Under a Spell

Chapter Twelve

The semi-deserted parking lot shouldn’t have been scary. There were splashes of light from poles that dotted the concrete, and five hundred feet away cars honked, tires squeaked, and muddled bass thumped as traffic eked down Nineteenth. But either way I was a woman who was aware, who watched all the “it could happen to you” specials and who had been pummeled by everything from a sweaty book agent to a rabid vampire. I walked with purpose, making a zippy beeline toward my car with my keys threaded through my knuckles—a makeshift set of eyeball-gauging claws.

It was these claws that tumbled from my hand when I awkwardly tried to stab them into the door lock. I bent over to retrieve them and my shoulder bag walloped me in the chin while my backpack clipped the back of my head. I steadied myself against my car door and pressed myself back up slowly (lest I behead myself on a side view mirror). That was when an engine revved and the headlights from the car half a parking lot away clicked on and flooded me and mine in glaring white light. I was temporarily blinded, unable to see anything but the glowing white orbs. I squinted and the driver revved his engine again.

“Big engine, small dick,” I mumbled, searching for my car key.

I heard the faint crunch of gravel and then the unmistakable sound of rubber peeling over concrete. My head snapped back and the white orbs were growing bigger and bigger as the car came hurtling toward me, its engine throbbing so loudly that the sound pinged through my bones, made my teeth feel weird and achy.

The driver saw me, I know he did. Or if by chance he didn’t, there was no mistaking my car beside me, my smashed-up, vampire-scrawled car. But he didn’t seem to care. The headlights didn’t waver, didn’t move a millimeter to either side. The driver knew where I was and was aiming right for me—quickly.

My brain told me to move, to dive, to swerve, to run, but my feet weren’t mine. They wouldn’t respond, couldn’t respond, and kept me rooted to the vibrating concrete as the car closed the distance between us.

I could smell the exhaust from the car, the fast burn of gas on the chilled night air. I knew it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds—five at the most—but it felt like a lifetime, me rooted to that spot, my meager offering of skin and bones and muscle and flesh against two thousand pounds of rocketing steel. Adrenaline shot through me in fiery waves and my legs gave out. I felt my hair whip across the flying car and I clenched my eyes shut, crushing my palms against my ears as the sound of metal pulverizing metal deafened me. I heard the pop of glass, saw the shards fall in delicate slow motion—like snowflakes, I thought—as they danced to the ground, glistening in the weakening light. I felt my flesh breaking, hot against the concrete.

And suddenly it was quiet. Dead quiet.

I couldn’t feel anything. My heart wasn’t beating, the blood that had been coursing through my veins was stiff and oddly silent. I dropped my head and felt the concrete grating into my cheek.

Then there was pain, and noise.

Cars honking, tires squeaking, the muddled bass of cars on Nineteenth.

Blood pulsed from my bottom lip, now swollen and tasting like dirt. I edged myself out from under my car, amazed that I had gotten there. My arms and palms looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to them and bloomed with fresh heat.

My heart started to thunder. The blood started to pulse. Suddenly, I was gasping, crying, coughing, doubled over with my arms wrapped around my stomach, hugging myself while fresh tears rolled over my nose and fell onto the ground in front of my shoes.

“Ms. Lawson? Ms. L, is that you?”

I heard Miranda’s voice over the din of traffic. I inched my eyes up, and when hers met mine, she vaulted out of the doorway and sprinted toward me.

“Oh my gosh, Ms. Lawson, what happened to you? Are you okay? Should I call someone? The police or 9-1-1?”

I sucked in a deep, steadying breath and pushed myself to standing. Miranda’s cheeks were flushed—whether from the short run from the school or her concern for me, I wasn’t sure—and her eyes were glassy and wide.

“No, thanks, Miranda,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “I’m okay. Really.”

She shifted her weight and a shard of glass from my smashed side-view mirror popped under her foot. She jumped. “What was that? What happened?”

“That”—I used the toe of my shoe to nudge some errant glass aside—“is what remains of my mirror.”

“Your car mirror?”

“Someone tried—” I paused, biting my bottom lip. I could feel the lump tightening in my throat, but I couldn’t cry in front of Miranda, in front of my student. And I couldn’t drag her into this. “Someone just cut a little too close to my car while they were leaving the lot.” I felt my heart thunder, remembering the brush of metal against my hair even as I lied about it. “They must not have seen me.” I managed a small smile.

Miranda studied me suspiciously. “You look like you were crying.”

My hand flew to my face. “Oh, do I? Probably because I was thinking of how much my insurance was going to go up. You know, hit and run and all.”

I saw Miranda’s gaze go over my shoulder and examine my shit heap of a car. “You have insurance?”

“Um, what are you doing out here? It’s late. Can’t possibly have been in detention.”

“I stay late a lot.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “Heddy—Ms. Gaines—lets me do some administration stuff for her while I wait for the bus so I don’t have to hang outside the whole time.”

“You stay until”—I glanced down at my watch—“after six every day?”

“Oh, no. Not every day. Today I talked to you, and that made me a little bit late so I missed the earlier bus.”

My near-death-experience emotional rush was replaced by an apologetic blush. “Oh, no. I’m really sorry.”

Miranda yawned, then shrugged. “No big deal. Not the first time I missed it,” she grinned, wide and genuinely. “Won’t be the last.”

“Why don’t you let me drive you home?”

She shook her head with a sweet smile. “That’s okay. It’s probably out of your way.”

“It’s the least I can do for making you miss the first bus. And you may have saved me from a potential mow-down. I kind of owe you.”

Miranda opened her mouth just as the Muni bus wailed to a stop at the curb. “That’s my bus,” she said, taking a step back.

She gave me a tight wave before turning around on her heel and sprinting toward the bus, backpack bobbing behind her. I watched until she boarded. She turned and glanced back at me, her whole body illuminated by the heavy yellow glow of the bus lights.

The bus belched out a puff of black air as it groaned away from the curb; I watched the illuminated trip board blaring HUNTERS POINT/ BAYVIEW and sighed. Hunters Point was the most undesirable place to live in the whole city. Miranda wouldn’t let me drive her home because she didn’t want me to know where she lived.

“It never changes,” I mumbled to myself.

I had almost managed to forget I that I had been a half-inch away from being a hood ornament until I opened my apartment door. Nina immediately jumped off the couch and slammed her pale hands against her open mouth.

“Ohmigod, Soph, what happened?” Her coal-black eyes were huge and saucer wide. She was on me in a heartbeat, and the second she slid her ice-cold arms around me, I crumbled.

“Someone tried to kill me!” I wailed into the crook of her neck.

Nina stiffened. “Again?”

I pulled back and attempted an indignant huff, then fell back against my best friend. “Yeeeeeeees!” I hiccupped, then burrowed my face into Nina’s neck. “I got run over!”

Nina took a few careful steps back, keeping one hand splayed against me while the other pressed against her perfect little ski-jump nose. “By a manure truck?”

I started. “Wha—?” Then I snaked a hand under my shirt and pulled off Lorraine’s fetid “charm,” tossing it across the room. “That was supposed to protect me.” I fell into another heap of tears, this one due both to my recent dance with a Goodyear and the fact that I smelled like a giant cow pie.

“Oh, Sophs, it’s going to be okay. No one’s going to kill you, I promise. I mean, look how many times people have tried.”

“But why do people keep trying? It sucks so much! I never try and kill anyone.”

Nina cocked an eyebrow and I frowned.

“Okay, okay. But they were all really bad people.” I clapped a hand to my chest. “I’m a good person and yet people keep trying to pummel the crap out of me.” I pressed the pads of my fingers to my swollen bottom lip. “And they keep getting closer and closer.”

Nina went to the kitchen while I settled myself on the couch. ChaCha circled me, looking concerned, and I cuddled her to me until Nina returned with an ice cube wrapped in a dishcloth. She pressed it gently to my lip. “You have a swollen lip and a couple of scratches. That’s so not a big deal. Remember when you almost got staked? And you got stabbed in the leg? Those were way closer. And you escaped a fire! Goodness, Adam was hell bent on taking you out and you survived that.”

“For some reason, none of that makes me feel any better.”

ChaCha whined on my behalf and shoved her little dog muzzle in my armpit.

The door clicked open and Vlad walked in, shaking off his duster and narrowly missing hanging it up. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Sophie’s upset that people keep trying to kill her.”

“Still?” Vlad’s lip curled.

“Again.”

Vlad shrugged and picked up the mail on the table. “Try being a vampire. They make movies about all the people who want to kill us.”

I peeked over the edge of the couch, my eyes narrowed. “Yeah, but you’re immortal. It really has much more weight when you’re full of blood and can actually die from being pummeled by a car.”

“Potato, potah-to. Do we have anymore O neg?” Proof positive that even at a hundred and thirteen, a sixteen-year-old never changes.

I stepped into the shower and scrubbed every inch of myself until my skin hurt, trying in earnest to get rid of the feelings of parking lot and imminent death. When I was nice and pink and warm, I slipped into my bathrobe and padded into my bedroom, ChaCha trotting happily on my tail.

I yanked open my top drawer and frowned, poking around at what should have been a sea of silk and lace. Or, more accurately, cotton and elastic stretched to the hilt.

Either I was woefully behind on laundry duty or there was a panty prowler afoot.

“Um, Neens?”

Nina came floating into my bedroom trailed by a cloud of pale pink silk and marabou. She was also wearing kitten heels, and her eyes were made up with thick swaths of black liner that winged at the sides, fringed with the most enviably long eyelashes I’d even seen—boxed or otherwise. The heavily lined lashes and lids only served to make the flat red color on her lips even more dramatic. She blinked at me and gingerly patted her hair—a spectacular waterfall of glossy waves the size of juice cans.

“Did you just do that while I was in the tub?”

Nina flicked an imaginary hair from her eye. “Maybe.”

“Wow. And here I thought you were directing a commercial, not starring in the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane biop.”

Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest, a rainstorm of marabou feathers showering her wrists and my carpet. “You have no vision.”

“I have no underwear, either.”

She cocked a slightly interested—if overtly confused—brow. “What are you talking about?”

I gestured to my knicker-free drawer. “I did laundry two days ago. Suddenly, I have nothing. Have you seen my underpants?”

“I try not to keep too tight an eye on your undergarments, Soph. That’s just disgusting.”

I yanked the pants I was planning to wear from where they lay on my desk chair and waggled them in front of her. “Not as disgusting as going commando in a poly-blend. Do you know what happened to my underwear?”

I could tell by the slight flash in Nina’s eyes and the delicate way she pinched her upper lip that there was something she wasn’t telling me.

“Nina?”

She went from tugging her lip to tapping her sleekly manicured index finger against her nose. “I may have had a few people over. Investors, mainly, for the shoot. If you really want high quality, you can’t just shoot the thing on an iPhone. I know they say you can but—”

An annoying heat stirred in my belly—while a cool breeze wafted through my bare legs. “Did you sell my underwear for financial backing? Who would do that? Who would buy that?!”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I wouldn’t sell your underwear because you’re right, who would buy it? Perhaps you’ve just misplaced it.” Nina looked at the blank spot on her wrist and tapped it. “I’m going to be late. I have to dress. You should, too. We can get to the bottom of this later. Here.” She picked through the meager remains of my lingerie drawer and handed me what appeared to be a sequined Chinese jump rope. “Panties. Now quit being such a baby.”

I yanked on the underwear, assuming each string was going in the correct direction, then dressed quickly and did an “are you kidding me with this butt floss?” duck walk toward the bathroom, rubbing my scalp with a towel.

“Aren’t you a vision of soppy wet loveliness?”

Will’s fat, grinning face reflected back in my mirror, and I almost hauled off and bludgeoned him with my hair dryer.

“How did you get in here?”

“I’m not a vampire, love. No one has to invite me in.”

I rolled my eyes and clicked on my hair dryer.

“You ready to head over to Alyssa’s?”

I yanked the cord from the wall and began wrapping it around my still-warm dryer. “You obviously didn’t hear what happened to me just a few short hours ago. Hand me that comb.”

Will grabbed the comb, edged me aside and ran it through his own hair. I snatched it out of his hand and used my hip to shove him aside.

“I almost died!”

Will didn’t show the proper amount of horror or concern. Instead, he cocked a sandy eyebrow and asked, “Again?”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Just because it happens fairly often doesn’t make it any less dramatic.”

He slid an arm out and pulled me to him, pressing his lips against the top of my head. “I’m sorry, love. It is serious.”

I shoved him off one more time. “Yeah, and as my Guardian, you should have been there. Or, at the very least, I should not have so many almost-murdering-me incidents, now should I?”

“Actually, love, I’m contracted specifically for fallen angels and all the baddies who want to cut the Vessel out of you, remember? Anything else really isn’t in my jurisdiction.”

My mouth dropped open. “That’s what’s wrong with Americans today! Slackers. No one willing to do anything more than their job description allows.”

“I’m not American, love.”

“Still!” I was fuming. I turned on my heel and marched out of the bathroom, stopping only to narrow my eyes at Will. “See this spot on the ground?” I screamed, feeling the hysteria growing in my chest. “This could have been me!”

“It happened here?”

“No, at the school. In the parking lot.”

“Did you upset the bathroom ghost again?”

“This. Is. Serious. And you know what? I’m going to file a complaint with the Guardian department. I’m going to get a new Guardian! Who do I call?”

“W-w-w-dot-guardian-dot-com.”

I paused. “Seriously?”

“No.”

“Ass!”

I stomped toward my bedroom, watching Nina and Vlad’s heads swinging back from me to Will like they were watching a tennis match.

“I think this one’s way funnier,” I heard Vlad tell Nina.

Will caught up with me and threaded his arm through mine. He pulled me along with him. “We’ll go ahead and wrap you in bubble wrap the second time allows.”

I rolled my eyes. “So. Not. Helping.”

I was far less steamed by the time I was dressed and settled in Nigella. Partly because I had found a clean pair of non-stringy underwear and partly because Will apologized with a hunk of Galaxy chocolate.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Will wanted to know.

“Well, if you would break down and buy a car from this century, we could be following a GPS. Right now, this”—I waggled the directions Vlad had printed out for me, complete with the Some roads may no longer be accessible or exist warning—“is all we have.”

Will sighed, but leaned back into the driver’s seat. “Okay.”

“Oh, right up there. That’s the street we need.”

We turned off the main road and were immediately plunged into a mecca of large houses with actual lawns and perfectly manicured landscaping. Hulking trees laced over the streets, but the cheery, mega-watt streetlamps made everything look like it was a Martha Stewart setup rather than anything encroaching or smothering.

“Nice neighborhood,” Will said, nodding. “Quaint.”

“If you consider five thousand-square-foot houses quaint. This is it.”

The doors in front of me were the largest I had ever seen. Like, behemoth, leering, laughably big. They, along with the carefully coifed swirls of juniper in pots the size of my bathroom, dwarfed me physically and mentally, everything telling me that I was a tiny, unsavory fly in the ointment of the posh. I tried to steel myself, to steady my shoulders and give myself the kind of self-talk that included bon mots like “money doesn’t buy class” and “no one has the power to make you feel small but you,” but even with such great bumper-sticker nuggets it was more than obvious that I stuck out like a sad, sore thumb among the carefully cultivated perfection here, and I almost felt sorry for Alyssa, for having spent her formative years as a showpiece in this gilded cage.

My fingertip on the doorbell released a series of clock-tower bells. The hunchback-esque crescendo shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did and I hopped back, hand on my chest, Will’s arms quickly snaking around my waist.

“It’s just a doorbell, love.”

I quickly righted myself, feeling heat zinging through me. I blinked and stuttered. “Um, right.”

The open door sliced through my awkwardness with Will and a one-dimensional image of a perfect, upscale soccer mom poked her dewy, Botox-young face through the opening.

“Yes,” she said, blinking red-rimmed eyes that seemed to bulge around her pulled skin. “May I help you?”

I cleared my throat and mustered up courage from somewhere, offering a teeth-baring smile that I hoped was more welcoming than grimacing. “My name is Sophie Lawson and this is Will Sherman. We’re teachers from your daughter’s school. I appreciate this is a difficult time, but would it be possible to speak with you about your daughter, Mrs. Rand?”

Mrs. Rand seemed to shrink into the slit of open doorway. I could see her hand go to her throat, her bony knuckles pressing against her breastbone. “You have the wrong house,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “The Rands don’t live here.”

The woman clicked the door shut before I had a chance to respond.

I sighed, pushing out my bottom lip. “Well, that was useless.”

Will licked his lips and grinned, looking nothing less than smug. “Not exactly.”

I rolled my eyes, sighing. “Oh, let me guess? Your plan is to bat those sexy hazel eyes at Mrs. Rand in there and she’s going to roll over and give you anything you want, huh?”

Will’s grin went from smug to mischievous in a single, panty-melting second. “You think my eyes are sexy?”

I felt the blush roll into my eyeballs. “Uh, so, what was your plan?”

His eyes washed over me and cut over my shoulder. He jutted his chin and I looked. “What’s she doing here?”

Fallon was cresting the hill on a white and mint-green bicycle, spotlighted by the streetlights. She was still in her uniform, her Mercy skirt tucked between her legs, the heavy fabric brushing against her thighs, catching the breeze, exposing the edge of her white, boy-short panties. Her hair sailed behind her in long pigtails, lazy s-waves that licked her shoulder blades and tumbled down her back. Her lips were pursed, her eyes a steely blue. She zigzagged down the street, commanding the blacktop as though a car would never dream of clipping her, of stopping her slow ride.

Even I was taken by her, and I felt myself scowl. Fallon Monroe was a lollypop and an Aerosmith song away from a Nabokov novel.

I jumped back as Fallon skittered to a stop in front of Will and me. Her eyes never left his and her front tire grazed my pant leg. I would have been certain that her pigtails and push-up bra had resulted in a stunning case of tunnel vision had she not flicked an apathetic, “Sorry, Ms. L,” my way.

Fallon pressed her feet to the ground, the bike balanced lewdly between her thighs. “What are you doing here, Mr. Sherman?”

Will’s eyes were firmly lodged on Fallon’s forehead and I appreciated that, given the fact that Fallon’s perfectly manicured forefinger and thumb were playing with the top button on her blouse. A hint of white lace peeked out, stunning against her tan skin.

“Actually, Ms. Lawson and I were looking to speak to Mrs. Rand.”

“Ms.”

“What was that?” I asked.

Fallon kicked at the dirt. “Ms. Rand. She’s not married. And she’s not here right now. She’s probably on her way home.”

“Home? Doesn’t she live here?”

Fallon’s laugh was halting and bitter as she swung a leg over her bike seat. “She doesn’t live here. She works here.” She grabbed the handlebars and pushed the bike up the walk, dropping it unceremoniously on the porch. The bike dropped in a huge clatter, and Fallon was walking through the front door that had just been slammed in our faces.

Will’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, how about that?”

“How about nothing.” I was striding up the walk, about to knock, when Will grabbed my arm.

“What are you doing?”

I whirled, suddenly angry for being jealous of a teenage girl’s sex appeal, angry that Fallon got to live in a house like this, angry that I would always be the outsider with the heavy, gorgeous door to fabulousness slammed in my face.

“I’m going to find out some answers.” I whipped Alyssa Rand’s records out of my purse. “How come the address Mercy has on file for Alyssa is Fallon’s address? And what did Fallon mean that Ms. Rand doesn’t live at this house. She—” I paused, feeling dense. “Alyssa’s mother works for Fallon’s family.”

Will nodded and took Alyssa’s papers from my hand. “And Alyssa’s mother must have used the Monroes’ address to keep her daughter at Mercy.”

“I feel like this blows everything wide open.”

Will eyed me. “You’re thinking that address masking led to Alyssa’s kidnapping? Or Cathy Ledwith’s? Wait.” He splayed both his hands as though he were about to lay something deep on me. “You’ve discovered that the demon our little criminals are trying to summon is the Antichrist of desegregation, right? Satan’s own school administrator?”

I narrowed my eyes, clenching my fists and jamming them into my pockets so I wouldn’t wallop Will right between his sexy hazel eyes in the middle of the goddamn street. “Go to hell.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. Go ahead.” Will held up his palms. “Tell me your theory.”

I thrummed my fingers against my hip bones, the cogs in my head spinning but coming up with little.

“Well, there is only one reason why a student would have to use another address to attend a private school. Frankly, if you have the money and the grades, you could live on Jupiter and still attend—as long as you show up, right?”

Will shrugged blankly. “This is your thing, love.”

“Every year, a certain number of scholarships are made available. The girls have to do well on the entrance exam and have the grades, but they all have to live within a certain radius of the school.”

“So?”

“So, Alyssa, likely on scholarship, used Fallon’s address to qualify.”

“Aha!”

I turned. “Aha, what?”

“Nothing. I just don’t see how your little theory here changes or, let’s just say, ‘improves’ anything. But I wanted to be supportive.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m thinking out loud here. What if someone caught on to Alyssa’s false address and threatened to not only have her expelled, but have”—I dropped my voice to a hoarse whisper and cut my eyes toward the house—“Fallon exposed, too.”

Will blinked at me, expression completely unchanged. “Is being on scholarship really that bad? Like, murderously bad?”

I shook my head. “Only for your social standing. I was on scholarship and hid it like it was some kind of oozing lesion.”

“I’m going to have good dreams tonight,” Will said with a grimace.

“Everyone teased me anyway, but when they found out I was a scholarship, too . . . oh, God. It was like a feeding frenzy.”

I remembered walking down the hall as slowly as possible so that the school would be empty by the time I got to my locker, but no one was budging.

I could hear their muffled giggles. I didn’t dare look at anyone because the giggles were easier to stomach than the narrowed, challenging eyes of Jessica and her gang, but worse were the eyes of the other students. They almost seemed to flash sympathy, but no one spoke up or offered me a reassuring glance. Most just looked away, thankful it was me and not them.

The thump of my heart got louder with each step I took and by the time I was ten feet away, I could see that something was pasted all over my locker.

Coupons. An application for public assistance. The Goodwill logo torn from a paper bag.

Jessica Bray sashayed up to me, a fresh coat of orange-scented gloss on her lips. She batted those huge, doe-innocent eyes at me. “Heard about your situation. Thought these might take some of the burden off you. Who knows? Maybe you can save enough to get yourself a decent pair of shoes.”

More than a decade later I could still smell the faint scent of orange blossom and it turned my stomach and shot an embarrassed heat down my spine.

“Maybe someone was willing to exterminate the issue to keep her status secret?”

Will crossed his arms in front of his chest and cocked his head. “You really think someone would go to such lengths?”

I groaned and rubbed my forehead in a vain attempt to cull the throb that had begun. “No. I just feel like we’re running in circles. There may or may not be a coven on campus. Are some girls witches? Or just bitches? I should have just got out of this when Sampson gave me the chance.”

Will shrugged and pulled out his keys, leaving me behind to sulk. I trotted after him. “Aren’t you going to tell me that we really are making progress? That I’m not a total failure?”

He gave me a quick once-over before disappearing into the car. I snatched the passenger-side door open and slid in. “Well?”

“Well, nothing. We’ve come up against a dead end. I haven’t time to tend to your bruised ego. There’s an Arsenal game on and I fancy a pint.”

I felt my lower lip press out and my bruised ego was starting to grate.

“Coming with?” Will asked me as we coasted along a surprisingly un-crowded Geary Boulevard.

Though drinking myself into a beer-addled oblivion sounded particularly pleasurable at that exact moment, my pulse was still thundering and the mass of puzzle pieces that never seemed to fit nagged at me.

“Can you drop me at the police station, please?”

Will’s brows went up.

“I think I’ll just go into work and see if there’s anything pressing.”

Will bobbed his head once as though he were considering the validity of my answer rather than agreeing with me in any way.

I had my hand on the glass double doors at the entrance of the police station as Nigella coughed into reverse behind me. She and Will were halfway down the street when my body seemed to seize up. Everything locked tightly; even the blood pulsing through my veins seemed to freeze solid.

“Help me!”