Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

by Vivienne Neas

  “Don’t come in tonight. Something urgent came up and I’m not going to be in the office. I gave Carl a night off too.” I’d completely forgotten about my so-called colleague. It usually felt like I was working the field alone. I hardly ran into the guy. Why hadn’t Ruben assigned him to Connor’s case if he thought I was making such a mess of it? Also, having a night off was a rarity.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Ruben said before I could ask and hung up the phone. A night off. I couldn’t remember when last that had happened. It sounded good for a moment. Until I started wondering what I would do with my time. What I would do for a release instead.

  I put more antiseptic cream on my wound, and then bandaged me leg up. It restricted my movement, which I hated, but with some luck it would be healed soon. I got dressed into jeans and a blouse. I let my hair loose for a change and left the apartment.

  I had a couple of errands to run. I’d run out of leather clothes and I wasn’t going to do the dirty in jeans. It just wasn’t that easy to get blood out of regular material. I also needed a quote on my paint job, I had to train with Sensei and I needed to get to a place where I could do research about the cat lady whose name I still didn’t know. I was running out of adjectives.

  I was getting tired of referring to her as my attacker. I would have much preferred to refer to her as my victim, but for that I’d need a leg up on what she was capable of.

  The rest of Friday was ridiculous. I went home with my bike booked in for a paint job, new leathers in plastic bags and absolutely nothing anywhere on women who had the abilities of Miss Mittens. I was miserable and tired, so instead of heading out, I took two sleeping pills and crawled under the pillows. As if my internal clock wasn’t messed up enough as it was.

  Saturday morning my cellphone pulled me out of a comatose kind of sleep with a shrill ring that made me want to throw it through the window. Instead I answered. No one said I had a lack of self-control.

  “What is it?”

  “This is Sonya,” her dull voice came over the phone. I realized she’d never phoned me before. I was usually in the office at sundown. If anything she sounded more boring than in person. I wondered if she had a life outside the office.

  “You work on weekends? You’re phoning me in the day.” I imagined her in a room with metal shutters and black curtains.

  She ignored my question. “Ruben has a meeting set up you need to attend,” she said.

  “You may work weekends, but I don’t.”

  “You had the night off,” she pointed out. Of course. Why would I think I’d get paid leave? “He wants you to meet with Miss Clemens today at noon.”

  “Miss Clemens the reporter?” The name at the bottom of the article Joel had shown me.

  “That’s the one.”

  “It’s daytime,” I said. Ruben and I had agreed, even though we both knew that I could head out in the day. I just didn’t want to.

  You’ll make a plan. Meet Ruben at Fiasco just before noon.”

  She hung up. I sighed and let the phone slide down onto the pillow. Great. If I knew I would trade my weekend for a Friday night off I would have refused and gone out anyway. I didn’t even know how I was going to get a hold of Connor to cancel with him. He would just have to suck it. Work came before vampires. This was besides that work was vampires.

  I rolled out of bed and crawled into the shower, swearing when the hot water stung enough to remind me of my leg. The edges were healed with new pink skin, but the graze was still quite big and it hurt. The hot water woke my body up slowly, and by the time I was finished I felt human again. I texted Aspen. I didn’t like skipping days, but I would see her tomorrow.

  I stood in front of my closet with a towel wrapped around my body, looking for something appropriate to wear. I wasn’t going to meet the snooping reporter in my killing clothes. There was nothing that screamed trouble like a woman like me with guns and leathers. I settled on jeans that could stretch to allow for the bandage I wrapped around my leg, a wine red blouse that made my hair color intense, and black sandals. The shoes were still in the original shoe box Aspen had given them to me in, three birthdays ago.

  I applied make-up and brushed my hair. I even went through the effort of putting on earrings. When I studied the final result in the mirror I didn’t look like myself at all. I looked like a business woman. A civilian. Someone who could have a completely different life. Pity that changing what I looked like didn’t change who I was.

  Fiasco was a coffee shop in the center across from the mall. It was the place everyone went to for business meetings because it opened at six in the morning before rush hour, and it offered the paper with a coffee and bagel as its morning special. When I arrived Ruben was already at a table. He wore suite pants and a collared shirt with a tie. The shirt was ironed and clean and he’d run a comb through his hair. I glanced down to see shiny black shoes instead of slippers.

  “You clean up nicely. You look human for a change,” Ruben said when I sat down.

  “I can say the same for you,” I responded coolly. He snorted.

  “I was scared you might arrive in your leathers.”

  “What kind of an accountant would I be if I wore leathers?”

  “That’s my girl,” Ruben said, smiling. I wanted to tell him how much I wasn’t his girl, but before I could another woman arrived at our table. She introduced herself and Celia Clemens, journalist for the Westham Gazette. I didn’t know why she bothered with the title. There was only one newspaper in town. The Gazette had a monopoly that claimed all the stories right off the bat. No competitors? Tough life.

  I looked at her carefully. She had mouse-brown hair pulled back in a low bun, and glasses with rims that stretched across half of her face. She had sharp features, almost pixie-like but something tugged at the back of mine. Something familiar. She wore an off-green dress suit that did nothing for her skin tone, and her eyes were a dark brown. Her clothes dated from a time-period that suggested she was rolling on to her forties, but her smooth skin and lack of smile-wrinkles told me otherwise. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty. I would bank on late twenties if the glossy quality of her skin was anything to go by. Not the gloss of riches, but the gloss of those who would live longer than others.

  “I appreciate you making the time to meet with me,” she said to Ruben in a sweet voice. Her words were lilted at the edges, but again there was something familiar about it. Almost like there was a veil between me and her, and if I could just remove it I would know I’d seen her before.

  “Of course, Miss Clemens,” Ruben answered, equally charming.

  “Celia, please,” she said and took a small notepad out of her briefcase.

  “I just have a couple of questions for you,” she said. She never made eye contact with me. I didn’t know if I should feel insulted or flattered.

  “Go on,” Ruben said, and Celia started her questioning. It was the standard stuff. What kind of business Ruben ran, how long he’d been doing it, how many employees, that sort of thing. I had no idea why she was bothering at all.

  “Word has it you operate at night, as well,” Celia said, and Ruben’s face closed.

  “We have a team that works overtime often,” he said. His voice was guarded. “It’s common knowledge that we employ vampires.”

  “You are pro-vampire then, I assume?”

  Ruben was everything but pro-vampire.

  “I do what is necessary to keep my company in the right circles. There are laws about everything these days, and who am I to keep someone out of business just because they’re…” he looked at me when he said the last word. “Different.”

  I could feel the tension in the air building like an electric storm. Ruben’s face was expressionless but I could smell his panic. Celia wasn’t throwing off any kind of emotion at all, and that had me on alert. People always threw off some kind of scent or emotions. Excitement, fear, sadness. Even something as simple as interest had a smell and a feel to it. Celia should have ha
d at least that. And she didn’t.

  “There are rumors doing the rounds that you’re the person to come to when someone has a problem.” Trouble.

  “We’ve always helped people with their finances, our main goal is to help our clients make ends meet.” It was a relatively smooth if he didn’t look so panicked.

  “Now, Mr. Cross. We both know that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

  “Do we?” he answered. Good for Ruben. He was starting to play this game the right way.

  “What do you do?” she suddenly turned to me, and her eyes sent a shock through my body that I couldn’t place but it wasn’t altogether unfamiliar. It made my fingertips tingle and my legs felt warm. This was not natural for a human.

  “I’m an accountant with Cross Ledger,” I answered without missing a beat. Ruben might have been panicking but I was ready for her. Miss Clemens was trying to hide who she really was. I did it all the time, I recognized the signs. The only question now was, who was she really?

  Celia had a glint in her eye. She sat back in her chair, like she didn’t have a care in the world, her one leg crossed over the other. Her skirt rode up a little, and on the skin just above her knee was a burn mark. A couple of days old, a scar now, it was red and flaring anymore.

  It caught my attention, and I knew right away that burn was out of place. Household accidents didn’t leave a scar like that. It was about three inches long and slightly off-kilter.

  “Miss Clemens,” I said, interrupting her questioning. Ruben looked relieved. She looked at me, annoyed. She wanted to be the one in control of this conversation. Too bad. When I looked into her eyes, I noticed the black was complete. The realization knocked me off-balance and I fought to maintain composure.

  “That looks like a painful burn mark on your leg,” I said. She looked down at her leg and tugged the skirt down to hide it.

  “Cooking accident,” she said. “I’m clumsy in the kitchen.” Sure. Straight burn marks, the length of a blade. What was she doing, kitchen gymnastics?

  Her eyes settled on mine again, and her words suddenly seemed too believable. Kitchen accidents happen all the time. I didn’t cook often, but burns are common in the kitchen. Stop it my mind shouted at her and I forced her out of it. I’d nailed her. There was only one person I’d run into that could play mind games like that.

  “I’ll bet you are,” I said. My voice was calm, but the atmosphere changed. It became thick, laced with warning and threat. I suddenly smelled her emotions. A powerful stench like flowers, the perfume-like smell that came after they’d been parched. I’d smelled that scent before. It was also laced with danger. No anger or fear, just trouble.

  “Where was I?” she asked Ruben but she was still looking at me.

  “You were talking about hidden identities and double lives,” I said without missing a beat. It wasn’t what she’d been talking about at all. I was calling her out. Ruben looked from me to Celia and back. He was starting to realize he’d missed something.

  I couldn’t be sure this was her. After all, this one had brown hair and the other had had white hair. But I had started running into creatures that could disguise themselves, and the only time I would believe what I was seeing, was never.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” she said. Her voice was confident. I didn’t think she fled because she was exposed. Her reaction wasn’t panicked. She was leaving because she’d found what she was looking for. Me.

  “Thank you for coming,” Ruben started saying, but Celia stood up and walked away just as the waitress arrive.

  “Can I take your order?” she asked with a bright smile. Ruben shook his head and waved her away.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Hundred bucks says Celia Clemens is only an alias,” I said as we both watched her walk away. “Not the name, but the job, definitely.” An alias or she had a damn good cover. Better than mine if she could throw her name around in public. “You’d better get some sort of insurance, Ruben. I have a feeling you’re not going to last very long.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” he said. He was taking my word for it. It was a first. Maybe he’d realized somewhere along the lines that he was in over his head, and I knew more about this ugly world than he did.

  “I need to go,” I said to Ruben.

  “I want you in the office at midnight,” Ruben said when I turned to leave.

  “Why?” Midnight was the witching hour. That was when supernatural creatures were most alive, the time I either wanted to be out with my guns, or locked up safely at home.

  “My clients want answers about why the job isn’t done yet, and I’m not going to make excuses for you again. I’m not facing them alone, you can come in and deal with them with me.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “It’s the only time slot they have available.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but instead I closed it again and nodded. I would be there, why not? I needed a bit of action, and maybe if I knew why they wanted Connor dead it would give me enough motivation to push my pathetic attraction aside and finish the job.

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  A midnight meeting over the weekend sounded like a lot of fun. Not. I was sure I would run into some creatures that didn’t show their faces in the day, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But if Ruben was involved I had to. He was just a human, and even though I strongly disliked him, this job was my responsibility. His increasing anxiety over the kill had me on my guard, too. Ruben didn’t just get upset when I didn’t make a kill right away.

  First, though, I had to get to Jennifer. She’d texted me her address and I had half an hour to get to her. I felt stranded without my bike, but this was the way it had to be. I blamed Celia. No doubt about it.

  I took the bus and it dropped me off halfway up Westham Hills. She lived in Tambuca Crescent, one up from Caldwell. I was starting to get to know this area. When I walked to number twenty one, I pushed the button on the intercom and a woman with an accent answered.

  “Adele Griffin for Jennifer Lawson, please,” I said. The intercom clicked and the massive gates swung open, revealing a curling driveway that led up to a Tuscan style house with arches over balconies and hanging plants.

  The door opened and a woman with a maid’s outfit from the movies and dark skin answered the door. I’d half-expected a butler.

  “Please follow me,” she said and took me to a formal sitting room just off the entrance hall. It was mostly white, with splashes of mahogany and red here and there. “Miss Lawson will be with you now.”

  When Jennifer arrived she wore a flowing green dress the color of her eyes, and she glided to the armchair opposite me. Her hair was impossibly straight and her make-up was flawless. If this was how she dressed on a Saturday I wondered how she dressed for an event.

  “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” she said and the maid brought in a tray with a tea pot and cups that sat upside down on their saucers. They were accompanied by a glass bowl filled with sugar cookies. “You look nice.”

  “Business meeting,” I said and wished I didn’t look like a mannequin in a window display. Jennifer turned the cups around and poured tea. I took a cookie and nibbled on it. I felt out of place here, surrounded by everything that never mattered.

  “You lied to me,” I said, getting right down to business. Jennifer’s hands trembled slightly, but other than that she was composed and her voice was steady when she answered me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t tell me about the trafficking. The fact that Connor was wanted.”

  She looked up at me and her green eyes were bright like emeralds.

  “You found out.”

  “Did you think this was something you could keep a secret from me?” I asked. It seemed a little stupid for someone this high up to make an assumption like that.

  “I suppose you would… I just thought, when I first found out you didn’t know, that I could as
k you to do this for me and you wouldn’t be influence by what they were saying about him.”

  “And about you,” I said. Because that was what it was really about.

  She didn’t answer. Instead her lips were pursed and slightly pouted, and she paid particular attention to the second cup of tea she poured, which she offered to me. I took it to be polite. I hated tea.

  “You are going to have to be honest with me. You came to me because of Connor, saying you needed me to find him. But you knew he wasn’t human anymore, didn’t you?”

  She looked at me and guessed that I would know if she was lying. She couldn’t know that I could smell a lie, but it was a smart move.

  “I’ve been to hell and back since I took this job, and I’m not going to get beaten up for nothing,” I said.

  “She found you, then?” Jennifer asked, and I didn’t have to ask to know she was talking about the cat lady. Celia.

  “Are you involved with this?” I asked. Direct was usually the best way to go. When you embroidered a picture around facts, danced around the truth, the chances were that the person you were talking to would do the same. A straight forward question was difficult to avoid without making it obvious.

  “I’m not,” she said. “I don’t condone things like that.”

  “But you don’t condone vampirism either,” I said. This was a guess, but it was an accurate one. Her face turned to stone and when she looked at me a lot of the color in her eyes had drained. “Why did you come to me?”

  “I hoped that if you found Connor before they did—“

  “You knew what it would mean for me to get into this, and you still sent me in there without the facts. That’s like going into battle unarmed, Jennifer. Do you have any idea what it’s like?”

  She took a sip, looking at me with big green eyes over the edge of the cup. She shuddered.

  “I needed him to stay alive. I needed them not to be able to find him. I can’t love a vampire, Adele. Surely you of all people can understand?”

  A million different emotions ran through me. I could understand. I killed them. My mother loved one and look where that ended up. I met Connor. And then everything about him, even in his vampire state, drew me to him. He was irresistible. I could love that vampire.