by Molly Harper
11
“The thing about past relationships and the baggage you carry from them, is that they can spring up when you least expect it and bite you on the ass. If you figure out how to minimize the damage, you have mastered life. Or at least, you have figured out how to dodge.”
—A Gentleman in Any Era: An Ancient Vampire’s Guide to Modern Relationships
* * *
Never in my life had I gone on a shopping spree. To me, money was something that you saved because you never knew when you might get more. You didn’t just go around spending it at random.
Moving into an empty apartment, I found I needed, well, everything. Curtains, sheets, towels, dishes, lamps, silverware, pots, and pans. I was literally starting with nothing. I ran through Sheets and Things like a madwoman on a game show, tossing everything that caught my eye into my cart. And a lot of things caught my eye. Apparently, I liked green, which was something I didn’t know about myself, in terms of interior design. It’s hard to know what your preferences are when you’re not allowed to choose.
Unfortunately, all of that stuff came in an unreasonable amount of packaging, meaning I was making a lot of trips back and forth to the dumpster in the parking lot. I was afraid I would fill the thing up before I finished unpacking, and I hadn’t even started on the furniture yet.
I stepped out of the apartment, taking a deep breath of what I liked to think of “the free air.” The instinct to return to my pack’s territory was like an itch in the back of my brain. I couldn’t reach it, couldn’t stop it. Only the distractions of work and moving-in chores kept my feet from running right back to my family. But it was becoming more manageable every day, because my freedom was worth more than the potential relief of that itch being removed.
“Hey, Tylene, how’s it going?” I heard a rich baritone call from across the lot.
My neighbor, Sammy Palona, was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. He was tall, built like a professional wrestler, and he smelled like coffee and cocoa all of the time. (He worked as a barista in the coffee bar at Council headquarters.) If I wasn’t already committed to a perfectly nice vampire, I could be in real trouble there.
“Hey, Sammy,” I called back. I nodded at his car. “Heading into work?”
“Somebody’s gotta keep the vampires caffeinated,” he said. “Just so you know. Jane and Dick and Gigi, and several other high-profile consultants at the Council have all told me to keep an eye out for you. So, if seems like I’m checking in on you too much, I’m not being a creep. I’m just trying to protect my job.”
“Understood,” I told him. “And I’ll try to get them to back off.”
“Eh, if that many people are looking out for you, it says good things about my new neighbor,” Sammy said with a shrug.
“Or I could be completely insane and they’re worried about you,” I countered.
Sammy grimaced. “You know, I had not considered that.”
“I’m kidding,” I assured him. “I’m only mildly insane.”
“Well, that makes you just like all my other neighbors.” He seemed to think that over for a moment. “You don’t think you’ll have private investigators coming by, do you? That last guy smelled like tobacco and ass.”
“I don’t think so…but if you see a couple of redneck types sniffing around, asking questions about me, you don’t know anything.”
“Exes?” he asked, his dark brows knitted together.
“Relatives,” I replied. “They’re not thrilled I’ve moved out. Dick and Andrea know all about it.”
“Okay, good. If you have any problems, I’m just a few doors down.”
“Thanks, have a good night,” I told him. “I definitely will not poke holes in your walls for my cameras while you’re at work.” He stopped and turned, his expression alarmed. “I have got to stop making jokes.”
“Nah, that was a good one,” he conceded as he climbed into his car.
I waved as he pulled out of the parking lot and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Note to self, ask Jane for a book on how to talk to normal people.”
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I steeled my nerves as I checked the screen, praying it wouldn’t be my mother again. She’d been calling and leaving messages pretty much nonstop since I’d moved out. It had gotten to the point where I just deleted the messages and texts unread. I didn’t need any of her pleading or accustations in my head right now. I would go to the cell phone store and get a new number that week. I didn’t think my parents were tech savvy enough to use a phone tracking app or anything, but some of my cousins were a little more advanced.
To my relief, the message was from Jolene’s phone. “Hey, Cousin Ty, this is Janelyn, I sent you an audio file. Video call me after!”
I pressed the attachment and immediately regretted it. Never in my life had I heard such unpleasant, shrieking sound. It felt like being stabbed in the ears with an ice pick covered in poison ivy. Covering one ear, I fumbled for the “stop button,” and felt relief flood my head when the unholy noise stopped. Grumbling, I dialed Jolene’s number and Janelyn’s puckish little face popped up on the screen. “Hi, Cousin Ty!”
“What in the hell was that?!” I cried, making her and Joe, who was hovering over her shoulder, crack up.
“It’s the highest note you can play on a violin,” she chirped. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for weeks.”
“Why would you send that to me?” I demanded.
“Because she could?” Joe guessed.
Janelyn nodded. “Yep. Besides, if anybody annoys you, just play that. It will mess them up. It’s gotta hold me over until Mama lets me get pepper spray.”
“It messed me up!” I cried. “And you should never get to have pepper spray, for the greater good.”
She jerked her shoulders. “Uncle Dick will get it for me.”
“Mama says we’re gonna come see your new place soon,” Joe said. “We’re gonna have a party for you!”
“As soon as I get some furniture,” I promised them. “I better get back to unpacking, okay, kiddos? Love you. No more audio files.”
“Love you!” they called back as I hung up.
“I am better off an auntie.” Sighing, I went upstairs to retrieve what I hoped would be my last batch of boxes for the Dumpster. Doing little chores like that was something I wasn’t used to. My parents did most of the maintenance things like that around the house. But I liked being responsible for it. It was my space and I was in charge of keeping it clean.
Though, I was going to have to get a broom if I was ever going to get all those Styrofoam bits of my floor. My floor. Just the thought was enough to send a little wave of contentment through me.
As I slid the cardboard into the recycling bin, I heard a strange noise behind me, like a foot being dragged across the gravel. I turned around, scanning the darkness for a sign for…I wasn’t sure what. But all of my predatory instincts were triggered. Someone was watching me, from the shadows and all of my nerves screamed for me to get away. Which was a little embarrassing. I would analyze my fight versus flight responses later.
I had freaking super powers. I shouldn’t be afraid of walking through a dark parking lot on my own. I closed the lid on the recycling bin, using my inhuman speed to get to the stairs. I didn’t care if anyone saw me and asked questions. I just wanted to get inside my door and lock it.
I was almost there. I sucked in huge lungfuls of air to propel my legs. So close to home, but just as I reached the bottom step, I felt a rush of motion behind me. I turned to confront whatever it was and felt a heavy object smack against my temple. Stars exploded behind my eyes as I dropped to the ground, my cheek scraping against the gravel. From this angle, I could see obnoxiously neon European sneakers on the feet standing over me. I tried to raise my arms, to get up and fight, but my limbs didn’t seem to be obeying my brain. In fact, I felt like I was still falling, hurtling to the ground where I was already splayed across the gravel.
My eyelids fluttere
d shut, but just before the darkness took me, I recognized the strange Roman mark against the wrist of the hand reaching for me.
Shit.
Even before I was completely awake, I remembered thinking that it was embarrassing to have been ambushed by a pubescent douchebag vampire.
I mean, sure, he was hundreds of years older than me, but I should have least seen those loud, horrible shoes coming.
It seemed that Greg, the hoodied dude from the library who couldn’t seem to take a hint, was also Augustus, the orphanage snack enthusiast who hated my boyfriend. Small world.
I felt pretty stupid, not picking up on the hints. My only excuse was that I’d pictured Augustus as a snotty teenager in a toga with one of those weird curly Roman haircuts from the sculptures—which just went to show you what happened when you pre-judged people. But like Cal and Alex, “Greg” had adjusted to the times. And obviously, he’d been following Alex for a while. Now that I thought about it, I remembered seeing him the first time I met Alex, the night of the book avalanche. And he must have followed us, watching us get closer and decided to follow me to Southern Comfort, the library, my apartment. I guessed the silver lining was that he didn’t have any real romantic interest in me.
Yay?
I pretended to be unconscious for a few more moments, just to assess the situation. He was close.
I was tied up, I knew that much. And my ass hurt from being in one position on cold concrete for too long. I couldn’t hear traffic noises or voices. Grumbling softly, as if I was shifting in my sleep, I scraped my foot across the concrete, trying to determine the size of the room I was being kept in. I guessed it was pretty big, given the sound of the echo I made. And then I realized that my shoes were taped together, which made no sense at all. Was my kidnapper aware that my shoes were not a permanent part of my foot?
I was suddenly very ashamed I’d been waylaid by someone who was such a bad abductor.
What could I do to get out of this? I could wait to see if help arrived, but no one really knew I was in danger. Alex wasn’t expecting to see me tonight, so unless he called and became alarmed when I didn’t pick up, no help there. Dick and Jane knew I planned on spending the evening unpacking and weren’t expecting me at the shop. Sammy might notice my door standing open when he got home, but he wouldn’t be back from work for hours. If I was still living on packlands, my parents definitely would have noticed I was gone after a few hours, but that was a moot point. There was no backup coming for me, no rescue. I was going to have to find a way out on my own.
The cannister of silver spray was in my purse, but who knew where that was. I couldn’t feel my phone in my back pocket. I thought about shifting to four feet, but while I was unnaturally strong in either form, I didn’t know if the shift alone would be enough to rip the tape. And then I would be bound in my wolf form on the cement, which didn’t seem like an improvement. Also, getting duct tape out of wolf fur would really hurt.
“You can stop pretending, you know. You’re awake. I heard your heart speed up a few minutes ago.”
Annoyed, I let my eyes open, glaring at him.
“Congratulations to you,” I muttered as I squirmed to a sitting position. “So the whole ‘dopey guy who doesn’t know how to talk to girls’ thing was a ruse? You were just trying to get to Alex?”
I glanced around the basement storeroom where he was holding me. I wasn’t sure where we were, but he’d taken the time to board over the windows. Did he spend a lot of time down here? My phone was on the floor next to him. And he appeared to be listening to my classical music with his earbuds. Apparently, he’d stolen a bunch of instruments from the music school before he burnt it down, because they were piled in the corner, next to a pile of cell phones still in their manufacturers’ boxes and flat screen TVs. And UK sweatshirts. And food dehydrators? Was he planning to sell them? Was that how this creep made his creepy money?
He’d taken instruments from Alex’s students to make money off of them, before he burned their damn school down. He was the worst.
“So you did all that stuff to Alex’s school,” I sighed. “Oh, man, I owe my family an apology.”
So what did my Aunt Braylene mean by all that stuff about lying to my family and seeing boys that they didn’t approve of? I also owed her an apology. I probably wouldn’t give it to her, even if I lived long enough to see her.
“Wait, go back.” Greg looked honestly insulted. “What do you mean, doesn’t know how to talk to girls?’”
“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “I went on a date with a guy who openly admitted he was in love with someone else and he had more game than you.”
When it became obvious that I wouldn’t elaborate on his poor people skills, he shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t just Alex, I was targeting Nik and Cal, too. We’ve known each other for a long time. Hasn’t he ever mentioned me?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said, smirking. “Cal and Nik did, though. They said you were a twerp. Is that your vampire power? Annoying people on an advanced level?”
“Well, that’s insulting, isn’t it?” He scooted closer to me. “And no, that’s not my special vampire power.”
I scoffed, a hysterical laugh bubbling up my throat because, well, this was my first kidnapping. “Don’t tell me, it’s not having a scent. That’s how you managed to get sneak around the vampires’ houses and businesses without being detected—not to mention sneaking up on me,” I muttered. When his eyes narrowed at me, I gasped. “Oh good grief, is that it?”
He sniffed. “I prefer to think of it as having the power of invisibility.”
“Just like unscented deodorant or detergent,” I said, snickering. “And I thought the sunrise thing was lame.”
He drew his arm back and backhanded me across the cheek. I grinned at him, which he seemed to find very off-putting—probably because of the blood seeping between my teeth.
“I’m much older than them, did you know that? Maybe even older than all three combined. And just because I was turned at a younger age than they were, they call me names? I am their elder! I deserve their respect!”
“And that’s just it, isn’t it? I think you don’t want to be invisible,” I said, laughing. “I think it drives you nuts that you don’t matter to them, but you know you’d get an ass-kicking of a lifetime if you made yourself known. You’re not brave enough to be seen, but you hate to be ignored. It must be driving you crazy.”
“You don’t understand anything about me.”
“Well, I do fail to understand why you’ve been such a dick about it,” I conceded.
He rolled his eyes at me, which probably meant I was doing something right with my life choices.
“So all of this—the spray paint, the silver bomb, the fire—this is all because they kept you from getting a meal a couple hundred years ago?” I asked. “Wait, no, I forgot about the Council thing, and the Council trying to set you on fire. Dang it, what in the hell did you hit me over the head with?”
“A tire iron.”
“You are such an asshole,” I hissed.
“Well, I can’t say that didn’t hurt my feelings. I mean, all I did was try to befriend them, and they went to the council like a bunch of tattletales,” he huffed. “And the Council’s fire? Well, I didn’t mind that so much. Convenient, really. I pretended to die so I could reinvent myself without the Council’s interference. I took the name Gregory, pretended to be a French peasant.” He held up his wrist. “No one really knew what this mark meant, so it was easy enough.”
The whole time he was talking, I was rubbing one foot against the other. I hoped he was so caught up in his whining that he wouldn’t notice that I was slipping my shoes off. My feet would be freed and then I could do all sorts of fun damage. With one of those uncased violins. Probably to his face.
“To be honest, I didn’t really think about the three of them that much until I moved here a few years ago. I wasn’t about to check in with those upstart morons at the Council office. I moved under their
notice, bought a home, established a business. I made a life here. But then, I saw that photo in the newspaper, with Cal and Nik celebrating Cal’s wife’s stupid little company, and wherever they were, I knew that Alex would follow. Those three can’t seem to stay apart for too long. It’s sickening, really. Sooner or later, they’d realized I lived here, and they wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from ratting me out to that nightmare Jameson woman. And I wasn’t about to lose what I’d built. I deserve to be here. I deserve what I have. Not them.”
“But you’ve lived here for years without them realizing it. In fact, you didn’t know that they lived here—which is sort of miraculous, considering how small this town is. It shows you how little you have to do with the vampire community around here. Why did you think they would notice all of the sudden?” I asked. “Did you really think they’ve been thinking about you all this time, just waiting for you to show up so they could sabotage your life?”
I could tell that the possibility that they had not been thinking of Greg/Augustus this whole time had not, in fact, occurred to him. Wow. This guy took self-involved to a whole new level, and that level was scary.
“But why don’t you just move?” I demanded. “You wouldn’t even have to go that far! Murphy, maybe, or Scadwell. I mean, what sort of business could you possibly operate? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
He smirked. “Well, it’s not quite legal.”
“Shocker,” I rolled my eyes toward the food dehydrators. I leaned against the wall, subtly flexing my wrists to test the strength of the tape. Yep, it was duct tape. This was not going to be easy.
“So, murdering multiple people is somehow less work than moving?” I asked.
He sneered. “Have you ever tried moving without any friends?”
“Yes, I did it just recently!” I cried.
“I sent this to Alex.” He held up my phone, showing me a picture of me trussed up and passed out on the cement. I groaned. If those were the last pictures ever taken of me, I was going to be so pissed. “And the coordinates for this stupid wreck of a building. He should be along shortly.”