Predatory

by Alexandra Ivy

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it an argument. Just a little disagreement. Emerson spilled a little wine on my dress, that’s all.” And by a “little wine” I meant half a bottle and by “on my dress” I meant soaked clean through until I had a faint purplish hue when I finally stripped the soaked garment off. I shrugged and tried to smile. “Crowded party and . . . accidents happen.”

  Accident my slightly purple ass.

  Moyer cocked his head. He was a one hundred percent cardboard cutout of every other detective my San Francisco roommate DVR’d each week, right down to his bulbous red nose and the aforementioned “isn’t it true.”

  There was an uncomfortable beat of silence as though Moyer expected me to say more.

  “And, that’s it,” I said.

  Moyer cocked a single caterpillar eyebrow and shot me one of those “prove it to me” expressions. The kind of expression that is so disconcerting it encourages perfectly innocent and well-read people to start babbling like psychopathic idiots. I was a solid four minutes into my soliloquy that contained a good selection of incriminating myself and backpedaling when my voice was drowned out by the ridiculously loud squawking of a black bird pacing the ledge of the open window.

  My God, New York was infested.

  Though I pathologically hate birds—not fear, hate—as I mentioned before, I could have run up and kissed this one on its filth-infested birdie beak for creating just the distraction that allowed me a millisecond to give myself a mental head-slap and take the vampire equivalent of a deep, calming breath.

  My mouth fell open again at the precise time the bird’s beak cracked wide, as though the foul thing was watching me.

  “Someone shoo that bird away,” Detective Moyer said, clearly annoyed.

  One of the pup cops used his hat to bat at the screen and the black bird did a patronizing flap of its enormous wings, circling about six inches from the ledge, still squawking like a maniac.

  Moyer blew out a disgusted sigh and raked a fat hand over his round face. “We’ll need to have you come down to the station to answer some questions,” he said finally. “Now.”

  I swallowed and glanced out the window, the sun catching the heavy leaded glass. Just the glare stung my bare shoulders and I inched away. “Can we finish the interview downstairs? Or in a non–bird-infested room? I just would like to not be here.”

  Moyer looked around, his eyes landing on the pattern spread on my table, edged by a heap of fabric scraps.

  “What’s all this about? You one of the, er, sewing students?”

  I felt myself stiffen even though I knew it was not the time to throw my weight(lessness) around. “I’m a designer, actually. This”—I gestured to the tables, the dresses, the patterns—“is a contest. A competition.” I swallowed, thinking of the swish-swish sound Reginald’s shoes made as they scraped across the dining table, thinking of Emerson’s sightless eyes, the slack in her jaw as it stayed open, forever frozen in surprise.

  Moyer eyed the fabric swatches and then eyed me, skepticism written all over his face. “Like a TV thing?”

  I was about to correct him, but instead bet on the draw-to-Hollywood that most breathers in this anyone-can-be-a-star decade seemed to have. “Yeah.”

  I pumped my head, growing more excited and happy that the majority of my never-lie-to-a-cop morals disappeared when my soul did. “Reality TV.”

  Detective Moyer’s spider-veined cheeks reddened and pushed up into a smile. “Is that model going to be here?” He looked around as though we were storing her in a closet or a drawer. “The blonde one? The host? She’s from Sweden or Switzerland. Saskatchewan or something.”

  “Uh, yeah, absolutely,” I said.

  If necessary, I’m sure I could scare up a Saskatchewan model somewhere, right?

  Moyer straightened his tie and yanked his pants up over his enormous keg of a belly, his eyes scanning the studio as if he had simply overlooked an enormous camera crew.

  “Are you miked?” he asked in a gruff, low murmur.

  “Miked?”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows and I was amused and horrified that this man of the law would be so into grabbing his fifteen minutes that he would use a homicide to get there. And to get a piece of prime Saskatchewan model ass, apparently.

  “No,” I said, leaning in. “This isn’t part of the show.”

  I watched Moyer’s Adam’s apple bob as he considered. “I’ll meet you down in the lobby.”

  My feet hadn’t so much as touched the lobby’s deco marbled floor when Pike met me at the elevator.

  “What are you doing back here?” I wanted to know. “Coming back to make sure the job is done?”

  Pike’s eyebrows went up and I tried my best to gauge everything about him—his body heat, the thunder of his heart—but he stayed completely still and relaxed.

  It’s too bad the good-looking ones are always sociopaths.

  “What are you—?”

  I poked his chest with my index finger. “I know what you did.”

  “You know that I got shit-faced drunk and slept in the stairwell because I lost my keys?”

  “Lost your keys?”

  Pike looked sheepish. “They were in my pants.”

  I glanced down and realized that Pike was wearing a pair of ill-fitting pants instead of the slim pair that went with his suit. Perhaps earlier, I was too busy looking for bulges instead of the poorly stiched seams and unnatural fabrics to notice the change. But I still wasn’t convinced.

  “So you lost your pants and your keys.”

  Pike nodded then held my gaze, his eyes meltingly delicious and for the briefest of moments I considered what life with a serial killer might be like.

  I shook myself from my revelry. “That’s a convenient story.”

  The other elevator plinged! and Detective Moyer stepped out with another officer who was carrying two steaming cups of coffee. Moyer nodded to Pike, who raised his own paper coffee cup to the man.

  I narrowed my eyes. “You know Detective Moyer?”

  Pike’s eyes cut to me as the steam wisped from around his deep brown eyes. “Didn’t I tell you I work for a lot of people? Sometimes even the NYPD.”

  “Right.” I felt myself grimace. “Crime scene photographer.”

  I glanced back at where Moyer and the pup cop were setting themselves up, then back at Pike.

  “Well you’d better stay around. They want to know who saw Emerson last.”

  “And why do you think that was me?”

  I narrowed my eyes and Pike narrowed his right back at me and stepped a little closer, his nose—his lips—barely inches from mine.

  “Are you accusing me of something, Ms. LaShay?”

  “Ms. LaShay?” It was Moyer’s deep voice and he was looking over his shoulder at me now, those heavy brows raised expectantly.

  I poked Pike in the chest. “We’re not done.”

  And though there is no reason in this realm or the other that it should have, the second we touched, a spark shot through me like delicious wildfire. I pulled my finger back as though it burned but it was too late; Pike’s eyes were low and hooded, and the half-inch of smile on his pursed lips let me know that he felt it, too.

  Moyer asked me a rather routine, CSI-type series of questions that I answered with the practiced unease of someone who had seen her first dead body. No one needed to know that back home in San Francisco, my every day was spent with the dead. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but San Francisco was the city that never dies.

  “Well,” Moyer said, his pale eyes scanning his notebook as his meat hook of a hand started to close it. “I think that’s pretty much all we need.”

  I stood up, but Moyer stopped me. “Oh, Ms. LaShay, just one more thing. Did you recognize the scissors that were used to kill Ms. Hawk?”

  My whole body stiffened and if my heart still beat, I knew it would be up in my throat, clanging like a fire bell. I swallowed slowly. “They were mine.”

  The
buzz and hum of the active lobby was suddenly plunged into a deep, uncomfortable silence as though everyone—from the half-conscious security guard to the honking cabbies right outside the door—had heard me.

  “Yours?”

  I wanted to lie, to shrug it off, but those scissors would be dislodged from Emerson’s chest eventually, and when they were, they would see my name engraved right across the blade.

  “Ms. LaShay, I’m going to have to ask that you don’t leave town until we have this all sorted out. You’re free to contact your lawyer.”

  “My lawyer?” I felt myself blanch. “Am I—am I suspected of something?”

  Moyer didn’t answer me but his expression told me that his answer was nothing that I wanted to hear.

  A cold stripe of fear shot down my spine and my whole body rang electric. I may have fangs, I may have walked this earth for centuries, but right now, I was in deep, deep trouble.

  I handed the cabbie several crumpled bills and pushed my way into the apartment vestibule, sinking my key into the lock. It had only been a day, but I already couldn’t remember not feeling like my body was covered with the stench of death (and not the good kind), or when I didn’t want to slink out of my clothes, burn them—which is high holy treason with a wardrobe like mine—or slip away to parts unknown. I pulled out my cell again and hit speed dial again.

  “Underworld Detection Agency, San Francisco. This is Kale. How may I direct your call?”

  “Hey, Kale, it’s Nina. Can you put me through to legal?”

  “Nina!” Kale’s voice brightened, then dropped to a low whisper. “Can you do me a favor and tell Vlad something?”

  I swallowed. “Who told you he was here?”

  “You just did.”

  Before I could respond—or backpedal—Kale had put me through to legal where my “call was very important to them and would be answered in the order it was received.” I drummed my fingers on my purse while listening to an instrumental version of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” and told myself that I would deal with Kale’s Easter egg hunt later.

  I was still on hold when I made it to the fourth floor, a perky UDA employee breaking in between during “A Groovy Kind of Love” to ask me if I knew I could file most basic UDA legal documents online. I clicked my phone off, depressed at my lack of a solution and dearly missing the good, old-fashioned slam of a receiver on its base.

  Sliding an icon wasn’t very satisfying.

  I was standing in front of Reginald’s door now, one piddling strip of crime-scene tape strung across the jamb, the door sealed with a flashy red sticker warning that no one other than the police, an inspector, or the coroner was permitted entry.

  “Or the resident vampire,” I muttered under my breath before taking my fresh manicure to the thing.

  Once the sticker was slit, I was surprised to find the door unlocked. I slipped into the apartment and winced, getting another sickly sweet hit of that new-dead smell.

  I crossed the living room and cracked the kitchen window, letting the musty scent of New York summer seep in, letting the throb and bustle of the city pierce the silence.

  “All right, Reginald, show me something that will help me.”

  But there was nothing overtly cluelike in the apartment. The furniture, modern and standoffish, was pristine, not even bearing a telltale crease where some murderer may have taken respite after his job was done. There was nothing—except . . .

  I climbed up onto the dining table, careful to skirt the dark smudges where Reginald’s shoes had scraped, and rolled up onto my tiptoes. There, on the top of one of the exposed beams, was a forgotten scrap of fabric—Emerson’s fabric. The fabric that Reginald’s murderer had tightened around Reginald’s neck until he had stopped breathing. I shuddered, pulled my barrette from my hair, and used it as a sort of makeshift, evidence-sustaining pair of tweezers and grabbed the swatch.

  Other than the raggedy ends where the fabric had ripped, there was nothing significant or incriminating about it. The strip was about two inches wide, followed the print of the fabric, but was cut against the grain. No name plates, no fingerprints, no “if found please return to.” I held it up to my nose, whiffing the slightest scent of tuberose and freesia locked into the stitch. Apparently it hadn’t been in Emerson’s apartment long enough to adopt her scent.

  There was nothing and I was annoyed, but I shoved the scrap in my pocket anyway, jumping off the table and closing Reginald’s door behind me.

  What a waste.

  I was only able to grumble for a millisecond; a feeling of stiff unease washed down the skinny hallway and my hackles went up. I spun, staring down Emerson’s closed door.

  My nostril flicked.

  Emerson’s patchouli smell still hung light on the air, but there was something else now, too, something that wasn’t there earlier.

  And then there was the slightest, softest sound.

  A footstep.

  Someone, doing their best to step lightly, to carefully avoid the creaking floorboards. A drawer slid open. Someone rifling.

  I slowly wrapped my palm around Emerson’s doorknob and was met with a lock. I bit my bottom lip, considering.

  Then I slid a bobby pin out of my extensive updo (which was quickly falling due to my surprisingly helpful multiuse of barrettes and pins) and quietly stuck it into the lock. A single jiggle and the lock popped, the door popping open a millimeter. I pushed it open a tiny bit more and sucked in my stomach—a human habit that hadn’t yet died—peering into the apartment.

  It was quiet, and the heaps of clothing and crap all around could have signaled that Emerson’s place had just been ransacked, or that Emerson employed the same kind of housekeeping style my roommate did back at home: slob chic.

  I slid through the doorway, head cocked, still listening. Whoever was inside paused, because suddenly the room went uncomfortably still.

  But the scent was still there.

  I scanned the room, my footfalls silent even on the squeaky floorboard (we vamps have no discernible weight) and stopped short when I saw Emerson’s sketchbook laid out on the glass-topped kitchen table. It was open to a black-draped design that was a mirror image of something I had been working on and everything in me started to boil.

  Which was probably why I didn’t hear him.

  He clamped one leather-gloved hand around my waist and another around my mouth and dragged me backward. I tried to dig my heels into the heavy carpet to slow him down but my weightlessness worked against me and it was an easy slide. I tried kicking and punching, but with my assailant behind me, firmly clasping me against his chest, it was futile.

  “Let me go,” I growled against the man’s hand, feeling the angle on my fangs sharpening.

  He responded by tightening his grip and I opened my mouth, sinking my teeth into his palm.

  He howled and pulled away from me; I lurched for the vase on the counter, swinging it hard. Water and roses shot out in a clear arc and the heavy leaded crystal made a pleasing, smacking sound when it caught my attacker square in the jaw. I thought it would stop him but the shot only angered him and his hands were on me, grabbing fistfuls of shirt. I was off my feet and face to face with eyes that spit white-hot anger.

  A voice echoing in the hallway startled us both and I was tossed to the side, landing in a crumbled heap in a pile of discarded muslin sketch paper. My assailant cast one backward glance at me, cracked open the living room window, and disappeared onto the fire escape.

  I sat up like a shot—vampire pride wounded, the strap on my Jimmy Choo busted, and pulsing with rage. I vaulted toward the window and followed the black-clad man out onto the fire escape for exactly forty-five seconds. He shot an upward glance at me as he climbed down the escape ladders. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open just the tiniest bit and I knew he saw the smoke, the little burst of fire as it pierced my skin and singed my hair. I edged back as far from the single flicker of fire bringing sunlight that I could, patting my shoulder and tr
ying to put out the flame. I slapped it out. It smoldered, smoked, and seemed to die, only to pop once again like a cobra dancing out of its basket.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  My entire body was rigid and the tension pulsed through me like an electric shock as Pike lunged out the window for me and dragged me inside. He pressed a dishtowel against my shoulder, holding and waiting until the flame died out. He folded up the blackened towel and tossed it on the table.

  “What happened?” Pike asked me. “What are you doing here?”

  I figured if I drew his attention away from my little Sterno moment, he might forget about it. “What the hell are you doing here? I live here.”

  He pointed. “You live there. This is Emerson’s place and you were on fire.”

  I harrumphed. “I was on fire? You were seeing things, dude. I was just smoking.”

  Pike cocked a disbelieving eyebrow.

  “I know. It’s a foul habit. I’m trying to quit. Got one of those patch things, and some of that gum . . .” I was rambling.

  “So you decided to come over to Emerson’s house to indulge in this foul habit?”

  I offered him my “duh, isn’t it obvious?” shrug. “What are you doing here?”

  Pike took a step toward me. “I was actually heading over to your place to check in on you.” A tiny blush shot over his cheeks. “I don’t have your number.”

  “Then how’d you end up here?”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You left Emerson’s door open. And after I saw that Reginald’s place had been opened, I thought I’d see what was going on.”

  He looked earnest enough but a girl doesn’t walk the earth for centuries and (continue) to be fooled by a pair of gorgeous eyes and well-tanned swimmer’s shoulders that slouched pitifully.

  “How do I know you weren’t coming to my place to kill me?”

  Pike took another step and I backed up against the window, instinctually. I felt the singe on my back but I needed to put as much distance between him and me as possible.

  He cocked a grin that would have been heartwarming, had he not been a psychopath. “Why would I kill you?”