Night Moves

by Kristen Strassel

  The tears just fell at his words. Screw being stoic. “How many times have I asked you the same thing?” I smiled at the irony.

  “Not enough to make me start doing it.” His smile was as sad as mine. “Someday, we’ll see in ourselves what we see in each other.”

  Rachel wasn’t faring well all cooped up in her hidey hole with just me, Ryder, and an occasional visit from Josiah. New vampires consumed a lot of energy. A lot of changes were taking place in her body, the metamorphosis took time. She was still learning how to be immortal. I could tell she was frustrated, and I sympathized with her. She was a flower that wanted to bloom. Instead she’d only see sunshine in her memory. Her face was graying out from lack of interaction with others. She slept all the time.

  “You should probably leave her alone.” Ryder suggested. “She might not be able to control herself around you.”

  “But she needs to have life around her! I thought you guys didn’t need blood.”

  “It would help her tremendously.” Ryder frowned. “Someone’s going to need to take her out.”

  “Call Josiah. They seem to be getting along really well.” I prayed that if Rachel and Josiah coupled off, maybe the vampire powers that be would spare her. She could just be a happy little vampire homemaker, not vying for control of anyone’s clan. Everyone could live happily ever afterlife.

  “But if she’s spotted by the wrong people, bad things could happen. We don’t need any vigilante vampires taking matters into their own hands.”

  “How would they know?” I didn’t want Ryder’s cautiousness to do more harm than good.

  “We know our own kind, babe.” He served me a plate of chicken picata, noodles and peas. One of my favorites. I took a bite, my eyes rolled back in my head with pleasure. Just as good as my mom made. “We can pull the wool over human’s eyes, but we see things you can’t.”

  “So you’re like a dog hearing white noise?” I teased.

  “Exactly.” He smiled, sitting across from me to watch me eat after topping off my glass of wine. I used to feel funny, eating when he didn’t. It’s such a girl complex. None of us want to out eat our boyfriends. But if I didn’t out eat this one, I’d starve to death. Plus, being the only human in the house with two vampires, they fed off of my energy. I felt like I was training for some sort of supernatural marathon. “How is it?”

  “Delicious.” I held up my wine glass to his. “I’m so sad you can’t have any.”

  “You’ll taste like it later.” He winked. “I guess I’ll call Josiah. He can share blood with her, maybe bring her to the Alta Vista or something, where he can go in a back door. At least there will be enough people around for her.”

  “That sounds like the perfect solution. I’m kind of jealous. I’ve only seen a little bit of the strip, I’m dying to go experience things.”

  “Patience, babe. Patience.” He got up from the table, putting the phone to his ear.

  So if Talis gave me her stamp of approval, would my life just return to normal? I didn’t really know what normal was anymore. But I’d love to drive around, hang out with Erin, make friends, and actually do things. I hadn’t been this stuck in the house since it rained on summer vacation in middle school. There had to be a happy medium between working myself to death and nothing. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know the questions to ask. Ryder had never been through this before, either. His relationship with Shannon took a nose dive when he became immortal. She hadn’t been interested in adjusting. She also hadn’t been a fugitive.

  “You look pretty.” I reassured Rachel when she emerged from her bedroom for Josiah’s arrival. It was bullshit. She looked sickly, but that was the last thing she needed to hear. Josiah didn’t seem to mind or notice, he beamed when he saw her. It made me feel all squishy inside.

  “Thanks.” She knew I was lying. I guess I should avoid the poker tables if I ever got to go to any casinos. She pulled me aside while Josiah talked to Ryder. “I’m nervous. We’re spending the night together.”

  “Really?” I clapped my hands together with excitement. Wait a minute. “You’ve done that before, right?”

  She shook her head and looked at her feet.

  “Oh my God!” I squealed, not to shame her, but to share her anticipation. “Rachel, everything’s going to be great. I promise you. Don’t be nervous.”

  “I just feel stupid.” She still wouldn’t look at me. “I already died a virgin once, I don’t want to do it again. I was so desperate and stupid to lose it that I wound up like this.”

  “Stop saying you’re stupid.” I tried to get her to look me in the eye. “Josiah doesn’t think you’re stupid. And we all have a first time. Plus, I’m sure it’s totally different as a vampire. I know the blood is mind altering for me. It will be even better for you.”

  Rachel smiled nervously and jumped when Josiah came into the room. He looped his arm in hers and kissed her. They were so cute together it made me sick. They headed out, and I grinned like an idiot as the door closed behind them.

  “Aren’t they cute?” Ryder half mocked me. I wanted to tell him Rachel’s secret but I thought better of it. She wouldn’t want that broadcast through the house. But I did need to get in touch with Erin. She would think the whole thing was as adorable as I did.

  “Oh, shut up and let me be a romantic.” I threw a pillow at him. “I feel like I just sent my baby to the prom.”

  “I know, right?” Ryder threw the pillow back at me and dove on the couch after it. “I didn’t give her a curfew, though.”

  “They’re spending the night together.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Nice.” Ryder approved. “I just hope Josiah’s smart about this. He’s got to be careful with her.”

  “Isn’t there any way Talis will let her be?” I pleaded, not like it made any difference. “I know she doesn’t care about power.”

  “It’s in her nature.” Ryder sighed. “She’s still coming into her own. I wish there was a place for her. I really do. But I’m not betting on it.”

  “I hate vampires sometimes.” I hugged my pillow and pouted. “You guys and your stupid rules.”

  “Believe me, babe. I feel the same way.”

  We still hadn’t heard from Rachel, and I was starting to worry. I was always on edge lately. Ryder had told me to relax. Easier said than done. I accompanied him into the studio where he was working on mixing some tracks. Listening to him sing was the most soothing thing I could think of.

  Ryder stopped suddenly and reached for his phone. He normally would have ignored it, but maybe he was as worried about Rachel as I was. He didn’t say much, but I saw his shoulders stiffen and his jaw drop.

  Oh, shit.

  “Fuck. Okay, man. Well, thanks for letting me know. Yeah, I will. Keep me posted.” He put the phone down on the table and looked at me without saying another word.

  “What’s wrong? Is it Rachel? What happened?” I sat up straight, bracing myself for bad news.

  Ryder chewed on his lip and shook his head. “No, not Rachel. Fuck.” He hesitated and looked around the room. “I don’t even know how to tell you this.”

  “Just tell me!” He was trying to make me crazy.

  He came over to the couch and put his arm around me. I looked at him suspiciously. “It’s Erin, babe. They found her this afternoon.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “She’s dead.”

  “What?” I shrieked. “No! No. That can’t be. You misunderstood.” I dissolved into Ryder’s arms. “Someone is lying to you.”

  “Babe, no. I didn’t misunderstand. She was found in the Alta Vista. I’m going to spare you the details, but she’s definitely dead.”

  “Why? Why would someone do this?” I struggled between sobs. “Erin is such a beautiful person. She doesn’t deserve this. Can’t you fix it?” I beat against his chest.

  “No, I can’t.” Ryder’s voice was soothing. “Not once it’s done. It could have been anyone. It could have been one of her clients, it could have been
someone in another clan—”

  “You said they wouldn’t bother us here!”

  “I know. But I don’t want to rule out any possibilities. It could have been one of Polina’s people, or it could have been her dealer.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I stopped crying long enough to look up at him in rage.

  “You were blind to it because you loved her so much, but Erin liked her pills. She used to ask the roadies to get them for her on the road. That’s not the type of thing you just stop doing. Especially after what happened to Drake.”

  I remembered that first day we reunited, when Erin told me that Drake gave her things to stay awake. I didn’t think that much of it. I took Ritalin in college to get through exam week to help me focus, but that was it for me. I knew it wasn’t so easy for others to stop. And she did have mood swings, a red flag of someone who needed a fix and then got it. My heart sank. I didn’t want to think about this right now. It wasn’t important. What was important was figuring out why someone killed Erin.

  I let grief and hysteria crash against me like angry ocean waves in a tropical storm. Finally, the gravity of what had happened, what I had caused, in the last few months hit me. It was real. Erin was gone, Jamie was gone, Drake Bonham was gone. It changed every facet of my life. Hell, it made it go away. I felt like someone had blotted out my entire life before this. I would do anything to hit rewind, to fix it. But I couldn’t, and it made me crazy.

  I sat in Ryder’s lap and sobbed until every bit of emotion ran out of me, leaving me to dry heave and hyperventilate. My head pounded, I could hardly breathe. Ryder rubbed my back. Every muscle in my body screamed.

  “I don’t know what to do.” My voice was raspy from crying. “I can’t remember my life without Erin. Except for when I was stupid and too busy for her, and that life wasn’t worth living.”

  “I know, babe.” Ryder said softly. “That’s how I feel about Drake.”

  I looked at him, wide eyed. Really looked at him, trying to process his grief. My elation with having Drake out of our lives had clouded how hard this was to Ryder for me. His eyes brimmed with sorrow. He was just as lost as I was.

  “I’m so sorry.” I looked down, knotting my fingers together in my lap. I felt so inconsiderate and selfish. “I know you’re hurting. I just didn’t know how to deal with it. How to make it better for you, since we just saw Drake so differently. I hate to say I think of anyone’s death as a good thing, but I guess I just don’t understand how you felt about him. It doesn’t make what you feel any less important.”

  Why was it we couldn’t say what we really needed to say until life had us down on our knees, begging for mercy?

  “I know. That’s why I haven’t said much.” Ryder’s eyes reddened with his own unshed tears. I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to break into smaller pieces that day. “But it’s hard. Every day I want to talk to him, ask him what he thinks, do something that he would have done without batting an eyelash. And all of that is gone. I can’t get that back. A piece of me went with him.”

  I took a deep breath, relishing the pain as it filled my lungs. “He confided in you, worked with you, and trusted you because you were strong. You were a worthy partner. You made him better. He needed you as much as you needed him.”

  Ryder nodded. He lowered his eyes and wouldn’t meet mine. “I just never thought I’d have to give up everything because I wanted to play guitar. It made me hate him too, Melanie. We glorify everything after someone’s gone. But I hated the decisions he made for all of us. I hated what they cost me. But I followed him, because I knew I needed him. He made me better. He made me strive for more, just to prove I could do it. I needed that. I needed to have my ass kicked and Drake did that.”

  “Baby, you deserve every bit of happiness and success that you bring yourself. No one needs to steal your glory. It’s yours for the taking. I hate that he made you feel that way. Like you weren’t worthy of everything you accomplished.”

  “It doesn’t make me feel any better about him being gone.” Ryder tipped his head back, wiping his cheeks. “I lost my family for this. Now it’s all gone. The whole reason I gave everything up is gone and I can’t get any of it back.”

  I put my head on his shoulder and ran my fingers along his collarbone. I wanted so desperately to fix everything for him. I wanted him to be able to see his daughters. I knew there had to be a way for it to happen. But they were so young, would they understand what Daddy was? But would they learn to hate him as they got older? It was such a no win situation. I just thought if there was a way Ryder could have a place in those girls’ lives, it would make so many things better for him. It wasn’t the band he pined for, or his career. It was Isabella and Olivia.

  Maybe I was the lucky one. I’d messed my own life up beyond recognition, but I did it myself. I didn’t have anyone to blame. Things were taken from me, but they were gone for good. Not living a parallel life, taunting me. I didn’t have to look at them through a window, wishing I could still have a place in their lives. But it’s not like those girls got a happily ever after, either. They had to grow up without their father, and I knew how hard that was.

  “You always tell me something, and you need to believe it.” I said to him. He looked at me with swollen eyes. “We can’t change what we’ve done, we can only change the future. We still have the future. Let’s not throw it away.”

  “We should go see Talis.” Ryder suggested as we lay in bed, not quite ready to officially start the day. We’d made it past the zombie mode of grief and had started to pick up the pieces to see where they fell now. Rachel was safe, happy and accounted for, playing house with Josiah.

  I nodded. This was one of those times I needed Erin. I had so many questions that only she could answer about this meeting. I didn’t know of anyone else who could help me from the human girlfriend meeting the vampire’s creator perspective. This was going home to meet the family times infinity. Erin had faced it alone, and I would too.

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked as we both sat up, stretching relaxation away. Ryder had turned on the shower, but he’d come back out into the bedroom. I got up to follow him.

  “I don’t know.” Sure, he was honest, but I think I would have preferred the lie in this situation. “I’m not sure how she really feels about what happened to Drake. I don’t know how she thinks you play into things. But I want her on your side, babe. And we can’t make that happen if we avoid her.”

  “What if it backfires? Neither of us can lose another thing.” I said, sadly. Ryder just sighed, opening the door to the shower for me to go in before him. Nothing was sexy about us going in together, we just needed to be there for one another.

  I hadn’t packed any outfits appropriate for a business meeting with a vampire when I fled from my apartment. Nor had I had chance to do any shopping since I’d left. Material things had become so insignificant to me over the last few months. I didn’t regret that. Material wants had never done me very well.

  My clothes were baggy and worn. I didn’t want to feel shabby so on a whim, I checked in Rachel’s old room to see if she’d left anything behind when she moved in with Josiah. Hopefully she hadn’t already had a meeting with Talis. I wanted to see her again.

  She hadn’t, but Erin did. A really cute drop waist black dress with pink flowers. It still smelled like her perfume. I almost didn’t dare to even try to pull it over my head, but it slid right down my body. Man, I’d lost weight since I’d been here. I gave myself a turn in the full length mirror and was satisfied with how it fit.

  Maybe Erin was coming with me after all.

  A pair of high heels completed the outfit. Ryder whistled when I joined him in the living room. “Maybe we can go another time.” He kissed me on the cheek and twirled me around. “I can think of better things to do.”

  “Later. Let’s get this over with so we have something to celebrate.” I laced my fingers around his neck, pulling him in for a proper kiss. “A
nyway, I want to make you think about whatever it is you want to do until we get home.”

  “Trust me, I won’t be able to think about anything else.” His hands slid up my thighs under my skirt and winked at me. “I’m going to make you keep the shoes on.”

  I wrapped one of my legs up around Ryder’s hips, making him gasp. “Deal. Now let’s do this thing.”

  We drove to the Alta Vista, to my surprise. I thought we were going to some secret vampire club. It all felt like creepy déjà vu as we went up the same elevator we used when we had to take care of Drake and Rachel. I didn’t want the evening to end the same way. I squeezed Ryder’s hand as we rose higher and higher into the interworkings of the resort.

  We entered directly into a formal office with heavy old fashioned furniture. I sat stiffly beside Ryder in a gold velvet Victorian love seat against the wall. Nothing besides the furniture gave me any clues about the woman we were about to meet with. It didn’t make me feel comfortable. I’d always wondered about people who chose furniture like this for their homes. It wasn’t relaxing or inviting. However, I didn’t think that was the message Talis de Rancourt was looking to send.

  An impressively carved cherry door opened on the far end of the room, and a tiny blonde woman in an impeccably tailored suit made her way over to us. Her face was elegant and serious, just like the room we were in.

  We rose to greet her. I felt a little bit like we were in a funeral parlor meeting with a distant relative. My legs wobbled on my high stilettos, I held on to Ryder with my left hand in an effort to avoid breaking my ankle, and offered my right to The Mistress. She took my hand in both of her cold tiny ones, the firmest handshake I’d ever felt. There was something about it that was warm and comforting. Nobody would ever mistake whose show this was.

  “Talis de Rancourt, Melanie Vaughn.” Ryder made formal introductions after he and Talis exchanged kisses on both cheeks.

  “Miss Vaughn. I’ve heard so much about you.” Talis nodded to me. “Please sit.”