by Chloe Garner
She was two full flights of stairs behind Tell by the time she got to the door, herself, pushing it open and then letting it fall closed behind her.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “I’m never going to be as fast as you are, am I?”
“Probably not,” Tell said. He was looking at the young Covum. “Did you think the fiend would kill us?”
“Slow you down long enough to hide it,” the kid said, backing into a corner.
He didn’t have the box, that was true enough, but he still moved like he was afraid of Tell.
Tina had a really hard time imagining Tell hurting a child, no matter how much Marcus Calloway was paying him to keep that stupid box safe.
Tina reflected on the lengths he’d gone to, to get it, and scanned the roof quickly, looking for traps, for anything that was out of place.
Mostly it was just a rooftop.
The building’s residents clearly came up here from time to time to sit and enjoy the view and the space - there was trash here and there where the wind couldn’t get at it - but there wasn’t any furniture or anything permanent to hide a trap behind.
The kid leaned out over the edge of the roof and Tell put a hand out.
“Whoa, kid,” he said. “This isn’t worth dying over. Just tell me where you put it, and I’ll forget I ever saw you.”
The kid suddenly grinned and leaned the rest of the way out, and Tina and Tell ran to the corner, looking over to see the Covum scrambling into a window about halfway down.
“How?” Tina asked.
“I bet if you went down there and looked,” Tell said, already moving, “you could figure it out, but I’d rather catch him and make him tell me where that box went.”
“What’s in there?” Tina asked, frustrated. “What are we even chasing?”
“It belongs to the client,” Tell said. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “We aren’t security guards. You’re a detective. He should be hiring you tomorrow after someone steals the thing, asking you to track it down.”
“Very compelling,” Tell answered, throwing the rooftop door open and plunging down the stairs again. “Only problem is that I choose the work.”
Tina sighed and sprinted after him. She could hear footsteps down near the bottom of the stairwell, and then a door opening.
The kid was out.
But this time they actually had his scent to go off of.
He wasn’t going to get away. They were just going to have to chase him some more.
They got to the bottom floor and Tell stopped.
“Search the building,” he said. “I’ll keep after the kid.”
Tina stopped.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“He hasn’t been that many places,” Tell said. “And he had the box when he left the hotel. Follow his scent trail and see if you can’t find it. Watch out for traps.”
And with that he was gone, off running again.
Tina sighed, taking her time to go back up the stairs again.
The problem with scent-tracking someone - well, one of them - was when they were willing to jump off of a roof in order to get away. He could have very easily done the same thing to break a scent trail.
And it was becoming quite obvious that the plan, here, revolved around knowing everything about who was guarding the box and where it was.
She went back up to the fourth floor, following his scent back to an apartment.
She knocked.
Sure, it was four in the morning, but she couldn’t come up with a better plan, and he had just come running out of there.
About four minutes later, the door opened against a chain and an elderly woman put her face to the gap.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Tina sighed.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but a young man, maybe seventeen, just jumped off the roof and came back into the building through this apartment.”
The woman closed her eyes, then turned her face sideways.
“Marshall,” she called. “You come out of there right now and come talk to me.”
“Ma,” a young man answered. “Close the door.”
“You got your little friends running around here, coming in through windows at this time of night?” the woman scolded, leaving the door open there against the chain as she went back into the apartment to give this other young man a piece of her mind.
“Ma,” the young man complained.
“I told you when you moved in here, you weren’t to see them,” the woman said. “They’re bad influences, the lot of them. You come up here…”
There was a grunting noise.
“… Come up here and tell the nice lady what she wants to know.”
A boy’s face came around the doorway.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“The boy that just left here,” Tina said. “Did he come here just a few minutes before? Did he ever have a cardboard box with him?”
“No, ma’am,” the boy said.
Tell could listen to the way a human’s heart beat and tell if they were lying or not.
Tina did not have this knack.
Apparently his matron did.
“You tell her everything,” she said, and his face pressed harder against the gap.
“He never had no box,” the kid shouted. “We just been practicing that jump a few days, and he told me it would be tonight. Was awesome. Then he left.”
“You sure?” the woman pressed.
“I’m sure,” he squealed. “I’m sure.”
“You aren’t gonna see him again, now are you?” the woman asked.
“No,” the kid said. “I don’t hang out with them anymore.”
“Hang out with who?” Tina asked, and the boy’s face disappeared.
“Gang, little thugs, bunch of adults telling them what they’re doing is how to get ahead in the world,” the woman said. “Live in the building next door. Got Marshall’s daddy tied up in something so big he had to come live with me. You go clear out the entire rat’s nest, I wouldn’t shed tear one. You know you got blood on your face and bell pods in your hair?”
“I do know,” Tina said. “Thank you.”
The door closed and Tina walked back down the hallway, going down the stairs and outside on a hunch, finding the back door of the apartment complex next door.
There was no sign of the Covum boy.
She continued to walk around the building, catching a whiff on the cold breeze, and chasing it to the fire escape.
She jumped, grabbing the ladder to pull it down and following the scent of the boy up five stories to a closed window.
Moral dilemma.
On the other side of the window, she could see the box that she was supposed to have been guarding.
On the other hand, this was a private apartment, and she had no right to just break the window and steal it back.
She could hear the people in the apartment talking, speculating at how the kid was doing, leading the two idiot vampires on a merry chase through a busier section of downtown, and Tina texted Tell to tell him where the kid was going.
She did not mention the box.
He’d pulled this stunt too many times for her to not do it back to him at least once.
She walked along, climbing over the edge of the fire escape and sliding along the same floor, walking on a slight lip of brick to another window. This one wasn’t entirely latched - one of the locks was open, and the other was only half-heartedly twisted to lock, under the presumption that no one was going to break in through this particular path.
Tina took the knife out, wiping the blood off of it on her jeans and then sliding it between the two window frames, working at the lock quickly enough. She popped it open and slid the window open noiselessly - special vampire trick - then she closed it behind her to keep a draft from tipping them off that she was here.
She listened to the noises around her, identifying someone asleep in the next room and four, mayb
e five men in a room down the hallway sitting up and talking.
Tina stole down the hallway into the third bedroom, picking up the box off of the bed and going back to the unlocked window.
It was a lot harder to shimmy her way back to the fire escape while she carried the preposterous box, but she managed, slipping down the fire escape and making her way casually back to the motel.
She put the box back down on the bed and took a picture of it, sending it to Tell.
Now, if you’d just tell me what’s supposed to be in here, I could tell you if we have it.
There was a long gap, during which Tina pleasantly imagined Tell staring at his phone.
I’ll be there in ten minutes.
She sighed, putting her phone away and laying back down on the bed again.
Vampires one.
Cova zero.
Marcus Calloway showed up, himself, the next morning.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“Oh, they were here,” Tell said. “Ran us around half the night. Tina stabbed a fiend in the throat.”
Marcus picked a bell pod out of her hair and looked at it.
“Heard you get rid of these with vinegar,” he said. “If it helps.”
Tina raised an eyebrow.
“I need a shower,” she said. “Is this really it?”
He grinned.
“Very excellent work,” he said. “Thank you for your effort.”
She looked at the box.
“You aren’t even going to open it to make sure everything is okay?” she asked. He nodded.
“Oh, I will, but not until you’re both far enough out of the building to not hear anything,” he said.
Tina spread her hands, looking at Tell.
“This is really how you’re going to do this?” she asked.
“We need to get going,” Tell said. “Sun is going to put her down in about forty minutes, and we have a twenty minute drive.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Marcus said cheerfully, collecting the box. Tina stretched her eyes at Tell, who fully ignored her and started down the stairs to the car.
She got in, sulking, and he started the engine, every bit as cheerful as Marcus.
“Are you ever going to tell me what that was about?” Tina asked.
“Nope,” Tell said. “Don’t expect I will.”
Tina crossed her arms.
“You suck.”
He snorted.
“The vampire joke is just too easy.”
She slouched lower in her seat and refused to speak to him the rest of the way home.
Hunter wasn’t at the penthouse.
He’d spent one day, the very first day, there with her, and then he’d just ghosted. He’d answered one of her texts just to affirm that he was indeed alive, but that was it. When Tina asked Tell what was going on, Tell had refused to get involved.
It had been a long three weeks, all things considered.
It was just as hard as the first time.
Turning.
The blood helped, and she was certainly getting enough of it. Tell swore that at some point she would be able to feed only every few days and she would be comfortable, but for now she was feeding almost every morning and then again every evening, just trying to keep the sun off of her.
Even so, the days stretched on endlessly, and the knowledge that it was never going to change frightened her.
She didn’t know if she could put up with it.
Never sleep again.
Not really.
To be paralyzed like that all day long - through the summer? - and never go back to who she had been.
It was real this time.
She’d been on the verge of dying and she had chosen this.
She reminded herself of that frequently, though it didn’t help much five or six hours into the day.
Tell sent her to get ready for bed on her own, coming in shortly after with a glass of blood.
Fresh from the vein was the most useful, but there wasn’t time this morning. She drank it down and went to lay down, Tell coming to sit next to her.
“I haven’t asked recently,” he said quietly. “How bad is it?”
“It might be getting better,” Tina lied. “I don’t think I cook as bad.”
He nodded.
She didn’t have a heartbeat.
His lie detector didn’t work on her.
Win.
“You did good, tonight,” he said. “You’re getting a better grip on what you’re capable of.”
“I need more time with fighting,” Tina said. “I’m not fast enough.”
“You’re getting there,” Tell said. “We can go through some grips tomorrow, if you want.”
She swallowed, feeling the weight of the sun poignantly just now, and even nodding was hard.
“How much did he pay you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Tell said. “Not in dollars.”
“I don’t get it,” Tina said.
“I don’t expect you to,” Tell answered. “Sherry gets home soon, doesn’t she?”
Tina groaned. She’d managed not to think about her best friend - one-time best friend - since she’d turned; she was going to have to figure out some way to manage that, now that she couldn’t do anything during daylight hours.
“She’s going to figure it out,” she said. “She’s too smart.”
“People tend not to see what they don’t want to,” Tell said. “You were living here, and watched a guy stab me in the chest and still didn’t have a clue.”
She frowned.
Well, she tried.
It was true.
“She’s going to think I’m blowing her off,” she said after another moment.
“Yeah, that’s probably true.”
“She’s going to hate me,” Tina said.
“No one hates you,” Tell answered. “Think about what you want to do. Movie, cards, games, whatever. Something late after work. We can make it work.”
“You’re acting like we’re a couple,” Tina said.
“I doubt you can talk Hunter into bridge,” Tell said, and she smiled.
“It’s going to be so hard to explain,” Tina said.
“Bridge is,” Tell said, then paused. “She’s going to want to show you pictures from Fiji. And get an explanation of why you bailed at the last minute.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” Tina muttered. “I wouldn’t have been in your way. Stubborn.”
“Did I never tell you?” Tell asked. “I only survived that because of you. I wouldn’t have had time to look at the computers and figure them out. Rosie was going to kill me. You kept all of us alive. I’m just sorry it cost you your life.”
Tina let her eyes fall closed.
“I still can’t believe it’s forever,” she said. “Sometimes I want to tear you limb from limb for not just letting me die.”
“Is that true?” he asked.
“No,” she said. She would have laughed, but she was only able to whisper, just now. “I don’t wish I was dead. I just wish I was still alive.”
“I do, too,” Tell answered, putting his hand to her head, then standing and going back to his room.
Tina couldn’t imagine being able to stand and walk around.
The days were getting longer, the nights shorter and she felt those minutes at the end of the evening stretching on, as the weight of the sun waned but she was still unable to rise.
Soon, not so long from now, that time would stretch for most of the night, robbing her of all but a few hours a day.
And she would spend an untold fraction of that time dealing with the fact that she had to feed.
She couldn’t just go out and buy blood.
Nor could she store it and have it stay good.
It didn’t work like that, anymore.
She opened her eyes once more to look at the ceiling, then even that was too much; her eyes were burning.
She closed them again and the day began.
&nbs
p; She got up the next evening and showered, finally getting all of the fiend blood off of her. It was all in her hair, as well, along with all manner of other things she’d picked up in the alley while they’d been fighting, but the bell pods stayed, save the few that stuck to her hairbrush. She dressed and went downstairs.
“You still covered in them?” she asked Tell.
“Vinegar actually worked,” Tell answered. “They dissolve in it.”
“Aha,” Tina said. “That’s one way to get rid of them.”
She went to the pantry, then teased out where Tell had left the vinegar on the counter by scent.
“You have a strategy, other than just pouring it on my head?” Tina asked. Tell snorted, coming over to look.
“You really… You’ve got these things everywhere,” he said. “What did you do, roll in them?”
“I don’t even know when I got them,” Tina said. “It was all kind of…”
“I wish I’d caught him,” Tell said. “I wanted to talk through the planning that went into all of it. It was seriously genius-level work.”
“How many did you count?” Tina asked, pulling one of the green stick-ems out of her hair and dipping it into a glass of vinegar. It fell away from her fingers easily and she sighed, going back to pick another and another out of her hair. Tell stood behind her, taking them out of her hair and sticking them to her sleeve.
“A hundred? Maybe more?” Tell said.
“No, of the Cova,” she said. “There were at least five of them involved, and the ones on the apartment at least knew about it.”
“Six,” Tell agreed. “I think there was one under the desk in the manager’s office.”
Tina turned her head.
“Did the manager know?” she asked, and the corner of Tell’s mouth came up as he shook his head.
“Nope.”
“Huh,” Tina said, pulling the green bits off of her sleeve and dunking them one by one. The first one had started to bubble and was down to half its initial size.
The humming that had been bothering her subconsciously all day finally started to subside, as the number of bits started to drop.
“You’ve got them worked all the way through your hair,” Tell said, pulling a new part across a different section of her head. “You got all the ones you can reach?”