Under a Spell

Chapter Fifteen

I turned the corner toward our apartment building and slid into a parking spot just as a carpet-covered van vacated it.

Will looked at me and smiled as I pushed the car into park. “Rock star parking. Maybe things are looking up for us.”

I had my hand on the door when a bolt of heat shot through me. “I’m not so sure. Look.”

Will followed my gaze to the girl sitting on the stoop in front of our building. She had her knees pressed up against her chest, her hands buried in the enormous sleeves of a charcoal-grey hoodie. Her head was down, and a very recognizable, fuzzy shock of hair slid out from under her beanie.

“Is that Miranda?”

I pushed open the car door. “Miranda?”

Her head rose slowly, the majority of her face hidden in the shadows. “Ms. Lawson? Mr. Sherman?”

“Yeah.” I rushed toward her. “What are you doing here?”

I could see from the slice of light over her beanie and hair that she was trembling.

“I probably shouldn’t have come here,” she said finally. “But I didn’t know where else to go.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

Will slid an arm through Miranda’s and helped her up. It was then that I could see her face clearly. My chest tightened painfully and the familiar prick of tears itched behind my eyes. “My God, Miranda, what happened to you?”

A purple-red bruise peeked out from under her beanie and marred the left side of her forehead. Puffed red scratches shot dangerously close to her swollen eye. Her cheeks were flushed red and slick with dried tears. There were neat slices at the edges of her lips, and dried blood was caked all over. Though Miranda did her best to shrink back into her sweatshirt and shrink back into the cover of night, I could still see purpling fingers of puckered skin under her chin and circling her throat.

“Can you walk? Do we need to get you an ambulance?” I asked.

Miranda shook her head, her hair swinging. “No, thanks,” she said, her voice a near-whisper.

“Let’s get her inside,” Will said before Miranda had a chance to elaborate.

Nina snatched open the door before I had a chance to sink my key into the lock. “Lorraine?” she asked, before her eyes set on Miranda.

“Nina,” I said, steering Miranda and Will around her, “this is Miranda, a student from my class.”

“Here, Miranda.” I led her to the couch and she sat gingerly, wincing. “Would you mind giving us just a second?”

Her dark eyes went from me to Will and finally to Nina before she nodded silently. I pushed Nina toward my room and Will shut the door behind us.

“What happened to her?” Nina wanted to know.

I chewed my bottom lip. “We just found her downstairs like that.”

“We do plan on asking, right?” Will asked.

“Of course. It’s just—” I looked at Nina, who sucked in a breath and patted the air.

“I know, I know. I’m just your normal flesh-and-blood roommate who is not salivating in the least at the overwhelming scent of dried blood.”

“Can you let Vlad know about Miranda before he gets back?” I said.

Nina shrugged. “He never left.” She cocked her head, listening. “And I’m pretty sure he’s already discovered your student.”

“Christ.” I pushed out my door and was momentarily taken aback by Miranda sitting primly on my couch. It was like my two worlds had crashed together.

“Sorry, Miranda. Can I get you anything?”

“You probably could have offered her a glass of water before you disappeared on her,” Vlad said as he appeared from the kitchen, tall, filled glass in his hand.

“Thank you,” she whispered to him, before downing the whole thing.

I sat across from Miranda. “Can you tell us what—or who—did this to you?”

She turned to me and tears began to pour over her lower lashes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know who it was.”

“She said she—”

I held up a hand. “Vlad, it’s okay. I’d like to hear it from Miranda.”

I’d expected him to growl or grumble something inappropriate before settling back behind his laptop to explode human arteries, but he sat next to Miranda—close to her—body-brushing close.

My heart thumped. He liked her.

Before I could swoon for teenage love and recoil at the vampire-breather consequences, Will quickly sat next to me and addressed Miranda. “I’ve got some paramedic training. What do you say you let me take a look and maybe clean up those injuries?”

Miranda looked around blankly, her eyes wide and heartbreakingly innocent. She pulled herself into her sweatshirt again. “It probably looks worse than it really is.”

I looked at Nina, who was perched on the chair-and-a-half. Even across the room I could see her nostrils twitch. She steeled me with a glance letting me know that the blood she was smelling was not fresh—or flowing—enough to be dangerous.

“Can you tell us what happened, Miranda?” I asked.

Miranda clasped her hands in her lap and stared at them for a bit before she cleared her throat. “I was leaving the school.”

I glanced up at the clock. “Wait. You were just leaving campus now?”

She shook her head. “No. No, I was trying to get on the three o’clock bus. I realized I left my book back in your classroom so I went back for it. But I still had enough time to make it back to the bus stop. Or I should have. Anyway, I went back to the main door. Janitor Bud let me in and I got my book. It’s Wuthering Heights—the one you saw me reading in the cafeteria. But it was weird—the door to your classroom snapped shut while I was in there. Like there was a breeze or something, but there wasn’t. I mean, all the windows were closed. And then . . .” Miranda shook her head and the tears started to fall again. She let them go and I could see Vlad watching as they rolled over Miranda’s nose and fell into her lap.

“It’s okay, Miranda.” I squeezed her hand.

“It’s going to sound crazy. You’re all going to think I’m crazy.”

Will and I exchanged a glance. “You have a long way to go before we would even consider that thought.”

“A long way,” Will added. “Your Ms. L there got locked in the toilet, and I didn’t think any less of her.”

I tried hard not to roll my eyes. “Just tell us what happened.”

“So the door shut, and I tried to open it. But it was like it was locked. I tried to fiddle with the lock, but that didn’t help. And then—all of a sudden—it was dark. Like, pitch black. I couldn’t see anything. Then there was a wind—a howling wind. Everything went floating around me and things were hitting me. It felt like fists—like people were there. Pulling my hair and”—she heaved, then pressed a hand over her bottom lip—“and punching me. There was like, lightning or something cracking and every once in a while that would make it light. There was no one there, Ms. L—no one but me, but I could feel people. And something was written on the board—it looked like, it looked like—”

“Get out?” I offered.

Miranda nodded, her eyes the size of teacups. “How did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess.”

“Then what happened?” Vlad asked her.

“Well, there was a giant crack. I was yanking on the door and as soon as I heard that, everything stopped. The room was normal again, there was nothing on the board, no wind. The door opened right up and I ran. I ran all the way out of the school and to the bus stop. I didn’t even know there was—” Miranda gingerly touched her fingertips to her puffed eye. “I didn’t even know there was anything on my face until the bus driver asked what happened.”

“What made you come here?” Will asked.

Vlad shot him a scathing look. “She was traumatized.”

“I’m just asking.”

“Yeah, what—I mean, I’m glad that you did—but why did you decide to come here?”

Miranda’s lower lip trembled and she looked into her lap again. “My mom works nights. I didn’t want to go home.” She looked up at me, her eyes desperate and imploring. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Not to a mate’s or something?” Will asked.

Vlad gritted his teeth. “She said she didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Miranda started to sniff again—another round of heavy tears.

“Look what you did!” Vlad snapped.

I nudged him away and slung an arm around Miranda, pulling her toward me. “You did the right thing coming here, Miranda. Everything is going to be okay. You’re safe now.”

Will steadied his gaze and I avoided it.

“There’s something else, Ms. L,” Miranda whispered into my hair.

“What is it, honey?”

Miranda pulled back and looked at Will and Vlad, then back at me. “We can go to my room,” I said, taking her hand.

I closed the door behind us, and Miranda started when ChaCha sprang from the covers and growled.

“Oh, don’t worry about her,” I said, snatching her up. “She’s my half-pint attack dog.”

The edges of Miranda’s lips quirked up into the beginning of a smile. “She’s cute.”

“You can pet her,” I offered, swinging ChaCha within arm’s reach. Miranda reached out tentatively, but ChaCha growled again, showing off her Tic Tac–sized bottom teeth.

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry about her; she’s very protective of my bed.” I set ChaCha down and the terrifying thing buried her way into my covers, her little butt and stub tail disappearing last.

“Animals always seem to hate me,” Miranda said wistfully. “Even my gerbil ran away.”

We sat in silence for an uncomfortable beat until Miranda sucked in a breath. “I didn’t want to tell them.” She jutted her head toward the living room. “I didn’t want to show them.”

“What?”

She swallowed slowly and I could see her hands tremble as she pulled up her hoodie—slowly, painfully. There were fresh scratches on her hands, the deepest ones across her knuckles where blood had pooled and dried. Miranda dropped her sweatshirt on my floor, then slowly began to unbutton the blouse underneath.

Suddenly, there was no air. Everything pressed against me and the beating of my heart threatened to shatter me, to break me right open.

“Oh, Miranda.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the puckered flesh on her abdomen. The skin at the edges of the fresh cuts was turning up, the edges purple and fragile like the torn edges of paper. Everything swirled into a watery mess, and I stepped back, feeling my way to sit back on the bed as bile burned up the back of my throat and my own blood pulsed through my ears.

Miranda’s abdomen pulsed when she breathed, the freshly carved words, you’re next, a ghastly, skin-deep warning that chilled me to my core.

I cleaned Miranda’s wounds and then set her up in a pair of my old sweats. She was now huddled with Vlad behind his laptop, his hand over hers as her brand-new BloodLust avatar sunk its fangs into its first human flesh.

“So your mom was okay that you’re spending the night?”

Miranda looked over the laptop and nodded before breaking into a gale of teenage giggles. “Your hands are freezing!” she murmured to Vlad.

If she only knew the half of it.

“So, what are we going to do about this?” Will jutted his head toward Vlad and Miranda.

“He won’t make any moves on her. Vlad knows the rules.”

“No, I don’t care about that. Unless he starts to floss his teeth with her. I mean about the bippity boppity in the classroom. We going to go check that out?”

“Pssst!” Nina stuck her head through her bedroom door and hissed at me. “A word with you, dear roommate?”

“Speaking of someone about to floss their teeth with—what do they call us? Breathers?” Will’s eyes glittered.

“And you, too, Union Jack.”

He didn’t bother to contain his fear.

We shut ourselves into Nina’s room. Will pressed himself up against the door while I faced Nina down.

“So?” I asked.

Nina narrowed her eyes. “So? So? That’s what you say to me? Sophie Annemarie Lawson. I have tried to be good. I have tried to be malleable.”

“Malleable?” Will asked, brows raised.

“But this!” She threw her arm out dramatically. “This is something else completely. You just can’t bring your work home with you, Sophie.”

“My work? Miranda is a person, Nina. And I didn’t bring her home with me. She came here because she needed help. She needed help and she knew that I would be able to help.”

Nina swung her head. “Fine. She needed help. She’s helped. Send her home.”

“I’m not going to just—”

“Sophie, she’s a breather. With fresh cuts.”

“They weren’t bothering you a half hour ago.”

“A half hour ago they were caked with stale blood.”

Will wrinkled his nose. “Stale?”

“Dried,” I clarified.

“And the smell of Windex or something was pretty much overpowering. Now she smells like you and fresh blood. And you’ve got two vampires in close proximity.”

I felt my nostrils flare. “Aren’t you the one always telling me that vampires can handle themselves with decorum? That you guys have the ability to see breathers as people, not just tasty snacks?”

“Whoa.” I heard Will step back until his shoulders were pressed against the door.

Nina pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, Sophie. I need to get things done. How am I supposed to get anything done with her out there?”

My gut roiled with white-hot anger. “Are you kidding me? You’re concerned about your stupid project? This is a human being. A young girl! Who was attacked. She needs us, Neens. I’m sorry if you’ve been without a soul too long to feel anything for anyone. But I have a soul and I have feelings and so does that girl out there. This is my apartment too and she’s staying.”

Nina didn’t bother responding to me. She didn’t bother to look at me, either. I heard Will suck in a sharp breath; I heard the muffled voices of Vlad and Miranda in the other room. I didn’t hear Nina when she slipped out the window and down the fire escape.

“Hey, love, you know Nina kind of has a point. There are two vampires—”

I whirled and pinned Will with a glare. “Stay out of it, Will.”

When I walked into the dining room Vlad looked up at me, his coal-black eyes hooded, accusatory. He had heard every word we said. Miranda kept tapping away, blissfully unaware, her avatar cheering when she made the next kill.

Vlad and Nina slipped out to spend their remaining nighttime hours at Poe’s while I pulled a blanket up over Miranda’s shoulders as she snored on the couch. I straightened and cocked my head, then pulled open the front door.

“What do you need, Will?”

“Whoa, love, how’d you know I was out here?” He sunk into his sly, sexy grin. “Been keeping an eye on me, have you? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Miranda’s asleep on the couch,” I whispered before stepping into the hall and softly clicking the door shut behind me. “And I heard you being English out here. What is it?”

He shifted his weight, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth. “I haven’t been able to sleep since our little visitor popped in.”

I ran my hands over my arms, a cold shudder going over me. “I know. I feel so responsible.”

“Well, don’t.” Will plopped down onto his chaise longue, the plastic patio slats groaning under his weight. He gestured for me to sit. I tossed aside his needlepoint Home Sweet Home pillow and two pairs of cleats, and sat across from him.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Miranda shows up here, at your place, after what happened to her?”

I shrugged. “Her mother works nights. She didn’t want to be alone. I get that.”

“Wouldn’t a teenage girl rather have gone to a friend’s house than a teacher’s? A substitute teacher at that.”

I shifted in my chair, stung. “Most girls would go to a girlfriend’s house—if they had a girlfriend to go to. Miranda and I had a connection. I told her I would help her if she needed anything.”

Will pushed his fingers into his belt loops and stared off into space, a hard, thoughtful look on his face.

“What?”

He snapped to attention. “What, what?”

“You’re thinking something. You have something to say. So, out with it.”

Will cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. I gave him the universal “well, come on” scowl and he blew out a sigh. “She had a lot of detail in her story.”

“Who? Miranda? Of course she had a lot of detail in her story. It happened to her. She was telling us. The details are important.”

“Is that common?”

I paused, thinking back on all of the eyewitness accounts Alex and I had sat through. Generally, the first time the story was told, the witness had very little to say other than the most general overview: “I was attacked. It was dark.”

“Not really. But she had had some time to process it. And, she’s kind of a loner. More of an observer. Not everyone reacts the same to trauma.”

“Yeah . . . but she was out of breath, crying, terrified. And yet she remembered all these small, unnecessary details.”

“People cling on to weird things when they’re traumatized. You read about it all the time. There’s even a name for it.”

Will crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What is it?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, cogs spinning in my brain. “Traumatic Unnecessary Brain Focusing . . . Syndrome.”

Will’s lips quirked up into a smirk.

I threw up my hands. “Okay, there is no name for it. Just what the hell are you getting at, anyway?”

“Nothing, love. I was just pointing out that it seemed odd that a young bird coming from such a stressful situation would have a story with that much detail.”

“You know what your problem is, Will? You just don’t understand women. We’re complicated. We’re varied. We’re not ‘birds’”—I made air quotes—“or ‘lasses.’”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever called a bird a lass, and as far as whether or not I can figure a bird out . . .” Will’s eyes sliced into mine and he licked his bottom lip seductively. The action, paired with the steady heat of his eyes, shot fireworks off in my veins and my entire body perked to attention. “I haven’t any complaints yet.”

Somehow, all the breath was sucked from my body. Somehow, all of my bones had congealed into a wobbly, untrustworthy jelly-like material.

Get it together, Sophie.

Will closed the distance between us and his arm brushing past me—the light wisp against my nipples—was on the verge of making me purr. It was hard to be angry and confident when all I wanted to do was collapse against his chest and do the bodice-ripping things that Harlequin novels were famous for with just a hint of Fifty Shades.

He was so close now that I could feel his breath on my neck, could feel his lips against my earlobe. Goose bumps shot up like spikes all over my flesh when he breathed and my heartbeat went slow and heavy, my entire body aching with desire. I knew he wanted me, too. The way his hazel eyes skimmed over my cheeks and settled on my lips for an extra second, the way his fingertips grazed mine . . . I closed my eyes as his lips came toward mine, waiting for that moment of soft flesh on flesh.

“There we go.”

I started, every hormone crashing into a brick wall. “What?”

Will sat back in his chair, now with a yellow notepad in his hand. “I was reaching for my notepad,” he said, waggling it for proof. “What did you think I was doing?”

I cleared my throat and straightened up. “That. I thought that’s what you were doing.”

There was a hint of amusement in his eyes and a bit of a sly smile forming at the edges of his mouth. His eyes broke from mine and scanned the notepad. Suddenly, all play and sex appeal was gone, replaced by an all-business look.

“Did you think it was strange that Miranda said Janitor Bud let her into the building?”

My sex-starved heart thudded to a stop. The saliva in my mouth went bitter. “What?”

“She said that Janitor Bud let her in the building tonight so she could go get her book. Janitor Bud who has gone on sabbatical and been replaced by your stinky troll mate.”

“He’s not my mate, and maybe she was just mistaken.”

“Veil or not, do you really think someone would mistake a little person they’ve never seen before for someone they’ve seen in their environment for the past three years?”

“I don’t think it’s all that likely, but it’s not impossible. And maybe she did actually see Steve, but in her recollection—with all the trauma”—I stressed the word—“maybe she just assumed it was Janitor Bud when it was actually—”

“A three-foot-tall gray fellow?”

I pressed my lips together thinking about Nina—about the snarl in her lip as she said that Miranda smelled like “stale blood and something like Windex.”

“Do you think Janitor Bud did this? Do you think his sabbatical was a fake?” I stood, considering. “Oh my God, Will, Bud could be the guy we’re looking for. He fits—it fits, right? He has close ties to campus, he could—he could hate the girls and want to exact revenge.” My heartbeat started to speed up. “Think about it—Meadow, Meadow from Simply Charming, said that Fallon came in with her grandfather. Or someone she thought was her grandfather, but she said Fallon called him something like her ‘buddy.’ Maybe she just called him Bud. They’re working together. They’re partners. It’s Janitor Bud. It has to be—that’s the only thing that makes sense!”

Will was silent for beat. “I don’t think Bud is the only thing that makes sense.” He looked at me hard until I sat down again.

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it, love—”

“Miranda? You think Miranda—what? Did this to herself? How dare you! Did you see that child? She has no friends. Basically has no family. And she was beaten, Will. There were words carved into her flesh. She didn’t do that. No one would do that to themselves.” I could feel the heat zinging through my veins. I knew I was yelling, clipping my words, but I didn’t care. “It’s not possible. It’s just not possible.”

“You’re certain?”

I nodded before I could think otherwise. “Absolutely.”

Will and I were nearly nose-to-nose, his arms crossed in front of his chest, my fists on my hips in a sort of Guardian-Guardee stand-off. We were still huffing into each other’s faces when my cell phone split off into a crazy Latin beat. I slid it out of my pocket and held up a finger.

“It’s Sampson. What do you think he wants?”

Will cocked an eyebrow. “I bet if you answer the call, he’d be willing to tell you.”

I rolled my eyes and slid the phone on.

“Hey, Mr. Sampson.”

“Sophie.”

He had barely finished saying my name when the chill ran through me. “What’s wrong, Sampson?”

There was a pause—it must have been for just a beat, but it seemed to stretch on as the sound of my own blood rushing through my ears filled up the room, punctuated only by the thud-thud-thud of my heart.

“Another girl has gone missing.”

Fear, like a gnarled fist, unwound in my stomach. I could feel the cold fingers reaching every part of my body. “Another girl, missing? That’s not possible,” I heard myself say. “That can’t be.”

I could hear Sampson breathe on his side of the phone and I wanted to be there to shake him, to tell him he was wrong.

“That’s not the pattern,” I mumbled dumbly. “That’s not the pattern.”

“It was another Mercy girl.”

I was shaking my head now, stunned and numb. Somewhere, a thousand miles away, I could hear paper rustle and I knew that it was Sampson, bringing police files closer to him. He cleared his throat.

“Her name was Kayleigh Logan. She was a junior.”

My whole body began to tremble and my lips felt impossibly swollen and weird. “I know Kayleigh. I know her. She’s not missing. She was in school today. I saw her. I saw her,” I repeated, somehow hoping that could change anything.

Sampson breathed slowly. “It happened after school. She was riding her bike and she just vanished.”

I thought of Kayleigh sitting in the back of my class, snapping her gum and batting those thick, heavy eyelashes. She laughed when Miranda choked on her speech, the high, tinkling laugh of someone with no cares, and her blond hair fell in a perfectly glossy cascade of face-shielding curls when she leaned over to whisper something to Fallon.

Had they made future plans?

Had she told Fallon she was going away? Had she known?

“Are there any details? Are they sure she didn’t just leave on her own?”

“A witness said she saw Kayleigh approach a car—a blue sedan.” Sampson paused for a beat. “Not a really good description. The woman said she was working in her garden, saw Kayleigh stop her bike to talk to the driver of the car, she looked back to her plants and then heard the tires squeal and both Kayleigh and the car were gone.”

I chewed my bottom lip. “Well, how did they know Kayleigh didn’t get in willingly?”

“She left her bike.”

I frowned. “Hey, wait a minute. The witness said she heard the tires squeal. Is that what she said?”

Sampson spoke slowly, probably reading from the police report. “Witness: ‘I heard the squeal of tires and that made me look up.’”

“So Kayleigh didn’t scream. If the driver nabbed her, she would have screamed and then the tires would have squealed. So maybe Kayleigh wasn’t afraid of her kidnapper.”

Sampson sighed. “She must have known him.”

I nodded numbly and Will took the phone from my hand, murmured a few words to Sampson, and ended the call.

“Kayleigh,” Will said.

I felt the tears stinging behind my eyes, but before I would let them fall, Will wrapped me in his arms, his lips warm against the part in my hair.

“We’re going to get her. We’re going to get both of them home,” Will said.

I looked up and caught his eyes—they were fixed, hard but open, the golden flecks dancing like firelight. I don’t know if it was my scrambled emotions or the steadiness of Will’s gaze, but suddenly, it was he and I against a kidnapping murderer and we were going to do whatever it took to bring Alyssa and Kayleigh back—regardless of who was willing to help us.

“All right, then,” he said, breaking the silence. “You going to wear that?”

He gestured to the sweats I was wearing and I cocked an eyebrow. “To do what?”

Will grabbed his keys, his jacket, then turned to face me. “To prove that Janitor Bud is the man we want.”