Under a Spell (8 page)

She did and immediately flopped onto the couch. “I’m just so mad at Vlad. Did you hear what he did?”

“Allegedly,” I mumbled. “But Kale, it’s the middle of the night. You’re eighteen. You should save the blowing up of ex-boyfriends for daylight hours, young lady.” I stifled a yawn. “Besides, aren’t your parents going to be worried about you?”

Kale waved a nonchalant hand and sniffled. “My parents won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“Oh, Kale, I’m sure that’s not true!”

“No, I put an oblivion spell on them.” She turned her watery eyes to me. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

I looked over her shoulder. “If you mean burning down doors at three a.m., no. If you mean trying to make Vlad pay his debts by throwing fireballs and whatnot at him? Still no. Ditto on the magical parental lobotomy. What’s all this really for, Kale? What do you want from Vlad?”

She sniffled again and used the heel of her hand to push the mascara-edged tears away. “I just want him to notice me.”

“Well, burning things might get you noticed, but not in the right way. Why don’t you try talking to him? Or, possibly sending him a nice, quiet text message?”

Kale heaved a weight-of-the-world sigh. “I don’t know. That’s really subtle. Do you think it would work?”

“I think it’s worth a try.”

She looked at her hands in her lap, shaking her head. A fresh round of tears rolled over her cheeks. “It has to work. You’re right, Sophie. I’m already nineteen. I don’t want to be alone forever.”

I bit into my bottom lip as Kale looked up at me with those round, earnest eyes. Eyes that truly believed that eighteen was, apparently, approaching the crest of “the hill” of which I was most notably over.

“I just don’t know how you do it. You don’t have anyone and you’re still just so confident.”

My left eye started to twitch. I pressed my index finger to it in a vain attempt at stopping the thrum. “You should probably head home now, Kale.”

Kale nodded and touched my hand softly. “Thanks, Sophie. You’re really wise.” She stood up and brushed her palms over her jeans. “And again, I’m sorry about waking you up.”

I swung the lock on the door and crawled into bed after Kale left, intent on getting at least another three hours of sleep.

I wasn’t going to be alone for the rest of my life,
I reasoned
. My life was very full with
two
incredible guys. One who was supernaturally bound to me and another who could never be truly happy unless he killed me.

Maybe I should go back on Match.com.

I tried to drift off to sleep—tried counting sheep and reciting the Gettysburg address, both usually fail-safe knockouts—but twenty minutes later my heart was still slamming against my rib cage and my whole body was tense, humming with adrenaline.

Kale was willing to show up in a shower of fire to get Vlad’s attention. She is willing to cut off his head due to jealousy,
I thought.
Yes, but she’s a teen witch,
I reasoned.
With non-witchy hormones.

I sat bolt upright in bed a second time.

Jealousy.

I grabbed my cell phone and counted the rings.

“This better be a matter of life or death, Lawson.”

I took a brief, fluttering second to absorb the velvet smoothness of Alex’s voice—even as it was throaty and gruff with sleep.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“A thrilling combination of good detective work and caller ID. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

I sucked in a breath and began pacing. “Sampson said you’re working on the Mercy kidnapping case, too, right?”

“Strictly the aboveground part of it. No creepy-crawlies or bump-in-the-nighties. Why?”

“Have you interviewed the girls’ friends yet? Cathy and Alyssa’s?”

I could hear the mattress groan as Alex changed position and I clamped my knees together and bit into my lower lip, scolding myself for thinking of Alex, position, and mattress all in the same sentence.

“So, Alyssa’s disappearance. What if it’s not the same unsub who snatched Cathy? What if it’s something entirely different?”

“I’m listening.”

“What if it’s jealousy? Alyssa was popular and friendly, everyone seemed to like her. She disappears and two days later another girl is sitting in her seat. Her clothes are burned
on campus.
That could be very significant. What if another girl is literally trying to be her?”

“Wait, wait, wait. What is this about Alyssa’s clothes being burned? And on campus?”

My chest tightened. “Didn’t Will mention that earlier? He was supposed to call you.” A flash of guilt washed over me and burned at the back of my neck.

Alex grumbled. “I don’t trust that guy.”

Ever since Will had inadvertently stabbed Alex in an attempt to defend my life, the two weren’t so keen on each other. And my Freudian slip—or my tossing of Will under the bus as it were—wasn’t helping.

I tried to appease my guilt by making a mental note that once the universe stopped vaulting into hell and raining down dead bodies, I’d throw some kind of bowling party or something so they could really bond.

But now wasn’t the time.

“I think I was supposed to call you. It wasn’t Will’s fault.” It rolled out in one complete string and Alex’s silence on the other end of the phone did nothing to make me feel better about coming clean.

“Where did you find Alyssa’s clothes? When? Who found them?”

“We found them. Today. In the Dumpster. They were on fire. Well, the Dumpster was on fire, but we were able to save some of the fabric. Enough to at least be able to figure out what it was.”

“How did you know it was Alyssa’s? Aren’t all the girls pretty much in the same uniform? Did it have her name printed on it somewhere?”

“No.” My stomach churned and I could feel the slightly warm plastic sole of Alyssa’s shoe in my hand. “We found one of her shoes. Her name was written on that.”

There was another beat of silence. Then, finally, “Lawson, this isn’t a game. A girl’s life is at stake.”

“I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you—”

It could have been an innocent cough, but I was pretty sure it was a derisive snort from Alex’s side of the phone. It wasn’t too long ago I was sitting in the passenger seat of Alex’s squad car, lying to his face.

I gulped and muttered weakly, “I promise.”

I could hear Alex processing the information. “Fine. But bring me the burnt uniform and all the information you have tomorrow. And no more conveniently forgetting to relay information. Deal?”

I nodded, knowing he couldn’t see me on my end. “Deal.”

“Now can I get some sleep?”

I chewed the inside of my lip, considering whether or not to tell him my theory. “No. My theory.”

Alex sighed.

“You said you wanted me to tell you everything.”

“And I’m already starting to regret it. But go ahead.”

“Well.” I sucked in a steadying breath. “A girl who is jealous of another girl can be ruthless.”

“Ruthless, sure. But murderous?” Alex sounded skeptical.

“People have killed for a lot less. It’s not like when you were—” I caught myself before saying “alive.”

“So you’re vetoing Sampson’s witchcraft idea?”

I sat back onto my bed and pinched my lower lip. “Not exactly. I’m just throwing a theory out there for you.”

There was an audible, painful pause and I held my breath until Alex spoke. “Look, Lawson, I appreciate the tip, but you’re with Will on this, aren’t you? Working the Underworld angle?”

I could hear a strain of something—annoyance? jealousy?—in his voice, but I couldn’t recognize it. “Yes, but—”

“How about you two stick to your end and I’ll stick to mine, okay? Physical evidence—anything other than black cats or pointed hats—is my end. Bring me the uniform tomorrow.”

The sudden change in Alex’s tone hit me like a ton of bricks. “Uh, well, oh—”

But Alex’s phone hit the cradle before I had a chance to respond.

I was determined the next day would be better. Nina laid out my clothes—a kicky combination of two items that I never would have thought to put together matched with a pair of shoes that were edgy enough to be cool, but not cool enough so that I’d blunder like an idiot and fall all over myself.

Nina was puttering in the kitchen when I walked in. She beamed when she saw me, her fangs tinged a faint raspberry red from her breakfast—O neg, I figured. Her face fell when I came closer.

“You look simultaneously ab fab and like your puppy just died.” She immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyebrows quirking. “Oh, no,” she let out an aching whisper. “Not ChaCha.”

At the utterance of her name, ChaCha came prancing in, nuzzling up to Nina. She scooped him up, chirped, “Oh, thank God!” then turned to me. “Then, what happened to you?”

I yawned and filled a Big Gulp cup with coffee. I craned my head over the kitchen pass-through and found Vlad—as always—perched behind his computer screen. “Last night while you guys were out gallivanting I had to deal with the ghost of Vlad’s girlfriends past.”

Vlad’s eyebrows shot up over his laptop screen. “Kale?”

“Are you insinuating that there could be someone else blowing our doors off at three a.m.?”

Vlad shrugged and went back to sucking CGI blood.

“Anyway, Kale’s easy enough to deal with. There’s this popular girl at my school. I swear she’s hell bent on making my life miserable.”

Nina sat down across from me. “What’d she do?”

“Nothing. But you know the type. Super pretty, evil. Her name is Fallon.”

Vlad choose that minute to walk into the kitchen and snatch himself some breakfast. “Fallon.” He tried out the name, rolling it on his tongue. He must have decided he liked that because he nodded with a self-satisfied smile.

“She’s evil and she must be stopped.”

“Why don’t you hit her with a spit wad?” Nina grinned while I poured myself a bowl of something non-sugar-coated and vaguely healthy. I took a bite and reminded myself that I was a responsible adult who ate responsible adult food and I would not be flustered by an oversexed sixteen-year-old in a push-up bra.

“Oh! I made lunch for you!” Nina plunked a brown paper bag in front of me.

“Aw, Neens!” I pulled open the bag and peeked in: apple, hard-boiled egg, granola bar, something that looked like a sandwich. “This might be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.

She grinned, looking every bit like a sweet, doting mother and I felt a twinge of sadness, knowing that she’d never be able to have—or be—that. I slung an arm around her neck and pulled her to me. “You’re the best.”

She tossed a handful of her perfect Pantene hair over one shoulder. “You’d better believe it.”

Like a sweet, doting mother with fangs.

I got to school so early that I met Heddy in the parking lot and Janitor Bud in the hall.

“He’s taking a leave of absence starting tomorrow,” Heddy told me as an aside.

“Isn’t that a little suspicious with a girl having just gone missing from the school?”

Heddy looked at me, indignant. “Janitor Bud has been with us for sixteen years. And the police did a full background check just to rule him out.”

“And did it?”

I thought Heddy’s eyes would explode out of her head with a trail of steam. I immediately started to backpedal, to open my mouth in an attempt to help Heddy simmer down, but she held up a single finger to me, her orangey lips pursed, eyebrows diving down. “And, he’s had this planned trip for seven months.”

I gave Heddy a moment, then licked my lips. “I wasn’t implying anything, Heddy.”

She gave me an over-the-shoulder harrumph and walked away, her sensible heels clicking down the pristine hall.

I went into my classroom, first flipping on the lights and doing my precursory “what wants to kill me?” scan, then dumping my things on my desk.

I was still feeling wounded from my early morning phone call with Alex. I let my fingertips ramble over the Ziploc bag of clothing that I hadn’t had the courage to drop off on my way to work, then felt a hint of smugness.

I didn’t need Will to babysit me and I didn’t need Alex’s help. I’d put the puzzle pieces together—alone—and I would find Alyssa—alive.

I sat at my desk, my back ramrod straight, hands clasped in front of me. I had each of the girls’ files spread out on my desk, the girls forever locked in open-mouthed joy. I revisited everything I knew about both of the girls—both abductions—in an attempt to force some kind of structure.

There were no witnesses to either of the girls’ abductions. The words “vanished” and “thin air” punctuated the reports, and each time I reread the words, my stomach, and my hope for finding Alyssa alive in the diminishing timeline, plummeted.

I sighed, resting my face in my hands, my index fingers rubbing small circles on each of my temples. I looked up and scanned the files as if something would have changed.

It didn’t.

I was biting my thumbnail and drawing little circles in my sparkly unicorn notebook when Janitor Bud pushed open my door.

“Oh,” he said when he saw me. “I didn’t know anyone was in here. Heddy said to bring these in.” The old man pulled a cart weighted down with yearbooks into the room. “Where do you want them?”

I stood up and Bud paused, then took a step back. “You’re not one of the regular teachers, are you?”

“No, no, I’m just substituting.”

He had a kindly smile on his face. “You look awfully familiar.”

I felt myself blush. “I was a student here myself. It was nearly fifteen years ago, but maybe—”

Bud wagged his head. “No, that’s not it.” His eyes cut from studying my face to the case files open on my desk. His smile dropped, his caterpillar eyebrows weaving together under his lined forehead. “Terrible thing about those girls, isn’t it?”

I hopped up on my desk in an awkward attempt to cover up the files. “Did you know the girls?”

Bud paused as if thinking. “I know all the girls here. Well, not by name.” He smiled again, one of those soft smiles that pushed up his cheeks into little fleshy balls. “Least I know them by sight. I know they were both good girls, though.”