The grocery store bouquet of alstromeria was all Stella could afford, and it was dwarfed by the massive vase of roses at the center of the shrine, but it would have to do. She set it in among the others, then rose, pushing her bag back onto her shoulder and straightening her jacket.
“Thought I might find you here.”
Stella sighed again. “Don’t you dare make fun of me, Lark.”
“I’m not, I swear. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Stella shrugged. “I’m fine.”
Lark fell into step beside her, heading back toward South First. Stella kept her hands shoved in her jacket pockets, her left hand wrapped around her cell phone. It was a nice night for a walk; the storm had largely gone around the city, but there had been enough rain to keep things cool, a bit muddy but otherwise perfect for the festivalgoers that had clogged Austin for days. There were still a lot of events going on tonight, but Stella suspected anything at Zilker Park would be sparsely attended, assuming APD let anyone near the stage.
“Foxglove said you saw the whole thing,” Lark said.
“My dad got me a festival wristband. I was in the fourth row. Of course I saw it.”
“That sucks, babe.”
“Understatement.”
They were passing Slim Shaky’s espresso bar, and Lark paused. “Want a coffee? I’ll buy.”
“Sure.”
Once they were settled at a corner table, Stella with her soy mocha and Lark with her dark roast Columbian whatever, Stella said, “I know you think it’s stupid. But when her CD came out I was in a really bad place. I’d just started practicing the Craft, my dad told me to go to hell, I had this … thing … and her music helped me make sense of it all. It was like she understood.”
She braced herself for a sarcastic remark, but for a wonder, Lark was nodding. “I get it. When I was in high school, I was a total outcast—shocking, I know. I was the kid in black with the tarot cards reading philosophy in a town where the two big things were Jesus and football. If it hadn’t been for the other Witches I met online I would have ended up in the nuthouse. Or worse.”
Stella sighed, relieved. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she wanted Lark to understand where she was coming from.
Lark leaned on her hand while her other was busy pouring a rather disturbing amount of sugar into her coffee. Whatever kind of outcast Lark had been in her hometown, she and Stella both fit in perfectly here in Austin; she and Lark both had a semi-Goth, semi-geek thing going … but tattooed twenty-two-year-old weirdoes were the norm in this town. The rest of the state was scarily conservative, but Austin was a haven for freaks, geeks, progressives, gays, artists, vegetarians, musicians … anyone for whom the status was simply not quo.
She wondered if Miranda Grey had felt the same way when she moved here to go to college. She was from a small Texas town, too, and she had left her family and not looked back. There wasn’t a whole lot known about her personal life except what was publicized on her website bio, but Stella liked to think Miranda had found a home here in Austin, too, a place to belong.
“I have to show you something,” Stella said, pulling out her phone.
“New app?”
“No. Just watch.” Stella muted the sound and hit play.
She didn’t look, but she knew what Lark was seeing because she’d watched it at least ten times since last night: A wobbly, grainy video of the ALMF main stage, with Miranda talking to the crowd and then hitting the first chord of “Bored Now.” Stella knew every note of every song on the album, and that moment was a surreal sort of Name That Tune … broken by a sound like a broomstick
breaking. It was muffled by all the crowd noise, but it came from somewhere near where Stella was standing, up front but off to the right.
A split second after she heard the sound, she saw Miranda jerk backward just a little: once, two times. Miranda looked down, her face going white as she saw the blood just before the pain must have hit her. She looked so shocked … and the whole audience had felt the same way … then she fell.
Almost the second Miranda’s body hit the stage, she was surrounded by people and the view was mostly blocked. The video went on for about thirty more seconds until the crowd had started to panic and it was too dangerous to stay there. Stella had wanted so badly to run to the stage, to try to … do something … but the police were already herding everyone away, pulling people aside for statements, and Stella found herself being grilled by her father, who was way more worried about her than he was about Miranda … but she didn’t give him the video. She just couldn’t.
“Jesus.” Lark shook her head. “That’s fucked up.”
“Again … understatement.”
“Weird—how come the picture’s so bad? I thought your phone had way better resolution than that.”
“
That’s
what bothers you?”
“No, just …” Lark handed the phone back, looking sheepish. “I remember you saying she doesn’t take a lot of pictures.”
“She said in an interview once that she hates having her picture taken because when she was younger she had this bad reaction to one of her meds and it messed up her skin for a while, so she’s felt self-conscious about it ever since.”
“So she has magic antiphotography powers?” Lark asked dubiously. “I know you love this chick and all, but she seems like a grade-A weirdo to me.”
Stella smiled. “I know. That’s the point.”
“Why didn’t you give this to your dad? They might be able to analyze the angles or something
CSI
and figure out who did it.”
“They’ve got videos of it—lots of people had their phones out that night. The police confiscated a bunch of them, but there are already some showing up online.”
“Are you planning to keep that forever? Kind of morbid, Stell.”
“No …” Stella stared down at the screen of her phone, considering, wondering … if there was anyone she could tell, it was Lark, but … it was crazy.
“What is it?” Lark wanted to know. “You’re making that face.”
“You’re going to think I’m totally out of my mind.”
Lark snorted. “Um, Stell? We’re Witches, remember? I’ve seen you do stuff right out of second-season
Supernatural
. For people like us, ‘out of my mind’ is kind of implied.”
Stella couldn’t help but laugh at that. “True. But … some things
are
impossible, right? There are limits to what can really happen. Magic works according to natural laws, so most of the time it’s not that obvious. The wind changes, the rain stops, the rope holds on long enough that the piano doesn’t fall on your head. Stuff like that. But what if …”
“Spit it out, babe.”
“Okay. You remember that thing last year with
Constellation
, where some jackoff said Miranda’s a vampire, and then the stuff about her porphyria came out?”
“Yeah.”
“I think there’s more to it than that.”
Lark apparently couldn’t decide whether to laugh out loud. “What, like she’s really a vampire?”
“Well … there’s no such thing, right?”
She shrugged, fingering the pentagram necklace she wore—Stella had one just like it. “More things in heaven and earth, Horatio.”
“I was watching the video, though, and there’s this one place where … I thought I saw something. Right here …”
Stella fast-forwarded the video past the shooting, to where all the security and medics were swarming the stage. “See this guy?”
She pointed to the tall, burly blond who ran to Miranda’s side and knelt next to her. He was in and out of the frame because other people kept getting in the way, but as tall as he was, she could pick him out.
“Cute,” Lark said. “A little old for my taste, but still.”
“Not the point. Notice the necklace he’s wearing? The big emerald that looks like it’s glowing? It looks almost exactly like the red one she wears. Why would they wear matching jewelry?”
“Okay, that’s a little freaky, but not exactly newsworthy. Maybe that’s her husband.”
“It’s not. He’s supposed to have black hair. The thing is, if you’re just watching like usual the guy’s just talking to her, but if I watch it with my Sight … something happens.”
“I didn’t think the Sight worked on video.”
“Foxglove always said it wouldn’t, so I never tried it. But I always wondered if maybe digital photography was different. A lot of aboriginal-type cultures won’t let themselves be photographed because they believe it steals your soul—there’s lots of myths built up around the idea. And there’s that legend that you can’t photograph a vampire because cameras use mirrors. But that’s all based on film photography, not digital. Anyway, I kept getting this weird feeling when I was watching this guy, and so I decided to give it a shot.”
Now Lark looked interested; they’d both said at one time or another that Foxglove, who had taught the Wicca 101 class where they’d met and owned the occult bookstore where Stella now worked, was hopelessly old-fashioned and needed to get with the times. “What did you See?”
“You know how when I look at people with the Sight I can see how they’re connected to other people—the threads of light? Well, this guy and Miranda are really, really connected. Almost like married people are, but not in a romantic way.”
“So, like relatives or something?”
“More than that. It’s kind of tenuous, like it’s new. And what’s even weirder … I’ve checked out her aura before
onstage, and it always seemed pretty normal. But now I wonder if maybe that isn’t just one hell of a shield. When she was lying there on the stage, for just a second, her aura went
black
.”
“Black? I’ve heard of all sorts of colors, but … black?”
“Black and a sort of bluish silver, like mercury. And it was crazy powerful. Scary even. I’ve met a lot of Witches, and I’ve never seen one as powerful as she was—but then it’s like she got her control back and she looked normal again.”
“So you’re saying she’s a Witch.”
“I don’t know. She might not practice Witchcraft, but she’s got a gift, and she’s had training. She could just be a psychic, or she could be a Witch. But black isn’t exactly the kind of aura you’d find on someone who worships a Goddess and practices healing arts, so I doubt she’s a Wiccan like us. It felt … dark.”
“Black magic is pretty dark, Stell.”
“No, not black magic. Not evil. Just … darkness. I don’t know how to explain it, but … when I looked at her, it was like … like looking at death.” She met Lark’s eyes, trying to impress on her how serious she was as she said, “I think … I think Miranda Grey
is
a vampire.”
Anodyne fell silent.
The bartender smiled. “My Lady, it’s good to see you again.”
Miranda strode into the bar, her entire body burning with pleasure from the hunt, strength and purpose flowing through her veins again, smoothing away the weariness, letting her walk again as a Queen.
Signets made other vampires nervous. She walked in aware that every eye was on her—doubly aware, as she was doing it on purpose to distract the crowd from what came in after her.
Cora didn’t respond well to large crowds, and Miranda was worried about being recognized, so they’d stuck to
a smaller hunting ground for dinner—a park known mostly to joggers from the university who came out at night for a last run before hitting the midnight books. As part of the school, it was well lit and frequently patrolled, so there was little risk for the students … unless, of course, the city was full of vampires.
The youngest Queen was unused to hunting this way. She and Jacob depended heavily on bottled blood, especially during winter months when the weather made nighttime travel treacherous even in urban areas. Prague was hardly a backwater—Miranda had never seen a city as beautiful—but it was cold as hell for long parts of the year. Cora had never really learned the heady joy of drinking from a live human or the sweetness of having that deep itch soothed by their blood.
She took to it like a spider to a snared butterfly.
Miranda and Jonathan helped her draw one out, a petite brunette on her jogging round. “Just watch,” Miranda told the Queen. “It’s easy.”
Miranda reached out to touch the girl’s mind, and the jogger halted, blinking, confused. She looked warily at the three flashing-eyed strangers standing beneath a sweeping willow tree just off the path.
“Come here,” Miranda said, barely whispering.
The girl obeyed. “Do I know you?” she asked.
She smelled like peppermint soap and sweat and … enchiladas, her most recent meal. Miranda took careful hold of her will and let it go slack in her grasp so that the girl’s head tilted off to the side, exposing her throat.
Miranda remembered when David had done this with her, gesturing, showing her the places it was safe to bite. “Here,” Miranda said, tapping the skin lightly. “Any lower and you don’t risk hitting a major artery, but you also don’t get much flow. This is best.”
Cora nodded, leaning in, and Miranda placed her hands on the girl’s back to support her. She gasped and pushed back, instinctively trying to escape; Miranda held her there, soothing her fears, letting her know she was okay,
that no one wanted to hurt her, but that she was giving them something they needed, the only thing, everything.
“Good job,” Miranda said to Cora as the jogger went on her way … walking this time and taking long swallows from her water bottle. Miranda had imprinted the usual instructions on her to go home, eat something protein- and iron-rich, and rest.
Cora’s eyes were practically glowing with satisfaction. Heavy-lidded and half-open, they were the eyes of a predator sated.
One by one, all three Consorts went on the hunt. Jonathan always preferred young men—athletic, all-American cute, a far cry from the slender, dark creature waiting for him at home. Miranda, on the other hand, still had not regained her comfort with men, except her Prime, and so she, too, fed on women.
Afterward they all went for a different sort of drink.
The patrons of Anodyne had seen Signets before, but never three at once, plus dog. Miranda had had someone call ahead to make sure there were no objections to Vràna’s attendance; the dog could have waited in the car, but she made Cora feel so much safer it would be a shame not to at least ask. There was no food served at Anodyne, and Miranda wasn’t even sure that the health department came anywhere near the Shadow District, so no one was likely to make any noise over it.