Page 1 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
Final Curtain
Prologue
EL GATO BLANCO
Iwatched from the shadows as the ambulance took the young witch away. She’d never know it was me that called. That fistful of Vicodin wouldn’t kill her, but she had no way of knowing that. Her parents had raised her to be totally ignorant of her powers, which would have awakened when she turned eighteen, but she bumped up the timeline when she tried to end her life.
I couldn’t fault her for thinking her life was over. She wasn’t being a dramatic sixteen-year-old. She might not know she was a witch, but she was gravitating towards it naturally.
Beyla Moonfall was a talented ballet dancer. I’d watched her through the window, at her human ballet school, and was certain she’d be welcome at any human residential ballet school in the country and have been automatically accepted into any company. She would have quickly ascended through the ranks, as things that were physically impossible for humans were not for her. Although, since she was a witch, she didn’t need to much as she could simply enchant the audience!
Still, she was following the trajectory of a professional supernatural dancer. The one school she applied to was attached to the dance companyThe P.They were the premier ballet company for supernaturals in the entire country. Still, no one knew that except other supernaturals.
Some other ballet companies looked down on them for being ‘too showy.’ Human ballet companies were happy with one prima doing the famous thirty-twofouettésplaying the Black Swan.The Pdidn’t bother with things like that. They regularly had four ballerinas in each corner of the stage doing that with their prima, and her danseur, in the middle doing an insanepas de deux.
But Beyla must have seen them once and accepted the challenge. While they allowed anyone to audition, they only took supernaturals. I’d seen her dance. She would have made it, and her parents would have had to tell her the truth.
But none of that happened.
I didn’t watch her during intimate moments, but I’d seen her with her human boyfriend… and I didn’t like him. He was the type of boy that would hold her back because he was selfish. If I had only known how far he planned on going, I would have removed him from the equation before he had a chance.
Two days before she was supposed to leave for New York, I wasn’t there, I was consulting my runes again and trying to induce another vision. Everything was pointing me towards this teenager. She was just so young, so ignorant of anything supernatural. How wasshethe one?! I needed clarification.
If I had known he’d break both of her feet to prevent her from going to the academy, well, I definitely would have killed him. Still, she could have recovered and danced again. It all meant she lost her spot at the academy, the one attached toThe P,but there was always next year.
After coming home from the hospital, with both of her feet in casts, her parents had left her alone to pick up something from the store. They never got home, they got into a fatal car crash instead. Beyla took an entire bottle of Vicodin after she found out.
I did my part, though no one would ever know that. I broke into her bedroom, stuck my fingers down her throat, called an ambulance, and placed an anonymous call to one of her parent’s best friends.
I couldn’t be there when she woke up, but she would need a familiar face to get her through this. We would meet again. All my tarot cards and visions had led me to this teenage witch.
I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how, but she was going to be the one to break that curse.
Chapter1
Beyla
My legs were a blur as I went through a series ofbatterieon the floating floor Kaine installed in the garage for me. I added extra beats to myjete battuand then assembled my feet in fourth position to spring into a quadruplepirouettethat I landed on one knee. I was out of breath and sweating, but I did this every morning and every night before bed.
I grabbed my towel and mopped my face. My parent’s best friend, Kaine, had put a roof over my head after my parents died. He was amazing. He turned his garage into a dance studio and spared no expense—floor-to-ceiling mirrors and a floating floor with Marley. Kaine pretty much refused to let me get a part-time job when I was a teenager, despite the cost of the insane amount of pointe shoes I destroyed!
He was waiting in the doorway when I was done, like always, with a steaming hot cup of coffee and scrambled eggs wrapped in a burrito, so it was portable.
“You sure you want to do this, twinkle toes? You were meant to be on stage, not catching criminals like me.”
There was a part of me that felt that was true, a part that bitterlymissedbeing on stage. Kaine was the one that had told me the truth about being a witch. I’m not sure why my parents hid that from me, because Kaine told me right away. Apparently all that Vicodin I downed never would have killed me, but it had triggered my gifts early.
Kaine was always around when I was a kid, so I knew he was a cop… but that was all I knew, since he never talked about work around me. He was a detective, with the Paranormal Investigation Bureau and, after I moved in with him, he got promoted to chief.
It was like my eyes opened fully for the first time when I moved in with him. At the time I was still grieving my parents' death, and what Derek did to my feet because he didn’t want me to go away to ballet school. Kaine moved me to a high school for other paranormals and found me a local ballet studio that catered to them. It sure wasn’tThe P,but I’d never been trained that hard in my entire life!
He eventually offered to get me another audition atThe P,and there was a part of me that wanted to take him up on it… but I didn’t. I suppose in that way Derek got his wish. I didn’t go to New York to study ballet.
“Ihaveto find out why Derek went missing the night I ended up in the hospital. His parents still think I did something to him, and that’s why I took the Vicodin that night!”
“Beyla, look, anyone with a brain knows you didn’t do a fucking thing to that boy, even if he had it coming. You’re five foot two and barely a hundred pounds! Both your feet were in casts, and the breaks were fresh. There’s no way you could have killed him and disposed of his body without a trace.
“Finding out what happened to that human shit stain is no reason to join the Paranormal Investigation Bureau. The human police have been looking for him for five years. Even though he’s human, and so is out of my jurisdiction, I’ve tried to find him so you can punch him in the face and go to New York. He’s gone. Hell, if he's not dead then maybe he grew up and realized what he did to you and fled the country.”
