Under a Spell

Chapter Ten

Once home, I showered and changed in record speed—fast even with Nina’s wrinkled nose and directive to “change into something that doesn’t look like I buried my Aunt Fanny in it.” I interpreted the Aunt Fanny crack to mean a never-been-worn pale blue cashmere sweater and a pair of charcoal-grey slacks that had miraculously become cigarette-slim while living in the back of my closet.

“Way better,” Nina said, handing me a Fresca and a bagel in a brown paper bag. She shrugged. “You should probably go grocery shopping.”

“We’re out of detergent, too,” Vlad chimed in, scaring the bejesus out of me. He poked his head over the top of the couch and grinned.

“Look, I was out all night—”

Nina held her hand out, stop-sign style. “No need to brag about your conquests with a C-H-I-L-D in the room.” Her eyes cut back and forth from the top of Vlad’s head to me.

“I’m not a child,” Vlad snapped. “You’re a child.”

“I wasn’t out conquesting. I was out.” I took a deep breath, trying my best not to recall the image of that gnarled hand, of the makeshift graveyard the police were unearthing as we argued about my nonexistent sex life. “We found some bodies. Several, we think. Out at Battery Townsley.”

Nina blinked and popped a straw into the blood bag she’d helped herself to.

“With Alex or Will?” Vlad asked.

“Both.”

“Kinky.”

I narrowed my eyes and took a big swig of my Fresca. “You’re disgusting.”

“My vote’s for Will, personally,” Vlad said as I gathered my purse.

“No.” Nina hopped off the counter, following me into the living room. “Alex. The whole doomed love is so romantic.”

Vlad snarled. “I don’t like that guy. I’m so over his holier-than-thou shit.”

I grabbed my keys. “You have no soul, Vlad. Everyone is holier than you.”

He resettled himself on the couch. “Not everyone has to act like it.”

I was still grumbling from Vlad and Nina’s lackluster response to our break in the case—but then again, for a couple of undead vampires, the actually dead really did little to pique their interest—when I crossed two lanes of screeching traffic and bolted into the Philz Coffee parking lot.

“Coffee,” I mumbled to absolutely no one.

I yawned and blinked, my eyes stinging and dry from lack of sleep. “Code Thirty-three,” I said to the perky, well-rested barista. “A big one.”

She studied me intently for an uncomfortable beat before reaching out to touch my hand. “You look just like him,” she said, her voice low and breathy.

“Excuse me?” I asked, heat pricking out along my hairline.

She snapped her hand back from mine, but her grin never faltered. “I said that will be $3.71, please.”

I felt my mouth drop open and I worked to push the words past my teeth. “No—no. You said—you said that I looked just like him.”

The barista cocked her head, the sweet smile still plastered across her glossy lips. “I’m sorry, you must have misheard me. Three seventy-one, please.”

I handed over the cash without taking my eyes off her. She gave me my change and I stepped aside, far enough to get out of line, but close enough to hear her should she murmur something else.

She was all business with the next customer.

I must have imagined it or misread her. I really need to get some sleep.

I slurped the last of my Code 33 as I pulled into the UDA parking lot, the octane hitting my bloodstream in one hot, energetic explosion. Thirty-six floors later, the big silver elevator doors slid open on the familiar chaos of the Underworld Detection Agency. Kale was at the reception desk with a cheek full of Hubba Bubba as she cocked her head and listened to a voice screaming on the other end of the phone line. The velvet ropes were bulging with clients already annoyed—a couple of zombies with brand-new papers, a windigo who shot a cool breeze at the oblivious vampire behind him.

I hadn’t even broached the UDA STAFF ONLY door when Sampson caught my eye and made a beeline for me.

“Sophie, great. You picked a perfect day to come back.” He waved toward the crowd. “First of the month. Everyone wants everything renewed or reneged.”

I stepped back. “Oh, I’m—I’m not here to work. I have to get back to the high school.”

Sampson frowned. “But yesterday you asked me to pull you and Will out.”

“Sorry, that was a mistake,” I said, shaking my head. “That was before—we found bodies and symbols and—I think we might actually be on to something.”

“So you have a lead about Alyssa?”

“Not exactly.”

Sampson’s shoulders slumped, the motion barely visible under his steel-gray suit.

“But I expect this thing to unravel really soon. Really soon. I just came down here to see Lorraine.”

“Well, Lorraine’s not in yet and Principal Lowe has already called in your replacements for today so . . .”

I snapped my fingers, brightening. “That’s okay. That’s actually good. Will and I can observe and poke around the school and check out a few things.” I stepped backward, edging my way toward Lorraine’s office. “Thanks!”

I wasn’t sure if my sudden thundering heart was due to actual adrenaline or still the Code 33 kick, but I took the opportunity to photocopy the receipt I had from Miranda’s book and stack that, along with a second shot of the protection symbol from the Mercy desk, and a photo Will snapped looking down into Battery Townsley on Lorraine’s desk. I clipped the stack together and slapped a Need your thoughts on this Post-it note to the top.

My thumb was hovering over the speed-dial button on my cell phone when I ran into Kale rounding the corner.

“Just the person I was looking for!”

I held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Kale, but I’m in the middle of something.”

Kale clapped her hands together, prayer style. “Two seconds.”

I dropped my phone hand to my side. “Okay, two seconds.”

She immediately produced a square envelope and began trying to push it into my hand. I stepped back. “No, sorry. I won’t be the go-between for you and Vlad’s lover’s spat.”

Kale’s cheeks pinkened. “Vlad said we were lovers?”

“Kale . . .”

“Okay, okay, sorry. This isn’t for Vlad, though. It’s for Nina. Give it to her for me, please? It’s just an apology for the bird incident.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Nina works here. Can’t you give it to her yourself?”

Kale paled and wagged her head slowly. “Vampires are so scary when they’re mad. Especially Nina.”

Knowing that my sweet roommate had once decimated an entire army for pissing her off, I couldn’t really blame Kale.

I took the envelope. “Fine. But I don’t know when I’m going to see her.”

“You’re such a sweetie, Sophie!”

I zipped past Kale, then paused. “Hey, make sure that Lorraine reads the stuff I left on her desk, okay?”

Kale pumped her head while her lips worked a giant orb of hot pink bubble gum.

“Will?” I screamed into the phone. “Will, would you wake up?”

It was the third time I’d dialed Will, and while it did occur to me that I was leaving messages on a voice mail rather than an answering machine, I still couldn’t help myself from screaming that he wake up and, “pick up, pick up, pick up!”

I was too frustrated once the doors opened on the police station vestibule to try again—and too frustrated to notice before I went chest to chest with Alex. He stepped back, steadied me, and furrowed his brow.

“Have you thought about getting glasses?”

“I don’t need glasses. I see you . . . now.”

Alex’s lips cocked up into the familiar, panty-dropping half-smile that shot lightning through my veins. “Leaving already?”

“Actually, after everything last night—or this morning—I’m headed back over to Mercy.”

Alex crossed his arms in front of his chest and sat back in that incredibly manly Abercrombie model kind of way.

“You picking up Will along the way?”

I batted at the air. “I can’t even get him out of bed.”

And suddenly, in that millisecond of recognition, it was as if someone had sucked all the air out of the room. Something flitted across Alex’s eyes, marring the clear ice blue. He stiffened—just slightly—as heat snaked up my neck, washed over my cheeks and burned my ears.

“I didn’t mean that I—that he—that we—”

“No.” Alex held up his hand and took a step back—a step that seemed to put an enormous chasm between us. “You don’t owe me anything. You don’t have explain.”

“No.” I bounced up on the balls of my feet. “No, I do. It just came out wrong!”

But my meager explanation was lost in the crackle of the overhead speaker calling all available cops into the briefing room.

Alex turned on his heel and I reached out for him, my fingertips brushing across the fabric of his Windbreaker.

“Alex, wait!”

“Later, Sophie.”

Sophie.

My name—my actual name—rolling across Alex’s lips hit me like a fist to the gut. I was Lawson to Alex. I always had been. Suddenly, the fact that he used my first name—more intimate, more familial—sent me reeling. My name on his lips sounded like a door slamming firmly shut.

I tried to put Alex—and the crazy barista—out of my head by blaring the latest American Idol winner–slash–pop star du jour as I drove to Mercy. Normally, perky pop beats and songs about chasing your dreams and young love could shake me out of any rut, but I just sunk deeper and deeper the closer I got to the school.

We still hadn’t found Alyssa. My stupid, mindless mouth had hurt Alex. And here I was pulling into the parking lot of a school that had given me more questions than answers.

“Oh! Ms. Lawson!” Heddy said when I walked into the office, her orange lips a waxy O of surprise. “We’ve got someone covering you classes. Principal Lowe said that you and your friend were through with your little investigation.”

Something niggled at me and I cocked my head, narrowing my eyes at Heddy. “Our investigation? Will and I are just substitute teachers.”

Heddy paused for a beat, her lips slightly parted, crimson meshing with the red rouge already on her cheeks. “Principal Lowe told me.” She clapped a hand over her mouth daintily. “Was I not supposed to say anything”—she dropped her voice to a throaty whisper and leaned forward—“here?”

It wasn’t until Heddy’s last motion that Fallon—standing at the back of the office with a stack of file folders in her hand—even seemed to notice us. I glanced up, feeling my heart do a little double thump, hoping she hadn’t heard anything.

“Fallon,” I said to her as she stared at me.

She crossed the office in three long strides, pressing the manila folders against her far-too-ample-for-a-woman-who-couldn’t-yet-vote chest.

“I thought you were done here,” she said, her eyes cold.

“And I thought Miranda was the office aide,” I said, my eyes traveling back to Heddy.

“She is,” Fallon said. “Third period.”

In my mind, I knew Fallon was just a snotty kid. Her daddy handed her everything and she’d been blessed with Lolita-like looks and enough cunning to use them, but she was still just a kid. So I couldn’t figure out why she put me on edge so much.

“Witch.”

I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until I felt the hot press of air edge past my lips

Heddy looked up at me. “Did you say something, dear?”

The word ricocheted around my head until it was droning in my ear: WITCH. Witch. Witchwitch witchwitch.

“Nothing, Ms. Gaines. Where is the library again?”

I turned my back on Fallon, still feeling the heat of her eyes boring into my back as I left.

Fallon was a bitch. She was a bully. And an office aide. She would have had access to each of the victims’ records, their home addresses, detailed confidential information about their family lives.

Did that make her a witch?

No.

There were bodies—multiple bodies. And if it was true that Suri and Gretchen had gone missing, Fallon couldn’t have had anything to do with it. She would have been a toddler then. But if she . . .

I made a beeline for the Mercy library and the librarian pointed to a tiny nook in the back of the room. “The yearbooks are all over there,” she said. “Every year. They’re getting very popular lately.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the second person who’s asked to see them in as many days.” She smiled thinly. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I settled myself in, pulled out my sparkly unicorn notebook, and yanked out a handful of books. I started with last year’s, flipping back and forth between the sweet-smiled Alyssa and the broad-smiling Cathy. Then I checked the index, writing down every page where the girls commingled.

There was only one.

“Lock and Key Club,” I said to myself in a low whisper. “They were in Lock and Key and one literature class together. Okay.” I bit my bottom lip. “That’s a start . . . I guess.”

I reached for another book, opening it on my lap.

“Oh, holy crap!”

I didn’t realize I’d screamed it until a selection of narrowed eyes squinted at me in a universal, “Shhhh!”

“Sorry,” I mouthed, picking up my cell phone.

“Hello?” I whispered into it.

“Shh!” This time from the librarian.

“Let me call you right back.”

I shoved the yearbooks back onto the shelf and my unicorn notebook into my shoulder bag, then apologetically made my way into the hall.

“Will?”

“Nice to hear from you, love.”

“What do you mean ‘nice to hear from you’? I’ve been calling you all morning.”

He yawned loudly into the phone. “Did you?”

“If you didn’t get my messages, why are you calling me?”

“I’m calling you because the PD came back with some info from your hole.” Will paused, then broke into a round of schoolboy giggles.

“Seriously, Will?”

“That came out wrong.”

“I know which hole you meant. What did you hear—and how did you hear it?” Alex’s pained face flashed in my memory and just as quickly skittered away.

“Not important. According to the bobbies, the bones of three different people were found there. All three women, all three seem to be in the range of sixteen to twenty-two.”

I bit my lip, my stomach roiling. “Are any of those bodies Alyssa?”

“Not likely. The bones were old. The decomposition was natural, so they’re placing the kills between fifteen and twenty years ago.”

My saliva tasted like hot lead in my mouth. Had our killer been working on his “project” for fifteen or twenty years?

“They were only able to identify one of the bodies. There was a bracelet tangled on her.” Will sucked in a sharp breath. “A bracelet with her remains. She was called Gretchen. Gretchen Von Dow.”