The Vampire Trap

  CITY OF WISHES

  2: The Vampire Trap

  Rachel Morgan

  CITY OF WISHES

  2: THE VAMPIRE TRAP

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  Copyright © 2019 Rachel Morgan

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  Summary:

  In a world of fae, vampires and shifters, Elle is human, bound to her stepmother by a slave charm. Her only hope is to wish for her freedom. But can she pay the price the Godmother demands in exchange?

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information please contact the author.

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  v2019.05.07

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Next …

  About the Author

  In the back aisle of Lunar Cherry, Vale City’s best baking supplies store, Elle Winter tapped her left combat boot against the floor as she scanned the shelves of unicorn-related items. “There you are,” she muttered, her eyes landing on the tiny glass bottles of Lawson’s Unicorn Tears on the top shelf. She stood on tiptoe and reached for a bottle, wincing as the partially healed cuts on her back pulled tight. The healing balm Sienna applied this morning had helped a lot, speeding up Elle’s recovery with its magical properties, but the wounds wouldn’t be completely gone until tomorrow or the next day.

  Elle lowered the unicorn tears into the basket floating beside her, then checked the note in her hand to make sure she had everything. “Check, check, and … check.” She crumpled the paper and pushed it into her shorts pocket. But instead of moving to the checkout queue at the front of the shop, she hung out in the back aisle, pretending to examine the vast array of cookie cutters and piping nozzles as her basket followed dutifully alongside her. Dex should be here soon. She’d told him she only had a few minutes to talk. If she took any longer than that, Salvia would get suspicious—especially after last night.

  After breakfast this morning, Salvia had put a confinement charm around the entire house, telling Elle she was never allowed to leave again. But then tea time arrived, and Elle hadn’t been able to bake any more of Salvia’s favorite pearl crunch cookies because some of the ingredients were finished, and at that point Salvia decided she was too tired to go shopping herself. So she temporarily lifted the confinement charm and shoved Elle out the front door with the threat of consequences—her favorite word—if she didn’t return within an hour.

  A squeak reached Elle’s ears, and she squinted at the collection of edible glitter spray in front of her. There certainly shouldn’t be anything alive among the bottles. She moved one aside to see if a mouse or some other tiny creature might be hiding back there, but all she saw were more bottles of glitter spray. She pulled the straps of her canvas bag further up her shoulder and walked forward. Another squeak greeted her, sounding suspiciously as if it came from beneath her arm. She peered into the bag and pushed aside the purse of cash Salvia had given her. Right there, between the two bottles of vitamins she’d picked up from the pharmacy next door, was the pixie she’d caught in the pantry the other day. Her pistachio shell hat sat cocked to one side on her tiny head. She gave Elle a mischievous grin and hugged one of the vitamin bottles.

  “What are you doing in there?” Elle hissed. “Don’t you dare open that bottle. Salvia will—”

  “Elle?”

  Elle’s head shot up and she found Dex in front of her. “Oh. Hi. Hello.” Typical, she thought. The first time they met, she was on her butt on a sidewalk. The second time, she was unconscious. Now, she was talking to her bag. She would hate to know what he really thought of her.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, his eyebrows rising slightly above his too-gorgeous blue eyes.

  “Um, yes. Sorry, there’s a—never mind.” She tugged at the end of her blond ponytail as she decided not to mention the pixie. For some reason, she felt stupidly self-conscious about her appearance. Old shorts, a faded T-shirt, and her favorite scuffed black combat boots with cheap rhinestones sprinkled across the front. Meredith had bought them several years ago and worn them once before deciding they were too chunky for her delicate feminine tastes.

  Elle noticed Dex’s gaze focused somewhere near said chunky boots, and for one heart-pounding moment she feared he could see the gold chain-shaped tattoo encircling her right ankle. Her head snapped down, despite the fact that she knew—she knew—her boots and socks were high enough to conceal the tattoo. She let out a quiet breath of relief as she confirmed that the symbol of the slave charm placed upon her was still hidden.

  She looked up and found Dex’s eyes on her face again. “I know you said you don’t have long to talk,” he said, “but I figured we should make some plans in person instead of arranging everything by text. You never know who might intercept that kind of information.”

  Elle lowered her hand as she looked around to see if anyone might be close enough to overhear them. “I understand.”

  “So are you sure you want to get involved in this? It’s going to be dangerous. Possibly even deadly.”

  She met Dex’s eyes so he would know how serious she was. “I’m sure. I need to do this.”

  “If it’s just about the Essence—”

  “It isn’t.” Elle let out a long breath and decided to tell Dex what had happened. “A vampire attacked my stepsister.”

  “What? When?”

  “Last night. One of them must have run from the fairground straight to my house. My stepsister Meredith answered the door, and I guess she was stupid enough to step beyond the doorway. The vampire grabbed her. Said he wouldn’t let go until she invited him inside, but then my stepmother managed to pull her back, and the vampire disappeared.”

  Dex cursed beneath his breath. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. But I can’t have vampires appearing at my front door again. My stepmother—well … I just need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” If it did, Salvia would punish Elle by hurting Sienna. That was Salvia’s twisted way of keeping her disobedient stepdaughter and daughter in line.

  Dex shook his head. “It’s bad news that they know where you live. Is that where that vampire caught you last night? Outside your home, as you were leaving?”

  “No. I, um, used the back entrance of my house,” Elle said vaguely. She didn’t need Dex asking why she had to sneak out of the kitchen door, tiptoe past garbage bins, and slip through a hole in the wall into the next street over. “Maybe he was waiting for me, but he wouldn’t have seen me if he was out the front.”

  “So then … maybe the attack on your stepsister was a coincidence,” Dex suggested. “Maybe it was an attempt at another random human abduction.”

  Elle shook her head. “My stepsister is fae. Besides, the vampire apparently said he was looking for me.”

  Dex let out a heavy sigh. Then he frowned. “Perhaps this makes things easier. We don’t have to orchestrate anything elaborate in order for them to come and get you. If they know where you live, they’ll probably be waiting for you the next time you leave at night.”

  Ignoring the fact that simply leaving the house was going to be a problem, given Salvia’s new restrictions, Elle said, “Maybe, but there’ll be two police officers stationed outside my home for the next few nights, so a vampire might not dare to come close enough.”

  “If they’re desperate enough to get their hands on you, a whole group of them might show up. They could probably take down two officers.”

  “Probably.” Elle crossed her arms. “But I want to keep this away from my home, if possible. If I can get out safely, then maybe—”

  “Oh, dammit.” Dex’s eyes focused on something behind Elle. “Okay, we need to go. Right now.”

  “What?” Elle whirled around, her mind turning immediately to the vampire who’d abducted her. But of course it couldn’t be him; it was still daytime. The only person Elle could see was a fae woman reaching for a container of cookie cutters.

  “I can’t let her see me,” Dex said. Elle turned back as he raised a hand and partially covered his face. He turned, hurried to the other end of the aisle, and peered around the shelf.

  “I guess I can understand that,” Elle muttered. She would have had the same response if Salvia had caught her somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. “You should be able to leave without her seeing you,” she whispered as she caught up to Dex. Shooting a look over her shoulder, she added, “She seems completely focused on those cookie cutters.”

  “Yes, I think—No, wait. Her husband’s here too. Heading this way. Wonderful.” Dex spun around, his eyes searching behind Elle as he kept one hand up near his face.

  Elle looked about, hoping to see another way out of the store, but there was none. Then her eyes fell on a staircase with a Staff Only sign hovering above the first step. “Over here.” She reached for Dex’s arm and pulled him toward the stairs. They ducke
d beneath the floating sign, Elle glancing behind her to make sure her basket was still following, and hurried up the stairs. At the top was a room piled haphazardly with boxes and wooden crates, and at the far end—in danger of being buried beneath reams of paper, stacks of files, and numerous cables sticking out of an old computer—was a desk.

  “We should move out of sight of the door,” Dex said, placing one arm loosely around Elle’s back. It was a casual movement he probably hadn’t even thought about, but Elle flinched at the sudden pressure against her wounds. Dex snatched his arm back as if he’d been burned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Um, do you think that woman saw us?” she asked quickly.

  “Uh …” He frowned for a moment before turning away and crouching down at the top of the stairs. “I don’t see anyone coming, and I don’t hear anyone shouting at us to get out of the Staff Only area, so I think we’re all good.”

  “Great.” Elle sat on the edge of a crate and pulled her basket closer. She was curious to know why Dex wanted to hide from a woman shopping for cookie cutters, but she had more urgent matters to discuss with him. “I don’t have much more time, so …”

  “Right, yes.” Dex shifted another crate closer to Elle and sat on it. His knee was almost touching hers, which was a silly thing to notice, and yet she could barely drag her attention away from that tiny gap of space between his leg and hers. “You were saying you want to keep the vamps away from your home,” Dex said, “which I totally understand.”

  “Yes.” Elle cleared her throat and looked up. “My stepmother—she just wouldn’t react well. What were you going to suggest before you realized they know where I live?”

  “Oh, well, there’s this event the night after tomorrow. One of Gizella Munroe’s parties. You know, where she invites her friends of all races and tries to show the rest of the world that we can all be friends.”

  Elle nodded slowly. “I’ve heard of them.” Gizella Munroe was a popular fae actress who firmly believed in the equality of all races. She held extravagant parties in her numerous homes around the world. Meredith had managed to score an invitation once or twice. Elle had obviously never been.

  “They’re usually well-attended,” Dex continued. “Anyone who’s anyone likes to be seen there. Not because they agree with Gizella, necessarily, but because—”

  “They want to be popular by association,” Elle guessed. Meredith had spoken endlessly about how unsettling it was to attend parties with vampires and shape-shifters—“And humans, can you believe it?”—and yet she bent over backwards to get herself invited.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Dex said.

  “And you think one of those vampires who tried to kidnap me will be at this party? Doesn’t sound like the right kind of scene.”

  Dex’s lips curved up on one side. “I know. Gizella Munroe’s vamp friends have never tasted a drop of human blood, right? Her shifter friends have never attacked anyone while in beast form. Her fae and human friends all respect and admire each other. They’re all upstanding citizens of the law, aren’t they?” He laughed. “I’ve been to a few of these parties, and I can tell you that’s not the case. Gizella likes to be inclusive, which means she doesn’t exactly supervise who her friends invite. It was actually at one of those parties that I first overheard a whispered discussion about the Allegiant, though I was never able to actually see the man and woman who were talking.”

  “The Allegiant?” Elle asked as her brow drew lower.

  “Sorry, I forget sometimes that the name hasn’t been publicized anywhere. I don’t know if the police even know that’s what this group calls themselves. They’re the ones responsible for all the recent human abductions. The abductions where no bodies have been found.”

  Elle clasped her hands together in her lap. “Okay, so we go to this party on Friday night, and hopefully the right vampire sees me and tries to abduct me, and you and your friends get hold of him instead?”

  “Yes. And then we’ll find out what’s really going on and who else is involved. We’ll make sure the police know everything, and soon—hopefully—you and your family will be safe again.”

  “Sounds so straightforward,” Elle said, unable to keep the doubt from her voice.

  “We’ll make sure nothing happens to you, but if you’re not comfortable with this idea, then you don’t have to—”

  “Dex, I already said I need to do this,” Elle reminded him as she stood. “For my family and for the Essence.” And for the chance to ask that vampire exactly what he knew about her mother. Her mind kept taunting her with the vague memory of those few words he’d spoken—She tried to keep you from us—and she couldn’t bring herself to believe she’d imagined that moment.

  “Oh yes, the Essence.” Dex stood and slid one hand inside his jacket. “Three vials a day until we catch a vamp who knows something. That’s what we agreed, right?” He withdrew his hand and held three vials glowing gold from the vapor-like substance within.

  “Um, thank you.” She wasn’t about to turn down the Essence, but she still felt awkward taking it. She hadn’t done anything to earn it yet. “Let me know where to meet you on Friday,” she added as she slipped the vials into the canvas bag still hanging from her shoulder. “I’ll figure out how to leave my house safely.”

  “You don’t want me to pick you up? That way I can make sure no vampire grabs you off the street and—”

  “No, it’s fine,” she rushed to say. “That, um, won’t work. I’ll ask one of the cops for a lift. He can escort me straight from the front door into his car.”

  “Okay,” Dex said slowly, his brow furrowed once again. “I guess that should keep you safe.”

  “Yes.” Elle nodded, though she hadn’t been thinking of lurking vampires when she’d mentioned leaving her house safely. Salvia and her rules and confinement charms were the bigger problem. But Elle had already begun to formulate a plan to deal with Salvia. She just had to be brave enough to execute it. “Anyway, I really have to go,” she said, nudging her basket back into the air as she stepped past Dex. “See you on Friday.”

  That night, Elle ate her dinner alone at the kitchen table, listening to her stepmother and stepsisters in the dining room. The first time Salvia banished her from the dinner table—“It isn’t proper for our slave to eat with us,” she’d stated—Elle had cried hot, angry tears while eating alone. These days, she was grateful for any time away from Salvia and Meredith. If she could just block out their conversation, her mealtimes would be almost perfect. Unfortunately, the door had to be left open in case Elle was needed for something. Stars forbid Meredith might have to refill her own glass, or dish her own second helping from the hot plate on the sideboard, or wipe her own darn face when she spilled gravy on her chin.

  Elle snickered at that last thought. If Meredith ever reached the point where she asked Elle to wipe her face, she would end up with a lot more than gravy on it. Then, of course, there would be consequences. Sienna would have to pay for Elle’s disobedience. Elle sighed as she chewed slowly on a mouthful of peas. It wouldn’t be worth it.

  The annoying pop song Meredith used as her phone’s ringtone interrupted Elle’s thoughts, followed by someone coughing and then a repeated smacking sound. Elle paused with her fork halfway to her mouth but didn’t move from her seat. She’d made the mistake of returning to the dining room unbidden before. If someone needed her help, they would call for her.

  The coughing and smacking ended. “It’s Quentin,” Meredith spluttered over the sound of her phone ringing. “One of Martin’s friends.”

  Goosebumps rose across Elle’s arms at the mention of Martin’s name. He was the target of Salvia and Meredith’s most recent con. The young man Elle had been forced to use her memory-wiping ability on.