Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (18 page)

Um, yeah? Hence the raising of a dead body? I quashed my need to deflect through sarcasm — especially since it was rare for a necromancer to be male — and answered the vampire politely, “His mother is.”

“And this Rusty has some sort of latent ability?”

“An affinity. But it’s spotty, unfocused, and really nowhere near powerful.”

“Powerful enough.” Kett touched the side of his smooth, unblemished neck. Reassuring himself he wasn’t still missing a chunk of flesh, I guessed. His regeneration was terrifying. I wondered if this would all be old news and everyday to me soon. I shuddered at the thought of such a life, jaded by fantastical magic. That drew Kett’s attention. “What are you waiting for, witch?”

“I was hoping for a nap.”

“The shifters will drive.”

“Are you two telepathically linked or something?”

“Certainly not.” Kett seemed a little over-the-top enraged at this suggestion — in his completely offish, icy way. “I’m simply not stupid. They always travel in multiple vehicles. They are pack.”
Pack
, I gathered from his tone, was a loathsome thing to be.

“For protection?”

Kett shrugged one shoulder and strode off down the alley. Then he almost immediately stepped back and forced me to follow alongside of him. Geez, he didn’t even give me a second to straighten off the wall. “For hunting, Jade. They are a pack even though he leads them. He might hunt alone if he wishes, but the rest hunt as a pack. Something you might have remembered in the dance club.”

“I’m not the bad guy here.”

Kett continued through the mouth of the alley and crossed toward the parking lot. Every time I matched his stride, he sped up a little more, as if it pleased him to drag me just a little bit. It appeared that dominance games weren’t just for werewolves. “You play with magic. That makes you irresponsible. You don’t know your own strength, and you leave magical objects hanging around for anyone to take or manipulate.”

“Trinkets,” I spat.

“Not just trinkets,” Kett snarled, as he whirled on me. We were standing in the middle of two rows of parked cars, with more vehicles stretching in every direction. It was a big hospital. To the passing humans, we probably looked like two very blond lovers having a spat after visiting a loved one.

“That knife severed the zombie’s magic like slicing through butter.”

“Everyone knows that if you destroy a zombie’s brain you kill it —”

“Myth,” the vampire spat. “You cut off the magic of the necromancer. And that necklace you wear like it’s just a pretty thing you’ve flung around your neck? It’s some sort of shielding device —”

“Maybe I’m naturally resistant —”

“No witch should be able to stand before me. And that bruise on your neck? Not only does it speak of a nasty injury, but it showed up within minutes. Bruises indicate the body’s attempt to —”

“That’s enough,” I screamed. Kett seemed shocked and surprised, as if we’d just been having a chat. “You have all the answers and I have none,” I said darkly. “I get it.”

“Perhaps you aren’t asking the correct questions.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to know.”

His face took on that impassive quality again. I glared at him, my fists clenched and chin jutting.

A too-large-for-the-lot SUV pulled up. Kandy was driving. An identical vehicle idled a few feet behind, Desmond at the wheel. He was smirking. Both SUVs were luxury vehicles of some expensive make. I couldn’t be bothered to care.

I yanked open the front passenger door of Kandy’s SUV, snarling at Kett as I climbed in. “Get your own ride.”

Kandy pulled forward toward the exit as I violently snapped on my seat belt. Kett stared after us. I could see him in my sideview mirror.

“I’ve never seen a vampire speechless before,” Kandy said with an appreciative chuckle.

“You’re not in my friendly book either. Where was the car this morning when you made me walk in the rain?”

“Not everything is about you.”

“But that was calculated. To wear me down? To confuse me? Make me uncomfortable? Upset me?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the West End. Over Burrard Bridge, loop right. He lives just off Denman.”

Kandy’s eyes flashed green and she grinned rather maniacally, as if she was already anticipating the hunt, as Kett had called it.

I looked away and hoped I was doing the right thing. Everything was all twisted in my head. I had a feeling — like the earlier walk in the rain — that all this was calculated to put me off, keeping me moving but confused. To what ultimate end, I had no idea. Maybe they did it on purpose, the vampire and the shifters. Maybe I was part of the hunt as well.

I closed my eyes and tried to nap. Tried to at least clear my head before I accused a friend of murder.

I wondered if I should text Sienna. I wondered if Kandy would stop me if I tried.

I stopped wondering and started focusing on the cool of the window glass as I pressed my temple against it. That soothed me, though only a little.

Rusty lived in a fifteen-or-so storey building on the corner of Bidwell and Burnaby Street. He had a peek-a-boo view of English Bay, and the annual Festival of Lights firework celebration in the summer was spectacular from his rooftop.

Not that I’d known him long enough to be invited more than once.

It was an older building with no amenities other than a laundry room, but his rent was still reasonable in a city where real estate was out of control.

As the shifters illegally parked in permit-only spaces, I realized that I wasn’t entirely aware of what Rusty did for work. He traded stocks or played the market, but I wasn’t sure if he had any clients, or if he was working off an inheritance or what. And now I was leading predators to his doorstep … not that there was any correlation between those two things, just … I was really unsure and numb. But the taste of his magic in the morgue had been unmistakable. As far as I could tell in my limited experience, such things were as individual as scent. My mother’s and grandmother’s magic, for instance, tasted different even though they were blood related. They both had that witchy, earthy base, and the layer that marked them as blood kin, but the spicing was different. I’d never met Rusty’s mother; I wondered how similar her magic tasted to Rusty’s.

“What if I’m wrong?” I whispered as I looked up at the building from the sidewalk. “Maybe it’s someone blood related —”

“We’ll figure that out pretty quickly, won’t we?” Kandy gave me a nudge with her shoulder toward the building’s front door.

Rusty lived up on the fourth floor, and a quick glance up at his balcony only confirmed that his curtains were drawn. I couldn’t remember if he usually opened them during the day.

I found myself staring at the buzzer panel. It wasn’t listed by apartment number, but I finally remembered Rusty’s last name. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen it written down anywhere before. Rusty didn’t answer the buzzer. I waited and tried again.

“Maybe … I could call,” I said, my voice sounded hollow even to my own ears. Desmond reached past me and snapped the lock on the glass front door with a simple twist of his thumb and forefinger. He tossed the broken dead bolt in a nearby planter and held the door open for me.

I thought about just giving them the apartment number and walking away. I was currently surrounded by four shapeshifters and a vampire. I had no doubt I was a prisoner. I just hadn’t tested the stretch of my cage yet. Honestly, I was scared to do so.

“What’s your name?” I asked the tall blond werewolf. He’d recovered enough from the vampire’s bite to follow us from the second SUV. He looked wan, as did Lara, who was huddled in a short-cropped, burgundy leather coat beside him. On a better day, I would have lusted after that coat, and the matching lip gloss she wore. The young werewolf looked at Desmond, who nodded his head almost imperceptibly.

“Jeremy,” he answered.

“All right, then. I thought it good to know all the names of the people who are probably going to kill my friend, and then me. Maybe with luck, I’ll manage some sort of death curse with my final breath.”

Jeremy glanced at Desmond with some questioning concern, but I turned away and walked into the apartment entranceway before the conversation could continue. I didn’t want their platitudes or cajoling — or maybe even torture — if I balked further.

The building manager’s door stood to the left. Two elevators were directly in front of the entrance doors. I opted for the stairs, not wanting to be crushed into an elevator with this group. I was fairly certain I would hyperventilate, and showing them more weakness wasn’t high on my to-do list.

I could practically feel Desmond’s breath on my neck as I climbed the four flights of stairs, though given how similar in height we were, that should have been physically impossible. It was Kandy’s hand that reached out for the fourth-floor door when I paused at it.
 

Kandy entered the hall ahead of me, holding me back as if she was protecting me or something. Then she turned and nodded to me. I led them to apartment 403. The varnish had worn away from around the door handle and the mail slot, and the door had a peephole. I really hoped Rusty used it when I knocked. The muddy teal carpet was worn but not shabby underneath my feet. Why was I noticing such stupid things?

Rusty had a one-bedroom corner suite, maybe 550 square feet if I was estimating generously. The shifters and Kett stepped off to the left, so Rusty couldn’t see them through the peephole. They lined themselves along the short, perpendicular wall that ran between Rusty’s door and his south neighbor’s. Kandy was right next to the door, her hand hovering over the knob.

I knocked.

No one answered.

“Rusty? Sienna?” I called, though not terribly loudly. I knocked again.

No answer.

“No movement within,” Kandy murmured. Desmond nodded and Kandy popped the lock with a single twist of her hand. The deadbolt wasn’t engaged.

The green-haired werewolf slipped by me and entered the apartment. I followed, not waiting for the all-clear even though I knew I was supposed to.

A small, rather messy bathroom stood to my immediate left. The toilet seat was up. A discarded light gray bath towel had fallen between it and the tub.

I turned right, avoiding the bedroom in front of me with its partly closed door, and walked by the tiny galley kitchen into the empty living room. I passed Kandy on her way out of the kitchen, though why she’d need to enter what her eyes could clearly see was empty I didn’t know. Dirty dishes sat in the sink, with clean ones drying on the counter.

Two wine glasses were on the floor by the futon couch. An old, barely-used TV occupied the corner of the living room. The drapes covering the balcony doors were just as closed inside as they’d looked from the outside.

Kandy was methodically opening the doors and checking the closets that ran parallel to the kitchen entrance. I wandered over to the west window — the one with the peek-a-boo view — and watched the sun begin to set. The dust on the drapes suggested that Rusty never bothered to close them on this window, probably because the building was angled toward a park so there were no nosy neighbors.

The apartment was empty. I knew that the moment Kandy had opened the door. I couldn’t feel any magical signatures beyond those of the shapeshifters and the vampire. They’d probably all known it as well; they were hunters, after all, with heightened senses. I gathered that Kandy’s continued search was for clues.

I’d always loved watching the sunset from English Bay. It was as if you were standing directly in front of the sun, with nothing but the ocean between you.

“Witch, you’re going to want to see this,” Kandy called from the bedroom. I was very certain she had no idea what she was talking about.

I turned from the window, unaware that the vampire had joined me in the living room. Great, he could dampen his magical signature. That wasn’t scary at all.

“I didn’t know you were here,” I said before I could stop myself.

Kett shrugged. He already had his arms crossed as he watched me watch the sunset. “You are preoccupied.”

“Witch!” Desmond snapped from the other room. With a sigh, I obeyed the command in his voice.

The bedroom barely fit the double bed and the side table. The stink of old magic hit me as I turned from the short hall.

I stared at the furniture arrangement from the doorway. The bed had been shifted to the middle of the room and placed inside a black-painted pentagram. That paint was going to be a bitch to get off the worn cork floors. The open closet held a set of shelves containing what I guessed were spell ingredients and collectibles, as well as clothing on hangers and an overfull laundry basket. The bird wing from our spell in the bakery basement sat on one of the shelves, among other animal bones and dried furry corpses I didn’t look at too closely.

The sheets on the bed were well mussed. Tangled, even. Kandy stood, her arms crossed defensively, as far away from the pentagram and closet as she could be and still be in the room. Desmond didn’t seem as wary, though he was careful not to cross through the pentagram as he circled the bed. He looked up to where I’d stopped in the doorway. The vampire was right behind me.

“Sex magic,” Desmond said. He wrinkled his nose.

I nodded and felt Kett do the same behind me. Even I could smell the stale sex that lingered in the air, but the bed in the pentagram was a dead giveaway.

“The pentagram isn’t active right now,” I said. I crossed a couple of steps further into the room to look down at it. No vessels of any kind stood at any of the five points. I glanced around the room, but, besides the closet shelves, there was nothing else to be seen.

“He’s using sex to power spells?” Desmond asked.

I shrugged. “Not sure. I usually cast a circle — north, east, west, and south sort of thing — which is how my Gran taught me. And there aren’t any collection vessels, empty or otherwise.”

“Raising Hudson had to have used up a bunch of juice,” Desmond said, but he was speaking to Kett, not me. The vampire nodded. He’d stepped up beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, he was only a couple of inches taller than me in my heeled sandals. He’d seemed much taller when I was facing him.