Chapter 43
I’ve never been inside a vampire-safe car before.
It’s one that has blacked out windows so no sunlight can get through.
It’s odd and feels suffocating for some reason, though part of that could be my anxiety.
The sun is just now setting and by the time the plane touches down in Charlotte, the sun will be down enough for vampires to roam.
Xavier’s been on the phone, and I know we both feel helpless.
We’re almost to the airport and then we’re an hour and a half ride away.
It’s really not that long, but it feels like forever, similar to the ride here.
But there is more urgency now. I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting for Xavier to get off the phone so I can bombard him with questions.
I’m assuming he’s been talking to Theo or Ezekiel because he’s been talking in Spanish this whole time, so low and fast I can only make out a few words. He finally puts the phone down when we get to the airport. We’ll disembark in a light-tight area and board our private jet safely.
“Did they find her?” I ask, though it’s obvious by his expression that’s not the case.
“No,” he says shortly.
“You, uh, made her,” I start. “Doesn’t that mean you’d be able to feel if she…”
“Yes,” he answers. “I would feel if she died and she did not.”
“Okay, that’s promising.” I gather up my things as the car comes to a stop. I tried doing a locator spell before we left the hotel, but it didn’t work, presumably for two reasons: she’s undead or because I had nothing of hers to use.
Being undead is an interesting complication. The spell found my parents, who are nothing more than bones in the ground. Being undead is a whole other level of magic, and I’ve never tried to locate a vampire before. Though, more likely, I don’t have anything of Mabels to use.
So now we’re rushing back to Charlotte to try and figure out where the hell Mabel is.
“What about her location?” I ask, knowing she has it shared with everyone.
“Turned off.”
“Has she ever wandered away before?”
“She has, but never during the day.”
I take in a sharp breath. Ezekiel must be panicking. We get out of the car and go into the plane. All the windows are drawn and Xavier and I take our seats. He puts his hand on my thigh and lets his eyes fall closed for a moment, as if he’s trying to sense Mabel.
“I’m sorry you’re here and not there helping,” I blurt, feeling like I did something wrong by having Xavier come to Hamden with me.
“Why are you apologizing?” he asks, leaning back and putting his arm around me.
“I don’t know. I feel bad that we’re not home to help. Or like maybe if we were there then Mabel wouldn’t be missing.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” I shrug, not wanting to go into how I’m so used to being a scapegoat, assuming I’ll get blamed just comes naturally for me. “She’s going to be okay. We’ll find her holed up in some old lady’s house because she saw a creepy doll or something that she wanted to invite over for a tea party.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Xavier lets his head rest on top of mine. We stay locked in each other’s embrace while the plane taxis and then get seated for takeoff.
Xavier is texting, typing with impressive speed and is looking more and more concerned as the minutes tick by.
“What is it?” I ask when the flight is about halfway over.
It’s tense, and the sense of urgency is making my stomach hurt.
I know from experience the longer someone is gone, the less chance you have of finding them alive.
Xavier has been rather distracted the last twenty-four hours.
Is it possible he missed, well, whatever the hell he would have felt if someone stabbed a wooden stake through her heart?
What if she got confused and wanted to see the sun?
Or…what if she couldn’t take life as a vampire anymore and stayed out of the dark on purpose? I blink, pushing those thoughts out of my head. No. She’s okay. She has to be. I didn’t get a best friend just to lose her.
“The vampires at the Velvet Vein,” he starts. “I think they took her and plan to use her as leverage.”
My heart skips a beat in fear. The vampires in that bar are young and dumb.
They would do something like that, not realizing the war they’d be starting if they hurt a Malus vampire.
Anxiety builds inside me, thinking about Mabel– sweet, innocent, and kinda crazy–getting invited to the bar under false premises.
She has to be so scared right now. If they hurt her, I want to hurt them.
Now that it’s dark, I slide open the shade on one of the windows, staring at the lights beneath us. Each minute feels like hours, and I try to come up with a spell to find a lost vampire but can’t concentrate enough to think straight.
“I’m going to meet Theo and go to the vampire bar,” Xavier tells me as the plane starts to descend. “Henry will pick you up and take you home.” He takes my hand and brings it to his lips. “Stay there so I know you are safe. They know who you are.”
I nod, secretly hoping some of those vampires from the bar will come after me. It’s been a while since I’ve killed anything, and now that I know you can kill a vampire by removing the heart, I want to try it for myself.
“Be careful,” I tell him, brows pinching together.
He gives my hand a squeeze. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’ve seen some of the best hunters get cocky, and it gets them killed.”
Instead of disagreeing or saying hunters are weak humans, he just kisses the back of my hand again. “I will be careful, and I will have my brother with me.”
“Do you think she’s at the bar?”
“Perhaps. Wherever she is, we will find her.”
I can see the worry behind his blue eyes, but he’s holding it together.
Calm and confident. I nod and take a breath, looking out the window again as I watch the runway come closer and closer.
We land and get off the plane as soon as we can.
Theo is already there, standing outside the driver’s side of a McClaren.
His eyes narrow slightly when he sees me, and while Xavier is logical and knows us going away has no bearing on what someone else decided to do, I don’t think Theo is thinking the same.
“Go home, and don’t worry about us,” Xavier tells me, stopping short.
He turns around and takes me in his arms. My heart swells in my chest and everything feels like it’s going to be okay when he puts his lips to mine, kissing me deeply.
I can still feel his big cock inside me and I long to sink into bed, disappearing under the covers with him.
“You know I can help.”
“I do,” he says, lips brushing against mine. “But I can’t risk you, Wren. I won’t risk you.” He puts his forehead against mine and my eyes fall shut. “Stay vigilant.”
“I will.” We kiss once more and Xavier gets in the car with Theo. I stand there, watching for a moment, before going over to the black SUV meant to take me home. Henry, the driver, opens the door for me and I get in.
I check Mabel’s social media accounts, going about this as a hunter trying to find a missing person. A lot of what I do is like PI work, and there’s something inside me that tells me Mabel wasn’t taken by the gang of young vampires.
Her last post was from yesterday, and it was something she recorded a few days ago.
I’m certain because I remember her outfit.
The last Instagram story she posted was almost twenty-four hours ago, and I screen-record it before it disappears.
It’s a boomerang of Mabel standing next to a fan.
Mabel looks so quintessentially Mabel, wearing a robin-egg blue dress with her hair curled tightly around her face.
The fan is a cute twenty-something girl, dressed casually.
She’s holding an iced Starbucks coffee. I don’t recognize the street behind them, though it has to be somewhere downtown.
The text “love seeing my Maybells in the wild” has been added at the bottom of the story.
And that’s it.
Biting my lip, I look out the window, trying to get a sense of where Mabel is.
I get nothing. I watch the boomerang again, looking for a street sign or anything, but nothing is clear enough to make out.
Then on the fourth watch, I notice the cup is from Starbucks, but says we proudly serve Starbucks.
Holy shit. This narrows it down to just a few places that sell Starbucks but aren’t actually a Starbucks store. The cup is full, which most likely means they are standing close to wherever this girl bought the coffee.
Okay…what places sell Starbucks? Hotels.
Airports. Bookstores. Heart in my throat, I open my internet browser on my phone and do a search.
There aren’t any hotels serving Starbucks downtown, but there is a bookstore.
I open my maps app and pull up the street view of the bookstore.
An audible gasp escapes me when I match the street to the one behind Mabel.
I look back and forth a few times, needing to be sure.
It’s a match.
The trees on either side of the sidewalk are the same, as is a purple banner hanging from a streetlamp a little down the street. I drop a pin on Mabel’s last known location and then look at the area, trying to see if there are any businesses around that Mabel would be interested in going to.
I have a list going by the time we pull into the garage.
“Thank you,” I tell Henry and rush inside, going right into the parlor to grab one of Mabel’s teacups.
“Hey,” Devon says, appearing in the room. “I take it you heard.”
“Yeah,” I reply and pick up a pink tea cup. “Have you heard any updates?”
“No. Everyone left as soon as the sun went down.” His eyes go to the bite marks on my neck but looks away when I notice him looking. “Did you find your parents?”
It feels like yesterday happened ages ago, though the thought of Xavier naked on top of me inside the mausoleum is fresh in my mind. “I found their graves.”
“Oh, Wren, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks, and it’s okay…or it’s not.” I shake my head. “I’ll deal with it later.”
“Right. Mabel.”
I hold his gaze for a second and then nod. “I couldn’t get the locator spell to work, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s a vampire or because I didn’t have anything of hers. I can find demons, but that’s picking up on dark energy. There’s nothing dark about Mabel.”
“She was a good person and it stuck after she died.”
“We’re going to find her,” I say as I blink back tears. “I know Xavier and Theo already think it was these young vampires not happy about following rules, but…I don’t know. I just have a feeling it’s not. So I decided to go about this old school, like a hunter and I found her last known location.”
As soon as the words come out of my mouth, something hits me. If I could easily find Mabel’s location, so could anyone else. Most people don’t think the same way I would, noticing the little text on the cup and putting two and two together.
But hunters would.
And there are several hunters who would want nothing more than to hurt me. Hunters who know Mabel is my friend because of her social media posts. It’s not vampires retaliating against Xavier who took her, it’s hunters retaliating against me who took her.
I set the tea cup down and rush out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Devon asks.
“Stay here,” I press. “I’m going to bring Mabel home.”