Fairytale Ambrosia (The Knead to Know Series Book 2) (5 page)

“All finished,” Ethel announced.

I went into the living room, prepared for gore, but everything looked exactly as it had before, except for two large black bags next to the front door.

She handed me a business card. “I’ve never worked with a human before, but any friend of Phoenix is a friend of mine.”

I locked the door behind her, pulled down my lower eyelid, and removed the dry, itchy contacts that hid the redness of my eyes. I had eaten enough today that even if Izzy woke up, she probably wouldn’t notice. Energy still coursed through me, despite how much I had consumed and there was no way I would be able to keep still. Not tonight. Not after everything that had happened. But there was nothing to do. My matchbox-sized house was the cleanest it had probably ever been. I could cook, but then I couldn’t eat any of it. Television required too much sitting and so did reading. What I really wanted to do was talk, but it was the middle of the night and I no longer had anyone to really talk to in my pathetic life. Maybe I should join a gym.

My phone chirped in my pocket. I glanced down, expecting Phoenix, but saw Boone’s name instead. My stomach sank. Could something the two of us have done gotten Valefor’s attention?

“Hello?” my voice cracked.

“Were you sleeping?” Boone asked. He was quiet, but sounded perfectly alive and not at all injured.

I lowered onto the couch, relief washing over me. “Sleep and I haven’t seen eye to eye in a while.”

“Right. I knew that.” The quiet baritone of his voice was comforting in a way I hadn’t known for a while.

I waited for him so say something, but he didn’t say anything at all. I tucked my legs under me and pulled a blanket over my lap. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m still here. Sorry. I don’t know why I called.”

I smiled to myself, a glimmer of warmth flickering to life in my chest. “Did you need something? Did you have another vision?” I silently hoped he’d say no. Was it really so terrible to want someone to call me for no reason other than just wanting to talk to me? Just because we hadn’t shared our personal lives, didn’t mean we couldn’t start.

“Not exactly. More like a feeling.”

“Oh,” I said, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.

“I had an overwhelming sense that you were in trouble or upset and it woke me up. I couldn’t go back to sleep without checking on you. Are you okay? Did something happen?”

I basked in the kindness of his concern for just a moment before I shut it down. I had to learn to deal with things on my own. This was my life now and it was too dangerous, whether or not I wanted it to be, for a human like Boone. He didn’t need to know about Valefor or the men or really any of it. “I’m okay,” I said. “Thanks for checking.”

“You know anytime you need to talk, Maggie, I’m always here. I understand, at least to a degree, how lonely all of this must be for you. I want to help. I want to be here for you.”

My throat tightened. Out of everyone I knew, Boone was the only one who had the potential to understand, but even the amount he knew about the Abyss was probably too much. He was psychic, so he lived on the edge of this world, but he didn’t have to be fully in it. Not like me. Plus, if I told him I killed two demons tonight, was that something he could deal with? It would probably freak him out, and, selfishly, I wanted our friendship to stay intact a little while longer, which meant what I said to Phoenix was right. “I’m glad we met,” I whispered.

“Me too.”

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the couch, pretending he was beside me and that if I turned my head, opened my eyes, he’d be there, all scruffy and handsome.

“You never sleep? Not at all?” He interrupted my fantasy.

“Not really. Once or twice I’ve fed to the point of passing out, but I can’t just lie down and go to sleep.”

“What do you do all night?”

“Hide from the demons,” I muttered more to myself than to him.

“I thought…don’t you…” He couldn’t even finish his sentence.

Don’t I eat them? Why, yes, I do. But that wasn’t what I was talking about. It wasn’t real demons that could hurt me. It was the ones in my head that did the most harm. Those inescapable thoughts and memories that came when I was alone, that haunted me. And after tonight, I would have two more on my conscience. They opened wounds that would never heal, no matter how much of a vampire I was. I suddenly realized, could feel, that Boone knew my current thoughts. . . . “Yeah,” I said. “Silly, right?”

“No,” he said. “Human.”

I checked on Izzy once more before I left for the bakery. Talking to Boone had brightened my mood considerably. But it also brought to mind the fact that I hadn’t done anything to find the woman who was going to be kidnapped. Not that I had a lot to go on, regarding her or the woman in white, but I had to try. What I needed was a place to start, and I decided that was with the kids. At least we knew who they were.

I unlocked the alley door and went inside, flipping on the lights. I got out my notebook and made a list of everything I would bake for the day, starting with several dozen loaves of bread. While I collected ingredients, my mind wandered back to the case. 

If the million mystery novels, TV shows, and movies were right, then truly random acts were rare—which meant that these people were connected, at least in the kidnapper’s mind. So if I could figure out what attracted the old woman to the children, maybe I could determine what she would be looking for in the hotel maid. Not that once I had that information, I’d have any idea how to use it.

The woman in white was obviously supernatural. She’d morphed from an old hag to a younger woman—yet continued to wear an archaic dress. Shifters could change their appearance, but those seemed like pretty banal choices unless they had personal meaning to the woman. What if my initial impression was right? Maybe it was some sort of eternal youth thing. So far everyone she had taken, or was going to take, was young. I vaguely remembered something I watched on TV around Halloween a few years ago about a woman, a countess or something, who bathed in the blood of young girls to make herself younger. People did weird things when it came to aging.

However, people who could actually pull stuff like that off had to be few and far between—at least I hoped they were. I glanced at my watch. It was way too late, or early, to call anyone. Holden would probably murder me if I called him or Olivia at this time, which was reasonable. Boone was surely asleep. The bounty hunter I knew, Femi . . . well, it was hard to say. She worked odd hours, but she also needed sleep. I had a small acquaintance with a vampire, Corbin, but I had no way to reach him. That left me with the one person I didn’t want to call again tonight, but who else did I have to talk to about this stuff?

While the bread was raising, I dialed Phoenix’s number, put the phone on speaker, and began to work on the sweet treats.

“Miss me already?” he asked and I rolled my eyes.

“Are you busy?”

“Why? Have you killed someone else?” His dry tone didn’t take away the sting from his words.

“Never mind. I shouldn’t have called.” I pressed end. Calling him was a mistake. I really needed to branch out and meet more people in the Abyss. He couldn’t be my only reliable contact—especially since he wasn’t all that reliable.

The space in front of the green back door filled with black smoke. I didn’t have to guess who would be there when it faded.

“That was rude,” Phoenix said as the wisps cleared. “What did you need?”

I whisked a little harder. “Nothing. How did you know where I was?”

Taking long, slow steps he moved toward me, craning his head to see the brownie batter for mini peanut butter cup brownie cheesecakes. He stuck out a finger. “May I?”

“No.” I held the bowl away from him.

He shrugged and swiped a peanut butter cup off the counter. “Did Valefor’s people come back?”

I shook my head. “My call didn’t have anything to do with that.” I poured the batter into dishes and popped them into the oven. “I just have a question about the Abyss.”

He raised his eyebrows with a slight smile. “I live to serve you,” he said with a mock bow.

“See. This is why I hung up.” I started roughly chopping the peanut butter cups, leaving some untouched off to the side. “I know this is all a big joke to the rest of you, but I’m struggling.”

His smile slowly faded and he nodded. “Fair enough. What’s your question, Maggie?”

“Is there anything in the Abyss that preserves its youth by taking it from someone else?”

He stole another peanut butter cup. It looked like I wasn’t the only one with a sweet tooth. “Nothing specific comes to mind. That’s sort of what vampires do. They feed on life force to stay alive, which in turn keeps them youthful. I suppose a witch could cast some sort of spell to have the same effect. Also there are demons who increase the aging process for no other reason than to be assholes.”

Out of those options, a witch made the most sense. Plus there was the magical door she used to appear and disappear. That sounded witchy.

“Dare I ask why you need to know this? Or what it has to do with Valefor?”

My eyes flicked up from the cheesecake ingredients. “Possibly nothing.” My tongue touched the corner of my mouth. “I just think there’s one operating in the city right now.”

“And you are staying out of it?”

“Maybe it’s this Valefor person. People started disappearing right at the same time she came looking for me. Seems connected.”

“It isn’t.” His voice was firm and final.

“Aha! So you admit you do know something about it,” I said. Phoenix smiled, shaking his head. “What does she want from me?”

He moved the stool from by the door and sat across from me. “Valefor is a demon, not a person. Saying
her
name gives her power, so stop saying it.”

“Tell me why she wants me.”

Phoenix tilted his head. “You tell me.”

That was precisely the issue. I didn’t have a clue. “I can’t think of anything I’ve done to draw attention to myself, but who knows? Maybe she has picked up on the people I have…” I still hadn’t thought of a nice way to say what I did to dark souls.

“Devoured? Sucked dry? Sampled like a buffet?”

“Thank you. Very descriptive. That. I have tried to be careful and follow Holden’s rules. I don’t hunt in the same place. I don’t take on groups. I don’t know what else I can do.” The whisk handle snapped in my hand. I tossed it in the trash and got another one.

“It happens. You can’t hide forever. She’s just one demon. She’ll move on or…” He trailed off with an unconcerned shrug.

“You said you would take care of it not even three hours ago, and now it’s not a big deal and this demon is just supposed to let it go? Are you kidding me?” I was trying not to panic, but taking care of a problem and ignoring a problem were two completely different things. She’d sent people to my business and to my home. Hoping she’d just go away on her own didn’t seem like a plan. I was going to get someone killed.

“I really don’t think there’s anything to take care of. Whatever got the bug up her ass will go away once she figures out who you are.” His voice was so calm I wanted to yell at him.

“But I’m nobody. I’m a half-vampire freak. Once she figures that out, she’ll just stop sending people to attack me and hire a sniper. I can be killed. The people around me can be killed. Damn it, Phoenix.”

Phoenix rolled his eyes. “You are Holden’s family. There isn’t a demon alive stupid enough to go after anyone connected to him or Olivia. You’re overreacting.”

I mentally counted to ten. Okay, yes, I was technically related to Holden, but he didn’t like me that much. Olivia was sweet and we were friends, but that didn’t mean either of them would get into a war over me. They had two little kids to worry about. I had to take care of myself. If Phoenix wasn’t going to handle Valefor, I’d have to do it myself.

Phoenix had a smug expression, like he lived in this magical world where he’d actually won this argument. “She most certainly isn’t stealing people’s youth. How do you even know someone’s doing that? I haven’t heard anything about it.”

“Chicago’s a big place.”

He gave me a serious look. “It’s my job to know. I would have heard something.”

As the regional leader of the jinn, Phoenix probably did have a pretty good idea of what was happening in and around the city. I added vanilla to the cheesecake batter. “I don’t actually know anyone’s youth is being taken. It’s just a working theory.”

“Ah.” He crossed his legs, obviously settling in. “Then enlighten me. Perhaps I’ll have some insight.”

He probably would, but I didn’t want him to know about Boone. It was bad enough that Holden knew. The last thing Boone needed in his life was jinn, especially one who would have no qualms about using him to his own advantage. “Two kids were taken from their bedrooms in the middle of the night by an old woman dressed in white. A door appeared, she came out of it and picked up the kids, then went back through. No one has seen them since.”

“Until they were found?” he asked. His dark eyes were completely unreadable as they locked with mine.

I shook my head. “No one has been found.”

He sniffed the air. “Brownies smell done.” I headed to the oven. “If they weren’t found, how do you know about the door?”

“That’s not important.” I put on oven mitts and pulled out the tray of brownie crusts. “Just trust me that I know what happened.”

“Fine. Then why do you think they were targeted for their life force and not for any of the thousands of other reasons people are kidnapped?”

This would be the tricky part to explain. I sprinkled the chunks of peanut butter cups over the brownies. “Because it’s about to happen again. Only this time the kidnapper will look significantly younger.”

Phoenix plucked at his eyebrow ring. “You can see the future now? When did that miraculous development take place?”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or if he meant the question. “Not exactly, but again, that’s not the important part. The part where an innocent woman is taken from a parking garage is. How do I find whoever is doing this?”

He stood up and took the mixing bowl from me. “Maggie, look at me.”

And this was the part where he’d question me about how I knew all of this, but I didn’t have a story. I pressed my lips together and attempted to keep my face neutral. I wasn’t going to tell him anything about Boone.

He placed his hands on my shoulders. “Whether or not people are actually being taken has no bearing on you. Focus on the bakery and learning your capabilities. The rest will work itself out.”

That had been my exact plan when I started this venture. I didn’t want to get involved, but then Boone came into my life. We had helped a lot of people. Yes, it was inconvenient and didn’t fall into my plan . . . but we made a difference and that was intoxicating. Sticking my head in the sand, while easy, didn’t feel right. Helping Boone stop these crimes had given me purpose, something to fill the gaping hole in my life. I couldn’t just pretend like there was nothing I could do. “Thanks for the advice, but how would you find this woman before she takes someone else?”

He shook his head. “Start with the kids. She had to use some sort of magic and all magic leaves a signature behind. Find a witch to help you. She or he might even be able to tell you what sort of being you’re looking for and if it’s of this world.” He pulled his phone from his pocket.

I snort-laughed—not my finest moment. “I don’t believe in aliens.”

Not looking up from his phone screen, Phoenix smiled. “Not aliens, parallel worlds. Some are similar to ours and some are vastly different. But I still have to say . . . I think you should run, not walk, away from all this.” His eyes finally met mine. “I have to go.” He took a couple steps back.

“Hey. Thanks for listening.”

He went up in a puff of smoke.

So I needed a witch. I assumed it wouldn’t be as easy as checking the yellow pages, but there had to be a way to find someone. Witches were human so I had that going for me, but I needed one with stronger magic who already knew about the Abyss. I topped the brownies with cheesecake batter, covered their tray with aluminum foil, and popped them in the oven. Then I got on my phone and searched for local Wiccan groups. I found four fairly large ones, all with meetings coming up in the next week. Apparently it was easier than I thought to find a witch. The Chicago Cauldrons had a meeting tonight. I clicked to join the group, RSVP’d to the meeting, then had another thought. Stephanie’s shirt said Wiccan and Proud. Was it true or was it just a T-shirt? I shook my head. I couldn’t take the risk of exposing what I was to a neighbor. I’d just go to the meeting.

Time ticked away and before I knew it, all the baking was mostly complete. I placed the dough for extra cookies and desert bars into the refrigerator, just in case we needed them later, and looked around the kitchen. Everything was cleaned up, the cupcakes were still cooling, as were the cookies I was going to ice. It was still dark outside.

I slipped on my knee length black coat and went for a walk. I strolled down the street, enjoying the quiet. The neighborhood was like a different place at night. Before becoming a half-vampire, I had never realized how much the world changed after the sun set, or how, when people went to sleep, everything else came alive—or, at least, became so much more visible. The street lights gave the sidewalks an amber glow that contrasted with the endless shadows of the alleyways, where the lights couldn’t quite reach. All the buildings’ windows were dark and everyone was sleeping. Everyone but me and people in cars I could hear the distant hum of. A slight breeze tickled the trees. The city seemed both foreign and familiar.