by L. E. Wilson
With a frown, I pushed that thought away. Though I really wanted to know, how he chose to identify himself wasn’t important. Leaning back on my elbows, I watched a lonely pedestrian walk quickly down the sidewalk as I thought back to all of my interactions with Alex since he’d healed me. My mind quickly going over everything he’d said, the way he’d looked at me, the way he’d touched me.
His kisses.
His reaction when I’d kissed him back.
I squeezed my thighs together as I remembered it all in great detail. Surely, he couldn’t have been faking that. I tasted nothing false in his kisses, felt nothing deceptive in his touch.
Or perhaps he was just a really good actor.
I pursed my lips, thinking about that. No. No, he couldn’t be that good. And much as everyone liked to think otherwise, I wasn’t that naive. There was honesty in the attraction between us. I’d felt it filling my hand tonight, for the sake of the gods. Saw it in his eyes and the way his entire body trembled in his effort to keep his need for me under control. Surely, he couldn’t fake that. I knew I could trust that much at least.
Attraction, a funny word that didn’t come close to describing the unceasing desperation I felt to be near him. All the time. Every moment. Even now, it was like there was an invisible thread connecting us even though we were far apart, pulling me in his direction. Like, somehow, when he’d reached inside of me to remove the curse, he’d left something of himself behind. And now he was a part of me.
And the way he played my body…gods. My heart began to race just thinking about it. I yearned to feel him against me, skin to skin. Dreamed of the taste of his blood. The way he moaned in my ear.
Or even just the way he watched me from across the room.
And he was always watching me.
Taking off my glasses, I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose with my fingertips as I tried to tune out the physical reaction Alex invoked in me, set my emotions aside, and think about what was happening with us in a logical manner.
But it was impossible to separate the two. My physical need for Alex was inexplicably woven into my perception of him and what he told me to be true. It colored everything he said. Everything he did. And the way I reacted to it.
If I were to be truly logical about it though, I knew that we couldn’t keep on the way we’d been. Sneaking around like teenagers. It was ridiculous. But what were my other choices?
Simple, I told myself. There was only one. To stop seeing him. My heart plummeted to my stomach, but I knew I was right. I wouldn’t…no, I couldn’t risk my family because my lady parts had the hots for a warlock.
Vivid memories of my human life assaulted me. Always poor. Always alone. None of the families who took me in ever formed any sort of attachment to me, nor I to them, really. I was never good enough to be someone’s daughter. Or someone’s sister. Though I desperately longed to be both of those. And I changed schools every time I switched foster parents, so I never had any chance to make friends. I was the shy kid with the ugly glasses who always had my nose stuck in a library book. Sometimes the kids were nice enough, other times they weren’t. But most of the time they just ignored me. And on the rare occasion one of my classmates reached out to me, I would have to move before we could truly become friends. So, books became my constant companion. The characters in them the only friends I needed.
But the night I woke up as a vampire, all of that changed. Killian became my father, my friend, and my teacher. And what was more, he accepted me and cared about me even with all of my imperfections I carried over with me into my immortal life. The other guys took me under their wing, too. And before I knew it, I had an instant family who truly cared about each other and looked out for one another. Something I’d never known before.
They were the only ones who’d ever stuck their necks out for me. And I wasn’t going to blow that all away now.
So tonight, I was going to go home and tell them all what was going on, and this time I wasn’t leaving Alex out of the picture. Surely, once Killian and the others heard everything he’d done to keep me—and them—safe, they wouldn’t be able to do anything but thank him. And Jamal could back up my story.
Mind made up, I was anxious to get home and stood up to leave. Before I could, however, I felt it. The dark magic that had been hunting me the other night. It slithered along my skin, worming its way beneath my clothes and leaving shivers in its wake.
The djinn was here.
I froze, my heart pounding in my chest. I needed to get the hell out of there, and I needed to do it now.
A man with dark hair and eyes appeared at the bottom of the monument, directly below me. Like a vampire, one second I was alone and the next he was there. He wore nothing but a dark long-sleeved sweater and dress slacks. Black shoes. Not what I was expecting to see on such an infamous supernatural creature. He looked…normal, harmless, except for the waves of ominous sorcery hitting me.
“Hello, vampire,” he said in a pleasant voice. “It seems we meet again.”
I ran. Spinning around, I took off up the steps to the statue and down the other side of the monument. My mind numb with fear, I didn’t go in the direction of Killian and the others, but back down Saint Charles Ave.
It was Alex I ran to.
I hadn’t gone a block when I felt something sink its claws into my hips and shoulders and I was lifted off the ground and sucked back the way I had come. A scream rose in my throat as my fangs shot down and the vampire in me instinctively readied itself for a fight, my muscles tensing and my mind going over every possible outcome within the span of a second.
But it was all for naught as I slammed into the front of the djinn and his arms wrapped around me like steel bands. Hissing and growling, I struggled like a banshee in his grip, but he only chuckled, holding me to his chest with little effort.
“Sleep,” he whispered in my ear.
And then there was only blackness.
Chapter 15
Alex
“Where the fuck is she?”
It was Sunday, and Lizzy had closed the store and called an emergency meeting of the coven at her touristy voodoo shop—Ancient Magicks. We were all here: Judy, Alice, Talin, Angel, me, and Lizzy, of course.
It was also the middle of the day, so the last thing I’d expected was to have a pissed off vampire all up in my face. “Where is who?” I asked Jamal.
Lizzy put a hand on his arm. “Jamal,” she admonished.
But he shook her off. “He knows where she is. Hell, he’s probably the one who took her.”
My blood froze as the implications of what he was telling me started to penetrate my thick skull. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I growled at him.
I swear, I wasn’t a praying sort of guy. But at this moment, I would gladly fall to my knees and offer myself to any god who was listening just to have what I knew he was about to tell me not be true.
The conversation between me and Jamal had caught everyone’s attention. “Kenya is missing,” Lizzy told us. “I called this meeting to see if we could do some sort of a spell to find her. A tracking spell maybe?” She looked to Judy for confirmation.
The High Priestess was already hightailing it to the storage room, Talin and Alice on her heels. “How long has she been gone?” she called over her shoulder. “And does anyone have anything of Kenya’s?”
“Wait.” I held up my hands. “Her cell phone,” I said to Lizzy and Jamal. “Can you track it somehow?”
“I did that last night when she never came home,” Jamal told me. “I found it on the steps of the monument in Lee Circle.”
Lee Circle? Halfway between my house and hers. What the fuck was she doing there? I shook my head. “No. That can’t be right. She texted me and told me she was home.”
Jamal nodded his head slowly, his mouth pulled tight and his eyes knowing. “So you were with her last night.”
I found my phone and pulled up my text messages. “Look,” I told them, turning
the screen around so they could see it. “Right here. See?”
“Looks like she was lying to you,” Jamal said with a smirk.
“How are you even fucking here?” I asked him, what little patience I had rapidly wearing thin. “Shouldn’t you be dead to the world in your coffin right now?”
He just bared his teeth at me in something that in no way resembled a smile.
Lizzy put her hand on his arm again, but her attention was on me. “When did you last see her?” she asked me. When I didn’t answer right away, she added in a quiet, “Jamal filled me in this morning.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “So Killian knows.” Weird that he would send Jamal instead of coming to kill me himself.
“No, he doesn’t know about your part in all of this,” she told me. “Jamal and I agreed that we should have the whole story before we told him anything.”
“So he knows he has good reason to kill me without feeling guilty about it?” I was only half kidding.
“No one is killing anyone,” Judy piped in from just behind the curtain. “We’re ready to do the spell. Do you have something of Kenya’s?” she asked Jamal.
“Yeah,” he told her and handed over a piece of jewelry he’d had in his jeans pocket. A necklace. “I wasn’t sure what to bring,” he said. “She doesn’t wear this all the time, but she wears it enough that I thought it would work.” His expression was tight with worry as he waited for Judy’s approval. “If not, Lizzy can maybe run back and grab a shirt out of her laundry or something.”
“This will work fine,” she told him, taking the necklace.
I saw Jamal’s eyes flick past Judy and stay there. I looked over my shoulder to see who or what had stolen his attention, only to find Angel standing in front of the curtain that separated the two rooms, looking like she’d just stepped off the pages of a magazine with her white skin, green eyes, bright red hair, and matching lips. Not to mention the beaded designer sweater, perfectly fitted pants, and heeled boots that probably cost more than my rent. “Are we doing this?” she asked our aunt.
“Lizzy, we’re going to need your help,” Judy told her.
“But I don’t know what I’m doing,” she protested. “What if I mess it up?”
But my aunt just grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind her. “Doesn’t matter,” Judy said. “Alex. You, too.”
I followed them into the storage room and back to the secret door that was normally hidden behind a rack of metal shelves, my mind racing and Jamal on my heels. I saw him breathe a sigh of relief as we entered the windowless room and had to give him props for being ballsy enough to show up here in Lizzy’s shop with no one but her to protect him from being tossed out into the sun. Not that Judy would do that for no reason, but from my experience, vampires were distrustful creatures.
Without being told, my coven sisters and I formed a circle around the map spread out on the dirt floor, careful not to knock over the candles, and linked hands. Judy placed the necklace in the center of the circle and pulled Lizzy in between her and Talin. Jamal stood near the closed door, out of the way, one hand in his front pocket and the other rubbing the back of his neck in a nervous gesture.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run out of the room and search every inch of the city until I found her, on foot if I had to. I couldn’t stop thinking—what if she’d gotten caught in the sun?
Or worse, what if Marcus had changed his mind about her.
“Alex,” Judy said, holding out her hand.
I looked over at her. Without a word, I put my hand in hers, noticing how it shook. Holding our arms out until our joined hands were over the map, she nicked my finger with a small knife, dripping a few drops of blood on the location of the Lee Monument on the map. I received a few looks from the others, but no one questioned Judy’s decision to use my blood. If they didn’t know about my connection to before, they sure as hell did now.
Judy handed me a bandage from her pocket, and I wrapped up my finger then took my place in the circle.
Hands linked and eyes closed, we began to chant the locator spell as one, repeating it over and over as we gave our magic over to the spell, feeding it into the blood on the map. The air moved around us, stirring my hair and my clothes, and goose bumps rose up all over my skin. When I felt the blood begin to move, I opened my eyes and saw the others do the same. We continued chanting the spell, watching it move west across the map out of the city.
As it entered the swampland, it slowed down. I exchanged glances with Alice and as one, the coven began to chant louder, our voices strong and insistent. The drop of blood shuttered, moved a fraction of an inch, and exploded, splattering all over the map.
It was finished.
I stared at the blood covered paper. No. No. She couldn’t be lost to me.
Jamal took a few steps toward us, his eyes shifting nervously around the room. “What happened? Where is she? Did you see?”
“The spell was blocked,” Judy told him.
“What does that mean?” he asked her.
“It means it’s finished. There’s nothing more we can do here,” I told him as I stared down at the map.
Jamal stomped forward as we all unlinked our hands, breaking the circle. He looked down at the map, then at me, then at Judy. “There’s got to be something else. What if we brought you something else? I can find you some of her hair or something.”
“Jamal, it’s the middle of the day,” Lizzy reminded him.
“Okay,” he said. “Then you can run home and find it.”
But Judy just shook her head. “It won’t do any good, Jamal. The spell is blocked. There’s nothing we can do.”
His head whipped around. Wide eyes locking on each of us in turn. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You’re witches. You have to find her.”
“So, we’re done?” Angel left the circle and started to leave.
As I stood, frozen and numb, Jamal flew across the room, blocking the door. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked her in a low voice.
She took a step back and turned her head away. I noticed she wouldn’t meet my eyes, or anyone’s. “Tell him to let me pass,” she said in Lizzy’s direction.
“You’re not going anywhere, Leeloo,” he told her.
Angel finally looked up at him. “What did you call me?”
He moved his head forward, jutting out his chin and putting his mouth right in her face. “Leeloo,” he told her.
She gave him the same attitude right back. “And why are you calling me that?” she asked.
“Because you have hair like Leeloo in The Fifth Element.”
Angel crossed her arms over her chest and laughed. “No, I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Her hair is orange. Mine is cherry red.”
“Still looks like hers,” he argued. “And you’re still not fucking leaving, Leeloo, until I know where Kenya is.”
“ENOUGH,” I told them.
Angel threw her arms up in the air and stomped away. Judy gave me a warning glare, but I ignored it. “I’ll find her,” I told them all. I felt cold. Numb. But my mind was racing and my heart was pounding in my chest.
“How are you gonna do that, witch?” Jamal asked when I walked up to him.
My upper lip lifted in a sneer. “You’re just going to have to trust me,” I told him.
“I don’t trust anything about you,” he replied.
We stared each other down for a few minutes, but whatever he saw in my eyes must have been enough, for he stepped away from the door. “You know what? You do that. You find her. And you’d better do it before Killian can leave the house.”
He didn’t need to tell me why he was giving me that particular warning. The master vampire was probably losing his shit. I went to walk by but he grabbed my arm.
“Wait. Give me your phone.”
“I don’t have time for this shit, vampire.”
“Give. Me. Your. Fucking. Phone.”
/> I thought about blasting him out of my way, but then I saw the panic in his eyes. Pulling it from my pocket, I swiped the screen and entered my passcode, then handed it to him.
“Here’s my number,” he told me. “You call me the minute you find her. Understand?”
“Yeah,” I told him.
“The fucking minute,” he insisted, then shoved my phone into my chest. “And know the only reason I’m letting you go is because I’m fucking stuck here until the sun goes down. So you’d better not let me down, witch.”
I took it from him and slid it back into the pocket of my coat. “I got it,” I gritted through my teeth.
He held me there a minute, his jaw tight and his eyes anxious, then he let me go and walked away.
Looking back at Judy, I gave her a nod and walked out of the room.
I knew who’d taken Kenya.
Now, I just had to let him find me.
Chapter 16
Alex
I rushed out of Ancient Magicks only to stop just outside the store. Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, I looked up and down the street, completely clueless as to which way to go despite my assurance to the others. Tourists walked around me to peer into the shop’s windows, looking at the displays before casting strange glances in my direction.
Where to go? Where to go?
The Garden District, maybe. It was where he’d found me before, and with all of the witches back at Lizzy’s shop, it would be the safest place for us to have this conversation.
I started to walk toward Canal Street to catch the streetcar, but halfway there, I stopped again. I suddenly had the inexplicable feeling that this was all wrong. I didn’t know how I knew that; I just did.
I needed to play this smart, not go rushing off half-cocked. I couldn’t fuck this up, or Kenya could be lost to me forever. And the more time that went by, the more certain I became that Marcus was at the center of her disappearance, and that it had nothing to do with Kenya and everything to do with me. I had no idea what he planned to do with her, but I would do whatever the fuck he wanted if he just let her live.
