Hannah Jayne - Under a Spell

And then everything went black.

Everything hurt—my eyes, my face, my stomach, my hips. My hair hurt.

“There she is.”

I blinked, the effort causing a painful spasm that reverberated through my skull. “Will?” My throat was parched and my lips felt dry and cracked. I tried to touch them with my fingertips, but a piece of tape pulled at my skin. “I can’t move. Why can’t I move?”

Will’s face came into focus. His eyes were kind, but his brows dipped down into deep Vs. “You’re in hospital.”

“You had an accident.”

I tried to sit up, tried to angle my gaze toward the other male voice. “Alex?”

“We’re all here,” Nina said, lacing her cold fingers through mine. “Will, Alex, and me.”

I looked around at my friends, a brief, warm sense of comfort washing over me. As soon as the calm feeling settled, it was chased away by a bitter cold and I sat up. “Bud! Miranda!”

Alex came over to my left side and very gently guided me back toward the pillows. “We followed up on Bud, Lawson.”

“And?”

Alex pressed his lips together, the muscle in his jaw jumping slightly. “He’s dead.”

“What?”

Alex slipped his leather notebook from his pocket and flipped it open, his ice-blue eyes going over the pages. “We found him at Battery Townsley. Someone called in an anonymous tip—they heard a gunshot.”

“But who—?”

“We’re thinking self-inflicted.”

My stomach roiled and had I been attached to a heart monitor, it would have flat lined. My eyes went from Alex to Will. “The girls?”

Will avoided my gaze. Alex swallowed hard. “We had Fallon in protective custody. She doesn’t know anything about Bud. And while we were securing the crime scene, we found Alyssa—alive—wandering in the parking lot. She was badly beaten and so far, hasn’t said a word.”

“She’s catatonic,” Will said. “They have her in the trauma ward upstairs. She didn’t even react when her parents came.”

I licked my lips. “Kayleigh?”

Alex looked down, studying the pattern on my blanket. “We haven’t found her yet. We’ve got men at Bud’s place. We’re going over it with a fine-toothed comb, trying to find the secondary location.”

I looked to Will, hopefully. “But Miranda’s okay, right? He let her go?”

Will hung his head but didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“We failed.” A sob lodged in my throat. “We failed all of them, Will.”

I sunk into my pillow as Will reached under the blanket, his hand finding mine and giving it a tight squeeze.

“We did the best we could.”

I snatched my hand back. “No. That’s not good enough.”

He fisted his hands, his eyes going from Alex to me. “I’m going to get you a cup of tea, okay?”

I lolled my head on the pillow, avoiding him. Nina popped off the bed. “I’ll go with you.”

Alex waited until the door closed behind them.

“I can’t believe that Kayleigh is still out there—somewhere. And maybe Miranda.”

Alex cleared his throat. “We’re not going to let this go. We’re still working,” he said. “We brought in the yearbooks you had in the back of your car.” His smile was tight. “As well as the box of files that went mysteriously missing from my office.”

I threw myself back on my pillow, tossing an arm across my forehead. “Oh! The pain!” I watched beneath lowered lashes while Alex rolled his eyes.

“Right. Anyway, I was hoping you could go through them and let me know of any other girls you think may have gone missing.”

I screwed up my brow. “You suddenly want my help? What happened to distancing yourself?” The anger was simmering in my gut, and I was mad at Alex for his continuous flip-flop behavior, at myself for not finding Bud—and Kayleigh—sooner.

“Lawson, you don’t understand.”

“No, Alex,” I said, swinging my head. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

His eyes raked over me and I could see immediately that the clear crystal blue was marred and flat. He still looked exhausted and pale. He opened his mouth and then closed it, as if thinking better of it. “This isn’t the right time.”

I was seething.

“I’d like to be alone now.”

Alex closed his notebook and shifted his weight. He paused for an uncomfortable beat before patting my leg awkwardly over the blanket.

“Take care of yourself, Lawson.”

Alex met the nurse in the doorway. She poked her head in. “Visiting hours are over.”

Nina edged her way past the nurse and perched herself at the end of my bed, her weightless body leaving no indentation. “I’m family.”

Will blinked at me, but I turned from him, too. I heard him sigh.

“Hey, angel boy, can I catch a ride? The bird decimated my Nigella.”

Nina ruffled my hair when the room was emptied out. I closed my eyes and sunk into my pillows. “I really screwed this one up, didn’t I, Neens?”

“You can’t save them all, Soph.”

I swallowed hard, my throat aching. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes and I let them fall. “I don’t know what made me think I could do this. It just doesn’t make sense, though. If this was all Bud, why the pentagram at Fallon’s house? Why the burned-up uniforms? Something is not adding up. If he wanted the girls for sacrifice, why would he just let one go? I mean, the spell books, the candles? Someone had to be keeping the girls. Someone had to be helping him.”

“Why? Men kidnap girls all the time.”

“Men who are in their sixties? He could have taken down each girl on her own, but how was he keeping them? And Alyssa was alive—and with him—when he took Kayleigh. How does a sixty-year-old man manage that?”

Nina popped off the bed and paced, her fangs straining against her lower lip. I straightened. “There’s something you’re not telling me. Oh, God—is there another girl? Did Bud take another girl? I’m telling you, it can’t just be him.”

Nina batted at the air. “It’s nothing. It’s just that I called Vlad like, sixteen times. He never even called back.”

I harrumphed and poked at the bowl of green Jell-O sitting on my bedside tray. “He’s sixteen years old. Does he ever call back?”

Nina puckered her cherry red lips, her perfect façade unmarred. I briefly wondered what it would be like to look perfect all the time or be eternally sixteen.

“I told him you were at the hospital. He still didn’t call.”

I frowned, stung. “Sixteen,” I said again.

Something nagged at me.

“Heddy.”

“What?” Nina asked, pausing her pace.

“Heddy’s not a geezer. Hey, Neens, pass me one of those yearbooks.”

Nina did as she was told and pulled one out for herself, curling up next to me in my bed. She flopped open the book, her face immediately breaking into a grin. “Ah, the seventies. Everyone looked horrible.”

“Look up Heddy Gaines.”

Nina went to the index, her finger going down the line of names. I did the same, and we both flipped our books open to Heddy’s smiling mug at the exact same time.

And it was the exact same picture.

“Wow, she hasn’t changed a bit,” Nina said.

“No, she hasn’t changed at all from 1971 to 1994.” I grabbed another book. “Exactly the same in 2010.” I pulled it closer, studying it. Finally, I flipped to the other indexed page. “Heddy Gaines, Lock and Key Club advisor.”

My heart started to thump. “Heddy hasn’t aged in thirty years.”

“A lot of women look good for their ages. Look at me.” Nina modeled her perfect mug.

“You don’t age, Nina.” I yanked another book—this one from ’63—and flipped it to show Nina. “Neither does Heddy. Not at all.”