by Mandy Rosko
He didn’t look away or appear ashamed at all, and that made her all the more furious. “It did happen, I did say those things to you, and I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think that I want you to forget it, though.”
“I hate you.”
“You’re acting like I’m dumping you. We were never together to begin with. But I still want something with you.”
She pulled the hospital pillow over her head with her good arm. “I still hate you. Go away.”
She couldn’t see what he did, but his voice, suddenly so close, let her know that he stood directly over her. "Look, I’m not going to argue with you about this. This is better anyway because at night being a vampire comes in handy, so I might need to stay this way for a little while longer. Carter said he's got some people trying to find the anti-curse for me, so until then I'll just stay the way I am. Not like I haven't been like this for several months already."
She lowered her pillow and stare at him, still wishing he was anywhere but close to her.
His eyes were puppy-dog sad on her, his hand rested flat on her bed on one side of her body, so close to her stomach that she could feel his heat.
She tried to remember that he betrayed her, so she put all her anger over everything, her sister, her mother, getting shot at, into one look and threw it at him. But it wasn’t as strong as she would have liked because he didn’t back off.
"I think you just look at me like that so I’ll feel guilty and let you off the hook."
Her lips quirked against her will. "Pretty much."
She didn’t want to understand his position, she wanted to stay angry with him. But that would be acting like a total spoiled brat. That fact was that she did understand. She understood that he wasn’t changing his mind like this to hurt her, but that didn’t make her feel any better.
She waited a beat. He said nothing else so she asked him with a sigh, "What are you going to do about sleep?"
He shrugged. "I never had an easy time of it before, but like this I'll have to try and rest every once in a while. But only when you're with Carter or anyone else who can watch over you. Besides, the lack of sleep didn't start to really bother me until a few weeks after I was cursed, so I should be able to watch over you at a hundred per cent for now."
She wasn't sure she liked the idea of letting him become an insomniac, but he seemed to have an answer for every argument she had. “There’s nothing I can say that’ll talk you out of this, is there?”
“Not really, Gorgeous.”
Her eyes softened. "So then, if we can’t be together now, what are we?"
"I'd like to think we're something. Not sure what, yet."
Her face heated. "I’d like to think we’re something too. Even though it probably won’t go anywhere because you’re a stubborn jackass."
He grinned, leaning back so far that his seat used only two of its legs to support him. “And this stubborn jackass will make sure to stick around and wait impatiently for the right opportunity.” He looked at her lips just then.
Jackie shivered. If only she'd said something to him right away when Evey told her about the match, maybe they could've started on whatever this was a lot sooner.
Which reminded her, "Do you think Evey's still here? I should visit her before my mother gets here." Anything to get her out of this room and away from staring at Kyle’s mouth.
Kyle slapped his knees and stood, apparently just as eager to be away from temptation as well. "Well Gorgeous, as you're injured there's no way I'm letting you leave this bed, and since the daylight is shining through tall windows right about now I don't think having her come to you is going to happen either."
She huffed out a breath and glared at him. "My arm was injured, not my legs."
"I don't care," he said with a huge grin, then went for the door. "I’ll go to her and see if she wants to send you a message though. I don't think anyone would've told her you were here yet. Anything you want to say?"
"Uh, just that I hope she gets better. Thanks for the advice, and that I’m well."
Kyle took his leave from her room, and Jackie lay back in her pillows and drifted off without meaning to.
***
Kyle walked down the now familiar halls to the section of the hospital for the daylight impaired, through the two guarded doors and into the safe area with heavily tinted windows. He looked out and saw the glowing orb that was the sun, only it looked like he was peering into a cloudy day.
An orange haired young woman sat behind the desk, typing something into her computer. Her tag read Annie.
"Is Evey Smith still in room forty-three?" He asked.
She took one look at him and smiled her perfectly white teeth at him. "Let's see." She tapped away on her computer again and shook her head. "Evangeline Smith checked out earlier today."
He blinked. "Really? Well, thanks anyway."
"Are you a relative?" She asked just as he turned to go.
"A friend, and so is Jackie Moore. She's in the other side of the hospital and just wanted to talk to her."
"Oh, well I was hoping you would know, but never mind. I guess that's a stupid thing to assume if you came here looking for her."
Kyle leaned against the counter, his spider-senses tingling. "Know what? Did something happen?"
The young woman leaned closer to him, lowering her voice. "I don't want to make you worry for nothing, sir, but if you have her cell number you might want to give it a call just to make sure she's alright."
"Why? What do you think happened?" He asked, wondering if Carter was still in the hospital somewhere, perhaps he waited for Jackie's family to get here to ease them into the situation. He hoped that was the case. He'd need the man here if Evey couldn't be found. As a vampire she was in as much danger as Jackie was, especially by some freak out to torture vampires into insanity.
She bit her bottom lip, her face rough as though she were pulling a triple shift. "Well, her driver came inside earlier looking for her. Apparently she wasn't outside waiting."
"Her driver?"
Anne looked at him sideways. "Her cab driver."
He didn't know the drivers actually got out of the cab to look for their fare. “Don't the drivers usually drive off if no one's there to meet them?"
A light went off behind her blue eyes. "I see. You're new in town, aren't you?"
Kyle forced back a growl, she grinned at the discovery. He hated looking so obvious. He'd have to work on that. "Yeah, so back to why that's suspicious?"
She straightened out a little. "Right, um, now remember that this might be just us worrying, but you're right that normal cabs drive off if no one is outside to meet them, but tinted cabs don't."
Tinted? "What exactly are they?"
"They look like normal cabs but with tinted windows. A passenger calls, explains that he or she is a vampire and the company sends a tinted cab. It's law that the driver has to knock at the house or come inside the public building if no one's outside waiting during the day. And when he came asking for Evey Smith and we told him she wasn't here, well, we called her apartment in case she got a ride from someone else, and no one answered."
The hairs on the back of Kyle’s neck stood on end. "When did he arrive to pick her up? Exactly."
"I remember thinking he was a little late because the sun was already up, but not by much, so we gave her a reflective robe to wear since she insisted on waiting outside. It was, at least, after seven-thirty. He waited around here for fifteen minutes before leaving."
He tried to think of anything else that could be of use to him, any question that should be asked under the circumstances. "So if a driver comes inside for the safety of the vampire then what other rules apply for that safety?"
Anne pulled a clipboard out from under the counter and ran a slim finger down the list. "One of the rules is that the inside of the car can't be electronically controlled by the driver. Like locks and windows. Another is that when a vamp calls for a car in a public place like a hospital or res
taurant, she has to tell the man on the phone where she's going, and tell whoever's in charge that too, to make sure the vamp gets home safe. Otherwise the family can sue us if the vamp goes missing. Here it is." She held the clipboard out for him to see. "Griffon Units, apartment 4B."
Kyle tapped the counter and turned. “Did you try calling her family when she went missing?”
“We called her emergency number, but no one answered.”
Shit. He suddenly had a bad feeling. “Is Jackie Moore her emergency contact?”
Annie clicked her keyboard, and then her eyes brightened. “Yes. How did you know?”
Fuck. If the driver was late and the staff waited before calling, then he and Jackie would’ve just left her apartment by the time the call came. They’d missed it.
“Did anyone think to call the police?”
She looked at him sideways. “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet.”
That meant no. Kyle dropped the list back on the counter and walked away. "Thanks for your help," he muttered.
He needed to find Carter. Right now if what that woman said was the truth.
He didn't find him in the waiting area like he'd hoped, instead he found him standing outside of Jackie's room on the other side of the open door.
There was a uniformed guard beside him, who stood straight at attention when he saw Kyle.
Carter looked up and saw him too. He must’ve sensed something was off in Kyle’s stare. "What is it?"
Kyle peered into Jackie's room and saw her speaking quietly with her mother. He could sense a small amount of distress and embarrassment, but nothing that required immediate attention. "Do you know Evey Smith's cell phone number?"
"All I know is where she lives. What happened?"
"She was released earlier today and her cab driver came inside to pick her up but she wasn't here."
Carter didn't blink, he kept his voice even and calm. "You think she was taken?"
"Which is why I'd like it confirmed that she's actually missing before we tell Jackie."
"I'll send someone to her place to check on her. The driver came in and didn’t find her?"
"According to the girl at the desk he even waited in the hospital, I don't know, in case she was in the bathroom or something. He got there just as the sun went up and left fifteen minutes later. If this is our same shooter then she could've taken Evey and drove by Jackie’s place while Evey was still with her."
"You still think it's Charity?"
"I'm sure she's connected somehow."
"Well, we already checked her out. She's alibied to the eyeballs at the time of the shooting and she doesn't own a car, or even know anyone with a car, that has tinted windows."
Kyle clenched his jaw and thought. There hard to be something he missed. Then it clicked. “Evey was wearing a robe.”
“A what?”
“A reflective robe. Vampires wear them whenever they need to go out in the daylight—”
“I know what you mean. Okay, I got it. So now you think that she might have gotten into a car without tinted windows just because she was wearing a robe?”
“The sun isn’t exactly shining so bright out.”
Carter looked out the windows and into the grey sky. “And the fact that Charity Dodd owns no car?”
Kyle didn’t have an explanation. He was about to suggest something else that could make his theory possible when he stopped. He realized he sounded like a man who wanted someone to be guilty not for justice, but to be proven right.
He decided to just stick with what Carter already told him. "When you checked out where she lives, you didn’t find anything that says she could have housed all those feral vampires?"
Carter shook his head. "Not a damn thing. If it makes you feel any better we're still keeping an eye on her."
It didn't make him feel better. So he decided to go back to Jackie's side, perhaps glare at her mother a bit for playing favorites with the daughter that cursed him in the first place.
Patty took one look at him before quickly turning her head, tightening her hands on her purse as she rose to kiss Jackie's head. "I need to be going now."
"Mom," Kyle heard the pleading in Jackie's voice. Whether it was for her to stay or be more polite to him, he couldn't tell.
"I'll come back to see you later if you're still here. Call me if you get out before then and we can talk some more."
Patty puttered out of the room fast enough for Kyle to know in all certainty that he was the reason she chose to leave.
He sat in the chair that Patty vacated and pulled it closer. "You okay? Thought I felt some tension."
She shrunk in on herself. "Yeah, a little. I guess." She sighed and threw her head back into the pillows. "The doctor said I could leave tomorrow morning. I only need to stay for observation. What did Evey say?"
He tensed. "She checked out this morning. She's not here." He hoped that the half truth would be enough to curb her suspicions.
She looked at him, her eyes sharp now. "I saw the way you and my mom looked at each other when she left. I don't want you to think that she's a bad mother or anything just because she goes easy on Carly whenever she makes a mistake."
He sighed at the quick change of subject. Still, Kyle thought it was an awfully nice way of saying that the mother favored one daughter over the other.
"But, there's a reason for what she does that you don't understand." She continued.
He leaned back and crossed his foot over his knee, trying to look like the picture of patience. "I'll listen if you explain it. If you want to, that is."
She smiled at him, understanding that he only prodded and poked where he didn’t belong because of his worry for her.
She closed her eyes before staring up into the ceiling. "Griffon city is a big place and all, but because of all the secrecy, you can't really come here and expect to get rich and famous, in pretty much anything. If you want to design clothes for celebrities, you have to leave and do it in another city, or you could just stay here and make a small business out of it that no one outside will ever hear of. The most this city has is its own newspaper, a private channel that's mostly for the news, and a radio station.
"Mom wanted to be an actress, but she wasn't brave enough to leave the city to go out and make it on her own. So she stayed here and opened her store. She expected Carly to take it over someday, but she didn't want anything to do with it. Said it was too small and wouldn’t bring her anywhere in her life.”
“Charming thing to say about your mother’s business.”
Jackie ignored the comment and plowed on. “She wanted to model, to be famous like mom wanted to be. But unlike mom, she was brave enough to leave and do what she wanted. Mom didn't approve, said all the basic things. The odds of making it were as good as no odds at all. They even had a big fight over it. No one who knew Carly expected her to actually make it, and yet she did. Now mom idolizes her for what she did."
"Even though you stayed?"
She nodded and finally looked away from the ceiling. "Right."
He crossed his arms tightly. Despite how she appeared on the outside, even if he didn’t have the ability to read her so well, he could see the bitterness just below. "You're story is really depressing."
That startled her. "What?"
He shrugged. "Well, think about it. Just because your sister went ahead and did something your mother couldn't do isn't much of a reason to favor her over you."
"She loves us both."
Once again Kyle didn't need to be an empath to feel the sad emotions in her voice as she said it. He recalled the last time he tried to talk to her about her mother and decided that he was lucky to hear what he heard because she was in the mood to talk. He wouldn't push her for more.
"I didn’t say that she didn’t love you. Every mother loves her kids.” He thought with some pain of his own mother before getting back on track. “Listen, I'll go to your place and board up the window before anything else happens. There's not much
of a point to me being here with all the security."
She looked at him sharply. "When are you coming back?"
He thought about it seriously. He wanted to make a pit stop at the hotel where Carly was staying and have a talk with her. A calm, adult, conversation, but he didn't want Jackie knowing this. "I guess it depends on how long the cleanup will take."
She nodded.
He decided to grant her a bit of good news, even though he questioned it. "Charity wasn't the one who shot at your window."
Her eyes brightened as they went wide. "How do you know?"
"Carter told me. She has an alibi for the time it happened, and when he checked out her apartment they didn't find anything that would convict her of starving vampires."
"Wow, he works fast. You just told him about that this morning."
"I think he just got some people to check it out and then report back to him." Without thinking of his earlier pact to himself to not do so, he leaned down to brush her lips with his.
He pulled away before she could kiss back, licking his lips and tasting her there. "I'll be back soon. Stay safe."
He went to the door and found the guard still thankfully engrossed in his magazine and not paying attention to the kiss he'd given her. He had to try and stop that. Despite what he’d said about avoiding kisses at night, embracing them, encouraging them during the daytime was not much better. Jackie getting shot through her window in the morning light was proof of that.
"You stay safe too."
He stopped and looked behind him. She was sitting up in her bed, looking so fragile where she sat with her arm in a sling in her hospital bed, just watching him.
Telling her where he was going would destroy her. He’d have to keep it to himself for a long while.
***
Jackie sighed and lay back, staring at the boring white ceiling again. She blindly reached out with her good arm for the book her mother brought her to read, a silent apology from the proud woman. Jackie opened it but couldn't read the words right away.
He was going to see Carly. She could feel it deep inside her.
"If she curses you again, don't come crawling back to me," she muttered, snapping it shut and sighing.