Chicagoland Vampires: Wild Things Part 22

It was late, but the grocery store glowed with light and welcome heat. Disco played on the store's sound system, and the cashier nearest the door smiled when I entered.

She couldn't have been more than twenty, and she didn't seem to mind the late hour or the dearth of customers. She filed her nails and hummed along with the music, a headband with fuzzy cat's ears poking from her otherwise straight jet-black hair. She looked up at me and took in the katana when I walked over. Her eyes widened.

"Nice sword," she said in a whisper when I moved closer. "That's a katana, right?"

"It is, yeah," I said with a smile. I'd forgotten I'd worn it, and appreciated that she didn't feel the urge to signal the manager.

"Cool."

"Thanks. Question for you." I hitched a thumb toward the window. "The carnival that was here-when did it pack up?"

"I don't know. Why? Were you hoping to win a goldfish?"

"Not exactly." My prey was significantly larger, but I didn't mention that aloud. "I don't suppose you know where they were headed next?"

The front doors shushed open. A woman with short blond hair walked into the grocery store. She wore snug jeans and a short red cape with a hood. It barely reached her waist and was perfectly cut, the type of garment you'd see on a New York runway. A very expensive leather handbag-the kind my sister, Charlotte, might have bought in the stores on Oak Street-was tucked on her arm. She looked, I thought with a smile, like a very chic Little Red Riding Hood.

"No clue," said the cashier, drawing my gaze again. "I'm not really into kiddie carnivals, you know?"

I took in the cat's ears, the Rainbow Brite T-shirt. "You'll appreciate them when you're older. Thanks for the help."

She shrugged and went back to her nails.

I walked toward the door but caught another glimpse of the girl who'd come in. She grabbed a red basket from a stack near the door and headed to the pharmacy aisle.

She looked familiar. I squinted, trying to remember the face and where I might have seen her. She wasn't a shifter. Not an elf, certainly, with that haircut or fashion sense. And she was down a bow and sense of ent.i.tlement.

I walked quietly closer, pretending to be interested in hot cocoa mix, dandruff shampoo, frozen chicken dinners. She pulled supplies-bandages, rubbing alcohol, gauze-into her basket.

A clerk stepped in front of me, blocking my view. He was another teenager, this time with dark skin, short braids, and suspicious eyes. "Can I help you?"

I grabbed a box of soda crackers from the Willis Towershaped display in front of me. "Are these, you know, on special?"

He looked at me for a moment, gestured toward the display. "The sign says they're two ninety-nine."

"Awesome!" I perkily said. I turned to a nearby shelf and pretended to be very, very interested in wasabi-flavored popcorn. Actually, I didn't have to try that hard. It was wasabi-flavored popcorn. I was already intrigued.

I waited a beat. Apparently satisfied that I'd only been nosy, and not pre-felonious, he disappeared. When the sound of his footsteps dissipated, I peeked around the end of the aisle again. The girl inspected the medical tape, and when a clerk approached and offered help, she waved him off with a smile, dimples at the sides of her cheeks. She turned just slightly, and I caught sight of her singularly gray eyes.

That's when I knew where I'd seen her.

Her hair was different now, and her clothes. She was no longer a brunette, no longer wearing her uniform, no longer enticing customers into the Tunnel of Horrors. But there was no denying the smile.

She was the carnival barker.

Like a deer scenting a predator, her head popped up, her eyes scanning for trouble.

She caught my gaze, and there was a hint of a smile on her face. But she turned back to the tape, fingers skimming the boxes.

I walked around the corner, checked out a rack of plastic sungla.s.ses while Lionel Richie crooned on the store's music system.

The girl moved forward, disappearing into an aisle that, according to the sign hanging above it, held chips and soda.

Ever so quietly, I shifted closer, and when I reached the aisle, looked around the corner.

She was gone, but the thick rubber flaps that covered the entrance to the back room were swinging, and her basket was on the floor, the contents strewn about. She'd definitely made me.

And that wasn't my only problem.

In her wake were scents much too familiar-sulfur and smoke. Dominic Tate, Seth Tate's vanquished worse half, had smelled the same. But Dominic was dead; I'd seen Seth destroy him. Seth had left Chicago, and his scent had been different-lemon and sugar, like freshly baked cookies.

We hadn't known any other Messengers, as the dueling angels had once been called. And yet, here I was, standing in a grocery store that smelled like the devil's front porch.

I muttered a curse and took off, following her through the flaps and into a cold room that stank of overripe produce and cardboard. The room was large, with a polished concrete floor and office built into a corner. I ran to the office. A man in a collared short-sleeved shirt sat at the desk, munching on a sandwich. Roast beef, by the smell of it.

"You can't be back here!" he yelled, over a mouthful of beef and bread.

"Just pa.s.sing through," I promised, then hurried down a narrow hallway to a storage area. This one held ten-foot-high stacks of boxes and wooden pallets. There was a back door across the room, but no one in sight.

"Can we just talk?" I asked, peering around a mountain of soda cartons, and caught a glance of blond hair hurrying away when a skysc.r.a.per of pallets rocked like a children's block-stacking game. As always, gravity won.

I jumped aside and missed the falling tower, tripped over a box behind me, and ended up on my a.s.s one way or the other.

Footsteps echoed through the room.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on here?" asked the meaty voice behind me. The back door clanged shut as the woman slipped through it.

I rose, ignoring the manager and his threats of police calls and litigation, but decided to send a little thank-you to Papa Breck in consideration for all the kindness he'd shown us.

"The Breckenridges will be happy to pay for any damages," I said, jumping over the messy pile of pallets and vaulting toward the back door. I slammed through it only to see her dart across the drive that ran behind the shopping center to the chain-link fence that separated it from the next property. A scrubby and empty lot, by the look of it.

I ran to the fence, jumped up a few feet, and began to climb. There was nothing remotely movielike about it, or elegant. The chain link wasn't securely attached, and it bobbed beneath my feet like I was climbing a rope ladder. I hit the top, felt skin slice as my palm caught one of the bare p.r.o.ngs of chain link. Ignoring the pain, I threw my body over the top and hit the ground.

Only then did I recall the fact that I could have simply jumped over the d.a.m.n thing. Maybe the House library was the place for me.

The girl was already running full out across the lot, which was pockmarked with piles of dirty snow, frozen hillocks of dirt, and construction debris. Something had been planned for this s.p.a.ce, but considering the cracked and peeling WILL BUILD TO SUIT sign that lay abandoned on the ground, it wasn't going to be finished anytime soon.

She ran with the long-legged grace of a marathon runner. I had vampiric speed and enhanced bone and muscle, but she was the running type, with a long stride and smooth motion that made it look completely effortless.

She reached a large concrete pad, hopped onto it, glanced back, searching the darkness to see if I was still behind her.

Because I was busy watching her, and not the ground in front of me, I didn't see the ditch until it was too late.

I fell down into the three-foot-deep depression, hit my knees on the ice and inches of muddy water that had acc.u.mulated in the bottom. The fall jarred me, and it took a moment to get my brain unscrambled. I got back onto my feet and toed up a k.n.o.bby dirt incline until I was at ground level again.

I spat out a curse that would have raised even my liberal grandfather's hackles, and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

She was gone.

"She couldn't have just disappeared," Catcher said.

We stood on the edge of the lot, surveying the darkness, eyes straining for any sign or scent of the girl who'd so handily eluded me.

"She disappeared," I a.s.sured him, trying my best to squeegee mud from my leather pants. "I hit a ditch, wasn't down for more than a few seconds. When I looked up, she was gone. And she's fast. I never got closer than ten feet, and that was in the building. Out here, she was like a rocket."

"Supernatural?" Jeff asked.

"Actually, yeah." I glanced at Mallory, worried how she'd react. "She smelled like smoke and sulfur."

Jeff frowned. "Smoke and sulfur?"

He might not have understood the connection, but Mallory clearly did. She paled. "Like Dominic Tate. It's what the fallen smell like."

"Oh, d.a.m.n," Jeff murmured, clearly understanding.

"Dominic's dead," Catcher said.

"Seth said there could be more Messengers out there."

"But not the fallen ones," Mallory said. "They were magically bound together into the Maleficium. Seth and Dominic only separated because Claudia kept Dominic safe all those years ago."

Or so we thought. This, I feared, was not going to help Mallory's recovery-having the Messengers and Maleficium thrown back in her face again.

"I'm sorry," Mallory said. "If this has anything to do with me, I'm sorry."

Catcher rubbed her back. "Let's not worry about what she is right now. Let's think about who she is and how we can find her." He looked at me. "Did she have any other physical characteristics we can search on? Piercings? Tattoos?"

"Nothing. Clothes looked expensive. Hair was blond, short. She had darker hair on the midway. It must have been a wig." I glanced at Catcher and Mallory. "Can you do some kind of searching spell and find her?"

"Locating spells are actually pretty complicated," Mallory said. "They don't work like bloodhounds. Otherwise we'd just use that box of stuff from the storage locker to find Aline. We'd have to have something substantial-something marked by her magical signature."

If only she'd whipped that expensive purse at me.

"Maybe the grocery store had security cameras," I suggested, looking at Jeff. "Could you do something with facial recognition?"

"I'll ask," he said, already thumbing his phone.

"What was she buying?" Catcher asked.

"Medical supplies-bandages, gauze. That kind of thing."

"So either she's a conscientious employer or a zookeeper with wounded animals," Catcher suggested.

I nodded. "If she's still here getting supplies, the carnival can't be too far away."

"The trucks pulled out about half an hour ago," Mallory said with a smile. "I followed up with the store. Pretended I had no clue why a woman had wreaked havoc in the back room. Made a few pithy comments about the state of the world, and the cashier opened right up."

"Cat's ears?" I wondered.

Mallory frowned. "What?"

She clearly hadn't spoken to the same cashier. "Never mind. Continue."

"So, Rhoda-that was her name, Rhoda-said the carnies kept to themselves, but before and after shift they'd come into the store for provisions. Snacks, drinks, deli food, booze, depending on the mood. She likes to travel-she and her husband have a camper-so she tried to make conversation about their route, but they wouldn't talk about it. Paid for their gear and left again."

"Even if the cashier had known where they were going next," I said, "there's a good chance they'll change their schedule. She knew we'd found her. Took one look at me and bolted."

"So where do we think they'll go next?" Mallory asked.

I smiled mirthlessly. "You're looking to add to your collection of sups, and you're an hour from the Windy City, which has the largest proportion of vampire Houses in the nation, not to mention nymphs, trolls, and G.o.d knows what else. I'll give you one guess: You aren't going to Disneyland."

We drove sullenly back to the Breckenridge house, none of us thrilled that we'd been so easily thwarted.

As we neared the house, we began to pa.s.s cars. A single car here and there, and then groups of four or five in succession. It was more traffic than I'd ever seen on the rural road that led to the estate.

"The shifters are going home," Catcher said, as we pulled into the driveway. There was something sad about that-it was morose that they'd departed under such unfortunate circ.u.mstances. Or maybe it was just the magic in the air, or the growing absence of it.

Gabriel met us at the door, Ethan beside him. We migrated into the front parlor, now empty of shifters, and out of the cold.

"Nothing?" Gabriel asked.

I shook my head. "They're gone."

"The entire carnival was packed up, moved out," Catcher said. "Merit found one of them in the grocery store, chased her down, but wasn't able to nab her."

Gabriel lifted slightly amused eyes to me. "That true, Kitten? Did you actually miss your prey?"

I decided not to tell him that I missed her because I fell in a ditch, as that would only add a thick layer of humiliation to the existing regret. I settled for glum.

"I missed her," I confirmed.

"And I might have found her," Jeff said, rocking proudly on his heels. "I was busy on the ride back."

I thought the backseat had been quiet. "Grocery store footage?"

"Yes, ma'am." He pulled out a sleek square of gla.s.s that looked like a miniature version of the screens in the Brecks' operations room, began to skim his fingers across it. The gla.s.s went smoky and nearly opaque, and images and text began to scroll across the front.

"Another new toy?" I asked. I wasn't much for gadgets, but it looked so deliciously tactile.

He kept his eyes on the screen, but a corner of his mouth perked up. "A portable to match the rest of the hardware. And here we are." He held up the gla.s.s, swiveling it so the rest of us could see.

"That's her," I said immediately, recognizing the light hair, dark eyes, dimpled cheeks. The shot, remarkably clear, was taken at the front entrance of the grocery store.

"The grocery store was robbed about a year ago, and they invested in some quality hardware. I told them we were investigating the dark-haired girl with the leather jacket"-that was me-"and the manager was more than happy to pa.s.s the photo along." He lifted his gaze, grinned full out. "He also asked about billing Papa Breck for the damages. Said they'd agreed to pay."