by Kayleigh Sky
“Why not?”
Jessa shrugged. “I don’t know. I like Isaac. Feeding from him feels like… talking. I don’t feel like I’m taking anything.”
Otto was quiet for a moment, chewing on his impulse to say something nice. The entire morning so far had progressed like a bizarre date, and Otto didn’t date. Otto picked up guys, fucked them, and shut the door on their asses. But right now, seeing the way Jessa hugged his shoulder bag made him melt inside. For fuck’s sake.
He needed to steer the conversation to Mal and Rune. Mostly Rune, who had the jewelry connection with Brillen and maybe a revenge connection because of his mother’s family, but when he opened his mouth, he said, “You don’t take anything, Jessa. It’s an exchange and not your fault. You didn’t ask for any of this. Hell, neither did I. I was a kid when everything went cock up. You got a raw deal.”
Jessa sighed. “Mal and Rune got a raw deal, but I’m going to fix it.”
“How?”
“By marrying Wen.”
For some reason Otto flashed on the statue in Wen’s office. Was it some kind of down payment? A promise to deliver Jessa and get the kid off their hands?
“Don’t you love him?”
Jessa whipped his head around, a panicky look in his eyes. “I—” And then he deflated, shoulders sinking, before he took a breath and smiled. “I will, I’m sure. It’s a practical arrangement between our families. I admire Wen for everything he’s done for drainers and the way he treats his donors.”
Otto stuck on the same old question about Mateo Lopez he kept asking himself. Then why leave?
When they reached the next exit, he turned off and headed into Windon. Groves of oaks, eucalyptuses, and sycamores shaded the place, and shops and eateries appeared alongside the road. Beside him, Jessa fidgeted.
“You okay?” Otto asked.
“I’m nervous. I’m a drainer, and what if…”
“Not a damn thing he can do about you being a drainer. I won’t leave you for a second. The worst he can do is refuse your merchandise, and that’ll be okay. I want to see his reaction to you. And here’s the thing about the lying, Jess. Go into this for real and you’ll believe it. The jewelry is yours, right? You want him to sell it. If he agrees, you’re not lying. Your middle name really is Daniel, so you’re Designs by Danny. Not a lie. He doesn’t know me from Adam, so I’m just your boyfriend/manager, Otto. Otto Caruso.”
“Caruso?”
“My mom’s maiden name, so not a lie. You’ll be fine. Just remember you don’t owe this guy jack. Just from what I know already, I can tell he’s a dirt bag. You aren’t. That gives you an edge.”
Jessa’s face flamed red. “Thank you,” he muttered.
Otto chuckled. “Your freckles stick out when you blush.”
Jessa snorted. “Thanks for that too.”
Otto parked against the curb and joined Jessa on the sidewalk. Some of the structures they passed were old houses that must have been here since the town was built. Some had turrets and gingerbread details, some wrought-iron fences and overgrown gardens, hunched on snippets of property that had probably been acres once.
True Heart Consignments was one of several shops in a building that had been fashioned without any conformity to its surroundings. The front was beige stucco and plate-glass windows with a flat roofline. Awnings over the front drowned the interior in shadow. Old and musty, the large square space contained a counter against the back wall and two glass display cases near one end of the counter partitioning off a corner of the room.
Some of the glasswork hung from the ceiling on suspension wires, and Otto had to resist the impulse to duck.
Beside him, Jessa hugged his shoulder bag.
“Relax, Jess,” he whispered, surprised when Jessa straightened, took a breath, and shrugged his shoulders as though shaking something off.
“Danny,” Jessa whispered back, right before he marched to the counter, leaving Otto gaping after him.
What the fuck?
Maybe the vamp was channeling Sam Spade. Catching up to him, Otto reached the counter where a human guy looked up from a sheet of paper he was crossing items off of. Behind him, a vampire stepped through a door.
“Yes,” said the human.
He was a youngish guy, about Jessa’s age, and cute in a wispy, pallid kind of way. His light hair was barely darker than his skin. His eyes an indiscriminate hazel, not quite blue, not quite green. But something off about him tripped Otto’s alarm system.
“My name is Danny,” said Jessa. “I called about selling some of my pieces. Are you Mr. Frenn?”
“No.”
“You didn’t say you were a drainer,” said the vampire, stepping to the counter.
He towered over both Otto and Jessa. He was impressive as hell. Otto had never seen a bald vampire before, but this guy rocked the look. His dark eyes smoldered in their sockets, deep creases in his cheeks giving him a hard edge. Well, no mystery what Abadi had seen in him. If the guy snapped his fingers, a dozen people would probably drop to their knees, begging him for the time of day. He was the vampire of myth, and Otto didn’t like one damn thing about him. That didn’t make the guy a murderer, but Otto would put odds on it.
“We’re here to talk business,” said Otto into the silence, “not your personal issues.”
The vampire laughed, his face lit with amusement, and said, “You I’ll talk to.”
Otto curled his arm around Jessa’s neck and let his fingers brush Jessa’s collarbone. “This is the talent.”
The vampire eyed him, a smirk growing on his face. Jessa stood as stiff as the statue in Wen’s office, heat radiating off him.
“My pieces are popular,” Jessa said. “Who makes them isn’t important.”
“That’s your opinion, and what do you need me for if your pieces are so popular?”
“I want to expand.”
“What’s your name?”
“Danny.”
“Your full name.”
“Just Danny.”
The vampire shifted his gaze to Otto. “You his keeper?”
“That’s me.”
The vampire chuckled again. “See that piece there?”
Otto glanced back. A framed panel of pale blue glass hung from the ceiling. The glass was bubbled and dotted with inclusions that projected an impression of motion as though water flowed across the piece.
“The artist is Adini,” said Frenn. “Like the Adini Treasure.”
“That’s a fairytale,” said Jessa.
Frenn shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“What is it?” asked Otto.
“Adini was paradise, the Garden of Eden, where jewels were as common as stones. Supposedly God collected them all after banishing Adam and Eve and hid them. Adini means treasure. That piece over there is worth thirteen thousand dollars. And it’ll sell. All of Adini’s pieces sell with no talking mouthpiece doing his work for him.”
Otto shrugged. “Not a drainer, I’m guessing.”
The vampire rocked his head in slight assent. “No. True, he isn’t.”
Otto brought his fingers up Jessa’s neck in slow strokes. His skin was warm and soft, and Otto sweated as though the press of Jessa’s body against his side was burning him up. He didn’t dare look Jessa in the eye and kept his gaze fixed on the vampire. “I make sure Danny’s safe. Consider me the deterrent.”
The vampire grinned again. “Nice to meet you, Deterrent.”
“Otto Caruso.”
The vampire sighed. “Let me see what you got, drainer.”
Otto eased away.
While Jessa laid his bags on the counter and began to unroll them, the human stood, refilled a plastic display case with a stack of brochures and disappeared through the back door.
An artist’s depiction of Celestine City on the cover of the brochure piqued Otto’s interest. “Mind if I take one of these?”
“Go ahead. World’s most magnificent city and your kind laid waste to it.”
; “You got your licks in.”
Another flash of admiration lit the vampire’s eyes but darkened when he turned back to Jessa. He looked closely at the pieces though before murmuring, “Not bad, drainer, but I’ve seen better. I take forty-five percent.”
“That’s high.”
“You’re taking up space, and I don’t turn over jewelry as fast as art. Take it or leave it.”
“Forty.”
The vampire’s eyebrows rose. “What part of take it or leave it didn’t you understand?”
“It’s too high.”
“You know where the door is.”
A muscle bunched in Jessa’s jaw, and he started rolling up his bags. Otto said nothing.
The vampire laughed again. “I’m feeling magnanimous today, little drainer. Come over here and look at this.” He didn’t wait and headed to the corner partitioned by the glass cases.
Jessa looked wide-eyed at Otto, and Otto nodded and mouthed, “Go on.”
Inside the partition, Solomon Frenn stood by one of the waist-high display cases. As they approached, Solomon removed a set of keys from his pocket, separated one from the others and used it to open the case.
“Think you can outsell these?”
“You saw,” Jessa said. “Of course, I can.”
Another grin split the vampire’s face.
You tell ’im, baby.
Jessa was playing this in perfect tune to Solomon’s personality. The asshole probably ate kind people for snacks. He liked a little bite in return.
The shelf inside the case was lined with red felt and covered in necklaces and bracelets. Mostly, the ornate metal work vampires favored.
“You get human customers?” Otto asked.
“Windon’s infested,” Solomon remarked.
Asshole.
Jessa bent over a necklace of tiny glass beads fused into the shape of an infinity symbol. He straightened with a glower on his face. “Forty.”
Solomon grinned. “Okay, drainer. You win. Just do better than the paste around your neck.”
Jessa hissed, his fangs sliding down in a flash.
Otto startled. Apparently, the little vamp liked his necklace. Solomon’s face had darkened but lit with another smile a moment later.
“Good show. That I can respect. Come back over here. We need to sign some papers.”
Looking sick now, Jessa brushed by Otto and returned to the counter. Otto made a slow circle of the shop until Jessa passed by a few minutes later and said, “That’s it.”
Otto paused before they reached the door and approached a glass spiral in pink and red in the shape of a figure reaching for the ceiling. The artist was the Adini Solomon had mentioned. Once more Otto thought of the statue in Wen’s office. “Beautiful,” he said.
“Pure vampire,” came Solomon’s voice from behind him.
Under the laugh was a menace that followed Otto out the door.
25
Getting To Know You
Storming down the street, Jessa got to the car before Otto. His whole body flamed. The day was mild, borderline cool, but sweat prickled his hairline.
Asshole.
But why had he gotten so mad over his necklace?
Because it hadn’t been over his necklace. It had been over that slime ball Solomon looking down his nose at him.
He startled at the weight of Otto’s arm around his shoulders again.
“C’mon. Let’s get some lunch.”
“The human was a feeder,” he blurted. Tattletale. An absurd thought, but it pricked at him anyway.
Otto fixed a startled gaze on him. So close, the sweet blood scent tickled Jessa’s nose again. He let Otto tug him along the sidewalk, sinking into the blue of Otto’s eyes like a cool, refreshing pool. He was lost until Otto looked away, guiding him through the gate of a wrought-iron fence that surrounded the patio outside an old Victorian house. They sat at one of the tables, not speaking until they had their menus and waters.
Jessa wrapped his hair around the side of his neck, though nobody looked his way. They chattered. Humans, a few vampires. Not mingling, but enjoying the same space, the same clear, cool day. Jessa’s fingers brushed the front of his neck, following the ghostly caresses of Otto’s fingers.
Otto took a swallow of water, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The skin over it was bristly. Jessa imagined it was salty and rough enough to burn his tongue if he sucked on it. Would Otto let him do that? Jessa wanted to. He’d never kissed anybody like that. Not even Wen.
He gulped his water and set his glass down in time to Otto’s clicking lightly on the table too.
“How do you know that?” Otto asked. “And what exactly do you mean, his feeder?”
Jessa repressed a shudder as his mind dredged up a memory of a vampire’s bloody face raked raw by Qudim’s fangs.
The recollection came from their early days in the castle. Back then they’d kept to the night when humans were weakest. Candles had burned, flickering strange shadows on the tapestried walls and Qudim’s throne. Jessa had snuck down from his room and crouched on the stairs, peering through the standing bodies at the bloody vampire and the human who’d knelt beside him. A feeder.
“Kill,” Qudim had rasped. “Kill it.”
Jessa never knew what had happened after that. Mal had appeared, snatched him up, and carried him away.
“A vampire can drain someone to the brink and they will want more,” Jessa said. “It’s like a drug, but nobody can prove the feeder didn’t want it. They look empty. I think it’s like being dead. They come so close.”
He ground his elbows into the table to drag himself out of his memory of the war and Qudim’s ferocious grief. Humans had become his enemy, and Dawn was lost in his hate.
The human across the table frowned at Jessa with his brows drawn low. The blue of his eyes darkened and his lips pulled thin. Was he angry? At Jessa? Jessa had no say about his bloodline or a love that had turned dark and vengeful. He’d never want to read about a romance like that.
Otto nodded and took a breath. “Okay. This is good. It fits with what we know about this guy. He hates humans, so he reduces them to food. The part that doesn’t fit is why he hates drainers. They feed off humans too.”
“Jealousy?”
Though to Jessa’s way of seeing things nobody with any brains would be jealous of a drainer.
“Makes sense,” said Otto. “Though that doesn’t explain why all the rest of you hate drainers so much. Why aren’t drainers considered pure?”
“We’re different for one thing. I mean, look at us Ellowyn. Same hair color, same eye color. Pale skin. Nobody who’s different fits in. Most vampires can drink Synelix. Why can’t we? What’s wrong with us?”
“Nothing.”
“I mean that’s probably their thinking. That and the fact Synelix ended the war. All the vampires who wanted to keep fighting probably think they surrendered for something that turned out to be defective. Maybe they don’t think it’s fair some of us can drink blood and the rest can’t. I guess there are a lot of reasons, but I think it’s mostly because drainers are different. Look at both our people. We hate each other.”
Otto’s lips parted, and his eyes narrowed. The quickening of Jessa’s heart stole his breath. He waited for Otto to deny it, but instead, Otto said, “Look at your menu.”
Jessa dropped his gaze. His heart actually hurt, but he took a breath and focused on the choice of dishes.
Not answering didn’t mean Otto didn’t like him.
His throat tingled, his memory returning to the heated strokes of Otto’s fingers, the weight of his arm on Jessa’s shoulders… the stares.
Jessa had caught Otto’s attention on him several times. Long, heated stares like the ones he read about in his romances. The hero and heroine locked in an imaginary embrace.
He chewed his lip, glancing up. Now Otto dropped his gaze.
“It all looks good,” Otto murmured.
Jessa ordered the mushroom soup and lasagna. Otto g
ot the steak sandwich and fries. Soon they had tea instead of water. Jessa squeezed lemon into his. When he looked up, Otto was staring at his chest this time. He motioned with his chin at Jessa’s necklace. “What got you so worked up about that?”
Jessa’s ears burned. “It was a present. Rune gave it to me after my operation. He found it on one of his jobs. It’s not expensive, but it’s not paste. The letter carved inside is Remorra. It means Hell.” Jessa swallowed at the memory. “I liked it, and Rune said I could have it when I woke up. Bribing me to be okay, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe Solomon thought it was cheap because it’s an imitation of the royal necklaces.”
Otto leaned against the table to look closer, and Jessa held it out to him. The soft whisper of Otto’s breath brushed his skin. Otto raised his eyes, and Jessa’s heart fluttered.
“Where are the real ones?” Otto asked.
“Gone.”
“In the Upheaval?”
“Some. The others were lost a long time ago. Mal would know. She teaches a class on Ellowyn lineage. You should talk to her.”
Otto nodded and sat back. “I’ll add it to my list.”
“You don’t keep a list.”
Otto tapped his temple. “It’s in my head.”
“Jackson Stork keeps a notebook he buys at the Dollar Store along with those little half pencils, and every night he goes through all his clues and plans the next day.”
Otto’s forehead creased and his mouth opened, but then the server arrived with their food, and he stayed silent. After she’d made sure they had everything they needed, she left, and Otto frowned again. “Who is Jackson Stork?”
“A detective in one of my books.”
“Oh.”
“Are we going to tail Solomon?” Otto laughed, but Jessa really wanted to do that. Outside of interviewing a cast of potential suspects, tailing the bad guy was the most detective-like task Jessa’s imagination conjured for him. That and going undercover, but he thought that was one he could check off his list now. He smirked at Otto’s laughter. “Ha ha.”
“Well, where would we tail him?”
“I don’t know.” Jessa shrugged. “Wherever he goes. I’m just trying to figure out how to do this.”