Under a Spell (2 page)

“They both confirmed that the incantation was legitimate. The killer also drained her blood.” Even Sampson winced and my heart seemed to fold over on itself. I chewed the inside of my cheek and found myself praying that all of that had been done postmortem.

Sampson went on. “From the looks of it, Cathy Ledwith’s killer was trying to summon a demon—and not a good one. This isn’t just over-the-counter witchcraft.”

“Oh.” The word came out small and hollow, dying in the cavernous room.

“As I mentioned, Cathy’s body was found seven days after she went missing. It was obvious that her attacker wanted—or needed—her to be found on that day.”

“I don’t understand. How do you—why—how do they know that?”

“According to the police report, an anonymous call came in at 7:07 that morning.”

“Seven-oh-seven on the seventh day?”

“Of the seventh month.”

I frowned, resting my chin in my hands. “Maybe her killer is just OCD. Did anyone explore that angle?”

It was silly, but I knew the significance of sevens—and I knew the demon Cathy’s murderer was calling.

“Seven is divine. Seven-seven-seven is—”

“Satan.” The word took up all the space in the room and I found it hard to breathe.

Everyone knows 6-6-6 as the devil’s “call” sign—or they think they do. And while it does have true significance—mostly in movies, fiction, and speed metal songs—it is more like a pop-culture high-five to the Prince of Darkness. The trio of sevens is the summoner.

My heart was throbbing in my throat. I knew the answer, but still had to ask. “Do they think the other girl—”

“Alyssa.”

“Alyssa, do they think she—that she may have been abducted by the same person?”

Sampson’s hulking silence was answer enough.

Something tightened in my chest, and Sampson, his enormous cherry wood desk and his entire office seemed to spin, then fish-eye in front of me. I gripped the sides of my chair and steadied myself.

“We want you to go into Mercy and see what you can find out about this so-called coven.”

“Are they even rela—”

Sampson held up a hand, effectively silencing me. “They’re related, Sophie. There’s no question. Students who knew Cathy confided that she had, in fact, been bullied by a group of other students. Haven’t heard the same about Alyssa but it’s a good possibility.”

A memory wedged in my mind and I was fifteen again, awkward, terrorized, cornered in a Mercy High bathroom by a selection of mean girls with Aqua Net hair and slouchy socks. I could feel the sweat prick on my skin again, the nauseous way my stomach rolled.

“The police—aren’t they working on this?”

Sampson nodded slowly, then laced his fingers together in front of him. “They are.”

“But?”

“They don’t have a whole lot to go on, either. But that’s not what we’re concerned about.”

“We’re concerned about potential witches.”

“I can’t help but believe there is a supernatural element in this case, Sophie. The carving, the state of the body. The police aren’t going to look at things like that. If there is a new coven brewing . . .” Sampson let his words trail off, his dark eyes flicking over me.

“I don’t get it, Sampson. If there were a coven—a coven full of
real
witches, wouldn’t we know about it? I mean, it’s kind of what we do.” I pointed to the plaque behind Sampson’s head. “It’s right there in the name, Underworld
Detection
Agency.”

The stern way Sampson’s brows snapped together as he crossed his arms in front of his chest let me know that he wasn’t enjoying my light banter-slash-attempt to do anything other than this assignment.

“Yes, Sophie, I know the name of the agency. But witches are among our least adherent of clients.”

I felt my mouth drop open. “Really?”

“Check the books. We don’t have a lot.”

“I thought that’s because there aren’t a lot.”

“There are thousands. Likely hundreds of thousands in California. We’ve got Wiccan factions, a group of Druids up by Humboldt.”

“And what? They don’t consider themselves ‘Underworldy’?”

Sampson blew out a sigh and nodded his head. “Something like that. If there is a new coven in town—even if it’s an old, under-the-radar one—we likely wouldn’t have known.”

“So really, I have to go out to Mercy and see what I can detect?”

Sampson smiled and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Yup, detect. It’s right there in our ” name.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed myself out of my chair. “Okay. I’m going to run upstairs and get the briefing from the police department. Kind of nice, I guess. They work on the physical, we pick up the metaphysical.” I nodded again. “Kind of like a Batman-and-Robin kind of thing.”

Sampson stood. “No, not like that all. We’re strictly working our angle on this. We’re not trying to find the girl, we’re trying to find the coven.”

A bolt of something shot through me. “So my job is to stand by and look for flying brooms and eye of newt while a girl is missing?”

“The police are going to find Alyssa. They’re going to find Cathy’s killer. Our job is to make sure that if there is a coven involved, if anything has actually been summoned—or anyone is looking for girls to use as future sacrifices—we stop it. We’re doing this on our own. Do you understand that, Sophie?”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and studied the office supplies on Sampson’s desk.

“Let the police do their job. You need to keep your nose out of the physical part of this case.”

Sampson eyed me and I broke his gaze, finding myself touching my fingertips to the tip of my nose. I didn’t stick my nose into things.

For me, it was pretty much a full-body kind of stick.

“I need your word, Sophie.”

“Okay, fine. You have my word.” Even as I nodded my agreement, my mind was racing: check evidence. Read autopsy reports. Wear black. Break into something. I wasn’t exactly lying to Sampson; I was simply covering all my supernatural bases. You’d be surprised how often a banshee shows up in a file folder.

I walked out of Sampson’s office feeling as though I had just sealed my fate. Each step back toward my office made my stomach sink lower, even as I edged around the hole in the linoleum where a wizard had blown himself up (eons ago—was anyone ever going to get around to that?). I was about to hightail it into the ladies’ room when I realized that part of the reason for the upswing in my stomach acids—and nausea—was standing on a chair, legs akimbo, facing me off in the hallway. I immediately started breathing through my mouth.

Steve.

Steve was our resident troll—resident, in that he was an independent contractor who never seemed to leave the confines of the Agency. Troll, as in, well, troll. He who resides underneath bridges, asks ridiculous questions, and desperately wishes to deposit his little troll babies deep in my lady parts.

He’s grey and vaguely scaly, is constantly showing off his tufts of lichen-green chest hair, and has a cache of dirty jokes and bad pickup lines that would make any honky-tonk or used car salesman envious. I should say that I have a soft spot for the little guy—he is mostly harmless (that stench did kill a few flowers) and he had been instrumental in saving my life. But the spot that was soft for him was growing a little harder each time he “bumped” into my backside or left me love notes that frankly should have started “Dear Penthouse Forum,” rather than “My Dear Sweet Sophie’s Legs.”

Steve grinned salaciously when he saw me, and he suddenly jumped off his chair, pushing it to the side.

“Steve thinks Sophie looks distressed.”

Also, Steve always referred to himself in the third person. I’m not totally sure that that’s a troll thing—I’m pretty sure (hopefully) that it’s purely a Steve thing.

“Would Sophie like to tell Steve all about it?”

I swung my head—and pinched my nose. “No thanks, Steve. It’s nothing.” I continued down the hallway and Steve trotted next to me, finally picking up speed and pushing his chair in front of him. He bumped it into my calves, jumped on it, and laid his swamp hands on my shoulders. “Steve is a very good listener. And he will give you massage. . . .”

Steve dug his thumbs into the meat above my shoulders, leaving two wet spots on my blouse.

“Soph—I mean,
I
appreciate the sentiment, but like I said, I can handle this one.” I tried to squirrel out of his grasp, but for three feet of lichen and swamp slime, he had an impressive grip. I softened, slightly, as he cocked his head and listened intently to me, his coal-black eyes registering nothing but sweet concern as his fingers moved little circles up toward the top of my shoulders. “Steve knows where a lady carries her stress. Steve studied reflexology.”

“Hey. HEY! Hands off you little swamp creep!”

Apparently, in Steve’s world, ladies carried most of their stress in their breasts.

Steve jumped off his chair and took off running down the hall.

“I’m going to call HR on you, you little pervert!”

I pushed open the ladies’ room door and turned the tap on cold, ready to plunge my whole head in the sink. The back of my neck was clammy and sweaty and my cheeks were flushed midlife-crisis-Corvette red. I settled for splashing water on my face instead of the dunking, as I was trying to present a more sophisticated, less stained Sophie Lawson.

“Okay,” I said to my reflection. “Everything is going to be okay. I’m in charge. I’m in charge.” I pushed wet, floppy tendrils of hair behind my ears, wiped the mascara from under my eyes and gave myself the tough-as-nails, sexy chick stare I’d been working on.

“Yeah,” I purred. “I’m in charge.”

With my self-confidence damp but re-inflated, I turned for the door, and busted directly into Vlad LaShay. His black eyes were wide, his lips set in a hard, thin line. Gone was his usual king-of-the-underworld swagger; in its place was something that I had never seen on any vampire, let alone this one: fear.

“Vlad, this is—”

Vlad grabbed both my shoulders in his cold hands and walked me backward back into the ladies’ room, glancing nervously over his shoulder every few feet.

“You’ve got to hide me,” he said finally.

“Who am I hiding you from?”

“Kale.”

My eyes shot around the room. “You realize that this is the girls’ room, right? And that in addition to being pissed off by you, she’s a girl? Who could very possibly have to pee at any given moment?”

Vlad grabbed the trashcan and pulled it in front of the door. “I don’t plan on staying in here all day. I need you to sneak me out of here, and then keep Kale distracted long enough for me to get out of the office and into the elevator.”

Aside from being the demon clearinghouse for everything that went bump (or groan, or splat, or bite) in the night (think DMV with longer lines and check boxes that included dead, undead, and other), the Underworld Detection Agency had also recently become the hotbed for hormonal ancient teen-vampire-slash-teen-witch activity.

It was like the
Jersey Shore
house with fewer suntans.

At the center of this week’s activities were apparently Vlad—Nina’s nephew, my boss, and the acting head of the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement—and his ladylove (or something), Kale. The fact that Vlad was an immortal sixteen-year-old (now a hundred and thirteen years young) meant that he had ruddy pink cheeks and had perfected that wholly teenage boy look of both scrutiny and complete indifference. The fact that he was my boss made it awkward that he had been couch surfing at my place for the last twenty months and technically had the power to fire me, but apparently not the power to pick up his socks. The fact that he was involved with—nay, head of—the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement meant that he dressed like a less appealing combination of Count Chocula and had every polyester Dracula costume ever sold. Kale, his paramour—or now, predator—is a teen witch who is firmly entrenched in our intern program under a powerful witch-cum-Tupperware saleslady named Lorraine. Lorraine works in the billing department so five days a week Kale answers phones and gets training on accounts receivable, QuickBooks, and how
not
to make it rain in the Underworld Detection Agency break room.

Several exceptionally soggy bologna sandwiches let me know that she wasn’t exactly great at the latter.

“If I’m going to hide you from cute little Kale”—eighteen, chronologically and supernaturally, with a bunch of wince-inducing piercings, bright blue hair, and an unsavory attraction to the trembling vamp in front of me—“you’re going to need to tell me why.”

Vlad shot yet another glance over his shoulder. “There’s no time.”

I hopped up on the sink and examined my nails. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Fine! Fine. Kale heard that I may have had a little incident with a certain female vampire at one of the VERM meetings.”

“You may have had?”

“All right, I had, okay? I’m sixteen, willpower isn’t exactly my strong point.”

“You’re a hundred and thirteen and, technically, my boss.”

“Are you going to argue what I am and am not, or are you going to help me?”

“Why do you need me? Can’t you just have someone take her out shopping or something? I mean, Kale has a temper. A bad one.” I shuddered.

“That’s why I need you.” Vlad’s eyes were so earnest that I couldn’t help but soften to his plight. “You’re magic immune, so if she tries to fry or filet you, nothing will happen.”

In addition to being one-hundred-percent human and the one and only breather down here in the Underworld, I also have the uncanny ability to
not
be affected by magic. Though vampire stealth, banshee death screaming, or a witch’s magic might have been more convenient, being immune to the aforementioned fileting and frying had come in handy more times than you’d think.

“Fine.” I hopped down from my perch and shoved the garbage can away from the door, just before it barreled open and I caught a face full of it.

“Crap! Nina!”

Nina’s eyes were wide—coal black, like her nephew’s—and her hand slapped over her open mouth. “Did I get you?”

“It’s not too bad,” I mumbled.