Page 69 of The Vampire and the Case of the Cursed Canine

I looked around as we waited. The car park was deserted and the building was dark. A few moments later, Aoife reappeared and nodded. ‘Is she okay?’ I asked anxiously. Aoife gave me another thumbs up and I sagged with relief. ‘Okay, we need to get inside. Can you show us where she is?’ Aoife nodded again.

‘You want to use your universal key?’ I asked Connor lightly.

‘Discretion is required for this one.’ He pulled out a lock-pick kit and I raised an eyebrow.

He shrugged. ‘What? The universal key isn’t always appropriate.’

‘Why didn’t you do that at Payne’s?’

He grinned. ‘Because she’s been a pain in my ass for a couple of years and kicking down her door was very satisfying.’ I couldn’t argue with that.

Connor patiently raked the lock and had the door open in a couple of minutes. Aoife floated ahead of us as we ran down to the space where the black market had been. Luckily, the doors down there weren’t locked. Fluffy raced ahead with Aoife, his nose down: he had a scent. My heart gave two quick beats; after all Mum had done to him, he was still willing to help me find her.

Connor flipped on the lights and we hurried after Aoife and Fluffy. We didn’t have to go far: Mum was tied up and gagged in the far corner behind stacks of tables and chairs. She looked at us wild eyed and shook her head.

I stopped, called Fluffy back then held out an arm to stop Connor. I’d run into booby traps before at Skylark’s kidnapping, but there were no strings, no rigged shotguns, nothing that I could see.

I looked at Mum and she raised her eyes. I followed her gaze: above her was an elaborate design. Now that I’d paused to pay attention, I could feel that subtle hum in my teeth and smell blood, past its prime and rotting. To top it off, there was a weird tugging at my guts; I’d thought it was panic but it wasn’t. It was dark magic.

I pointed up. ‘Do you recognize that?’ I asked Connor.

‘I’m not a witch,’ he said, ‘but it looks sort of familiar.’ He took a picture with his phone and texted it to someone.

‘Who did you send it too?’ I asked.

‘An old friend who studies the paranormal, especially signs, symbols and things like that.’

‘The last time I saw a curse like that, I had to disrupt the lines and it failed.’

‘That works for 99% of curses,’ Connor agreed, ‘but I’ve seen few where doing that triggers a kill curse buried within it.’

‘Shit. So what do we do?’

‘We’ll wait until my friend texts back – I told him it was urgent. Let’s give him a minute to look at the design.’

Mum coughed behind her gag. She looked small and ill – she’d probably been there with no food or water for almost a full day. But her pallor was also tinged with grey, and I wondered if sitting under that thing on the ceiling was sapping her energy in some way.

A few slow minutes passed. I was about to barge in and drag her out when Connor’s phone buzzed. ‘It’s him.’ He started to read. ‘It’s a necromantic curse, a nasty one. It steals life force to power itself. Anyone that passes by, over or under it will have their energy taken.’

‘That sounds like what happened to Jeff. He was hit with a nightmare curse but it stole his life force, too. And something like that took down Sigrid and Stan – it’s why they lost so much muscle mass. I’m guessing Mum’s curse is missing the nightmare element since she seems to be wholly present.’ She made a noise of agreement through her gag.

Connor was still reading. Suddenly he looked relieved. ‘It’s easy to break. You need to disrupt the pattern of the ritualistic symbol.’

I spotted a long broom in the corner of the room, grabbed it and started frantically scrubbing at the ceiling. The old blood smeared and Mum took a quick breath. She blinked and some of her colour returned.

I threw the broom aside, untied her and removed the gag. She moved her jaw, shook out her hands and worked her mouth to produce some saliva, then she looked at us. ‘It’s Liv,’ she said.

I felt like I’d been slugged.

Chapter 44

I frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense. Liv is trying to heal the barrier, that’s why you’re in Portlock. Why would she try to bring it down?’

Connor looked as shocked as I felt. Liv was the only reason we had a barrier; if she’d gone to the dark side, we were all screwed. And I didn’t get why she needed this elaborate game. The gems were hers; she could take them, so why kidnap Mum? It made no sense.

Was someone else involved? Was Liv being coerced? A sudden thought made me go cold. Before she’d handed the gems to the new elemental witches, she had looked after them. Was she under their influence like Wintersteen had been? Did the cursed gems want the barrier down so that they could be released?

‘The gems,’ I said to Connor. ‘I think they might have influenced her. When we interviewed Wintersteen’s kids, they said that sometimes their mother was totally normal and other times she wasn’t. They said it was like a switch had been thrown.’

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