by E G Bateman
“What about Dick? You tried six times?” Scott leaned forward, engrossed in the story.
“After the dust settled, I spent a few days tracking him. I threw silver knives and tried to drop a silver net on him, but he’s a slippery fucker, so I kept losing him. I finally managed to surprise him coming out of a jazz club, and I broke his neck and dragged him into an alley. I intended to finish him off, but I decided it would be worse for him to wake up in a dumpster.”
“Worse than death?” He looked doubtful.
“You’ll get it when you meet him. He’s a real snob. I’m kind of surprised he’s prepared to work with me. And I’m damned unhappy about working with him.”
He picked the phone up and scrolled further. “Well, Dolores trusts him and I trust Dolores. It says here he’ll meet us at sundown.”
“What’s the update on the job? Why do we need Dick the Douche?”
Scott read the details to her. “Kate. Shifter female. Owns a bar down the street from here. It says, ‘further information is now being sought from a local contact.’ We need to speak to Dick before we see the client. Then it confirms what Dolores already told us—that her business is being targeted by local thugs. That’s funny, I thought shifters were the local thugs.”
“Don’t be a bigot. I’ve met some good shifters this last year.” She turned her attention to his phone and raised an eyebrow. “How are you reading that if there’s no signal?”
“I downloaded the file from the server, duh!” He spoke slowly as though it should have been apparent.
“You keep operational data on your cell phone? What if someone gets hold of that thing?”
He snickered. “No one will ever get hold of my cell phone,” he assured her and tossed it on the bed. “I’ll get the rest of the gear.” He vanished.
Lexi walked to the bed and was tempted to pick the device up. As she closed her hand around it, though, it vanished. She strode to the window and stared at him as he waved it at her.
She rolled her eyes and turned to the room.
Her first decision was to claim the bed closest to the entrance. When she looked at the distance between the door and Scott’s bed, she confirmed that the only way someone would get to him while he slept would be through her. No one would complete that journey.
That settled, she looked around the room for the AC control and concluded that the hole in the wall near the door was where the switch should be. This would be an uncomfortable night.
Standing in front of the mirror, Lexi flicked her gaze to the door but there was no sign of Scott. She slipped a small glass vial from her pocket and placed it on the dresser before she turned her attention to the mirror. Quickly, she drew loose hairs back into her long, brown ponytail, which revealed a shaved undercut. Then, allowing her face to screw up in discomfort, she shuffled the girls around in her leather vest.
“If Dick won’t appear before sundown, let’s get something to eat,” Scott said from his bed.
Lexi jerked from the mirror, turned, and gave him the evil eye, wondering how long he’d been there.
“Sorry.” He blushed.
“We passed a barbecue place down the street. Let’s hit that.” Lexi swept the vial deftly into her pocket and headed to the door. “Can you sort the bags out?” she asked and turned to see there were no bags in the room and no Scott.
“Done. Let’s eat,” he called from beside the car.
She stepped to the empty bed and swept her fingers over the cover. While she knew the bags were there, she couldn’t see or feel them.
“That will always be trippy,” she murmured.
Chapter Two
Still a little disbelieving, Lexi stared at the mountain of rib bones on the table in front of Scott.
While he gazed around the room, she looked at his torso. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of extra fat on him. When she raised her gaze to his face, he was watching her with disturbingly green eyes.
“I can’t work out where you put it all.” She was embarrassed that she’d been caught staring but not sure why.
“I have a fast metabolism.” He gave her a dimple-popping grin and leaned forward. “I messaged Dolores, asking her to let this Dick guy know where we are.”
She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
He gave a thumbs-up. “It’s okay. No one can hear us.”
“I wonder what Dick can provide that we can’t get ourselves?” she mused aloud. She dipped the corner of a sugar cube into her coffee, and they both watched as the coffee rose and changed the color of the sugar. After a moment, she dropped the cube into the liquid and returned her gaze to her companion.
“I guess there’s no other way to get the information Dolores mentioned. Maybe the family is involved.”
“The what?” she asked pointedly. Her teaspoon had frozen in the air above her drink.
“Sorry. I mean Kindred—maybe Kindred is involved”
“And why don’t we refer to them as ‘family?’”
Scott rolled his eyes. “Because they’re not family. Not anymore.”
“They never were.” Lexi stirred her coffee.
He leaned back and sighed. “Don’t you miss it? Being part of an organization and fighting for justice?”
“No. You know why? Because it was all lies and now, working for Dolores, I do fight for justice. We rescued you, didn’t we? From Kindred, as I recall.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re more like Kindred now than when we were with them?” He smiled. “Neither of us were blood-matched before we left, and now you’ve got access to my magic.”
Lexi shrugged. “Your only choice for matching was a psycho, and I was considered a dud as a legacy. I feel bad that you’re stuck with me. If we hadn’t been in a bad situation, I wouldn’t have done it. At the rate you keep having to top the magic up, we’ll run into problems with that.”
“You’re not a dud. You’re faster and stronger than any regular human and I’ve never seen fighting skills like yours. I think we’re well matched.”
“Yes, but for someone with the blood of the ancient supernaturals running through my veins, I’m somewhat of a disappointment, aren’t I? I don’t show a clear connection to any supe. I’m not as fast as a vamp, or as strong as a shifter, nothing. I don’t think they’d ever have wasted a mage on a match with me. I suppose that’s why I found it so easy to leave and not look back after I discovered the truth about them.”
Scott leaned forward again and investigated the ribs for meat he might have missed. “I don’t believe every individual cell can be bad. Why would the whole supernatural world agree to be policed by them if the entire organization was rotten?”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? We all operated in little family units with no idea what was happening in the rest of the organization. We don’t even know who the Kindred council are.”
“Well, my family was definitely a problem, but I never really felt I was working on the Death Star.”
“I’ll tell you what is a problem. Your ability to turn every conversation around to Star Wars disturbs me.”
“Yeah, I know.” He laughed.
Scott looked at his watch. “I wonder when he’ll turn up. If this guy’s local, he might have a contact who can help.” He shrugged.
“Then why can’t he give us the name of the contact so I can throttle them until they tell me what I want to know?” Lexi gave him a tight smile.
“Which is precisely why you don’t have my contact’s name. Scoot over.” When she looked up, it was into Dick Levin’s smug, chiseled, irritatingly handsome face.
She didn’t move and made her face as impassive as possible.
The newcomer turned his face to Scott. “You’ll scoot over for a weary but stunningly attractive vampire, won’t you, handsome?”
“Sure.” Scott moved across the bench seat to make space.
Dick unfastened the buttons on his expensive-looking suit jacket, slid into the booth, and dropped his newspape
r onto the seat next to him. He looked around. “I couldn’t hear you as I entered. You must be shielded.”
Lexi nodded.
“How’s your earlobe, Dick?” she asked, with a staccato k at the end of his name.
“I should ask you that question since you were the one who ate it, dear,” he replied with a smile as his hand moved involuntarily toward his left ear.
“I didn’t keep it. I try to be discerning about what goes into my mouth.”
“I suppose one of us should be,” he replied with an infinitesimal twitch of one eyebrow.
“You look different.” He glanced at her arm and his eyes widened. “You have the unhealing scar.” He leaned forward for a better look.
She pulled the sleeve of her jacket down. Of course, a supernatural creature like him would be able to see the scar in its metaphysical form—a deep, angry red crevice the length of her forearm with white, shining energy running through it. To those with no magic, it merely looked like a healed pink-silver scar, but it would never truly close. It would always be raw and painful.
“It’s a paper cut,” she lied pointlessly.
Dick leaned back and gave her a perfunctory smile.
“Let’s get down to it. Will you try to kill me again?” he asked, all business.
“I have to decide now?”
“If you want my help, yes.”
“Will you crawl back to Kindred and tell them where I am again?”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Last year, they hired me to find you and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t put all that much effort into it. I don’t like Kindred. No one likes them. They’re the self-imposed bully boys of the supernatural world. So, I was trying not to find you. Hell, I was rooting for you. But you did a shitty job of running away. I simply followed the trail of dead supernatural bodies. Without those, I probably wouldn’t have found you at all. That was on you.”
“I didn’t run away. I left. I chose to leave.”
“No one leaves Kindred.”
“Yeah, thanks. I’m getting that now. It’s a shame that witch’s pouch didn’t give you eternally bushy eyebrows.”
Dick recoiled in horror and automatically smoothed an eyebrow. “Anyway, I don’t accept jobs from them anymore.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly grown a conscience?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’ve adopted a ninety-day payment schedule. I can’t wait that long for my invoices to be paid.”
“There’s the Dick I know and love.” Lexi sneered.
“You got away—” he protested.
“No thanks to you,” she cut in.
“All thanks to me. Who do you think sent Dolores your way?”
She froze. Dolores had never told her but at that moment, she knew it was true.
Dick continued, “I gave my word that I’d buy you time, so I called in a favor and asked her to get you out. I’ll admit I was motivated. Kindred did something to me I considered inappropriate. I was ready to lie and tell them I hadn’t seen you, but that mage girl picked the information out of my head. I tried to tell you at the time but you were hell-bent on trying to kill me.” He pointed his finger at her but, she noticed, not so close that she could bite it off.
“If I had been trying to kill you, you’d be deader.” She leaned forward as well. The two were now almost nose-to-nose across the table.
“Really? Because you seemed extremely bloodthirsty at the time.”
Lexi looked away and straightened in her seat. His eyes narrowed and he seemed to sense he’d somehow struck a nerve. He leaned against the backrest.
“I tried to find a witch who could protect my mind, but no one would do it. Everyone’s too scared of Kindred.”
Lexi looked at him. She believed him and they had to work together. This hadn’t gotten off well. She thought for a few moments. “I might have someone who can help you with that if you’re serious.”
Dick stared at her in surprise for a long moment. “Really? Sister, I am so serious.”
“Then I won’t kill you…for now.”
“For now? If that changes, can you give a handsome vampire a head start?” He placed his elbows on the table, put his chin in his hands, and batted his annoyingly long eyelashes at her.
After a short silence, they smiled tentatively at each other.
Lexi chuffed a laugh and shook her head. “How’ve you been, you old bastard?” It was the closest she would get to making an apology and the atmosphere grew congenial.
“Bored. You?” He raised an eyebrow and smirked.
“Life’s not boring,”
Dick swiveled toward Scott. “Which brings us to you, muscles. What glorious stone did she find you under?”
“Oh, I’m only—” her partner started.
“He’s my traveling companion. A lady shouldn’t travel alone these days.”
Lexi could see that the vampire had recognized the opening for a cutting response. He opened his mouth but seemed to think better of it.
“Good for you. It’s nice to travel with a friend.” He sighed.
She was genuinely surprised by the apparent kindness in his voice.
“Excuse me?” A waitress appeared at the table.
The three of them turned to her as she bent much lower than she needed to place a tall drink in front of Dick, and she delivered a dazzling smile to go with the view of her cleavage.
“I didn’t order this.”
Lexi could see his gaze dipped no lower than her carotid.
“This is from the gentleman at the end of the bar.” As she moved away, she nodded in the direction of a handsome, muscular young man with a square jaw and a varsity jacket. He smiled at Dick, stood, and headed to the bathroom. At the door, he turned and winked.
Scott looked from the man to her companion. “Do you know him?”
“Let’s simply say my reputation precedes me. I don’t come here anymore.” The vampire raised the glass and smiled broadly at the young man while he muttered under his breath, “Not in a million years, jailbait.”
“Why do they call you ‘Dick?’” the other man asked. Lexi’s lips twitched. He’d chosen that moment to voice the question.
“They don’t. She does.” Dick rolled his eyes. He turned to Lexi. “So, you need a document from my friend Leonard.”
“Dolores told us you’d explain about that.” She felt like she was a little behind the curve.
“There was a robbery at a bar a few days ago. The safe wasn’t touched but the contents of the filing cabinet were all over the floor. It took a while for your client to discover important documents were missing.”
“What documents?” Scott had his notes app open again.
“The whole block used to belong to Kate’s father. He divided the land when she finished business school, and she opened the bar and sub-let the flower shop next door to a friend. The land ownership papers are missing,” Dick explained.
“I thought she was being harassed for protection money.” The other man used his cell phone to start making notes.
The vampire nodded. “Well, things are escalating.”
“Shit! I hoped this would be a quick job. It looks like we’ll have to stay longer than I had hoped.” Lexi sighed. “So, how can your friend help?”
“Leonard is an investigator. We worked together for a while. He has a contact at the County Clerk’s Office who can check the records and find the city’s copy, if it’s still there. If it’s missing, you have a bigger problem than you thought.”
“Have you already spoken to him?” she asked.
“I haven’t discussed the particulars of the case but I’ve asked for his help. He might, he might not. He’s probably angry with me.”
Scott stopped typing. “I thought he was your friend?”
“He is, but he’s so last-year. Or was it the year before that? One of those years that isn’t this year.” Dick waved his hand nonchalantly. “I’m meeting him for a date tonight, so I guess we’ll find
out. He was supposed to help me with…another job, but he’s avoided me for months.”
He noticed the plate of rib bones and looked at Scott.
“Did you eat all those?” He moved his gaze unnecessarily slowly down the other man’s torso.
Scott moved his hands self-consciously into his lap.
Dick swiveled to Lexi. “Where does he put it all?”
“Excuse me?” The waitress had returned, this time with a low-ball glass containing amber liquid.
Dick stared at her with his bright topaz-blue eyes.
“This…er…” She faltered, and color bloomed in her cheeks.
“This?” he responded helpfully and gestured at the drink.
“Sorry, yes. This one’s from the gentleman at the table in the corner.” She indicated an impeccably dressed bald black gentleman who rose, winked at him, and headed through the door to the bathroom.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll find each other,” he muttered.
Another man walked past and smiled at him. “It looks like everyone around here knows you.” Scott shook his head and smirked.
“Intimately.” The vampire sighed.
“How about we go back to the room and talk business more privately?” Lexi signaled the waitress for the check
She brought over a folded piece of paper on a little plate and placed it in front of Dick with a smile before she turned away with a flick of her hair.
“Boy, is she barking up the wrong tree.” He pushed the check across to her.
She read it, threw cash down to cover it, and passed the check to him. “I think that’s for you.”
He glanced at the waitress’s number scribbled across the bill but made no move to pick it up.
Scott leaned closer and snagged it. Lexi looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “What? It’s for our expenses.” He pocketed the receipt.