by Jess Haines
That was a relief. I smiled at him, grateful that he was willing to come save the day. My good cheer faded when I remembered what he’d said yesterday—he was doing this for his own reasons. I had to wonder what was on his agenda.
“What about me?” Sara asked.
Arnold and I stared at her like she’d grown two heads. “You can’t be serious,” he said at the same time I sputtered out, “Are you nuts?!”
With a scowl, she leaned forward on the table and pointed at me. “You shouldn’t be going in there alone. I haven’t signed anything and he doesn’t have any leverage against me, so there isn’t much he can do to hurt me. You, on the other hand, could use all the help you can get if you expect to get out of this alive.”
In a sudden panic, I shook my head, curls flying wildly before I pushed them out of my face. “Sara, no! You don’t want to do this, trust me. I didn’t think he had anything on me either, but he still put me in this spot. He told me I should tell you to consider signing a contract with him, too, and believe me, you don’t want that!”
Her eyes narrowed and I wanted to throttle her, knowing she was thinking about doing just that. I held my breath, waiting for her to answer. Arnold looked like he was biting his tongue to keep from adding his own thoughts to the conversation, though I don’t know why he chose to stay out of it. After a moment she relaxed and slumped back in the chair.
“You’re right, I don’t want to get involved. Not yet. Royce would get suspicious if I showed up with you now, ready and willing to sign.”
That was not exactly why I didn’t want her involved, but hey, at least she wasn’t going to try to face him head on.
We all got quiet for a few minutes. I stared at the table, Sara sipped her coffee and looked thoughtful, like she was planning something, and Arnold just cleared his throat and scuffed his feet a little. It was an awkward silence, and I really didn’t want to be the first to break it.
Eventually, Arnold stood up, the sound of the chair scraping over the linoleum sounding overly loud. “I’m going to shower and get dressed. Shia, you might want to think about what you want to do with the rest of your day. We can’t be seen by anyone you know if we’re going to stick to the cover story that you’re out of town. I only hope that ex of yours carries the word back to any packs looking for you.”
I gaped at him, realizing all of a sudden what his behavior of yesterday was all about. “You really wanted them to think I was out of town so they wouldn’t come after me? Or know where to look?”
He nodded, a wry grin slowly suffusing his lips. “Of course. I told you that you have a tail. That should throw them off the scent for a little while at least.”
I felt about a thousand times more stupid than I had a moment ago for not realizing it sooner. Here I’d thought he might actually be trying to save me from Chaz’s affections, not his pack.
That thought made me frown. I was hesitant about sounding dumb or egotistical, but I needed to know what was going on if I was going to save my skin. So I asked the question.
“You really think Chaz was there because of something to do with this mess I’ve gotten into? Not because of me?”
“I don’t have any doubts about it.” The touch of sympathy in his tone made me want to sock him. He didn’t have to rub it in. “He might want you, but he must have known he was taking a risk contacting you after revealing himself. He hid what he was, didn’t he? Never gave you a contract before…”
“No.”
I knew where he was going with his question and wasn’t interested in hearing him finish it. I didn’t think I could bring myself to press charges against Chaz for initiating a relationship with me without a contract, but if he persisted, I sure as hell wouldn’t stick around to see what other laws he was willing to break. Vamps and werewolves, considered too dangerous to interact with people without some kind of safety net, were required to keep any physical contact to a minimum until their partners signed contracts. Embarrassing as it was to look back on, Chaz and I had been intimate plenty of times without my spotting any signs of danger. It didn’t mean they weren’t there—only that I hadn’t seen them.
Arnold nodded, giving a helpless shrug. “That just leads me straight to the conclusion that he was sticking his neck out in the hopes of getting close to you again in case you might have a lead on the focus.”
So much for my thoughts of Chaz having a heretofore-unknown romantic streak.
He continued, apparently unaware of, or ignoring, my sudden sour expression. “Anyway, I’m going to go take that shower. Let me know if there is anything else you need to get done or pick up before tonight.”
Once he was out of earshot, Sara turned to me, brows raised and expression wry. “You really believe that?”
I slouched back in the chair, folding my arms across my chest and glaring with helpless rage at the cheerful, sunny day shining through the kitchen window.
“I don’t know what to believe. Chaz could be a dick, but he was never that slick or conniving before. I have a hard time believing he wasn’t just there to see me again.”
He wouldn’t have given me all those flowers, sent all those cards, or left all those messages if he hadn’t truly wanted to get back together. Right? Of course, it didn’t matter since I wasn’t exactly planning to jump in the sack with him. As far as I knew, he’d been honest with me about everything except what he was. Even now, thinking about how he’d looked and felt in those moments before he shattered that perfect image with fur and fangs sent a pang of regret through me for kicking him out. That had been an act of necessity and self-preservation, though. I wouldn’t have changed my actions if he’d been Don Juan incarnate. At this point, it was nothing more than an ego boost to think he still cared.
“Well,” Sara said, slathering some jam on her English muffin, “you can always call him and ask. Maybe he’ll play it straight with you this time.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, and maybe tonight Royce will say this whole mess was just a mistake, so sorry for the inconvenience.”
She grinned at that, blue eyes glinting with mirth. “You never know.”
Oh well. At least we could make light of the situation.
Taking a bite out of her muffin, she mumbled at me through her mouthful, “So what’s the plan for today? I’m going to work some more on the missing persons case, that Borowsky kid, while you guys are out. What about you and Arnold?”
I rubbed my chin, thinking about it. What exactly did one do on (probably) one’s last day alive?
Chapter 23
On one’s (probably) last day alive, one apparently stood around for almost an hour waiting for a notary to stumble over the clauses in a contract before signing it.
The man was in his mid-forties, balding, lisping, and had glasses thicker than Arnold’s that he used to squint at the fine print. Arnold had driven me to a place not far from Sara’s, a little copy and print shop that had a sign reading CHEAP NOTARY! in the window. Cheap being the operative word.
The notary finally looked up at me across the counter, lips pursed in disapproval.
“It’s not my place, miss, but are you sure you want to sign this? It’s not too late to back out, you know.”
I fought back the urge to rub at my aching temples. “Yes, I’m sure. Can we get on with it, please?”
Looking even more displeased than before, the guy handed me a pen. I scrawled my signature on the Human Notice of Willing Consent and Agreement to Binding Contract with Other Citizen page and shoved the pen and paper in his direction. He picked up the pen and put his own neat, professional signature under mine, dated it, and stamped his seal on the page.
God save me, I’d just signed myself over to Royce.
I had a copy of the contract made and paid the guy. Taking my receipt and the contract with me, I devoutly hoped that Sara was right and Royce wouldn’t bother reading the contract over or examine it for anything but my signature before taking it down to the courthouse for filing. Arnold
opened the car door for me once we got to the tiny parking lot, putting a hand on my shoulder before I got in.
“Try not to worry. We’ll figure out a way to get you out of this.”
Irritated, I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and slid into the seat, staring down at the papers clutched in my lap.
“It’s too late for me to get out of it. Once this gets lodged with the court, that’s it. Until one or both of us are dead, Royce can make whatever is left of my life miserable.”
“You can do the same to him, you know.”
Arnold shut the door and went around to the driver’s side. Once he got in and revved up the engine, he looked at me again, his green eyes bright but narrowed in seriousness.
“Vampires, even more than humans, hate when things don’t go the way they plan them to. Especially ones as old as Royce. They pride themselves on their ability to predict what others will do and keep the odds in their favor. It’s something of a survival instinct. As soon as he knows the contract is different, he’ll probably try to weasel out of it. Particularly if you show up with that belt on.”
I frowned at that, brushing my fingers over my temples. “I’m not sure how I can show up in his office pretending to have given in while wearing a bunch of stakes at my hip. It’s just not going to match the image of me meekly handing over a contract.”
The grin that suddenly curved his lips was alarmingly sly. “I know. I thought of that. We’re going shopping.”
Shopping. I was going to be branded a vampire’s toy tonight and he wanted to go shopping?
“It’ll be cold tonight, so you can wear a long jacket to hide the belt. I want to make sure you have the right look—you need to look like you intend to hurt him back if he tries to hurt you. It might make all the difference in whether he stands down or tries attacking you anyway.”
It took a minute to digest that. “You’re saying I need to look the part of the ‘fearless vampire hunter’ so he thinks twice before trying to bite me? But I have to hide it long enough to get close to him so he knows I’m actually a threat?”
He nodded, not taking his eyes off the road. “You got it.”
What exactly did a “fearless vampire hunter” wear? Combat boots? A trench coat? Reflective shades at night?
Thinking about that, as well as what I’d inevitably have to face tonight, I shifted around uncomfortably and stared out, unseeing, at passing buildings.
“Royce has been at least ten steps ahead of me every time I’ve dealt with him so far. Did I tell you I had some White Hats break into my place the other night? They tried to bully me into joining their cause. He knew they had come before I’d told anyone. Now here I am, doing their work, and not even getting a nifty white hat to wear while I’m at it.”
That startled him. He looked at me, horrified, before quickly focusing back on the road. “Don’t for a second even think that the White Hats are on your side. They’ll happily gut you and burn you at the stake for signing those papers, no matter what your intentions really are.”
“I know that. Jeez. I was just being facetious. Though it would be nice to go in with backup, I’m sure as soon as they finished up with Royce, they’d gun for me next.”
“Not necessarily in that order. They hate donors almost as much as they hate the vamps themselves.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“On another note, you should still be on the lookout for the focus while you’re with Royce tonight.”
I grimaced, wishing mightily that I didn’t have to worry about that stupid thing, too. I had enough of my own problems.
“Are you sure I really need to look for this thing? I mean, not that I like the idea of Royce having more power over anyone, but why not just let him keep it?”
Arnold frowned and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “It’s too dangerous to leave it in a vampire’s hands.”
Oh really? And a power-hungry coven of magi are better guardians of this thing, huh? What actually made it out of my mouth sounded a lot more civil than what was going through my head.
“I remember what you said to me over the phone yesterday. You said something about the end of the world as we know it. I take it that wasn’t just a lame reference to a song?”
His thin lips briefly quirked in a smirk, his grip on the wheel relaxing a tad. “No. You’re right, I did say that.”
The silence dragged on. I helped him along with an “And?”
“This thing is really, truly dangerous.” Brows lowered in thought, he stole a glance at me, then looked straight ahead again. “You heard about what Veronica’s body looked like when the cops found her, right?”
With a sudden chill of foreboding, I nodded. “Royce used that thing to do that to her?”
“I think so. There isn’t any other logical explanation for it. Like I told you before, that thing lets a vampire have a measure of control over Weres.”
I remembered the description in the newspaper. “So Royce drained her, and used the focus to make a Were savage the body?” Ew.
“Best as I can figure it out, yeah. I don’t have any solid proof, but it fits.”
“Okay, not that it isn’t bad enough, but what does that have to do with the end of the world?”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and I watched the emotions flitting across his face. He had a good poker face, but I could see that he was fighting an internal battle. When he finally spoke, the words were careful and measured, which meant he was likely hiding something else beside whatever he was about to tell me.
“Certain people have more will and finesse in using arcane objects than others. Royce is one of the oldest known vampires, and he’s not averse to stepping out into the public eye. He flaunts it, actually, which you may have already noticed, considering he was one of the first Others to use the legal system and the press to win over human support for things like equal rights for vampires. While what you may have already seen of his work is impressive, he is capable of a lot more than he lets on.
“Since it is in his hands, I’m assuming, based on what’s known of this thing, that he is perfectly capable of using it to start a war. While it might not serve his interests yet, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to assume he might use it for that purpose sometime soon.”
Arnold paused and drove in silence for a minute. I had the feeling there was something else underlying what he was telling me, something he wasn’t saying and that I was just missing.
He continued. “He’s not happy with The Circle. What intelligence we have on him indicates he’s been gathering up similar artifacts and actually making some deals with the local Were packs. The newshounds weren’t too far off Sunday morning. He can use that thing to turn Other against Other in an all-out war, weakening the power bases of magi and Weres to a point where he can step in and take over.
“If he accumulates too much power, or creates too many other vampires, he can use it to overtake the city and spread outward from there. Remember, he’s been around at least long enough to have seen the rise and fall of Rome, the burning of the Holy Land in the Crusades, and learned firsthand from the triumphs and mistakes of some of the greatest military minds in our history. He knows what he’s doing, and I for one am not interested in seeing vampires overrun the planet.”
I listened to all that with a growing sense of unease, trying to picture the charismatic vampire as some kind of warlord or dictator. It didn’t fit with what I’d seen of Royce so far, but there was no doubt that Arnold was right about his growing power base. However, even if Royce did make it to the top of the Other food chain, there weren’t nearly enough vampires, Weres or magi combined to be able to overthrow any major government or country. What did Royce need with a dictatorship anyway? He already had most of New York under his thumb as it was.
I couldn’t figure it out. I guessed I’d just roll with the punches for now.
“You’re right, I’m not interested in seeing vampires take over everything either,” I said. “I’l
l keep an eye out for the focus.”
I was careful to keep my voice from betraying any doubts or hesitation. What I didn’t tell him was that if, by some miracle, an opportunity presented itself to snatch this thing from the vampire, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be handing it over to The Circle.
Chapter 24
Arnold took me to a specialty shop near Central Park. From the display in the window, it looked like some kind of tattoo parlor and leather fetish shop. I was leery of going inside, but once Arnold finally persuaded me to follow one of the heavily pierced and tattooed assistants through the “Staff Only” door in the back of the shop, I saw why he had brought me here.
The assistant led the way down a rickety flight of wooden stairs and unlocked a nondescript door marked STORAGE, half-hidden by piles of boxes and crates. We then entered the obviously less than legal part of the business, a large, well-lit room with an admittedly impressive array of body armor and weaponry on display in glass cases, hanging from racks and tacked on the walls. I was reasonably certain they didn’t have permits for any of that stuff, particularly the heavy caliber minigun under a lighted display or the neatly stacked boxes of incendiary grenades next to the register cheerily marked ON SALE—30% OFF WHILE THEY LAST!
I noted the back wall had a section with a carefully hand-crafted wooden sign over it declaring HUNTER’S PLAYGROUND: FOR THE EXPERT EXTERMINATOR. From what I could see, it consisted mostly of wooden stakes with faux-leather grips, fragile-looking vials of holy water probably meant to shatter on contact, crucifixes, crossbow bolts and arrows that ranged in size from a bit thicker and longer than a pencil to as long as my arm, UV flashlights, and some other odds and ends I couldn’t quite make out.
Arnold headed toward a fairly normal-looking guy perched on a stool behind the register, leaning against the counter and reading a paperback. Unlike the assistant who showed us down, this one had no piercings or visible tattoos, and was wearing a plain white button-down and slacks instead of ripped jeans and a T-shirt with some obscure band’s logo on it. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen him before. His features were nondescript, neither handsome nor ugly, and he didn’t seem to recognize me either once he looked up. I dismissed the nagging sense of familiarity as nothing more than my imagination.