner. What am I looking for?” Quinn asked.
“Michel de Grammont had the warehouse under surveillance before he died, and I want to know why.” Her lip curled. “I’m still discovering the finer details of his betrayal.”
Red took a bite of chicken to avoid adding that Cora was still stamping out the last of his followers. The former public relations czar of the Supreme’s empire, he had tentacles that spread over Los Angeles county and probably further.
Cora continued, “The owners are listed as the Bethesda Group while the cargo seems to come from two overseas firms— Haelyonim LLC and Uriel & Sons Corp. Paper companies and subsidiaries, my researchers haven’t found the source.”
“Unless that building is owned by the video game company, those are pretty biblical for company names,” Vic commented.
Red raised her eyebrow, not understanding the references. They were roommates but when he popped into church on Sundays, she slept in.
“Bethesda is where Jesus healed a guy. It was like the first pool party. Total rager,” Vic explained with a shrug. “Uriel is an angel’s name.”
“Somehow I don’t think we’re dealing with angels,” Cora said shortly. “Take pictures of the inside and send them back. The drive should take longer than the recon.”
“It will be done,” Quinn said.
Cora pressed her hands together and nodded. “Namaste.”
Red waited until the video chat had ended to say, “Sounds pretty simple.”
“Yeah, why isn’t she having one of her minions do it?” Vic asked.
Quinn opened his email inbox on the screen, tapping on the latest message then wrote the warehouse address down on a notepad. “Cora Moon trusts the universe, she doesn’t trust her people.”
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 28
