Jane was too tired to make it back to her apartment, and so she spent the day sleeping on the cot in the back room of the shop. Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café, owned and run by my family, had a booming business, both locally and on the Internet, selling herbal mixtures and teas by bulk and by the ounce, the shop itself serving teas, specialty coffees, brunch and lunch daily, and dinner on weekends. It was mostly vegetarian fare, whipped up by my older sister, water witch, professor, and three-star chef, Evangelina Everhart. My sister Carmen Miranda Everhart Newton, an air witch, newly married and pregnant, ran the register and took care of ordering supplies. Two other witch sisters, twins Boadacia and Elizabeth, ran the herb store, while our wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, were waitstaff. I’m really Molly Meagan Everhart Trueblood. Names with moxie run in my family. Without a single question about why this supposed human needed a place to crash, my sisters let Jane sleep off the night run.
While my sisters worked around the cot and ran the business without me, I went driving. To the Partman place. With Brax.
“You found this how?” he asked, sitting in the passenger seat. I was driving so I could pretend that I was in control, not that Brax cared who was in charge as long as the rogue vampires were brought down. “The dogs got squirrelly twenty feet into the underbrush and refused to go on. It doesn’t make any sense, Molly. I never saw dogs go so nuts. They freaked out. So I gotta ask how you know where they sleep.” Detective Paul Braxton was antsy. Worried. Scared. There had been no new reported deaths in the area, yet I had just told him that the vamps had gone hunting last night.
There were some benefits to being a witch out of the closet. I let my lips curl up knowingly. “I had a feeling at the McCarleys’ yesterday, but I didn’t think it would work. I devised a spell to track the rogue vampires. At dusk, I went to the McCarleys’ and set it free. And it worked. I was able to pinpoint their lair.”
“How? I never heard of such a thing. No one has. I asked on NCIC this morning after you called.” At my raised brows he said, “NCIC is the National Crime Information Center, run by the FBI, a computerized index and database of criminal justice information.”
“A database?” Crap. I hit the brakes, hard. Throwing us both against the seat belts. The wheels squealed, popped, and groaned as the antilock braking system went into play. Brax cussed as we came to a rocking halt. I spun in the seat to face him. “If you made me part of that system, then you’ve used me for the last time, you no good piece of—”
“Molly!” He held both hands palms out, still rocking in the seat. “No! I did not enter you into the system. We have an agreement. I wouldn’t breach it.”
“Then tell me what you did,” I said, my voice low and threatening. “Because if you took away the privacy of my family and babies, I’ll curse you to hell and back, and damn the consequences.” I gathered my power to me, pulling from the earth and the forest and even the fish living in the nearby river, ecosystems be hanged. This man was endangering my babies.
Brax swallowed in the sudden silence of the old Volvo, as if he could feel the power I was drawing in. I could smell his fear, hear it in his fast breath, over the sounds of nearby traffic. “NCIC is just a database,” he said. “I just input a series of questions. About witches. And how they work. And—”
“Witches are in the FBI’s databank?” I hit the steering wheel with both fists as the thought sank in. “Why?”
“Because there are witch criminals in the U.S. Sorcerers who do blood magic. Witches who do dark magic. Witches are part of the database, now and forever.”
“Son of a witch on a switch,” I swore, cursing long and viciously, helpless anger in the tones, the syllables flowing and rich. Switching to the old language for impact, not that it had helped. Curses had a way of falling back on the curser rather than hurting the cursed.
I beat the steering wheel in impotent fury. I was a witch, for pity’s sake. And I couldn’t protect my own kind. Rage banging around me like a wrecking ball, I hit the steering wheel one last time and threw my old Volvo into drive. Fuming, silent, I drove to the Partman place.
The entrance, once meant for mining machinery and trucks, was still drivable, though the asphalt was crazed and broken, grass growing in the cracks. The drive wound around a hillock and was lost from view. Beyond it, signs of mining that were hidden from the road became more obvious. Trees were young and scraggly, the ground was scraped to bedrock, and rusted iron junk littered the site. An old car sat on busted tires, windows, hood, and doors long gone. The office of the mining site was an old WWII Quonset hut, the door hanging free to reveal the dark interior.
Though strip mining had been the primary means of getting to the gems, tunnels had gone into the side of the mountain. The entry to the mine was boarded over with two-by-tens, but some were missing, and it was clear that the opening had been well used.
Brax rubbed his mouth, looking over the place, not meeting my eyes. Finally he said, “I would never cause you or yours trouble, Molly Trueblood. I do my best to protect you from problems, harassment, or unwanted attention from law enforcement, federal NCIC or otherwise.”
“Except you,” I accused, annoyed that he had apologized before I blew off my mad.
He smiled behind his hand. “Except me. And maybe one day you’ll trust me enough to tell me the truth about this so-called tracking spell you used to find this place. I’m going to check out the area. Stay here. If I don’t come back, that disproves the myth that vamps sleep in the daylight. You get your pal Jane to stake my ass if I come back undead.”