by Molly Harper
“Good! I’m so glad. We miss you around the hall. New Dawn just isn’t the same without your cheerful presence.”
I kept my face pleasant, but I couldn’t help but wonder where this was coming from. I was pretty sure that Tina hadn’t spoken to me directly before I was turned. It’s not like she’d sent me a care package to Jane’s house. Hell, I’d barely thought of her, with the exception of those wonky financial reports she’d sent us.
Wait.
I couldn’t ask about the financials, because I couldn’t quote the numbers out of my head, and I still didn’t know whether the number fudging was Council-sanctioned or not. But I could ask her about the other weird discrepancy that came up in my paperwork overload. It would satisfy my morbid curiosity and show Tina that I was a semi-grown-up professional with work duties—who didn’t need adult “friends” checking in on her via invasive social media, thank you very much.
I smiled brightly. “Actually, Tina, I’m glad you called, because I had a question for you.”
Tina’s face practically glowed with pleasure. “Shoot. I’m here for you, anything you need.”
“You know that I’ve been working at the Council office to fill my hours, acting as Jane Jameson-Nightengale’s personal assistant?”
Tina’s expression faltered just the tiniest bit. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“And last month, you asked Ophelia to submit a list of her contacts in the area.”
Tina nodded. “Yes, I got an e-mail from Jane asking for a list of her contacts.”
I pursed my lips. Because Jane specifically said she’d never sent Tina such an e-mail. Something was weird here. And some suspicious itch at the back of my head wouldn’t let me drop it.
“Well, Ophelia responded to that request by sending Jane a pretty rude e-mail.”
Tina cringed. “Well, that’s not good.”
“Yeah, the response e-mail has to go into her disciplinary file,” I said, deliberately leaving out the part where Jane considered the e-mail too minor to punish Ophelia. “We have to document every little thing around here. You know how vampires are about keeping records.”
“Sure.”
“So can you send me a copy of your e-mail?” I asked. “I would print it off from our system, but somehow it got deleted from our server. Our IT department tends to purge anytime someone’s Internet activity gets the least bit suspicious.”
“I’m not sure I still have it,” Tina said. “I empty my in-box pretty often.”
Tina’s expression faltered for just a microsecond. I couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or fear that rearranged her face. From what I’d seen while living at New Dawn, Tina jumped at any chance to prove her loyalty and usefulness to any vampire who crossed her path. Why was she being so slow to jump on an opportunity to do a favor for the head-vampire-bitch-in-charge? Or was she afraid because she’d deleted the e-mail and thought Jane would be upset with her for not saving what could be an important communication?
“Well, just give your in-box a look and see if you can find it,” I said.
“Sure thing!” Tina chirped. “So you know, if you need anything—anything at all—you can always call me.”
“Just make sure Morgan and Keagan are doing OK, and Ophelia. They play it tough, but they’re basically people-shaped marshmallows.”
“I will,” she said. “Talk to you soon, Meagan.”
“Thanks, Tina.”
Andrea was nice enough to drive me home to River Oaks, which gave me time to mull over my conversation with Tina. My chat with Morgan and Keagan had been fun and far less perplexing—student government scandals, Homecoming, follow-up stories on the off-campus fire that amounted to no one knowing where the unidentified bodies came from and no one coming forward to claim missing relatives. But Tina’s information I didn’t know how to process. If Jane hadn’t asked her for the list of Ophelia’s contacts, why would Tina make the request? Could someone else at the Council office have done so through Jane’s e-mail account without her knowing? The Council seemed to have pretty tight IT security, and Jane made it a point not to leave her computer or her office door unlocked. Maybe this was something I should discuss with Ben before I went to Jane with my suspicions. Because that was all I had right now, suspicions, and I didn’t want Jane to think I was some hyperreactive Nancy Drew wannabe and therefore unqualified for this job. Not because I loved my job so much but because I had no idea what she would reassign me to.
I came through the door and called, “I’m home!” before I even thought about it. Georgie and Gabriel were still waiting for Jane and Ben to return from work.
“Dinner’s ready. We’ll sit down as soon as our wayward workaholics get here,” Gabriel told me, taking my bag.
“Did you get all of your homework done?” Georgie asked slyly, bouncing on her toes at the foot of the stairs.
“You know, you could enjoy the fact that I have homework a little less,” I responded, taking the stairs two at a time.
“It’s a cool, breezy fall evening, ripe with potential prey, and you spent your night at a bookstore, typing an essay on the economics of preindustrial England and its impact on literary culture. No, I don’t know if I could enjoy that more,” Georgie tossed back as I cleared the landing.
“Keep it up, and I’ll tell Jane what happened to the creepy china shepherdess in the parlor,” I whispered, just loudly enough for Georgie to hear.
Her jaw dropped. “That was an accident! Well, not so much an accident as a happy coincidence, but— You promised you wouldn’t tell!”
“Did I?” I whispered.
“Georgie, please stop teasing Meagan and set the table,” Gabriel called from the kitchen.
Georgie pointed an imperious finger at me. “This isn’t over!”
Laughing, I hustled into my room. Jane and Gabriel had clearly sunk a lot of money into renovating their upstairs bathrooms, putting luxurious showers even in the guest bath. I turned on the overhead rain shower and combined it with the body jets, sighing as the hot water washed over my skin. This was definitely superior to the communal showers back at the dorm.
I reached for my loofah and the body wash that Iris had mixed up for me, a soothing blend of jasmine and cassis meant to calm my nerves. She’d made something for Ben, too, but he was sticking to some body gel he liked because the commercials made him laugh. I flipped the cap of Ben’s bottle and sniffed. It wasn’t quite his scent, but it held a little bit of him, and I inhaled deeply.
Yeah, I had it bad for this guy.
This was embarrassing.
I stepped out of the shower and slipped into my fluffy blue terry robe; the first adjustment one made to dorm living was never going to bathe without outerwear. Outside, tires crunched over the gravel driveway. Downstairs, I could hear Gabriel on the phone, speaking German with someone. Georgie was taking advantage of her limited video-game time. I opened the door a bit to let the steam vent from the room.
“I’m just going to run upstairs,” Ben called.
I chewed on my lip, considering my reflection, and then dropped the robe.
I walked out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around my chest, steam billowing around me like something out of a 1980s rock video.
Ben had a carry-out blood cup in his hands and was sipping the dregs through a straw. He dropped it onto the floor, making the tiniest splash on the hardwood.
“Hey, are you just getting back from work?” I asked brightly, adjusting my towel.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah.”
“Long day?” I leaned against the doorframe and tilted my head, drawing attention to the long line of my neck. Because apparently, I was sort of mean to boys who liked me and spent weeks jerking my emotional chains about it.
“Mmmm-hmm,” he mumbled.
“Well, dinner will be ready in a few. I’ll see you downst
airs,” I said, passing by him.
And just by the way his mouth hung open, I could tell that the steam that followed me down the hall carried the floral sweetness of my body wash and my own natural aroma, the scent of his sire.
“Did you find a way for us to spend unsupervised time together yet?” I asked.
He shook his head, and a series of nonsensical clicks and syllables came tumbling out of his mouth.
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders, feeling the towel slip just a bit. “That’s too bad.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sight of Ben’s face, which would have been the perfect gif for “mental grabby paws.” I smiled sweetly and closed my bedroom door with a snap behind me. I covered my face with my hands, laughing silently.
That was the most evil thing I’d done since becoming a vampire. It wasn’t much on the grand scale of undead evil, but it was mine, and I would claim it. I pressed an ear to the door, hoping to hear if Ben had any sort of response.
“Oh, you want to play naked. I can play naked,” he grumbled.
I laughed even harder, pressing my fist into my mouth.
I heard Ben’s shoes drop to the floor, as if he was stripping out in the hallway to prove his point. I was rolling.
And then I heard Gabriel’s voice. “I don’t want you to play naked. I would like you to put more clothes on, for the sake of my own well-being. Now. Put several more layers of clothing on now. Right now.”
“Uh, we don’t have to tell Jane about this, right?” Ben asked after a long pause.
“We will never mention this again,” Gabriel told him. “This never happened. You’re just lucky Jane went out back to walk Fitz.”
I heard footsteps and assumed Gabriel was taking the stairs back to the kitchen.
Ben’s voice sounded just outside my door. “You’re not even sorry, are you?”
“Nope!”
11
Allow your childe the freedom to develop his or her problem-solving skills. But keep the Council’s “emergency disposal and cleanup” number handy, just in case.
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
Somehow Ben being left without pants or dignity in front of Gabriel wrung quite a bit of forgiveness out of my battered little heart. I felt like we were on even playing ground after that particular dinner, which involved the least amount of eye contact I’d seen out of either man since we’d moved in.
So when I found the little yellow Post-it on my desk asking me to meet Ben on the library subfloor, my response was to smile. I supposed that after he’d sacrificed his honor on the altar of semipublic nudity, he deserved some sort of rendezvous, even if it was on the office grounds.
I’d enjoyed the anticipation and the teasing until this point, but I was also ready for a little bit of fun. We’d been working hard for the Council. We’d kept our grades up. We’d been nice little vampires. Now it was time to do something a little naughty.
Fortunately, I’d worn some of my nicer panties today, black and purple lace, and a bra that more or less matched. I told Jane I would be taking my coffee break and made for the elevator. I pressed the button for the library floor and surreptitiously checked my breath. More than acceptable, thanks to the little bottle of Fang-Brite Mouthwash I kept in my desk drawer.
The doors opened to reveal a space with dark wood paneling and row upon row of oak bookshelves. I suspected that Jane had redecorated this floor because she couldn’t stand the idea of a bare, industrial space being called a library. She took all things book-related pretty seriously.
I scanned the rows of shelves but didn’t spot Ben anywhere. What should I do if I ended up waiting for him and some other vampire found me loitering on a floor where I really didn’t have an excuse to be? I heard the elevator ding and ducked behind the nearest shelf. I watched through the empty shelf space as Ben emerged from the elevator. He looked confused, staring at a yellow Post-it as if it contained cheat codes for how to never get caught in a communal area with your pants around your ankles by your foster sire.
I stepped out into the open and smiled. “Really? A Post-it on my desk? Are you morally opposed to the traceability of instant messages or trying to be ironic?”
Ben frowned and held up his own little yellow square. “You asked me to meet you here.”
“No, I didn’t. You asked me to meet you.”
Just then, Ben’s face shifted into an expression of horror. In his dark pupils, I could see the reflection of a white-gloved hand reaching over my shoulder. Before he could say anything, Dr. Hudson appeared behind Ben, latex gloves in place as he jabbed a needle into Ben’s neck. I opened my mouth to protest but felt a sharp sting in my own neck. I reached out to Ben, clutching at his arms as a wave of fatigue dragged me to my knees. Ben dropped to the floor with me, his head sagging against my shoulder.
“Just relax,” Dr. Hudson told us. “Let the drugs do their work, and this will be much more pleasant for you both.”
“I’m gonna rip your head off,” I told him. “And jam it up your own butt.”
“It will be fascinating to watch you try,” Dr. Hudson assured me as my eyelids drooped. The world tilted and faded to black, and I felt nothing.
I was standing with my face propped against a metal grate.
Why was my face propped against a metal grate?
I blinked the gummy remnants of makeup from my eyes and shook my still-fuzzy head. I coughed, rolling my sore shoulders against freezing, wet metal. Where the hell— I was outside? Why was I outside? And why was I asleep at night?
I heard a light snort beside me. Ben was standing with me. We were side by side in an upright metal mesh box, just wide enough for us to stand but too shallow for us to sit down. It was like a double coffin, which was not a comforting thought.
We’d been propped up in a huge, open tobacco field. The sky was lightening to purple with orange streaks. The plants were in full leaf, almost ready to be harvested, bouncing gently in the predawn breeze. And the air smelled pleasantly of smoke and earth.
If I weren’t certain that the rising sun was about to make me burst into flames, it would be a nice, calming scene, like something out of a Thomas Kinkade painting.
How did we get here? And who the hell put us in this box? Why did I keep waking up in weird places? Why was my head so fuzzy? Maybe it was time to reevaluate my life choices.
“Ben?” I tapped my hand against his. “Ben, wake up.”
“Ten more minutes, Mom,” he grumbled, wiping his hand over his face.
I sighed and stuck my finger in his ear, yanking on the lobe. He grumbled and tried to roll but woke when he found that he was standing, and, well, he was in a freaking metal box.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed.
“We’re in a box,” I told him.
“I can see that,” he said, glancing around. “Why are we in a box?”
We both struggled as much as we could in the confined space, banging our shoulders against the walls and rattling the door. Even with both of us throwing our weight around, the box remained upright.
“I honestly don’t know. I’m just glad it’s not made of silver,” I huffed. “This isn’t your ‘clever’ plan for finding a way for us to spend time away from River Oaks together, is it? Because this is not what I meant.”
“No,” he told me. “Phone. Do you have your phone? We could call for help.”
I searched my pockets and looked down at the empty cage around my feet. “Nope. I’m getting the feeling we’re not supposed to be able to call for help.”
“Maybe this is some sort of training exercise from Jane?” Ben said. “Like survival training, when they drop soldiers on the top of a mountain and expect them to get home safe?”
“I don’t think Jane would lock you up in a Saw murder box just to teach you life skills. The woman made you chocolat
e breakfast blood yesterday with a little chocolate syrup smiley face. That’s the vampire equivalent of cutting the crusts off your PB and J.”
“She likes you, too, you know,” Ben insisted. “You just don’t let her get close enough to make those little gestures.”
“Not the time, Ben.” I grunted, pushing at the door. Even with my superstrength, I couldn’t make it budge. I craned my neck to get a look at the latch. It was sealed with a padlock.
“Maybe we screwed up paperwork for the Council or something?”
“That seems extreme, even for the Council,” Ben said. “Besides, what are the odds we both screwed up paperwork that badly? You’re actually pretty good with the paperwork, from what I hear.”
“Good point,” I said through gritted teeth as I unleashed the full force of my biceps on the door. And suddenly, I remembered standing outside the elevator with Ben. The flash of movement behind him. A needle and the sting in my neck.
“Dr. Hudson,” I growled. “He lured us to the library and injected us. We were betrayed by Post-its.”
Ben groaned, smacking his forehead against the cage. “I told you. Only trust instant messages.”
“Yeah, yeah. Also, have you noticed that the sun is coming up?” I said, nodding at the horizon. “And we’re in a box that offers no sun protection.”
“I did notice that.”
I wriggled my hips so I could work my feet up on the door. I braced my back against the wall of the box and pushed. The metal groaned and gave a bit but definitely not enough for either of us to squeeze out.
“The padlock,” I said, nodding to the metal loop that was keeping the door pinned to the cage. “Think we can break it?”
“It’s a Master Lock,” he muttered as he propped his own butt against the back wall. “Who seals up a death trap with an unbreakable lock? That’s just a douchey thing to do.”
We put our feet against the door, extended our legs, and pushed as hard as we could. There was a loud groaning noise as the door buckled. Breathing hard—out of habit, really, and not need—we dropped our feet to the ground. I shoved at the door, but the latch and the lock were still pretty much intact. Maybe it was a special supernatural-strength Master Lock?