A few people on the Front Street sidewalk where I now briskly moved along glanced at me warily as I kept talking to myself like a crazy woman.
A location spell. A person’s exact location could be pinpointed if you knew someone who could work some hocus-pocus. What’s his name—wizard-boy Steven, aka The
Darkness—did a location spell to find out where I lived, didn’t he? Just before he was possessed by a demon and threw me into a wall, that is.
However, it might be worth it if I could find him.
But how was I supposed to do that? I didn’t have his phone number. I had no idea how to contact him. And time was running out.
Check it out, my nightwalker said. A falling star. Why don’t you make a wish, you loser?
My evil inner voice wasn’t very nice at all.
I looked up at the sky, dark but clear, showing a full moon and stars like a thousand sparkly diamond rings.
Normally, I’d wish for a million dollars. Tonight I’d make an exception.
“I wish I could find Gideon Chase,” I said aloud to the brightest star I saw. “Pretty please.”
The star moved to reveal that I’d just wished on an airplane.
Well, that sucks, my nightwalker said.
At least we agreed about something.
“Hey, lady.” Somebody poked me in the arm. I turned around to scowl at my attacker.
“Need concert tickets?”
“Concert tickets?” I repeated. “That’s one thing I actually don’t need right now.”
“C’mon. They’re cheap. Concert’s already started. You can have ’em for fifty each.”
The man’s breath smelled like a cross between Cuban cigars and a used litterbox. Pleasant it wasn’t.
“Not interested,” I told him.
“Death Suck is the hottest heavy metal band out there. You look like you could use a little excitement tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Forty each. C’mon. Take them off my hands.”
I was about to open my mouth again to tell him exactly where he could shove the tickets when I froze.
Did he say Death Suck?
Did I not already know Death Suck’s biggest fan in the entire Northern Hemisphere?
Why, I think I did. And Death Suck’s biggest fan just happened to be a teenaged wizard who liked to be called The Darkness, who I already knew had expressed a very keen interest at being at the concert this evening.
I looked up at the path of the plane I’d wished on and said a silent thank you. Wishing on stars was obviously overrated.
“Give me the tickets,” I said.
“Forty each.”
I narrowed my eyes and held out my hand, reaching down a little into my nightwalker self to pull out my “thrall” ability as though I was searching through a cluttered purse. “Give them to me.”
His eyes glazed over immediately. “Sure thing,” he said, and he handed me the tickets without further argument. “Enjoy the show.”
I snatched the tickets away from him. I’d forgotten that the thrall was, hands down, my favorite side effect of being a nightwalker.
Not that there was anything good about the curse, mind you. But if there was, it would be the thrall. Wonderful, glorious thrall.
I focused on going into the domed Rogers Centre stadium, getting past security, who saw nothing suspicious about my strolling into a heavy metal concert more than an hour after it had already started. The scent of beer and pretzels and popcorn hit me, along with the very mild scent of weed.
Vampire nose at full capacity. Check.
The sound of twenty thousand screaming kids assaulted me, and the grinding whine of guitars and synthesizers hit me like a brick wall as I wandered the seating area, straining my senses, for any sign of the wizard I was looking for.
“Death suck!” the lead singer screamed into the microphone.
“Kill them! Stab them! Make them bleed!
“Tear their hearts out, THEN WE’LL FEED!
“Suck! Death! DEATH! SUUUCCKKK!”
Catchy.
Vampire hearing: not exactly an asset at the moment. Check.
A quick sweep of the place showed me nothing I could use. This was already taking too long. How would I be able to find him in a crowd of thousands of kids?
I kept searching until a glance at my watch told me it was just after ten o’clock. I’d already been wandering aimlessly around the concert for way too long.
Two hours left.
I made my way down the aisle trying to ignore the music, if you could call it that, and focus on finding Steven. I knew I couldn’t find him the old-fashioned way. It would take forever to look at faces one by one. So I decided to do something a little risky.
Here we go again, I thought.
No, I could handle it. Really. I would slide into my nightwalker skin just a little, kind of like testing the temperature of water with your big toe. He’d touched me the last time I saw him. I vividly remembered him wrapping his hand around my throat and trying to squeeze the life out of me. We all had a dark side to deal with, didn’t we?
“We’re close to the end now,” the demon speaking through Steven had told me yesterday, all red-eyed and scary. “And if you don’t step aside when the blood begins to flow it will devour you whole.”
When the blood begins to flow?
Still freaky. And yet, weirdly appetizing, which wasn’t a very calming thought at all.