A new group of customers entered, both sexes looking appropriately pale and dressed in black, purple or bloodred. He’d seen some of them before, but several new faces clustered around the one who called himself Elvin Mowry. As if being above all others was his due, the purple-haired prince of freaks ascended the half-dozen stairs to the raised deck of the bar. One by one, his troupe followed.
Jake delivered the Bloody Cosmopolitans to the two young women who were watching Elvin Mowry and his sycophants.
Then his attention was drawn back to Silke when she appeared to take their orders. Jake was aware of the action around her—a newbie with electric-blue streaks in his long black hair eyed Silke with a lecherous grin.
And as the waitress moved closer to the guy, Jake tensed. His gut told him the guy was going to pull something, and Hung Chung was nowhere around to break it up. Though he usually spent most of his time hanging around the bar, the security guard must be doing a round of the other businesses in the building. Ready for an altercation he would have to deal with himself—and he would enjoy every minute of it, because Mowry and his minions irritated the hell out of him—Jake focused his attention on the newbie.
“Hey, sweet cheeks. You and me. Let’s grind hips together later,” he heard the guy say while sliding his hand up the back of the waitress’s skirts.
About to leap over the bar, Jake froze when she grabbed the guy’s hand and bent it back so fast it looked practiced. The pressure took the creep out of the chair and onto his knees on the floor. And still she didn’t let go.
“Don’t ever try that again or you’ll be sorry,” she said, her voice soft but threatening. “You know how many bones there are in a hand? You will if I break them all.” She let go, saying, “Now, can I take your order?”
The moron slid back into his chair and cradled the wounded hand to his chest. “Beer. A red beer,” he said, refusing to look at her until her back was turned. Then he shot a vile glare of hatred at her.
As if nothing had happened, Silke continued taking orders, leaving Jake to wonder what in the hell he’d just witnessed.
Chapter 4
I couldn’t believe my luck. First night playing waitress—no, first order—and I was assaulted by some loser with roaming hands.
How did Silke deal with this kind of crap? I wondered, stalking toward the bar to hand over my order. She wasn’t a fighter. Oh, she knew the moves. If she remembered them, that was. I’d made her take a self-defense workshop, but that had been years ago. She’d said it had been to appease me, but I figured she’d thought it might come in handy if she ever had to be part of a stage fight.
I felt that prickling, got a vague feeling that told me my twin was tuning in. I ignored not only her but also the music assaulting my ears—Gothic keyboards, dense guitars and mournful vocals going on about bloody kisses.
Arriving at the bar, I handed the order to the bartender. “A red beer and a bottle of Shiraz.”
“You okay?” asked the guy who I knew to be Jake DeAtley. The fine scar in the beard stubble gave him away.
“I’m okay,” I told him, visibly shivering the way I’d seen Silke do when she didn’t like something.
Eyebrow slashing upward, he asked, “So how many bones does the human hand have?”
“Twenty-six.”
How had he heard my threat? The place was pretty big—not terribly wide, perhaps, but long. And Mowry and his crew were on the raised level in back, which put them even farther away. The acoustics in this place must be something, I thought as Jake opened a bottle of red beer. When I tried to tune in on Mowry and company, I got nothing but music. Maybe there’d been a break between tunes, I thought.
“That was some fancy move,” Jake said, pulling me out of my musings. “Where did you learn it?”
“Cable television has something for everyone.”
Though he didn’t respond to my tart remark, Jake gave me a piercing look that made me nervous. I took it to mean that he hadn’t thought that I—rather Silke—was capable of an effective defensive move. Or that Silke would be so acerbic. Uh-oh, I didn’t want to arouse suspicions.
So I said, “Sorry, I’m still a little uptight. Actually, my sister got me to take a self-defense workshop. You know, one of those one-day wonders that give you a couple of moves to protect yourself. She doesn’t like me working in this neighborhood at night.”
“Any neighborhood can be dangerous at night.” Jake set the beer on the tray in front of me.
“Yeah, but I’ve heard stuff that creeps me out.”
“Stuff?”
“Like last night, Raven was all worried about Thora. She was certain something bad happened to her.” Considering Raven had spoken only to Silke, Jake wouldn’t know what was said, and I didn’t elaborate. “You haven’t seen Thora tonight, have you?”
“Thora…no, can’t say as I have.”
“What about Raven?”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, did you ever catch Raven’s last name?”
He shook his head.
I watched Jake open the bottle of red wine, his expression suddenly closed. Could he possibly know something? I wondered. While he was busy, I gave him an intense once-over.
Six feet tall, athletic build, dark hair and smoldering good looks played up by a black collarless shirt. His skin was pale. I might think he was a Goth, but he wore no makeup at all, and only had a single piercing. The stud in his right ear looked like a black diamond. The pale scar slashing through the beard stubble on his left cheek was window dressing as far as I was concerned. I had a few scars of my own. It simply made me think he was rugged, a man’s man, and made me curious as to whether or not he had any additional scars on that pumped body.
“Here you go.” He cut into my musings by pushing the tray toward me.
The way he was studying me—as if he was trying to read my mind or something—made me back off. I was getting vibes a whole lot stranger than the ones I got off Silke. Only these I didn’t understand.
I took the tray and almost dropped it. “Nerves,” I said, purposely doing a Silke twitch. “I guess that guy really got to me.”
Before Jake could respond, I moved through the poorly lit bar, looking for Thora as I had been doing since I’d arrived. I’d asked several people about her now, with no results. I’d been looking for Raven, as well, but as far as I could tell, she hadn’t shown, either.
Great. I was getting nowhere fast.
I tried to imagine who might know LaTonya Sanford in this place. She’d been underage, but that didn’t mean anything. Lots of these customers might be using fake IDs. As a cop, I knew it wouldn’t be hard to get one. Not that I had ever found evidence of one in the Sanford case. But there had been those matches. If she hadn’t been in here herself, she’d known someone who had.
LaTonya’s purse had presented me with a conundrum. What to do with it? I’d been reluctant to accept potential evidence on a case I was not actively working for the Chicago Police Department. And what I had found hadn’t been enough alone to take it in and make the investigation official. In the end, after returning the contents into the purse—including those matches—I’d regretfully left it in Mrs. Sanford’s care. Temporarily, I reminded myself.
The bar had enough atmosphere to attract a growing number of customers, enough that I had to dance around a few to get to the stairs. Deep purple walls, black ceiling, wood floor stained a dark red, no mirrors, and lamps that looked like and gave off as much light as candles. Cigarettes rather than candles filled the air with a nasty cloud of smoke.
I headed to deliver the drinks to Elvin Mowry and what I figured were the other vampire cult members. I put a beer in front of the creep whose hand I’d wanted to break. He sucked on his cigarette and immediately looked away.
Then I set wine glasses down before Mowry and his companions.
“I shall taste before you pour, my dear,” Mowry said. “And please forgive Ronald for his poor judgment earlier. He’s new,” he said
, as if that explained away the little creep’s transgression.
I smiled into Mowry’s pretty face and poured a splash of the ruby-red wine in his glass. Then I watched as he lifted it with ring-covered fingers—a wolf, a bat, a gargoyle, all in pewter. He held the drink up to a light fixture overhead and licked his lips in anticipation. I was certain he’d chosen this vintage because he thought it looked like blood, and the action creeped me out. Unless he actually had something to do with draining women of their blood, he’d probably never seen the real stuff in any quantity. If he worked homicide, his romance with vampirism would fade fast. Nothing like a blood-splattered wall to kill one’s appetite for red wine.
“Wonderful. Pour,” Mowry commanded. When I began filling glasses, he said, “You are a lovely and complex woman, Silke.”
The name reminded me to give him a subtle Silke smile and soften my voice as I set down the bottle and asked, “Would that be a compliment?”
“Definitely. Your unexpected vigor tonight adds a spiciness that I appreciate to our relationship.”
Relationship? Silke thought Mowry was nothing but creepy. But I smiled again and said, “I always aim to please.”
“You would pleasure me greatly if you would join me when the bar closes.”
Great. Was this going to be grope number two?
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“I am a gentleman, Silke—”
“Sorry. I don’t fraternize with customers. It’s kind of a rule of mine.”
I tried to keep that smile pasted to my lips as I flicked my gaze over the purple spiked hair and settled it on Mowry’s pretty-boy face.
Ironically, the song blasting through the bar was “Love You to Death.” How many young women had been? I wondered. And did Mowry see me as the next victim? Did the creeps who took enough blood from a woman to kill her do it while having sex with her? Was that what had happened to Thora? And LaTonya Sanford?
The mystery eating at me as it had been all these months, I said, “Besides, Elvin, I thought you and Thora had a thing going on. Where is she, anyway?”
I caught a fleeting expression chase Mowry’s features before he shuttered them and said, “I have no idea of where she might be. Thora can be amusing, but she is not anyone I would consider…well, permanent.”
The way he said it made my blood pressure come knocking at my arteries.
Had Elvin Mowry just admitted to killing Thora Nelson?
“Everything’s okay, right?” Silke asked anxiously when I finally took a break to call her.
“So far.”
In addition to packing my weapon, I’d of course brought my cell phone. I’d told Jake I needed some air, so I was outside the bar where my conversation wouldn’t be overheard. I’d needed a break, a few minutes of being out of a crowd that had tripled since I’d arrived…of being away from the haze of smoke that threatened to choke me…of not having to worry about every word coming out of my mouth.
“Mowry didn’t seem broken up over Thora’s absence,” I told her. “He said she was amusing but not permanent.”
“Jerk!”
In my opinion, that was the general consensus about men. Until they got blindsided by the love bug, they were casual with the women in their lives, thinking there was always another one around the corner. And usually there was.
And speaking of men…
“What about Jake DeAtley? How well do you know him?”
“Uh-oh,” Silke said. “Do your hormones kick in when you look at him?”
I suddenly felt annoyed. “Do yours?”
“What is it you’re really asking?”
I’d felt this tension humming off the bartender more than once, but I hadn’t wanted to define it. “It’s probably nothing. Just the way he was looking at me…”
“Hey, if you can get his attention, I say go for it.”
“He was assessing me,” I told her, “but it wasn’t attraction. It was like he was trying to see inside me.”
“He does get weird sometimes. One minute he can be smiling and charming and the next minute he’s a completely different person.”
I digested that assessment and wondered what Jake really was all about.
“Did Raven show?” Silke asked.
“I haven’t seen her, either. Listen, I need to get back inside before someone gets suspicious.”
I’d barely made it past the security guy stationed at the door to check IDs when, seemingly out of nowhere, the owner appeared in front of me and gave me a good start.
“Hey, Desiree.” My breath caught as I wondered if she saw through my disguise.
Her eyes narrowing, Desiree leaned toward me and, through the curtain of blue-black hair that slid along her face, said, “Chérie, I do not pay for you to chat on the phone while my customers thirst.”
Her tone was as mild as her French accent, her lips were curved, and yet I knew from the glitter in her dark eyes that she was truly irritated with me.
“I’m on it.”
Before I could say anything to arouse her suspicions, I quickly made myself scarce. Then I realized she’d known I’d been on my cell. Had she been spying on me through the window?
I glanced back, and caught sight of her at the far end of the bar. How had she gotten there through the crowd so fast? I wondered. Her attention was centered on another pretty boy, this one with long blond hair. Blaise Allcock, I presumed from the description Silke had given me. They were sequestered away from other people, apparently arguing about something.
I would have given my eyeteeth—whichever ones those were—to know what they were arguing about. Too bad I’d never gotten around to taking a course in lip-reading.
I arrived at the table of newcomers, non-Goths who were gazing around, sending up smoke signals with their cigarettes and whispering to each other. I took their order and rushed back to the bar, where Jake got right on it.
“Air fresh enough for you?” he asked.
“As fresh as city air gets. Better than the smog in here.”
A dark eyebrow shot up, and Jake’s gaze flicked from the drink order to me. He didn’t say anything, but I was getting weird vibes off him again. I couldn’t wait until the order was filled so I could get out of his space.
What was his story? I wondered, remembering to handle the tray as Silke had showed me. For some reason, I couldn’t get a read on Jake, and I was pretty good at reading people.
As I served drinks, I looked over the crowd for the hundredth time, but I didn’t see anyone who fit either Thora’s or Raven’s description.
With the bar filled with bodies, most of them with a cigarette in hand, the atmosphere was thick enough to cut. I would be wearing the smoke until I jumped out of my evening’s costume and into the shower. And I couldn’t wait for that. In an era where women were allowed to be comfortable, why did anyone want to dress like this? I was wary of bending over, both because then I could hardly breathe and because I feared falling out of my bodice.
Even so, I had to admit there was something seductive about walking among a whole group of people in disguise, me included. I felt anonymous, as if I could disappear into myself and no one knew who I really was. Which they didn’t. Maybe that was the attraction. That and the theatrical atmosphere of the bar itself, which drew as many neighborhood regulars as it did Goths.
I swung through the crowd, taking orders while keeping an eye out for either of the Goth girls. As Jake filled an order for me, a commotion got my attention. A couple of guys trying to get into the bar were making threatening noises. The man blocking their way was solid looking—Hung Chung himself. The head security guard grabbed the two guys by their collars and shoved them out the door with him following.
“Huh, what’s going on there?” I muttered to myself as I turned to see if the drinks were ready.
“You know Chung likes to assert his authority. Scares the pants off underage kids.”
“I wonder what scares him.” He was being unnecessarily rough, and I’d
never had a fondness for bullies.
“Not much probably. What scares you?”
The unexpected question threw me. And the way Jake was staring at me. Speculation licked his features, and I wondered what conclusions he was drawing about me.
“You want to know what scares me?” I asked, looking around at the young women in the bar and seeing them as potential victims.
“Just making conversation.”
“What scares me is that some people are so damn trusting they don’t recognize evil when they face it.”
Jake’s expression altered subtly, but I didn’t miss it. I’d managed to surprise him.
He said, “I’d like to continue the conversation. After work?”
“I need to get these drinks to my customers.” I picked up the tray, but my mouth went dry.
What exactly was he suggesting?
“I find your perspective fascinating, Silke. So what about it? Breakfast, I mean.”
“At four in the morning?”
Heart of Darkness had a late license on the weekends. One of its draws, I knew.
“Why not? You could use a meal. I could use company.”
Was that all? I wondered suspiciously.
What I could use was information. About Thora. About Elvin Mowry and his vampire cult. About Raven and LaTonya. Silke had told me Jake was okay so maybe this was a way to get what I needed.
“All right. Breakfast.”
By the time the bar closed and all the patrons left and we got things in order for the next day, it was nearly four-thirty. Thankfully, the next day was Sunday and I could sleep in. I wasn’t used to the hours.
“Ready?” Jake asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
We exited the bar, Chung locking the door behind us, me thinking the security guard was staring hard enough to see right through my disguise.
“I’m parked over this way.” Jake indicated west on Randolph.
“I’m over on Lake Street. We can take both cars and meet at the diner.”
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