The Devlin Investigation. He liked that. It sounded mysterious and official, and it was one more title he could add to the recent episodes of his newfound human life along with “The Lambert Affair” and “The Zoe Dilemma”.
The former would fade away soon enough. Enoch was satisfied with his coup for the time being and had plenty to keep him busy and off Julian’s back. The latter, however, still weighed heavily on his newly beating heart.
Would she forgive him for abandoning her? What could he really offer her at this point? He barely knew how to be human, and he still wasn’t sure he liked it. Was he kidding himself to think he had any kind of future with her?
“Watch it, shorty.” A gruff voice broke Julian’s concentration. He looked up, and up into the face of the giant who had just stepped on his foot. “I said watch it.”
The huge man’s scowl begged for an attitude adjustment that Julian longed to administer, but he no longer possessed the strength and reflexes needed to leave the behemoth whimpering and begging for mercy.
Rather than snap the man’s neck, he moved off, muttering a less than sincere apology, and found himself a seat on a vinyl-covered bench.
While he waited for what seemed like hours, he passed the time by reminding himself that this was the life he had chosen. He was determined to make it work no matter how long it took him to get used to it.
Pure panic set in about the time Zoe reached Tanya’s place. Tanya still hadn’t answered her phone, and Zoe’s uncontrollable shivering was making it difficult to keep the car steady. During the frantic drive from her parents’ house, she’d begun to wonder if maybe the whole world had gone crazy while she and Julian had hidden away in Hester’s seaside cottage.
She hadn’t woken her parents to tell them she was leaving. She could never have explained what she’d experienced with Bryan and figured they were better left out of the loop for now. That set her to worrying that he might come back and decide, in her absence, to feed on Anna and Gregory. “Ohmygod, ohmygod. Think, Zoe. Think! This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.”
She cut to the curb in front of Tanya’s building and jumped out of the car. Leaning on the door buzzer, she prayed she wasn’t too late. When Tanya’s tinny voice floated through the speaker, Zoe sobbed with relief.
“Zoe? Is that you?”
“Let me up, Tanya, hurry!”
The second buzzer sounded, and Zoe flung open the security door and raced inside. She ran up the stairs to Tanya’s second floor apartment and arrived, panting just as her friend opened her door.
Tanya pulled Zoe inside, her brown eyes narrow. “What’s going on?”
“Has…has Bryan…been here tonight?” Zoe gasped between words. Her lungs were on fire.
“No.” Tanya squinted at her. “Why would he be? Are you okay? You look pale.”
“No…no. I’m not okay.” Zoe sank down on Tanya’s sofa. “It’s Bryan. Something’s wrong. Why haven’t you answered your phone?”
“What do you mean? What happened to Bryan? Is he hurt?”
He’s dead. The thought chilled Zoe to the bone. “He’s a vampire. We have to get away from here before he comes back.”
Tanya knelt in front of Zoe and tilted her head like a curious puppy. “Get a grip, Z. What the hell are you talking about?”
Zoe couldn’t form the words again, not after her gaze settled on two small puncture wounds on Tanya’s throat. They were fading fast, but still clear enough to leave no room for doubt as to how they were made. “He was here.”
“Who?”
“Bryan.”
“No. I haven’t seen him since I left him at your place.” Hurt colored Tanya’s words, reminding Zoe she still needed to make amends for not telling Tanya the truth. “What do you mean, he’s a vampire?”
“Why haven’t you answered your phone? I’ve called you a dozen times.”
“My phone didn’t ring all day, Zoe.” Tanya reached up to feel Zoe’s forehead. “You took a caffeine pill again, didn’t you? Don’t you remember what happened last time?”
“I didn’t take a caffeine pill.” Zoe lunged across Tanya’s sofa and grabbed the cordless phone from the end table. She scrolled through caller ID and showed her friend the small LCD screen. “There, see? My cell phone number, one, two, three, four, five times. Is the ringer off?” She checked, and it wasn’t. “He’s got you conditioned not to answer my calls.”
“Who? Zoe, for heav—”
“Tanya, you have to listen to me.” Zoe grabbed Tanya’s shoulders and shook her just a little. “Bryan was just at my parents’ house, and there’s something wrong with him. We have to find him and…” And what?
“And what?”
“I don’t know. We just have to find him before he feeds on someone else.”
Tanya gave her the look again and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not making any sense. What’s going on with Bryan? If this is some crazy scheme to get me to talk to him again after what happened this morning—”
“It’s not. I promise you.” Zoe grabbed Tanya’s hands. “It’s much more serious than that. We have to figure out a way to help him. I’m afraid of what he might do if he figures out I know.”
“You know what?”
“I’ll explain more on the way. Please, let’s just get out of here before he comes back.”
Still skeptical, but looking worried, Tanya hastily changed out of her pajamas and ran around looking for her sneakers. Zoe paced the living room. What could they do? How could they fix this?
“Come on, we’ve got to go now.” Once Tanya had found her shoes, Zoe practically pushed her out of her apartment, and together they ran down the two flights of stairs and out to the car.
Zoe slid behind the wheel. She promptly dropped the keys, and Tanya retrieved them, placing them in her trembling palm. “You’re really starting to scare me, Z. Please tell me what’s going on.”
Zoe sighed and clamped her hands around the steering wheel to keep them steady. From Tanya’s point of view, she probably did sound like she’d OD’d on something. Zoe wouldn’t have believed it herself if she hadn’t seen Bryan’s fangs with her own eyes. “I wish I could explain this better,” she said after a deep breath. “Julian Devlin was a vampire. They’re real. We don’t recognize them because they can deceive us to protect themselves. The only reason I know about Bryan is because Hester put a spell on me.”
“And Hester is…?” Tanya raised a brow. It was only going to get more unbelievable from here.
“A witch. She’s a friend of Julian’s…well, an acquaintance. It was her potion that turned him human again, but he wanted to get back to being a vampire, so she gave him a potion to change him back. I think he must have bitten Bryan, and now Bryan’s feeding on you, and he tried it with me, but I—”
Tanya burst into nervous laughter.
Zoe stared. “I’m not making this up.”
“Oh, come on, Z. It’s a little late for an April Fool’s joke, and I’m not going to play along. You’d better not have Bryan stashed somewhere in plastic fangs and a cape.”
“Trust me, I don’t.”
Tanya rolled her eyes.
“Please, just trust me on this, T.” Panic bubbled up in Zoe’s chest again. The only person who might believe her was Hester, and the witch was too far away to help now.
“Why don’t we get some coffee and talk about this from square one?” Tanya had that look in her eye that said her patience was beginning to wear thin. It was the middle of the night, after all, and Zoe hadn’t yet gotten to the punch line of this elaborate joke.
“All right.” Zoe sighed. “Let’s go to my place for now until I figure out a plan.”
Tanya nodded. “Fine. I’m telling you now, Bryan better not be there. I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Me neither at the moment. Me neither.”
“And you were where all this time, Mr. Devlin?” The officer in charge of the Devlin Investigation was a man of compact
stature and expansive gestures. Detective Joseph Van Nuys sat, or rather sprawled, across a chair behind a metal desk. One cowboy-booted foot tapped rhythm to a barely audible radio station playing in the background and each of his impertinent questions was punctuated with a movement of some kind. A shrug, a drumming of fingers, a stretch or cracking of knuckles. He was a one-man symphony, and his inability to sit still made Julian nervous.
“I was in Ocean City, visiting a friend.”
“So your house blew up, and you went to Ocean City?” Van Nuys cocked a brow.
“No, I went to Ocean City, and while I was there, apparently, my house blew up.” Lying had been so much easier when he was a vampire. Now he actually had to sound convincing.
“And you didn’t know about it until today?”
“I didn’t watch any television while I was away.”
“No one called you?”
“I didn’t leave a number. I didn’t want to be disturbed.”
The detective’s upper lip twitched at that, then he turned his attention to his computer screen. “Was this friend a man or a woman?”
“A woman.”
“That makes some sense.” The detective’s response was accompanied by a vigorous nod. “So you just rolled back into town and found out your house is gone, and there’s been a city-wide manhunt for you?”
“City-wide manhunt makes me sound a lot more important than I am.”
Van Nuys shrugged but didn’t comment. Julian raised his eyebrows and watched while the detective typed his responses into the computer.
“I’ll need the name of this friend. Address and phone number too.”
“No problem.” Julian recited Hester’s information. She’d vouch for him. He hoped.
“Any other people who can place you out of town when the explosion happened?”
“Unfortunately, no. I didn’t see or speak to anyone else.”
“Did you tell anyone that you were leaving?”
“It was a spur of the moment trip, and I value my privacy.”
Van Nuys scratched his stubbled jaw. “Sure. Okay. Well, who do you think would want to blow up your house, Mr. Devlin?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been told there’s a possibility that it was actually the result of a gas leak in the main line under the house.”
Would Lambert come through for him after all this? Part of their strange bargain involved Lambert pulling a few strings. Julian didn’t like relying on Enoch for anything, but he’d held enough back from their negotiations that he still had some carrots to dangle in front of his old friend if he ever needed a favor.
“I wasn’t aware of that.” Van Nuys tapped a few keys and leaned close to the glowing monitor before him. “Yeah…apparently the gas utility is investigating a main line leak in your neighborhood. I didn’t know that.”
“It’s fortunate I wasn’t home at the time. I’m glad none of my neighbors’ homes were involved.” Julian held the detective’s gaze for a moment. It would have been so much easier in the old days. He’d have walked away with the city apologizing for inconveniencing him.
After a deep sigh, Van Nuys said, “Well, there are going to be more questions, but since it’s almost midnight, why don’t we shelve this discussion for now?”
“Great idea.”
Van Nuys rose. “I’d advise you to stay in town until all the reports are completed. I can reach you at the cell phone number you gave me?”
“Yes. I’ll be on hand if you need anything, Detective.”
“Then I’ll be in touch.” Van Nuys dismissed Julian with a fake smile and a brief handshake.
Now the hard part was over. The newshounds would probably want an interview sooner or later, and at least Julian still knew how to schmooze the press. He only hoped his charms would work on Zoe, assuming she’d ever allow him near enough to speak to her again.
Zoe hurried Tanya through the alley and up the dark staircase to her apartment, petrified that every shadow held a lurking vampire.
Once inside, she shoved a kitchen chair under the front doorknob and faced her friend. “I know this is hard to believe, but I swear it’s true. Bryan is a vampire.”
Tanya stared. “Right now I can think of a lot of things I might call him, but bloodsucking, soulless demon wasn’t actually on my list.”
Zoe took Tanya’s hands and led her to the couch. “Doesn’t it make sense, though? It explains why we hardly ever see him, why he works all the time, why he’s suddenly so callous, and—”
Tanya nodded. “Yeah. About that.”
Zoe cringed. “We had agreed not to mention it, ever. I’m so sorry. It was a mistake, and we realized it immediately.”
“But still not soon enough.” Tanya studied their entwined hands. “Zoe, I’m a big girl, and I should’ve gotten over my feelings for Bryan a long time ago. He never led me on. He never pretended to feel anything more for me than friendship, and honestly, if I’d known you two—”
“There is no ‘us two’. Really.” I’m in love with Julian. Those words never made it to Zoe’s lips. She couldn’t bear to hear them. “I know it sounds lame now, but we never wanted to hurt you. We weren’t thinking. Things got out of hand one night, one very forgettable time, and we hated ourselves for it afterward. I know I did. Please forgive me for not telling you right away.”
Tanya didn’t hesitate. “I do. I just wish you didn’t have to resort to all this drama to come talk to me about it.”
Zoe shook her head. How could she ever get Tanya to understand? “I’m sorry about all of this. I wish I knew what to say to get you to believe me, but for now, you just have to trust me on the vital points. First, Bryan is a vampire, and second…so is Julian.”
Zoe paced back and forth in her living room, brandishing the herb bundle Hester had given her the day before. She’d found it in the kitchen trash and figured Bryan must have put it there when he’d been in her apartment last.
After a long, difficult conversation, Tanya had fallen asleep on Zoe’s bed, and that left no one for her to talk to. Hester still hadn’t answered her phone.
Thinking was the last thing Zoe wanted to do. Without conversation to keep her distracted, her mind whirled in circles around the idea that Bryan was a vampire. She’d dismissed the belief that Julian had turned him. It made more sense that Bryan had been transformed a while ago, maybe several months. That would explain his increased strength, the strange work hours and his inexplicable secrecy. She had to wonder if Bryan knew Lambert, and if he’d been involved in any way in what happened to Julian.
Now, with two vampires after her, the thought of leaving town was looking better and better. Maybe it was time for a sabbatical somewhere far away…someplace with lots of sun and garlic and holy water.
Maybe Tuscany, or a Greek island or—
Her heart lurched at the quiet knock on her front door. No one would be visiting her at one A.M. She held her breath when the door knob began to turn. At least she’d taken her spare key down from the door frame. “Zoe? Are you there?”
Julian.
No. No. No. She didn’t have the emotional strength to deal with him now. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to fight him.
“Go away. I have—” What did she have? Hester’s lavender-scented smudge stick hadn’t done much to keep Bryan at bay. “I have vampire repellant all over the place in here.”
His soft laugh made her heart ache so badly she thought her chest would burst.
“It’s a good thing I’m still human, then.”
“Sure you are.”
He sighed, and the door knob stopped turning. “Zoe, I promise you, I didn’t take Hester’s potion. I poured it out in the tunnels. Please believe me.”
“I can’t.” Was there desperation in her voice? She wanted more than anything to open the door and throw herself into his arms. He would understand. He would know what to do about Bryan, and he’d make her feel safe. If he hadn’t come back here to kill her. “Go away. You told me not to talk to you anymor
e.”
“I know. And you’re right to doubt me. I doubted myself long enough. But now I know what I want. It’s you, Zoe. I stayed human for you.”
“Liar.” How could he play her like this?
“Open the door. Please.”
“No. You made me promise to stay away from you, and I’m keeping that promise. I couldn’t do it the other night, but now I can.” And what would stop him from breaking down the door? The kitchen chair wouldn’t hold for long against vampire strength. Zoe scanned the apartment. She could wake Tanya, and they could shimmy down the fire escape and out into the dark night where nothing would protect them.
“I’m human, Zoe. How can I prove it to you?”
If she opened the door and saw him, she’d know. Thanks to Hester’s spell she’d see him as she’d seen Bryan, and the knowledge would kill her. She couldn’t bear seeing Julian look like that. “You can prove it by going away and leaving me alone.”
She sensed his movements outside the door, and she drew closer, listening, trying to gauge what he was about to do. “Do you remember the other night? Do you remember when you were bitten?” he asked after a moment.
“Bryan said you bit me—” Bryan, the vampire, had said.
“Do you believe it was me? You told me you didn’t believe I could ever hurt you. You’re right. I couldn’t, so I didn’t change back because I couldn’t stand the thought of what I might do to you if I was a vampire.”
He sounded like Julian. There was none of that oily undercurrent she’d heard in Bryan’s voice. Could she open the door just a crack? She reached for the chair, wondering if she dared take just a small peek. “You’d say anything to get me to open the door.”
“I’d say anything to get you back, Zoe. I want you.”
Her heart had turned to liquid now and was trickling in hot rivulets down to her belly. She rested her palm flat against the door as if she could somehow feel him through the cold wooden surface. “You left my keys here, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I brought you back here. Bryan and I did, and there was a note on the table from Lambert, warning me that he would hurt you if I didn’t disappear. Look—”
Uncross My Heart Page 20