by Jax Garren
Her fledgling paled as he got it.
She pushed away from the couch. “Did I shock you, doctor? People are a nasty lot. You know it as well as I do, even if, for reasons I can’t completely fathom, you go around indiscriminately patching everyone up.” She headed for the bedroom door, no longer looking at him. “But if you think I view you like every other man I’ve ever met, you’re stupider than I thought. I don’t bother saving the lives of folk who force themselves on me, and that’s a plain fact. Hell, I don’t go around saving men in general. You lot cause more problems than you’re worth, on the whole.”
He nodded briskly, eyes wide and mouth ajar. “My bad,” was all he said.
She had to smile at how badly she’d thrown him. She felt oddly triumphant that he was the only one who knew her darkest success. She made her voice light as she changed the subject before he said something dumb and ruined the moment. “Now, lest you tell me no, I’m about to wash up and hit the hay. You can crash by me or crash by yourself. Your prerogative.” She caught his gaze. “But believe me when I say, I would happily tell you to fuck off if I minded sleeping side by side.”
Sweet, friendly Emma had just admitted to premeditated murder. Javier watched her go, trying to process that. CoVIn law came down harshly on members who killed humans—even on accident. But with turn rates sitting at fifty-fifty and the time it took to get transportation to Texas in the early 1800s, there was no way anyone would have found out she’d turned in an application with the intention to bleed the man and let him die.
Most people tried to hide a murder; it was human nature to run from your misdeeds. But by bringing attention to her plan—part of it, anyway—she had an alibi CoVIn wouldn’t question. It was a ballsy move, cold, and required expert acting skills.
Ballsy and an expert actor described Emma to a T. Cold? That was news.
How many people had she seen die and not bothered to help? He was special in her mind and had been since day one, same as she’d been for him.
The peace that came with that realization proved her point. His frustration was all about him—his hurt feelings, his desire that she want him the way he wanted her. But it wasn’t fair to take out his issues on her. Emma wasn’t like Danielle. Yeah, they had similarities—crappy grammar, pleasant lies, and an instinct to run. But when he’d nearly died, Danielle had left him hemorrhaging on the living room floor. Emma had saved him.
Dopamine, epinephrine, glutamate, oxytocin. Be the chemist. Not the reaction.
Feeling dazed, he followed her into a small but pleasantly appointed bedroom. She was already in an attached bath that could be deemed luxurious, with its walk-in shower and a window overlooking Congress Bridge.
He looked back to the open-plan living-dining-kitchen which, by itself, could contain his entire apartment. The furniture was sleek and modern—not the flea market finds and bulk collection day swipes of his current place. No, this looked like a successful person’s apartment.
He’d like it here. It was small enough for easy upkeep but large enough to feel airy. The fixtures weren’t gaudy but didn’t look like the cheap stuff either. CoVIn tended to choose quality over largess—something he appreciated. Yeah, he’d like it very much here.
Maybe he should be frustrated with Emma’s invasive help—he’d spent his life being told where to live. But he hated apartment hunting, and at CoVIn he’d have something pretty fundamental in common with his neighbors: they were vampires.
His lease was up in two months…
The water ran, bringing his attention back to his sire, the murdering vampire. He headed to the door to the bathroom and leaned on the frame, watching her. “A man who’d participate in the gang rape of a thirteen-year-old deserves to die. If CoVIn can’t see that, they’re morons.”
She paused with the white handle of an electric toothbrush—apparently included with the furnishings—already sticking out between her lips. “How bloodthirsty of you, doc,” she managed around it.
Contrary to all good sense, the sight of her with her lips wrapped around a toothbrush that should be his sent his mind careening in the wrong direction. Her admission, if anything, made him want her more, and his ever-expanding unrequited lust was not what they needed to make peace between them.
Frustrated with his lack of control, he shook his head and turned away. “I’m getting out of these clothes. Shut the door if you’re bothered.” He exited the bathroom and started unbuttoning his shirt. Sure enough, the hardwood chest of drawers contained clothing in his size. He pulled out a T-shirt of impossibly soft cotton and tossed it onto the bed. As for his own shirt, blood and zombie goo had sunk into the material, ruining it. He probably stank of equal parts torch smoke and death.
“Want the shower?” Emma yelled over the vibration of the brush.
He pulled off his undershirt and wadded it up with the other. He should probably keep them somewhere to pull samples from, but hell, he wanted to burn everything he’d worn today. Instead, he found a plastic bag to stick them in. “God, yes. You need it?” So awkward. And what did he wear to bed when Emma was next to him? He usually slept in boxers. He pawed through the chest of drawers, digging for something mundane, like sweatpants.
Hell, what was she sleeping in? The dress was gorgeous, but it had an, uh, puffy underskirt thingy—what was that called? A crinoline.
“Nah, no shower. I didn’t get gooped up like you. You take it.” The toothbrush stopped whirring, the sink ran, and then she was in the doorway, running her tongue over her teeth. “Hate to ask, you putting me up tonight already being a favor and all, but you got something I could…” She motioned to her outfit.
Javier tossed one of the soft but thin T-shirts at her. She caught it and held it up against her chest. The hem nearly hit her knees. “Perfect.” She kicked off her shoes and yanked on the zipper running down the back of her dress. It wasn’t a sexy strip by a long shot. The shoes launched in two directions with the finesse of a toddler with a slingshot, and her zipper made a jagged rrt-rrt with each yank instead of the smooth hiss it’d made the first time they’d been together.
This was Emma. The real Emma. God help him, it was more desirable than the show she’d put on before.
She read the shirt and laughed, her donkey bray of a guffaw the honest, open laughter he loved. “‘Trust me, I’m the Doctor.’ I picked this one out. Made me think of you.”
He glanced at the T-shirt—a Doctor Who joke. “You watch the show?” She’d acted like she’d never seen it back in those first few days, when he’d just turned and they’d spent a week at Cash’s house fighting about, well, everything as he adjusted to being not human. She’d “humored” her “baby bat” and watched an episode of the “silly British show” for him. Figured she was lying and was already familiar with the whole series.
She actually blushed. “Yeah, well, you were right—it’s pretty good. I caught up on a bunch of episodes while I was in San Francisco.” She busied her hands at her waist, and her crinoline dropped to the ground, an abundance of tulle frothing around her ankles. The skirt now fluttered to her calves, twirling about them and catching against her slight curves. His throat went dry. She kicked the crinoline away. “Figured we’d have something to talk about if I watched a few more episodes, then I went and actually liked the damn thing.” She frowned at him. “Figures you’d like something good.” One strap slipped down her shoulder, and he lost track of the conversation. Her shoulders were pale as white roses compared to the ocher fading up her forearms and bronzed face with freckles across her nose. A farmer’s daughter, frozen into the tan lines of another century.
He was staring. He needed to quit.
Her hips swayed gently as she strode to him and placed a hand on his bare shoulder, each finger a little brand against his skin. “Go take your shower, sweetie.”
His face heated in embarrassment. “I still don’t understand how you’re not angry with me. The first time, yeah, you picked me up. I had no idea. But tonight, at the p
arty…” He shook his head. “I didn’t intend to…” He licked his lips, shoulders clenched and skin taut underneath her fingers. He didn’t want to go on, but he had to. “Please don’t fake anything with me. I’m not going to come on to you again”—a promise he hoped he’d keep—“but even as friends, I don’t want to spend our time wondering what’s real. I’ve never been good at reading people. I can’t tell the difference.”
The pressure on his shoulder became a gentle pat, almost patronizing, before she pulled her hand away and crossed her arms defensively. “That wasn’t fake.”
He watched her face, desperate for any hints of truth. “What part wasn’t fake?”
“At the party? I gave you blood while you fingered me? That was a real orgasm.”
Words like orgasm and fingered, and, yes, blood, struck him with the blunt club of need. Her pupils dilated and a faint blush spread across her cheeks—the former prostitute was blushing—and he wanted her so badly he tensed to keep from reaching for her. “But you don’t like sex. How did you like that?”
She cocked a hip. “That wasn’t sex. You were paying me for blood.” She actually smiled. “I was the client. And you’re pretty damn good at that. I remember that from our first time too, what you did with your mouth, you got cunnilingus skill.”
He gripped the doorframe of his bathroom and tried not to remember her legs spread, her beautiful sex open before him. The bed behind her had the same type of coffee-colored sheets that had been in his apartment. He wondered if she’d picked those out too. If she remembered.
But was she lying again? How could she like him getting her off but claim she didn’t like sex? He shook his head, wishing he could shake off his baffled frustration. “You are the most confusing person I’ve ever met. You beat out Danielle by the narrow margin of managing it while not tweaked beyond coherency.”
She pushed him backward, into the bathroom, and he let her. “Take a shower. You smell like dead zombie.”
He paced back, still watching her. “If you like me going down on you, I can do that again.” Spoken like a seventeen-year-old. Hadn’t he just said he wouldn’t hit on her again? Fuck, he just had.
“Better make it a cold shower.” She smiled as she shut the door.
He turned the water on but found himself gravitating to the door as he waited for it to heat up. He couldn’t stay away from her. “Are you saying that you like being touched but don’t want to touch anyone else?”
From the silence on the other side, he wondered if she’d heard. It would be easy to pretend not to. Then her too-slight weight hit the door, and he sensed more than heard her slide down. He followed her motion, pressed his cheek against the wood, and imagined she did the same.
“Javi, don’t think so much. Don’t put ideas where there ain’t ideas, or meaning where there’s just a tangle.” She sighed, her breath a whisper over the sound of falling water. She moved, the zipper made a final susurrus, and in the following rustle of fabric, he imagined her trading her dress for his T-shirt.
“But you and Cash…” He stopped himself before he finished. It was one more jealous, selfish thought, centering on his need to be special to her, like she was to him. But that wasn’t a right—she didn’t owe him anything.
“Cash and my relationship”—more fabric and the banging of elbows against the door— “as I said, has been greatly exaggerated in popular imagination.” She settled back against the door. “We’re friends. We ain’t had sexual congress since the early 1800s.” She sniffed. “He was the first vampire I met after Joe left. That’s your grandsire. Wish you’d a known him. He was a hoot. Anyways. When Cash showed up, he said he wanted to get me out of town, somewhere with more of our kind. I was scared and didn’t know what to think. Joe had told me to wait for him, and I was doing that. I wouldn’t talk to Cash, so he hired me. I wouldn’t let him pay for nothing, so we had sex. I thought he’d go on his way, but he came back. Day after day he came back. Finally we got to talking, and he convinced me to travel to New Orleans with him. We pretended I was his mistress. I’d never been out of Nacogdoches. The whole experience was something else. I owe Cash for being stubborn enough to stick with me.”
He’d never heard any of this. “Where was your sire?”
“Joe?” Emma’s voice perked up, like the thought of Joe made her happy. “Oh, Joe was rambling somewheres in Indian Territory. He met up with us in Louisiana that year. Cash punched him for being a crappy sire. So Joe shot him. Then Cash cut off his right hand and wouldn’t give it back until Joe agreed to take care of me proper-like. Body parts take months, if not years, to regrow, but reattaching only takes a few days, so Joe gave in right quick to get his trigger finger back.” She laughed, like the mutilation story was hilarious. “You wouldn’t have recognized me. I was such a damsel.”
Javier did laugh at that, trying to imagine the same woman who shot zombies and orchestrated the murder of her rapist as a fairy-tale damsel in any way but her long hair and waiflike figure. “I can’t imagine you in distress.”
“Oh, I was seriously worthless. Cash left to go back to the northern branch of CoVIn in Philadelphia. I think he knew war was on the horizon—the Civil War, I mean. That boy can smell a fight coming from decades away, and he already knew which side he was on. Joe and I stayed in New Orleans for about a year, but he weren’t much for the big city. So he took off for God knows where and I went back to Nacogdoches to take care of the unfinished business I told you about. Joe and I met up again a few years later during the California gold rush, but that’s another story.” She sighed. “I’m gonna miss him. I think it’ll take a few years to realize he’s gone. We didn’t see each other much, but it was always fun when we did.”
Steam started to eke through the bathroom, proving the shower, and its detoxing power, was ready to go, but Javier didn’t want to leave Emma while she was in a talkative mood.
“I didn’t mean to do unto you what Joe did to me—turning you, then running away.” She sighed. “But I did.” More shifting, and the door shook as she moved, sending the vibration from her to him. “I really thought you’d be better off with Cash. Then I come back and find out you ain’t relying on him.”
Javier snorted. “The man who’s eating my sister? No. I haven’t been.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was easier to talk to her when they couldn’t see each other. Weird, that. “He did offer, though. That was my choice. And I’ve been fine. It’s not like I’ve been”—like Joe had left her—“stuck in the middle of nowhere at a house full of humans with no idea what to do next.”
To his surprise, her fingers appeared under the door. He put his thumb across them—it was all that would fit in her outstretched fingers—and she curled her knuckles over it, almost like they were holding hands. It was more comfortable than it should have been, that slight touch. A small connection across the door’s barrier. “Well, I’m here now,” she said. “And I’m staying. You keep saying I don’t need to be here, and I know that. You don’t need me or much of anything. You’re clever and scrappy. You’ll figure it out. But I don’t got nothing special in San Francisco keeping me there. We got a special connection, you and I. And we got forever on this earth—or forever till we get killed. Possibly by zombies. Anyway, please quit telling me to go back. I ain’t got nothing to go back to. But you’re a reason to be here.”
It finally dawned on him what she wanted. She didn’t think of him as a friend or a lover. They shared blood. She thought of him as family—something she’d already said, but he hadn’t listened. Family let each other down, they fucked up and made wretched choices. But in the end, they always came back to each other. That sort of erratic helter-skelter wasn’t what he wanted with her. He wanted love, the kind with bodies combining and households blending. The kind that worked out as forever in stories, but rarely in life.
She didn’t want him like that, but he also wasn’t a one-night mistake that she regretted. A five-month ache lifted from his heart. He might not have the place
he wanted in her life, but he had a place, and she didn’t begrudge it. He could live with that, and not just because he had to.
“Please stay in Austin,” he said, honestly. “I want my sire here.”
Her fingers squeezed his thumb. “You betcha, baby bat.”
He huffed in irritation. “Don’t call me that.”
She snorted and let go. “Take a shower. We got ten minutes, and I don’t want to wake up next to you smelling like the evil dead.”
The shower’s rhythm changed as Emma’s too-hot-for-his-own-good fledgling stepped under it. A vision of Javier naked, water sluicing around his compact shoulders and running over his tattoo—the doctor hiding the scars—came unbidden. He looked good naked. She remembered that. Movies all showed whores getting hired by Richard Gere and other beautiful people, but that wasn’t the typical way of it. She’d seen toothless, hairless, distended, pimpled—you name it, and they hired a whore. Even as a vampire, now that she picked, it didn’t seem to matter that much whom she took home. Hell, the uglier the dinner date, the quicker she usually scored an easy meal.
Javier had been an exception even then. She still couldn’t put her finger on why.
She opened the closet and brushed her fingers over two suits and a leather jacket. She’d let Vince do most of the picking, and she was pretty sure Charlie—who was rich as sin even though he didn’t live like it—had footed the bill. The one she should’ve paid for.
She needed to get a job, but other than throwing money she no longer had at a charity she owned and someone else ran, baking and fucking were pretty much all she was good at. She didn’t want the latter and the former… was she really capable of starting a business? Taking out loans, hounding sales, managing spreadsheets. She was practically illiterate and barely knew how to turn on a computer. Brand-spanking-new inventions, but they were already a requirement to do anything.
CoVIn probably offered computer literacy classes. She got out her phone. Cash had “accidentally” smashed her flip phone and given her a new fancier smartphone. He’d handed her both phones at once with an apology that didn’t sound the least bit sincere. CoVIn had its own app, and she used it to bring up the member education panel. It took a moment to parse out the class names, but sure enough, there was one called Computers for Anivets—old souls. She wasn’t quite to the age most vampires thought of as old, but the class was meant for folks like her. It was free too. Six weeks of Tuesdays, a couple hours before dawn. She hesitated over the sign-up button, the notion of schooling scary as hell. As a kid, she’d been in a one-room school on and off, long enough to prove she wasn’t student material.