Wicked Nights (2 page)

Silence took over the room. It seemed like minutes before either one of them moved or breathed. Her mind was lost in a snarl of thoughts, trying to figure out her next move, his next words. But when they came, they didn’t provide any answers.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

She hesitated for a second but decided against asking any more questions. Maybe because part of her realized he wasn’t willing to give her any more answers.

Corneliu
.

It didn’t seem possible, but there it was. When the woman first mentioned the
stang
, Alex’s first thought was of his cousin Corneliu. Immediately after that, he felt the energy of the room change and the electric charge of the air swell. And then something happened to her. He could feel her own energy vibrating, increasing in some way. That connection was enough for her to somehow “hear” the name Corneliu.

This was a complication he wasn’t expecting. He could deal with Corneliu if he was really behind the disappearances, but this was different.

It had been a long time since Alex had been able to connect with an “ordinary” human. The human mind was too limited, too closed up to act as a receiver for a warlock’s energy. And yet, somehow, he’d been able to connect with this woman today.

His mind was screaming “danger,” but the rest of his body and soul were just too curious about her to turn away. He had felt the attraction as soon as she walked into the room, but once he realized there was a bridge between them, curiosity turned into fascination.

Still, it was dangerous. His kind had mostly escaped detection for centuries, and he wasn’t about to risk the secret just because she had all the right curves. Being a warlock in the modern world was tricky. He was human enough to lead a normal life. Hell, he was human enough to become an illusionist and pretend everything he was doing was just that, an illusion. It was easier for humans to believe in tricks and mind games than to allow for the possibility that magic was real, that he was really making things move and disappear using just his mind. But all that hiding in plain sight was possible because he was able to hide the other side of him, the truly magical one.
 

So he had to be careful the next time he saw her. He needed to figure out how connected they were and why. But he also needed to figure what part Corneliu played in all this.

Damn him.

If his cousin was involved, he was almost sure he knew why.
Samhain
was just around the corner. While “normal” people would celebrate Halloween by dressing up and going around collecting candy or playing scary games, Corneliu was probably planning a ritual. And not just any ritual.

Alex had read the newspapers. All the women had birthdays that fell on one of the pagan holidays. They were all the right age, with the right look and the right energy. He hadn’t realized the connection then because he’d been missing one vital piece of information: the
stang
, that magical tool used to cast a circle before starting a spell … or a ritual. You weren’t really supposed to leave those behind after a ritual, but maybe whatever Corneliu was doing required just that.

A ritual for the
Samhain
holiday, the night when the veil between the world of the living and the dead becomes thin. The only night of the year when something dark can step into the world of the living if the right invitation is extended. And if Corneliu somehow succeeded in completing the ritual without killing the woman involved first — or at least until it was the right time to kill her — Earth was in for a world of pain.

He closed his eyes for a second and pictured the police consultant standing right in front of him. Her hair falling on her shoulders, her jeans just a bit too tight in all the right places. The curve of her hips inviting a look and intruding in his thoughts even now, when he should have been thinking about the danger ahead.

Damn it. Alex picked up the phone and dialed. It rang a few times before somebody on the other end picked up.

“Anton,
buna
ziua
. I think we have a problem.”

Emily half-smiled from across the desk. “You have a date with the suspect?”

“No! Not an actual date, no. I mean, I told him I’d come over tomorrow so we could continue the conversation.”

Emily had been Laurie’s friend almost as long as she’d been her boss. When she was assigned to the homicide department, she’d done her best to bring Laurie along. But Laurie couldn’t deal with being part of the force and all the rules and limitations that came with it. Being a private consultant made things a lot easier. It made breaking the rules a lot simpler. And breaking the rules usually got you the best results, which was why Emily always came to her when they were stuck in a case.

“How good-looking is he in person?”

Laurie glared at her.

“He’s gorgeous, so I really hope he’s innocent.”

“It’s against the rules to sleep with the suspects,” Emily said with a smile.

“Funny.”

Laurie hadn’t had time for a relationship — heck, not even for a fling — for a while. It was hard to form lasting bonds with somebody when you were always out chasing bad guys at ungodly hours. And then when you came home, you couldn’t even talk about your day. Guys got tired of it rather quickly. Or maybe they just couldn’t deal with being the ones waiting around.
 

Laurie zipped up her jacket, ready to head out into the night again. “The files don’t show any connection between the women, but there has to be something, somewhere. Any ideas?”

“No. We’ve been desperately trying to find any connection, but there’s nothing so far. We’re really lost here, Laurie.”

“Do you think the girls are dead?”

Emily paused for a second, her eyes never leaving Laurie’s. And before she said a word, Laurie knew what she was going to answer.

“Yeah.”

Home was just a few blocks away, so Laurie decided to walk instead of taking a taxi. The sharp night air was usually good for her mind, but tonight it did nothing to ease her restlessness. Her thoughts kept jumping to Alex and that weird moment when electricity seemed to be floating around in the room. There was some kind of connection between that electricity and the strange name popping up in her mind, but she couldn’t find it. Maybe it was so obvious that she couldn’t see it. Or maybe her mind just couldn’t grasp the enormity of it, whatever it was. She closed her hands into fists, her fingernails biting into the skin, and let out a soft growl.
 

Although she’d hoped to go to bed right when she got home, things just didn’t work out that way. She turned on her laptop and did a quick search for the word “Corneliu.” Somehow she wasn’t surprised to find out it was a common Romanian name. Where exactly had it come from today? She scanned online newspapers for any mention of a suspect with that name, but nothing came up. So it wasn’t something she’d picked up subconsciously somewhere and just happened to remember today.

Her thoughts returned to Alex, and she suddenly realized she had an advantage in this case. Since he was famous, she could find out a lot about his life just by looking online.

And boy, was there a lot out there.

All the girls he dated, slept with, and left with a broken heart. A list of his many properties, a photo of his yacht, and a lot of pictures of him shirtless.

Nothing useful, but way too distracting.

As she starting digging deeper, she began to realize that there wasn’t much information about his family origins. If he was shooting for mysterious to enhance his stage persona, mission accomplished. A few gossip websites insinuated his family came to the States around the turn of the century, but there was nothing to be found about where they were from or how they left. Or why.

“Rumor has it the Volman family had to escape from Eastern Europe because of witchcraft accusations,” she read aloud.

Laurie paused and sat back against the desk chair.

Eastern Europe. Romania. That had to be more than just a coincidence. She swore under her breath. There was something there, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. Something in her gut was telling her Volman wasn’t the kidnapper. It wasn’t that he was gorgeous and famous; pinning these disappearances on him just didn’t seem like the right answer. But that same feeling in her gut was telling her he knew something.

A soft crackling sound rushed past outside her window, and her hand instinctively reached for the gun in the upper desk drawer. It was such a soft rustle, it would have been easy to ignore it, but she knew her apartment well enough to know which sounds belonged and which ones didn’t.
 

A gust of wind assaulted the room when she opened the window, but other than that, the balcony was empty. Empty, but it didn’t feel that way. Laurie had the firm impression that somebody was watching her right at that very moment. The air felt thick, almost erratic … as if something had just cut into it and left its essence behind. She felt her stomach tighten and closed the window.
   

When she finally went to bed, she slept with the gun under her pillow.

Alex finished his brandy and looked at his watch.

He had been waiting all day for Miss Cole to show up, but now that it was almost dinnertime, he wasn’t sure what he would say to her. He wanted to ask her what exactly she had felt before “hearing” the name Corneliu, but he wasn’t sure how to do that without exposing himself. He’d made some phone calls that morning to find out more about her. Where she lived, who she really was, what her superiors thought of her. She had a track record for breaking difficult cases, which meant that if he was going to lie, he needed to come up with something credible.
 

He hadn’t been able to reach Corneliu yet, but his sources had told him his cousin was supposed to be in town. And that was a very bad thing.

He was about to step out of the study when the phone rang.

He knew it was Anton before he answered. One of the good things about being a family of warlocks was that they all had an
otherworldy
connection to each other. He and Anton had grown up together, almost as brothers, and their connection had always been one of the strongest in the family. As children, they used to play tricks on the other cousins and drove the kids — and the parents — insane. The connection had only gotten stronger over the years.

“
Buna
seara
. Any news?”

“Not the kind you will like, I’m afraid. I did some research on the ritual.”

“Can I stop it?”

“Not exactly. But you can choose to perform it yourself.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, the ritual works only once on
Samhain
, for whoever finishes it first. If you manage to open the door, you’ll be the one who receives all the power, and you can choose what to do with it.”

Alex frowned. “Doesn’t the ritual involve killing somebody?”