A Drop of Red

by Chris Marie Green

“Of course you would have,” Natalia said, coming over to Mrs. Lansing’s bench to sit near her. “You were only doing what you thought best.”

  “It wasn’t enough.” The older woman glanced up at the steeple, her gaze damp.

  “Mrs. Lansing,” Dawn asked, needing to steer things toward the vamps before it all broke apart. “Were there any friends you remember who could’ve been a bad influence on Kate?”

  The woman was already shaking her head. “I’ve gone over this question myriad times, and still there’s no answer. Her friends from school were model girls and boys. I thought Katherine would assume their disposition at some point, only because they seemed to exert such a positive influence on her during her school days.”

  Kiko was getting anxious, and Dawn guessed that he wanted to ask about Highgate Cemetery, seeing as that’s where his and Natalia’s visions had been centered.

  But Dawn was getting there. “Were there any particular places where Kate hung out? Odd places where she might’ve met kids who influenced her negatively?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. . . .”

  If Kiko hadn’t been so hot to keep his mojo going, he probably would’ve rethought his next comment before it tumbled out.

  “In America,” he said, “kids find trouble in gathering spots like malls or convenience stores or even graveyards . . .”

  Oh, subtle.

  “Graveyards?” Mrs. Lansing repeated, as if it conjured the image of Kate’s disembodied head buried beneath the dirt.

  Her face broke into a perplexed scowl before she raised her hand to cover her expression.

  And, as she started to cry, their interview came to a close, leaving them nowhere closer to an Underground than when the day had started.

  THIRTEEN

  THE TAkEOVER

  BY the time the team got back to headquarters, the sky had changed to a dark grumble of coming precipitation, so they went inside and shed their coats and jackets in the entryway while the Friends who’d guarded them swept off to mingle.

  A clock chimed an hour past dusk, ushering Frank into the room. “How’d it go?” He was dressed in his dark sweatshirt and cap like he was ready to charge out the door.

  “It wasn’t my best of days.” Kiko brushed a hand through his blond hair.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Dawn said, “ ’cos we do have a new lead or two.”

  As Natalia took out her notepad to show Frank her scribblings and sketches, they related the details of Justin Abberline’s interview and asked Frank to follow up with another one.

  He agreed, and they moved on to Mrs. Lansing.

  “Anything I can do there?” Frank asked afterward.

  “I don’t know,” Dawn said. “Nobody seems to think she’s vampy at all. Might be a good idea to put her on the back burner and concentrate on those possible vampire girls Kiko saw in Justin’s vision.”

  Taking up position in front of a tall, iron-grated heater, Dawn held out her hands, trying to absorb warmth as the wind keened outside. All the way home regret had eaten at her as she’d realized, minute by minute, how removed she’d been during the interview with a woman who’d tragically lost a stepchild.

  Couldn’t she have stepped outside of her investigative role and shown a little more compassion, just like Natalia?

  But every time Dawn quizzed herself, she wondered how else she was supposed to shovel through the facts they needed to find their quarry. How else she could get through hearing stories about dead girls and the agony of their parents.

  As Natalia joined her, Dawn leaned closer to take in more from the heater.

  The new girl spoke. “Mrs. Lansing does appear to be a normal woman. . . .”

  “But?” Frank asked.

  Kiko took the notebook Frank was holding and flipped to Natalia’s sketch of the stepmom. “This is pretty much what we got from her. She was an odd duck, and not just because she didn’t want to be recorded in any way.”

  Seeing a chance to make up for what she hadn’t offered back at the interview, Dawn talked over her shoulder. “There’re people who don’t like to go on the record, and maybe Mrs. Lansing’s just one of them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kiko said.

  “And I don’t think she’s a fame whore,” Dawn added, turning to the heater again.

  “For your information,” Kiko said, “I take that back. Listening to her changed my mind.”

  “Then why’re you still dwelling on bad vibes?” Dawn asked.

  Kiko folded his arms over his chest. “Maybe I’m just like you, Dawn, and I don’t feel good about how she treated Kate. Mrs. Lansing seemed like she’d be a hard-ass to live with.”

  Frank interceded. “What were your impressions, Natalia?”

  The new girl pulled away from the heater, seeming shocked to be included.

  But when Dawn looked at her expectantly, that seemed to get her talking.

  “I know how to listen to myself,” Natalia said carefully. “My instincts . . . my own inner voices . . . And my senses have never disappointed me. That’s why I don’t doubt what Mrs. Lansing presented to us today.”

  Dawn rubbed her hands. “Maybe we’ll have another chance to observe her at the coroner’s inquest. It should be open to the public.”

  “Heck,” Kiko said, “we could be knee-deep in vamps tomorrow .”

  “Then,” Frank said, “let’s ask the boss if we should put a Friend on the woman, just to see what we see.”

  No one objected. Same with getting surveillance on Justin Abberline. Dawn only wished they had enough Friends to cover all of London.

  “The boss awake yet?” she asked her dad.

  “Yeah, I talked to him for about a minute. But he sounds kind of off tonight.”

  Dawn turned away from the heater, stuffing her hands under her armpits. “I should get up there. Maybe he didn’t feed himself from a refrigerated bag yet.”

  “Jeez, Dawn,” Kiko said. “You’d pee for him if needed.”

  Dawn fake laughed.

  Yet before she dashed off for the stairs, her dad said, “You want to know about the kid in the freezer?”

  Her attention was all his.

  “I wouldn’t look so hopeful if I was you,” Frank added. “Information about the boy’s fingerprints came back. Or, should I say, no information came back.”

  Kiko made a disgusted sound. “Interpol couldn’t make anything of his prints?”

  “Right. We’ve got ourselves a Kid Doe.” Frank went to Natalia to give her notebook back, then sent her a smile as a bonus.

  The new girl beamed, and Dawn looked away.

  But Kiko didn’t seem like he suffered from running her through the gauntlet today. “Are we gonna have to give up a DNA sample from the boy now?”

  “That might be risky,” Dawn said. “I’m sure the boss already has a plan for all this though.”

  “Darn tootin’.” Kiko jutted a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “Listen, I’m going to grab a bite and then hang with Frank while he arranges that second interview with Justin.”

  The two guys drifted away, but Natalia stayed in the center of the room where Frank had left her. Dawn could tell she wasn’t sure where she belonged.

  “Hey,” she said to the new girl.

  Obviously relieved, Natalia came right over, flipping her notebook to a clean page.

  Dawn held out a hand to indicate that the psychic didn’t need to fuss. “I just wanted to tell you . . . Good job today.”

  It was like Dawn had showered Natalia with a handful of freakin’ gold dust.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m doing my best, and—”

  “Well, just keep on doing it.” There was only so much mentor shit Dawn could take. “How about you hit the computers to check into any missing girls in the Brixton area? Maybe you’ll get something about Justin’s girlfriend if she went MIA.”

  “Certainly.” Natalia took off toward the stairs.

  “And remember to eat!”

  The
new girl changed direction and aimed for the kitchen. Brother. Not too long ago, Costin had told Dawn that jealousy didn’t become her, but she was even more positive that playing Mother Dearest was a worse fit.

  She went upstairs and opened the door to her quarters, expecting to find Costin readying himself for the night. “Hey, Frank said you sounded sort of—”

  The words died in her throat.

  Tall candles—they were electric—breathed a romantic glow around the room while a recording of a cello lulled from the corner stereo. By the bed, a white-linen-covered table waited, flanked by two high-backed velvet chairs. On the table, a glass bottle of sparkling water sweated next to an ice bucket, and domed chafing dishes emanated the aroma of beef cooked in what Dawn guessed to be scallions and mushrooms.

  She shut the door behind her, not knowing what to make of this. Costin was more emotional than romantic, and the few times he’d made well-meaning but embarrassing Valentine-type gestures, she’d awkwardly laughed them off.

  “Costin?” she asked.

  The sheer drapes of the bed stirred as he eased out from the shadows wearing a calf-length black coat over a burgundy shirt and dark trousers. His midnight hair looked like it’d only been finger combed, and at this distance, the candles reflected a colorless, wolfish glint in his eyes.

  Outlaw. That was what Dawn thought before she caught herself. Before her belly heated and sent a slow melt down and down until it arrowed to a pierce between her legs.

  But when he flashed a tilted grin and came near enough for her to see the true color of his gaze, she took a step back.

  Blue. His eyes were a predatory blue.

  Anger fisted in her, slamming down. Yet instead of smashing her arousal, her clit only stiffened under the sharp pressure.

  It made her angrier, even when she told herself that responding to his body only made sense: she was intimate with him every night, and seeing him should’ve stimulated her.

  But she didn’t want all that now. Not. Now.

  “Jonah,” she said, her voice hard as she blocked her mind from him in case he tried to enter. “No wonder Frank said you sounded different.”

  Surprisingly, she didn’t feel him knocking at her consciousness to get in. In fact, all he did was silently pull out a chair for her.

  Oh, like she was going to just sit down and have a candlelit night with him. “Listen, I don’t find this amusing. Go back to where you came from. We don’t have time for your reindeer games.”

  She sounded tough, but she was still aching from the sight of him coming around the corner of the bed.

  Why did her damned body have to be so confused?

  Fortunately, when he talked, his American Jonah voice put things into perspective. Or, at least, it helped.

  “If you think I’m going to jump on you and have my way,” he said, “don’t. All I want is a truce talk.”

  She exaggerated a shrug. “Oh, okay, cool beans. I’ll just forget about how you think you need everything Costin has and how you make his existence so much harder than it needs to be. By pulling out a chair for me, you’ve really won me over, Jonah, so let’s sit right down and have ourselves a good palaver.”

  He chuckled. She hated it when men chuckled.

  “Hear me out,” he said. “Then, I promise, I’ll let Costin come back.”

  “You’ll let him come back.”

  Not answering, he poured water into the crystal flute at her setting.

  When she didn’t oblige him, he put down the glass bottle, hardly bothered by her vinegar. “If you want to get this over with, you’ll sit. Otherwise I can stay around all night and leave Costin buried down where it’s deep and dark.”

  The thought of the alienation, the confinement shook her to a response. “So all I have to do is listen, then you’ll leave soon? Super soon?”

  He held a hand over his chest. “Promise. But, you know, you should really linger over this food. It smells great, even if I have more of an appetite for you than for it.”

  Making a gagging sound, she started to leave, but he halted her with a lowered, more sincere tone.

  “I really do promise, Dawn.”

  Taken aback by his new approach, she hesitated. Not that she truly would’ve left anyway, not with Costin trapped. She would do anything—even go through the hell of talking to Jonah—to retrieve her companion, so she wandered over and dropped into the seat.

  “I’m only staying,” she said, “because Costin can’t afford to handle an Underground and you right now.”

  “I want to make sure life goes smoothly, too.”

  Her bullshit radar wasn’t going off as much as usual, so she decided to see where this led. “I sure hope you got some blood out of the fridge already, because your body can’t go long after waking without it. And don’t even ask me for a nip, because I’m not going to let you anywhere near me.”

  “Understood. And I did feed, thank you for the concern.”

  “Please. Don’t labor under the delusion that I’m concerned about anything more than Costin’s well-being.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  He was so . . . Well, she guessed “temporarily tolerable” might be a good phrase. But it wouldn’t last.

  When he opened the biggest chafing dish, a beef-and-herbs aroma filled her. She almost mmmmed.

  As much as she wanted to wolf down the food he’d provided, she couldn’t stand him knowing that he’d gotten to her. But that was dumb, because he would know. Jonah spent every night seeing what Costin saw, knowing what Costin knew. He’d be an expert in how to read her.

  And he proved it now.

  “One time,” he said, smoothly transferring a slice of beef to her plate, “you told Costin that Frank took you out for your twelfth birthday dinner, and you ordered some fancy beef dish you couldn’t remember the name of. It was one of the happiest nights of your life, with your dad sober and attentive.”

  “If you’re going to cue the violins next, forget it. Oh, hold up,” she said, cocking her ear to the recorded cellos from the speaker, “you already sort of did.”

  He spooned the creamed spinach and rosemary sweet potatoes next to the entrée. His vampire grace made her watch before she forced herself not to.

  “I have to be honest,” he said. “I can cook, but I didn’t have enough time, so I ordered in.”

  In spite of how the food was doing its best to win her over, she glared at him. “Tell me you didn’t go to the door to get this from a delivery guy.”

  “I didn’t have to.” He smiled at her, confident, easy. So unlike Costin’s brooding. “I’d been planning this, so when I briefly overcame Costin the other night while you were gone—”

  “You overcame him?”

  With a nod, Jonah kept going. “I took the opportunity to preorder online, timing this just right and hoping I’d be able to gain dominance tonight and carry this through. The catering service left the meal for Frank to bring in after I told him that I was treating you to a nice dinner. Your dad’s going to make sure the others get their share from the kitchen.”

  God, why had Costin kept from her that he’d been battling Jonah more than she’d known? How far had their struggles gone?

  She saved it for later, when Costin returned. “So you hoodwinked Frank.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “And when you woke up tonight, was it as Jonah or Costin?”

  “Costin. But I fought him down and went ahead with my business pretty quickly. It just gets easier and easier.”

  Shivers traveled her skin, and she crossed her arms to quell the sensation. Simultaneously, her stomach grumbled at the rich smell of her meal, but she didn’t touch it. She wouldn’t until Costin came back out.

  “Then I guess,” she said, “tonight is about showing us that you can get control whenever you want.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. But I’ve spent a long time studying Costin, finding out ways to push him down so I can emerge. Back before we were turned, Costin
used to give me time out of body, but now he doesn’t, because this body’s trapped him and he doesn’t have the option of traveling to another host now, so he has to control his shelter more than ever.” He closed the chafing dishes, his hands lingering on them. “It’s dark where I live, Dawn. It’s not easy to stay there night after night.”

  He paused and, for a split second, Dawn felt for him. In real-world terms, he didn’t deserve to be in any kind of jail.

  But here and now, with him being uncooperative and with so much at stake . . . ?

  As if her pity was the last thing he wanted, Jonah sat in his chair, adjusting his coat around him like he was some kind of careless bad boy who could handle anything. Costin had always said that vampirism was appealing to Jonah because he thought the condition was romantic. Since he’d spent most of his life as a rich recluse, his perceptions of reality were probably out of the ordinary, so he no doubt thought this was the peak of living, with all these heightened senses and appetites and strengths.

  But, hell, hadn’t Dawn thought so, too, for that short time when she’d had the same thing?

  Needing something to distract her—something besides Jonah—she snatched her folded napkin from the table. “I suppose you could say life with Costin has really brought you out of your shell, huh?”

  “Touché.” Jonah cocked his head a bit. “Back before Costin came to me, I was too busy to go outside. Too much business to attend to. It got to the point where I didn’t even see why it was necessary to ever walk out the door of whichever one of my properties I was currently at.” He grinned, almost to himself this time. “I can admit now that maybe I got to be such a hermit that I was afraid of what might happen if I ventured out of my comfort zone. It got to be a compulsion, hiding. Then Costin found me.”

  He waited a beat, the cellos serenading just as softly as the wind outside.

  Then, as if he’d talked too much, Jonah rested his ankle over a knee, languid as can be as he hung his arms over the sides of the chair, tapping the legs.

  “So, Dawn,” he said, “how do you like our time in London so far?”

  She stared at him. “Talk about conversational whiplash.”

  “I’m just wondering. You don’t seem as . . . lively . . . here as you did in L.A.”