Under a Spell uda-5 Read online

  “Will, find her!”

  Alex shot out a hand and grabbed Will’s arm. “Wait a minute.”

  Will started to shrug Alex off. “Don’t touch me. I’m not in your jurisdiction, either.”

  “I’m going to go find Miranda and Bud.” I spun, then slapped my hands to my head. “Nina took my car.”

  Will took my hand and folded his keys in my palm.

  “Nigella?” I whispered.

  “Just find the girl.”

  My heart was slamming against my rib cage and tears were stinging at the back of my eyes. I furiously dialed Nina, Vlad, and Miranda at every stoplight, getting nothing but a busy signal, a direct to voice mail, and no answer.

  “Where would he take her, where would he take her, where would he take her?” I mumbled to myself as tears flooded my vision.

  “The Battery!”

  Adrenaline shot through me, hot and pulsing, and I stamped my foot on the gas, blowing through a red light on Kearney, my tires squealing as I took a left on Columbus. I was trembling, using the back of my hand to push away tears as I gripped the steering wheel with one hand. I was focused on my mission, focused on getting to Battery Townsley before Miranda, Kayleigh, and Alyssa could become another set of bones, tossed like so much trash, forgotten in some godforsaken hole. The thought hit me with another round of sobs, which is why I probably didn’t notice the car inching up behind me. It may have been there when I rounded the corner, may have been waiting at the last intersection. I caught its lights—and its driver—in my rearview mirror just before I heard the metal crunch, the ear-splitting pop of windows shattering. I felt myself vault forward; my teeth chattered and my brain seemed to ramp against my skull. Something ripped across my chest and my flesh was on fire. I could taste fresh blood in my mouth, hear the squeal of tires and someone screaming.

  And then everything went black.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Everything hurt—my eyes, my face, my stomach, my hips. My hair hurt.

  “There she is.”

  I blinked, the effort causing a painful spasm that reverberated through my skull. “Will?” My throat was parched and my lips felt dry and cracked. I tried to touch them with my fingertips, but a piece of tape pulled at my skin. “I can’t move. Why can’t I move?”

  Will’s face came into focus. His eyes were kind, but his brows dipped down into deep Vs. “You’re in hospital.”

  “You had an accident.”

  I tried to sit up, tried to angle my gaze toward the other male voice. “Alex?”

  “We’re all here,” Nina said, lacing her cold fingers through mine. “Will, Alex, and me.”

  I looked around at my friends, a brief, warm sense of comfort washing over me. As soon as the calm feeling settled, it was chased away by a bitter cold and I sat up. “Bud! Miranda!”

  Alex came over to my left side and very gently guided me back toward the pillows. “We followed up on Bud, Lawson.”

  “And?”

  Alex pressed his lips together, the muscle in his jaw jumping slightly. “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  Alex slipped his leather notebook from his pocket and flipped it open, his ice-blue eyes going over the pages. “We found him at Battery Townsley. Someone called in an anonymous tip—they heard a gunshot.”

  “But who—?”

  “We’re thinking self-inflicted.”

  My stomach roiled and had I been attached to a heart monitor, it would have flat lined. My eyes went from Alex to Will. “The girls?”

  Will avoided my gaze. Alex swallowed hard. “We had Fallon in protective custody. She doesn’t know anything about Bud. And while we were securing the crime scene, we found Alyssa—alive—wandering in the parking lot. She was badly beaten and so far, hasn’t said a word.”

  “She’s catatonic,” Will said. “They have her in the trauma ward upstairs. She didn’t even react when her parents came.”

  I licked my lips. “Kayleigh?”

  Alex looked down, studying the pattern on my blanket. “We haven’t found her yet. We’ve got men at Bud’s place. We’re going over it with a fine-toothed comb, trying to find the secondary location.”

  I looked to Will, hopefully. “But Miranda’s okay, right? He let her go?”

  Will hung his head but didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  “We failed.” A sob lodged in my throat. “We failed all of them, Will.”

  I sunk into my pillow as Will reached under the blanket, his hand finding mine and giving it a tight squeeze.

  “We did the best we could.”

  I snatched my hand back. “No. That’s not good enough.”

  He fisted his hands, his eyes going from Alex to me. “I’m going to get you a cup of tea, okay?”

  I lolled my head on the pillow, avoiding him. Nina popped off the bed. “I’ll go with you.”

  Alex waited until the door closed behind them.

  “I can’t believe that Kayleigh is still out there—somewhere. And maybe Miranda.”

  Alex cleared his throat. “We’re not going to let this go. We’re still working,” he said. “We brought in the yearbooks you had in the back of your car.” His smile was tight. “As well as the box of files that went mysteriously missing from my office.”

  I threw myself back on my pillow, tossing an arm across my forehead. “Oh! The pain!” I watched beneath lowered lashes while Alex rolled his eyes.

  “Right. Anyway, I was hoping you could go through them and let me know of any other girls you think may have gone missing.”

  I screwed up my brow. “You suddenly want my help? What happened to distancing yourself?” The anger was simmering in my gut, and I was mad at Alex for his continuous flip-flop behavior, at myself for not finding Bud—and Kayleigh—sooner.

  “Lawson, you don’t understand.”

  “No, Alex,” I said, swinging my head. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  His eyes raked over me and I could see immediately that the clear crystal blue was marred and flat. He still looked exhausted and pale. He opened his mouth and then closed it, as if thinking better of it. “This isn’t the right time.”

  I was seething.

  “I’d like to be alone now.”

  Alex closed his notebook and shifted his weight. He paused for an uncomfortable beat before patting my leg awkwardly over the blanket.

  “Take care of yourself, Lawson.”

  Alex met the nurse in the doorway. She poked her head in. “Visiting hours are over.”

  Nina edged her way past the nurse and perched herself at the end of my bed, her weightless body leaving no indentation. “I’m family.”

  Will blinked at me, but I turned from him, too. I heard him sigh.

  “Hey, angel boy, can I catch a ride? The bird decimated my Nigella.”

  Nina ruffled my hair when the room was emptied out. I closed my eyes and sunk into my pillows. “I really screwed this one up, didn’t I, Neens?”

  “You can’t save them all, Soph.”

  I swallowed hard, my throat aching. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes and I let them fall. “I don’t know what made me think I could do this. It just doesn’t make sense, though. If this was all Bud, why the pentagram at Fallon’s house? Why the burned-up uniforms? Something is not adding up. If he wanted the girls for sacrifice, why would he just let one go? I mean, the spell books, the candles? Someone had to be keeping the girls. Someone had to be helping him.”

  “Why? Men kidnap girls all the time.”

  “Men who are in their sixties? He could have taken down each girl on her own, but how was he keeping them? And Alyssa was alive—and with him—when he took Kayleigh. How does a sixty-year-old man manage that?”

  Nina popped off the bed and paced, her fangs straining against her lower lip. I straightened. “There’s something you’re not telling me. Oh, God—is there another girl? Did Bud take another girl? I’m telling you, it can’t just be him.”

 
; Nina batted at the air. “It’s nothing. It’s just that I called Vlad like, sixteen times. He never even called back.”

  I harrumphed and poked at the bowl of green Jell-O sitting on my bedside tray. “He’s sixteen years old. Does he ever call back?”

  Nina puckered her cherry red lips, her perfect façade unmarred. I briefly wondered what it would be like to look perfect all the time or be eternally sixteen.

  “I told him you were at the hospital. He still didn’t call.”

  I frowned, stung. “Sixteen,” I said again.

  Something nagged at me.

  “Heddy.”

  “What?” Nina asked, pausing her pace.

  “Heddy’s not a geezer. Hey, Neens, pass me one of those yearbooks.”

  Nina did as she was told and pulled one out for herself, curling up next to me in my bed. She flopped open the book, her face immediately breaking into a grin. “Ah, the seventies. Everyone looked horrible.”

  “Look up Heddy Gaines.”

  Nina went to the index, her finger going down the line of names. I did the same, and we both flipped our books open to Heddy’s smiling mug at the exact same time.

  And it was the exact same picture.

  “Wow, she hasn’t changed a bit,” Nina said.

  “No, she hasn’t changed at all from 1971 to 1994.” I grabbed another book. “Exactly the same in 2010.” I pulled it closer, studying it. Finally, I flipped to the other indexed page. “Heddy Gaines, Lock and Key Club advisor.”

  My heart started to thump. “Heddy hasn’t aged in thirty years.”

  “A lot of women look good for their ages. Look at me.” Nina modeled her perfect mug.

  “You don’t age, Nina.” I yanked another book—this one from ’63—and flipped it to show Nina. “Neither does Heddy. Not at all.”

  Nina blinked, not quite absorbing.

  “You know who else doesn’t age? Kale or Lorraine.”

  Nina’s eyes went saucer-wide. “Heddy’s the witch.”

  “She’s the faculty advisor for the Lock and Key Club. She was handpicking her victims.”

  “So what about the dead janitor guy?”

  “Maybe it was too much for him to handle. Maybe the guilt got to him. She’s got to do the spell tonight—the seventh night. We’ve got to get to them, Neens. She’s got Kayleigh and whatever she’s going to do to her is going to happen tonight.”

  I kicked the covers off my legs and yanked the tape from my hand, wincing as I removed the IV.

  “What are you doing?” Nina wanted to know.

  “I’m getting dressed. Um, where are my clothes?”

  Nina bit her bottom lip, the blood she had just drunk just barely coloring her cheeks. “I took your clothes home by mistake.”

  “What? How do you take someone’s clothes by mistake?”

  “Will put them in your shoulder bag and told me to take them home. He figured you’d stay in the hospital until the doctor let you go if you had no clothes.”

  “Some mistake.” I put my hands on my hips and paced for a half a minute before I pointed at Nina. “Go. Downstairs. Go to your car and get me something to wear.”

  Nina opened her mouth to protest, but I pinned her with a glare. It was widely known that any free space that Nina had or could find was stuffed with emergency couture. Her UDA file cabinets were stocked with high-end shoes and intricate bustiers. Her earthquake kit held Band-Aids, a ham radio, and a selection of gowns from Carlos Miele’s winter collection—and the trunk of her car was nothing less than a closet on wheels.

  “Get. Me. Something.”

  Nina held up her hands. “Okay. Okay! But most of what I have are gowns or dressy.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Find me something to wear.”

  She skittered out the door without another word.

  I dialed Will and paced while it rang. “Will? Will! Answer the phone! Fine. I need you to meet me at Battery Townsley. Bud wasn’t working alone. I think he was just the fall guy. Call me when you get this.”

  Nina came back through the door, lugging a log-shaped Louis Vuitton with one hand and pressing a pair of stiletto-heeled black boots against her side with the other. “I brought everything I had in the mobile armoire. But I’m warning you—there are none of your things in there. Lexus and poly-cotton blends don’t mix.”

  I rolled my eyes and took the bag from her, dumping its contents onto the bed. A heap of black leather, hot pink lace, and tiny skirts or possibly large belts flopped out. I looked skeptically at the pile and briefly wondered if I could possibly kick butt while mine was hanging out. I picked up the hot pink hunk of tulle. “You don’t have anything any little more authoritative looking?”

  Without saying a word, Nina dove into the pile and fished out the black leather pants. One more shot and a matching shirt-possibly-headband came out.

  “You can’t expect me to wear that.”

  “Look, you asked for clothes and I got you clothes. You asked for authoritative and I got you authoritative. If you’d rather hunt down that crazy caught-in-time witch in your hospital gown, be my guest.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and stepped into the pants. “You didn’t happen to bring in a can of Pam, did you?”

  It took a tremendous amount of pleading, squirming and bending myself into angles that I’m not wholly proud of, but the leather pants were on. The top was, too, mostly, and now Nina was behind me working on the complicated lace-up detailing. I looked at myself in the mirror.

  I wore slick black leather in my mind. I wielded a sword, kicked serious ass, and did it all without mussing my mid-back-length flowing red hair. Tonight, my legs looked a mile long in the leather boot-leather pant combination and a little pouch of chocolate pinwheel belly bubbled over the waistband. Nina had hoisted my boobs to my chin with the little strap-up apparatus and my cheeks were flushed—not exactly with the strength and confidence of a superhero—more like the angst of squeezing into the getup. But still, I looked reasonably badassed even if my hair was neither mid-back-length nor flowy.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Nina hiked up her shoulder bag. “I’m coming with you.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder and shook my head. “I’m not letting anyone else get involved or get hurt. I can do this.”

  She silently handed me her keys.

  I slammed myself into Nina’s car and gunned the engine. I was midway to Battery Townsley when a call came in from Vlad.

  “Vlad?” I screamed into the phone. “Vlad, Nina is worried sick about you. Where are you?”

  But Vlad didn’t respond. Instead, there was some muffled speech, a high-pitched scream, and the thunk of something being hit. I pressed the phone against my ear, listening for some clue—until I heard the cry.

  Desperate. Terrified. Young.

  I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal, pressing it as far down as it would go. After a full block, the light turned red in front of me and I slammed on the brakes, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” I huffed to the sleek black interior. “Ugh!” After what seemed like hours in idle, I clicked on the radio.

  “This is Heather Idello reporting from Battery Townsley where Mercy High School janitor Budd Hastings seems to have taken his own life. Further down the bluff, police encountered fifteen-year-old Alyssa Rand. The teen has been missing for five days and appeared out of nowhere. Police Chief Conway will be releasing more information at a press conference on the hour.”

  I snapped the radio back off and made a squealing U-turn the second the light turned. Whatever Heddy was going to do tonight, she wasn’t going to do it at the Battery.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I said to the steering wheel. “If Battery Townsley was just a dump site, where would Heddy take her sacrifices?”

  I snapped my fingers as the dozens of illuminated pentagrams burned in my mind. I barely had a moment to catch my breath before I was pulling in to Mercy High.

  The building was ble
ak, the parking lot deserted save for one dented Rambler parked in the back corner. I didn’t have to move closer to know that the car was Janitor Bud’s—and likely the one Nina had seen Miranda disappear into. My heart lurched into my throat, but I steeled myself, sinking my administrator’s key into the lock before it occurred to me that I was approaching a powerful, murderous witch, weaponless. I hesitated there for a quick second—but when I heard a scream—high-pitched, tortured, I pushed through the doors, thundering through the darkened hallway.

  “Kayleigh! Miranda!” I screamed.

  “Ms. L?”

  Miranda turned out of a darkened alcove. Her eyes were wide and glassy.

  “Oh, God, Miranda, I’m so glad I found you. We have to get you out of here.”

  I yanked my cell phone out of my bustier—the only place I could fit it—and speed-dialed Will.

  “No,” Miranda said. “You’ve got to help me. We’ve got to save Kayleigh. She’s up there!” She grabbed my hand and stepped up, yanking me to her. “Come on!”

  “Miranda—your hand—your arm. You’re covered in blood!”

  She glanced down at me one more time, her eyes pleading. “Please, there isn’t much time!”

  I shoved my phone back into my bust just as I heard Will’s muffled. “Hello? Hello? Sophie?”

  I was halfway up the stairs when I heard the sound of crushing metal behind me. Someone was kicking and growling and screaming. I took a step backward and Miranda ran behind me, pressing her palms against my back.

  “No, upstairs!”

  I held her off. “Miranda, what is that?”

  “Please Ms. Lawson! We’ve got to get to Kayleigh!”

  The desperate terror in Miranda’s eyes clawed at my chest and I took the steps two at a time until I was on the second landing. The hall should have been dark, but a blinding yellow light was bleeding through the cracks in the art room door. I went for the handle, then burst back, my hand singed.

  “You have to get in there. You have to!” Miranda was clawing at her hair, tears rolling over her cheeks.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and prayed to God the leather would stretch as I center kicked the door, launching it open. I saw the glint of Heddy’s eyes as she looked up at me, startled. Her hair was blown back by the wind that swirled out from the spinning vortex in front of her—the center where the pentagrams had been.