Hex Appeal Read online

  “What is this place?” Clothes on, slippers on, she shuffled forward and bumped into the invisible barrier surrounding the grave. For a second, she looked like a street mime doing that stuck-in-a-box routine. Those magically powered walls were as solid to her as brick ones were to me.

  It took time to get her past that shock, then introduce the idea (again) that she’d been in an accident, that we were not kidnappers, psychos, or part of some twisted reality show and would explain everything soon. That’s a lot for anyone to take in, especially when they’ve not been prepared. Neos and their mentors have usually been together for years and adjust faster. Even orphans will have some inkling of what’s happened to them and catch on sooner or later. It’s usually because they’ve lived on the fringes of the supernatural community and pick up hints by osmosis. Just because we stay off the human radar doesn’t mean people don’t notice and wonder.

  But Kellie Ann didn’t have any of that. This was completely outside her tiny pocket of a sheltered world. She didn’t remember anything, didn’t know of the greater supernatural community, and she had no clue that she’d been murdered.

  So how did she get from Alabama to an abandoned cemetery in Texas?

  The vamp drove her. She was his food for the trip, perhaps kept locked in a trunk for the day. There were cases like that on the books. The supernatural community was no more immune to crime than the day-walking world. We punished the perps when we caught them.

  This one had finished her off but didn’t do a proper job of it, enabling her to come back. It’s a mixed blessing. She was in the world again, but not all victims are able to make the adjustment.

  Kellie Ann paced the boundaries I’d put up, trying to find a way out, too agitated to listen. That was also normal and the reason why she had to be confined. The fever that would drive her toward her first feeding was kicking in, and she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. You might as well tell a newborn not to cry.

  I ordered her several times to open the cooler chest. With shaking hands, she finally did, fumbled with the plastic drink bottle, snapping the lid off and, madly thirsty, gulped the contents.

  Ellinghaus watched this with close attention, then relaxed a little. So did I.

  A new vamp’s initial taste would influence the rest of their existence. They will stick with the kind of blood they got at their first meal. If it’s cattle blood, then it’s easier to follow the rules. If it’s human, it gets complicated in ways I try not to imagine. In the bad old days, human blood (often drained from a hapless victim) tended to be what some breeds craved unless the potential vamp knew to prepare and had himself interred near a livestock pen. Don’t laugh. It worked.

  The Company has a deal going with a number of meat-processing plants—God knows what story they gave; for all I know, the vamps ran the slaughterhouses—and thoughtfully provided a month of free blood to orphan newbies. After that, they were expected to get gainful employment and buy it same as the rest.

  With a quart of bovine in her, Kellie Ann settled down enough to focus, and I began making headway. Just not for long. Her eyes, flushed an alarming red from the feeding, soon dulled, then she sat on the cooler, blinking at me, nodding agreement at whatever I said. With a strange, drunken smile, she pointed at Ellinghaus.

  “I know you, you’re that guy.”

  He touched his hat brim. “Yes, ma’am. Close enough.”

  “That. Guy.” She waved a hand around. “My dad loves your movies.”

  “Very kind of him.” He shot me a look. “I believe she is ready to go, Miss Goldfarb.”

  I needed a prop for this part and got a metal rod about a foot long and as big around as my thumb from my backpack. Nothing like cold iron to take the juice from a spell. I prodded the invisible wall, felt the energy thrum and dissipate, then the holding mechanism was gone, like popping a balloon.

  Ellinghaus stepped forward and asked Kellie Ann for permission to help her to the ambulance.

  I know. But it worked. She took his arm, made two unsteady steps, then her legs wobbled. He swept her up, hardly breaking stride, and got her in, stretching her flat on the rolling gurney clamped to one wall. I came up behind with the cooler and discarded bottle, stowed them, and went back for the stool and backpack. One more chore: fill a few plastic zip bags up with a quantity of dirt from her grave. Without it, she’d not be able to rest during the day. The geeks were still working on the why behind that one, too. I dropped the bags into an equipment drawer with the folding shovel and had a last glance at the horrible place. I hoped she wouldn’t remember it.

  My partner had buckled her in under a blanket and gone through to the cab of the bus.

  “You going to change?” I asked.

  “Is it necessary?” He really liked his black suit; the look had proved to be disarming and distracting to Kellie Ann, as intended.

  We’d be going the speed limit, and medical transport vehicles drove all hours, day and night, so there’d be no reason for a cop to bother with us. Sure, Ellinghaus could hypnotize us out of a situation, but why take chances? We could not be caught with a missing person. “I think you should. If we get pulled over…”

  “I see your point. One moment.”

  While he went outside to trade the hat, black coat, and tie, for a white shirt to match mine, I swabbed Kellie Ann’s face with a damp wipe and told her to relax, we were taking her to a doctor.

  “But I feel fine,” she said dreamily.

  With the drugs dissolved in that bottle of blood, she’d be feeling just wonderful for hours to come. It’s better this way. Really. Maybe she’d have been calm enough to cooperate and come willingly, but if not, then even Ellinghaus wouldn’t have been able to hold her for long. She’d vanished once to escape her grave and could do so again by accident. Not a good idea when you’re booming down the road at sixty-five.

  I couldn’t raise a holding spell inside the ambulance, so a strong cocktail with lots of Xanax in it would keep her happy and her body solid until specialists could take charge. They’d treat her the same as any rape victim. Hopefully she’d be able to adjust to her new life.

  If she was allowed to live it.

  The simple solution, the one that didn’t bear thinking about, was to disappear her.

  I said her name a few times, and she gave me a tired smile. “We’re going to need your consent to help you,” I said. “I need you to sign a standard release form.”

  “I don’t have insurance.”

  “It’s all right, this is on the county. You don’t have to worry about that. Sign here, and I’ll be able to treat you.”

  “I feel fine,” she insisted.

  “I know you do, but you have to sign. It’s a formality.”

  “Need to read it first.”

  “Of course.” I held the clipboard, and she must have read the simple agreement several times, unable to take any meaning from it. I fitted a marker-type pen into her hand and held the board firm as she scrawled her name at the bottom. She dotted the “i” with a little heart.

  Thank God that was done. She might not have felt it, but I did, the tiny crackling of power that told me the spell that would compel her to obey the number one rule had taken hold. When she sobered up, she might not recall much of this, but she would adhere to the agreement. I’d have loved to meet the designer of that crafting; it was elegant and simple and powerful—like Hepburn’s little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Was I envious? You bet.

  Things like that temped me to renew my contract when the time came. I’d get the big pay raise and truly advanced training in my craft. Right now I was a good, if limited, spell-slinger. I could slam a holding spell in my sleep and read auras in the right light, but there were others to be learned.

  I ran the signed agreement through a portable laminating machine. The plastic would keep the ephemeral parchment preserved pretty much forever if it was properly stored, and the Company had excellent facilities. There. Most of my job was done. I heaved a hug
e sigh and felt ravenous. Spell work and therapy on the fly are exhausting.

  Kellie Ann seemed to doze. No vitals like a heartbeat or pumping lungs, but no problem. It just meant she was a Chicago Special, a Drac, or another Euro-breed I was too tired to recall. I grabbed a double-thick turkey sandwich and Coke from the fridge, dragged my weary carcass to the cab, and belted into the passenger seat.

  Ellinghaus still had on his sunglasses but otherwise looked like an EMT. Between bites, I gave him directions, and he got us clear of the bumpy road, onto a two-lane, and more than an hour later a four-lane heading in the right direction for home. The GPS began working again, along with my cell and laptop, but I told him to pull into the next gas station. We needed a fill-up, and I wanted to phone this one in on a landline.

  He found a busy truck stop, pulled up to one of the diesel stations, and took care of the bus while I kept an eye on Kellie Ann. Regs demanded there always be someone with the patient though she was still out of it. Once Ellinghaus was done, I fled to a washroom. His ambulance has a potty, and I could pull the curtain divider shut behind the cab for privacy, but sue me, I prefer the kind with running water.

  The phones were by the facilities. I used a Company card for the charges.

  The night shift was the busy time at HQ, like Monday morning anywhere else, but there was some kind of old-country holiday with an unpronounceable name on. The phone rang and rang before someone finally picked up. I got an audible gasp—not common when dealing with people who don’t breathe all the time—when I asked to speak to Ms. Vouros. She was second only to God in authority so far as I was concerned. She was upper, upper management, and I doubted she knew my name. I’d never spoken to her directly. She relied on e-mails and underlings. Speculation ran that she learned her management style from Elizabeth Báthory, but that was ridiculous because old Liz had been a narcissist psycho, not a real vampire.

  Which did not preclude Vouros from being a narcissist psycho, so I was very polite and stuck to the bare-bones business when she got on the line. I gave her my location, who I was with, and shared the joy about Kellie Ann Donner.

  It was significant that Vouros did not ask me to repeat anything. I took it to mean she’d grasped the situation.

  “Oh, crap,” she said, confirming.

  I refrained from asking what to do next; she’d tell me if it deviated from the usual drill. She shot a few questions, getting an overview of the situation, and I gave her my best guess about what breed might be involved.

  “Never mind that. Is she under control?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m sending a team to the gravesite to process it. The forensics crafter should be able to find maker traces. You two get straight back here, no stops.”

  What did she think, that Ellinghaus and I would take in a movie? Good luck with that. There were hardly any drive-ins left. Only on the way to the truck did it hit me how rattled she must be.

  The trip was routine from this point; Ellinghaus had his music plugged in from his iPod, and I tried to get some shut-eye stretched out on the padded bench in the back. The storage area under it was where he slept during the day with a bag of his soil, but I wasn’t bothered by that anymore. I belted in and wrapped tight under a blanket, fending off the A/C.

  Of course I didn’t sleep. Who could?

  I checked on Kellie Ann for the umpteeth time. Okay, she could sleep, or whatever it was vamps did. She made me want to have soothing drugs of my own. I couldn’t stop wondering what would happen to her once we got inside the gate.

  If she disappeared permanently, it would solve everything for the Company. It would be hell on her family, but Company’s rules outweighed their right to know her fate.

  If Kellie Ann was allowed to live and be a part of the greater community, she’d have to get a whole new ID, maybe relocation to another country. She wouldn’t like that. There was a kind of magic that could compel her to accept, but that sort of crafting is dangerous. When it goes completely against the will of the subject, they either throw it off or go nuts or both. None of those options is a party.

  Or—with certain kinds of bounding spells in place so she could not share about being vamped—Kellie Ann could return to her family. She’d be primed to give them a tale of an abductor who’d drugged her, then let her go in a fit of conscience. The mystery around her disappearance would fade, and she could go back to most of her former life, with some dietary changes in place.

  While it wasn’t anything I could influence, I would recommend it in my report and at my debriefing.

  She would be closely questioned by experts. Spell work would be involved to pick her memory. Company investigators would want every detail to find out the name of the moron vampire behind this PR headache.

  I wouldn’t feel sorry for him, either.

  I gave up trying to sleep and returned to the cab. Ellinghaus was easy to hang with, no need to talk if we didn’t feel like it. He let a few miles pass before pulling out his ear buds and speaking. His voice was low, conversational. The general noise of the bus would prevent our patient from hearing him.

  “Did you, by chance, notice her hands, Miss Goldfarb?”

  “Can’t say that I did, no.”

  “They were not messed up as one might expect, given her circumstances.”

  Trying to claw your way from a coffin was hard on the manicure. “It just means she healed up when she vanished. You do that.”

  “Yes, I do that. But it takes longer when the injury involves wood, and I heard wood snapping.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just thought I should mention that, is all.”

  “Put it in your report. The geeks love details.”

  “Indeed they do.”

  I told him that Vouros was sending out a forensics crafter to process the grave.

  He grunted approval.

  That department had serious magical talent. Never mind about wearing gloves and being careful not to leave behind any DNA, they could get a fix on a vamp by magical means. It was also proprietary spell work, and scary efficient. Too bad they couldn’t apply it to human murder cases, only to supernaturals.

  “I’ve been wondering about some things, too,” I said.

  “Such as what, if I may inquire?”

  “Such as how the hell did she get way out there? Who would even know about that place?”

  “I have given some thought to that, as well. Perhaps the perpetrator was originally from the area and thought he could hide his crime, thinking no one would ever visit. He must not have expected her to revive.”

  “He’s in for a shock.”

  “Deservedly so.”

  Ellinghaus hates them, the ones he calls crash-feeders. Since the Company got itself truly organized (at about the same time as the FBI), there’d not been many of those cases. He’s a stickler for rules, and when a crash-feeder comes along, it makes the rest of the vamps look bad. They resent anyone who caves to the crave.

  “I suppose I could ask around, maybe look into genealogy records for that area,” he said. “I made note of the family names on the stones.”

  “As good a place to start as any.”

  “Might you consider initiating an online records search?”

  “Glad to, but not right now. I’m tired and don’t want to get carsick.”

  A grunt of understanding. Some vamps forget how tough it is to be human and subject to fatigue. Ellinghaus didn’t seem to be among their number. Not for the first time I wondered how old he was; I’d never asked, and he’s never brought it up. He could be fifty or five hundred, no way to tell. But he was comfortable to be with and always professional. I hoped he found those same qualities in me.

  “Would you like to listen to some jazz, Miss Goldfarb?”

  “Smooth?” I wasn’t in the mood for anything fast and raucous.

  “And dark as chocolate.”

  “The best kind.”

  * * *

  The music did its own magic to the p
oint that I nodded off long enough to feel rotten when I snapped awake. Ellinghaus was on the exit for HQ; we were two minutes out with a long, comfortable margin before dawn. I was rumpled and soggy of brain, but if I had another Coke, it would leave me too wired to sleep later. Just have to tough it out minus chemical help.

  Company grounds were intentionally deceptive. The buildings looked to be typical light industrial on the outside, with lots of security lights and cameras, nothing unexpected. However, the cyclone fence was extra tall, topped with razor wire and electrified. That was for human intruders. For everyone else, there was a boundary spell in place like the one I’d cast around Kellie Ann’s grave, but this one was on steroids with a crack chaser. My hat was off to the witch who had crafted it. He or she had created a vast domed perimeter, and no vamp could get in or out without magical help.

  When dealing with people who can go invisible, people who might not agree with Company policies, you can’t overdo the locks.

  The guard’s blockhouse in front was always manned. A vampire and witch pairing, as usual, to watch the gate. They recognized us, and Judy, the vamp, asked about the newbie.

  “Orphan case,” said Ellinghaus. He knew better than to share our bombshell before management had a meeting on the subject.

  “That sucks,” said Rosa, the witch. She was straight-faced, clearly not chasing a bad joke.

  “I hate when that happens,” added Judy. I went in the back, opening the doors so she could make sure only three people were going in. Vamps can see others of their kind even when they’re vanished. She didn’t find unauthorized intruders in Ellinghaus’s storage locker and hardly glanced at the dozing Kellie Ann. Judy hopped out and called to Rosa to pass us in.

  Rosa had a glass rod that would shift, rather than dissipate, power and waved it in a wide pattern that was too fast and subtle for me to follow, combining the action with a chant under her breath. The barrier that would have crushed Ellinghaus flat into his seat back had he tried to gun forward ceased to be there. Rosa nodded him in, working the wand and chant until our taillights were clear, then ceased, and things thumped back into place. I felt the power like a tangible echo. It would be so cool to know how to craft that kind of magic. Architecturally, the ones I raised were like a box made from Lincoln Logs. The one around HQ was comparable to a Renaissance cathedral in artistry and staying power.