Almost Final Curtain (31 page)

When I turned south, hot air blasted me. It was harder to concentrate on the words as the magic grew, but I continued to speak. I slipped into complete gibberish. “Julius Caesar. Rigor mortis.”

The sensation of spinning made me feel faint. My entire body shook with the effort to stay conscious. I still had two more directions before the circle was complete. I wasn’t sure I could make it without an infusion of blood, so I cautiously bit the inside of my cheek.

When the familiar coppery taste filled my mouth, I felt a corresponding jolt of energy.

Turning to the west, I imagined water quenching the fire of the talisman. Steam hissed on my hand, surprising me. Wow. That was Real Magic. I’d never done anything like it before. My own blood and the talisman must augment whatever tiny spark of witchiness I possessed.

The circle of vampires around me widened suddenly as if giant hands pushed them back a pace. Dad recovered from a stumble, and his expression had changed to one of panic. I could see Dad mouthing a spell or prayer of his own. But it had no effect. The strange power inside me continued to rise. My hair stood on end.

Like an electromagnet was spinning in my core, tiny flashes of lightning arced outward. Bolts jumped any gap. It leaped the space between my legs, between my side and my arms, and, finally, between each finger.

When I faced north and completed the circle, a spark hit the talisman.

Like a clap of thunder, a deafening boom rattled the air. A spiderweb crack appeared on the hip of the goddess. More sparks flashed across my skin, widening the fracture.

An eerie reddish glow filled the night. Wind whipped wildly at my hair, and a strong, inexplicable compulsion caused me to look up. A vortex of spinning clouds in a perfect celestial mirror of the circle I’d cast below appeared above my head. Through the hole rent in the sky, I saw flame tongues flitting across an alien sky.

Somehow I knew it was the Other Side of the Veil.

Outside the circle, vampires began to look up, drawn by the same strange desire that had me reaching upward as though to try to dive into welcoming waters.
Home,
begged a part of my mind, but my internal rotation reached a fever pitch. I couldn’t hold back the massive energy I’d created. It burst from me like a wave of light.

The clay of the talisman began to splinter. A black, ancient dust coughed out. I breathed in the scent of frankincense.

The core of the talisman flashed bright, like I had. The vampires shouted in pain and scattered at the sudden intense burst of sunlight. The passage to the Veil slammed shut with an audible, earsplitting snap.

Then the talisman was gone, crumbled to clay fragments in my fist.

The only vampire who remained was Dad. He’d fallen to his knees; his watery eyes appeared filmy and clouded.

Behind me, the door burst open to the sound of shrieking alarms. Even as spent and exhausted as I was, I felt Mom’s power building as she rushed to my side. Nikolai, Aiden, and Elias joined, and the four of them stood just outside the circle I’d cast, facing outward at the cardinal points, like guardians.

But there was nothing and no one to defend me from anymore. Dad must have used whatever strength he had left to rush blindly away.

Sirens wailed in the distance. The feeling in my arm returned painfully. My other palm looked like it had a bad case of sunburn.

We were an odd and unlikely group—a free vampire, a servant, a hunter, the Queen of Witches, and me—all of us momentarily united in our determination to stop the hunt and destroy the talisman. “I guess that’s it, then.” Mom’s voice sounded shaky. She looked at the granite under my feet, which had been burned black in a perfect circle.

Elias and Nikolai faced each other menacingly. My gaze returned to the lifeless bodies on the lawn. I said to Nikolai, “Looks like you found a way to graduate after all.”

He broke from his stony posture, clearly shaken by the realization of what he’d done. I wondered if he knew that he’d killed living bodies that had once been human. Given the look on his pale, horrified face, I hardly needed to remind him.

“Oh. Shit,” he said, looking at his hands as if they were stained with blood. His psychic dagger crumbled instantly. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t mean to—”

I raised my hand. “I know, Nik. You were defending me. All of you were. That was awesome.”

 

 

It wasn’t exactly a group hug, but my words were enough for us to form an uneasy alliance for the time being. Nik drove Mom and me home, and Elias met us there. Mom looked surprised to see him, but I explained Elias had no other place to stay. Before I could even argue my case, Mom threw up her hands and agreed he could continue to stay in the basement, but only until other arrangements could be made. “You saved my life, I guess,” Mom sniffed. “I suppose I owe you a couple of weeks for that.”

Nik, meanwhile, seemed completely shell-shocked. He hadn’t said a single word on the drive back. When I looked around to invite him in for a soda, he’d already taken off. I guessed he had a lot on his mind.

I abandoned the strange scene in the parlor of Mom explaining the “house rules” to Elias, to head to my room. I could hardly keep my eyes open, I was so physically drained.

But before I collapsed into bed, I opened my desk drawer to look for something and saw that the snake-headed goddess figurine had shattered into a million pieces. I cut my finger on one of the shards. The blood rolled down my finger. Instinctively, I put it in my mouth, tasting copper and salt and residual magic, intensely sweet, like honey.

A thought brought me instantly awake. We’d avoided the hunt tonight, but how much longer could we put it off?

 

 

With that worry skittering around my brain I slept fitfully, but I awoke happily to the sound of Mom’s weather radio. She’d packed my lunch and she even gave me a peck on the cheek before I headed out the door. My days quickly fell into a routine: classes, homework, and rehearsals. Bea and I didn’t talk much, nor did Nik and I. But I wanted space from her and allowed him to have what he seemed to need.

Meanwhile, when I returned home in the late evening, I’d sometimes find Elias in the dusty front room reading one of my manga series in the dark. Mom would come in and turn on a light for him or place a cup of tea at his elbow. The house was a lot less empty, but the tension was still more of a cease-fire than a truce.

One night over a late dinner, Elias told us that he’d heard that the guard had found Ramses and taken him back to the kingdom. He was blinded, though Elias seemed to think that a steady diet of blood would eventually heal him. Mom offered her opinion, which involved rotting in hell.

“Except no one can return to hell now,” I pointed out. “Rotting or not.”

“Return? No one has ever returned home,” Elias said. “Not even on the hunter’s blade.”

 

 

A month later, I sat in my chair in the greenroom. Though the bruise on my arm had finally healed, I still had to smear a ton of pancake on my sunburned palm. Around me, everyone chattered excitedly. Thompson very seriously applied eyeliner. Bea buzzed around, happily practicing lines because the girl playing the nanny had come down with strep.

Through the intercom, the sounds of a full house drifted in. The band struck a few practice chords and adjusted sound.

My stomach fluttered, even though I dreamed the lines of this play, I knew it so well. I’d finally gotten the hang of the new arrangements, especially when Stevie came over to tutor me. She’d assured me that Nikolai would come around when he was good and ready, but in the meantime I’d let myself get lost in the work of rehearsals and flirting/fighting with Thompson.

A knock on the greenroom door startled me from my thoughts. Since everyone else was occupied, I got up to answer it. A florist stood in the doorway with a huge bouquet of bloodred roses. “Are you Ana Parker?”

“I am.”

“For you,” he said. I took them and read the note: “Break a leg, from Elias.”

He had a few other deliveries, so I let him through. Bea squealed at her bouquet of daisies, and even Thompson got a single yellow rose. I took my vase back to my spot. That was when I noticed the mysterious envelope. It had my name printed on it, so I opened it. Inside was a brief note and a flash drive that fell into my palm.

“Even if we never figure out how to make things work,” the card read, “you will always be my muse. With all my love, Nik.”

I wiped a tear from my eye and fixed my makeup, and then Thompson and I brought the house down.

Tate Hallaway
lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is also the author of the Garnet Lacey novels. Visit her on the Web at
www.tatehallaway.com
or check out her blog at
tatehallaway.blogspot.com
.

 

Almost to Die For

 

Almost Final Curtain