Darkness & Discovery (The Bespelled Trilogy #2) (4 page)

“It is,” Joey said. “Usually.
But what it can’t do is override really strong emotions.”

“What do emotions have
to do with it?”

 “Let’s say
hypothetically,” Joey said, pulling up to the curb down the block from Ted’s
house and turning to look at me, “that ol’ Teddy is in love with you. Rewriting
his memories can’t touch the underlying emotion. If he fears for the safety of
the woman he loves, then that’s going to seep through, not matter what.”

“He broke up with me.
He’s not in love with me,” I protested.

“Whatever. I’m just
trying to find an explanation for why compelling him failed.”

It was a full fifteen
minutes before the Cadillac pulled up and parked in the street in front of
Ted’s house. Ted activated the garage door opener and the Impala pulled inside,
the door closing behind us. Apparently Ted and Joey had had the foresight to
plan ahead a bit.

We went through to the
kitchen, and Ted and Carrie met us inside. I’d spent a lot of time in this
house, so it was almost as familiar as my own. I pulled up a chair at the
breakfast bar and Ted sat beside me while Carrie consulted with Alastair and
Joey across the kitchen, scribbling something on the pad Ted’s mom used for
grocery lists.

I glanced over at my ex
and asked, “So, how are you?”

“Dazed. Disbelieving.
Doubting my sanity. The three D’s of trying to cope, apparently.” He actually
grinned a little. And then he turned to me and said, “So of that group, one’s a
vampire and one’s a werewolf. But what’s the third, the one you’re dating?”

“He was part human,
part angel before being turned into a vampire.”

“Damn,” Ted murmured.
“I knew there had to be an explanation for him, because no one’s that good
looking. But I thought the explanation was going to be boatloads of plastic surgery,
not that he’s a freaky mutant vampire angel thingy.”

I pivoted my chair and
watched Ted’s profile as he studied the people across the room, then asked him,
“How are you so calm about this? I would have expected you to totally lose it.”

“I realize I’m not
generally known for my coping skills,” he said. “And that reminds me: I’m so
sorry for bailing on you when Aunt Claire got sick. I know I was a total wuss,
and I’m really ashamed of myself.”

“Thanks. You actually already
apologized at one point. You just don’t remember.”

“Well, that’s good at
least,” Ted murmured. After a moment he said, “I can see why you’d think I’d
have to be shielded from all of this. But how’d you do it? Alter my memories, I
mean?”

“Vampires can compel
people, make them believe what they want. I felt really bad for manipulating
you like that, even though I thought I was helping you. I’m actually glad you
know the truth now.”

“And you’re glad I’m
not quite as big a wuss as I led you to believe.”

“I never said you were
a wuss.”

“It was implied.” He
was grinning again.

“You really are coping
with this incredibly well.”

“I guess I’m just glad
to find out there’s an explanation for the past few days. Because I seriously
thought I was going crazy. Plus, that there are really vampires and werewolves
and stuff – that’s pretty cool, right?” He was still grinning.

I grinned too. “If you
say so.”

Alastair came up to us
then and said, “Joey and I are going to go out and scout around a bit. I want
to get a look at the Order, so I can learn to recognize them.”

“Is that a good idea?”
I asked.

“Joey doesn’t think so.
But I hate not knowing who my enemies are. If I can get a look at them, then
they’re less likely to catch me unaware. We’ll be careful, obviously, that they
don’t spot us.”

“Well, ok.”

 Carrie came up to me
and said, “I’m going to go home, before I’m missed. We all exchanged cell
numbers, by the way, so I can alert you if there’s any news. And Teddy,” she
added, “I’m going home as a wolf, so I can shake the scent of vampires along the
way. Is it ok if I leave my clothes hidden in your backyard, and come back for
them tomorrow?”

“Yeah, uh, sure. But do
you really think my neighbors won’t notice a wolf running through the railroad
district?” Ted asked.

“No one ever does,” she
replied with a grin.

“Take care Carrie, and
thanks again,” I said as she waved and left by way of the kitchen door.

Alastair reached across
the breakfast bar and took my hand. “We’re probably only going to be an hour or
two, tops, and then we’ll head to San Francisco. We’ve spent enough time
recuperating. We need to track down the warlock that bespelled me and get this
damn memory block removed, because obviously my enemies haven’t taken a holiday.
We can visit Bryn while we’re there, maybe stay at his house. It’s nice and
secure.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

 “If you can, try to
get some rest while we’re out.”

“Highly unlikely,” I
said. “Please don’t do anything crazy. That means you too, Joey.”

“Like taking on five
highly trained half-angel assassins? Believe me, that’s so not the plan,” Joey
said. “We’re going on foot and only bringing minimal weapons so we don’t
attract attention, by the way,” he added. “Which means the Impala and all it
contains is staying here. Not that you’ll need it. But just FYI.”

In other words, he was
leaving me with a weapons cache big enough to take over a small nation.

Allie leaned over the
counter and kissed me lightly, then held my gaze as he said, “See you soon.”

“See you soon,” I
agreed. And then he and Joey were out the door.

I leaned back in my
chair and took a good look at my former best friend and ex-boyfriend. “You
know, I’ve missed you, Teddy,” I said, folding my hands in my lap.

“You have? I thought
you hated me. Did you make me forget the part where we made up and became friends?”

“I
was
mad at
you for a long time, but I’m way past it now,” I said. “And you didn’t forget
the part where we made up and became friends, because that’s happening right
now.”

“Awesome. I missed you,
Lulu.” He held his hand up and added, “And before you remind me that we’re only
going back to being friends, it’s cool. I know you’re with Mr. Undead Universe
now, and I’m not going to do anything lame like trying to get you to be my
girlfriend again.”

“Well, good.”

“So,” he said with a
huge smile, “I want details on the whole vampire thing. How much did Joss
Whedon get right?”

“Teddy,” I said with a
grin, “Joss is always right about everything.”

Chapter
Three

By the time Alastair and Joey returned, Ted and I
were seated in front of the television, eating popcorn and watching Nosferatu.
We’d talked for over an hour before Ted finally decided he was in information
overload, and needed to veg out a little.

“Dear God, what is
that?” Joey wanted to know, coming up behind us and staring at the screen.

“A vampire,” I grinned.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh
come on. If you’re gonna watch a vampire movie, watch the modern one with the
hot, sparkly guy. At least he makes us look good.”

I laughed at that, then
asked, “So how was your field trip? Did you find the Order?”

“Nope,” said Alastair,
sitting on the arm of the couch. “Joey caught their scent at one point and taught
me what to look for. But we think they took to the air, because their scent cut
out abruptly.”

“Took to the air? But
they’re nephilim, not full-blooded angels. They can’t actually fly, can they?”
That question came from Teddy, who now apparently deemed himself an expert on
all things supernatural following his hour-long briefing.

“I’ve never seen it,
but I’ve heard that nephilim can take angel form. Which would of course include
wings,” Joey said, cringing as the vampire on screen went after a victim. “Ok,
that’s it. I’m declaring this film culturally insensitive.”

I grinned and stood up
as I said, “Get over it, Joey.”

Ted hit pause on the
remote and said, “You still planning to head out of town? Because you’re
welcome to crash here tonight, if you want.”

“Thank you, Ted,”
Alastair said, “But if we leave now, we can make it to San Francisco before
sunrise. Joey thinks we should put some distance between ourselves and the
Order.”

“Not that anyone ever
listens to me,” Joey grumbled.

“I’m listening to you
right now! I’m agreeing that we should get on the road,” Alastair pointed out.

“Yeah, but I wanted to
get on the road two hours ago, not linger around town playing sniff out the
assassin,” Joey said, and the two began to bicker like brothers.

Ted walked us out to
the garage and gave me a hug as he said, “Please be careful, Lulu. And text me,
ok? Let me know how you’re doing.”

“I will. See you soon,
Teddy.”

I was pleasantly surprised when I realized I’d slept
the whole way to San Francisco, cradled in Alastair’s arms. “Wakey wakey, eggs
and bakey,” Joey crooned from the front seat. “We beat the sunrise by about
twenty minutes, yay us! And by us, I mean me. You know, the person who did all
the driving.”

“You love driving,” I
pointed out as I unfolded myself from the car and stretched. “But thank you,
Joey. Not only for driving, but for getting us here in one piece.”

“Such a backhanded thank
you,” he said, going around to the trunk and grabbing our bags. “But I’ll take
it.”

As usual, we had to
park several blocks from Bryn’s hidden house. The warlock had created an entire
neighborhood out of thin air, his grand mansion concealed behind a row of
nondescript Victorians that proved to be just an illusion when you walked up to
them and stepped right through their walls.

When we’d been here
just a few days ago, Bryn’s house had been vivid purple with white trim, ablaze
in about a million Christmas lights with music spilling out the front door. It
had been as vibrant and alive as the warlock himself. But now when we stepped through
the barrier houses and emerged in the courtyard, it felt as if a hundred years
had gone by, the cheerful Victorian decayed to the point where it looked like a
haunted house. It was grey now instead of purple, sort of sagging in on itself,
dark and foreboding. “Well, that’s not good,” Joey murmured.

“What happened to it?”
Alastair asked as we all came to an abrupt halt and gazed up at the bleak
exterior.

“Bryn seems to be
having a bad day,” Joey replied.

“He has a bad day, and
this
happens?” I asked.

“You know this whole place
is held together by magic,” Joey said. “If something’s off with Bryn and he’s
not making an effort to fortify his spells, then there goes the neighborhood.
Kind of literally, since this whole block could fold in on itself if he doesn’t
maintain it.”

“Well damn,” I murmured
as we climbed the rickety steps at the front of the mansion.

The big front door was
closed, but opened for us with no resistance. Warlocks didn’t bother locking
doors. They just put spells in place that let only certain people enter.

The foyer was dark and
still. But then a smoke alarm went off at the back of the house and we headed
in that direction, emerging into total chaos in the brightly lit kitchen. And
there we found Augustine. More or less.

Augustine was
Alastair’s maker, a very old, very manipulative vampire. His obsession with his
creation had led him to enlist a young warlock named Jin to bespell Alastair
and wipe his memories. He’d thought making Alastair forget their troubled past
would give them a fresh start, but it had all pretty much blown up in his face.

Normally, Augustine was
sleek and sophisticated, his ethereal beauty masking a dark interior. But at
the moment he was a harried mess, balancing on his tip toes on top of a bar
stool and trying to poke the wailing smoke alarm on the incredibly high ceiling
with a broom handle as smoke billowed from the stove. He was barefoot and dressed
in red flannel pajamas with a repeating pattern of Chihuahuas in Santa hats on
them, the top and sides of his long, platinum blonde hair pulled back into a
messy ponytail.

“Oh dear lord,” he
murmured when he caught sight of Alastair, and quickly jumped off the chair. He
usually had a very slight accent, of an origin no one could pinpoint, but just
then it was significantly more pronounced. He tried to smooth out the front of
his pajama top, as if that would help his appearance somehow, and blurted,
“What are you doing here?”

“We were about to ask
you the same thing,” Joey yelled over the wail of the alarm as he grabbed a
smoking frying pan from the stove, carried it to the kitchen door and set it outside.
He left the door open, fanning it back and forth a couple times, and after a
minute the alarm fell silent.

“Thank God,” Augustine
murmured. His accent had once again receded to the background.