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Strangers in the Night

Page 26

by E M. Jeanmougin


  “He didn’t follow us,” said Jasper. “And he was afraid to come into your house.” It wasn’t hard to see why. The werespider’s anger often came on like a flash storm, but even when his life (or Al’s life, or Jasper’s) was in danger, Jasper had never seen him take it so personally. “Stay here tonight. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  “Jerry’s right,” said Alan. “Anyway, that guy wasn’t so tough. I mean, he fucked like a—”

  Crimson clapped a hand over Alan’s mouth. “Alright.” He looked at Jasper. “Fine.” He moved his hand, revealing the hopeful, half-there grin that was permanently affixed to the werewolf’s face. “Go back to bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Alan hugged himself tighter, his smile widening. “Oh, I love when you’re all commanding.”

  “Now, Alan.”

  “Yessir,” purred Alan. Jasper felt like throwing up. Crimson had exceptionally bad taste in men. Actually, thinking of Ivory, in women as well. Alan slinked back into the darkened room, and Jasper looked away quickly but not quickly enough to miss the flash of his bare back and ass as he shrugged off the coat, letting it fall into a pile on the floor.

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do,” said Crimson. “But if I were you, I’d stay in the house tonight. Shane isn’t above foul play. Actually, it’s kind of right up his alley.”

  Jasper frowned but nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  Crimson returned the nod, started to reach for him, and stopped. “I’ll see ya soon,” he said, then disappeared into the room, with neither thanks nor apology. The door fell shut behind him with a soft click. With no other recourse, Jasper took Abby upstairs, sat her in the armchair, and put on the television. He sat on the bed, chewing on leftover summer buffalo jerky and trying not to hear anything but the television, which he had tuned to an inappropriately loud volume. The surround sound rattled the trinkets stacked around the room any time the dialogue on screen went above a whisper. It was still better than the alternative.

  The ashtray on the nightstand between the two beds was nearly full and his lungs were starting to hurt from smoking when the door at the bottom of the stairs creaked open and Crimson and Alan came stumbling up into the attic, still hanging on each other, but without the desperation they had previously.

  The werespider’s ears were more sensitive than his, and he cringed at the roaring sound of WWII helicopters as they alighted with wounded men harnessed in litters. Abby barely stirred for the entire duration of the movie and didn’t speak at all, for which Jasper was grateful. He watched Crimson cross the room to grab the remote and turn the volume down. Alan was still hanging around the kitchenette. He checked a message on his phone, clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and went over to the couch. “C’mon, Abs. We gotta roll.”

  “You’re not staying here tonight?” asked Crimson. His voice was toneless, face unreadable, but he would not have asked if he did not want him to.

  “Well, I would, but”—Alan flashed the phone at him—“duty calls. My alpha’ll shit a silver brick if she finds out I turned down two hundred bucks an hour.” He paused, assessing the werespider. “Of course, if someone were to, say… price match…”

  “You want me to pay to let you sleep in my bed?”

  “Time’s money, honey.” He drew a step closer. “We don’t have to sleep.”

  “Phfftt, alright, get outta here, then,” said Crimson, flopping down on the sofa.

  Alan shrugged. “Worth a shot.” Tossing Crimson’s jacket in his lap, he laid a kiss on his temple, grabbed Abby’s hand, and led her down the stairs. She waved vaguely in Jasper’s direction, though she wasn’t looking at him. The two appeared briefly on the black-and-white security feeds, walking away arm in arm from the stoop. Alan hopped the gate, then held it open for Abby, who drifted through like a specter.

  “If I ever pay that werewolf to sleep with me, take me out back and shoot me,” muttered Crimson, stretching out on the couch, his head resting on the arm.

  “You did pay him,” said Jasper. “With the drugs, remember?”

  Crimson shifted uneasily on the couch and rolled over to look at him. “That’s different. We were just sharing. And Alan sleeps with me all the time. For nothing. So…”

  Jasper breathed a snort out through his nose. “I don’t know why you bother with him at all. He doesn’t even like you. And he’s mean to you.”

  Crimson smiled with his lips and his teeth, but the rest of his face stayed fixed in a scowl. “Wow, are you finished?”

  “I’m just trying to look out for you,” said Jasper.

  Crimson barked sarcastic laughter. “That’s weird, cuz it kinda seems to me like you’re being a jealous little bitch.”

  “Ha!” Jasper echoed the werespider’s sarcasm, though even to his own ears, it sounded more grated. Harsher. “Jealous of what, exactly? Your terrible taste in men?”

  “At least I have some sort of taste. What can I say, Jazz? We can’t all be holier-than-thou virgins like you. Some of us don’t walk around all day being terrified of our own sexuality.”

  “He said he was going to stay, and he didn’t,” said Jasper flatly. “And now he gets to run off to fuck someone else, probably your psycho ex-boyfriend, and I have to sit here and deal with you pouting all night.”

  “You don’t gotta deal with jack shit,” spit Crimson. He sat up, swung his legs off the couch, and stood. “I’ll sleep in the other room.” He snatched the throw pillow off the couch and, without even looking his way, strode for the stairs. “Have a good fuckin’ night.” The door slammed with a resounding BANG that rattled the shelves even worse than the surround sound had.

  For several moments after he was gone, Jasper sat on the bed, his heartbeat fast and hard, a peculiar-feeling lump set in the back of his throat. There were so many things he still wanted to say. It would have been easier if he had not left.

  After another half hour of sitting on the bed, listlessly watching the movie as he had hypothetical argument after hypothetical argument in his own head, he got up and killed the lights. He turned the television off, found that without its latent noise, he seemed able to hear every creak and groan in the building, and then turned it back on and flipped through the stations until he found a film noir that seemed familiar in the way all old movies, even the ones you hadn’t seen, always did.

  He fell asleep to the low rumble of Humphrey Bogart and the clipped, nasal sneer of James Cagney.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  —

  Devil in Disguise

  When Jasper woke the next day, it was alone. He wasn’t surprised since he had barely slept, having woken often and easily, sometimes for no apparent reason whatsoever. Against his better judgment, he looked towards the other mattress every time, sure that by that hour Crimson would have relented and slipped back into the room to sleep in his own bed. His expectations were wrong every time.

  He made coffee, strong and black and bitter.

  They had made loose plans to deal with Shane today, but that was before the yelling match. Besides, it was still early. Barely eleven. Be damned if he was going to sit around for the entire afternoon, waiting for the werespider to just blow him off again.

  He took a quick shower, got changed, and took his backpack to walk to the library four blocks over.

  He had never been to this library before and had to use the new ID Alcander had provided him with to open a fresh account. The towering rows of leather-bound books were like old friends, easing the pervasive feeling of isolation. He stayed for an hour and a half, during which time he picked only four books. On a good week, he could get through all four in four days. He’d drop by Alcander’s and pick up a few more. He wanted to talk to the vampire anyway, check up on him and Max, see if something could be done about his phone, and find out if he knew anything about Shane.

  It was only a ten-minute walk, but Jasper was in no great hurry. He bought a pack of cigarettes at a newsstand and loitered there, browsing the headlines
while he smoked his first cigarette of the day, regretting he hadn’t brought a thermos of coffee to go with it.

  It was a quarter to one on the dot when he arrived at Alcander’s. He twisted and turned and ducked his way to the back of the warehouse. When he reached the door, it was already open. Alcander and Max both stood there, framed by the light from below.

  Alcander was wringing his hands nervously. “Are you… moving back in?”

  “What?”

  “I do not mind,” said the vampire quickly. “You can certainly stay here.”

  “What?” repeated Jasper.

  “Crimson just called,” explained Max. “He said you took all your stuff and left, and you weren’t answering your cell phone. So… we thought…”

  Jasper felt a brief moment of satisfaction—Crimson had been worried about him—which quickly turned into something like shame. “My phone doesn’t work anymore,” he explained, which didn’t explain anything. He adjusted his backpack and scuffed the heel of one boot against the concrete floor. “We, uh, had a fight last night.”

  Max stepped to the side, offering the staircase. “Do you want breakfast?”

  Jasper smiled, just a little. “Yeah. Yeah, that would be great.”

  #

  Alcander had an entire tote full of spare burner phones of every make and model imaginable. Jasper sat in the kitchen, listening to the sizzle of bacon, and tinkered with the settings on one. It was the first cell phone he’d ever had that did not flip open—flat and slim with an expanded number pad of tiny buttons that included letters, like a keyboard. He tried twice to compose a message to Crimson, but both ended up too long and complicated, muddled with an excess of thoughts too difficult to convey in the written word. Finally, he just sent a message that simply said, “Hey, it’s Jasper. This is my new phone. I’ll be home soon.”

  There was no response.

  He wasn’t surprised. Crimson texted in much the same way a seventy-year-old grandmother with failing vision might.

  Alcander sat at the table beside him, his laptop popped open, fingers racing over the keys in a rhythmic tip-tap-clack, pausing only occasionally. He held down one key and struck another. “One moment.” He disappeared into the lab.

  “So are you like… staying here for good?” The question was directed at Max, who was sitting on the other side of the table, slowly eating while he read a pulp fiction detective novel from Michael’s section of the library. “I don’t mean that to sound like… judgy,” Jasper added quickly when Max glanced up. “I was just wondering.”

  “Alcander said he could use an extra pair of hands around the lab. I think he’s mostly just being nice,” replied Max. “But he really doesn’t like to go outside, and sometimes he does need things. And I need a place to live and a job, so it just seemed to work out.”

  Jasper thought it was probably a good thing for Alcander to have someone around. Someone to look after him and also maybe someone to look after. He liked Alcander’s house, but he didn’t think the vampire should be all alone down here.

  When Al returned, he was holding a small blue passport. He set it in front of Jasper. “Alright, you should be all set.”

  Jasper tried to say “thank you” around a mouthful of eggs, nearly choked trying to swallow them, and then managed to get the words out. Alcander gave him a small patient smile and assured him it was “no problem at all.” “Did you need anything else? Debit and credit cards?”

  It didn’t feel right to take Al’s money, even though he had more of it than he could really use. But… Jasper’s company credit cards had been canceled along with his phone, and he could count the dollars he had left on his fingers. He did a weird half-shrug, half-nod thing and scraped the rest of his food into his mouth so he could avoid properly answering. Alcander was up and gone before he could finish chewing, returning with a half dozen cards he must have already had prepared in the other room.

  “Thanks,” Jasper said again. He took his plate to the sink and rinsed it, then poured the final dregs of coffee down the drain and rinsed the mug as well. He set them both in the rack to dry, knowing full well that they would be gone over again, no matter how well or poor a job he had done getting them clean. “Hey, Al, do you know an incubus named Shane?”

  Alcander made a face. “I hope you do not mean Shane Robinson.”

  “That seems to be the standard reaction,” replied Jasper.

  It was lucky that vampires could not develop frown lines. “Is he in town?”

  “Yup.”

  Alcander snapped shut the laptop and steepled his fingers under his chin. The gesture reminded him of Charlie. “I suppose it was too much to expect that he would stay away.”

  “He comes around a lot, then?”

  “Oh, every decade or so, when all else fails. You would do well to keep him away from Crimson. Those two are like nitric acid and hydrazine.”

  Jasper didn’t really understand what that meant, but by the grave tone of the vampire’s voice, he surmised they were two things that probably should not be mixed. “Any idea why he might be hanging around?”

  Alcander tiredly turned up one palm in a lofty shrug. “Every con artist needs his stooge.” He slid back his chair and stood, the laptop clasped under his arm. “I really should be heading to bed.” It was nearly two p.m. Jasper was surprised he hadn’t slept yet. “Sorry to run. Take care, Jasper.”

  “You too,” said Jasper. “And thank you. For everything.”

  #

  When he got back to the house, he found Crimson in the attic, awake. He was sitting on the bed with an impressive collection of knives and guns spread out before him. When Jasper entered the room, he looked up just long enough to nod in his direction, then looked back down just as quickly, his focus on sharpening the knife currently in his hand.

  Jasper set his backpack down on the kitchen floor and opened the fridge to put away a handful of Tupperware containers Max had given him before he left Alcander’s. He picked a book out of his bag at random and went to the couch.

  He tried to read.

  The only sound was the scrape of the blade against the whetstone, steady and persistent. The silence was louder than every cab driver in Brooklyn simultaneously blaring all of their horns during rush hour.

  “Are those for Shane?” asked Jasper after a while. He didn’t see how one demon (and a half-blood no less) could warrant such an arsenal, and regardless of what Crimson said, Shane hadn’t done much more than ask for a meeting, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  Crimson grunted. “I guess. They needed it anyway.” There was no follow-up. He set the blade aside and started on the next. Jasper tried to go back to reading.

  “You figure… sunset? Or maybe we could go a little earlier,” suggested Jasper. It seemed easier to pretend the argument had never happened than to address it directly. He had been sure Crimson would not see it the same way, would be screaming at him as soon as he walked in the door, but it wasn’t so, and now it felt like there was no way to approach the topic. The other wouldn’t give him an opening. “I got a pretty good sense for him at the bar. I could probably track him.”

  Crimson finished polishing the blade he was working on and set it down in a pile of its fellows. “I’m not actually gonna kill Shane, Jazz. I was just really high and really pissed, but I wasn’t gonna do it. Not really. I mean, not unless he did something to deserve it first.”

  “Oh,” said Jasper. He had seemed so set on it the night before. The way Crimson kept looking away made him feel like he wasn’t telling him the whole truth. “You… don’t consider someone drugging you so that they could force you to uproot your life and move somewhere else to be… like… enough?”

  Crimson’s hand went to the back of his neck, his gaze still avoidant. “I dunno? Maybe?”

  Jasper sighed. “Crimson, if you’re saying this because you don’t want me to come with you—”

  “I’m saying it because you asked,” cut in Crimson, his voice suddenly as sh
arp as the newly polished blade. Jasper felt his own features harden in return. Crimson continued before he could reply. “I still need to figure out why he’s hanging around. I definitely don’t wanna wait until Saturday. So that leaves today. You said you wanted to come, so if you wanna come, do that, but if you changed your mind, it’s, y’know, whatever.”

  “I said I would go,” said Jasper. “So obviously I’ll go.”

  “See? That right there? That’s pissing me off. You’re not obligated to go with me just cuz you said you would. It’s not your civic fuckin’ duty, and my life is not your godsdamned responsibility.” They were cusping onto another argument, though it was not about Shane or anything to do with him, really.

  “Why don’t you just say whatever it is you’re actually trying to say?” asked Jasper.

  “Why don’t you?”

  Now that gave him pause. The answer was that he didn’t really know himself. He bit the inside of his cheek, thinking. “You ditched me at the bar last night. You know I hate that.”

  Crimson stared at him, his expression one of disbelief. Actually voicing it aloud made him realize how petty it sounded, but it was more than just that. It was just hard to explain.

  “You ditched me for that werewolf.” He rephrased it. “I just thought we were going to hang out, and then all of a sudden he’s there, and it’s just like I don’t even exist. Then Shane shows up, so I come running all the way back home to give you a heads-up, and you just take for granted—”

  “Take for granted?” repeated Crimson, livid. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Jazz, but me an’ you didn’t have plans. You were hungry, so I went with you to the bar. Alan showed up, and I decided I’d like to get laid. I told the waitress to put whatever you guys wanted on my tab. I figured you’d be there longer.”

  “You could have asked if it was okay if you brought him over,” insisted Jasper, though his argument felt weaker now. “He’s a fucking jerk to me.”

 

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