Chapter 20
Ophelia stared out the window and tapped Jena’s phone against her chin. Her search hadn’t found much more than what Mr. Sheffield had told her, but she supposed that really didn’t matter. What did was that last aside he’d made.
The one about vampire hunters.
That had gleaned more interesting results.
They weren’t so common on this side of the ocean, but on the Eastern continent, an entire society had been built around eradicating any hint of vampirism.
True, that wasn’t really news. An entire semester back in high school had been dedicated to the Purge and history behind it.
Unsurprisingly, she’d been more interested in skipping class than the details of something that’d happened almost a hundred years before she’d been born.
But based on what she’d just read, the Western continent was the only place in the world where vampires had any kind of a foothold. They’d been hunted to extinction everywhere else. Ophelia couldn’t imagine they were happy about that. She chewed her lip. No wonder Vesper wanted Havers so badly.
She wasn’t going to get it.
Ophelia stood and went back to the kitchen. Jena stood at the stove, dipping a hank of dime-sized charms into a bubbling cauldron on the stove.
“Find what you were looking for?” she asked.
Ophelia shrugged and traded the phone for the takeout bag from Cups on the table.
She fished around for her sandwich and sat.
“Yes and no. Mr. Sheffield said something about my eyes reminding him of a dhampir’s from his grandmother’s stories.
It’s like a human-vampire hybrid. There wasn’t much more than what he’d said about them, but the vampire hunter bit was interesting. ”
Jena’s brow quirked. “Thinking about a new vocation?”
“No, but it kind of makes sense why Vesper wants Havers so badly. The Citadel is the only place on earth where nobody fucks with them, and I’m pretty sure she’s got visions of world domination.”
“What?” Jena snorted. “Like ‘the South will rise again?’”
“Yeah, something like that. Where did everybody go?” Ophelia asked, taking a bite of ham and cheese goodness.
“You’d think they would’ve taken the out the feds gave them and laid low after the Purge.
” The witch shook her head. She hung the charms to dry on a cabinet pull and gathered up another batch.
“The rest of the coven went to make sure their families are all safe, and Matilda needs a bunch of supplies to do an auric reconstruction on Chambers. Which, by the way, sounds more like necromancy than the courtroom spell Liam mentioned. Aggie’s been in her room.
” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, lingering on the doorway before she glanced at the clock on the stove.
“They should start trickling back any time now. No messages from Chase?”
“Nope. You think Gideon will be able to do something about the portal?”
“You’re probably a better judge of what he can do than me, but I’m gonna go with no. I really wish I knew how it got there in the first place, but it’s been there forever, and I’m pretty sure my mom would’ve closed it if she could’ve.”
“She couldn’t because it’s a scant, not a portal,” Aggie said, sweeping into the room in a black catsuit. “What do you think?” she asked, giving a spin.
“Oooh baby. Emma Peel’s got nothing on you,” Jena said, tonguing her cheek.
She looked more like a geriatric version of Catwoman to Ophelia, but whatever. “What’s a scant?” she asked.
Aggie grunted, smoothing her zipper. “A scant’s what’s left where a mound once existed and the veil’s at its thinnest. When they originally set up the grid, they put nodes over as many of them as they could, but the fae didn’t exactly lay their mounds out in a line.
The feds hit most of them out west and up north, but this one and another down south fell into the close-enough-for-government-work category. ”
“Of course it did,” Jena muttered. “But I guess that makes sense, considering we’re on the fringe. Better to miss one here than in the center of the country.”
“You’d think so, but you’d be wrong. Any witch worth her salt knows picking something apart is easier when you start at the edge.
Too bad they’ve got a bunch of warlocks on the payroll more concerned with their slide rules than doing the job right,” Aggie muttered, pulling out a chair and sitting across from Ophelia.
The sun streaming through the long windows behind the woman sparkled in her steel gray hair, turning it silver. “That kettle still warm?”
Jena flicked on a burner. “It will be. Hey, do you know anything about dhampir?”
“I dunno. You pick a name for that little bundle you’re toting around yet?”
“No,” Jena drew out the word, visibly refraining from saying something far different. “And technically, it’s not me asking, it’s Ophelia.”
Ophelia nodded, crinkling up the paper from her sandwich as she swallowed. “Mr. Sheffield says my eyes remind him of what he’s heard about them.”
Aggie waved a dismissive hand. “He was probably hitting on you. Man couldn’t keep his dick in his pants if you paid him. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
The spoon Jena was holding fell the counter. “What? Dear God, please tell me you did not have sex with Max Sheffield.”
“I’m not telling you anything until you name that baby Agatha,” Aggie muttered, squinting at Ophelia.
“Although Max isn’t wrong, at least not as far as rumors are concerned, but never in my very long life have I ever met a dhampir.
” She sucked her teeth. “It’s not possible.
Before the vaccine, shacking up with a bloodsucker would’ve made you one, too, and even now, they aren’t exactly virile. ”
Ophelia huffed out a breath, having come to the same conclusion.
“Of course, I’ve also never met a vampire bound to a node.” Aggie shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Maybe they are out there. I can’t imagine they’d advertise it if they were. People are leery of vamps to begin with. A hybrid would freak them right the fuck out.”
They all glanced into the other room at footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later, Chase and Gideon walked in.
“He can’t close it by tonight,” Chase said without preamble.
Aggie narrowed her eyes at Gideon. “I’m surprised he thinks he can close it, period.”
He quirked a brow back at her. “I can do a great many things, madame, and dearly wish that cleaning up after the slipshod use of magic over here didn’t have to be one of them, but it appears to be an ongoing theme. One would think, you, of all people, would know better.”
“Ouch,” Jena chuckled, putting a hand to her breast.
“Leading a horse to water and making it drink are two very different things,” Aggie sniffed, looking down her nose at him.
“And why do I suddenly feel attacked?” Jena muttered.
The older witch snorted, patting her close-cropped hair. “Because you’re not stupid.”
Ophelia glanced from the motion to a flash of movement above Aggie’s shoulder outside the window. Ophelia stood and went closer to the glass.
For a split second, a lanky black rat stared at her from the fire escape on the neighboring building, then disappeared. Her heart leapt to her throat.
“They’re here,” she whispered.
“Come again?” Gideon asked, striding to her side.
“I— There was a rat. On the fire escape, watching us.” She turned to him, panic beating through her veins. “It was one of them, Gideon. The vampires are here.”
Gideon swore, pulling Ophelia away from the window and into the next room. “Aren’t there any shades in this infernal place?” he roared at the row of them overlooking the street.
“Aggie, grab some sheets from the hall closet to tack up,” Jena said, wiping her hands on a cloth and grabbing her phone. She began to text furiously. “Damn it, I thought we had more time.”
“We should’ve, Liam’s out there with the pack,” Chase said, doing the same. “Did you feel anything try to cross the wards?”
“No.”
Damn it, Gideon hadn’t either. What kind of chthonic sorcery—
“They’re not coming from the scant,” Ophelia interrupted, back at one of those damned windows.
She looked out over the town toward the docks.
The sea beyond was covered with a heavy, rolling fog despite the bright afternoon sunlight above.
It lapped at the shoreline, as if testing it, and the darker silhouettes of a massive fleet studded the horizon.
A shrill alarm cut through the air. “Felix is on his way,” Jena said, hurrying to the hall. “Forget the damned dog collars, Chase, grab those charms and have everyone swallow one of the frickin’ things. I need to call corners and draw a circle.”
“You better make it fast,” he said, “because it doesn’t look like they’re waiting.” At the alarm’s cry, the bank of fog had surged forward, engulfing the docks.
Gideon drew Ophelia into his arms and kissed her fiercely. “Stay close to Jena and stay here. I need to get out there.”
She nodded, her eyes huge and her lips pressed into a thin, white line.
“How do I get to the rooftop?” he asked Aggie as she gathered things from the kitchen.
“Follow me.” She pushed past them, down the hall and through a pair of shoddy doors to a stairway leading up.
At the top, it opened to a large empty room, its beleaguered ceiling held up by scaffolding.
“Stairs are at the end of the hall, that way, and I’d wouldn’t suggest doing any aerobics while you’re up there. ”
Gideon frowned, eyeing the supports and the partially filled buckets of water beneath them. “Indeed.”
He sprinted past Jena, who was already chanting at the center of a design laid out in chalk on the floor, sparks of purple flaring from her fingertips.
The node’s awareness swirled around her, lending its power to her spell and urging him to hurry.
A door was at the far end of the hall beyond the main room.
He opened it and ascended the short flight, its molding flaking away and water stains blackening the walls.