by Jasmine Walt
I shook my head to clear it and tried to focus on the conversation.
I listened carefully when Mr. Beautiful gave the cops his information. His name was Malcolm Owens, and he was a Ph.D. student in the math department. He lived on the other side of campus. I hoped he was telling the truth and wasn’t connected to Vampire-Greg. I hoped his presence was sheer accident.
When they were done talking to us, the security guards offered to take me to a hospital, and when I refused, to escort me home. I hesitated, then accepted. I was too tired to worry about whether or not Fordham’s security force was in league with vampires. I told Malcolm Owens that I’d drop the jacket off at the math department the next day. He nodded, and I left with the security guards.
Back in my apartment, I stepped into the tub, turned on the shower, and scrubbed at the gunk on my arm. It rinsed away, and vanilla-scented soap took away the smell of rotten meat, but I kept wiping at it as if perhaps it had penetrated deep into my skin.
I’ve got to think about this logically, I told myself sternly as I wrapped my terrycloth robe around me and curled up on the mattress. Millie came over and sat down on my hip. I stroked her silky back and tried to consider the attack calmly. It worked, for the most part. I ignored the occasional murmur in the back of my mind that told me there was nothing logical or rational about my fiancé becoming a vampire.
I’d gone about this all wrong, I realized. I should have waited for Nick to return my call. I’d gone to the library to learn about vampires, but I already knew about vampires. We all do, really—what is there to know besides they’ll suck your blood, they’ll kill you, they’re evil? Oh, and a stake to the heart will kill them.
But now my undead ex-fiancé was hunting me—not just any available meal, but me, specifically.
I needed to find out about the vampire who had changed Greg, not just vampires in general. I mean, I had half expected Vampire-Greg to come after me in some sick vampirey version of Stalker Ex-Boyfriend. But tonight’s attack had still come as a complete shock. I needed to quit thinking of Greg as my fiancé, once again ignoring the part of me that knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. I stabbed him with a letter opener and he barely flinched, I reminded that part of me. He’s definitely a monster.
I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling, still thinking. Vampire-Greg might be the end result of my problem, but what was the beginning? The law firm. And that brought me back to Nick. He worked for the law firm, had a contact there who had known that Greg was going to be attacked that night. Nick was the place to start. My new phone was on the floor right next to the cross Nick had given me. I picked up the phone and found his number.
This time he answered. “Nick here.”
“Hi, Nick. It’s Elle Dupree.”
“Hey, Elle. What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you. About Greg. He attacked me tonight on campus. I got away, but I need to know more, because he’s after me now.” I felt—and sounded—strangely detached as I spoke.
“Oh.” Nick was silent for a moment. “Not on the phone, okay? I’ll meet you tomorrow. In the city.”
He named a restaurant on Union Square and we agreed to meet for lunch the next day—easy enough to do as it was a Thursday, one of my no-classes days. I stayed awake a long time that night, questions swirling through my head: who had tipped Nick off to the vampire attack? Why? How had the contact known what was coming? What did Vampire-Greg want with me? What did vampires have to do with a Manhattan law firm? Or, perhaps more importantly, what did a Manhattan law firm have to do with vampires?
Three hours later I sat straight up in bed. The letter opener, I thought frantically. It was still somewhere under the tree.
3
I was woken up early the next morning by the sun streaming into my windows.
I didn’t feel like moving, but I decided to face the day. I was determined to start a new life—one in which I was safe from Vampire-Greg.
I turned over, ready to spring out of bed, and instead rolled up into a groaning ball. I hurt all over. Every single muscle. My arms felt like they’d been pulled halfway out of their sockets. My neck was stiff, my calves felt like they were contracting up into my stomach somewhere. The sheets scraped against my battered knees like sandpaper.
From now on, I vowed, I was going to hit the gym every single day. If I was really going to continue to live, I needed to be able to get away from vampires that attacked me, and that meant being able to move. Quickly. And reliably. If I couldn’t trust my body not to go into the fetal position when I tried to move it, I wouldn’t survive long.
I managed to drag myself out of bed and pull on sweatpants and a t-shirt, though. I walked slowly to the tree Greg had grabbed me from and stared up into the branches. It was a warm enough day, but I shivered. I started combing the grass around the tree, trying to remember where the letter opener had landed.
A bloody letter opener with my fingerprints all over it might not be the best thing to leave lying around on campus for anyone to find and turn in. I’d watched enough true crime shows on television to know what the forensic guys could figure out with evidence like that.
Of course, I don’t know if the forensic guys could figure out “vampire” with evidence like that.
But I was actually more afraid of them drawing other conclusions, like “murder weapon” or even just “violent attack,” and then attaching those conclusions to me in any way.
I couldn’t find the letter opener. Naturally. That would have been too easy. Bad enough I had to fret about my vampire ex jumping out of trees and trying to eat me. Now I had to torment myself with the idea of life in prison for fighting off my vampire ex who jumped out of trees and tried to eat me.
Weird didn’t even begin to describe it.
I trudged back to my apartment, muscles aching.
I felt better after I’d dragged myself through a hot shower. I spent an hour in the basement laundry room washing and drying the windbreaker-style jacket Malcolm Owens had loaned me—it seemed rude to return it with vampire ooze all down the inside of one sleeve. It was only 9:00 by then, and most grad students don’t make it to campus that early unless they have class, so I knew that my chances of running into Malcolm were slim. After breakfast at the local diner, I headed to the math department to return the jacket. Just like I had said I would. Of course, the possibility of seeing him again—this time in broad daylight with the sun shining full on him and him not bursting into vampire-induced flames—didn’t hurt, either. It would be nice to be sure he wasn’t a vampire.
The math department was open when I got there. I wrote a quick note thanking Malcolm for his help and left the jacket with the secretary. As I walked down the hall toward the exit, though, Malcolm himself jogged up behind me.
“Hey. Wait up!”
I paused briefly, barely giving him time to catch up with me before moving on. “I left your jacket in the main office,” I said. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”
“No problem. How are you feeling today?”
“Fine. A little sore, but mostly okay.” I put my hand on the door and walked out into the daylight.
Malcolm followed me, and I silently sent up a thankful little prayer as the sunlight washed over him.
“Listen. I couldn’t stop thinking about last night,” Malcolm said. “And the thing is… that was really weird, you know? I mean, I saw the guy jump over you, and then he was just gone. I didn’t see him leave or anything. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Um. I dunno. Maybe you were in shock or something?” I did not need this. I had enough on my mind without having to try to convince some random pretty boy that he hadn’t seen anything bizarre when he clearly had. “Maybe he left when you weren’t looking? Things got pretty hectic. And, you know, I’m sure he didn’t want to stick around until the police got there.”
“Maybe.” Malcolm looked unconvinced—he had a little furrow between his eyebrows as he thought.
“Look, I’ve gotta go�
��maybe we could talk about this later? I’ve got a train to catch.” I inched away from him.
“Really? I’m headed to the station, too.” He followed me.
With a mental sigh of resignation, I fell into step next to him.
“Okay,” he said. “So the guy grabbed your shirt, right? And you got out of it—and got all bloody, somehow—and took off running. Then you bumped into me, and he jumped over us. And then—”
“Look. I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to relive last night, okay? It was kind of traumatic.” I knew I sounded peevish, but I needed him to quit talking about it. And thinking about it, for that matter.
Malcolm looked like I’d slapped him—first horrified, then miserable. “Oh, geez. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just have this thing—I have to figure everything out. My mother always says it’s why I’m a mathematician. I need to know how things work. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to figure out what happened.”
I shook my head. “No. That’s fine. It was just awful and I want to forget it ever happened.”
By that time we’d reached the train station. I bought a ticket to Grand Central from the automated machine and turned to Malcolm. “Where are you headed?”
“Westchester—up to New Rochelle.” He bought his ticket and we stood there in awkward silence for a moment. I cast around for something to say.
Finally I said, “Well, thanks again for the jacket. See you around.”
I was halfway down the stairs to the train platform before he caught up with me.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said. “Let me buy you dinner sometime, or a drink or something.
I promise I won’t bring up what happened last night.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve kind of got a lot going on right now… and I just got out of a relationship.…” The trite phrases—so ludicrous given what had ended that relationship—almost made me want to laugh. Or maybe cry. I wasn’t sure which.
“Hey. No problem.” He scrabbled in his book bag and pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen.
“Here’s my number. If you change your mind, call me.”
He jogged up the stairs and turned around at the top, grinning. “Call me!” With a wave, he was gone.
I was still shaking my head as I boarded the train. My blood-sucking fiend vampire of an ex was hunting me. The last thing I needed was to drag someone else into this. Malcolm seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t want to disrupt his happy little mathematician’s life.
Still, I folded the scrap of paper with his number on it in half and tucked it into my purse.
I had one errand to run before meeting Nick at Union Square, and I didn’t think it would take long.
Little did I know how difficult it would be to find a wooden letter opener to replace the one I’d lost the night before. Lucky for me I had several hours before our lunch meeting.
I started at the Staples Office Supply store at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. The only letter openers they had were either plain metal or electric. Who needs an electric letter opener? At any rate, neither of those alternatives were any good for killing vampires, so I had to widen my search.
In the gift shops on Times Square, I found stainless steel letter openers with Statue of Liberty handles and brass letter openers with lovely wooden handles carved with the words “New York City.”
The Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue didn’t have any letter openers at all.
With an hour and a half to go before I was supposed to meet Nick, I grabbed a taxi and headed to Chinatown. Surely somewhere in the piles of junk there I could find what I was looking for.
I didn’t, of course. What I did find on the second floor of a two-story emporium on Mott Street, however, were some lovely wooden chopsticks. With very pointy ends. The small Asian man who had led me to them looked a little startled when I started testing the points of all the chopsticks against my palm. He earnestly assured me, in broken English, that the points didn’t matter when eating with chopsticks. He even demonstrated the proper use of chopsticks to illustrate his point. I smiled and nodded, then went on testing the points. He shook his head in irritation and muttered to himself in Chinese when I chose the sharpest of the bunch and bought three pairs of them. I didn’t mind him thinking I was a stupid American tourist if it meant I had heart-impaling chopsticks when I left the store.
I made it to Union Square with fifteen minutes to spare. Nick was already waiting for me when I walked into the restaurant simply labeled “The Coffeehouse.”
The restaurant was much hipper than the ones I tended to frequent. The servers were all tall and willowy, an impression heightened by the all-black uniforms they wore. Most of them sported tattoos and many had nose-rings. Our waitress seemed irritated that she had to wait on us at all.
I picked up the menu that was waiting for me. Most of the food on it was Brazilian. More hipness.
I ordered something saladesque. When the waitress left, I leaned over the table toward Nick.
“So,” I said. “Like I said on the phone, Greg attacked me last night. On campus.” I told him the whole story, lowering my voice to a whisper when I noticed the couple next to us staring.
When I got to the part about Malcolm, Nick stopped me. “Did he see Greg?”
“Yeah. Why? Does it matter?”
“I don’t know yet. Tell me the rest.”
It didn’t take long for me to finish. “So,” I said, concluding the story, “I need to know everything you know. Start with Forster, Pearson and Sims. And how they knew about Greg that night.”
Nick ran a hand across his eyes. “It’s not that simple, Elle. I’m not supposed to talk about it at all.
I’m not entirely sure that meeting you here today was a good idea.”
“I don’t care what’s a good idea and what’s not, Nick. You told me to call you if I ran into trouble. The man who, up until just a few days ago, I planned to spend my life with, attacked me last night.” I emphasized the last four words. “I’m in trouble and I called. I need your help. Talk to me.
What do you know?”
We both leaned back as our waitress brought our food and slapped it down in front of us.
Nick pushed his plate slightly away, then looked up at me. “Okay. I don’t know if I can tell you anything all that helpful, but I guess I need to tell you how I got into this business in the first place.”
I took a bite of my salad and waited for him to begin.
“Alec Pearson is my godfather.”
I stopped chewing and raised my eyebrows.
Nick nodded. “He and my father were college buddies. I was thirteen when my parents both died in a car wreck and Alec took me in. He didn’t have any idea what to do with a teenage boy, and I didn’t have any idea how to deal with losing both parents and leaving behind pretty much everything I’d known to move in with this guy I’d known all my life but never spent much time with.
“Not that we spent much time together after I’d moved in, either. At that point, Alec was still young, trying to prove himself in his grandfather’s firm. He wasn’t around much, so I did just about anything I wanted to. It didn’t take long for me to get myself arrested—it was on a breaking and entering charge, though it could have been any number of things; that was just what I got caught doing.
“So Alec did the only thing he could think of: he sent me away to military school to straighten me out. It worked, too. After I graduated, I went into the Marines as an officer and stayed in the military for twelve years.
“By this time, Alec’s grandfather had died, his father was a partner in the firm and Alec was well on his way to becoming a partner, too. That’s when they got mixed up with the vampires.
“I don’t know exactly what happened. I’m not sure anybody knows. But it had something to do with a real estate transaction—that’s mostly what Alec’s father, Benjamin, dealt in. As best we can figure, some big-honcho vampire hired the firm to negotiate
the sale of a building the vampires owned.”
Nick paused to take a bite of his lunch. I realized that my mouth was hanging open.
“Vampires own real estate in Manhattan?” I asked incredulously.
“Apparently,” said Nick. “I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess they own a lot more than just real estate. Wouldn’t you, if you were going to live forever?”
I nodded. “I guess so.”
“Alec says that they all knew something weird was up. Their new client, a Mr. Salvaggi, refused to meet them during the daytime. He refused to meet with anyone other than Benjamin. By all accounts, he was a difficult client.
“But the Pearsons were used to dealing with difficult clients—according to Alec, the very rich are often also the very demanding. So they really didn’t think anything of it.
“At least, not until Benjamin Pearson turned up dead.” Nick paused and took a long drink from his cup of coffee. I had forgotten all about my salad and was leaning forward across the table so as to catch every word.
“Alec was the one who found him, of course. Benjamin had a late-night meeting with his client, and when Alec came into the office the next morning, Benjamin was stretched out behind his desk.
“He called in the police, and they ruled the death a homicide.” Nick laughed that short barking laugh of his. “They never could figure out why there was no blood at the scene—they finally decided Benjamin must’ve been killed somewhere else and dumped back in his office. The body was all carved up; the police assumed that the two puncture wounds in Benjamin’s neck were part of the ‘ritualistic’ murder.
“Alec might have bought the whole ritual murder scenario, too, except for one thing: his father had left detailed records about his dealings with Salvaggi. And his father had figured out the truth.
“By the time Alec brought me in, he’d done some investigating on his own. I would have thought he was crazy—sane people don’t believe in vampires, right?—if he hadn’t managed to capture one of them.
“He had it locked in a walk-in safe when I went up to his office. He’d told me his whole story and shown me a whole bunch of documents, but I was still about to walk out when he opened the curtains in his office and opened the door to the safe. All I saw at first was that some guy was hog-tied and gagged.