42nd & Lex

by Hofland, Bria

  “Wow. I had no idea. What about someone like Lucan, what would he do since he’s in a relationship?”

  “So he’s, um, eating take out?” I wrinkle my nose at the idea, thinking back to the sweet and sour sauce in the fridge. Max is starting to look anxious. “Geez, Abri, maybe you should have this conversation with Lucan. I don’t want to assume what he’s doing. There are several options for when that happens.”

  I know Lucan is partaking of someone else at the Enclave; he has to since I’m not feeding him. Having Max call it what it was, take out, makes me anxious. Jealous. “Well, he goes to the Enclave, I know that. But I just wondered what guys in his situation do if they aren’t getting it at home.” Now it sounds like Lucan is having an affair instead of dinner.

  “You mean if they aren’t dating another vampire or a Patron, or at least a willing participant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Typically they just take from the blood reserves, or, if they have a long standing Patron, they might continue to use them. It’s not like all Patron relationships are sexual or anything. Most are quite anonymous actually. I mean, it’s not like you have a conversation with your cheeseburger before you eat it, right?”

  “True,” I laugh. “Well, thanks for the info. And I’m really glad I can tell you stuff now. Since I know you have to keep their secrets, and I do too, I suppose.”

  “Just be careful, Abri.” Max warns again. “Lucan is good, but there are a lot of his kind that aren’t. Most of them are like that Serge idiot under the surface.”

  “I will be. Speaking of which, I had better get to work on the Ainsworth case. Want to come to court with me Monday? I could use the help.”

  “Sure. I haven’t suited up for court in a while. I just bought a new suit, charcoal grey pinstripe, that will be perfect.”

  There is the Max I know and love. “Great. I’m going to review their financials. Why don’t you see what kind of dirt you can drag up on Mark Ainsworth and his attorney, Virgil Hicks?”

  “The vampire attorney?” Max gasps. “I mean he works for vampires, but he’s not one. Or at least he didn’t used to be.”

  “One in the same.” It makes sense that Max would know that working in the legal field and being a Patron.

  “Is Mark a vampire?” Max asks, cautiously.

  I toss around whether or not I should tell Max about Mark. If he is going to come to court with me he might as well know, especially if Lucan decides to come too.

  “Sorta. He’s a Halfling. We don’t know who tried to turn him but it happened a few months ago. Sarah doesn’t know and I'm not going to be the one to tell her. I found out when Mark broke into Lucan’s apartment. I'm not sure why, other than he wanted to meet me after he was served with the papers and found out I was there. He’s kinda retarded or something on account of being a Halfling and not full vampire. Lucan says his brain’s rotting from the venom.”

  I pause to reflect on just how ridiculous this all sounds. Sure, Lucan and I had discussed it and it didn’t sound so strange then, but telling someone else made it sound crazy. Even someone who knew that what I am talking about is one hundred percent real.

  “Well, that explains why he’s hired Hicks. Whoever made him a Halfling probably put the two in touch.” His voice tells me he’s leery of coming to court with me now and even more leery of my involvement with Lucan.

  “I just wish we knew who that was.”

  “Maybe it was the valet guy that tried to kill you last night. Think about it, Mark shows up after he gets served with your divorce paperwork. Working at the Enclave, that Serge guy would have access to member’s information and he saw you with Lucan the other night. He probably told Mark where to go when he saw your name on the petition. Maybe he doesn’t like you messing with his progeny. That happens sometimes,” Max says, almost as an afterthought. “I’ll go get started on the digging. I want to be out of here by three and enjoy my weekend.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  After Max connected the Serge and Mark dots, it’s all I can do to concentrate on Sarah’s file. It’s just too close to be a coincidence. Lucan is probably too strong for Serge to go after directly, but I make an easy target and Mark makes a convenient scapegoat. Who wouldn’t suspect an estranged husband of attacking or killing his wife’s divorce lawyer? Although, I don’t think Serge’s interest in hurting me has anything to do with me messing with his progeny. Serge didn’t seem like the type to care about others.

  When Mark broke into the apartment, he had been babbling that I was “just as pretty as he said you were.” The he could be Serge. The bits and pieces I remember from the conversation between Lucan and Serge last night seem to fit that implication as well. Serge wants me and not necessary for a girlfriend, at least not in the long term. The thought sickens me.

  It is almost three o’clock by the time I have enough ammunition from Sarah and Mark’s financials to use at the hearing. I reach into my purse for my cell to call Lucan only to realize it isn’t there. The last place I remember having it was in my apartment last night. I must have forgotten to grab it in my foggy state. Maybe Lucan will go back over and pick it up for me. I’m certainly not going back there any time soon. I dial him on the office line instead.

  “Hey,” he answers.

  “Hey,” I reply. “I'm on my way up in a few. You home?”

  “Yes, love. I’ll come down and get you.”

  “That’s okay. Max is still here. He will walk me to the elevator. He was a Patron, did you know that?” I ask, not really knowing what kind of answer to expect.

  “Aye.” His reply is hesitant and full of worry. “I guess we have a lot to talk about tonight don’t we?”

  “Yup. See you in a bit.” I hang up before he can argue with me about heading upstairs alone. He must be in shock or he would have at least fought me a little.

  “You ready to go?” Max asks from the doorway. “I've got some good leads on Hicks and Ainsworth. I summarized and emailed them to you. God, that man is shady. Hicks I mean, not Mark. He’s a boy scout, not so much as a parking ticket.”

  “Thanks. I kinda figured as much, on both of them. Just let me put all this stuff back in the file. I'm going to take it upstairs with me.”

  Max and I walk to the elevators and push the buttons for our intended routes of travel. “It’s nice not to have to ride the elevator down to the lobby and go back up again,” I say to fill the silence while we wait. “You probably weren’t going to buy that I forgot something and needed to go back up again.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing these last few weeks?”

  “Yeah, just to keep up appearances. When you and Lindsey saw me coming from the service elevator, I was coming up from the parking garage. Lucan gave me a car to use.” I give him an apologetic smile and shrug.

  “Wow,” is all Max replies. “Wow.”

  Our elevators arrive before he can say anything else. After Max is sure no one else is inside mine, he hugs me goodbye and gets in his own car. “See you Monday in court,” I say, waving goodbye. “It will be fun.”

  “Ah, yeah, right. Please be careful, Abri. This is some scary shit you’re playing with,” he says as the doors shut.

  Playing with? I’m not playing with anything. Sure, I might not have met Serge if I hadn’t gone to the Enclave with Lucan, but I would have still run into Mark when Sarah hired me to do her divorce. So Serge would still be in the picture. At least this way I have Lucan by my side. The thought of facing Mark and Serge without knowing what they were, without Lucan, makes my stomach heave again.

  Once upstairs, I take off my shoes and look under the bed for my slippers but they are nowhere to be found. “Lucan, have you seen my slippers? I had them on last night when we came back.”

  “Go look in the closet, love,” he calls from the guest bathroom next to the kitchen. “I'm just cleaning up. Zaid and Amelia are coming over tonight.”

  “Great! I need to apologize to them for my antics last night. Are we
going out again?” I yell, unnecessarily, from the closet. My slippers are on a shelf next to my Jimmy Choos and the few other pairs of shoes I’d brought over this week. Lucan has cleared off a space for me in the closet and hung up my clothes, including my holey sweats, next to his. Wow.

  “I hope it’s okay,” he says from behind me. “I thought it was stupid to leave your things in a bag like you were a guest here or something. I cleared you a drawer in the bathroom too.”

  “It’s great. Thank you. So I'm not a guest here anymore?” I smile.

  “Nope, you’re…family—uh, well, that doesn’t sound right, does it? One wouldn’t do this to family.” He bends down to kiss me, lifting me into his arms.

  “I would hope not. I understand what you mean though. We’ve reached the bathroom/dresser drawer phase of our relationship. And in under a month, that has to be a world record.”

  Lucan kisses my neck as he carries me towards the bed. That’s all it takes and a delightful shiver runs down my spine, pooling in my belly. Before we can go any further, the iron beast starts up across the room announcing Zaid and Amelia’s arrival. With a sigh, Lucan sets me back down. While he goes to greet our guests I put my shoes back on and comb my hair. My face is flushed but not too bad. I hear the grate sliding open on the elevator and Zaid’s voice fills the room.

  “I thought we were free of these rat trap lifts here in America! I hate these things, the size of a cracker box. Amelia wanted to move into a building on the fourth floor. It took five minutes to chug up in that bastard just to take a look at the place. No way,” he rants. I can hear Amelia’s soft laugh as I open the bathroom door. Lucan is laughing too.

  “There she is!” Zaid booms. “How you feeling today, Mitra?” In the short time I had spent around Zaid, I had learned he liked to use foreign words when he spoke English. Mitra is Sanskrit for friend. I Googled that last night after he’d used it the first time. I wonder if he uses English words when he speaks Sanskrit, or if he even speaks Sanskrit.

  I hear Lucan stifle a giggle. He’s listening in. “Better. My head is a little sore, but I’ll live. I think my cell phone has gone missing though. I meant to tell you that earlier, Lucan. I can’t find it.”

  “I think you are in the market for a new one, my dear,” Zaid says, pulling a squashed black square from his coat pocket. “I found it this morning when I went back to check your apartment. I rekeyed the locks as well.” He hands me the remains of my Blackberry and a new set of keys.

  “Thank you, Zaid. That was sweet of you.” I take the phone and keys from him. “Here,” I say, handing Lucan one of the keys on the ring. “This one is yours.”

  He takes the key from my hand and as our fingers touch, I hear him think that it isn’t necessary and that I should just move in here with him. The man never ceases to amaze me. This is an even bigger jump than a bathroom drawer, one I’m not sure I’m entirely ready for. “We’ll talk later,” I think back.

  “So, kids, what are we doing tonight?” Amelia asks. She’s been quiet so far and I can’t help but wonder if she’s mad at me for my behavior last night, or at least disappointed. After all Lucan is her friend and I walked out on him. “I am starving, what about you, Abri?”

  I decide to let that go for now and enjoy the evening— after I apologize. “Totally. But first, I want to apologize to you two. I was a total spaz last night. Forgive me?”

  “Oh, Abri, of course!” Amelia exclaims and Zaid nods in agreement. “Like I said, I didn’t really take it in stride when Zaid told me about it all either. And I apologize for being tight lipped when we were waiting last night. I knew you probably wouldn’t take it any better than I did and we’d just met. I didn’t want you to hate me. I hope you don’t hate me now, actually.” Oh geez, she is worried about the same things I am.

  “Apology accepted! I could never hate you, either of you. I’m just glad to have someone else to talk to about all this and that you’re not mad at me. This is not really something I can tell my other friends.”

  “Well, any questions you have, I will do my best to answer,” Amelia confirms. “How about Zaid and I make you some Italian food and we crack open a bottle of wine or two?” Amelia hugs me and wipes her eyes. I can tell they are happy tears.

  “Sounds good to me. Lucan?”

  “Aye, I can never pass up Zaid’s cooking. Abri, would you come with me to the wine cellar?” he winks.

  “Okay. I didn’t know you had one of those here.”

  Lucan and I take the stairs down one level to what had been the lounge area of the Cloud Club. Lucan has sectioned the floor off into several guest suites and a weight room but the Club’s original bar still dominates the center of the space. During Prohibition, the back of the bar was outfitted with lock boxes to hide the members’ hooch. Lucan has transformed the boxes into a giant wine rack. He reaches for a set of antique keys hanging on a peg behind the bar and opens one of the lockers. Inside is a very old looking bottle of wine.

  “This one just happened to be here when I renovated the place. It’s a rare vintage. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

  “I think having your friends in town is special enough. Can’t you just picture stodgy old businessmen smoking cigars in here and drinking bootleg whiskey? We should throw a party down here sometimes. I mean, when things aren’t so crazy,” I say, running my hand along the polished wood of the bar.

  “The special occasion is that I didn’t lose you,” Lucan replies, ignoring my party suggestion. Which doesn’t really matter since a long kiss accompanies his response.

  “How could I leave? We are meant to be, right? I was stupid to run away last night. It is just so much to take in and I haven’t been able to tell anyone, not Linds or Max. Well, Max knows some stuff now, but not the really important stuff. Or at least the important stuff he didn’t already know.” I am rambling.

  Lucan scoops me up and sets me down on the bar, my knees are now at his waist and I open them to allow him closer. I play with the buttons on his shirt. He looks like he wants to say something important.

  “Abri, I understand why you left. I should have handled it better and told you myself. I hate that you feel like you can’t talk to anyone about us. I know that Max knows who I am and what I am. As for Lindsey, I will let you use your judgment on that one. Vampires are secret by nature but I'm not ashamed or fearful. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Linds and Max will be easy compared to telling my mother. But that is so far down the line, I can’t even think about it right now. Linds will probably be cool. She’s really into Charlaine Harris and J.R. Ward romance novels so this is totally in her realm of believability. I have a question though…”

  “Aye…” Lucan raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Where do you get the blood from? I mean, I know from the Enclave, a Patron, but Max said—” Lucan cuts me off with a finger to my lips. The amps tingle and I brush his hand away to rub my lips.

  “So Max told you what a Patron does and you’re worried I'm seeing someone else on the side.”

  I nod, still rubbing my numb lips.

  “Remind me to punch Max in the arm next time I see him, will you,” Lucan says, not really meaning it. “I get the blood from the Reserves. It’s like a regular blood bank. I have no idea who donates it and I don’t really want to know. I have not had a Patron in a long time. I never liked taking it from another person, willing or otherwise. It’s too barbaric…too intimate. Once they perfected blood drawing and storage methods that kept it like live blood I gave up free feeding, as they call it.”

  I have been absent-mindedly running my fingers under the edge of the old wooden bar while we talked and my finger has met with a rather nasty splinter. It prompts me to ask my next question, one I’ve wanted to ask since our first date. “Would you ever take it from me?”

  Suddenly it is very hard to look Lucan in the eye. My heart is thundering in my chest and I feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Lucan looks as if he hadn’t
seen that coming. He must not have been listening in. He stops breathing and stills. Only his eyes dart around the room, looking anywhere but at me.

  “Abri, it’s not that simple.”

  “Isn’t it?” I lift my hand from the edge of the bar and rest my bleeding fingertip on his lips. Lucan springs backwards into the wine lockers wiping his mouth furiously. His eyes are red and his breathing has come back online with a vengeance. He is wild with fear. Not anger, but fear. “I’m sorry Lucan. It was a bad idea. I'm sorry,” I sputter.

  His eyes flash back to blue. “It’s okay. I didn’t get any in my mouth.” He is still wiping furiously.

  “What! I know you just said that taking blood was barbaric and intimate, but we aren’t exactly strangers, Lucan. You think I'm your friggin’ soul mate for christsake.” Offended, I make a move to get off the bar but he stops me.

  “You are my soul mate and that’s why I can’t take your blood, not yet at least.” He gathers me into his arms and I yield. “I’m sorry, love. I haven’t told you enough about this Sodalis thing.”

  “Start talking,” I reply. It sounds harsher than I intended and I squirm in his arms, trying to put some distance between us. I fail miserably. Lucan is at least a hundred times stronger than I am without even trying.

  “So first off we are Sodali, true?” he begins, relaxing his grip on me. “And we’ve already bonded ourselves with sex. So if we were to exchange blood…”

  “The trifecta, right?” I interrupt, quoting his words to me from after we had sex for the first time.

  “Right. And if we seal that bond without completing the Sodali ceremony I’m S.O.L.,” he finishes.

  “There is a ceremony?”

  “Yeah, but let’s not worry about that just yet. I'm sure Zaid and Amelia have dinner about prepared by now. Let’s go back up.” He steps away from me as if our touching might reveal some thought of his he doesn’t want to share. I have a few thoughts I want to share with him, but they are of the kind my mother would have told me to keep to myself, so I don’t. This Trifecta crap is infuriating.