Chapter 19
Ophelia sat in one of the overstuffed chairs by the boxed-in fireplace wishing she’d picked a seat closer to the door. Around her seven witches and six warlocks filled the rest of the seats, all of them looking dour.
“I knew it was just a matter of time before this bit us,” a bitchy little witch with blonde pipe curls groused. “Pun intended,” she spat, glowering at Ophelia.
“Matilda Hanson!” A big woman of color in a bright kaftan chided. “We don’t need more of your sourness. What we need is a plan, and bitching about what’s been done isn’t helping.”
“And we all know how cooperative they are,” Matilda muttered.
“Pot, meet kettle,” Sweets hummed, crossing her arms over her generous breasts. “Warding the town’s all well and good, but it’s not gonna be enough. You saw how Thaddeus sidestepped the ones at the node with that shadow walking of his. Unless you have any insight?” she asked Ophelia.
Ophelia tensed as every eye landed on her.
“Um…maybe? I know that they have to see where they’re going, or have been someplace before to shadow walk, and vampires do need to be invited into a private residence…
but some of them are able to compel if they make eye contact.
People need to stay away from their windows. ”
The woman in a pink tracksuit beside her furiously scribbled down notes. “What about holy water and garlic?”
“Garlic doesn’t do anything. Holy water, wafers, crosses—anything sacred or blessed is a deterrent, but honestly it just pisses most of them off. They will stay away from hallowed ground.” She chewed her lip, thinking about the house Gideon had bought.
“What a fine time to be without a priest,” Sweets muttered.
“Agreed, but the church can still suffice as a refuge,” a tall, white-haired man said. He’d been paying close attention to everything Ophelia said, like he was weighing the truth of her words.
“Otis, you know we can only get about a hundred people in there,” Ms. Pao frowned. “Remember how devastated the Lackland girl was when her cousins from Pelton had to stand outside for her wedding? And in the rain, no less.”
“It’s still something,” Sweets murmured. “And she said ground, not building. That churchyard’s been consecrated, right along with the cemetery if memory serves.”
Ophelia’s gut churned. “Weather aside, you don’t want people out in the open. Some of the Crimson Guard can, um, do things.”
“Things? Like…” Matilda prompted.
“Control shadow,” Ophelia blurted out. “They can make it corporeal. Drag people to where they can get at them. Suffocate. People need to stay behind four walls with the blinds drawn. Even if the vampires can hear their heartbeats, they won’t be able to get a good lock on them.”
“Hear their heartbeats…?” a big man with a bristly beard asked.
Ophelia nodded. “It’s how Cerceta? hunt,” she said, naming the tribe.
“Well, isn’t that just tits,” Matilda spat, throwing her hands up. “So we can’t even send Felix out distorted to assassinate the sons of bitches.”
“Whoa,” he said. “Since when am I an assassin?”
“Well, you killed a dragon, didn’t you?”
He sputtered at her, pale. “T-this is a little different!”
The coven muttered like they didn’t quite agree with him.
“Okay, calm down,” Jena said like she was trying not to laugh. “Ophelia said a stake through the heart, fire, and decapitation will kill a vampire. Let’s focus on that. Mr. Sheffield, your family’s bent is fire, do you have any ideas?”
A tall warlock with thick gray streaks at his temples pursed his lips. Ophelia squirmed. He’d been staring at her since he’d come in and it was more than a little creepy.
“It would be possible to set up a series of cantrips,” he mused, “but once triggered, they’re impossible to control. Anything in the vicinity would become engulfed.”
“Unless we bolstered them with water and earth,” another man with a long, thin nose murmured. “But I don’t see it happening. In one location, yes, but we’re talking about the entire town, and if it’s overrun by a plague of rats, there’s no way we can stop all of them.”
The coven looked at Ophelia again, and she didn’t know what to say.
“Have you seen anything, Aggie?” Ms. Pao asked, scooching forward in her chair.
“Not anything that will help,” the crabby witch scowled, “and I’m positive that’s because of the gargoyle.”
And you could hear a pin drop.
Otis cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, there’s a gargoyle?”
“Mmm.” Aggie sipped her tea like she hadn’t just lobbed a bomb at them. “What? Don’t look at me. Apparently, he came to shack up with little Miss Fang over there and decided to pledge his service to the node while he was at it.”
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Ms. Pao asked. “Historically, they’ve been quite effective at defending their nodes. I’m assuming that will carry over to the town?”
Ophelia nodded. “Gideon will do whatever he can to protect Havers.”
“Yeah, as long as he doesn’t lose his shit and destroy it when something doesn’t go his way,” Aggie muttered.
Jena rolled her eyes. “As long as Ophelia’s safe, that won’t happen.”
“Then should we be focusing on her?” Sweets asked. “From what I remember, a gargoyle is a hell of a lot more equipped to deal with this kind of thing than we are, but keeping one girl safe? We can do that.”
“And the first step is to ward the town,” Jena agreed. “It might not keep all of them out, but it should slow them down enough for Gideon and the pack to deal with them easier. I can focus on pulling from the node to power that while the rest of you work on shoring up the Witchery’s defenses.”
The coven murmured in agreement.
“Okay, then what are we going to tell the town?” the woman with the notepad asked, absently rubbing lipstick off her teeth.
“We tell them the town’s warded, but it’s not a guarantee of safety.
They need to stay inside, lock their doors, draw the shades, and keep away from any windows,” Felix said.
Surprisingly, he sounded like he knew what he was doing.
“Meanwhile, the weres are going to be patrolling the woods and streets, and Gideon will be doing whatever it is that gargoyles do.”
Jena pushed up out of her chair with a heavy sigh. “And until then, I’ll be in the kitchen making vamp-be-gone charms to go on dog collars. Felix—”
“Yes, yes,” he said getting to his feet as well.
“I’m already on it. Sal has whatever he had in stock set aside for us, but fair warning, most of them are bedazzled neon pink and are gonna have to be used as anklets.
This town has way more Pomeranians than Great Danes.
Give me an hour to get town hall situated, and I’ll be back with them. ”
The rest of the coven began milling around, some leaving and others joining Jena in the kitchen. Ophelia chewed her lip, her anxiety rising. Was she just supposed to just sit here?
“Ah, Ophelia, is it?” the tall man with gray streaked hair asked, coming to sit by her. He extended his hand. “Max Sheffield.”
“Right, the fire guy.”
He chuckled. “Yes, among other things. You probably don’t remember me, but I co-own the nail salon on Main with my ex-wife. I’ve seen you come in quite a few times since we summoned you.”
Ophelia stared at him. Dear God, he better not be hitting on her.
Max ducked his head and cleared his throat. “Yes, well, my reason for approaching you is that I couldn’t help but notice, ah…” he waggled a finger at his face. “The color of your eyes is quite striking. It reminded of the stories my babcia would tell about the dhampirs in the old country.”
He suddenly had her attention. “Dhampirs? I’ve never heard that word.”
“No, not over here at least,” he chuckled.
“In Eastern folklore, dhampirs are the offspring of human mothers and their vampire assailants. Impossible, obviously, but they’re said to have all the abilities of vampires without their thirst for blood, possessing violet eyes, and hold a vendetta against the tribes. ”
“A vendetta?”
“Mmm. In the stories, most became vampire hunters to avenge their mothers’ honor. As I said, impossible, but…interesting.” His eyes ran over her face, then he smiled. “At any rate, it’s nice to meet you. I should probably try and find Rick to see where he wants me.”
“Yeah, thanks…” Ophelia said as he left. Huh. A dhampir. It was stupid, but she somehow felt better after talking with him. If there were folktales, maybe she wasn’t the only one this had happened to. Well, if that’s really what she was. Though you’d think Thaddeus would’ve said something.
Ophelia snorted. No, he wouldn’t.
She got up and went into the kitchen. Sweets, Matilda, and Ms. Pao were all bent over Chambers’s bagged corpse with Jena. “Hey, Jena? Can I use your phone?”
“Why, you need to text someone?” she asked, raising a brow.
Ophelia rolled her eyes. “No, I want to google something.”
Jena pulled it from her back pocket and tossed it to her. “Just let me know if anything comes through from Chase or Felix.”
“Yeah, I will, thanks,” Ophelia murmured going back to her nook and opening up the search app. How the hell did you spell “dhampir?”
Gideon crouched on the banks of an ice-glazed pond staring at the copse of birch.
He frowned. The woods here were dense, and he’d be hard-pressed to effectively surveil the site from above.
Worse, skimming around the conifers and oaks would be an impossibility given the amount of scrub growing beneath them.
There were just too many damned places for prey to take cover.
Jena’s father had chosen his ingress well, damn him.
That the portal was within the circle of birch was a given, though the copse wasn’t what it was anchored by.
It hadn’t taken Gideon long to see the signs of a former mound scarring the landscape, rather like a pockmark.
Which meant that this wasn’t a portal, per se, but a scant, and the thin spot between realms that was left behind when a mound was destroyed should’ve been long since dealt with.