by Juliet Lyons
When we stop at the traffic lights, he turns to face me, his pale-blue eyes flat as glass as they slide over the contours of my body. “My goodness, you’re a beautiful young woman,” he murmurs, a sly smile twisting the corners of his fleshy mouth.
I now know exactly how Grandma must’ve felt right before the wolf ate her. My hand, with a will of its own, falls on the shiny chrome door handle. He doesn’t miss a trick, his pale eyes following my every movement.
I pass off the gesture by tugging my skirt down. “So, what do you do for a living?” I ask him. “It wasn’t clear from your profile.”
The traffic lurches forward and he turns away. “I own nightclubs, one in Johannesburg and the other in Zurich.”
“For humans?” I ask.
He laughs, though I’m not sure why—it’s a perfectly reasonable question. I get the impression he’s the sort of guy who exists purely to mock others. “Yes, for humans. Mostly. Do you enjoy clubbing? You certainly look like a party girl. I can usually spot a woman who knows how to have a good time.”
The words, though innocent enough, are saturated in double meaning. If the evening continues in this vein, it won’t be long before I’ll need a sick bag.
“Not really. I’m the bookish type,” I lie, hoping to steer the conversation to more neutral ground.
Another slimy grin spreads across his face. I could probably tell him I’m a librarian who knits bed socks for cats in her spare time and he’d find a way to make it dirty.
“Shy types are often the naughtiest.”
“Not this one,” I murmur, avoiding his penetrating stare by pretending to watch a woman walking a black Labrador along the pavement.
A short while later, we arrive at the restaurant. He pulls into a disabled spot and turns off the engine.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to park here. It’s for blue badge holders,” I say in a tight voice.
He roars with laughter, shaking his head. “They know me here. Don’t worry. The owner and I have an understanding.”
Pushing the car door open, I scramble out before he has a chance to make it around to help me.
“You modern girls,” he mutters, reaching the passenger side to find me already standing on the pavement. He offers me the crook of his elbow and I take it reluctantly, my fingers brushing the shiny material of his suit jacket as lightly as possible.
Inside, amid the buzz of talk and clink of cutlery, the restaurant is a trendy mix of beige and cream with plain, sanded wood floors and leather, high-back chairs. The walls are bare except for a few modern paintings, the wood tables covered with simple, white linen cloth. An aroma of freshly cooked fish and red wine laces the air. Despite the company, my tummy rumbles in anticipation.
A maître d’ walks toward us, holding out a hand to Gerhard. “Mr. Johnson,” he says warmly, grasping his hand. “I’ve reserved your usual table. This way, please.”
The sweet relief at being released from the arm holding is short-lived. He stands back, allowing me to walk ahead, and as the waiter ushers us through, I feel his large hand between my shoulder blades. Immediately, my thoughts go to Logan and the gentle fingers at the back of my waist, his green eyes wide with a look that seemed to ask Is this okay?
I swallow my melancholy like a bitter pill as we are led to a secluded area at the back of the dining room. There is a folding screen to one side of the arch that can be closed for privacy, and for one terrible moment, I think the waiter means to pull it across. I hold my breath while he fusses with a bottle of champagne and hands us two supersized menus. It’s only when he leaves, making no attempt to close the concertina-like folds, that I allow myself the luxury of exhaling.
The vampire pours golden bubbles into tall flutes, holding one out for me to take. I remember the last time I drank champagne. The contrast between then and now is so jarring that a wave of horror rises up inside me, dark and impenetrable, like a wall. I may never feel that way again.
I snatch the glass from his outstretched hand and tip back my head. Gerhard is left, arm poised in midair, while I throw the entire contents down my throat in one gulp.
“I hope I don’t make you nervous,” he purrs, eyes lit up with amusement. To my absolute horror, I feel a hand brush against my knee. In reflex, I jerk it upward, hitting the table and making the cutlery and glasses rattle.
I’m all out of good manners. “Don’t touch my leg again and we’ll get along fine,” I snap.
Rather than act offended, he grins. “I like my women with a bit of spirit.” With a fleshy finger, he gestures to the menu in front of me. “I highly recommend the crab.”
I hold the menu in front of my face, using the brief respite from his ogling to give myself a mental pep talk. Get it together, Silver. Ask about Clegg and get out of here.
“I’ll have the crab then,” I say, shrugging out of my cropped jacket. His heavy-lidded eyes land directly on the line of my cleavage and I lean back in the chair, putting as large a gap as possible between us. Ignoring the leer, I force a smile onto my face. “Tell me about your nightclubs.”
Like most people, he seizes the opportunity to hop on board the me train. “Well, I’m not sure they would be appreciated by bookish types like yourself, actually. They’re both gentlemen’s clubs, you see?”
Lap dancing. Could this guy get any sleazier? If it wasn’t for the fact the police are funding my account these days, I would seriously consider asking V-Date for a refund. “Is there much of a market for those places in Zurich and Johannesburg?”
He smirks, fish eyes trailing across my body like a grope in the dark. “Isn’t there always a market for beautiful girls, Jenna?”
It is the first time he’s used my fake name all evening. Too bad both myself and my alter ego are out of patience. “For men like you, I suppose there is.”
His eyes narrow, a flash of anger sparking to life in their cold, blue depths. “And what kind of man is it you think I am?”
Reaching forward, I grab the champagne bottle and top up my empty glass. “Confident and wealthy. Used to having his own way.”
“Well, you got that right,” he says, eyes flashing. “I always get my own way.”
Just then, the waiter returns with his little electronic tablet, stylus poised. “For mademoiselle?” he asks.
Quick as lightning, Gerhard snatches our menus up and thrusts them unceremoniously into the waiter’s chest. His gaze remains fixed on my face. “She’ll have the crab and so will I. Bring another bottle of champagne along with it.”
My mouth drops open. Dad always says you can tell everything you need to know about a person by the way they treat waitstaff in restaurants.
“Do you date much?” I ask him, brow slanted in what Logan once referred to as my mark of scorn.
He unravels a thick napkin with his plump fingers. “Yes. Can’t you tell?”
“Do you always have to answer a question with a question?” I ask, irritation leaking into my voice.
“Why?” he replies, tucking the white cloth into his collar bib-style. “Does it bother you?”
The mask slips. I can no longer disguise the rage simmering within me. “Will you excuse me?” I say icily, slipping my jacket on and grabbing my clutch bag. “I need to use the bathroom.”
He doesn’t stand the way dates have in the past when I’ve gotten up to go to the ladies’. He leers instead, puffy eyes fixed on my rear end as I follow the restroom signs to a door in the corner of the restaurant.
As soon as it swings shut behind me, I sag against the wall and breathe a massive sigh of relief. There is no way I’m going back out there. My limit has been reached. I push open the door to the ladies’, praying there’s a sizable window to make my getaway.
No such luck. Apart from a tiny air vent high up on the stone-tiled wall, the place is sans exit. For my troubles, I snatch the shiny bottle of Mo
lton Brown hand soap next to the sink and shove it in my bag.
Old habits die hard.
Stepping back into the corridor, I decide to try my luck in the men’s. The room, however, is an exact mirror image of the female bathroom. It even has the same air vent above the hand driers. I consider going through the restaurant and blatantly ditching him, but something tells me that might be a bad idea. If he did follow me out onto the street, I don’t stand a hope of outrunning him. Then where would I be? Sneaking out is by far my best option.
The only other door is the cleaning cupboard. I know this because there is a yellow-and-black warning sign stuck on at eye level, reading CLEANING MATERIALS ONLY. Closing my eyes in silent prayer, I pull at the handle. When I open them, I find myself looking into a dark room with a small window. The milky-blue glow of the moon shines through the frosted glass like a mirror.
“Thank you, Jesus,” I mutter, pulling on a white cord by the door and blinking against the bright, yellow light that floods the room.
Letting the door swing closed behind me, I clamber over bottles of bleach and toilet paper, desperate to put this whole sorry evening behind me. There’s a dreadful moment when I reach the window and think it’s not going to open. It’s a couple of feet in height, half that in width, with a metal rod running horizontally across the center. I flip the rod up and push. Nothing happens. Then I realize it opens from the middle. I force the glass until it pivots back on itself, cutting the space into two halves. My relief at it not being stuck is short-lived by the realization I only have a square foot to wriggle through. Not quite the exit I hoped for, but then, none of this evening has exactly gone as planned.
Tilting the window so it’s fully horizontal, I toss my bag out and step onto one of the white boxes piled up next to the wall. I poke my head through the gap, inhaling a delicious lungful of nighttime air. Despite the cooking smells wafting out of the kitchen a little farther down, freedom tastes pretty sweet.
The only problem now is that my shoulders won’t fit between the panes. I pull back out, pushing my arms ahead of me, Superman style. As the cardboard boxes start to give way beneath my feet, I dive forward, biting my lip against a wave of pain as my tummy grazes the edge of the window. Once my head and torso are through, my hips are the next inconvenience. They jar against the frame, leaving my body hanging half-in, half-out.
I try not to imagine what I must look like.
Using the outside wall to push against, I thrash violently, twisting my body from side to side like a giant cork stuck in a bottle. Thankfully, the satin material of my skirt works in my favor. After a few moments, gravity takes over, popping me out onto the ground in an undignified heap.
I scramble to my feet and dust myself off. My hands are grazed and my tummy hurts from where it struck the windowpane, but all in all, it could be worse—I could still be sitting indoors with Mr. Euro Creep. Snatching up my purse, I look around the shadowy backyard for a gap in the redbrick wall.
It’s at this point I realize I’m not alone. Gerhard the vampire is standing just a few meters away, hands thrust into his trouser pockets, a brow quirked in smug amusement.
My eyes widen as he smiles, moonlight reflecting off long, pointed canines, eyes flashing like cold, dead stars. “To think,” he says, taking a step across the cracked concrete, “that I was going to have to wait until the end of the evening to get you alone.”
A cold trickle of panic drips down my spine, my heart freezing to ice in my chest. I taste fear, as sharp as a copper coin on my tongue. Remembering my self-defense classes, I force my chin into the air. “I lost an earring,” I say. My voice belies my fear, sounding wobblier than the knees knocking together beneath my pencil skirt.
He takes another step across the deserted backyard. “You weren’t wearing any earrings,” he says in a deep, guttural voice that sounds distinctly less human than it did earlier.
I clear my throat. “Well, I think we should get back inside, don’t you? They’ll be serving up those crabs of ours by now.” Trying to be discreet, I dart glances around the gloomy yard, frantically searching for another exit. But the only gap in the wall is filled by Gerhard’s beefy frame. It’s only now he’s standing in front of me, blocking my escape route, that I notice just how large he is.
“There’s no way out,” he goads, inching ever closer, a cat stalking its prey. “You know something? You’ve been incredibly rude this evening. I’ve brought you to a Michelin-starred restaurant, provided you with champagne, indulged your idle chitchat, and you’ve humiliated me by crawling out of a bathroom window.”
“Cleaning cupboard, actually,” I mutter under my breath. I never did know when to shut my mouth.
His eyes flash with barely concealed rage. “I rather think you’d better start making it up to me. Don’t you?”
Meeting his glacial stare, I decide I have two options—run or scream.
In the end, I do both.
Beyond the window I crawled through is a set of double doors that must lead to the restaurant kitchens. A thin halo of light glows around the edges of the doors, a faint rumble of voices coming from inside. Spinning as fast as I can and screaming my head off the whole time, I pelt across the concrete toward them. I’m pulling back my fists to hammer on the plain black doors when rough hands grab the back of my jacket, lifting me from my feet.
For a second, I’m suspended midair, dangling like a terrified puppet in a useless bundle of limbs. Then with a grunt, the vampire spins around, hurling me across the yard into the wall on the other side.
My back hits the wall full on, the wind knocked from my lungs as I slide down the brick like a melting snowball. At first, the struggle for breath consumes me, the pain burning through my body muted by shock. It isn’t long, however, before my brain catches up. Gray dots dance across my vision as a dizzying throb of agony explodes at the base of my spine. From the building, a security light flickers to life, and within its white glare, a shadow falls across me. I look up, gasping for breath and almost blinded by pain, into the gloating face of Gerhard. Oddly enough, it hasn’t occurred to me until this moment that I might die here, murdered by a vampire. I feel detached, as if I’m watching myself in a dream. I wonder if this is how everyone feels before they die.
A fleshy hand closes around my throat, dragging me to my feet and pinning me to the wall, his eyes shimmering like broken glass. As he leans toward me, I smell aftershave on him and, now that he’s closer, the metallic tang of blood. “No,” he says menacingly. “I’m afraid I’m not quite done with you yet.”
A lizard-like tongue emerges from pulpy lips, sliding across the jagged points of his canines, and I stare, transfixed with terror, eyes bulging, as he moves closer. Perhaps it’s the sight of his fangs about to sink into my flesh or the shock wearing off at last, but suddenly, I jolt to life. I struggle against him, my hands thumping against his chest, thrashing my head from side to side. I try, unsuccessfully, to bring a knee into his groin, but he only laughs, tightening his grip and shaking his head, as if I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum in a supermarket. I try to scream but find I can’t, his hand tight as a noose around my throat.
I’m so consumed by my escape efforts that I don’t notice another dark shadow fall across us. I hear the noise first—a swishing, like a bird in flight cutting through the air, followed by the sound of flesh tearing from bone, and for a split second, I think it’s me, that I’ve been killed and my senses haven’t caught up. Next comes a hissing sound, like steam from a kettle whistling at my ear. The grip on my neck loosens, drops away completely. I try to focus on the vampire, only to find he isn’t there. I slide down the wall, my legs giving out under me, and it’s only now I see it—his body, fizzing and shrinking on the ground—headless.
There is a surprised cry in a familiar Irish brogue. “Silver?”
I notice a figure above me—flashing eyes; thick, dark hair; dimples.
I gasp. “Logan!”
Chapter 17
Logan
The last time I saw Gerhard Johnson was over 150 years ago, at Anastasia’s house on Cherry Garden Street. I remember the night she brought him back, leading him like a show pony across the shiny, black-and-white-tiled hallway of her lavish home. Even though he was filthy—hair and skin color indiscernible beneath a thick layer of grime—and smelling badly of excrement, she beamed like she’d hit the jackpot.
“Sentenced to hang for murder in the morning,” she said, her voice ringing like a golden bell around the room. “What an excellent find.”
His sly, pale eyes glowed, hollow with greed. Like most of her other finds, I disliked him instantly.
I sit on the opposite side of the room, nestled discreetly into a corner of the bar with a glass of malt whiskey. I didn’t want malt whiskey, or anything for that matter. But the barman insisted if I’m going to loiter, I should at least buy a drink. So here I am, overpriced spirits in hand, watching a murderer sitting alone at a table across the room. Despite the modern suit, he looks just like he did all those years ago—a toad-like head disappearing into his neck like a cut of boiled ham, heavy-lidded eyes that are growing darker and angrier with each passing moment.
When I arrived, I assumed he’d been stood up. But then I noticed the half-empty champagne glass on the table opposite, the chair pushed back as if someone left in a hurry, and the way he keeps darting glances toward the toilets in the back corner of the restaurant. Clearly the standing-up part is unraveling before my eyes. It’s nice to see he hasn’t lost his touch with women. Jenna Gold must be an excellent judge of character.
Like Ronin said, I need to be creative with this date. It won’t simply be a case of waiting near her house like it was that night with Silver. I will have to follow her—though if she’s given him the slip already, there isn’t a lot I can do.
The guy behind the bar pushes a small glass bowl of peanuts under my nose. “Face it, mate. You’ve been stood up.”