Vampire’s Curse Read online

  Vampire’s Curse

  Shifting Magic Book One

  Lysa Daley

  Contents

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  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Also by Lysa Daley

  About the Author

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  UNMASKED: The Dark Skies Trilogy Prequel

  Copyright © 2018 by Lysa Daley

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781976930393 (paperback)

  ASIN: B0787V9J8W

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Book cover by Rebecca Frank

  Created with Vellum

  “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

  Roald Dahl

  Chapter One

  “This must be a mistake?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not a mistake.” The dean of my college handed the letter back to me, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Miss McCray, but we’re unable to allow you to enroll in winter classes.”

  “I don’t understand,” I muttered, suddenly feeling like I might throw up. “I registered online a month ago. My grades last quarter were good. And by good, I mean all A’s. The research for my dissertation is on track. I only have two more quarters before I’m done with all my classwork and can defend my doctorate.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.” He nodded sympathetically.

  “Did you speak to my advisor, Dr. Boyd? She’ll tell you.”

  The registrar leaned back in his high-back leather desk chair, his expression grim. “Lacey, UCLA holds you in the highest academic regard as a grad student. You’re one of our strongest performing students.”

  He reminded me of a raven with his slick black hair, black woolen suit, and sharp, beakish nose. I wondered if he was part wizard. But, as far as I could tell, there was no magic radiating from within him.

  “That’s not the problem.” He scanned my file, flipping through the pages. “Unfortunately, your tuition is past due.”

  I almost laughed.

  “No. That can’t be possible.” I shook my head, even more sure than ever that this was some big misunderstanding. Surely I could clear it up and get on with registering for classes. “My father’s check must have gotten lost in the mail.”

  “We received the check. Unfortunately, it bounced.” He pulled the check from my file and handed it to me.

  A laugh tumbled out of my mouth. My family may have its share of problems, but money wasn’t one of them. My father came from one of the oldest wizarding bloodlines on the planet. His side of the family had once been very powerful back when a magical family could still be powerful. And even today, they were still rich.

  “Bounced? That’s ridiculous. Did you contact my father?”

  “The accounting department has made several attempts to get in touch with your father. As of yet, he has not returned any of our calls or inquiries.”

  “Did they double-check?”

  He frowned. “They don’t make that information available to me, but I’m sure they did. Have you spoken to your father recently?”

  I brushed a long strand of brown hair off my shoulder. My father and I weren’t exactly on the best of terms. “He’s… out of touch at the moment. But his office in London should be able to help with this matter.”

  The truth was I hadn’t spoken to my father in almost a year. I had made a half-hearted attempt to call him on his birthday in October, but when I didn’t reach him via the satellite phone, I just sent an email instead. I got no reply. Same with my Christmas gift.

  I supposed I could have used a basic spell or a little simple magic to reach him, but I didn’t use magic anymore. Besides, I wasn’t that eager to talk to him. He didn’t approve of my going to grad school in California, instead of going to work for him in his London research firm. We hadn’t quite gotten around to making up yet. I knew he’d get over it… eventually.

  “As far as I know, he’s still in Finland, near the Arctic Circle, studying Russian Horned Ridgebacks.” My father was one of the world’s premiere authorities on dragons. Especially ancient, endangered breeds, like Ridgebacks.

  The dean shrugged. “His office has not responded to us, either. We do consider you to be a tremendous asset to our graduate program. Unfortunately, at this point, unless we receive tuition, we’re going to have to deny you entrance this quarter.”

  “What about a scholarship or a grant? Perhaps a temporary loan? There’s got to be something until I can get this straightened out?” I tried hard not to sound totally desperate.

  Before he could answer, someone knocked on the closed office door. A girl with Coke-bottle thick glasses that made her look all googly-eyed slouched in. I’d seen her before. Those weird eyes were hard to forget. Pretty sure she was an undergrad. Through my work as a teaching assistant in a history class called the Fall of the European Vampire, I’d seen her in the big lecture hall.

  “Sir, I double-checked, and as of this morning, we still don’t have any word from her father,” the meek girl reported barely above a whisper.

  “Thank you, Agatha,” the registrar replied, dismissing her with a wave.

  But instead of leaving, she just stood there, staring at me. With those weird eye. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

  The registrar finally glanced up from the file to see that Agatha was still there. “That will be all, Agatha.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course,” she said, still hesitating. But after an awkward beat, she slipped back out into reception area.

  “As I was saying,” the register continued. “Currently, we have allocated all of our scholarship and grant money for the semester. You can reapply at the end of this term. But as you know… UCLA has an extremely prominent Magical Arts college. And your program History, Folklore and Magical Literature is perhaps the most prestigious in the world.”

  I nodded in agreement. Duh, that’s why I’m here.

  “As I’m sure you’re aware, many qualified candidates are waiting to get in. Especially for a — non-practitioner — such as yourself. Perhaps you could reach out to the zoological or transfigurations departments. They might have more funding available, in the form of a scholarship, if you’d be willing to transfer to them. And they’d surely be very interested in… someone like you.”

  By someone like me, he meant an animagi. I was born with the unique wizarding ability to change into an animal. Unlike were-shifters, we didn’t only change into one kind of animal. We could shift into a variety of animals, depending on our strength and abilities.

  “You’d have to alter your coursework, somewhat, but you’d still be able to get your Phd,” he said, like this was a good idea.

  It wasn’t.

  There was no way I would give up my research, and switch to stupid transfigurations. There was no way I’d throw seven years of hard work and study down the drain if I couldn’t come up with the money.

  I smiled as sweetly as I co
uld, and said, “I don’t practice animagic anymore. Besides, I haven’t had any training since high school. And I have no interest in that field.”

  “Very well.” He sighed, closing my file and slipping it under a very tall pile of other folders. Then he handed me a thin yellow slip of paper. “At any rate, you have until the end of the month to pay tuition with traditional funding.”

  I tried to hide my shock. “But January 31st is only five days away. Surely I can get a bit more time?”

  He averted his beady bird-like eyes. “I’m sorry for the late notice. We had been hoping that we’d be able to resolve this matter with your father. But the deadline is firm.”

  I turned over the yellow slip of paper. It was my tuition bill. “Nine thousand dollars! How am I supposed to come up with that much money in less than a week?”

  “Of course, you’d have until the end of the moon cycle if you chose to use goblin’s gold.”

  Goblin’s gold was the currency of the magical world. A world that was dying out more quickly than the rotary phone or the VCR. I hadn’t even seen a goblin coin in ten years.

  He rose from his chair. “I do wish you good luck, Ms. McCray. I’ll let you know if the situation changes.”

  I stood up, my knees wobbling beneath me. “Thank you, sir,” I replied, trying to hide my disappointment.

  None of this made any sense. My father would not have forgotten to pay my tuition. And even if he did, someone in his office should have taken care of any outstanding bills. Why hadn’t anyone given me any advanced warning? Why was I just learning about this with only five days left?

  When I was nearly out the door, the registrar repeated his earlier suggestion, “If I were you, I’d try to contact your father.”

  I slouched though the reception area with my head hung low. Two other students were waiting to see the registrar. I wondered if they were getting the same news I’d just gotten. How often did something like this happen?

  Agatha, the mousy girl with the weird glasses, called to me, “Ms. McCray. Can I talk to you?”

  I sighed. If she was in the history class where I worked as a teaching assistant, she probably wanted to ask me about the upcoming test. The class, taught by my advisor Dr. Boyd, was hard, and the tests were nearly impossible. Almost no one got an A.

  “Ms. McCray?” she called again.

  I pretended that I didn’t hear her as I picked up my pace and walked out of the office with tears filling my eyes.

  There wasn’t a more beautiful college campus than UCLA, filled with old ivy-covered brick and sandstone buildings. The Spanish-influenced administration building, with its dark wood interior beams and worn tile floors, was no exception.

  Today all that was lost on me.

  I hurried down the long hallway past dozens of tiny offices occupied by various university administrators.

  Around the corner, a cluster of what appeared to be math professors waited for the elevator. I really couldn’t take a bunch of socially challenged men asking me why I was crying, so I brushed past them and took the stairs down three flights instead.

  Coming round the last set of stairs into the dimly lit first floor stairwell landing, I almost jumped out of my skin when I nearly ran right into the girl in the Coke bottle glasses leaning casually against the doorway.

  “Hey you,” she said, standing so still it almost looked like she wasn’t real.

  “Oh!” I cried out. “Agatha? You startled me. How did you—?”

  There was no way she could have beaten me down here.

  “I guess you didn’t hear me calling your name back in the office.” She arched an eyebrow. Something was different. She was different. Her mild-mannered demeanor had evaporated. A confident, almost cocky, grin creased her lips.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “I was… in a hurry.”

  She took off her glasses, revealing unnaturally red eyes. “No worries. I’ll make it quick.”

  “You’re a vampire,” I said, taking a step back.

  “You got a problem with that, witchy?”

  The glasses were enchanted, meant to hide her eyes and keep her true identity a secret. It wasn’t exactly illegal for vampires to go to college. They made everyone nervous, and for good reason. Vampires were dangerous—even nice, studious, college student vampires.

  At least now I understood how she’d beaten me down here. Vampires could move at superhuman speeds. They could also bench press a Volkswagen if they wanted.

  “I didn’t know they gave vampires work-study jobs?” I said, putting even more distance between me and Agatha.

  “Contrary to popular belief, not all vampires are rich like you.” She smiled and held up a hand. “Some of us suffer from the curse.”

  She meant the vampire’s curse. If you weren’t born into a vampire coven, that meant you’d been turned against your will. It was a difficult life. A terrible fate. Most were shunned by their family and friends. Many ended up being nothing more than low level slaves in a coven.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…” I replied. Now I admired Agatha for being in school to get an education.

  “Don’t worry.” She smirked. “You’re safe with me. I’ve recently fed.”

  “What do you want?” I asked nervously, my eyes darting around hoping to see another person. No matter how much I admired her, nobody wanted to be alone with a vampire.

  “I obviously heard about your little problem,” she said, handing me a small rectangle of paper. “I thought this might help.”

  It was a business card. Printed on plain white paper. It had no name, no phone number. Just an address.

  1 Ironwood Way.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Despite the pretty sounding street name, this was the old part of downtown L.A. Its dangerous reputation preceded it.

  I handed the card back. “Sorry. I don’t touch the dark stuff.”

  “It’s not dark arts. I promise. Go see for yourself. It pays real good. And it sounds like you need the money pretty quick.”

  “What kind of work?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing illegal or immoral. Check it out. They may have some work for… your kind.”

  So she knew what I was too.

  A tingle of residual magic transferred from the card and moved across my hand. I couldn’t tell if it was light or dark magic. I nodded and slipped the card into the back pocket of my jeans. At this point, I just wanted to get out of there. “I’ll consider it.”

  “Smart.” She nodded and stepped aside as I pushed open the door and headed into the hallway.

  This sure wasn’t the way I thought my day would go. First I lost my fellowship, then I got a job referral from a vampire.

  I walked across campus in a daze. A bright January sun filled the Southern California sky. The clear air smelled sweet from the rain we had last night. I veered off the pathway shaded by a line of old eucalyptus trees, cutting across the wide, sunny green.

  My brain reeled from learning that I might not be able to enroll in this quarter’s classes. For the last seven years, I’d dedicated myself to the study of supernatural history and folklore. My dissertation focused on the decline of magic in the modern world. I documented how technology was speeding up the downfall of the paranormal community. Who needed old world magic when you had things like cell phones, airplanes and security cameras.

  Like I said, I came from an old wizarding family. Most witches and wizards had a special talent. Some were potion masters, others were psychic or mind-bender, and elementals could control the weather. Some members of my family were gifted with the ability to spontaneous change into the form of an animal.

  I stopped practicing in high school, and only got up to insects, birds, and small mammals. I was working on fish and aquatic mammals when I quit.

  My father, Cassius McCray, held a very rare Class 4 Animagus license. That made him a mage—one of the most powerful kinds of wizards alive. He could turn into an animal as large as a lion, be
ar, and even some whales. There had only been a handful mages that powerful in the last century. If he could master transforming into a dragon, he’d be the world’s only living Class 5.

  Obviously, my quitting made my animagi father very upset. He wanted me to join the family business and focus my studies on becoming a higher level animagi, so I could join him and his research team.

  But the world had become a very dangerous place for supernaturals and paranormals. Magic was being driven deeper and deeper underground, fading away as the years passed. Most humans didn’t even know that supernaturals and the paranormal existed.

  Determined to live my life away from the fading world of magic, I focused on school. My goal—one I’d been working toward for seven years—was to get my Ph.D and find a nice secure place to teach at a highly prestigious university in the non-magical world. I’d already had a few Ivy League department heads reach out to me. Then maybe someday, I’d find a nice human boy to marry and have a couple half-breed kids who could grow up in the normal world.

  Unlike my childhood.

  Despite my non-practicing status, I still held a Class 2 Animagus license, set to expire at the end of the year. I wasn’t planning on renewing it. What was the point? I never used it.

  Okay, technically, sometimes extreme circumstances called for the emergency use of a sprinkle of magic.

  Like when my roommate in undergrad locked us out of our second floor apartment. I was late for a final exam and didn’t have time to wait around for the locksmith to show up. So when my roommate wasn’t looking, I turned myself into a finch, flew in the open bathroom window, turned back into myself and unlocked the deadbolt on the backdoor.