Maven glanced at him. “That is historically true, but then again, we don’t have the most traditional structure here in Colorado,” she pointed out. To me she said, “What do you suggest you could do for us, Lex?”
I swallowed, focusing on my wording. I didn’t know much about vampires, but it had occurred to me, of course, that they might be involved in some nasty stuff. Illegal stuff. I needed to set my limits clearly without making myself unattractive as an employee. “Security. On call, part time, however you want to do it. The army taught me how to drive a truck, gather intelligence, and look for weapons and for lies. I won’t kill anyone or hurt the innocent,” I added, “but I could be your daytime Quinn. I’m very motivated, reasonably intelligent, and apparently no one can press my mind.”
Itachi stayed silent, waiting for his next cue. Maven was looking at me very speculatively, her fingers now tapping on the file of information Itachi had been reading. “You just got out of one army,” she said finally. “What makes you so willing to join another one?”
That took me aback for a moment. Was that really what this was? Another army? There were similarities, I supposed, but the comparison was too strange to really wrap my head around. Then again, I knew that I would do a hell of a lot more than rejoin an army for Charlie.
I started to say just that, but stopped myself. That wasn’t what she was really asking me. She didn’t care why I wanted to join, she wanted to know why I would stay. Why I wouldn’t just sell them out to the first person who promised to protect Charlie instead.
“Because I’ve been part of an army before,” I finally said, “I understand concepts like taking orders, chain of command, and working for the greater good. I also know,” I went on, “that sometimes protecting the greater good means being the lesser evil.”
Maven’s eyebrows raised just a fraction, and I knew I’d managed to say the right thing. “Give me your wrist,” she commanded.
I started to reach out before I even knew I’d moved, but I caught myself and asked, “Why?”
“We are vampires, Lex,” Maven said, not unkindly. “I want to taste your blood. If you work for Mr. Itachi, you’ll be expected to make the occasional donation.”
I weighed my options, then reluctantly held out my hand. I had no problem with giving blood, and so far we were still well within the “small price to pay for Charlie’s safety” arena.
Maven took my hand, turning my wrist to expose the veins. Her fingers were very cool, but not ice-cold like the grave or anything. “I can’t press your mind properly,” she warned, “but I’m strong enough to press it a little, to help with the pain. Do you want me to do that?”
I shook my head. I’d take pain over mind control any day. Maven nodded and bared her teeth without another word. Her canines looked a little bit sharper than normal, but there was something else off about her teeth, too. Before I could figure out what it was, she was pressing them into my wrist.
To my surprise, they sank through my skin without any resistance. I squeaked as the pain hit, but I managed not to pull my wrist away. She pressed her lips into the wound, forming a seal as my blood spurted into her mouth. I realized dimly that her teeth had looked odd because they were scary sharp—they were roughly rectangular, like any other human’s, but razor-edged.
She held out her free hand to Itachi, and he leaned forward, lifting a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket and handing it to her. I looked away. After a few seconds, Maven deftly pulled my wrist away from her mouth, pressing the handkerchief to it at the same time. She tied the handkerchief around my wrist and released me. When she raised her head, there was a luminous smile on her face. “Well,” she marveled, shaking her head a little. There was still enough blood in her mouth to stain her teeth red, and I fought the impulse to flinch. “You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“What is it?” Itachi asked, suddenly curious.
Maven raised a small hand and dabbed at her lips with one finger. “She certainly has active witchblood,” she told him, without taking her eyes off me. Though Itachi looked like he had more questions, he said nothing. I couldn’t figure out the distribution of power between the two vampires, but I decided I didn’t really need to know until I understood my own situation a little better. Maven could taste the magic in my blood?
With everything that was going on, I’d nearly forgotten about Darcy’s comment that I had “weird blood.” Now it made more sense. I didn’t know whether to be intrigued or grossed out by that, so I just pressed the handkerchief into my wrist. It hurt, but although I was pretty sure she’d nicked a vein, the blood wasn’t seeping through the delicate white cloth.
“Don’t worry, vampire bites clot very quickly,” Maven promised. “It won’t scar, either.”
I nodded. I wasn’t really worried about bleeding out. Both vampires were watching me carefully, probably waiting to see if I would freak out. “This is officially the weirdest job interview I’ve ever had,” I muttered.
Maven smiled.
“So?” I asked. “Do we have a deal?”
Itachi’s eyes narrowed. “Not so fast,” he chided. “There’s nothing for you to—”
Ever so gently, Maven laid a hand on Itachi’s arm. She leaned over and whispered something into his ear, too softly for me to hear. Itachi’s expression didn’t change, except for the slightest tightening of his lips. When she was done, he leaned back and nodded.
Maven peered at me through the thick glasses she undoubtedly didn’t need. “A probationary period is in order, I think,” she said at last. “We want you to help Quinn find out who came after your niece in Itachi’s enclave.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, startled. “We know it was Victor and Darcy.”
“And Darcy is still out there,” Itachi countered, his voice sour.
“At any rate,” Maven added, “I am inclined to believe someone else sent them to collect your niece. Trying to take Charlotte behind Itachi’s back, before he was aware of her—they might have gotten away with that on a technicality, as they say.” She smiled without mirth. “But to go after her again, once he was aware of her existence, was a very brazen move.”
“And those two were never known for being brazen,” Itachi broke in, as though he just wanted to edge his way into the conversation.
Maven nodded her head slightly, agreeing with him. “I’m afraid someone may have . . . motivated them.”
“That’s it?” I asked, trying not to sound as incredulous as I felt. “You just want me to find out who’s after Charlie?” Hell, I was going to do that anyway.
But Maven held up a hand. “In addition to that, we’d like for you to seek counsel from Clan Pellar on how to use your magic.”
“My magic?” I echoed dumbly. In my concern over keeping Charlie safe, I had nearly forgotten that I could theoretically do . . . something. Magic, I guess.
Maven arched an eyebrow in a way that suggested this was a deal breaker. “If you are to become our ‘daytime Quinn,’” she said, “we want all the use we can get out of you.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to fuck around with witch powers, but I could learn a couple of spells, or whatever the witches called them, to pacify Maven and Itachi. Maybe I could learn something that would help me protect Charlie. “And then we’ve got a deal?” I persisted, working to keep my voice light and respectful. I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
“These two tasks should determine whether you truly are who and what I suspect,” she told me. “If you swear loyalty to us and can prove your value, then we have a deal. We will make sure the Old World stays away from your niece until she turns eighteen, or until you terminate your service, whichever comes first. No one in our enclave will touch her.”
I opened my mouth to ask for more time for Charlie, but before I could speak, Itachi said firmly, “That is our only offer.”
I closed my mouth a
nd nodded tightly. Seventeen years of service, and no guarantee that Charlie would be safe once she was no longer a minor. It wasn’t the greatest bargain I’d ever made, but I didn’t see a lot of alternatives, short of moving into Charlie’s bedroom or trying to convince John to move to Belize. Neither seemed very viable. If I worked for Itachi, at least I could ensure that Charlie got to have a childhood.
“Oh, and Lex?” Maven added. “In the interest of fairness, you should know that if you don’t perform to our satisfaction, there is no deal. Itachi will do whatever he wants with the child, and we’ll kill you if you interfere.”
She said it in a completely reasonable, “just so you know” kind of tone, which somehow made it worse.
“You can try,” I said quietly. Itachi chortled with laughter at that, but Maven just smiled, almost sympathetically.
I rose from the chair and held out my hand, with my wrist still encircled by the delicate handkerchief. “I believe we have a deal.”
After we shook, Maven called for Quinn. I didn’t think anyone would be able to hear through the thick office door, but vampires must have good hearing. He popped his head in, his eyes widening slightly as they took in our new positioning in the room. “Ma’am?” he said to Maven.
“We have a task for you, Quinn.” She nodded toward me. “We’d like you and Lex to locate Darcy. Find out if she and Victor were sent by a third party. Then kill her.”
A sputter of shock came out of my mouth, and Maven turned her head to look at me. She raised an eyebrow. “This is the Old World, Lex,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you truly plan to work for us, you’ll need to understand the way we do things. I accept your stipulation against killing, but Quinn has no such condition.”
I looked at Quinn, but his face was completely unreadable. Maven continued, “Lex, you’ll work with Quinn at night, hunting for Darcy. During the day you’ll work with the Pellars to advance your magic. Quinn will set that up for you. Begin tomorrow.”
I stepped away from the chair, but paused and looked back at the vampires. “And Charlie?”
“I’ll put the word out,” she promised. Itachi gave me a polite, dismissive nod.
Feeling a little dazed, I followed Quinn into the hallway, where I stumbled and had to lean against a wall. He stopped a few feet ahead of me and retraced his steps. “You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, working to control my voice. “Just a little lightheaded.” It wasn’t the blood loss. I had bled more while shaving my legs. For some reason leaving Maven’s presence felt like moving from strong sunshine into the shade again—not necessarily a bad feeling, but definitely an adjustment.
I suddenly felt very young, and very naive. It reminded me of my first deployment to Iraq, where the customs, language, government, and daily risks were so different that it felt like I was on another planet. But now the displacement was happening in my hometown. A mile from the hospital where I was born.
Quinn waited patiently until I straightened up again, a question on his face. “Sorry, this is all just happening really fast,” I mumbled. “I think I just agreed to go vampire hunting. With a vampire.”
“Yeah, well, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” he said frankly. “Most witches are told all about magic by the time they hit puberty. If you’re going to tag along with me while I go after Darcy, you’re gonna have to pick up a lot of information fast.”
I looked up at him. “I’ve got no love for Darcy,” I remarked, “but are you really okay with just killing her? You were a cop.”
With exaggerated patience, Quinn took my elbow and propelled me forward, his grip like a concrete cuff on my bicep. When we had passed through two rooms, he leaned over and whispered, “They could still hear you, you know.”
“Oh.” Oops.
“To answer your question, I don’t feel great about it, no. But I don’t have a choice,” he said, his tone bitter. “Not everyone volunteered for a deal with Maven and Itachi.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, a little hotly. “Do you think I woke up this morning hoping I’d get to feed my blood to a vampire?”
Quinn hesitated. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean you . . . My situation is different, that’s all.”
“Different how?” I said.
He looked away. “I was sold to them.”
My eyes widened. “You were—”
“Come on,” he said brusquely, giving me a gentle push. “Let’s get you home for some sleep. You have magic lessons tomorrow.”
“Oh screw that,” I shot back. “You’re starting now, right?”
He hesitated. “Well, yeah . . .”
“Then I’m coming with you. What do we do first?”
Quinn sighed, his cool demeanor momentarily ruffled. “You’re going to be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” I told him, and I felt a smile spread across my face. Not a nice smile. “But not nearly as big as I’m about to be in Darcy’s.”
Chapter 13
One of the many things I’d never bothered to consider in my thirty-one years of life were the logistical problems that came with the care and keeping of vampires.
As I followed Quinn out to his car, a gray Toyota sedan that had probably been purchased for its anonymity, he gave me a rundown of how vampires lived, starting with the fact that they were pretty much dead while the sun was up. “Unfortunately, that leaves us vulnerable,” he said, “so vampires keep really great hidey-holes, often underground. Victor and Darcy have a basement apartment not far from campus. We’ll go there first, see if we can find any clues about where she might have gone.”
A basement apartment? It seemed so . . . ordinary. But then, I guess vampires wouldn’t get much access to their food supply by hiding out in Transylvanian castles. Speaking of food supply . . . “How does, um, feeding work?” I asked Quinn. “Is there a way to find her through . . .” I made a helpless gesture, not wanting to say “who she eats.”
He shook his head. “Vampires don’t need blood every night, and we don’t often feed from the same person twice,” he informed me. “That’s exactly why you find vampires in so many college towns, because of the transient population.”
“You just go to the middle of campus and grab somebody?” I asked, incredulous.
Quinn shot me a glare. “We’re predators,” he stated. “A lion doesn’t wade into the middle of a pack of wildebeests and start slashing with its claws. You pick off the edge of the herd, isolate, and feed. Once we learn control, we can exist on very little. The . . . source . . . doesn’t even remember it happening.”
I decided I didn’t need to know more about that right now, and looked out the window. To my surprise, Quinn was driving us into a familiar student neighborhood in South Boulder. I’d spent a little time in that area of SoBo, which was where Sam and John’s first apartment had been. When he said “close to campus,” he really meant it.
“We’re not actually expecting her to be there, are we?” I asked.
Quinn shook his head. “Darcy’s not that stupid. But I’m hoping we’ll find something to point us in the right direction.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then we’ll talk to the vampire they’re pledged to,” he said, as if that was a perfectly logical thing to say.
“Pledged?”
“Vampires still have a more or less feudal system of government,” he explained. Because it took years for new vamps to learn how to manage finances, create new identities, and control their bloodlust, they always served older vampires for a period of time before striking out on their own. “Most of the time, a new vamp serves his progenitor, the vampire who created him,” Quinn said flatly.
“Most of the time?” I asked carefully. I wanted to know more about that “I was sold” comment.
Quinn ignored the question. “When they’re done
with their service, they pledge a troth,” he continued. “Aside from the physiological changes, it’s the only bit of magic we really have. A troth is like a formal binding of loyalty. We can’t break it.” He shook his head a little. “Everyone belongs to someone.”
“Like ranks,” I said. “A hierarchy of power.”
Quinn thought that over for a long moment, then nodded. “Sort of. Younger vampires have to obey not just their own dominus, but any dominus who obeys him. So it’s more like . . . a lineage of obedience.”
“So where did Victor and Darcy fall within the pecking order?”
“They both finished their service a couple of years ago, and they pledged troth to a vampire named Kirby,” Quinn explained. “And Kirby belongs to Itachi. Wait, we’re here.”
He pulled to a stop in front of a perfectly ordinary wood-frame building that had once been a single-family residence. Someone had converted it into two apartments with separate mailboxes, I saw. There was a third mailbox for a basement apartment, along with a dark staircase leading down on the side of the house.
When we got out of the car, Quinn immediately walked around to the Toyota’s back bumper, looked around a little, and popped the trunk.
Quinn’s trunk was packed. The top layer was camp blankets and collapsible chairs, the kind of thing you’d have at a picnic or an outdoor concert. He moved these aside and revealed piles of more sinister supplies, including several power tools and a lidless shoebox full of stakes. I noted with surreal detachment that the shoebox full of stakes had the Luther Shoes logo printed on its side. Quinn pulled out two wooden stakes and handed me one. It was a simple piece of hardwood, about the length of my forearm, machine-sharpened to a rounded point.
“The wooden stake thing is real, huh?” I asked, turning it over in my hand. Frankly, I would rather have had a gun.
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