Jack Bird really intended to bring that scrawny, underfed kid with him back into the Cauldron. He really intended to risk her being raped, fed on by vampires, kidnapped by sex traffickers or, hell, by a middle-aged, old-style-movie-star defense contractor.
Bird was willing to risk her being ID’d by drones, found out for what she really was, experimented on… killed.
“What’s with the mural in the Cauldron?” he said, blunt. “The one on that brick wall?”
Jack Bird stared at him.
His angular face didn’t move.
“What else can your sister do, ‘Mal’?” Nick growled. “Since you seem to be a family of ‘rare skills.’ What exactly can your sister do that’s going to scare so many humans?”
That time, it was Lara St. Maarten who spoke.
“You needn’t concern yourself with that, Detective.”
He turned, aiming his glare at her.
“Oh, ‘needn’t’ I?” he growled. “I just saved her life. I didn’t feed on her, not even to get her to tell me the truth about the two of you. I’m also not feeling overly inclined to turn her in to the authorities… yet. Which might just make me the stupidest fucking vampire in the entire Protected Area, if not the world. I’d kind of like to know just how stupid I am, and if I’m going to end up regretting what I let happen tonight in a few months—”
“You won’t,” Jack Bird cut in. “You won’t, Detective. I vow it.”
When Nick turned, the seer was holding up one hand in a seer’s gesture that made him wince all over again.
“…I vow it,” Bird finished, switching to the seer’s language, Prexci. “Tai is a good girl. She is getting help. I vow we will not cause you to regret your kindness to either of us.”
But Nick frowned all over again at his words.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said in Prexci.
He was about to go on, but St. Maarten cut him off, speaking English.
“—It means we’re handling it,” she said, in a “case closed” kind of voice. “It also means it’s none of your business, Detective Tanaka.”
Nick turned towards her, then looked between them.
For a long-feeling minute, he only frowned, conscious that they were winning this little battle of wills. After all, could he really keep Tai from her brother? What the hell would he do with her? Wasn’t the whole point of this that he find her brother, so he could get her out of his government-owned vampire holding facility?
“How many?” he said finally.
“How many what, Detective?” Ms. St. Maarten said.
“Seers,” Nick growled, glaring back at the tall male with the long, black hair. “How many more of you are there, running around?”
At their silence Nick rested his hands on his hips, looking between them.
“Well?” he said. “You’re not going to tell me you’re the only ones? That I just happened to stumble across the only two seers living here? On the whole damned planet?”
Nick watched them exchange glances, and frowns.
He waited for them to answer him.
But they never did.
Chapter 14
Dismissed
“Your brother’s here. He’s outside, waiting for you.”
Nick looked down at her, frowning when he realized she was wearing one of his shirts, an old band T-shirt he usually wore to run or work out in. The shirt fell past her thighs, almost to her knees. Her hair was wet, dripping down the back of it.
“I know,” she said.
Nick frowned.
“So why are you dressed like that?” he said, nodding towards the shirt. “You’ll freeze.”
She looked up at him, her ice-colored eyes shockingly blue.
Staring at his eyes for a beat, she seemed to be thinking.
Then she shrugged.
“I hadn’t had a shower in a while,” she explained.
Nick’s frown turned into a scowl.
He didn’t say anything aloud, but found himself muttering in annoyance in his mind.
“It’s not his fault,” Tai said.
Nick’s eyes returned to hers. Seeing her studying his face, he bit his tongue, telling himself this was none of his business.
“It’s not his fault,” she repeated. “He didn’t make the Cauldron the way it is.”
Nick tried to clear his mind, if only to block the curse words that wanted to form.
In the end, he walked away from her.
“You need more to wear than that,” he muttered, walking away from her with deliberate strides and heading for his bedroom.
She followed him, watching him go through drawers, then through his closet, then through boxes in his closet.
Nothing he found would come close to fitting her. He wished he knew some humans here, someone who might have kids with hand-me-downs. He hated the idea of putting her back in the filthy clothes she’d shown up in, but he couldn’t let her walk out in his T-shirt and with wet hair, either. In the end, he found her a knit hat, let her keep the T-shirt, so at least the layer touching her skin would be clean, and cut off a pair of his sweatpants so at least they’d fit the length of her legs.
They looked ridiculous on her, but they were clean. And warm.
She watched him tighten the drawstrings of the pants, making a bow tie of the long ends.
“What about my clothes?” she said, as he took the bottom of the T-shirt from her fingers where she held it up, and pulled it down over the sweatpants.
He surveyed her outfit, and frowned.
She still looked like a street urchin, and now one wearing ridiculously too-large clothes, but she should be warm.
“Let’s dry your hair,” he said, motioning with his chin for her to follow him into his bathroom.
“What about my clothes?” she repeated, glancing at them where they sat on the tile floor.
“I’ll bring them to you.”
He positioned her under the dryer built into his shower cubicle and adjusted the stream so it wouldn’t be as hot, then turned it on, aiming it at her wet head.
When he glanced at her face, she was grinning at him.
“What are you smiling about?” he said, loud over the dryer.
“You’re coming to see me!” she said, shouting even louder than him, probably because the warm air was going right into her ears. “You’re going to come visit!”
Nick made the exhale motion, rolling his eyes, but her grin only widened.
“Maybe,” he said, speaking louder to match her. “Maybe I’ll just leave your clothes in a bag by that mural. With a cleaning bill inside for your brother!” He lowered his voice to a mutter. “…Your fucking brother, who seems to think it’s okay for his little sister to wear filthy clothes, never shower, go hungry, and not go to school.”
“I’m not hungry!” she shouted.
“You’re skinny!” he shouted back.
“Did you bring me cookies? The mint kind?”
He stared at her.
Then he laughed.
“Yes!” he said. “And don’t pretend you just guessed that!”
“Are you going to give them to me? And the cheeseburger and fries you brought me?”
He grunted. “Only if you promise NOT to share them with your brother!”
She laughed, pushing at his leg with her hands.
Damn kid.
Truthfully, he still didn’t like letting her go like this.
Especially since he didn’t exactly get the impression that her brother, Ms. St. Maarten, or Ms. Racine wanted him, Nick, in any of their lives.
Why the hell would you want to be in their lives? Nick wondered to himself, his frown turning back to a scowl as he watched the baby seer shake her rapidly-drying hair under the blower, combing her fingers through the damp ends.
He’d come to New York to be alone. He’d told himself he wouldn’t make the same mistakes here that he made in Los Angeles… that he’d mind his own fucking business here, not let his stupid v
ampire emotions get in the way.
At the thought, he grunted.
Look how well that was turning out.
He just stood there, watching, until she was finished.
He gave her clean socks, too, watching her pull them up to almost her knees before shoving her feet back into her worn tennis shoes.
He noted two holes in the soles of those shoes and frowned again, watching her tie the laces with practiced fingers as he eyeballed the size she probably wore.
Sticking all of her dirty clothes in one of the biodegradable bags he used for his laundry service, including the ratty jacket she’d been wearing, he gave her a flannel shirt to wear in lieu of the coat until he could get it cleaned, and handed her the bag of food he’d brought.
“Go on,” he said, gruff, guiding her with his hands towards his apartment’s front door. “My friend will handle the security footage. We need to get you out of here… preferably before my neighbors start coming home.”
Watching her button up the thick flannel shirt, he bit his lip.
“You going to be okay pushing the guard again?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging.
“Okay.” He couldn’t think of anything else. “Let’s go.”
Her brother frowned as soon as he laid eyes on her.
“Where did you get those clothes, Tai?” he said, glaring at Nick.
She gave him a puzzled look, like she couldn’t figure out why he would ask that.
She looked at Nick, then back at her brother.
“They’re his,” she said.
She said it in a little kid’s duh voice.
Malek raised his mismatched eyes to Nick. “Where are her clothes?”
“Upstairs,” Nick said. “I told her I’d bring them to her. After they were cleaned.”
Malek shook his head, once, vehement.
“No,” he said. “Bring them down. Now.”
“No,” Nick said, glaring back at him. “You need to go. Now.” He checked his old-fashioned watch, scowling. “You don’t have much time.”
“Why did you take her clothes?” Suspicion and anger emanated off the male seer, almost physically tangible.
Nick couldn’t help noticing the seer’s calm from when they’d been inside Phoenix Tower appeared to have evaporated, in the face of his baby sister.
He also couldn’t help but wince from the emotions coming off the male seer.
He knew he was feeling the reactions in the seer’s living light, or aleimi, as seers called it. Aleimi was practically an extra limb on seers, and could knock a human—or even a vampire—over emotionally and mentally if they weren’t used to it, or weren’t aware of what was happening to them.
Unfortunately, seers were just as emotionally volatile as vampires.
“Why?” The male seer was glaring at him, his voice openly hostile. “Why would you steal a little kid’s clothes from her, vampire?”
Nick could feel the nature of his suspicions now, and felt his jaw harden.
He barely noticed his spine straightening, his shoulders going back instinctively in response to the intensity of the seer’s aleimic light.
“The kid was filthy,” Nick growled. “Her clothes are filthy. She took a shower on her own. When I got home, she’d already taken it, and was wearing one of my shirts. I wasn’t about to dress her in that garbage again.”
Seeing and feeling the fury rise in the male seer, even as the air seemed to crackle around the two of them, Nick lowered his jaw, now almost in a fighting stance, his hands clenched at his sides.
“I’ll bring them by tomorrow,” he said, his voice growing deeper. “I’ll leave them by the fucking mural, if you’re so adamant I not have contact with your ‘precious’ sister. A sister you clearly don’t even bother to feed half the time, much less—”
Nick wasn’t done.
He had a lot more to say to this fucker.
Now that he could feel the threat in the other male’s living light, and see it in his eyes, he had even more to say to him.
But before he could go on, small fingers wove into his. Once they had a hold of him, they squeezed, surprisingly strong.
Nick bit back his words, mid-sentence.
He turned, staring down at Tai, who’d taken his hand.
“It’s okay,” she said, looking up at him. Her voice was serious—adult serious, despite how impossibly small she looked, especially in his clothes.
“It’s okay,” she insisted, tugging on Nick’s fingers. “He’s not bad. He just forgets things.”
“Like to feed you?” Nick growled. “Like to wash your clothes?”
She shrugged, looking apologetically at her brother.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. She looked back up at Nick. “His brain works different. Different from mine. Different from yours. He can’t help it. I’m getting bigger now. I can do more myself.”
Nick’s back molars ground together, seemingly on their own.
He only nodded though.
Still glaring at the older brother, he nodded again, once.
He didn’t realize until later that he’d copied the brother’s seer-like nod that time.
“Okay,” he said.
“Really,” she insisted. “I’m all right, Nick.”
Nick nodded, still glaring at the male seer. “Fine.”
There was a silence.
Then, tugging the little girl seer in the direction of her brother, he let go of her fingers.
“Go,” he said, gruff. “You two need to get out of here, before the rest of the vamps living here get back.”
He gave the male seer, “Malek,” or “Jack Bird,” a meaningful look as he said it.
That time, Nick’s message seemed to penetrate.
The tall seer’s eyes flickered as he remembered why they couldn’t stay.
His anger diffused a few seconds later.
Returning Nick’s nod, he took his sister’s hand, swallowing visibly as he glanced down at her. From something in his face, Nick found himself thinking the little girl was talking to her brother now, only in his head.
That suspicion strengthened when the male seer scowled, then looked at Nick, his eyes and expression obviously grudging, if not out and out reluctant.
“Thanks,” he said, his voice gruff. “For looking out for her.”
Nick frowned. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“Well. Thanks anyway.”
The male seer was already stepping backwards.
Nick could feel the intention, the emotion, in his aleimic light.
Brother Mal never wanted Nick, or any vampire, anywhere near his sister again.
“Maybe make yourself a list,” Nick growled, made more angry somehow by the seer’s obvious retreat. “You’ve got room on that arm,” he added coldly, indicating towards the seer’s unmarked right limb. “How about having someone ink it on there. I could get you started. ‘Feed sister.’ ‘Make sure sister gets showers… and clean clothes.’ And maybe find some way to educate her. And get her out of that fucking hellhole and into a real house.”
The male seer was scowling at him again.
“We don’t need your help,” he said, his voice harsh. “We’ve been getting along fine without you. Both of us.”
“Sure you have,” Nick snapped.
Malek gave him another hard look.
Gripping his sister’s hand tighter, he turned with her entirely then, turning his back to Nick. He began leading Tai out of the building’s underground garage.
Nick watched them walk away.
He should have gone back to his apartment.
He should have turned around and walked in the opposite direction, back to his apartment, back to his life. He should have walked away.
He shouldn’t have given either of them another thought.
At the very least, he should have considered it ended with the return of her clothes.
He should just hand them over for his cleaning service to arrange.
Tell the service to clean them, then send them to her brother, along with a new pair of tennis shoes, maybe a new coat, a few more T-shirts, some socks, some pants, all in care of Ms. Lara St. Maarten at Phoenix Tower in Dorsal Community, the River of Gold—the same Ms. Lara St. Maarten who could have opened a damned restaurant in the middle of the Cauldron and served food from it, free of charge, for ten years, and not burn through one quarter’s earnings she got from Archangel Industries.
But Nick didn’t walk away, figuratively or literally.
He stood there, watching the tall, dark-haired seer walk the little girl through the underground parking structure of his building and out to the street.
He watched them, frowning.
Somehow, as he did, he already knew he wouldn’t let it go.
Chapter 15
Field Trip
“You’re late.”
Jordan scowled at him, tapping his headset, presumably to indicate the built-in timepiece.
“The train’s already here,” the human added—unnecessarily, since Nick was on the same platform he was, staring at the exact same train.
Jordan wasn’t done.
“Where the fuck have you been?” the detective said. “You don’t even sleep. You should have been here already, waiting for me with a fucking sandwich and a coffee.”
Nick did his best to keep his expression flat, despite his irritation.
Meeting the human’s gaze, he paused, studying those dark brown eyes, now clearly seeing the enhanced ring of pale blue.
Looking away, he jerked his chin towards the train.
“Let’s just get on, okay?” His irritation leaked into his voice, plainly audible despite his half-assed efforts to mask it. “We both had long nights. And we’re both going on our second back-to-back shift.”
He should have left it at that.
He should have, but he didn’t.
Instead, he found himself adding sourly, “…And the day I bring you a fucking sandwich and coffee is the day you offer me your wrist for a morning snack.”
Damon Jordan flinched.
He turned slowly, glared into Nick’s face half-incredulously, like he thought he must have misheard him. His disbelief turned rapidly to anger as it dawned on him that he really hadn’t misheard him, his face turning red, his jaw pushed out from him clenching it so hard.
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