***
She was starting to get anxious by the time the cab pulled up outside 312 Robinson Street. Nosy-ass motherfucker was making no effort at all to tone down his incredibly creepy habit of staring at her in the rearview, and she seriously just wanted to get away from him.
Even more than that, though, she was beginning to think about the fact that she had zero idea what she was walking into. Looking at the house from the backseat of the cab, she saw that it was settled on a massive and perfectly-manicured estate, just as large or perhaps even larger than Blake Turner’s property. It was an aesthetically-appealing combination of brick and stucco that had an Italian vibe, like the villas Andi had occasionally seen on the wine documentaries Carmen used to watch.
Jesus Christ, why did she have to go and think about that bitch? Now she was mad as hell and she wanted to shoot a motherfucker.
Which made her regret the fact that she didn’t have her Glock. She really didn’t like to even have to handle guns, she was much more comfortable with her knife, but she felt like this might be a good situation in which to be fully armed.
By the appearance of the house, completely quiet and tranquil, with soft lights glowing in the first- and second-floor windows, it sure didn’t look like there was any wild party going on. Strange that Aaron should be here, then.
Cue increased anxiety.
“Are you . . . getting out?” Nosy-Ass Cab Driver asked.
Andi glared at him in full-on bitch mode, and he shuddered. “Keep pushing me,” she growled, “and you’ll get the business-end of my switchblade instead of the money I owe you.”
“Fair enough,” he murmured, his face pale as sour milk.
***
Walking towards the front door of the house, Andi felt the first stirrings of regret. Make no mistake, she was still pissed at Blake, but she was sort of starting to wish that she was here. Unknown situations with possible danger lurking beneath their otherwise shiny and unassuming veneers were the perfect kind for sidekicks with superhero abilities.
And yes, that was how Andi insisted on describing it. She was the MC, she was the goddamn protagonist, and Blake was the fucking sidekick. She’d done more than enough to earn that demotion tonight.
Whatever their individual roles were, though, Andi really wished she had swallowed her pride and told Blake where she was going. But then – it wasn’t too late. She had her phone. She could still call.
She stopped in her tracks, thinking deeply. She almost reached for the phone in her boot, but then changed her mind.
Nah. That pride of hers still tasted too vile and chunky to swallow.
Taking a deep breath, she rang the doorbell. A sharp-looking hunky-type hulk of a guy in a white button-down with slicked-back hair answered.
“Good evening,” he said in a smooth voice. “You are Miss De Luca, I presume?”
“Yeah,” Andi said slowly. She didn’t like the look of this guy. What the hell was somebody like this doing hanging around Aaron? She’d only been here five seconds, and things already weren’t adding up.
“Mr. Jarvis is expecting you,” the guy said. In that same suave, almost demure voice. She had no idea what his game was, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t take long to find out.
Then a warning bell went off inside her head.
Mr. Jarvis.
She’d heard that name before. But where?
She racked her brain, searching every messily-organized cubby and file for the information she needed.
Mr. Jarvis. Who was Mr. Jarvis?
Then she remembered. The vamps who’d attacked her on King’s Bridge. One of them had said . . .
You appear to have a connection to someone Mr. Jarvis is very interested in. He’d like to speak with you.
But of course this recollection did nothing at all to help her figure out what was going on here. The vamps had mentioned Mr. Jarvis – they had apparently worked for him. For some reason, this Mr. Jarvis wanted to speak to Andi.
About someone she knew. But about whom? Aaron was here, so she could only assume it was him, but that made no sense. Who in the world had any business with Aaron that didn’t involve unpaid drug debts?
Was that what this was about? Drug money?
Goddamn it, she wished she had that Glock.
“I can tell you’re thinking very hard about something,” the guy with the slicked-back hair said with a soft smile. “I’m sure this is a little confusing for you. But please, why don’t you come in out of the heat? I promise it’s much more comfortable in here.”
Like hell it is, Andi thought nervously. Given the state of affairs, however, she didn’t think it was a good idea to argue. She didn’t know exactly what she’d been expecting to find at 312 Robinson Street, but it certainly hadn’t been anything like this. She was completely out of her element.
She stepped into the house with a shiver. She was coated in a thin layer of sweat from the muggy night, and the powerful air-conditioning almost froze the perspiration into small beads of ice.
Chapter 10
As it turned out, Andi needn’t have worried about anyone hearing her when she crept out of Blake Turner’s house on her way to Robinson Street. Poor Albert was exhausted, and was fast asleep in his bed (he’d stayed up much later than usual waiting for Andi and Blake to return from dinner).
As for Blake, pretty much the moment Andi stormed out of her bedroom, she left the house herself. So, by the time Andi went out, peering at Blake’s bedroom door as she went down the stairs, there was no one there, anyway.
To say the least, Blake was distraught. She was upset about hurting Andi, but even more than that, she was furious with herself for not knowing how to handle the situation. It was obvious that she’d done damage to Andi’s emotions, as well as her body, and she had no idea what to do about it.
She didn’t feel like driving, so she called her car service and ordered a ride. It arrived promptly, pulling into the driveway less than ten minutes after she’d placed the call. She nodded to Jeb, a tall, thin young man in a shiny black cap who’d been one of her drivers for about a year now. He was a nice enough boy, with a pleasant Southern accent and twinkling blue eyes.
“Evening, Miss Turner,” Jeb said politely. “Where will I be taking you tonight?”
“Nowhere in particular,” Blake answered, settling into the backseat with a sigh. “Just drive around for a while.”
“Ah, I see,” Jeb said sympathetically. “It’s one of those nights. I’ve had quite a few of ‘em myself.”
He offered this simple commiseration, but then fell silent. He was a nice boy, yes, but he knew his business, and he knew that most people who could afford car services weren’t paying to hear their driver’s jabbering.
They’d only been driving a few minutes, though, when Blake asked him a question.
“Jeb,” she said quietly. “What do you do when you hurt someone, but you have no idea how to make it right?”
Now, normally she would never have brought up a situation like this with someone she hardly even knew, but the truth was that she was desperate for an answer, and she probably would have asked anyone.
“Well, now,” Jeb said slowly, removing his cap and scratching his short brown hair. “That’s a loaded question right there. Best I can come up with was this one time back in Texas, when we had Career Day at school. Now, my daddy was a simple farmer, and they had loads of those all around. I didn’t see much of anything special in it. A lot of the other kids, their daddies were doctors, or lawyers, and this one kid’s mama was even a writer on that New York Times Bestseller list. So I didn’t really see the point of asking my daddy to come in and talk about farming.
“Thing is, though, after Career Day had passed, my daddy found out about it, and well, his feelings were pretty badly hurt because I hadn’t invited him. He never said anything about it, but I could tell. And I didn’t know how to fix it.
“Best thing I could think of was, once Halloween came around, dressing up li
ke a farmer when all the other kids were going as ghosts and vampires. I was eleven, and I hadn’t asked my daddy to come trick-or-treating with me in a long time, but I asked him that year. I threw my friends over for the night, and me and him, we went all around, dressed like a couple of right proud farmers. I even borrowed one of Daddy’s John Deere caps.”
Blake was silent for a long moment, not exactly pondering Jeb’s story, just unsure how to respond to it. She appreciated his effort, but the truth was that it hadn’t really been all that helpful.
Not that she’d known what she was expecting. How could anyone shed light on what had happened between her and Andi? Blake was about a million light-years away from understanding it herself.
“You’re a good son,” she said simply, smiling at Jeb when he glanced at her in the rearview mirror.
“Not always,” Jeb replied with a smile of his own. “But I suppose all any of us can do is try our best.”
***
After they’d driven for about half an hour, Blake began to grow restless, and she wondered what Andi was doing back at the house.
But then, of course, she remembered Andi’s propensity for doing things that others would consider unwise, and she began to wonder if the other woman was even in the house. This made her worry, and she pulled out her phone to open the tracking app.
She was struck again by the questionable ethics of tracking her houseguest, and she decided that she’d need to come clean about it. No sooner had she thought this, however, than she was distracted by a more urgent situation.
Andi’s tracker was still active, but as she’d suspected, it wasn’t at the house. It was on Robinson Street.
What was Andi doing on Robinson Street? She’d admitted earlier in the evening that she never had any business in this part of town. So what reason could she have to go there?
Blake knew she could be jumping the gun, and that it wasn’t really any of her business in the first place, but just the same, she knew that she couldn’t ignore it. She asked Jeb to bring her home.
***
Passing by Albert’s bedroom door, she heard his heavy snoring, and she smiled softly, hoping that he’d sleep through the night without waking up to worry where everyone had gone.
In her own room, she put on her Voltana suit, taking the usual care to make sure her face was fully covered by the mask. If anyone ever found out that Blake Turner and Voltana were one and the same, it would be a media uproar, never mind a complete three-ring circus for Biotech. She didn’t want those two worlds to mix. Work and . . . whatever this was had to remain separate.
She examined herself in the mirror for a moment, not even recognizing herself. As many times as she’d seen herself in this suit by now, she still couldn’t convince herself that it was truly her. It looked like a stranger staring back at her.
She’d designed this suit with painstaking care, using a completely new combination of materials to create the most flame-retardant fabric her imagination could fathom. So far, she hadn’t managed to set herself on fire with the electricity from her hands, so she supposed she’d done a decent job.
And yet, when she looked at the mask, it felt . . . unnatural. It wasn’t that she wanted people to see her; it was just that she sometimes forgot how to see herself. In this suit. With this mask. With a name she hadn’t even invented.
Not that any of this mattered right now. Right now, all that mattered was finding out what was going on with Andi. And she had a feeling that it was nothing good.
She raced the ten miles to Robinson Street in a few blinks of an eye, then found herself standing outside the Italian-style estate, staring up the sidewalk and wondering how she should approach the situation. Dressed in her Voltana suit, it felt ludicrous to knock; but then again, she didn’t even have any idea where she was, so it made very little sense to break in.
With a sigh of resignation, she went up the sidewalk and stopped outside the door, ringing the bell and feeling like a complete fool. The door was answered immediately by a well-built man with fair slicked-back hair.
He smiled politely, then ushered Blake inside. “I assure you you’re expected,” he told her.
“Expected by whom?” she inquired dubiously.
“By Mr. Jarvis, of course,” the man said with that same smile. “Come with me, if you please.”
He started up a winding marble staircase on the left-hand, and though Blake certainly didn’t want to follow him, a quick check of the tracking app reassured her that Andi was still in the house. So how could she not follow him?
They came to the second-story landing, where the fair-haired man continued straight ahead down a short hall which led to an open door. He knocked softly on the door, and a low, deep voice told him to come in.
The fair-haired man looked back at Blake with another smile, then jerked his head lightly in a gesture for her to continue to follow. A warning shiver ran through her, but she stepped forward into a large, dimly-lit study.
She didn’t have much time, at first, for taking in any minute details, because the first thing she noticed was a pair of people tied up in wooden chairs on the right-hand side of the room. Andi and her brother, Aaron. Their hands and feet were bound, and they were gagged. Aaron looked petrified, and there were tears streaking down his dirty cheeks, but Andi just looked pissed, as if she would have immediately bitten the hand of anyone who attempted to remove her gag. Her eyes were flashing like angry firecrackers.
Far from happy about the situation, Blake was at least relieved to see that Andi wasn’t hurt. She tried to catch the other woman’s eye, tried to reassure her somehow, but Andi refused to look at her.
So Blake fell to examining the rest of the room. If she was going to come up with any kind of plan, she had to understand her surroundings.
There really wasn’t all that much to see. There were bookshelves lining every wall, some with spines stamped in English, some in foreign languages that Blake recognized, and some with words that she couldn’t even begin to fathom. Strangely enough for this time of year, there was a fire burning in the grate – but not just any fire. The flames were bright green, and they gave off no heat.
“Pay those no mind,” a man’s voice advised.
A man – the only other person in the room except for the fellow with the slicked-back hair – was seated at a large mahogany desk near the grate. He was lean, and apparently tall, even in a sitting position. He had short dark hair and even darker eyes, eyes that seemed to burn more ferociously than the flames behind his seat.
The man rose to his feet, proving his considerable height, then gestured to the green flames. “They’ll do you no harm,” he went on. “They are nothing special, just my window to the outside world.”
Blake had no idea what this meant, but she chose not to remark on it. Instead, she asked the obvious question. A bit cliché, and not very clever, but it would have to do.
“What do you want?” she inquired.
The man grinned mirthlessly. It seemed as if it would take a great deal to either entertain or surprise him.
“I desired your presence,” he said simply. “I wished for a brief audience with you, that was all.”
“And now you have it,” Blake went on, her tone growing more pointed. “Explain who you are and what you want.”
The man turned to face her, folding his arms behind his back. He smiled that same joyless smile, as if he were the physical incarnation of the Grim Reaper.
“My name is Maxim Jarvis,” he said. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I think we can spare ourselves the niceties, don’t you?” Blake inquired sharply.
Jarvis shrugged indifferently. “I try to be a gentleman when I can,” he said. “You can’t always, I’ve found, but there are times when it seems to be the more prudent option.”
Blake remained silent this time, and Jarvis shrugged again, the faintest hint of amusement creeping into his expression.
“I have been interested in your c
omings and goings for a while now,” he stated simply. “I read the news articles regarding your nighttime exploits in the city. I am, to put it plainly, rather fascinated with your abilities.”
“Is that so?” Blake countered. “What about me fascinates you, exactly?”
Jarvis rocked back on his heels, puckering his lips, his arms still folded behind his back. “Well,” he drawled languidly, “I suppose it’s not often I come across someone who seems to rival me in either strength or intelligence. You appear to possess a fair amount of both those substances, and I can’t deny that I am intrigued.”
“Someone who rivals you,” Blake echoed. “Which reminds me – you’ve told me your name, but I still have no idea who you are.”
Jarvis nodded calmly, not seemingly put out by this comment.
“Some people in my position would wish for notoriety,” he admitted. “For recognition, and also for the fear that goes hand-in-hand with said recognition. But not me. I choose to remain in the shadows. That way, I never suffer any unwanted confrontations with people I would rather avoid.”
“And what sort of people would those be?” Blake asked.
“Oh, the usual,” Jarvis answered flippantly. “Julius Hall and his committee of ‘law-abiding’ vampires. I have no patience for laws, really. They get in the way of my goals.”
“Your goals?” Blake repeated drily.
“Yes,” Jarvis said, brightening up a bit. “Not a new goal; nothing anyone hasn’t heard of before. It’s an age-old desire, no doubt about that. If you have not already discerned the fact, I will tell you now that I am a vampire. But I am also a warlock. There was one other like me in Shadow City – my brother Kristoff.”
Voltana & the Rogue Vamps (The Voltana Adventures Book 1) Page 8