Hex Appeal (25 page)

“What’s your name?” I asked after she pulled the top on. It hung halfway to her knees. The pants would be too long and big in the waist, but she could roll the legs and hold the rest up until I found a better size.

“You first,” she snapped.

Anger was good, much better than panic. We were close enough that I got a clear look at her in the light spill from the back of the ambulance. She was strangely familiar, though I was certain I’d never met her before. It’s that out-of-context recognition where you know the face, just from some other location. I told her my name again and repeated my question.

“I’m—I’m Kellie Ann Donner. Have I been in an accident?”

Oh, crap.

I glanced at Ellinghaus. He put his hat on and took off his sunglasses. He
never
takes off his sunglasses.

“What’s going on?” she demanded, tears beginning to tumble. “Who
are
you people?”

*   *   *

I hate being off the grid. There was no way to let HQ know about the volatile situation we’d gotten into. Not that they’d change procedure, that was set in stone, but at least someone back in the bullpen could pass word up to management so they could start figuring out what to do.

That flutter in my gut came back. Why me? I wondered. Perhaps I’d had an inkling of this way back in my head, inspired by the news reports.

A week ago, Kellie Ann Donner, a night clerk at a roadside gas stop in Alabama, had inexplicably walked off her job and vanished. While it is a rage-making and horrible fact that many young women go missing and are never found again, this one caught the public imagination due to the efforts of the franchise owner, who raised holy hell with the media about his missing employee. He insisted she was a bright, responsible girl and posted a half-million-dollar reward for her safe return, no questions asked. The hometowners beat the bushes for her, and hoards of private investigators, pseudo-psychics, reporters, and other helpful crazies wanting a crack at that cash were on the case. It was like the community shark-hunt scene from
Jaws
—the movie, I’d not read the book.

CNN and other networks picked up and ran the story, that lady lawyer needled the Alabama authorities nightly on her show for not trying hard enough to find the girl, and the blurry video showing her departure had gotten more than a million hits on YouTube.

I’d seen it. From a high angle, the camera recorded the store’s door opening, Kellie Ann seemed to speak to someone coming in, only no one was in front of her. For exactly twenty-two seconds she stopped moving, staring at something unseen, then left her spot at the counter and went outside. An exterior security camera caught her walking up to a plain white van, no plates visible, and getting in. Its door seemed to slam shut on its own, and the van drove off. You couldn’t see the make or who was driving.

Poof, gone.

The store, lights bright on the side of a lonely two-lane, stood empty for an hour until a patrol car pulled up, and the officer, seeking his usual coffee-and-donut break for his shift, radioed in the first report of the mystery.

The Company was keeping a close eye on this one. We were certain in the bullpen that a rogue vamp was behind it since he wouldn’t show up on camera. The twenty-two seconds of blank staring would be when he’d hypnotized her. She’d be docile, under his complete control, perfect for a living blood bank. But
who
would be that stupid?

For a week now, Kellie Ann Donner’s face had been impossible to avoid. Moderately pretty, a birthmark just off the right corner of her mouth, she smiled at America from her high-school prom picture while friends and family put on a brave front and wore yellow ribbons. Bunches of flowers were left before an improvised shrine at the gas station. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of other people went missing that week in America, but this was the one that caught the public imagination—along with that half-million-dollar reward.

And now she was a vampire.

The inviolable rule was about to be shot to hell and gone.

Soon as the Company CEOs got my news—well, there had to be protocols in place. The simplest solution came to me, and I wanted to be wrong and hope they’d not go there. It wasn’t Kellie Ann’s fault. She was a
victim
. No need to make it worse.

In the meantime, I was in charge of getting her safely to our HQ in Dallas.

*   *   *

“Yes, Miss Donner, you’ve been in an accident. I’m here to help you.” I held hard to my professional patience.

Again, she wanted to know who we were, and I told her. Disorientation and short-term memory loss are normal. The latter usually includes how they died. The geeks think it’s a protective mechanism that kicks in because no one wants to remember that sort of thing.

“What
is
this place?” Clothes on, slippers on, she shuffled forward and bumped into the invisible barrier surrounding the grave. For a second, she looked like a street mime doing that stuck-in-a-box routine. Those magically powered walls were as solid to her as brick ones were to me.

It took time to get her past that shock, then introduce the idea (again) that she’d been in an accident, that we were not kidnappers, psychos, or part of some twisted reality show and would explain everything soon. That’s a lot for anyone to take in, especially when they’ve not been prepared. Neos and their mentors have usually been together for years and adjust faster. Even orphans will have some inkling of what’s happened to them and catch on sooner or later. It’s usually because they’ve lived on the fringes of the supernatural community and pick up hints by osmosis. Just because we stay off the human radar doesn’t mean people don’t notice and wonder.

But Kellie Ann didn’t have any of that. This was completely outside her tiny pocket of a sheltered world. She didn’t remember anything, didn’t know of the greater supernatural community, and she had no clue that she’d been murdered.

So how did she get from Alabama to an abandoned cemetery in Texas?

The vamp drove her. She was his food for the trip, perhaps kept locked in a trunk for the day. There were cases like that on the books. The supernatural community was no more immune to crime than the day-walking world. We punished the perps when we caught them.

This one had finished her off but didn’t do a proper job of it, enabling her to come back. It’s a mixed blessing. She was in the world again, but not all victims are able to make the adjustment.

Kellie Ann paced the boundaries I’d put up, trying to find a way out, too agitated to listen. That was also normal and the reason why she had to be confined. The fever that would drive her toward her first feeding was kicking in, and she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. You might as well tell a newborn not to cry.

I ordered her several times to open the cooler chest. With shaking hands, she finally did, fumbled with the plastic drink bottle, snapping the lid off and, madly thirsty, gulped the contents.

Ellinghaus watched this with close attention, then relaxed a little. So did I.

A new vamp’s initial taste would influence the rest of their existence. They will stick with the kind of blood they got at their first meal. If it’s cattle blood, then it’s easier to follow the rules. If it’s human, it gets complicated in ways I try not to imagine. In the bad old days, human blood (often drained from a hapless victim) tended to be what some breeds craved unless the potential vamp knew to prepare and had himself interred near a livestock pen. Don’t laugh. It worked.

The Company has a deal going with a number of meat-processing plants—God knows what story they gave; for all I know, the vamps ran the slaughterhouses—and thoughtfully provided a month of free blood to orphan newbies. After that, they were expected to get gainful employment and buy it same as the rest.

With a quart of bovine in her, Kellie Ann settled down enough to focus, and I began making headway. Just not for long. Her eyes, flushed an alarming red from the feeding, soon dulled, then she sat on the cooler, blinking at me, nodding agreement at whatever I said. With a strange, drunken smile, she pointed at Ellinghaus.

“I know you, you’re that guy.”

He touched his hat brim. “Yes, ma’am. Close enough.”

“That. Guy.” She waved a hand around. “My dad loves your movies.”

“Very kind of him.” He shot me a look. “I believe she is ready to go, Miss Goldfarb.”

I needed a prop for this part and got a metal rod about a foot long and as big around as my thumb from my backpack. Nothing like cold iron to take the juice from a spell. I prodded the invisible wall, felt the energy thrum and dissipate, then the holding mechanism was gone, like popping a balloon.

Ellinghaus stepped forward and asked Kellie Ann for permission to help her to the ambulance.

I know. But it worked. She took his arm, made two unsteady steps, then her legs wobbled. He swept her up, hardly breaking stride, and got her in, stretching her flat on the rolling gurney clamped to one wall. I came up behind with the cooler and discarded bottle, stowed them, and went back for the stool and backpack. One more chore: fill a few plastic zip bags up with a quantity of dirt from her grave. Without it, she’d not be able to rest during the day. The geeks were still working on the why behind that one, too. I dropped the bags into an equipment drawer with the folding shovel and had a last glance at the horrible place. I hoped she wouldn’t remember it.

My partner had buckled her in under a blanket and gone through to the cab of the bus.

“You going to change?” I asked.

“Is it necessary?” He really liked his black suit; the look had proved to be disarming and distracting to Kellie Ann, as intended.

We’d be going the speed limit, and medical transport vehicles drove all hours, day and night, so there’d be no reason for a cop to bother with us. Sure, Ellinghaus could hypnotize us out of a situation, but why take chances? We could
not
be caught with a missing person. “I think you should. If we get pulled over…”

“I see your point. One moment.”

While he went outside to trade the hat, black coat, and tie, for a white shirt to match mine, I swabbed Kellie Ann’s face with a damp wipe and told her to relax, we were taking her to a doctor.

“But I feel fine,” she said dreamily.

With the drugs dissolved in that bottle of blood, she’d be feeling just wonderful for hours to come. It’s better this way. Really. Maybe she’d have been calm enough to cooperate and come willingly, but if not, then even Ellinghaus wouldn’t have been able to hold her for long. She’d vanished once to escape her grave and could do so again by accident. Not a good idea when you’re booming down the road at sixty-five.

I couldn’t raise a holding spell inside the ambulance, so a strong cocktail with lots of Xanax in it would keep her happy and her body solid until specialists could take charge. They’d treat her the same as any rape victim. Hopefully she’d be able to adjust to her new life.

If she was allowed to live it.

The simple solution, the one that didn’t bear thinking about, was to disappear her.

I said her name a few times, and she gave me a tired smile. “We’re going to need your consent to help you,” I said. “I need you to sign a standard release form.”

“I don’t have insurance.”

“It’s all right, this is on the county. You don’t have to worry about that. Sign here, and I’ll be able to treat you.”

“I feel
fine
,” she insisted.

“I know you do, but you have to sign. It’s a formality.”

“Need to read it first.”

“Of course.” I held the clipboard, and she must have read the simple agreement several times, unable to take any meaning from it. I fitted a marker-type pen into her hand and held the board firm as she scrawled her name at the bottom. She dotted the “i” with a little heart.

Thank God that was done. She might not have felt it, but I did, the tiny crackling of power that told me the spell that would compel her to obey the number one rule had taken hold. When she sobered up, she might not recall much of this, but she would adhere to the agreement. I’d have loved to meet the designer of that crafting; it was elegant and simple and powerful—like Hepburn’s little black dress in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Was I envious? You bet.

Things like that temped me to renew my contract when the time came. I’d get the big pay raise and truly advanced training in my craft. Right now I was a good, if limited, spell-slinger. I could slam a holding spell in my sleep and read auras in the right light, but there were others to be learned.

I ran the signed agreement through a portable laminating machine. The plastic would keep the ephemeral parchment preserved pretty much forever if it was properly stored, and the Company had excellent facilities. There. Most of my job was done. I heaved a huge sigh and felt ravenous. Spell work and therapy on the fly are exhausting.

Kellie Ann seemed to doze. No vitals like a heartbeat or pumping lungs, but no problem. It just meant she was a Chicago Special, a Drac, or another Euro-breed I was too tired to recall. I grabbed a double-thick turkey sandwich and Coke from the fridge, dragged my weary carcass to the cab, and belted into the passenger seat.

Ellinghaus still had on his sunglasses but otherwise looked like an EMT. Between bites, I gave him directions, and he got us clear of the bumpy road, onto a two-lane, and more than an hour later a four-lane heading in the right direction for home. The GPS began working again, along with my cell and laptop, but I told him to pull into the next gas station. We needed a fill-up, and I wanted to phone this one in on a landline.

He found a busy truck stop, pulled up to one of the diesel stations, and took care of the bus while I kept an eye on Kellie Ann. Regs demanded there always be someone with the patient though she was still out of it. Once Ellinghaus was done, I fled to a washroom. His ambulance has a potty, and I could pull the curtain divider shut behind the cab for privacy, but sue me, I prefer the kind with running water.

The phones were by the facilities. I used a Company card for the charges.