Fangtabulous (11 page)

So much for “do no harm.” But I recognized her tone for what it was … bravado. All bark, no bite. Olivia was scared. Legitimately scared. Down to her toenails.

Ulric wasn’t. He didn’t draw back his hand—or a bloody stump, since she didn’t make good on her threat. Instead, he stroked a thumb gently over her hand. While Olivia’s death-glare didn’t lessen, I did notice an untensing of her body by degrees.

“I
don’t
want to start a witch hunt,” I said. “In fact, I want to prevent it. Look, the supernatural starts acting up and most people think
magic
. They don’t know that there are different kinds, and that one isn’t like a gateway drug to the others. I can’t be the only person wondering, even if I’m the first to say it out loud. The best thing we can do is figure out what’s going on and how to stop it, ASAP.”

“Before the tourist trade or anyone else gets killed.”

“Ulric!” I said, shocked. “How can you even be thinking about tourism at a time like this?’

The look he gave me was dead serious. He wore it well. I wasn’t used to seeing this side of him, and it was kind of … impressive. “You don’t understand. You don’t live here. The end of September through the beginning of November—Halloween season—is when the residents make about seventy-five percent of their income. Before and after … it’s a dead zone. A quiet town without a lot of traffic or attention. For most here, the tourist trade is literally a matter of life and death. Financially speaking, anyway.”

I’d never even thought about it. Since I’d been vamped mere months ago, I’d been living
Fright Night
full time, playing dress-up, putting on personas. My Halloween had become a year-round thing.

“Back to stopping it,” Olivia said, taking back her hand from Ulric. “How is that your business? Like Ulric said, you don’t even live here.”

“I do now.” If I was going to gain her trust, I’d have to give something in return. “But it’s a fair question about my business. I came to Salem with a few friends. We wanted to start over and didn’t exactly fit in elsewhere, if you know what I mean.” And I thought she might. “We like it here. We’d like to stay. But one of my friends … he’s a sensitive, and this place is making him nuts. If we can lay the spirits to rest … ”

Olivia’s gaze softened. “That’s rough. I can build him a dampening spell, something to shield him from all the energies.”

“How about answering my question?” I asked gently, not wanting to put her back on the defensive. “Could it be a spell? Should we be looking for dark magic? A dampener would be great, but it won’t keep girls from getting strangled. I should know.”

I raised a hand to my neck to remind her of my personal stake in all this, the
other
reason she could assume I was so interested. Luckily, my jacket covered the fact that I was all recovered from the ordeal.

She looked at me in sympathy and started to reach a hand out before drawing it back, still not clear, I guessed, on my relationship to Ulric and whether it was okay to like me.

“I want to help, but—well, my coven and I have already done a spell to search for the origin of the trouble, to try to lay the Salem Strangler to rest.”

“And?”

“And whatever it is, it’s stronger than us at its core. It doesn’t
read
like a spell, which is bound with components, woven together, diffuse.”

“What does it read like?”

“I don’t know … a beacon? A beam? Focused, intense. Ancient, I’d say, but I don’t know why.”

“Like an object of power?” Ulric cut in. “Like Excalibur or something like that?” He sounded like Bobby.

“Probably not Excalibur,” Olivia said with an amused twist of the lips. “But something. Yes, maybe an object of power.”

“An object we could track?”

“Maybe. We tried and didn’t get very far. All I can tell you is that it’s here, in Salem.”

“Could it have come from JC Supplies?” I asked.

Her eyes narrowed again, but not to the point of arrow slits; more like she was trying to figure out what I was getting at. “They don’t deal in the arcane. JC is more about antiques and theater props.”

“Maybe they didn’t know what they had.”

“I guess it’s possible. Why are you so focused on them?”

“A few of the things my friend, the sensitive, has reacted to have come from JC.”

She shrugged. “You could ask. I have their number right here.” She pulled her phone from a jeans pocket beneath her apron, pressed a few buttons, and handed it to me.

“It says ‘Tara,’” I noted.

“That’s who I always deal with.”

“Not JC?”

“Never met him … her? Don’t even know if there is a JC or what that stands for.”

“Thanks,” I said, entering the number for “Tara” into my own phone. I noticed I had two missed calls from Bobby and I felt guilty all over.

“Don’t mention it,” she said.

She looked at Ulric and her face was so sad, like she was looking at something she knew she’d lost. “For the record,” she said, lowering her voice as if she could shut me out of this part of the conversation, “I gave Jesse the boot right after you left. You were right. It’s just … he’s always known the right buttons to push.”

“Clearly I didn’t.”

Her gaze dropped at that, and I didn’t know if anyone but me heard her whisper. “Yes, you did.”

I looked at Ulric’s face, though, and I didn’t think it would matter. Something about it said that once he was done, he was done, and there was no going back. I hurt for them.

I didn’t look for Marcy as we left. Or Brent. Truth was, I wasn’t thinking about either one.

“You couldn’t cut her a break?” I asked Ulric as we left.

“No.”

“But
I’m
spoken for, and you’re always trying to get between me and Bobby.”

“And you always tell me ‘no.’ Very firmly. That’s the difference.”

“But still you try.”

“Lady, a man would have to be dead not to try to get with you. I mean, dead-dead. Not, you know, undead.”

“Thanks. That’s probably the weirdest, sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

He groaned. “
Sweet
. Yup, that’s me all over.”

“I like sweet.”

“Don’t start throwing me a bone now. I’ll just take it for pity.”

“Hon, there is nothing about you that says ‘pity’ to me.”

A couple brushed by us on the sidewalk and Ulric moved in unconsciously to shield me, as if I weren’t the bigger bad, but I didn’t dare call him sweet again. Not to his face. A man could only take so much.

“Does anything about me say
for a good time call
?” he asked.

I grinned. “Ah, there’s the Ulric I know and … like.”

“Ah ha, nearly made you say it.”

“In your dreams.”

“Sadly, you don’t cooperate there either.”

“Go figure.”

He walked me back toward Haunts, but slowed to a stop as he saw Bobby waiting out front, looking impatient, edging toward panic. Bobby froze when he saw us, his body language changing from near-panic to something a helluva lot more complex—relief, tension, hatred … all wrapped up together. I was reminded of the scary-intense moment earlier that night, when I’d woken up to find him staring down at me, all alien and strange.

“I’ll take it from here,” I told Ulric.

“You sure? Your boyfriend doesn’t look too happy to see us together.”

“I’ve got this. You go.
Really
. Don’t you have a show to get ready for?”

“Not on Sunday night.”

“Then go home. Get some sleep.”

He looked from me to Bobby and back. “Call if you need me.”

“I promise.”

Ulric went, like I told him. But I got the sense he didn’t go far. How I knew that when I was about as sensitive as a Mack truck I had no idea, but I did.

“Hey,” I said as I approached Bobby.

Whatever that crazy-complex look had been about, it was gone now, and Bobby was all concern.

“You had me worried! I couldn’t reach you. You didn’t leave a message about where you’d gone.”

He didn’t reach out to touch me, as if he wasn’t sure of his reception. I wanted to touch
him
, but … okay, yes, I was a little afraid. So we stood toe to toe, both of us wanting but neither of us
doing
. I thought of Ulric and Olivia.

“Why didn’t you use the mind-speak to talk to me?” I asked.

Bobby looked uncomfortable. “I … couldn’t. Something about Salem is really messing with me.”

“Bobby, we need to talk.”

I could practically see his shield walls dropping into place, shuttering his expression. He thought he knew what this was about: Ulric. But he was wrong. I’d decided there was no way I would hide from Bobby. He needed to know what I’d seen in him.

What I feared.

10

B
obby insisted on sharing with the class.

We didn’t have too terribly much time to kill before Brent and Marcy got off duty. Without the Gothic Magic Show to observe tonight or any other job as of yet, Eric had the van idling outside the brew pub with us and Nelson already loaded in, all set to collect Brent and Marcy when they emerged.

I kept shooting glances at Bobby to make sure it
was
Bobby beside me and not his evil twin. At least, I assumed it was evil. I didn’t have a whole host of experience with possession or horror flicks, but it seemed to me one didn’t possess an unwilling host in the pursuit of world peace.

While we waited, Eric geeked out about the Ghouligans’ tech and how he’d been able to use the cool new lockpicking skills he’d learned from Donato to break into their hotel rooms and wipe the recordings while the Ghouligans hung at the lobby bar. Turns out that even if he’d been able to use the electromagnetic pulse machine, it would only have fried the equipment, not necessarily the memory cards, etc. And all that only if the equipment was turned on. Anything currently locked and stowed, inert, would have been saved. Eric’d had to do the erasures manually. He’d even thought to screw with their clocks so they’d think some kind of space-time-spirit anomaly was responsible. There’d been only one room he couldn’t get into—one member of the team who was burning the midnight oil, going over footage. That was going to be a problem.

Even still, I was only half listening. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered to Bobby, who I
was
focusing on. He was sitting statue-still beside me. With me, but not, his thoughts seemingly about a million miles away.

“Sure,” Bobby said unconvincingly. “As long as you lock me up so that I don’t murder you all in your sleep, and keep a watch on me all day everyday.”

“You haven’t killed anyone yet,” I said, going for cheery. “For all we know, I was imagining things. Or the spirit was just passing through.”

“Then what’s messing with my magic?”

I didn’t have an answer for that one, and I could tell he didn’t really expect one.

“What’s that?” Eric asked from the driver’s seat.

The side panel doors of the van slid back, scaring me half out of my wits, and Brent and Marcy appeared—the former looking tired and the latter energized, like she was ready to party the night away. Humans vs. vamps. For Marcy it was like mid-day. Meanwhile, it was probably way past Brent’s bedtime. Not that he’d kept bankers’ hours when working for the Feds.

“What’s what?” Brent asked, apparently having heard that much … or having picked it up when he touched the van, being a telemetric and all.

“Get in,” I ordered. “Close the door and I’ll tell you.”

He followed my instructions, and once in, everyone turned to look at me. I glanced at Bobby, not necessarily for his permission to talk, but … well, it
was
his tale.

“I’m possessed,” he announced without preamble.

“
Might be
,” I insisted.

“Probably am,” he said firmly. “Gina says I wasn’t myself when I woke up tonight, and something’s been interfering with my magic all evening.”

“If you’re not yourself, who are you?” Marcy asked.

“We don’t know.”

“Then how do you know it’s anything to worry about? You could be, like, the second coming of Errol Flynn or something.” I gave her a look, and she hurried to add, “Usually I don’t go in for those black-and-white guys, but he was seriously hot.” She stared at Bobby closely, as if to see if he’d developed any Flynn-like tendencies.

Brent leaned toward her. “Uh, honey, you do realize that only the
films
were black and white, right. Not the people.”

She gave him a death-glare to put Olivia’s to shame. “What am I, stupid?”

Brent’s face drained of all color. Oh sure, he could buck the Feds and face down the fangs, but present him with Marcy in all her fiery fury … “No, of course not. It was just the way you said it … ”

“You are
so
sleeping on the couch.”

“Hey,” I protested. “That’s ours.”

“Oh yeah, like you’ll be getting a whole lot of sleep with your boyfriend’s head spinning a three-sixty and him spitting pea soup and all,” Marcy snapped.

“I’d first have to
eat
pea soup,” Bobby pointed out reasonably.

“Fine,
blood
then. Because that’s tons better.”

“Huh?” Eric asked.

“
The Exorcist
,” Marcy replied. “Classic movie.”

“Never seen it,” Eric answered.

She gasped.

Wow, the things you learn about your bestie after you’re dead. Back in Tampa with the steampunk vamps, she’d been all excited over her doomsday dress and poison ring, as excited as I’d ever seen her over strappy sandals or haute couture … and now I found out she had a secret thing for old films and horror flicks. What else didn’t I know? Was it even possible that she could be a closet goth?

“We’ll totally have to remedy that,” Marcy was saying. “Like now. Tonight. Those video rental boxes outside the 7-Eleven are open all night.”

“I think we’ve got bigger problems than Eric’s classic movie education,” I cut in before Hurricane Marcy could sweep us all up in her gale-force winds. Girl was a force of nature. “Eric, tell them.”

“You’re the one who got caught on camera,” he grumbled. “Or
not
caught.”

But he told them about the filming, the equipment, and his attempts to destroy the evidence.

“That’s it,” Brent said. “We can’t stay in Salem. I don’t even think we can risk going back for our things. Eric, drive.”

Eric seemed prepared for this reaction, because he had the van in gear and rolling before the words were completely out of Brent’s mouth.

“But—” I started.

Brent cut me right off. “Already ahead of you. I know we can’t leave Salem to fend for itself. We’ll call the Feds, dump the phone, and get the hell out of Dodge. If we’re about to be exposed, we need to go straight to Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“Develop a Plan B, and then a C, D, E, and F while on the move.”

“Wait,” Marcy said. “Don’t we get a vote? Who died and made you boss?”

We were seeing signs for the highway junction only miles ahead. Eric was heading right for it.

“Look, I know the way the Feds think. I was one. Maximum distance away for a scrub team is, maybe, Boston. How long do you think it would take them to get to us?” Brent asked as Nelson squeaked, “Scrub team?”

“As in scrub us off the face of the Earth,” Brent said, not gently. “Sanitized for your protection.”

No one was paying attention to Bobby, and we should have been. It wasn’t until I looked over for his reaction that I saw that his eyes had gone dark. Not a deeper version of his blue, or even storm-cloud gray, but a brown from which no light escaped. One shade off of total abyss. Bobby had left the building.

“Uh, guys!” I called, hoping to get their attention.

Bobby—or whatever now occupied his body—was mumbling something under his breath, almost a chant, and starting to rock back and forth.

When I leaned in to catch what he was saying, he launched himself at me, hands in rigor-like claws.

“You won’t take me alive!” he cried. Even his voice was different. Deeper. Scary.

Those claws lashed out for my chest rather than my throat, as if he could punch his fist right through it and yank out my unbeating heart. I fell back at the horror of seeing him so transformed, the terror blotting out all else, even self-preservation.

“Holy hell!” Eric shouted, losing control of the car for a second as he looked back to see what was going on.

Bobby was thrown on top of me, which suited him fine. His clawed hands ripped at my shirt like it was tissue paper, shredding it. Blood welled to the surface and fangs snapped into place.
His
. Mine.

I barred my fangs at him and pushed with all my might, but there was more than vamp strength driving him. There was crazy-delusional superpower backing it up, like in those cases you heard about where a man hopped up on drugs was shot, like, forty-seven times and refused to drop—the body not knowing it was impossible for it to keep going. Brent and Marcy had both thrown themselves on Bobby, pulling and tugging. Marcy had him by the hair and, to my horror, was left with a handful of it when he wrenched himself away, out of her grip, heedless of the pain.

“Bobby, stop! Come back,” Brent shouted. “Bobby, you’re hurting her!”

Bobby hurled his now-freed head back, crashing the back of his skull into Brent’s nose. I heard bone crunch and cried out, my legs scrabbling uselessly on the floor of the van, trying to propel me away. But Bobby seemed to have gained weight and mass. He felt like a boulder, like an immovable object.

Nelson untangled from his seat belt and launched himself from the passenger’s seat into the back just as Bobby screamed, “No!”

A pulse of power went out of him, flaring, lighting up my every neuron, flaying my skin. The others cried out in agony and the van seemed to buck like a bronco—then it shuddered to a stop and died.

We were rocked by cars blowing past, laying on their horns, but I could barely hear them over the ringing in my ears, the death cry of every single one of my nerves. My body’s electrical system was fried.

“Oh my God, Brent!” Marcy wailed. Her agony easily putting mine to shame. I fought my way back from the blackness that wanted to eat at me and steal me off into oblivion. I forced my eyes open, forced them to focus. Bobby had fallen across me, heavy and boneless. It took a monumental effort to move him. My arms felt like over-cooked spaghetti—soft and weak. I didn’t know how to make sure he was just dead weight and not truly dead. No pulse, no breath … but apparently, Marcy was having the same problem with Brent, only
he
couldn’t live without all his systems on go.

She was beating at his chest, having no idea about CPR. “Beat, damn you, BEAT!” she ordered his heart as she pounded. Blood tears streaked down her face.

“What can I do?” I asked.

“Your boyfriend killed him! Bobby killed him!”

“He wasn’t himself!”

She turned away from me, continuing to pound on Brent’s chest. Eric was slumped over in the driver’s seat, and Nelson lay moaning where the blast of power seemed to have blown him against the far wall. I yanked out my cell phone, fearing Marcy would kill Brent accidentally with her vampire strength rather than save him, and fearing I’d do the same with Eric.

“911,” the voice on the other end of the phone said as my call rang through. “What’s your emergency?”

“Car accident. Highway … ” I went to the windows, looking for a sign. If not for my vamp vision, I’d never have seen it. “Interstate 95. Just south of Salem. Hurry. My cousin—I think his heart’s stopped.”

“Miss, I’ll dispatch an ambulance to your location, but I’ll need some more information. Please stay on the line with me—”

I cut her off. “He’s dying. Please, hurry. And my uncle—”

The 911 operator was saying something else. I knew it was protocol, but I couldn’t waste time with that right now. I hit mute but left the call connected in case they needed to track the signal.

“Marcy, stop!” I yelled. “An ambulance is on the way. We have to get out of here.”

“I can’t leave him,” she wailed.

“You have to. There’s no choice. Give him a drop of your blood. If he can be saved, that will do it. The EMTs will do the rest. We can’t be here when they arrive.”

I threw myself across Eric’s inert body, listening for his heartbeat. There—very faint, thready. He’d be okay.

“Why can’t we be here?” she screamed at me, already opening a vein for Brent. “Why can’t we be here for them?”

“Because with an accident the paramedics will insist on checking us out as well. They’re bound to notice a little thing like the lack of heartbeat.”

She froze, her face a mask of indecision, knowing I was right but unwilling to accept it. I’d have been the same about Bobby, but he was coming with us.

“Let’s go!” I prompted, after she’d let her blood spill.

Already we could hear sirens in the distance. I went to Nelson and slapped him awake. He was clearly hurting, but I told him we had to get out, asked if he could take Bobby, and got a nod in return.

“Oh no you don’t,” Marcy said, putting herself between Nelson and Bobby. “He
caused
all this. Let him get caught.”

“Let me get this straight,” Nelson said, his tone reasonable. I waited to see what he would say, because there was no way I could be reasonable with Marcy right now. “You want us to leave him here—with Eric and Brent, the two most vulnerable of us. What if he wakes up?”

Marcy nearly swallowed her tongue. “Fine,” she said, as if it tasted like ashes. “Bring him, but keep him away from me.”

“Wasn’t. His. Fault,” I said through clenched teeth.