I let Rage take the lead. His hands hovered over the keyboard like he were trying to defuse a bomb, sweat dripping down his wrists onto the cheap plastic. The room filled with the click-clack of keys and the static of skipped time as he scrubbed backward through the night’s footage.
“There,” he said, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Twenty-three fifteen. That’s when she leaves.”
He played it in real time. Harper moved through the corridor, head down, body language deadened. She didn’t look left or right, just kept to the wall. Rage appeared a minute later, carrying the go-bag and a set of keys. He never looked at her.
They hit the alley. Harper hung back, just out of the reach of the lights. Rage circled to the driver’s side, did a perfunctory scan, and unlocked the Escalade. Harper reached for the passenger door.
Next frame, she was gone. No blur, no struggle, not even a shadow. Just empty space.
I watched the loop five times, each repetition grinding another layer of patience from my nerves. By the sixth, I wanted to put my fist through the monitor and into Rage’s face.
“You didn’t even watch her get in the car,” I said, voice flat as a morgue slab.
Rage tried to stand straighter, but even his size couldn’t cover how small he felt. “I—I always do, boss. She’s never run before. Three years, not one problem. I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” I snapped, eyes never leaving the freeze-frame. “She’s not a girl, she’s a product. You don’t leave a product on the dock and hope it loads itself.”
He said nothing. The security tech pretended to be absorbed in the next screen over, but I could smell the terror sweat from across the room.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the club’s main number. “Get Darlene to the security office. Now.” I hung up before they could answer.
The wait was measured in heartbeats. Darlene arrived in two minutes, heels stabbing the tile, the slit of her dress running thigh-high and her face a mask of perfume and contempt. She gave Rage a look that could have killed a weaker man, then focused on me.
“What’s the emergency?” she said. Her voice was sugar, laced with arsenic.
I pointed at the screen. “Watch.”
She did, and her mouth curled at the edge, not in surprise, but in recognition.
“You said the cameras are top of the line, right?” She asked the tech.
He nodded, nervous. “Redundant system, multiple angles. Nothing gets missed.”
Darlene smiled, with a smear of lipstick on her teeth. “Except this.”
She leaned closer, peering at the frozen frame, and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The air shimmered, just a little, like a drop of oil on water. She put her palm on the monitor, held it there for five seconds, then let go.
“It’s a spell,” she said. “Very expensive, very clean. Probably a charm of disappearance or misdirection, layered with a time-warp. Whoever did this was either a professional or an older witch with access to ancient magic.”
My jaw tightened. “You told me the covens wouldn’t work in Houston anymore.”
“They won’t,” Darlene said. “Not for you. But there’s always someone willing to do business if the money’s right.”
I didn’t bother asking how much. If it was enough to get a girl out from under my nose, it was enough to make a dent in a mid-sized nation’s GDP.
Rage hovered by the console, desperate for absolution. “You want me to hit up our sources? See if any witches came into town the last week?”
I nodded. “Do it. Check the hotels, the airports. Pull the guest lists for every room in the building since Friday.”
He was already on his phone, dialing with a trembling finger.
Darlene turned to me, one eyebrow raised. “You want me to track her?”
“Yes.”
She grinned. “I’ll need a sample. Blood, hair, saliva. The usual.”
I didn’t have to ask where to get it. The demon king had left plenty of Harper’s DNA on the velvet couch upstairs. I sent the tech to fetch it.
