20. Wednesday
WEDNESDAY
IN WHICH DESSA’S WEEKEND HAS A ROUGH START
The blurry dream of a shadow chasing her through a field woke Dessa in the darkness, her heart thrumming through every pore.
Three panicked seconds of frozen fear passed before she registered that she was still in the tiny apartment over AzRIO.
She forced in a shuddering breath, only to realize Jamison Kane was slumped over the side of her bed, sound asleep with his arm draped across her middle almost protectively. And her body relaxed.
Not alone.
She honestly couldn’t believe he’d stayed.
Not only that, but he hadn’t left her side since he’d attacked the Vampire and tried to save her.
Burrowing deeper into the warmth of her bed, she marveled at the calm his presence brought.
He murmured in his sleep, his forehead furrowing, and she absently reached out a finger to smooth the line between his brows.
He calmed at her touch, and her hand moved to his sandy-blond hair, the locks soft in her fingers.
He claimed she’d ignored him in high school, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Of course she’d noticed Jamison Kane. Hadn’t everyone? Even in the crowded halls, something about him had stuck out—an effortless ease that drew every eye. Like he was made to live life.
So, naturally, she’d also noticed him noticing her. That’s why she’d pulled so hard away. Why she’d intentionally forced her gaze to move over and past him. But now, here he was again, that very high-school impossibility talking in his sleep on her bed as she combed her fingers through his hair.
With all the trauma still thick on her skin, and with sleep still tugging at her, she couldn’t see farther than the next morning, but right now, in this moment, she wouldn’t have wanted to be with anyone else.
Impossibility or no.
Dessa woke to the tinny alarm of the phone she couldn’t remember plugging in. Her body was sore, and her head pounded as she sat up. The previous day’s events rushed back and she squinted around the apartment. Jamison Kane was gone.
Evidence of him, though, popped out from all around her apartment. Ibuprofen and a glass of water sat beside her bed, and the bubbling of coffee trickled through the air with a warm, bracing aroma.
She moved with care as she got ready, mentally counting off the tasks she’d have to tackle in the office, but even still, her internal preparation wasn’t enough to brace her for the onslaught of the rest of the week.
While she’d dreaded Melba’s concerned mothering, in reality, Melba barely had time for such attention as representatives from the Werewolf packs, the Vampire clans, the Hexxer compound, and even the Magicker collective pounded on their door asking for updates and plans.
Arthur recruited Jamison to translate rules and regulations into “plain English” for Werach’s enforcement office down the street.
Meanwhile Dessa fielded a tidal wave of phone calls from the community—and her parents—to assuage their fears of rising tensions.
Which left Melba to fend off their regular clients, who’d no doubt just come in for the gossip.
Even Noah and Richard seemed to sense the intensity and stayed out of their hair—only appearing in order to deliver a few pizzas at the end of a much-too-long day and relate the news of Julia’s funeral.
Apparently her husband, distraught with grief, had collapsed into a catatonic state of grief by the end of it, and the clan wasn’t planning on waking him until her killer had been brought to justice.
Though Richard was relatively circumspect when sharing these details, they still twisted the knife of guilt in Dessa’s gut. Another family destroyed in her wake.
She tried desperately to contact Brad, but all her messages and emails went unanswered.
After facing similar plights during her teenage years, she knew better than to worry about him, but it did nothing to relieve her stress levels as the regional office sent in their own investigative team.
Dessa followed the two agents around town as they searched for leads, asking the same questions that had already been volleyed repeatedly—not that they’d bothered to read the file or listen to her when she tried to explain the nuances of local relations.
She held her breath, waiting for the accusations or criticisms of AzRIO’s handling of the case.
At worst, with their funding already hurting, such things might even lead the regional office to shut them down right here and now.
With that guillotine hanging over AzRIO’s head, she wasn’t sure if it made her feel better or worse when the regional agents made it to Friday with “nothing significant to report.” They dropped the single sheet of paper on Arthur’s desk with a hurried mumble of “keep up the good work” before being called off to a different case.
The round-the-clock tension incited painful memories of her start-up, and as she deleted Aiden’s stupid daily voicemail, she had to force herself not to check their eco-accounting social media pages for updates.
Though she’d treated the work like her budding-business-child, she couldn’t deny that it was their all-encompassing preoccupation with its success that had probably done in her relationship.
It was a chapter she was ready to leave behind, and she was not going to let this team repeat those workaholic mistakes.
Especially when much of what they were being expected to do should’ve been handled by the enforcement office, undermanned and poorly managed or not.
Finally, at 6:13 p.m. on Friday, Jamison texted that Werach’s enforcement office, where he’d been trapped trying to walk Werach through the investigation all day, had closed for the evening. Actually, what he texted was:
Jamison: FREEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDOMMMMM
With a very un-Friday-like sigh, Dessa decided AzRIO might as well follow suit.
Invoking her uncle’s name and some nonsense about allowable overtime, Dessa officially shooed everyone out for the weekend.
Even with Dessa’s officially made-up jargon, Melba practically had to drag Arthur from his desk, while Richard babbled about the apocalyptic onslaught of threats flying between the Vampires and Werewolves.
Dessa shook her head as she watched them go.
In the twilight, she blinked as her gaze caught on what looked like an unattached human shadow across the street.
She blinked again, and it was gone. With a groan, she rubbed at her eyes.
They were all going to go crazy if they kept up this intensity without any forward progress.
But of course, even as she thought it, she took the case files up to her apartment.
Placing Brad’s gun on the table beside her, she put on a history documentary that she hoped would lull her to sleep while she absently flicked through her notes.
Kiwi-Fred had somehow slipped into her bedroom and glanced at her curiously while he strutted up and down the top of the couch.
She paused briefly to scratch his neck, grateful for the company.
As much as she wanted to relax, they had to find the Vampire before he took someone else.
So far he’d taken a Magicker, tried to kidnap a Were, and killed another Vampire, which meant he probably wasn’t welcome in any of those communities.
It also made it unlikely that there was a personal connection between him and his victims. Trying to harvest PC folk for paranormal substance creation spoke of a Hexxer connection, but the regional team had completed a solid sweep of their compound and hadn’t found anything.
She pulled out the map Melba had made that charted everywhere they’d looked for the Vamp. At this point, it was basically a bird’s-eye view of Azalea Springs covered in red cross-hatching. But…What had Julia said before she’d died?
Dessa zoomed out until the other paranormal communities around Orlando appeared on the map.
Of course, there were so many it would be hard to canvass the area if the Vamp were based somewhere else.
The black print of Lithfield jumped at her from a more urban area—the place Julia had come from.
It was hard to believe that she’d only been in town for a couple weeks before this happened.
But…Dessa closed her eyes, pressing her fingers into her temples as she tried to think. Julia had looked at the Vamp like she’d known him.
And she’d said something about how he’d followed her.
Her eyes snapped open.
Originally, Dessa thought Julia meant that he followed her that day.
But what if Julia meant he’d followed her from Lithfield?
The AzRIO database from that area should have a photo of every Vampire that had come and gone.
Hope spiking through her, Dessa raced down to her computer.
She didn’t even bother to turn on the lights as her monitor’s screen glowed blue on her skin.
Of course, this was probably a dead end. But the Vamp had called her Jules, apologized to her even, which could’ve implied a personal connection.
She found Julia’s photo first, marked as a recently turned Vampire along with the date of her departure.
But her shoulders fell when she didn’t see their guy listed as a current member.
That would’ve been too easy though. Maybe he was someone who’d left years ago?
She scrolled past a shocking number of names; Vampires really were the vagrant type.
She went back three years and was about to give it up when his familiar face flashed up on the screen—long brown hair and that same scar on his chin.
Jean Marc Boucher.
Still, he looked almost like a different person in the photo. He was smiling for one and seemed relaxed. Normal. The Lithfield office report read that he’d departed the country, linking to a different international network that she didn’t have access to.
Obviously though, if he’d left, he hadn’t been gone for long, and if he’d come back, wouldn’t he choose places that were familiar to him?
With a few more clicks, she printed out a list of the addresses he’d used over the last fifty years.
Then in another flurry of commands, she overlaid them on the map of the surrounding area.
One of his residences was described as vacant and in poor condition on the outskirts of the city, somewhere in between A-Springs and Lithfield. A secluded location in the wetlands that would give privacy for all kinds of things—perhaps even kidnapping victims.
On instinct, she called Jamison first. More than anything, she needed someone to make sure she wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there. She also needed a sanity check, and honestly, she needed her backup.
His phone went to voicemail. Ugh.
She went down her list of contacts next, leaving the same message on every voicemail she encountered.
“The abductor’s name is Jean Marc Boucher, and I think I’ve found a potential residence; I’m emailing you the coordinates.
” She called regional, the enforcement office, the pack, the clan, the Magickers, and of course since it was four a.m. on a Saturday, absolutely no one answered.
She tapped her fingers on the desk, trying to think.
The last time she’d chased this guy, it ended badly for her, but with every minute that passed, Carly’s survival rate dropped.
Meanwhile, Dessa potentially had a location for her.
Returning to her email, she found the addresses of Alpha Hismark and Rhett Carline.
She’d go pound on their doors, and with any luck, she could muster a cavalry to investigate.
With a relieved smile, she grabbed her keys, pop-stake, and her uncle’s gun from upstairs before walking out to the car. She was mentally running through her to-do list when a silhouette loomed out of the alley’s shadows. She raised her pistol only for it to be smacked out of her hand.
“Stop.” Jean Marc’s familiar voice rang through the dark alley.
Dessa pushed herself against the brick wall, sliding her pop-stake from her pocket and extending the wooden spike. With another slap of the Vampire’s hand, that went flying too. Apparently, Dessa was going to have to talk her way out this morning. “Listen, you don’t want to do this.”
Not exactly original, but she was having a hard time thinking around the panic short-circuiting her brain.
Her magic churned in her chest, but this was no defenseless Nesci threatening her.
This was a full-grown Vampire with his own competing magic flowing through his veins.
And if she revealed her gift but failed to control him, who knew what he would do with her then.
Jean Marc limped forward, and though he was obviously in pain, he looked more relaxed than he had when she’d last seen him. “If you cooperate, I’ll take you to Carly.”
“Carly?” Dessa’s mind spasmed with shock. “You have her?”
“She says you can help me get away,” Jean Marc said.
“Um…” Dessa didn’t know what to say to that. If she said she wouldn’t help him escape, did that mean he would kill her? “Listen, I want to see Carly but—”
“We’re running out of time.” Jean Marc bared his fangs, his body jerking as he seized her by the neck. “Get in the car.”
“No, no, no, no.” Moving to a second location with a murderer was not how Dessa wanted to start off her weekend, and she made a last-ditch effort to wrench away from him.
Jean Marc swore under his breath, and a sharp sting bit into the soft flesh of her neck before she crumpled to the ground.