by Liz Meldon
“Not really,” she admitted, surprised at her honesty, “but maybe.”
She kissed him again, unable to help herself, but this time on his cheek as he carried her away from the crowd. From the festival grounds to the Beltmore Hotel, Claude gave her the only piggyback ride she would ever commit to memory, laughing and chatting as they bypassed other late-night partygoers along the downtown walkways. For once, she wasn’t trying to scope out the vamps from the humans—she was in the present, totally fixated on the man carrying her on his back.
It felt kind of nice.
Kind of more than nice.
It felt like relief.
On the drive back to her apartment, Claude thanked her for the date, saying it was quite fun.
“Was it?” she asked as she reclined in the passenger seat beside him. He nodded, gaze fixed on the road.
“I enjoyed myself.”
“But only the second half, right?”
“Both,” he insisted. “For different reasons, I suppose.”
“Hmm.” She studied the familiar buildings through the window. Like the last time he drove her home, she almost dreaded seeing her street sign. “Next time you can skip the really expensive restaurant and rom-com. Neither are really my thing.”
“Ah, so there will be a next time?” he asked, laughing when she playfully rolled her eyes at him. “Naturally there should be. I have to make up for my dismal choices, don’t I?”
“Well, it’s not like you’d know what I like on a date.” Even if they’d spent time together last month, it wasn’t like he actually knew her. Delia had always been careful about not letting too much of her personal life slip.
And to be fair, Delia had no idea what Claude liked, either. Fenton Festival could have been his worst nightmare, but because he was ridiculously patient and considerate with her, he’d never say it to her face. She bit her lower lip, watching him out of the corner of her eye. For some reason, she wanted to make sure he had a good time.
“So…” Claude brought the car to a gentle stop in front of her building, her street quiet in both directions. He shifted in place to face her, his expression suddenly too serious for her liking. “Aren’t you going to invite me up again?”
She blinked back her surprise, which peppered her cheeks with colour and made her body warmer than she liked. A tremor of excitement passed through her at the thought, but she swallowed it down, shocked at his presumptuousness.
Seconds later he laughed and snatched her hand, kissing it before she could pull away. “I’m only teasing. Because at the bar the other night…”
“Right, right, let’s harp on my drunken stupidity—”
“It was a very enticing offer,” he told her, still holding her hand, thumbs stroking the top. The heat from his palms soothed her temper. “I mean, had you been able to stand upright on your own, I might have taken you up on it.”
“Okay.”
“And if your words were clear, too. As I recall, they were very slurred and your dress was in such a state of—”
“Okay.” She yanked her hand back and tried to suppress a smile. “Maybe one day we’ll figure out how to get vamps piss drunk, then I can have embarrassing stories about you to throw in your face.”
“Spend more time with me and you’ll see I don’t need to be drunk for you to have embarrassing stories,” Claude said with a chuckle. Delia pursed her lips, shaking her head.
“Bullshit. I’m sure clan leaders don’t do anything embarrassing.” At some point, she too had shifted on the seat so that she faced him, one leg bent and drawn under her. “Kings even less so.”
“The king title is a formality,” he insisted. “Few actually remember I have the power to decree martial law.”
“So why don’t you?” She paused, sensing a slight shift in the air between them. “I mean, some of the other clans have been misbehaving lately.”
“I can assure you, and your League,” Claude said somewhat pointedly, “that should a line be crossed, the issue will be dealt with.”
She withdrew both hands to her lap. They’d been creeping toward him while they talked, desperate to settle on his arm or his thigh.
“Well, I hope so,” she said after another brief pause. “For the sake of the people of Harriswood.”
Claude studied her, eyes fixed on her in a way that was almost calculating. But then he blinked and the look was gone.
“Delia, you know I have no desire to discuss clan or League business with you,” he said, his tone suggesting he was tired of saying it. All she could do was nod—this wasn’t the first time he’d told her, and she had every intention of including that in her report for the High Council tomorrow.
“I know. Sorry. It’s habit.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t deal with a lot of people outside the League socially. Vamp and human politics are kind of the main topic of conversation.”
Unless there was alcohol involved—then it was open season for whatever her drunken brain could come up with. His jaw clenched momentarily, but, like that look of contention from before, it was gone in a flash.
“I understand,” he told her. “At least, I understand now.”
“I’ll keep my prying to a minimum on the next date,” she insisted with a grin. “I promise.”
Delia added a wink because she thought it suited her mischievous tone, but instantly regretted it. Who the hell actually winked at anyone in real life? She busied herself with pulling her purse strap over her shoulder and zipping up her jacket to hide her embarrassment.
“And when would you like this next date to be?” he asked. Maybe he’d missed the wink. Delia glanced up with a heavy sigh.
“I’ll need to plan it around my schedule,” she told him, a half-truth that made her butterflies turn to knots. “Can I let you know?”
Claude nodded. “Of course.”
It would have been easy to lean forward and kiss him. A little awkward with the gear shift between them, given how small the car was, but she could probably swing it. Instead, Delia reached out and pressed her hand to his chest, offering him a very real smile.
“Thanks for everything,” she said, swallowing hard when he placed his hand over hers. “Seriously.”
Claude lifted her hand to his lips again and pressed them to her palm. Shooting him one last smile, she clambered out of the car as gracefully as she could manage. After she shut the door, Delia heard him roll down the window and call her name. Resting a hand on the car, she leaned down with a raised eyebrow.
“See you soon,” Claude said, then, much to her horror, offered her an overly dramatic wink and a wicked smile. So he hadn’t missed it. Perfect. With her cheeks hot, Delia flipped him off and kept flipping him off until he closed the window and drove away. Just before he rounded the corner at the end of her building, Claude gave two quick honks, and Delia waved from the curb until the car disappeared.
Across the street, the grey-haired hunter from before was still seated on the same bench. Newspaper folded on his lap, he too waved once she saw him. Jaw clenched, Delia turned on the spot and hurried for the door, her nerves from the start of the night slowly but surely creeping back in and making themselves at home.
CHAPTER 12: Keeping Enemies Closer and All That
“Well, look at you, high roller.” Arthur beamed from the other side of the glass as he slid Delia’s pay envelope across the counter. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been promoted?”
She wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown, laugh at a joke or take him seriously, so her mouth morphed into some weird half-smile-half-frown thing that felt strained.
“What is that? What is your face doing?” Arthur asked, his exuberance faltering somewhat.
“Oh, I wasn’t sure if you were being serious,” she said as she shoved the white envelope into her purse. “Are you being serious?”
The accountant frowned. “What? Are you?”
“What?”
They stared at one another, both trying to gauge wh
at the hell was happening, before dissolving into giggles. She was the only one picking up her earnings that afternoon; she’d received a notification yesterday that her cheque was ready. Most hunters visited Arthur the day it was issued, which she knew resulted in a giant headache for her friend behind the counter. ID squabbles. Arguments over the amount—like he was the guy who decided how much everyone was paid. Idiots.
“But seriously, you were in a different category of hunter when I went to print your stuff,” Arthur told her, rolling himself over to a monitor a few feet from the main one. Delia’s brow furrowed as he clacked away at a keyboard, then nodded at the screen. “See? New category. Doesn’t say why.” He glanced over at her through his wide-brimmed glasses. “Got a new super secret assignment?”
“Kind of,” she said weakly. She turned away and retrieved the envelope, tearing it open as Arthur continued to type away. While her hunter ID was the same as always, her pay grade seemed to have changed. Suddenly she was getting a quarter more than usual, at least—all because she went on a date with a vamp, then wrote a blasé report about it.
Three days had gone by since she and Claude had had their first date, and she felt just as slimy about it now as she did when the High Council first assigned her to it. If the mark had been anyone else, maybe she could have done it. She could have forgotten that they were using her for some unwarranted sexual prowess. She could forget that she was supposed to flirt and charm information out of a man, that she was supposed to use him for the League’s gain, toy with his feelings. If he had been anyone but Claude Grimm.
But Delia actually felt something for Claude. As of that moment, however, she wasn’t sure exactly what. The lust phase had mostly passed after the masquerade ball. There was no denying the sexual tension, but it was something more than that now. She wasn’t just smitten anymore. Not in love. Just floating in some weird middle ground that she couldn’t wrap her head around yet.
On the other side of the coin, Delia had made more money than she usually did in a week writing one measly little report—most of which was filled with information she had found in the digital archives, reworded to make it seem like it had come up in conversation.
This was what she had wanted for so long—to finally move up, to not stay stagnant. For her superiors to see she had worth beyond the mundane tasks they had assigned her week after week, year after year, since she was twenty-one.
It was finally happening, in spite of the bite marks on her neck, the ones that should have earned her a one-way ticket to Exiled Traitor Island.
She ought to be happy.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah.” Delia shoved the pay summary back in the envelope and looked up, finding Arthur studying her curiously.
“You look, uhm, tired.”
A polite way of saying she looked like shit. She smirked. “Nice.”
He backtracked quickly, as any sane male did when they’d been caught commenting on a woman’s appearance. “No, no, no, it’s just you kind of seem—”
“I am tired,” she admitted. “My schedule’s a bit all over the place.”
She’d been so hyped up on nervous adrenaline after her date that she had barely slept. After sunrise, Delia had decided to stop chasing the ever elusive shut-eye and head to HQ, where she’d holed herself up in the digital archives room with her laptop to write her report for the High Council. Once she’d submitted it and headed for home, she’d crashed hard in a hangry fit, needing food but too tired to make it, and then woke with a splitting headache for her regularly assigned patrol the following evening.
Since then, her sleep schedule hadn’t quite balanced out, but since she had the night off she had plans to splurge on takeout for dinner, have a glass of wine in a hot bath while streaming trashy TV, then take the sleeping pill the League nurse had issued and catch up on all her missed hours of quality time in bed—alone.
This week felt never-ending.
“You’re not the only one looking tired, I promise,” Arthur told her as he sidled back to the front of his little accounting bubble. “Kain was in earlier and he looked like he had crawled out of a crypt or something.”
Delia hadn’t heard from Kain since their run-in on the elevator—and that was totally fine in her books.
Mind you, she also hadn’t heard from Claude since their date.
“Can I ask you a weird question?” When Arthur gave a tentative nod, she took a moment to figure out how to phrase it, then just came out with it. “Do you put any stock in that stupid three-day rule after a date? Like it’s too desperate to call someone the day after, or the guy isn’t interested in you if they don’t…” Delia trailed off, the look on Arthur’s face coinciding with her realization of how ridiculous the question was. “…call.”
“I hate to repeat myself,” Arthur said after a brief pause, “but are you serious?”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “No.” Delia then shook her head and went for the door. “Thanks for everything.”
Delia made it a few feet before she heard him call her name.
“Everybody gets busy,” he told her with a shrug. “I mean, you could always call him, you know? Nobody thinks it’s desperate. We’re not in high school.”
She shot him a thumbs-up and a half-smile. “Thanks, Arthur.”
“See you around,” he called back across the vast empty room. Delia nodded before she left, pleased that he hadn’t used a somewhat self-conscious moment to poke fun at her.
The rational side of her knew that Claude hadn’t called because Delia said she’d let him know when they could see each other again. Still, she actually missed getting the occasional text from him.
Maybe she’d call him when she got home, sometime later tonight—let him know that she’d had fun the other night and was still waiting on her work schedule to come out. Her mouth twisted into a smile at the thought, but the sight of a wall-mounted surveillance camera ogling her made it disappear just as fast. Head down, she made her way to the elevator in silence, all the while fantasizing about the relaxing night ahead.
*
Delia’s hopes of a relaxing night imploded as soon as she rounded the corner and saw who was standing at her building’s door, jamming his finger into the wall-mounted intercom talk button.
“Look, I’m worried my friend is ill,” Kain sneered. Delia crossed her arms, gripping her phone. Only moments earlier, she had contemplated texting Claude to let him know that she was free to talk for a little while if he wasn’t doing anything. That probably wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.
“Oldest trick in the book, buddy,” came the prickly response from her super. Delia stopped a few feet behind Kain, her eyes narrowed. “Either a tenant lets you in or you can piss off.”
“Fucking bastard,” Delia heard the hunter mutter, finger hovering over the communication button. As soon as he punched his finger into it again, Delia cleared her throat, which he ignored.
“You should have said you were a plumber or something,” she said stiffly. Kain whirled around, mouth slightly open as if she’d caught him just as he was about to say something. Exhaling deeply, he stepped away from the intercom and ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. He stank of smoke and was probably responsible for the smoldering cigarette butts scattered around the entryway. Delia looked at them pointedly, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Figured I’d get more sympathy if I said I was worried about my friend,” he told her before raising two fingers at the security camera overhead. “Apparently your super doesn’t give a shit if someone’s potentially dying up there.”
She grabbed his arm and pulled it down so he’d stop flipping off whoever was watching the monitors. “Stop.”
“You alright, Dels?” He moved in closer, but Delia skirted around him and shoved her key in the lock. “Haven’t heard from you in a few days.”
“That’s because I’m mad at you,” she snapped. Against her better judgement, she let him follow her inside—he
probably would have pushed through the door anyway if she hadn’t.
“Still?”
“Yeah, still. It was a shitty thing you did.”
They crossed the lobby to the elevators together, their synced footfalls the only sounds to be heard. Once she’d pressed the up button and stepped back, Delia noted Kain’s gaze seemed to be everywhere but her.
“I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately—”
“Oh my god, just go, Kain,” Delia said thickly, rolling her eyes as the elevator doors peeled back and stepping inside. He hurried in after her and tapped the button for her floor before she could get to it.
“No, you’re right, it’s no excuse.” He gave her some space as the rickety lift began its ascent, leaning against one wall while she stood firmly at the other. “I was an arse. What I did… I understand why you’re angry. I wanted to check in with you and make sure you’re okay after the, uh, date thing.”
“The date thing was fine,” she remarked, staring intently at the buttons on the panel in front of her. Some of the numbers had faded, their outlines split and chipped. “Fun, actually.”
“Fun?” By the time they’d reached her floor, Kain had another cigarette in hand. “You didn’t include that tidbit in your report.”
Her eyebrows shot up, but she stepped out and blitzed down the hall before he could catch her look of surprise. Of course he had read her report. The gossip was right. Kain was Wentworth’s little pet.
“Don’t come in if you plan to light that thing up,” she told him coolly when he caught up at her door. Kain tucked the cigarette behind his ear, wearing an easy smile when their eyes met.
“I know the rules, Dels.”
Sighing, Delia turned the key and pushed the front door open, contemplating slamming it on his foot. However, by the time she decided on doing it, Kain had already shouldered his way inside, and she closed her front door more forcefully than usual, kicked off her shoes, and stalked from the front hall toward the living/dining area. With all the lights off in the late afternoon, her place was shrouded in comfortable shadow. Tossing her purse on the couch, the arms of which had pants and shirts hanging over them, she tidied up—also known as pushing the mess into a single large pile instead of a number of smaller ones—then plopped down in the middle and crossed her arms.