by Sloan Archer
Okay, so . . . What to do, what to do? I felt like somebody else should be aware of Robert’s disappearance. But vampires, like humans, were wily beings. I had to be extremely cautious about sharing the information.
Though the VGO were now on my side, I didn’t trust them enough to ask for their assistance. Without Robert’s protection, they might get it into their heads to abduct me. They might keep me as their human pet so that they could tap blood from my veins any time they pleased. That would certainly make things easier for them, wouldn’t it? It would save them a lot of trips from their headquarters in Scotland to my home in San Francisco. They’d probably keep me locked away in a dungeon—
I shuddered. Envisioning such awfulness was not helping my mental outlook.
I went to take a sip of wine and realized that I’d already killed the glass. Good call on bringing the whole bottle, I thought. Then again, it would turn into a bad call if got too drunk. I poured myself half a glass and then cut myself off, feeling a little buzzed.
I made a mental list of the vampires I trusted, which took a pathetically short amount of time. Really, there were three: my previous employer, Marlena, who was cantankerous on a good day and a downright pill at her worst; Jerry, who would be busy dealing with all kinds of wedding hoopla with it being so close to his nuptials; and my best friend, Liz, who I could think of absolutely no reason not to call.
3
Liz drove like most people ate pepperoni pizza: fast and dirty.
I could have sworn that I’d hit END CALL on my cell not three seconds earlier when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find Liz standing there, looking ethereal and supermodel-y in jeans and a plain sweater. The changeover from human to vampire had been very kind to her, though she’d been an equally gorgeous human.
“Damn, Liz, did you f-fly over here?” I asked with a hiccup.
“Have you been drinking, Ms. Montgomery?” she chided.
Okay, so maybe I’d had slightly more to drink than the half of a glass that I’d allowed myself. “Yep.” I gestured for her to come in. “Want me to pour you one? It’s merlot, your fav.”
“Uh . . .” She walked into the house and followed me into the kitchen, taking her usual spot at the dining room table. The sofa was more comfortable, but the kitchen was where we liked to talk. “How drunk are you?”
“Why?” I didn’t think I was slurring that much. After a moment, I realized my gaffe. “Of course! Duh! Sorry, I sometimes forget that you’re all vampy now. You want some blood?”
“I want you to tell me what this is all about.” Liz sat up in the chair and tucked a leg under her butt. “What’s the big emergency?”
I went to the fridge to get her some blood anyway. Reading the labels on the side of the bottle, I said, “I’ve got a thirty-something runner or twenty-something ballerina.” Vampires bought blood the same way people bought different roasts of coffee. Each human tasted different, apparently.
“Whatever you’ve got is fine,” she said, waving a hand. “You’re killing me! What’s the news?”
While I was at it, I grabbed myself an energy drink from the human fridge. Some couples had His and Her bathrooms; Robert and I had Human and Vampire refrigerators. If Liz could tell that I was inebriated from my simple greeting, then I must have been pretty tanked. A smidgen of caffeine would do the trick to remedy that problem.
I poured Liz some of the ballerina and then joined her at the table. I took a swig of the energy drink and then outlined all that had happened.
Liz was a pretty unshakable individual. Usually. Now here she was, gaping at me with her mouth hung open. “Okay, wow,” she said. “Wow.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “That really isn’t helping me, Liz! Which part are you wowing?”
“Um, all of it! I mean . . . Wow!”
“Say wow one more time,” I kinda-sorta snapped.
“Sorry. Okay. Let’s start with Mathew. Are you sure he’s dead? I just . . . I just can’t believe it.”
“Yes, I’m absolutely sure,” I said with forced patience. “I saw them pull his head out of a fountain.”
“Right. Okay. That was stupid of me to ask.” She took a sip of the blood, glossing her lips in red. Only Liz could make drinking plasma look sexy. She sucked in her bottom lip and then said, “Would it make me a bad vampire if I told you that I’m glad that Mathew finally got his comeuppance?”
“It wouldn’t make you a good vampire,” I said. “But since he was part of the group that put your husband in the hospital, I guess I’ll let it slide.” David, Liz’s husband, had been housesitting for Robert and me when Mathew, along with a few VGO thugs, broke into the house looking for me. They found David asleep on the couch, and then beat him so severely that he’d wound up in a coma. Obviously, this was back before the VGO and I had kissed and made up. Vampire principles, I’d learned, were extremely fickle.
“Who do you think did it?” she asked. “And, so you know, it wasn’t me. I would have liked to kill Mathew, but I didn’t. You can ask Marlena—I was doing hair all night.”
“It didn’t even cross my mind, Liz.” I rested an arm on the table, tracing my fingers along the wood grain. “Whose hair did you do tonight?”
“Dignitary was overseeing a charity event for the preservation of gorillas in the Congo.” Vampires carried a spot in their lifeless hearts for species on endangered lists, perhaps because they felt bonded with rare creatures. “It was actually pretty fun. There were about ten vamp bachelors and bachelorettes each. They were doing this auction where other vamps—and a few humans—bid against each other to go on dates with them. It was all in good fun.”
“That does sound fu—” I shook my head. “What in the hell are we doing, talking about vampire auctions? I have a huge problem on my hands, Liz. We need to focus!”
Liz rubbed her cold hand along my back when I started tearing up. “It’s okay,” she soothed. I could smell the blood on her breath. The scent was comforting in an odd sort of way, because it reminded me of Robert. Many kisses I’d shared with Robert had tasted coppery. I scarcely noticed it anymore.
“No, I really don’t think that it is.” I sniffed. “I have no idea what to do. What would you do?”
“This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I don’t know if I’m the right vampire to ask, Merc. I can give you advice as your best friend, but you know that I haven’t been vampire very long. I’m not sure about the protocol for immortal kidnappings. I don’t even know if a vampire investigation squad—or whatever—exists.” She shrugged. “I guess we could call Marlena.”
I shook my head. “I thought of that, but I don’t want to get her involved just yet.”
“Got it.”
I got up to get Liz a refill. This time I went with the runner.
“Before we get all panicky, what makes you certain that Robert has been kidnapped?” Liz asked when I sat back down. “You said the living room was in disarray, but that’s hardly like finding Jimmy Hoffa.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” I said with a wry smirk. Liz had a way of making me smile in the worst circumstances. That’s what best friends are for though, right? “But I guess I kind of see what you’re getting at.”
“I think you should reconsider calling Marlena. She’s really not that ba—”
“Shh!”
“What?”
“Oh my God! Robert’s phone!” I squawked. “Shit! Where did I put it?”
“You had it in your hand when you answered the door.”
I must have surely broken at least one Olympic track record as I raced to the door. I also nearly broke my toe, which I stubbed on the side table. It was totally worth it, however, because I was able to snap up the phone just before the call was going to switch over to voicemail. I knew how Robert’s phone operated like I knew my own, since it went off a lot when he worked from home.
“Hello!” I yelled. “Robert?”
“Try again, sweetheart.”
&nb
sp; It was her. Bitch Face. I could tell straightaway because of the sultry French accent. I’d only heard it once, at the VGO headquarters, but it had burned itself on my mind like an infected cold sore. I pulled the phone from my ear and clocked the number. It was clearly foreign, with a peculiar prefix that no state anywhere in America used. I hadn’t noticed it before because I’d been so worried about getting to the phone on time.
“I’m sorry, who is this?” I said levelly. Of course I didn’t want to give Bitch Face the satisfaction of knowing that she’d had such an impact on me that I’d gone to the trouble of remembering her voice. “This is Robert Bramson’s phone.”
“I know whose phone this is,” she snapped. “This is Serena Aucoin.”
I opened my mouth to snidely say, I’m sorry, that doesn’t ring a bell, but I wasn’t so drunk that I lacked the good sense to bite my tongue. Bitch Face was, after all, a member of the VGO. She was by no means the highest-ranking member, but she was a member nonetheless, and was important enough to hold a place at their prestigious high table. Getting lippy with her would cause me more grief than it was worth, and I already had plenty of grief on my plate.
“Oh, yes. Serena. What can I do you for?” I asked as pleasantly as possibly. On the bright side, my annoyance was taking my mind off my throbbing big toe.
“It’s not what you can do for me,” she said. “It’s what I’m going to do for you.”
“Oh?”
This should be interesting.
I sleepwalked back into the kitchen after the conversation with Bitch Face had concluded. Liz was at my side in a speedy vampire instant, helping me down into a chair.
“Who was that?” she said. “You look like you’re on the verge of passing out.”
“I am.” But I didn’t.
“So?”
Liz, of course, knew exactly who Bitch Face was. I’d raged about her after Robert and I had returned from Scotland. Though Liz had never met the vampire, she loathed her on sheer principal. Because that’s the sort of thing best friends do.
I swallowed. “That VGO chick from Scotland, Serena—”
“Bitch Face?” she confirmed. See?
“Yah. That was her.”
Liz snorted. “What did she want?”
“She wanted to tell me that she was with Robert now.”
“Wait. What do you mean, with Robert? Like, they’re hanging out someplace together?”
Dazed, I shook my head.
“She kidnapped him?”
I shook my head again.
“What, then?” Liz yelped. “You’re killing me!”
“She . . . She said that she’s with him now. Like, with-with.”
Liz’s eyebrows were so high on her forehead that they nearly reached her hairline. “I don’t believe it. It has to be a joke or something.”
“She sounded pretty serious, Liz.”
Liz puckered her lips and made a sort of half-assed raspberry. “Did you speak directly to Robert? No? Okay, then.”
“She said that they’ve been talking behind my back since our return from Britain. She said that she knew Robert from way back when, and that they used to date, and that they were only pretending not to know each other at the VGO.”
“Lies,” Liz declared.
“Why would she go through all the trouble of doing that?” I asked. “She’s a bitch, Liz, but I didn’t get the vibe that she was a crazy bitch.”
“But you did say that she was all flirty with Robert, right?”
“Yah. So?”
Liz waved an arm like a defense attorney making a sudden revelation in court that exonerated her client. “There you have it. She’s trying to break the two of you up.”
“Do you think she’s with Robert?”
She blew another raspberry. “No, I think she’s messing with you. I doubt she even knows where he is. I bet she was calling his phone looking for him, trying to set up a date on the down low, but then she had to improvise after you answered.”
“What a . . .” I sucked in my bottom lip. “A . . .”
“The phrase you’re looking for is cunt. You can go ahead and say it, Mercy. You’re allowed to use that word when a woman is out to steal your man.”
Liz had once again managed to make me smile. “Okay,” I agreed. “What a cu—”
The cell rang in my hand. I hadn’t even realized that I was still hanging on to it. I looked at the number. “It’s Bitch Face again. What do I do?”
Liz made a humph sound and then rolled her neck like a chicken. “You answer it and tell her that she’s a cunt, that’s what you do.”
I chuckled in spite of myself. “Right.” I answered the phone with a sickly sweet, “Hello? This is Mercy speaking.”
Liz mouthed: SHE’S A CUNT! TELL HER!
I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. My amusement was short-lived.
“Mercy, it’s Robert.”
I bolted upright in my chair. “Robert! Where are you? What’s happened? Are you okay? I saw the lamp tipped over . . .” I trailed off when a not so great detail occurred to me. I looked at the phone. “Why are you calling from Serena’s number? Are you with her right now?”
“I’ve been mulling things over lately,” he said in a voice that was flat and emotionless.
“You sound funny. Are you okay?”
“You and I are two completely different species, Mercy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need to be with . . . with somebody more like me.”
“What are you saying?” I muttered. “Is this a joke, because I really don’t think it’s fun—”
“Somebody who knows what it’s like. To be immortal.”
“I . . .”
Liz’s hand was on my shoulder, shaking me. WHAT? WHAT? I swatted her off.
“Serena is that somebody. She understands me, Mercy.”
I didn’t grasp that I was sobbing until I went to speak. “Why are you doing this? W-w-hy?”
“She will never grow old, never die. But you will.”
“But I love you!” I wailed.
“I’d nearly forgotten the feelings I’d had for Serena so long go. I’d buried them so deep. But seeing her again, it reminded me of the love we used to share.”
“What the fuck?” I was making these ugly clacking sounds in my throat. Nobody ever sounds respectable when they’re angry-crying, which was precisely what I was doing. “I can’t believe it, Robert.”
“You have to. We’re over.”
“No, I mean that I literally cannot believe you’re saying this! Do you remember the last thing you said to me as I walked out the door to meet Mathew?”
Robert said nothing for the longest time. The phone made a crackling sound on his end, so I knew that he was still there. I knew it was impossible to tell on a cell phone, but it sounded like he was far, far away . . . maybe sitting in a bathtub, naked, with Bitch Face—that cunt—in some Parisian townhouse.
“Do you?” I shouted. “In case you don’t remember, let me remind you. You told me that you loved me. You said that having me in your life made you the happiest man on earth.”
“Mercy—”
“So I find it incredibly hard to believe that in the past—” I looked at my wrist for some reason, though I didn’t even own a watch “—couple of hours, you suddenly came to the conclusion that, no, you actually don’t love me. Oh, and while you were at it, it also occurred to you that you’re madly in love with some bitch that you told me you’d never met prior to last month.”
More silence on his end.
“Well?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he droned. “This is the way things have got to be.”
“No, I don’t accept it! I can’t! I won’t!” I cried.
“I don’t expect you to move out right away. You can stay in my home until you find a new place to live.”
My mouth fell open. “You think that’s what I’m worried about right now, finding a new place to
live?”
“In the meantime, I’ll be staying at Serena’s.”
“Is this about me meeting up with Mathew?” I asked desperately. “I’ll have you know that he’s gone, Robert! Decapitated! So, if you think that I’ve gotten back with him, or that something happened . . . sexually when we met up, you’re way off!”
“This has nothing to do with your past lover.”
“Then what is it, Robert? Tell me! You can’t end things with no explanation! This is insane!”
“I’ve said all that I’ve needed to say, Mercy.”
“Wait! Please!”
“I’ll call you in a few days.”
“Don’t go—”
“Goodbye, Mercy.”
Click.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Mercy, what’s going on?” Liz demanded.
“Not now, Liz,” I snarled. I punched CALL to redial the number. It didn’t go through. I tried again. And again. “What, did that bitch use a burner phone like a drug-smuggling kingpin? Throw the cell over the side of the boat and into the ocean so I couldn’t call back?”
Liz didn’t bother playing dumb. She’d been sitting two feet away during my conversation with Robert, so there was no need for us to play games for the sake of decorum. She fetched a new bottle of wine, opened it, and then poured me a glass. I drank it down in one gulp and then she refilled it.
“I . . . I can’t believe it,” she declared.
“Yah,” I sniveled, swiping a tear off my cheek with a sleeve. “That makes two of us.”
“Okay, let’s have a think. Could there be a rational explanation for this?”
“What, like Robert had a lobotomy? I still . . . I can’t believe it, Liz!”
“I know what you mean. I thought Robert was one of the good ones.” Liz sat back in her chair for a moment while I pounded more wine and felt sorry for myself and contemplated jumping in front of a train. She said, “There is one possibility.”
“Let’s hear it,” I said with zero enthusiasm. My buzz was coming back good and strong. It was nice to be numb. But the wine, mixed with the caffeine from the energy drink, mixed with the other wine I’d had earlier, was making me queasy.