Under a Spell (18 page)

“What the—?”

A blinding wash of light poured over me and I tried to use my hand to shield my face—but my arms were still stuck by my sides. So I squinted, then sunk back against the dirt.

“Alex? Where are—why—what the hell is going on?”

He crouched down next to me, settling his flashlight on the ground so it wasn’t blinding me anymore. “I could ask you the same thing.”

I was about to answer him in some fashion—I still had no real idea where I was or what, exactly, had happened—when Alex went vaulting forward, the toe of his sneaker scraping across the top of my head. I heard the sickening sound of flesh hitting earth and I tried to turn, but I was stuck, held solid by this—dirt.

I stopped.

“I’m in a fucking hole,” I mumbled, awed. “I’m in a fucking hole!” I craned my head over my shoulder as far as I could get it. “Will, help me!”

Will had pummeled my attacker and was on top of him now, pinning him into the dirt, about to land a blow.

“Will?” I heard.

“Alex?” Will asked.

“Alex? Alex!”

“Lawson?”

“Oh, holy Christ.”

Will rolled off of Alex and pushed himself to standing, offering Alex a hand—which he didn’t take.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Alex spat.

“Why the fuck are you attacking her?” Will returned, throwing a gesturing arm my way.

“You’re trespassing at a crime scene.”

“Guys!” I yelled from my hole. “Guys!” I tried to dig my toes against the wall of the hole, but without the use of my hands—still bound by the narrow hole to my sides—all I could do was wobble back and forth uselessly.

“Sophie and I were here looking for clues. We were assigned this job.”

I rolled the abandoned flashlight with my chin so that both Will and Alex were illuminated. My stomach dropped when I saw the fire in Will’s eyes, the hard clench of Alex’s jaw. The guys were nearly nose to nose and spitting mad. Will’s hands were fisted at his sides, and Alex kept one hand resting on his holster.

“Guys!”

“I’m on this case. The SFPD is on this case, not the UDA. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’M IN A FUCKING HOLE, HERE!” I screamed.

Both Alex and Will swung their heads to look at me as though they had just realized I was there.

“Why are you in a hole?” Will asked, calm as ever.

“I fell in.” I gestured with my chin toward Alex. “I guess you thought I was an intruder. He chased, I ran. I fell.”

Alex’s ice-blue eyes washed over me. “I was just doing my job. We were staking out the Battery.” He jutted his head toward me in my hole, then cut his eyes toward Will. “Doesn’t look like you were doing much of your job.”

Will’s nostrils flared. “I am doing my job just fine. She’s not hurt. The Vessel is still intact.” He took a half-inch step closer. “It’s not like I lost it.”

“Guys?” I asked, half to diffuse the spitting glares between Alex and Will, and half because I was still stuck in a goddamn hole on the Marin headlands in the middle of the night.

“I didn’t lose it,” Alex said, biting off his words—and completely oblivious to my stump of a head in the dirt.

They were talking about the Vessel of Souls—before it was me. Alex stole it, which caused his fall from grace. There is much more to the story as it’s rather long and complicated and I was praying to God, Buddha, and Oprah that they wouldn’t go over the details now, while I stood in my HOLE IN THE GROUND.

“Really?” I screamed. “Really, guys? I’m down here. IN A HOLE. I fell into a hole that’s about as big around as my shoulder span. I’m in a hole!” I could hear the hysteria and panic rising in my voice, but I didn’t care, because my mind was suddenly full of all the bugs and maggots that climbed around underground, mere centimeters from my exposed skin.

Suddenly, I was an upright corpse and I swear to God there was a worm on my arm.

“Get me out of here!”

“How’d you end up standing upright in a hole?” Will wanted to know.

“Just get me out!”

The guys stared at me and walked around the hole as if somewhere I was hiding a spring trap door.

When Alex and Will shared a shrug and a glance, I realized that I would likely have to spend the rest of my life in this hole, begging for people to bring me marshmallow pinwheels or dig me out with soup spoons.

“Can you get your arms out?” Alex asked.

My enormous, exasperated sigh was lost in ten inches of damp dirt. “I can’t do anything. This”—I think I shrugged—“is what you have to work with.”

“All right,” Will said over my head. “I’ll take this side. I think we can slide our hands in enough to reach under her arms and pull from there.”

“From her armpits,” Alex clarified.

Will nodded and counted to three, and suddenly I was being remarkably molested by four strong hands. I tried to help, squirming in one direction and then the other, but that only served to first lob one boob into Alex’s hand, the other into Will’s.

“Those aren’t my armpits.”

“Sorry.”

On three, there was a larger-than-necessary groan, and I was free from my upright tomb. The fresh air whipping through my clothes was cold but freeing. I would have run, but the guys were still holding me, my feet six inches from the ground, dangling.

“You can put me down. I’m free. I’m okay.” I swung my head, addressing Alex and then Will. “Nothing’s broken or anything.”

But neither Will nor Alex was focused on me. Each of their heads were bent downward.

“We’re going to set you down, but keep your right foot raised, okay?” Alex asked.

“Okay, I guess.”

The guys placed me down gently, my one sneaker touching the tuft of soft grass in front of me, my right leg bent, foot swung in front of me. I could feel my eyes widen. My teeth started a chatter that had nothing to do with the cold. My stomach folded in on itself.

“Wh-wh-what is that?” I asked, pointing.

“Don’t freak out, Lawson.”

Will still had my arm as Alex whipped a Ziploc bag from his pocket and used it to gingerly remove the thing that was hanging from the cuff of my jeans.

He moved his hand and I saw what he’d picked from me as it crossed the yellow beam of light.

“Is that a—”

Will’s grip on my arm tightened and I heard Alex say again, “Lawson, don’t freak out.” This time his words were stern, but they did nothing to slow me down.

“That’s a hand! That’s a hand!”

I felt the heat shoot up the back of my neck and throb in my temples. Suddenly, I was doubled over, then on my hands and knees, my body jerking and heaving as I vomited.

I barely had enough time to register my rage when I heard Alex yell, “Keep it away from the hole!” because the sudden stench of moist dirt and decay assaulted my nostrils and I heaved again.

I felt Will’s cool hand lace through my hair as he pulled it back from my face, his other hand touching the small of my back tenderly as I sputtered and coughed, hot tears mixing with snot dribbling over my chin. I sat back on my haunches and Alex handed me his handkerchief. It may have been my nerves or my recent assault by a disembodied hand, but I thought I saw a flash of jealousy in Will’s eyes as I took the white cloth from Alex.

“What—whose—who does that belong to?” I croaked, dabbing at my nose and mouth.

Alex had the hand laid out on the plastic bag as Will shone a light down on it.

“Doesn’t look too recent,” Will said, squinting.

“Most of the flesh has been eaten away. Kind of hard to determine time of death at this point.”

My stomach lurched and I prepared for another round of vomit that thankfully, never came.

“It’s a female,” Alex said. He pulled a pencil from his pocket and pointed it toward the hand’s clawed index finger.

“Is that a ring?” Will asked.

“Looks like it.”

I crawled over, unable to help myself, and stared. Among the dirt and muck was a tiny band of something silvery, pushed up against the knuckle. “It has a stone in it,” I said, amazed.

Will pushed the eraser end of the pencil toward the stone that I pointed out and nudged the moist earth aside. A sliver of emerald green—muted and fogged—caught the light.

I swallowed heavily and sat back on my haunches, suddenly overcome with grief.

“Hate to break up the bio lesson but, wouldn’t you say where there’s a hand there’s probably—”

Alex glanced up at Will, his eyes reflecting the light. “An arm?”

Will nodded solemnly and they both looked at me. My heart thumped. “What are you looking at me for? I found that, I’m done for the night.”

Alex handed Will the flashlight as he pulled his cell phone from his back pocket. “I’m going to call this in. There’s probably a body in there.”

“A body.” I heard myself say it, the word dropping solid on the cold air.

Will rolled the extra flashlight to me. “Just take a look.”

I chewed the inside of my lip and begged that this hand had come upon this hole independently. But when the yellow streak of my light caught the glossy mud walls I’d had leaned up against, my stomach went to liquid.

Suri. Gretchen. Cathy. And now—Alyssa?

“It’s not a body,” I said slowly. “It’s a couple of bodies.”

Fingers of color were just starting to streak through the night sky as the police began making their way toward the bluff. A news crew followed the cavalcade and onlookers came behind them; I shuddered when Alex directed a few officers with metal gates to hold back the sudden proliferation of people.

“You okay, love?” Will asked.

I swallowed and sighed. “Yeah. Just got a very unfortunate case of deja vu.”

The last time I had been on a beautiful, grassy bluff overlooking the bay, I had also been at a crime scene. There, the bodies of two women had been found, decimated. And now, before the majority of the city even roused from their beds, the police were digging up the remains of more women. The realization was like a steel band tightening around my heart. I glanced toward Alex as he was meeting the coroner’s van in the parking lot.

“Sometimes it seems like we’re all under attack,” I muttered.

Alex tossed a glance over his shoulder as Will and I made our way toward the parking lot. I wanted to say good-bye to Alex, to explain—something—but exhaustion and a numbness that seeped all the way to my bones prevented it.

Chapter Ten

Once home, I showered and changed in record speed—fast even with Nina’s wrinkled nose and directive to “change into something that doesn’t look like I buried my Aunt Fanny in it.” I interpreted the Aunt Fanny crack to mean a never-been-worn pale blue cashmere sweater and a pair of charcoal-grey slacks that had miraculously become cigarette-slim while living in the back of my closet.

“Way better,” Nina said, handing me a Fresca and a bagel in a brown paper bag. She shrugged. “You should probably go grocery shopping.”

“We’re out of detergent, too,” Vlad chimed in, scaring the bejesus out of me. He poked his head over the top of the couch and grinned.

“Look, I was out all night—”

Nina held her hand out, stop-sign style. “No need to brag about your conquests with a C-H-I-L-D in the room.” Her eyes cut back and forth from the top of Vlad’s head to me.

“I’m not a child,” Vlad snapped. “You’re a child.”

“I wasn’t out conquesting. I was out.” I took a deep breath, trying my best not to recall the image of that gnarled hand, of the makeshift graveyard the police were unearthing as we argued about my nonexistent sex life. “We found some bodies. Several, we think. Out at Battery Townsley.”

Nina blinked and popped a straw into the blood bag she’d helped herself to.

“With Alex or Will?” Vlad asked.

“Both.”

“Kinky.”

I narrowed my eyes and took a big swig of my Fresca. “You’re disgusting.”

“My vote’s for Will, personally,” Vlad said as I gathered my purse.

“No.” Nina hopped off the counter, following me into the living room. “Alex. The whole doomed love is so romantic.”

Vlad snarled. “I don’t like that guy. I’m so over his holier-than-thou shit.”

I grabbed my keys. “You have no soul, Vlad. Everyone is holier than you.”

He resettled himself on the couch. “Not everyone has to act like it.”

I was still grumbling from Vlad and Nina’s lackluster response to our break in the case—but then again, for a couple of undead vampires, the actually dead really did little to pique their interest—when I crossed two lanes of screeching traffic and bolted into the Philz Coffee parking lot.

“Coffee,” I mumbled to absolutely no one.

I yawned and blinked, my eyes stinging and dry from lack of sleep. “Code Thirty-three,” I said to the perky, well-rested barista. “A big one.”

She studied me intently for an uncomfortable beat before reaching out to touch my hand. “You look just like him,” she said, her voice low and breathy.

“Excuse me?” I asked, heat pricking out along my hairline.

She snapped her hand back from mine, but her grin never faltered. “I said that will be $3.71, please.”

I felt my mouth drop open and I worked to push the words past my teeth. “No—no. You said—you said that I looked just like him.”

The barista cocked her head, the sweet smile still plastered across her glossy lips. “I’m sorry, you must have misheard me. Three seventy-one, please.”

I handed over the cash without taking my eyes off her. She gave me my change and I stepped aside, far enough to get out of line, but close enough to hear her should she murmur something else.

She was all business with the next customer.

I must have imagined it or misread her. I really need to get some sleep
.

I slurped the last of my Code 33 as I pulled into the UDA parking lot, the octane hitting my bloodstream in one hot, energetic explosion. Thirty-six floors later, the big silver elevator doors slid open on the familiar chaos of the Underworld Detection Agency. Kale was at the reception desk with a cheek full of Hubba Bubba as she cocked her head and listened to a voice screaming on the other end of the phone line. The velvet ropes were bulging with clients already annoyed—a couple of zombies with brand-new papers, a windigo who shot a cool breeze at the oblivious vampire behind him.