Anton asked, “You would serve human blood?”
“Yes.” That surprised him and Rainor both, I could tell. “Blood banks have to get rid of donations after they reach the expiration date, but it is still drinkable. My idea was that we buy it from them so they are more willing to work with us than if we ask for it to be handed over. I know they would be disposing of it anyway, but this idea is going to gross them out. I would also offer up some animal varieties of blood. Some vampires do like it.”
“Which will have animal rights activists after us,” Kain said. “We could hook a live human up to syringes, hang them above the bar and drain them dry to feed the vampire patrons and the lawyers would debate it in courts for years trying to decide if it was a violation of human rights and dignity or if stopping it discriminated against the vampires, but serve up a glass of Doggy Delight and we’ll have protesters picketing the parking lot.”
Anton laughed. “You are absolutely right.”
Tristan said, “We could go with that human above the bar idea in one of our clubs though. It’s intriguing.”
Rainor said, “This club could do the same with a vampire.”
Tristan laughed. “No one drinks vampire blood.”
“Humans would enjoy its restorative properties,” Rainor said.
Kain added, “We could cash in on the Order’s dollar. They might start coming around if we did that.”
Everyone fell silent.
“Or not,” Kain said.
I gave him a withering look and said, “We should serve donated human blood and some varieties of animal in addition to alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. The bartenders and servers would have to be half-castes and vampires since most humans would find serving blood to the vampire clients repugnant and they would be the ones putting it in the glasses. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about any of the human employees catching anything if the blood should be contaminated. Blood would only be sold to vampire clients, not humans who think they are vampires.”
“Agreed,” said Anton. “You know the blood drinking world better than I thought you would. Would all the employees be non-humans?”
“Humans would be involved in cooking and serving food. They could be hosts too. Bouncers and doormen would have to be supernatural. Décor would be classy goth. We want to poke a little fun at ourselves to draw the curious humans in.”
Anton paced around the area taking it all in. It was hard to visualize the crisp looking Kensington as anything else. “How would you avoid the…accidents that could occur with this particular mix?”
“First we only hire vampires and half-castes who we are sure will play nicely with everyone. They have to want to do this; we can’t commandeer anyone into it. Then we make sure the humans are here to be workers and not desserts or recruits. We have the hosts and hostesses cheerfully explain the rules to everyone as they seat them or show them to the bar. The bouncers will take care of anyone who gets out of line.”
“It will never work,” Tristan said.
“I think it might,” Anton said. “Natasha has obviously given this a lot of thought and she knows what she is talking about. But Kain made an excellent point before.”
“I did?” Kain asked. “What was that exactly?”
“The Order will take an interest in this if they haven’t already. If anything goes wrong with it they could shut us down. What do you think Natasha?”
I licked my lips. “I don’t think they’ll have any issues with the reasoning behind this idea. As long as we are successful and this doesn’t create more problems in the long run, they’ll stay out of it. Besides they are paid assassins they aren’t going to object to someone else earning a buck.”
Rainor said, “She’s right. Did the figures we sent over sound good to you?”
“They did,” Anton said.
We spent another hour going over every detail of the contracts and possibilities for disaster. In the end the club was a go although its name was to be determined. I did not put one foot out of line the entire time and to my surprise Anton didn’t try to goad me either. When we got home Rainor went right up to bed, but I grabbed Kain’s arm and stopped him from going upstairs.
“Why don’t you come work out with me?” I asked. “I was so good today I’m about ready to burst.”
Kain shook his head. “Sorry, I’m going to go spend the night with my lady.”
“Mercy?”
“Who else?” He gave me a weird look. “Are you ok Tash?”
“I’m fine. You know if anything was up you could tell me?”
“Yes. But everything is fine.”
Well there was a failed attempt to get him alone to talk. Not that I expected him to own up to cheating on his girlfriend or trying to start a war, but maybe he would have let something slip to give me a clue what was going on with him. Looks like I was working out alone. Down to the basement I went to work up a sweat.
Chapter 12
My date from hell began with a knock on the door. I had wanted to meet Christopher at his house, but he was coming from work after some sort of layout emergency required revisions to his story and my place was on his way. I suggested meeting at wherever we were going, but it was supposed to be a surprise, so we were back to him coming to the coven house to get me. I would have prepared him for the house, to say nothing of those living inside the house, if I had known this was going to happen. Had I known Dawn was going to open the door instead of Max, I would have jumped out the window to greet him before he knocked, but since I thought I was safe on that front and since the guards had already gotten a look at him to report back on his appearance, car and general presence to anyone who wanted to know once I was out of earshot, I let fate take its course. An acknowledged mistake the instant I hit the last landing on the staircase to find Dawn had him cornered. I paused to see what my quasi gal pal was up to since she had developed a fascination with the men in my life and what I did with them.
“Chris, why haven’t we seen you around here before?” she asked. “The girls and I are always looking for some fresh blood and you are exactly what we need. Natasha needs to learn to share her toys and stop hiding you away like she’s ashamed of you.”
“I’m not a toy,” Chris said.
“Aren’t you?” Dawn leaned in so close to him I felt like I would need to check him for indents from her breasts. “We all know you’re not her type. You’re too nice for our Natasha, she likes the bad boys, like Anton. You’re just a nice little distraction until she grows the stones to admit she wants him. But we could have some fun. I’m not frigid and moody.”
I was about to step in when Harris stepped out of the shadows. “You’re really asking it for it kiddo.”
Dawn continued to remain glued to Chris as she put on a fake pout. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Harris, or why you care what I do.”
“Sure you do. You want to get Natasha back for giving you a few loose teeth and shutting you out of the girls club she and Mercy have going so you’re hitting on Clark Kent by making him think he shouldn’t try to climb her icy heights while you’re down here with the little people and readily available. If he takes you up on it, you’ll score a pathetic victory and claim you only did it to prove to Tash that he was unworthy. If he shoots you down, you’ll say it was a joke.”
Chris raked Dawn with his green eyes and a look of disgust crossed his face. “That was a come on? What kind of guys do you date that find being insulted while you simultaneously run down the woman they are interested in and talk yourself up attractive? Cause what I heard was, ‘I’m easy and if I undermine your self-esteem you’ll stoop to being with me’ and I’m not that stupid or that desperate.”
Harris started to choke. Then he snorted. Then he gave up trying to not laugh and gave in to it. There were tears running down his face when I joined them. I really didn’t think it was that funny, but maybe he was imagining what could possibly happen to Dawn for this exchange and that tickled his funny bone. Harris did
have a twisted side once you got to know him.
I decided to play dumb and asked, “What did I miss?”
“Nothing except your pet is rude,” Dawn snapped as she stalked away.
“Someone needs to define rude for her,” Chris said loudly enough that humans in Alaska could have heard him. The house was going to be buzzing about this. Then he compounded it by asking, “Do you think it would help if I bought her a dictionary?”
Harris laughed even harder.
I rolled my eyes and greeted Chris with a light kiss on the lips. “We should get out of here before it gets any worse.”
“But I think he may wet himself soon.”
I gave him a withering look. “You’re as bad as the rest of them. Let’s go.”
We were at the door when Harris got enough control of himself to ask in a breathless voice if I had seen Kain who had failed to show up for a meeting with the lieutenants. “It’s not like him to not show and not call Tash.”
“No it’s not.” I looked over at Chris. “Do you mind waiting for another few minutes?”
“That depends. Is the wonder bra coming back? I’m not going through that again, she’s one messed up chick.”
Now it was my turn to laugh until I cried. Crap, I was wearing a pale green dress and now I had to worry about getting bloodstains on it from my tears. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I was going to go with wonder slut, but she gave me a feel of the bra on my arm so I knew it was true, I only have a suspicion about the slut part.”
Harris was down for the count on that one. Literally, on the floor howling. If he kept it up everyone was going to be down here for the comedy show and I’d never get Chris out of the house. This was not time to be demure. “MERCY!”
In a blur she arrived from the direction of the library. “You bellowed?”
“Yeah. Do you know where Kain is? According to chuckles down there Kain missed a meeting this morning.”
Mercy furrowed her brow. “He said something about an appointment, but I didn’t think it was anything that would keep him long. I knew he was supposed to meet with Ben and the others today. That’s weird. Let me give him a call.”
I glanced down at Harris who was now sitting up and wiping his eyes on his shirt. No blood tears to contend with there. “Are you ok down there Harris? I don’t need to call 911 or anything?”
“I’ll be fine as long as your friend can control himself and Dawn doesn’t come back. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at her again for at least a week.”
“Any luck Mercy?” I asked.
“I got his voicemail.”
“Maybe I should stick around.”
Mercy shook her head. “Please don’t. I’m sure he’s fine, probably just out of his service area. It’s daylight so we know it wasn’t the vampires.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Ok.” I looked over at Chris. “Ready?”
“After you.” He held the door open for me and we made our escape.
As I was about to climb in the car, I saw Kain pulling into the driveway. “Give me another minute please. Sorry.”
I walked over to the enforcer’s car as he put the window down.
“Problem, officer?” he jokingly asked.
“You tell me. You’re the one that missed the lieutenant meeting today.”
“No I didn’t. That’s on the tenth and today is the-”
“Tenth.” I showed him my watch where the date was displayed.
“Shit.”
“Where did you go instead?”
Kain’s gaze shifted. “I had an errand to run. It was a personal thing.”
“Right.” I decided not to press. Yet. But in light of his appearance in the vampire quarter that I had also let slide and Dawn’s drop about the waitress, Kain and I were due for a serious conversation soon. I returned to Chris and managed to get in the car this time.
I had no idea where we were going. Christopher had said he wanted to go somewhere private where vampires or coven issues could not come into play when we set up the date, a daytime date took care of the vampires, aka Anton, who would turn into piles of ash if they decided to butt in on today’s activities, but as he was seeing, the coven’s problems could follow me anywhere day or night. “So, where are we-”
My phone rang.
“Sorry,” I said as I flipped it open. “There’s a lot going on right now.”
Apparently there was more going on with Harris’ funny bone then with the coven, because he was crank calling me with the sage advice that I should be careful not to bruise Chris if I decided to sleep with him on the second date. I really hoped Chris’ hearing was not good enough to hear Harris’ helpful hint because it would be mortifying, but from the way he started to smile I think he had that wonderfully perfect preternatural hearing most half-castes did. I snapped the phone shut. “You know, I don’t care if the house is burning down, I’m not answering that thing again.”
“Afraid of what the next call will be about?”
“You’d think living in a house full of people all over the age of fifty there wouldn’t be juvenile crap like this, but they are worse than actual teenagers. Now you can see why I didn’t want you to pick me up at home. I knew they would want to play with you a bit. I’m sorry about Dawn by the way.”
“Anyone that walks in the door is fair game, huh?”
“Bad choice of words.”
“What? Oh, ‘game’. I thought Dawn was joking about that blood comment. There aren’t actually people in that house that would be out to drink my blood are there?”
“No, but sometimes cats like to play with small creatures. Corner them, bat at them, and torment them. Think of the people inside that house like a group of cats; charming when they want to be, sneaky, cunning, only occasionally declawed and all to willing to sink metaphorical fangs in whenever they feel like it.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“But I’m just like them when I want to be so it works.” He eyed me as he drove and I wondered if I had just worried him a little. “Anyway, where are we going? And what is that smell?”
Chris sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything.”
“I have a hypersensitive sense of smell. You know, I can actually smell blood. You probably don’t want to know that. No one ever really wants to know that, but it’s true.”
“Then I’ll have to always make sure I shower before our dates.”
Even though the air conditioning was running, I put the window down. I could still smell it and it was making me nauseous. “Did you forget a bag of groceries in the trunk? It really smells like meat.”
“You can really smell that? You aren’t a vegetarian are you?”
“Um…no.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
Chris grinned sheepishly. “I planned a picnic on the beach and packed a trunk full of sandwiches and salads. I didn’t know what you liked so there’s some of everything back there. I hope you brought sunscreen, you must really have to be careful about the sun with that skin of yours.”
I groaned at the dreaded sunscreen comment, but explained I currently had no worries about the sun. After that I faced an interrogation about half-caste life: Why did we live in coven houses? Didn’t that leave us open to a siege? What started the war? Did any other group drink blood beside the Order? Were the half-castes in the Order as scary as the rumors said?
Finally I asked, “Are you writing a story on this?”
“Sorry,” Chris said as we pulled into a parking spot at the beach. “I’ve never been in a position to ask anyone these things. I sound like a two year old don’t I?”
“A two year old wouldn’t have come up with wonder slut.”
“That was a good one.”
“Do you practice them?”
“Spur of the moment only. I never rehearse my material.” He sm
iled and got out to lug the picnic basket out of the trunk. It was on the tip of my tongue to offer to help since it looked like the basket might pull him over, but decided to let him do the manly thing. So much for my personal motto of living in the current era, the Victorian era still seemed to have a hold on me if I was going to let a man feel like a man for his demure little woman. The vampires that drilled those age-old misogynistic concepts into my head would be so proud. Oh, well it seemed like a nice thing to do for his ego and I was usually very hard on the ego or so I had been told.
We found a spot where a cluster of boulders blocked the wind. Chris was worried about sand in our food and I was worried about sand down my dress. It took me about four minutes to decide the beach was not my scene. The ocean was pretty, but the sand that stuck to everything, the beating sun that bothered my eyes and the endless stream of screaming brats on parade reminded me why I had gone to the beach once when swimsuits were still made out of wool and had not returned. Prowling dark allies was much more my style.
“Quite the spread. Did you make it or buy it?” I asked.
“I bought the sandwiches, but I made the potato salad. Mom’s own recipe.”
“That’s nice.”
“Did your mom cook?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“No.”
“Were you close?”
“No. Can we talk about something else?”
“Not a problem our mouths are about to be too busy to talk.”
I had a sinking feeling he wasn’t talking about kissing which was quickly confirmed when Chris glopped a spoonful of the potato salad on a plate and handed it to me. Then he gave me a verbal map of what sandwich was where. I was pretty sure I was supposed to pick one and dig in. I grabbed an egg salad sandwich and stared at it as it sat on my plate. What was I going to do with all this? “So what did you bring for dessert?”
“No dessert until you finish what’s on your plate missy.”
He’s joking. He’s joking, don’t overreact I told myself. But then he prompted me to try the potato salad and I snarled. I didn’t mean to.
“Whoa. I guess no one ever hovered over you at meals before. What was that mother of yours doing while you were growing up?”
Heir to the Coven Page 9