Dirt #2
“Gabrielle and Lauren preyed on a doe-faced young intern. Gabrielle was the doe’s immediate superior, and she would force the doe to do all of her work and then claim credit for it.
The doe tried to bring it up to management, but Lauren flirted with the manager and convinced him that Gabrielle was the victim and the doe was merely doing the research that was her job and then trying to claim credit for the entire project. ”
He tilted his head. “I arranged for the doe to be absent the day of an important presentation—with the project she’d done completely on her own safely locked away in her desk at work.
Gabrielle broke into her desk to steal it and ended up covered in blue dye with a symphony of greeting card musical inserts blaring.
Everyone at the meeting came out to see what was going on. ”
I frowned as the light turned green, and I eased into the intersection. “Couldn’t she just claim that the project was her work and she’d had to get it out of her absent assistant’s desk?”
“She tried,” Alex agreed. “And Lauren’s lover backed her up.
But I had told the doe to do this project in her own hand—no electronic copy.
Gabrielle didn’t know that, and was caught…
unprepared. And since the manager’s bosses were all present, he was unable to save them—or himself. All three were fired.”
“Okay, so they could definitely be angry enough to seek revenge.” I pulled into a parking spot in front of the apartment building.
Since we had no way of knowing if whoever had sent the zombie after Alex had seen Poppy, both the necromancer and Alex stayed in the car while Peasblossom and I went into the apartment building.
As I had on the other visits, I had an official-looking file in my hand that held Alex’s “mug shot,” a police report I’d printed off the internet, and a blank form for the victims to fill out.
“Ready?” I asked Peasblossom.
The pixie squirmed deeper into the collar of my red trench coat. “Ready.”
I knocked on the door.
No answer.
I raised my hand to knock again, but just before my knuckles touched the wood, the doorknob turned. I pasted a polite expression on my face and waited while the door slowly opened.
A girl stood there with one hand braced on the doorframe as if she needed the help staying upright.
Her eyelids drooped, and she looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair in a couple of days at least. She was dressed in a pink hoodie and matching yoga pants but didn’t have any socks on, and there was something about the paleness in her cheeks that made me think she was unwell.
“Hi,” I said, carefully. “Are you Lauren Reilly?”
“No, I’m Gabrielle. Hang on a second.” She looked over her shoulder, swaying as the movement seemed to set her off balance. “Lauren?”
She sounded as if she’d tried to yell the name but didn’t have the breath for it.
She opened the door a little wider. “Come in.”
Another girl came out of a room off to the left as I stepped into the shared living space.
She had rich brown skin, but even without the paleness, I could tell that whatever was wrong with Gabrielle seemed to be affecting Lauren too.
She moved like a woman fifty years older, shuffling forward in fuzzy green slippers.
She made it to the couch and grasped the back cushion to steady herself as she looked at me.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
I looked back and forth between the two girls. “I’m here looking for information on a cyberhacker who’s been targeting people in the area.” I opened my file and pulled out Alex’s picture to show them. “Do you know this man?”
Both girls tensed.
“No,” Lauren lied. “I’m sorry.”
“Who is he?” Gabrielle sidled around the couch and let herself collapse onto the threadbare cushions. “He looks like he got beat up. Is he in trouble?”
“He certainly is,” I said, pinching my face in stern disapproval. “This young man has been illegally spying on people on this campus. And we’ve had reports of him hacking into personal computers and disseminating private information.”
“That’s terrible,” Lauren murmured, sitting on the arm of the couch. “I hope you catch him. Sorry we can’t help.”
I called my magic, weaving purple energy into my voice before I spoke again. “I think you can help me, Lauren, Gabrielle. I think you can tell me who this is.”
Neither girl was in any shape to fight the hypnotic enchantment, simple as it was.
Lauren’s eyelids fluttered. “Scales. He calls himself Scales. He…I saw him in a coffee shop.”
“You were his victims, weren’t you?” I pressed, pushing more magic into my voice. “How did you know it was him?”
“Heard him talking at the coffee shop.” Gabrielle ran a hand over her face, bringing some color into her cheeks. “Recognized his voice. Such a…loser.”
“Sexy though,” Lauren said, sounding as if she were falling asleep. “Nice abs.”
“Don’t say that,” Gabrielle insisted, propping her chin on her arm where it lay on the side of the couch. “He’s…trash.”
“You heard his voice?” I asked. “When?”
“He called. Said he was…sorry about us losing our jobs.” Lauren closed her hand into a fist. “He was not sorry. He laughed.”
“You both seem to be a little under the weather,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine.”
“She said we’d feel a little tired,” Gabrielle added, her eyelids drifting closed. “Nothing to worry about.”
“She?” I repeated.
“The…witch.”
Peasblossom shot out of my collar, and I held my breath until I realized she’d made herself invisible so the girls wouldn’t see her.
She scrabbled over my shoulder to my neck so she could speak directly into my ear.
“They said witch!”
I pressed my lips together, resisting the urge to rub my ear as the reverberations of the pixie’s voice made my eardrum buzz.
“What did the witch do for you?” I asked.
Lauren smiled as she closed her eyes. “Revenge. She said she’d make Scales pay for what he did to us.”
Gabrielle frowned. “She was supposed…supposed to send us a video.” She forced her eyes open and looked at Lauren. “She didn’t send us a video.”
“Maybe it’s not ready,” Lauren mumbled.
“What did she ask in return?” I pressed.
Lauren sighed. “Just some energy. It’s okay, it’ll…come back. Just need some rest.”
“Lots of rest,” Gabrielle added. “And time. Just rest and time.”
“Energy?” I stepped up to the couch and knelt so I was facing Gabrielle. “What kind of energy?”
“Don’t know. She had…some kind of dirt. It felt…sticky. Like it was mixed with glue.”
I rose to my feet, one hand going to my waist pouch.
“What are you doing?” Peasblossom asked.
“I need salt. I need to get a look at these two with my third eye.”
“You shouldn’t open your third eye here,” Peasblossom argued. “You don’t know what happened to them. There could be something here, feeding off them.”
Neither girl responded to Peasblossom’s voice.
I wasn’t sure if they were asleep or just that oblivious.
“That’s what the circle is for.”
I rooted around for the bag of salt, but it remained firmly hidden. I sighed and knelt on the floor again.
Peasblossom watched me remove a pair of socks, an extension cord, and a packet of tissues before letting out a sound of disgust and flying down to land on the zippered edge. “Let me find it.”
I moved my hands as Peasblossom dug through the enchanted depths of the fanny pack, throwing out a handful of playing cards, a roll of duct tape, and a rain of Q-tips before finally emerging victorious with the bag of salt.
I shoved the detritus back into the pouch and laid out a salt circle, confident neither girl was aware enough to realize I was doing anything strange. I touched the circle and imbued it with a flash of my magic, waiting for the tight hum of energy to tell me it was active before standing.
Opening one’s third eye was dangerous business.
While it did let you see echoes of the astral plane—very handy if you needed to see spells, or someone’s true form—it also required you to rise partially out of your physical body.
Which meant two things. One, something on the astral plane with no physical body of its own could take advantage of the opportunity to beat you back into your own flesh and blood, leaving you with no body to return to, and two, anything on the astral plane that happened to be nearby would be in a perfect position to attack your psychic form.
And death on the astral plane was as bad as death on the physical plane.
Safe in the circle, I took a deep breath and opened my third eye, careful to focus only on Gabrielle at first.
I saw the problem immediately.
“Peasblossom, someone took a portion of their life force.”
“What?!”
I studied the colors around Gabrielle’s body. The shimmering lights of her aura were missing in one large, noticeable chunk. As if something had taken a bite out of the energy field given off by living things.
A quick look at Lauren confirmed she’d suffered the same fate.
I closed my third eye, shifting from one foot to another as my energy settled. “Lauren,” I said, raising my voice, “I need the contact information for the witch who helped you.”
“I’m not supposed to give it out,” Lauren mumbled.
“But I’m going to ask her when you can expect that video,” I prompted. “You want to see the video, don’t you?”
“I want to see it,” Gabrielle said. “I wrote it down. There’s…the paper is on the fridge.”
I broke the salt circle and walked into the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a scrap of paper with a phone number on it.
And a little pentagram drawn next to it in purple ink.
“I’ll make sure to have her send the video as soon as possible,” I said, taking the scrap of paper and walking toward the door. “Thank you for your help.”
Neither girl said anything else as I left.
I paused before leaving the apartment building, giving Peasblossom time to squirm back into my collar so the freezing February wind wouldn’t suck the warmth from her tiny body.