by Lisa Olsen
“Aw, man…” Looking down, that warm fuzzy feeling I woke to turned out to be less about being in the safety of Jakob’s arms, and more about a shaft of sunlight burning across the backs of my legs. All red and blistery, my skin looked like it had been through the deep fryer and I pulled them out of the light with a hiss of pain. “How the heck…?” The blinds stood wide open, even though I had the distinct memory of closing everything up tight. As a human, I would’ve been looking at a trip to the burn unit, but as a vampire, I knew a bit of blood and I’d be fine.
Of course, if I was still human, the worst I’d have might be a tinge of pink skin from lying in the sun for a while. At least now I knew what would happen if I stayed out in the full sun for too long without Jakob to protect me.
Jakob.
With a snort I dismissed the dream as an overactive imagination. Nothing Bishop told me supported the idea that Jakob could keep me safe from the sun. I’d probably dreamt about the beach and burning bodies because my own legs slowly cooked in the afternoon sunlight. It bothered me as to why my subconscious pulled Jakob into it as an unlikely savior instead of Bishop though.
I could’ve crept up on the window and put the blinds down, but for the moment I didn’t feel like moving. Instead I huddled in the shaded side of the bed, wondering what I’d possibly done to make someone hate me so much that they found some new way to mess with my life just about every day. Was someone ticked off that I’d “killed” Kursik? Whoever it was, they seemed to know what the sunlight would do to me, that put them firmly in the vampire camp.
Reaching for my phone, I sent Bishop a simple text. Someone got into my room again, gratified when he called almost instantly.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m a little crispy, but okay.”
“What do you mean crispy?”
“They opened the blinds this time, and I was apparently too dead to the world to move out of the sun when it hit me. I’m sure I’ll be fine with a bit of blood though.” I downplayed the pain and gross factor, not wanting him to worry, but I heard a string of curses on the other line. “Bishop?”
“That’s it, you’re not spending another night there unprotected. I’ll be by to collect you in an hour,” he growled, and I was floored by the offer. Did I want to move in with Bishop? Something made me hesitate.
“I’m really fine, I promise. I think if the person really wanted to hurt me, they would have. They’re just bent on being a pain in the behind.”
“That’s what I’m worried about, Anja. They could have killed you while you slept, they could have…” he broke off and I was glad he didn’t complete that thought. “You’re completely vulnerable while you sleep.”
“Exactly, but they didn’t kill me, or even hurt me permanently.” At least I hoped not. “I need to feed and I’ll be fine.”
“Then let me take you hunting, you’ll need more than bagged blood to heal the damage.”
It was tempting, so tempting… that’s why I knew I had to refuse. “It’s really not that bad. I’m not a normal newbie vamp, remember? Ellri blood, makes me tougher than usual.”
“I remember,” he replied, sounding subdued.
“Look, I have to get going to rehearsal, but let’s get together later. Then you can see I’m really fine, alright?”
“I still don’t like it.”
It warmed my heart to hear the concern in his voice, but I couldn’t let my intruder scare me out of living my afterlife. It was time to stop hiding in the bedroom. Maybe I couldn’t control some things in my life, but there were plenty of things I could do to solve some of the problems. “I’ll text you later when I’m done with rehearsal.”
I didn’t fool around with trying to add cinnamon or vanilla to the bagged blood, the pain in my legs throbbed something fierce. It took three mugs full before my legs looked normal, if a little pink. There were only a few bags of blood left, and I hid them in a plastic pitcher at the back of the fridge, just in case I had an unexpected visitor. It wouldn’t fool an involved police search, but I hoped I’d have a bit of warning before that happened. A quick change and I was ready to go, no worse for wear.
Only when I got to school, I didn’t go to the auditorium at all. Rehearsal seemed less important than clearing up a few things. Instead I made my way to the registrar’s office. They had records for every student including home addresses, and I had a sudden hankering to check out Melissa’s apartment. The office was closed of course, but I could see a light on in the back and I rapped on the glass, hoping I could find some busy bee getting in a little overtime.
Sure enough, a pair of horn rimmed glasses peeped around the corner attached to a guy with more hair on his lip than on his head. I smiled and waved, knocking again to get his attention, and he lumbered over, reluctance written in every step.
“Office is closed,” he called out through the glass.
“Yes, I can see that,” I replied, biting back the duh that threatened to escape. “Can you please open the door? I need to ask you a quick question.”
“But we’re closed,” he shook his head hopelessly, as if he had no control over the matter. I let out a long breath. He wanted to do it the hard way, I’d do it the hard way.
“Open the door,” I said simply, no longer trying to shout my way through the door. Instead I caught hold of him with my will, thankful for the pane of glass that separated us instead of a solid door. That time he unlocked it, a vacant look on his face as he stood awaiting further instructions. “Thank you,” I smiled, scooting inside and shutting it behind me. “I need you to do me another favor. I need the address for Melissa Edwards.”
“Those are in the computer.”
Could he really be that dumb? “Yes, and you’re going to get it for me, aren’t you?”
“Get it for you,” he nodded before turning to log onto the nearest terminal. In a few minutes I had Melissa’s address written on a pink post it note and I’d compelled him to forget all about my visit. Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I stopped short when I saw Detective Lucas grinning at me from across the parking lot. Wode tìan…
“Good evening, Miss Evans, fancy seeing you here.”
“I go to school here.”
“But you’re not in class, are you? What business did you have with the administration office? Aren’t they closed?”
“As luck would have it, they are,” I nodded, doing my best at feigning nonchalance. “I’ll just have to stop by in the morning.”
“Oh, so that guy with the coke bottle glasses didn’t help you with whatever you needed?”
Crap, he’d noticed that. “Um, no. He’s pretty clueless actually,” not a lie… “I considered leaving a note, but I decided it would be easier to come back when the regular staff is in. I ah, wanted to give them my change of address form.”
“You’re moving?”
“No,” I hedged. Why couldn’t I have been blessed with the ability to lie like my sister? “But I’m getting a PO Box. My mail’s been disappearing lately.”
“That’s a serious offense, did you report it to your local post office?”
“No.” My brows drew together, it was turning out to be more complicated than I’d thought. “I didn’t think they could do anything about it.”
“You should definitely still report it though,” he smiled amiably.
“Um, thanks. If you’ll excuse me, I’m running late for rehearsal,” I swept past him, but his voice called me back.
“Just doing my part to take a bite out of crime. You’ll let me know if you do move, right Miss Evans?”
“Absolutely I will,” I called out without looking back. Forced to go to rehearsal after all in case Detective Lucas decided to follow me, I tried to slip into the auditorium as unobtrusively as possible, but all eyes were on me as I took my place on the risers. Professor Matthews tapped his watch, but didn’t otherwise call attention to my tardiness. The rehearsal ran extra long. With the performance coming up in just a few days, the perfect
ionist in all of us wanted to get it right, and the professor was no exception.
There was no sign of the detective when I left the auditorium, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled out the post it with Melissa’s address. Her apartment wasn’t too far away, and it didn’t take me long to walk there. The door to her unit was locked, with yellow police tape declaring it a crime scene. What did I think I could accomplish?
Calling the only one I knew who might be able to lend a hand, I got Bishop on the second ring.
“Are you alright?” His voice sounded tense and I did my best to calm his fears.
“Yes, I’m fine. That’s not why I called you.” Briefly I went over my plan to get into Melissa’s apartment to look for any clues to her death and more importantly, any vampire involvement. Bishop must not have been too busy, because he agreed to help without any convincing on my part.
“Great, I’ll text you the address,” I beamed, only to hear him clear his throat uncomfortably.
“That’s not necessary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I… can track you by your phone.”
“What?”
“I was worried about you.” He sounded pained by the admission and I tried to view that as sweet, not overbearing.
“Okay, well come and find me then, I want to know if I have anything to worry about.”
“Relax, ma’am, I’ve got this.”
Chapter Eight
True to his word, Bishop pulled up in his dark SUV, stopping about a block away and approaching the rest of the way on foot with his game face on. “Which one is hers?” he asked, all business. I tried not to let it bother me, I had asked him there in an official capacity after all.
“The one on the corner. Her apartment is on the ground floor, 1C. How are you going to get in, anyway? The place is locked up tight.”
“I told you, I’ve got this.” Bishop shot me a sidelong grin as he loped up to the building, not bothering to be sneaky or ninja-like at all. I jogged to keep up, hoping he didn’t tell me to wait out on the street. It either didn’t occur to him, or he didn’t care, dropping to a crouch in front of her door. All I saw was a flash of metal and he had the deadbolt open in mere seconds. “After you.” He pushed the door open with a waggle of eyebrows, and I got the idea he might be showing off for my benefit.
“Boy, remind me to call you the next time I lock myself out of my apartment.”
“You won’t have to, because I’ll already be there. You’re moving in with me until I figure out who’s stalking you, remember?” he fired back, shutting the door behind us and I narrowed my eyes at him.
“I never agreed to that.”
“I thought you agreed to defer to my judgment when it came to your safety.”
“You know, if you want to spend more time with me, you just have to say so. You don’t have to try and rope me into living with you.”
“I’m not…”
“What happened to it being a bad idea to let people know we’re a thing?” Bishop fell silent then and I knew my point had hit home.
“Have you ever been here before?” he changed the subject and I let it slide.
“No, I had to get her address from the registrar’s office. Why?”
“That’s good. Less chance they’ll find anything here to link you to the case. Put these on.” He produced a pair of blue surgical gloves which I quickly tugged on.
“Aren’t you worried about your prints turning up?”
“My prints aren’t on file in any of their databases.” Bishop didn’t appear too worried.
“That seems like a cavalier attitude, especially if you keep visiting crime scenes.”
“Let me put it this way. If my prints or any other retrievable DNA were to be flagged anywhere, it would disappear from the file in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Wow, that’s handy.”
“That’s the Order. We get more than a nifty tattoo for joining up.”
“You have a tattoo?” My eyes widened with interest. “Can I see it?”
Bishop cleared his throat uncomfortably. “We’re getting off task here.” Refocusing, he went to the bedroom unerringly. “She died in here.” I opened my mouth to ask him how he could be sure, but then I saw the dark splotches on the matted carpet.
“Oh.”
Crouching beside the stains, Bishop took a small sample of bloody carpet fibers from three different spots, tucking them away into his pocket. “I think it’s all Melissa’s blood, but we’ll see what the lab turns up. Does anything look amiss to you?”
Without the body, it looked like an average college student’s room except for the stains on the carpet. Actually, strike that, I’ve been to more than a few college rooms with way dirtier floors.
I took a leisurely tour of Melissa’s bedroom, feeling awkward about looking through her things. Even though we’d sung in the same section for nearly three years, I realized I didn’t know all that much about her. There could be giant clues staring me right in the face and I’d never know it. “I have no idea what to look for,” I admitted miserably. “I don’t know what I thought we might find here tonight.”
“Try not to worry about it. We’ll hack into the PD file and piggyback into their investigation.”
“Do you think we could do that now?” I gave him my most winsome smile, not really expecting it to work, but Bishop capitulated with a roll of the eyes.
“Come on, let’s get moving.”
“Where are we going?”
“Whetstone Pharmaceuticals.”
“Why would we go there?”
“Because that’s where HQ is.”
*
The modern, red brick building took me by surprise. So did the fact that the upper floors were an actual functioning company. The elevator we stepped into looked like a regular elevator and unless you knew how to make it descend to the subterranean levels. I imagined most of the daytime employees never knew what they sat on top of.
A little nervous about descending into the belly of the most feared organization within the vampire community, I tugged at my clothes nervously, wishing I’d worn something more befitting a vampire of my supposed age. Bishop noticed me fidgeting but didn’t call attention to it other than to drop me a quick wink. I took that to mean we were probably under surveillance, and resolved to keep my lip buttoned as much as possible.
If it was unusual to take non-Order members into the facility, he gave no sign of it. Then again, most vamps probably wouldn’t come voluntarily, and I did have an escort. We didn’t encounter a soul in the corridor, and Bishop led me to an office with three computer workstations on one side and a work bench on the other, covered in electronic components I couldn’t identify.
“Have a seat, this should just take a sec.” He slid into one of the chairs, fingers flying over the keyboard in a blur, and I counted three separate security blocks before the computer logged him in. Screens moving fast, he had the local police department database as a shortcut on the desktop, and it didn’t take long at all to get into their system. I fed him Melissa’s full name and birth date and he found the rest pretty easily.
“Here we go. Oh, you might not want to look at this part,” Bishop closed the scene photos scant seconds after he opened them, but not before I caught a flash of Melissa’s body lying on the carpet, her eyes open and sightless. “Hey, how about you read through the forensics reports here and I’ll take a look through the notes?” A few more keystrokes and he had the reports in question on the screen in front of me.
“Sure, I’ll take a crack at it.” Feeling woefully out of my element, I pored over the reports, doing my best to puzzle through some of the acronyms. As best I could tell, she wasn’t on any drugs at the time of death and her blood alcohol content was zero. She wasn’t sexually assaulted, which I’d never even considered, but was beyond grateful she didn’t have to endure before the end. There were a ton of other results on various fibers and hairs found on the scene, but I couldn’t m
ake heads or tails of it.
“Maybe we should switch? This is all Greek to me.”
“Ah, okay. I’m actually done, but let me take a look at yours.” Bishop leaned close, and I let myself be distracted by his close proximity. My fingers itched to reach out and touch the stubble at his cheek and the strip of smooth skin behind his ear, the investigation forgotten until he leaned back, eyes narrowing at me in puzzlement.
“What?”
“Um, nothing. What did you find?”
“They’ve got nothing basically. Lucas tried to work the stalker angle, but other than her fight with you, no one has noted any unusual behavior lately.”
“It talks about her argument with me in there?”
“Oh yeah, there are notes of interviews with several of her friends. They all agree a few days ago she turned particularly unpleasant where you were concerned, that must be what set Detective Lucas on your trail. As for hard evidence though, they’ve got zip. The scene is clear of your DNA and there are no warrants on file to search your apartment. I think you’re in the clear.”
“You have my DNA typed?” I blinked and he just shrugged like it was self explanatory. “Then why does Detective Lucas keep looking at me like he knows something I don’t?” I grumbled.
“That’s his job. Here, watch,” Bishop squared his shoulders, eyes boring a hole into mine. “Why did you break into the victim’s apartment, Miss Evans?”
“I wanted to see if I could find any clues to the killer’s identity,” I answered honestly enough.
“And you don’t trust the boys in blue to do their jobs?” his expression darkened.
“I didn’t say that, I just…”
“Are you privy to some information you’re not sharing with us that would make it easier for you to spot the killer among her personal effects?”
“No, of course not.”
“Do you make a habit of breaking into buildings?”
“No, this was the first time I’ve ever done something like this.”
“But not the first time you’ve broken the law,” he leaned closer into my personal space, but that time it wasn’t pleasurable at all.