Chapter Twenty-Three

I stood frozen at the sight of billowing smoke. I knew we had to get out of there, but I couldn’t leave without the locks of hair or this nightmare would never end.

I dropped to the floor and crawled around, searching for my clutch.

“What are you doing?” Vaughn asked.

“My purse,” I said. “I have to find it.”

“We need to go.” His voice snapped me out of my frantic searching just as my hands touched my clutch. I tore it open and took out the baggies filled with hair.

“Hold these,” I said. I’d need my hands free, so I had to leave my purse behind. I shoved the baggies into the front pocket of his jeans.

“Let’s move,” he said. Vaughn picked up Sky over his shoulder. I didn’t know what would happen if she started to struggle.

I tried the only window. The lock was sealed shut.

“I can’t open it,” I choked out. “We’re trapped.”

“You can do this,” Vaughn said, but then he started to cough from the black smoke.

I grabbed a chair and threw it at the glass with all my strength. The chair ricocheted without doing any damage.

“Again,” Vaughn said. The smoke was so thick now that I could barely see his face.

I tried to remember what my granny had told me as my eyes streamed with tears. Something about humming? I took a shallow breath, trying not to inhale the thick-as-tar air.

I hummed a few bars of the “Moonlight Sonata.” Granny had told me that for some witches, music helped to focus the magic. I didn’t feel anything magical, but my hand did start to tingle and then throb. It hurt so much that I thought I’d been burned, but when I checked, my skin was untouched.

I muttered, “Break, damn it,” and the window shattered.

Thank god.

I started to rush toward the fresh air but noticed Vaughn was bent nearly double from coughing. I grabbed his shirt front and held on. “Follow me and don’t let go of Skyler.”

“Never,” Vaughn croaked out.

By the time we made it outside, someone had already called the fire department, because I heard the wail of sirens in the distance.

We’d escaped, but Sky had gone limp and quiet, and Vaughn had an angry-looking burn on his arm. I’d coughed up so much smoke, I thought I was at a Miley Cyrus concert.

A fire truck arrived, and firefighters started doing what firefighters do. I wished I’d thought to try telling the flames to stop. Maybe I wouldn’t have lungs that felt like a dirty ashtray.

An ambulance pulled up, and emergency responders started checking us out.

“What happened?” Skyler asked. Her smoke-smudged skin looked pasty.

“You’re safe,” I said.

“It’s so bright out.” She shielded her eyes from the rising sun.

“Do you know how the fire started?” a firefighter asked her.

“I don’t even know where I am,” she replied.

He hustled her off to check her out.

Vaughn came and sat next to me. He gave me a quick kiss. My mouth probably tasted like ash, but I kissed him back.

Then I realized that Travis was gone. “Do you still have the hair?”

Vaughn’s face paled, and he searched his pockets. “Got it.”

I exhaled in relief. “I have to cast the spell now.”

He handed me the baggies. Skyler’s hair was already mixed with lavender and rosemary, but I didn’t have any juniper or fennel. Or the filet of fenny snake.

There was a fast-food restaurant across the street. I started jogging. “I’ll be right back,” I called to Vaughn.

I burst into the empty restaurant. “I need a frozen fish,” I said. “Now.”

The cashier gaped at me. “You don’t want me to cook it first? The microwave only takes a second.”

“Now,” I replied. “It’s life or death.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. He disappeared into the back and returned with a small container.

I gave him a twenty. “Thanks for this.”

When I returned to where Vaughn stood, I held up the frozen brick. “I’m improvising.”

A eucalyptus tree was nearby and went over and pulled off a few leaves. It would have to do.

I mingled Skyler’s and Travis’s locks and the other ingredients. “Release her,” I said in my most commanding voice.

“Now what?”

“We cross our fingers and hope it worked,” I said.

“I know it did,” he said. “We make a good team.”

I smiled at him. My throat was still burning, but I managed to get out, “We are. And now I’m ready to go home.”

But even as I said the words, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to leave and forget those other girls, even if I wanted to. We’d drive Skyler home, where she’d be safe with Granny, and then we’d figure out a way to stop these monsters, even if it meant telling Granny the truth.

That I knew she’d lied. That I knew my mother was alive.

But none of that was going to happen. Because when I looked around to tell Skyler it was time to go, I couldn’t find her.

“Where is she?” I asked. The last time I’d seen her, she was being examined by a cute EMT. But the EMT was talking to a firefighter now.

“Maybe they put her in the ambulance?” Vaughn suggested, but when we asked around, nobody seemed to know anything.

I slumped over, shivering in the night air. The spell hadn’t worked.

Of course it hadn’t. I’d used a frickin’ Filet-O-Fish.

I wanted to scream.

“Don’t cry,” Vaughn said. “Maybe there’s another explanation.”

I brushed away the tears. “I’m not crying. Smoke got into my eyes.”

“What now?” Vaughn asked, taking my hand.

I looked at him pleadingly. “She couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t…” Vaughn trailed off when he saw my face.

“Don’t say it, Vaughn,” I warned. “She’s our best friend.”

“You almost died.”

“But I didn’t,” I said. “I won’t.”

…

We searched the entire city, but Travis and the rest of The Drainers had vanished. We returned to the hotel, smelling of smoke and adrenaline. My phone rang while we were still in the parking lot. My grandmother was calling.

“I thought you were going to check in with me,” she said.

“I’ve been a little busy,” I said. “What do you know about Jure Grando?”

There was a pause, and then Granny replied, “Why are you asking?” Her voice was sharp.

“He’s Travis’s dad,” I said. “And he just tried to burn me alive.”

“You need to come home right now,” she said.

“I’m okay,” I said. After I managed to calm her down enough that she wasn’t jumping into her car and coming to Diablo, I asked again, “Have you heard of him?”

“Yes,” Granny said. “He’s the king of the vampires.”

“And he’s a shitty one,” I said.

“So I’ve heard,” Granny said.

“Tell me everything you know.”

Granny sucked in a breath. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“The vampire world is divided up into realms,” Granny said. “Kingdoms. Jure’s in charge of the California realm. And he has a bad reputation, even in the vampire world.”

“Bad how?” How much of an asshole did you have to be to get a bad rep with vampires?

“He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way,” she said. “Supposedly, he killed his own mother. The only things he cares about are wealth and power.”

“Granny, I know now that the monsters in the dark are real,” I said. “I need to know how to fight them.”

She sighed. “I just… I wanted to keep you from all this.”

“I know,” I replied. “But you can’t. I have to help those girls.”

I heard Vaughn shouting my name.

“I’ll call you back later, Granny,” I said and hung up.

“Look.” Vaughn pointed to the side of the hotel, and there it was: the tour bus was parked a block up. I never thought I’d be so happy to see that mobile petri dish.

“Quick, they’re pulling out,” I said. “We need to follow them.”

Bobbie Jean and her white pickup screeched around the corner of the hotel parking lot and pulled to a stop beside us. “Get in,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re chasing after your girl, aren’t you? I know where they’re heading. We’ll talk on the way.” Bobbie Jean’s blond hair was frizzy and unwashed, and her clothes were wrinkled like she’d worn them for a few days. “Get in or I’m leaving without you.”

What was the real story between her and Travis? I had a feeling she wasn’t telling us everything. I didn’t trust her, but what choice did I have?

Vaughn looked at me, and I nodded. I took the middle while Vaughn slid in next to me.

“I saw Travis hustle her into the tour bus,” she explained as she started driving. “The rest of the band was with them. But that’s not the bad part.”

“Bobbie Jean, just spit it out,” I said on a sigh.

“Jure was with them, and they’re headed for the ranch,” she said.

“A ranch? Where?”

“North of here,” she said.

“How do you know all this?”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I told you,” she said, “I’ve been tracking Travis since the band left Texas. I found out a whole lot about his daddy, too. None of it good.”

I caught Bobbie Jean checking Vaughn out and wanted to growl “mine” like some Neanderthal. Or maybe lick him. Skyler’s brother, Davis, used to lick the cookies so nobody else would want one.

Instead, I let my incisors go down and flashed my gold fangs at her. She nodded once, like I’d said what I’d been thinking aloud, and returned her eyes to the road, where they belonged, instead of all over my guy.

“Tell me more about this ranch,” I said.

“Jure’s place, real private,” she said. “It’s up north a way. Where he takes the girls.”

“You mean the Sundowners? Or maybe the Bleeders?” I was trying to ignore the ominous way she said it.

“Not them,” she said. “The other girls.”

“Don’t they have enough?”

“I don’t want to worry you—” she started to say, but I interrupted her.

“That phrase has never made anyone worry less,” I said. “Please just tell us.”

“The ranch is where the girls go in, but they don’t come out. And we only have until sunset to get there.”

There was something she wasn’t telling us, but I didn’t have time to push her right now. Sky needed us.

Bobbie Jean drove with her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “The ranch is a long way north,” she said. “You two may as well get some rest.”

Vaughn wrapped an arm around me. I snuggled in. “You make a good pillow,” I told him.

Vaughn and I had been up all night, and though I was too amped to fully sleep, I did doze.

It was already dark again by the time Bobbie Jean eased her truck onto the shoulder. “We have to walk the rest of the way,” she said.

“There’s nothing around here,” I said. We’d stopped along a desolate part of the road, with nothing to see except a few horses and cows grazing in the fenced-in pastures. “Except endless space.”

“In space, no one can hear you scream,” Vaughn quipped.

I nudged him. “You’re not helping.”

“Follow me,” she said. We hopped a fence and then started walking. It seemed like we walked for miles without seeing anything but ancient oaks, tall grass, and placid bovines, but we finally came to a long driveway. An iron gate guarded the entrance. There was a mailbox next to it, but you couldn’t see the house from the end of the drive.

I dropped back, and Vaughn did the same. “Do you think it’s a setup?” I grabbed his hand.

“Nothing would surprise me now,” he said.

“Stop talking,” Bobbie Jean said. “Any closer and they’ll be able to hear us.”

She seemed so different from the bubbly girl I’d met in Los Angeles.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Yes, many somethings are wrong,” she said.

Through the trees, a Spanish-style mansion came into view. We were still far away, and there were only a few security lights on, but I made out a red tile roof and an enormous fountain near the crescent driveway.

The structure was luxurious, but it looked odd to me; lopsided, even. Then I realized there weren’t many windows, and the ones it did have were disproportionately small for the size of the house. It looked like…a prison.

The house itself was shrouded in darkness. But in the driveway were several black limos.

“Looks like Jure’s having a party,” Vaughn commented.

Bobbie Jean flinched.

“What do we do now? Walk in the front door and say hey?” I didn’t really have a plan, but I couldn’t leave Sky.

“I know another way in,” Bobbie Jean said.

“You seem to know a lot about this place,” I observed.

“I was here with Travis once,” she said.

“I thought you said you met him in Austin?” I asked.

“Something like that,” she hedged. “Anyway, the kitchen has a back door. Nobody ever uses it.”

“Vampires don’t eat?” I asked.

“They don’t cook,” she corrected. “Jure prefers his blood fresh.”

I could smell the blood. It saturated the air. The house, the grounds, and the entire ranch were soaked in blood and pain.

The back door was unlocked. Vaughn and I exchanged a look.

We crept through the immaculate designer kitchen and down a long hallway. I could smell vampire, but it wasn’t The Drainers’ scents. It didn’t reassure me that I was able to tell their terrible vampire smell from other, equally as terrible, but different vampire stenches.

We were walking into a trap. We all knew it. I turned to say something to Bobbie Jean, and that’s when our suspicions were confirmed.

“I’m sorry,” Bobbie Jean whispered, right before someone put a gun to my back.

We were led into a huge great room, which was decorated in southwest style with a dash of toxic masculinity.

Oh, wait, that was just Jure and his cronies.

“Someone had a free hand with taxidermy,” I said, staring at the stuffed heads of dead animals.

“I enjoy dead things.” Jure smirked at me from his leather chair, which was as big as his ego. In other words, ugly and oversize.

Clustered around him was a group of men holding glasses filled with blood.

I recognized a Chicago-based rapper, an A-list actor, a famous quarterback, a musician (not Travis—one who could actually sing), and another man who, although I didn’t recognize him, wore the unmistakable air of self-importance. And to round things off, the boys in the band stood awkwardly by the fireplace. It was weird to see the band without a couple of Bleeders hanging off them like human fast-food meals.

The men all wore expensive cologne, applied with a liberal hand—perhaps to mask the stench of vampire, but I could still detect it.

Travis made the rounds, handing out something small and silver. He was passing out demo tapes like it was 1995. Why had Bobbie Jean brought us here?

I scanned the room, but Skyler wasn’t there. In fact, there weren’t any girls in the room except for Bobbie Jean and me. I didn’t like where this was going.

The Chicago rapper held up his glass. “There’s nothing more refreshing than the blood of a young girl.”

He would be the one I killed first. As soon as I figured out exactly how to kill a vampire. It had been nothing but luck both times I’d managed it. Luck and my trusty drumstick.

Travis glared at me. “What’s she doing here?”

The guys in the band looked over at me. “What’s the problem? She’s cute.”

“Cute?” Travis said. “She’s the reason we needed a new drummer.” Then he looked over at Vaughn. “Why is our temporary drummer here? This is a vampire-only party.”

Jure scowled. “You let the witch’s consort in your band?”

“What?” Travis replied. “He’s good with the sticks.”

Jure didn’t even look at Travis when he backhanded him.

“Is Skyler actually here?” I asked Bobbie Jean. “Or did you lie about everything just to get us here?”

She didn’t answer me, but Jure said, “My son’s little friend is currently my guest.”

“Let her go, Jure,” I said, but he didn’t even flinch. My command voice bounced right off him.

He smirked at me. “That only works on young fools like my son.”

He motioned to someone sitting in a little alcove. “Get their rooms ready.” An older woman in a severe black uniform stood and then left the room. From my brief glance, I couldn’t tell if she was a vampire or human, but I thought she was human.

His stare forced me to look up, but I remembered to focus on something over his shoulder and avoided his direct gaze. I was astonished by the sheer rage coming off him in waves. One wrong word, and he’d snap my bones and rip out my heart to serve it in a stew.

I’d never had anyone hate me like this. Terror made it hard for me to think.

I wasn’t sure if he hated me because I was a Mariotti witch or simply because I was female.

“Don’t look in their eyes,” I whispered to Vaughn, but Jure heard me. He let out a laugh that sounded like it had been kept in a vault and only taken out for special occasions.

“That might work with my pathetically weak progeny, but I’ll bend you to my will as quickly as you bend a straw.”

Arguing with him would only sap my strength, so I tried ignoring him.

“Take off your necklace.”

My hand raised against my own volition, but I managed to stop it with enough concentration. “No,” I said. “If you want it, come and take it from me.”

“You won’t be so disrespectful soon,” he managed, but he looked shaken. He recovered quickly and snapped his fingers at The Drainers’ piano player.

“She’s wearing a necklace,” he told him. “Take it off her. She’ll be more…compliant without it.”

Armando approached me slowly. “I don’t suppose you’d take it off for me?” he asked.

“Must have flunked Vampire 101,” Bobbie Jean muttered. “Vampires don’t ask; they tell. That’s why Jure’s so pissed at you. You resisted his compulsion.”

Interesting. I turned my attention to Armando, who was still watching me hopefully.

I shook my head. His hand inched closer to my neck, where the chain showed. I snapped my teeth at him, and he jumped.

“Remember Fang?” I asked him.

“Fang’s dead,” Armando said.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied meaningfully. “I killed him.”

Now if I could only figure out how I’d done it and repeat the effort.

He studied me for a second and then shook his head. “Anything you could do to me, Jure would do worse.”

He wrapped his hand around the chain and started to yank but let go almost immediately when his skin started sizzling. The smell of burned vampire flesh filled the air.

The guy howled with pain while I gagged from the odor. Still, I smirked at him as he writhed on the floor.

“Leave it for now,” Jure said. I noticed he didn’t try to take my necklace. He smiled at Vaughn. “We have other ways of making Ms. Mariotti cooperate.”

That asshole.

“You’ve done well, Bobbie Jean,” Jure said.

Bobbie Jean squared her jaw. “I brought her here like you asked,” she said, confirming she’d double-crossed us. “Now give me my sister.”

“You’ll be reunited with the girl soon enough,” Jure said. His eyes gleamed, and I realized he was getting a sick pleasure from playing with her. If it were up to him, Bobbie Jean and her sister wouldn’t be leaving here.

At least not alive.

Bobbie Jean seemed to realize the same thing. She took a swing at him, but Jure’s body moved at an incredible speed, and when he stopped again, he was on the other side of the room.

I’d been so naive—too worried about Sky to worry about myself. Or Vaughn.

“Please show our guests to their accommodations,” Jure said blandly, like we’d been invited for a sleepover. His lips were wet with blood from his goblet.

I held out a cross, which Edna had given me before I left, and Jure laughed in my face. “I’m afraid we’ve built up quite a tolerance to the more traditional vampire repellents,” he said. “We have coexisted with humans for hundreds of years.”

That probably meant holy water wouldn’t work, either, and I’d read that the strongest ones could even walk in daylight, as long as they avoided direct sun.

The housekeeper returned, stone-faced. “The rooms are ready, sir.”

“Thank you, Hilda,” he replied. “My friends would enjoy a little playtime, I think.” The other vampires laughed, which sent a shudder down my back. I didn’t think we had the same idea of “playtime.”

She nodded once and left the room. The guy holding a gun at my back prodded me with it until I followed her.

They took Bobbie Jean and Vaughn somewhere else and then led me upstairs to a bedroom and shoved me inside. Now that I was here, “room” wasn’t exactly the right description. Holding cell? Prison?

There were bars on the window, and after the door slammed, I heard the distinct click of a lock from the outside.

Bobbie Jean could rot after betraying us, but I would find Vaughn and Skyler and get us out of here. I wished I knew how I’d managed to kill vampires before, but it had just happened. I hadn’t even meant to do it. But now, when I really, really wanted to kill one, my powers had deserted me.

I still had my trusty drumstick. I hoped that would be enough.