We made it to the side exit and out of the building without Langford giving chase. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. I opened my cruiser door and let Mandy into the front seat. She’d have to shift before we made it home, since I was pretty sure there would be a car waiting for us. Waiting to collect Star and stuff her in a kennel.
If they couldn’t find her, that would be easy enough to avoid. I wasn’t sure if that would be sufficient to keep them from arresting me for theft, though. Or from attempting to arrest me, anyway.
I would abso-fucking-lutely bite someone and drain them dry if they tried to put me in cuffs. The thought horrified me because I knew if I ever ended up in a cell, House Lilith would send someone to bust me out—if only so they could execute me themselves for being stupid enough to get caught by humans in the first place.
I fired up the cruiser and pulled out of the lot, merging into the meager, early-morning traffic. A crackling noise came from the passenger seat. Mandy’s bones were reconfiguring themselves as she shifted. I diverted my gaze and focused on pushing the accelerator into the floorboard as we barreled down the street, putting distance between us and the station. If Langford misplaced his wits again, I wanted to be long gone before he even considered giving chase.
Laura was probably up by now. My stomach churned impatiently as I fumbled with my phone. I wasn’t being a very responsible driver, but I didn’t have a lot of time to fix this.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I chanted as Laura’s phone rang.
“I’m awake,” she grumbled.
“Put a uniform on,” I snapped. “You’re going to have company soon. I just quit and took Mandy with me. Langford wasn’t happy about it. Whoever they send, tell them she ran off as soon as you let her out of the car.”
“Jesus, Jenna. I thought you said you wanted a quiet exit.”
“I know!” I smacked the steering wheel. “Damn it. I know what I said. It didn’t work out that way, all right?”
“But your cruiser isn’t even here.” Laura cleared her throat, and I heard the squeak of her mattress as she crawled out of bed.
“Tell them it’s in the garage, that you’ll be using it to return all of the training equipment by the end of the day like Langford requested. You’ve been nothing but compliant. Don’t let them search the house without a warrant.”
“What?” Laura’s voice cracked. “Oh my God. I’m not going to get arrested, am I?”
“Don’t be stupid.” I tried to muster up a laugh, but my throat wouldn’t work. “Just do what I said, and everything will be fine. I have to make another call.”
I hung up before she decided to launch into a melodramatic monologue. Laura would be okay. I hoped. She was an actress, after all.
“She can totally pull this off,” Mandy said, thrusting her hips up to button the cut-off jean shorts she’d fished out of the glovebox. “And I’ll be a witness to the escaped dog story, but I’m using an alias. I don’t want my name showing up in a human police report.”
“Good. That’s fine.”
I fingered my phone again and held my breath as Roman’s line rang. He owed me a favor after this morning. All of this was really his fault. At least, that was what I planned on telling him until he caved and helped me out of this mess.
“I’m at your house,” he said by way of greeting. “You’ll make it here five minutes before the unit being sent to arrest you.”
“What? How?” I recalled the complex system that ate up the entire dash of his SUV. “You hacked the department’s GPS system.”
“Correction, I have security clearance to access any and all law enforcement GPS systems.”
I smirked and cradled the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could use both hands to make a turn. Mandy grabbed the dash and wrestled her seatbelt on with her free hand, casting me a nervous frown as she listened in on my phone conversation with her wolfy hearing.
“And I guess you already know what I’ve stepped in, too,” I said to Roman.
“Why else would I be waiting at your house?” he asked.
“So you’re going to help me?”
“That depends.” A stretch of silence followed that had me holding my breath, and then his smug voice tickled my ear. “Are you going to help me?”
I groaned, but it was the sound of defeat rather than refusal. “When you said well paid…”
Roman’s laugh startled me, and I almost dropped my phone. It slid down the curve of my shoulder. When I pressed it back to my ear, he’d regained his composure.
“We’ll talk numbers once I convince Officer Collins to leave without making an arrest.”
My heart dropped. Langford had sent Collins. He could have sent Sergeant Patz and had a real catastrophe on his hands, but instead, he’d sent one of the few officers he knew I actually respected. I wondered if I should be worried about the sudden appearance of his brain. I guessed maybe he made captain for some other reason than his taste in vintage haircuts and gag-worthy charm.
“Jenna?” Roman was still on the line.
I didn’t want to be arrested, but I didn’t want Collins to lose his job either. I glanced across the car to where Mandy sat. I was the only stable adult she’d probably ever had in her life, which wasn’t saying a lot. Still, I didn’t want to let her down.
Accepting Roman’s help was the only way any of this would end well.
“I’m in.”
Chapter Seven
Roman’s timing was off, but I wasn’t complaining. I figured Collins would drag his feet, giving me the extra minutes he probably thought I needed to say goodbye to Star.
Laura met me at the door in uniform, and then, after grabbing her hip and delivering an exasperated sigh, she retreated back to bed to resume her beauty sleep. Mandy followed her. Roman had insisted it wouldn’t be necessary for her to make a statement. She looked skeptical, but she didn’t argue.
Roman watched the two of them disappear inside with a pinched brow. “It’s too bad you can’t convince your sister to stay. I know you and the girl value your work with the police.” It was an oddly heartfelt remark for him, but I guessed he was feeling less abrasive now that I’d agreed to help with his case.
“Maybe we can learn to value working with Blood Vice, too.” I gave him a tight smile and closed the front door, joining him on the porch. His expression hardened as he turned back to me.
“This is just one job, Jenna. You’ll be paid as an anonymous, undercover civilian.”
“Sounds like a pretty good foot in the door to me,” I said.
Roman took a deep breath. His brows drew together again, crinkling the skin between them on his otherwise smooth, tanned face. “You don’t have a sire to recommend you to the duke—”
“You don’t have a sire. Who recommended you?” I folded my arms and leaned my back against the front door, projecting far more casual calm than I felt. I was hungry again, and that hunger was laced with anxiety. It was a weakness I was determined to keep hidden, especially around Roman. I didn’t need another lecture on the importance of setting up a blood harem or drinking directly from the source.
“I’m not a vampire,” he answered, earning a sarcastic eye roll from me. “But I am half-sired, so my potential sire vouched for me.”
“Who is your potential sire?”
Roman’s frosty eyes dilated, and his breath hitched. It didn’t seem like it should have been such a touchy subject, but it clearly was for him. He licked his lips as if working his way up to the answer. Then Collins arrived, just in time to offer up a distraction.
Collins parked his cruiser in the street. Roman’s SUV lined the curb on the opposite side of the road, and my cruiser filled the driveway. It almost looked as if my house were about to be raided.
I pushed away from the front door, but Roman held his hand up to stop me.
“It would be best if you let me handle this alone.” His shoulders squared when he realized that I was trying to decide whether or not I would listen to him
. “You won’t like what I have to say, and your reaction will blow the cover story I’ve spent the last month building for you.”
Month? My mouth dropped open, and I gaped at him.
“Just like that.” Roman snorted. “See, you have no poker face.”
He turned and stepped down off the porch to go greet Collins, leaving me behind, stunned and still reeling from his confession. Had he really known it would come to this for a full month? And I’d thought my self-esteem was sinking before.
Roman met Collins at the curb before he reached my front lawn. They stood just inside the beam of the cruiser’s headlights, their shadows stretching down the asphalt road. Collins left the vehicle running. It hummed over their low voices, making it difficult for me to pick out their words.
I quieted my breath and strained to listen. Remembering Roman’s jab about my poker face—or lack thereof—I turned my back to them and looked at the front door so Collins wouldn’t see how I reacted to whatever I managed to overhear. My brain was too panicked to fathom what terrible thing Roman planned to tell him to get me off the hook.
“The captain will want to see some sort of documentation on that,” I heard Collins say.
“And he’ll have a copy of it by the end of the week, once I finish tying up this investigation.”
Shit. I’d missed the meat of their exchange, and now it was practically over. That was fast. I glanced over my shoulder to get a better look at Collins’ expression to see just how convincing Roman’s story had been.
His gaze met mine, and he froze, revealing the storm of emotions swirling in his eyes. A dimple appeared on one side of his mouth like it always did when I knew he wanted to say more but was afraid to. It was the same look he’d had on his face when we were teens, and he’d asked me to go to prom with him when what he’d really wanted to tell me was that he was gay. I’d been so bummed about Vin not asking me to go, and true to form, Collins had come to my rescue. Or he’d tried to, anyway. I’d turned down his offer and skipped prom altogether, choosing to sulk over Vin instead—while Vin had been busy losing his virginity to Laura, thinking she was me.
So, my sister wasn’t perfect. So, our relationship had a few near-fatal crashes. Laura and I weren’t just twins. We were the only family either of us had left. It felt good to have her in my life again, sketchy past and all. Especially now that my weird new reality hindered my already dismal social skills.
I’d never tell Collins, but he could probably guess that I didn’t have many other friends. Besides occasionally having dinner with him and his husband Lazlo, the only people I’d socialized with outside of work had been Will and his family. I’d spent my holidays with them after Mom died, during the years that Laura and I weren’t speaking. That was another wound that had never really healed.
With the holiday season growing closer, and Laura returning to California, I wondered if we’d actually stay in touch like we kept promising. Would we make plans to see each other? Or would we settle back into old habits and burn the rickety bridge we’d only just begun to reconstruct?
Like I didn’t have enough reasons to sweat the holidays as it was. How would Thanksgiving dinner go over when I couldn’t actually eat anything in front of Alicia and Serena? Alicia’s pecan pie was award-winning. She would be shattered if I turned down a slice.
I’d already stepped on Collins’ toes by declining his dinner invitations for the past few months. Our friendship was on the rocks, and it made me wonder if the look he gave me now wasn’t him deciding to wash his hands of me altogether. It hurt my heart to think that’s what things had come to, and it hurt even more trying to accept that it was probably for the best.
Collins finally broke our gaze. He gave Roman a curt nod, then headed around the front of his cruiser. As I watched him climb inside and drive off, Roman made his way back to the porch. The chirping of crickets grew louder as if they had been eavesdropping, too, and now they were as curious as I was, wondering out loud all the possibilities.
“Well?” I said before Roman had finished climbing the front steps.
He gave me a pitying look, his blue eyes sincere. “He was a personal friend?”
I swallowed and nodded. “What did you tell him? Is he going to get in trouble for not bringing me in?”
Roman sighed and took the last step up onto the porch. “I told him that you were placed on the K9 unit by the FBI as an internal informant to investigate the claim that a white supremacist hate group had infiltrated the police force—”
“As a mole?” I covered my face with my hands. “You can’t be serious.”
“So the FBI—or Blood Vice, rather—will be paying all of the department’s expenses for the extra training Star received, since she’s one of our agents and was placed along with you for the investigation’s credibility.”
“And you’ve been building this cover story for a month?” My face was on fire. “You’ve known all along that I wouldn’t be able to pull this off.”
“It would be a challenge for any new vampire,” he said, making a pained face as he watched mine twist up with humiliated rage. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m impressed that you made it work for as long as you did.”
“Right. And if I hadn’t made it work?” I snapped. “Were you waiting to spring into action, to put me down, as you called it? If I wasn’t useful to your current case, is that what you’d be here to do right now? Damage control?”
Roman’s sigh bordered on a growl. He closed his eyes and ran a hand down his face. “I’d forgotten what a pain in the ass you can be. Thanks for the reminder.”
“That’s not an answer—”
“No, I would not be here to put you down,” he hissed. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “I didn’t even report your involvement with the Scarlett Inn case.”
“Why?” I had to crane my neck back to maintain eye contact with him. This close, I caught the scent of his skin— wet grass and cocoa butter. It was one part sedative and two parts aphrodisiac. I was pretty sure he knew it, too.
Roman watched me, waiting until the tension eased out of my face before he spoke next. “Everything I’ve done since we met has been an effort to keep you out of trouble, to shield you from the fate you’d undoubtedly face otherwise.”
“Why?” I asked again. My voice was barely a whisper this time, rasping laboriously as I breathed in his intoxicating aroma. I was growing more docile by the second. “Why are you protecting me?”
Roman sighed and broke eye contact, twisting his head to one side to pop his neck. “It’s my job to keep peace within the supernatural community, and this is the only way I can do that without having to…put you down. I don’t particularly enjoy doing that. So this is me, being a nice guy. Try not to make it such a difficult task.”
I swallowed and struggled to recall what I’d wanted to ask him before I’d gotten so offended. “How do I apply for Blood Vice?”
“You don’t,” Roman said. The trace of softness in his expression vanished. “I told you, you need a sire for that.”
“But you don’t—”
He held a finger up in front of my face. “If we’re really going to have this conversation again, can we at least take it inside so we’re out of your neighbors’ earshot?”
I huffed and pushed the front door open. “After you.”
Laura had left the light above the kitchen sink on. The soft glow spilled into the dining room and lit a narrow path across the hardwood floor, leading us beyond the dark hallways that cut through the center of the house and converged in the living room. I stepped lightly, hoping not to rouse Laura or Mandy.
Once in the kitchen, I fetched a bag of blood out of the refrigerator. I couldn’t take it anymore. Surely Roman didn’t expect me to have a harem put together so soon after his last lecture.
“Would you like something to drink?” I asked, attempting to be a proper hostess before slurping down some cold B-positive.
Roman put a hand on the back of a barst
ool and gave me a hesitant look. “A glass of water would be nice.”
“Sure.”
I opened a cabinet and pulled down one of the new water goblets Laura had insisted we get for our upcoming dinner with the Bankses. I’d grumbled my way through the shopping excursion, but in retrospect, it was long overdue. And I was really glad to be offering the broody agent a drink in something other than one of the scuffed up, cartoon-inspired glasses that my mother had collected from half a dozen fast food joints for Laura and me as kids.
I filled the goblet with ice and water at the fancy new refrigerator and handed it to Roman. Then I took a step back and bit down on the bag of blood. Mandy, Laura, and Vin were used to watching me eat, and they’d stopped gawking so much. Under Roman’s scrutiny, my awkward discomfort made a comeback.
“None of the vampires I work with consume pre-drawn blood. Is that…any good?” Roman frowned at me and took a careful drink of his water.
I snorted and pulled my teeth out of the plastic long enough to offer it to him. “Do you want a sip?”
He shook his head. “Human blood doesn’t do anything for half-sireds. Only vampire blood works for us.”
I finished off the blood in record time and turned to deposit the spent plastic in the trash can under the sink. “You never did tell me who your sire is.”
“Potential sire,” he corrected me. “They’re not a true sire until I rise as one of the undead.”
“So, how’s that work?” I asked, circling the counter and him to take the far barstool. His hand still rested on the back of the other stool as if he couldn’t decide if sitting down would be a good idea or not.
“I’ve been assigned to three different vampires over the past fifty years.” Roman cleared his throat and tugged at the collar of his turtleneck. “When I’m turned, my sire will be the most recent vampire who anointed me.”
“Anointed?”
“Whoever’s blood is freshest in my system,” he added, seeing my confusion. “Right now, that vampire is my partner, Vanessa.”
“But it wasn’t always her?”
Blood and Thunder Page 7