Fangtabulous (16 page)

Renfield was up again.

“Master!” he called.

I looked at where I’d last seen Rebecca, but she’d vanished. Brent was staring down at the water, so Marcy must have succeeded in pulling her in, but from the way the water was churning, the fight was far from over.

I took advantage of Renfield’s distraction to jump him, grab his head in my hands, and
twist
for all I was worth. Breaking his neck broke my heart. I felt it snap along with his vertebra.

He lay still. So still. Dead. That his condition was temporary didn’t do much for my state of mind. He’d heal, but it would take time, especially without the benefit of new blood.

Marcy popped up from the depths, dripping wet and spitting water out of her mouth. “Do you see her?” she asked urgently. “The girl is like an eel. She got away from me.”

Brent, who’d been studying the water, shook his head. “No sign of her. She didn’t … drown, did she?”

“I wish. She kicked off my chest and I lost her.”

“There,” Brent shouted suddenly, pointing.

“Hold this,” Marcy ordered, tossing something up onto the pier.

It was Rebecca’s obsidian pendant. It must have come off in their struggle.

Marcy struck out in the direction Brent had pointed. But after an initial burst of speed, she got slower and slower until she started to sink instead of swim. She bobbed to the surface, gasping, “Help!”

Before I could even process the SOS, Brent had his shoes off and was diving in after her. I was torn between guarding Bobby and doing the same, but Brent had Marcy in no time. He hugged her to him with one arm and stroked back to the pier with the other as I waited anxiously topside. I knew she couldn’t drown—she didn’t need to
breathe
—but that didn’t do anything to calm my fear for my friend.

He pushed her up out of the water to me, and I took her under the arms, drawing her out and laying her down. Brent pulled himself up after her, panting as he stood above us.

“What do we do for her?” he asked. “CPR won’t work.”

“Feed her a bit of your blood,” I told him. “That’ll do better than CPR.”

He bent down beside her, grabbed a knife out of his back pocket, flicked it open, and cut himself. He opened her mouth gently and let the blood fall in.

“What happened?” I asked him. “What went wrong?”

“If I had to guess … ” Brent paused. “Well, mythology has it that vampires can’t cross running water, which we’ve always thought was hokum. Clearly, they got from the old world to the new, so they’ve crossed oceans. Must be, though, that it takes a lot out of them. I don’t know the scientific explanation. I’m not even sure there is one.”

“Well, damn, let’s get her away from the water then. Let’s
all
get away. We have Rebecca’s pendant, at least. We don’t want to risk her coming back for it.”

Brent lifted Marcy into his arms in one of those heroic carries with her head cradled against his chest. Me? I went, as always, for the bling. Rebecca’s necklace lay abandoned on the pier, its dark stone sucking light. Marcy had touched it, so I knew it had to be safe, but there was something about it I didn’t like. I pulled my fleecy sleeve down over my hand to pick it up, careful not to touch it with my bare skin. I tucked it quickly away in a pocket and we walked to where I’d left Bobby, who was still unconscious. My beautiful, brilliant boy, all beaten to a pulp.
I’d
done it to him. Me.

“Do you need a hand with him?” Brent asked, nodding at Bobby.

He had his hands full, and I had my vampire strength. And my guilt. “No, I’ve got this.”

Brent watched me, just to be sure. “Do you think we should call someone about Rebecca?” he asked, pretending not to see me struggling to get all of Bobby’s limbs where I needed them to be after declining his help.

“As soon as we get back to the car. Where is it?”

“Ulric drove us here, but we left him back on the other wharf. We couldn’t let Rebecca see him or the car—it wasn’t safe.”

“He didn’t put up a fight?”

Brent’s lips twisted. “We told him it was for
your
safety. That seemed to convince him. Gina, the boy’s got it bad. You’re going to have to tell him if he doesn’t have a shot.”

I looked over my shoulder at Bobby’s upside-down face where it bumped my butt. He looked so …
him
. So handsome and non-homicidal. So peaceful, like a fallen angel. I looked back up at Brent. Whatever he saw on my face, he didn’t push it.

“I’ll call for pick-up,” he said, gently lowering Marcy’s legs to the ground.

“No need,” came a voice out of the darkness. Ulric. “I parked way back at the seafood shack, but I couldn’t stay away. Guess you didn’t need my backup, though.” He was looking at me when he said it, his eyes all intense. “I’m so glad you’re okay. Can I take that from you?”

That
being Bobby. “Nah, I’ve got this, thanks.”

This. That.
As if Bobby was nothing more than my own personal baggage.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“My aunt’s out tonight with her bunco group. We can go back to her place.”

“What about our footprints on her rug?”

He shrugged. “So maybe I’ll vacuum.”

Ulric, being domestic. The mind boggled.

Marcy was coming around, and she was able to walk with Brent’s support. “Wha’ ’appened?” she asked, her head lolling against his shoulder as he supported her, their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

“You don’t know? You were swimming after Rebecca when you just seemed to run out of steam.”

It took her eyes a second to focus on Brent’s face.

“I ’member now. I felt so heavy.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all. I thought of the old
witch test. If you floated, you were a witch. If you drowned …
well, I guess maybe you were a vampire. Either way, the test seemed like a lose-lose proposition.

“Do you think Rebecca’s a witch?” I asked, not realizing that I was the only one riding my train of thought.

“Why, because of her pendant?” Brent asked.

“No, the Book of Shadows.”

14

E
veryone looked at me blankly, and I realized that no one had a clue what I was talking about. I was so used to sharing mind-speak with Bobby, to having someone know what I was thinking, that even with everyone around, I suddenly felt totally alone.

Then I heard a
snap
and my gaze riveted on the boy in my arms. Bobby was adjusting his neck like he was working out kinks rather than totally realigning his spine.

I felt the piercing stab of guilt with every crack. Then his heart-stopping blue eyes focused on me and the most amazing smile lit his face. “Hey, beautiful.”

My knees gave out, and Bobby would have toppled to the ground if Ulric hadn’t steadied me and then helped lower him to the ground.

“It’s you!” I said stupidly.

Then I dropped beside Bobby and kissed his face—his cheeks, his eyes, his chin, finally his mouth. Such a flood of warmth washed over me that I thought I might spontaneously combust. He looked a little confused until I got to his mouth, and then he held onto me for dear life. You know those crazy-awesome film kisses after the hero and heroine have just survived a killer virus or mondo explosion or, like, Doctor Doom. Well, it was like that, with tongue.

Then there was the throat-clearing in the background, but we ignored that. It was the hooting and hollering from the drunk people just stumbling out of one of the bars over on the wharf that did the trick, especially when two of the guys started offering suggestions about what should come next.

We moved on to Ulric’s Crown Vic. He grabbed a towel out of the trunk for Marcy to slosh on. The rest of us piled in—Bobby riding shotgun, since he was the tallest of us.

“So what now?” he asked. No one suggested he get into the battered trunk. We knew there was no point.

Shooting sidelong glances at Bobby all the while, I told them about the Book of Shadows Rebecca was searching for. It took all of one second, since I didn’t really know much.

“And she thought I could help?” Brent asked.

“She knew you were a telemetric. She must have had something related to the book that she thought you could read.”

We both looked to the pocket where I’d stashed the pendant.

“You think?” he asked.

I reached into my pocket, but hesitated to pull it out. Rebecca had summoned spirits with an object of power. I had the overwhelming sense that this was it. The amulet was making Salem’s spirits strong. What if it had some kind of control over Bobby … or rather, his ride-along? We could lose him again. Or he could go nuts and fry the Crown Vic like he had the van.

“Only one way to find out,” Brent said, as if he could read my mind. I knew he couldn’t, but … maybe I was just that obvious.

Reluctantly, I brought out the amulet, watching Bobby the whole time, looking for the first sign that he was going to go all Renfield again. But for the moment he just looked curious, and tired. Almost human.

“Wait!” Marcy said as Brent reached to take it from me.

She grabbed his ears and gave him a scorching kiss first. Everyone else looked away.

“
There
. Now you won’t get lost in it or anything. You’ll remember what you have to come back for.”

“Always,” Brent said, heart in his eyes. Okay, ewww, bad visual.

I passed the amulet off to him before there could be any more mushy stuff that didn’t involve me and Bobby.

Brent’s eyes almost immediately rolled up into his head.

“Brent!” Marcy called, but I grabbed her before she could rip the amulet from him.

“Give him a sec,” I said. “We need to learn what we can.”

“But—”

Brent spasmed and dropped the amulet like a hot potato.

“That’s definitely what’s powering the spirits,” he said, gasping for breath. “It’s like some sort of energy cell with no off switch.”

“Any connection to a Book of Shadows?” I asked, pulling my sleeve over my hand again to rescue the dangerous amulet from where it had fallen.

“Could be. I got a pretty good sense of the original owner. You’ll never believe this.”

“What? Who?” I mean, on a previous mission we’d met Rasputin.
The
Rasputin. The Mad Monk, advisor to the doomed Romanov royal family killed during the Russian Revolution. Next to Elvis, Jesus, and Dracula, how much crazier could it get?

“Tituba,” he answered.

There was that name again, and I still couldn’t remember what it meant. Marcy’s face crinkled up in confusion.

“The name sounds familiar,” I started. “But—”

“The witch!” Bobby exclaimed, and suddenly I remembered it from all the times he’d read us Salem history snippets until we wanted to brain him. “The slave who taught those Salem girls the ‘spells’ that they felt so guilty about, they started acting out.”

“Wait, I remember this!” I said, excited. “She and her husband John Indian were accused of witchcraft.”

“He turned on her to save himself, just like the girls,” Bobby jumped in again.

“That so sucks,” Marcy said, totally recovered now.

“Not so much,” Bobby responded. “Unlike so many others, she wasn’t put to death. Someone bought her way out of prison.”

“So, what’s this amulet?” I asked Brent.

“Something she brought with her from her homeland. When Tituba sensed that the authorities were coming for her, she knew everything she had would be confiscated—the accused basically funded their own trials. Tituba hid the pendant and her Book of Shadows to save them for her daughter, and also so they couldn’t be used against her. She foresaw her own imprisonment.”

“Harsh,” Marcy commented.

“But she didn’t hide the pendant and book together,” I cut in, “or they’d have been found together.”

“I didn’t get all that from the amulet. Imprints are only left when strong emotions are involved—I got Tituba’s fear that witch hunters would come for her, and her acceptance of an almost-certain death, which turns out wasn’t so certain after all. I don’t have much more than that. Her daughter did get the pendant somehow, because I feel her here as well, overlying the memories, obscuring the hiding places. I have images, but not much else … nothing that means anything to me. The necklace was in a secret spot, a hidey-hole within the household where she served. The book … wasn’t,” Brent answered helpfully.

His gaze shot suddenly to Bobby, as if something had just occurred to him. “Should he be hearing all this?”

We
all
looked at Bobby, whose eyes were, mercifully, still baby blue.

“Brent, it’s
Bobby
,” I said, even though I had the same doubts.

“For now. But you said Rebecca knew I was a telemetric. I know Bobby wouldn’t have intentionally told her about me, but he doesn’t seem to have any control over himself, and I don’t see how else she could have known.”

“I’m right
here
,” Bobby said.

“That’s exactly my point. Until we break this … spell or whatever, you can’t be trusted. What if this is plan B? What if you’re still somehow bound to her and she meant for you to come along and turn on us once we solve her mystery and find the book?”

“Paranoid much?” I asked.

“Occupational hazard,” Brent answered.

“What occupation? You wait tables.”

“Enough,” Ulric said, cutting across us all. “You can’t start turning on each other. If you want the amulet destroyed or deactivated or whatever, I know who to call.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

“Olivia?” I asked.

He nodded.

“But the coven’s already tried to lay the spirits to rest. They couldn’t do anything.”

“They didn’t have the source of the problem to study, though.”

“You’ll make the call?” I asked.

“Um, yeah, hold that thought.”

Ulric had slowed the car to a crawl and was staring hard out the window ahead of us.

There was a patrol unit about a block away on the right, along with another car, both parked on the street. Since all other cars on the block were tucked away in driveways or garages, this seemed pretty significant.

“Your aunt’s place?” Marcy asked, jumping to the same conclusion I had.

Ulric nodded. “But why?”

He pulled over to the side of the road and started to get out of the car. Brent reached over from the back seat to stop him. “What are you doing? It’s probably you they’re after. They probably have the Crown Vic on tape at the hospital driving away after the incident there. You can’t go in.”

Ulric shook him off. “I have to! What if something’s happened to her?”

“Wait!” I said urgently. “Think about this for a second. I’m not saying don’t go. Just, if you do, if you’re questioned, remember that the police don’t have anything on you. If there’s footage from the parking lot, they’ll know you weren’t the one driving getaway. You weren’t even conscious.”

“Whatever. I’m not worried about me. What if the killer cop’s the one in there interrogating my aunt?”

We all went silent.

“You all go,” he said. “I’ll handle this on my own. But I have to go in there.”

“No,” I said. “I mean yes, you go. But you won’t be alone.”

“But they can’t see you … ”

“They won’t,” I said. “And neither will you.”

He gave me a funny look, but I didn’t explain and he didn’t wait around for it. He was already out before I turned to the others. “You all bug out, in case they search the car.”

But don’t go far
, I mind-spoke to Bobby, forgetting for a second that his abilities were on the blink.
You stay you until I get back.
I love you.
I wished … I slipped out of the car, pushing aside the pain of the wishes I couldn’t make come true. Instead, I focused on going insubstantial. Almost in an instant I was as light as air. The sounds and smells of the night lost their clarity. The ground was no longer beneath my feet. Even my sorrow seemed a distant thing. It took all my concentration to move myself after Ulric. I wondered if this was how actual ghosts felt. If so, it was no wonder they took possession of a body, to recover the immediacy of life when they could.

I floated, past the police car and the other cars, toward the house. I sensed rather than saw Ulric let himself in, mostly by the change in the air as the heat from the house met and mingled with the cold air outside, creating a swirly pattern of contrast. I aimed for that turbulence, but he must have shut the door right behind him, because as I hit the entrance, I smacked up against something dense. Only my momentum pushed me on through … or rather, it felt like pieces of me squeezed through, like spaghetti through a press. Panic that all my parts might not get sorted out again on the other side overtook me. This happened every time I went through something solid. I hated it.
Hated
. With a fiery passion rivaled only by my feelings toward my old arch-nemesis, Tina Carstairs.

Then I was
in
, past the door, all together again. Or so I hoped. I tried to get a sense of where
in
put me. A big open space that I’d be caught out in at any second? The safety of a coat closet?

I sensed the air, stretched out my awareness, and tried to let the impressions come. It definitely wasn’t a closet, or I’d have subtle pressure from the contents on all sides, but it wasn’t a big space either. Air currents were swirling just beyond—people talking or moving around. I
had
to know what was going on.

The more solid I became the better spy I’d make, but also the more discoverable. I floated behind some big object—like one of those typical New England pieces that combined a wooden bench for pulling on your boots with a mirrored back for seeing how you looked in them, and a wide backsplash with hooks on either side for hanging jackets and scarves. Aside from that, the area felt almost entirely taken up by boots, lined up all the way to the door like soldiers standing at attention, reporting for duty.

Luckily, the behemoth piece of furniture was big enough to hide me, which was a good thing, because I had to go at least semi-solid to hear. I peeked out from behind the jackets and could see straight into the sunken living room, in which Ulric’s aunt, I guessed, was serving two uniformed officers—luckily
not
the killer cops—tea and cookies. I craned my neck to see farther into the room, and nearly knocked all the coats aside in shock. My heart wanted to beat just so it could stop all over again.

There, right in Ulric’s living room, were our former Federal handlers: Agents Sid and Maya, aka Stuffed Shirt and Stick-up-her-butt.

Brent had been right that the Feds would be on top of the goings-on in Salem, and wrong to think that they wouldn’t be instantly connected to us. It couldn’t be mere coincidence that it was these two agents who’d showed up. Here. Now. We were so screwed.

Seeing Ulric, his aunt—a militantly trim woman in a lavender sweater set, her gunmetal gray hair like a helmet on her head—straightened. A teacup with hand-painted cherry blossoms dancing across it was clasped in one hand and a matching kettle in the other. She trapped him with her steely gaze and demanded, “Ulric, what have you done?”