Their Dark Reflections

by Amanda Meuwissen

  “Oh, I’m hardly a professional.”

  “Looks professional enough to me,” Sam argued. “Could be a real…. Spider-Man opportunity for you.”

  Ed chuckled helplessly, cheeks going red again.

  “That reminds me,” Marie said, “I need to give you back that comic book. The kids really loved it.”

  “Let them keep it,” Ed said with ease.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Really, I insist. I have another copy. They can have it.”

  Sam was honestly proud, not only because Ed was schmoozing the neighbors with such skill, but because it was honest. He wondered how seldom Ed allowed himself to get close to people, to know them and make friends. Almost never, he figured, because in Ed’s own words—it got harder to say goodbye, since being a vampire, he always had to move on when the people he met grew older and… died.

  Like Sam would someday.

  The conversation drifted away from him as he spent far too much time dwelling on that. When he came back to himself, the others were talking about Ed’s photography again.

  “The least you can do is show me your work. Let me be the judge.”

  “I don’t know if I’d want to see my name on the nightly news.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem if it’s for a good reason,” came a new voice, drawing their attention to the kitchen doorway. “And not a bad one,” finished the stranger with a wide smile that didn’t seem to reach his eyes—blue and piercing.

  He had short blond hair and made a tall, striking figure. Daniel was with him, and their equally Aryan appearances made Sam wonder if this was one of his relatives.

  “Ed, Sam, this is Detective Cheroneau,” Daniel said—not a relative, then, unless he was a distant cousin. “He’s a transfer, working with me on the, um… murders.”

  “Daniel!” Marie scolded.

  “But no shop talk at the barbecue!”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Linda muttered.

  “Hon, didn’t you want to introduce Linda to Mikey?” Daniel deflected, like he was used to deflecting hungry reporters.

  “Right!” Marie said. “You haven’t met my baby brother yet. We’ll be right back,” she said to Sam and Ed before dragging Linda out of the kitchen.

  Almost immediately, Daniel was called away again, the perils of being host, which meant Sam and Ed were suddenly alone with Cheroneau, who didn’t seem at all like he was going to scamper off and leave them be.

  “New in town, Detective?” Sam tried to read him.

  But all he said was, “Call me Hal.”

  His smile was dangerously calculating.

  Like a cop with a lead.

  If Ed noticed, he didn’t let it show, reminding Sam again that he did know how to navigate these things. “I’m new in town myself,” Ed said, “moved in next door a little over a month ago.”

  “I know. You did all those renovations.”

  “That’s right. Well, I didn’t do them myself.”

  “Of course. You hired a contractor. Who was he again? Oh, wait. He was murdered.”

  There came that gripping chill Sam thought he’d banished. He knew this had been going too smoothly.

  “Not to worry,” Cheroneau said with his false smile, “even if there was a conflict of interest with you and Daniel being friendly, I’ve also looked over the case, and you have an alibi. Don’t you, Mr. Simons?” He stared evenly into Ed’s impressively neutral expression. “Mr. Coleman vouches for you. I mean, it would be different if you two were sleeping together.”

  Shit. Maybe they shouldn’t have been so cavalier about their relationship.

  “Sorry, I had to detective my way through that one. But full disclosure? That’s not enough either. There isn’t evidence to put you at any of the murders, just suspicion and coincidence, and Daniel thinks very highly of both of you. As of now, you have nothing to worry about.”

  He patted Ed’s shoulder like Daniel had earlier, but with an entirely different connotation, as if to say he was not as easily swindled as the Neu-Ryans.

  “Enjoy the barbecue.”

  Just when Sam had thought they had nothing to worry about.

  “I REALLY thought we had nothing to worry about,” Sam said once they’d returned to Ed’s house. “We don’t. We know who the other detective on the case is now. He has to act like that, because they don’t have any leads. He’s desperate, trying to get us to reveal something—”

  “Sam.” Ed stopped him, since Sam had started a hurried pace across the foyer.

  “Sorry,” he said, one of the rare times he’d shown his age and inexperience compared to Ed. “I’m rambling.”

  “You are.” Ed smiled. “It’s cute on you. But I really do think we’re fine. We’re doing everything we can. We’ve done everything right. Like you said, he’s desperate, trying to scare us.” Ed had to believe that until they had real reason to suspect otherwise. “Were you heading back to the hotel now?”

  Sam calmed with a drop in his shoulders, finally releasing some of his tension. “I know Cheroneau spooked us—well, me—but I had something else planned for tonight, if you’re up for it?”

  Ed was always up for whatever Sam wanted.

  Until he grabbed Ed’s hand and dragged him to the widow’s walk. Ed almost refused and said he’d had enough adrenaline for one day, but Sam looked so eager as he gripped his hand.

  The stars were just starting to twinkle when they made their way up onto the roof, and a pair of lawn chairs and Ed’s telescope were waiting for them.

  “How…? When…?”

  “I’m still a meddler in misdirection,” Sam said. “After spending all day with other people, I thought we deserved some alone time.”

  They got comfortable in the chairs, chaise-like and easy to lie back in, and Sam pulled the telescope closer to peek through. Then he gestured for Ed to do the same.

  Ed had to admit, the view was much better from the roof than poolside.

  They watched the stars awhile, Ed pointing out constellations and Sam looking at him adoringly through all of it, until finally, he moved the telescope aside to climb across the space between them and crowded onto Ed’s chair.

  Under the stars, Sam kissed him sweetly, moving his tongue like a slow memorizing of the moment. Ed tried to memorize it too, to hang on for as long as he could. When Sam’s hands drifted from Ed’s face down his body, he realized how much he never wanted any of this to end.

  “T-tell me more….” He pulled away before Sam’s hand could stray beneath his beltline. “About Hades and Persephone.”

  “What more is there?” Sam chuckled.

  “What happens after they decide to stay together?”

  The weight of the question hung between them, and Sam pulled away to look Ed in the eyes. “I don’t know. It’s easier for them. They’re both gods. Immortal.”

  “You think that makes it easier?”

  “I don’t know…,” Sam said again.

  Ed could map Sam’s face and memorize it like he had their kiss, and a hundred years from now, he’d be able to recall exactly how Sam looked tonight. He wasn’t sure if that was enough, but the alternative….

  Ed liked what he was, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have regrets.

  “It doesn’t make everything easier,” he said.

  Sam’s hands returned to Ed’s face, their bodies close, scrunched in the lawn chair. He stroked his thumbs beneath Ed’s eyes as if to say, even if they were yellow, fierce and glowing, he wouldn’t mind. He accepted all that Ed was, but that was very different from giving up humanity.

  “We don’t have to think about that right now,” Sam said.

  “Okay.” Ed kissed him before anything else could be spoken, because he wanted to enjoy what time he could steal before the days collected again and his hunger returned.

  As their kissing grew more heated, Ed pawed past Sam’s clothes and rucked up his shirt to feel the contours of his stomach. Frantic, feverish in his want, Ed undid th
e clasp of Sam’s jeans and then his own, wanting to get his hands on them both again and feel that connection of skin.

  Sam panted, breaking from their kiss to move his lips down Ed’s neck while rocking into his touch.

  Ed’s bestial side stirred, making him want to drag his fangs along Sam’s scratches again. He didn’t. He didn’t want to make the marks worse, but his eyes flickered and his fangs grew long as he licked the marks instead. Sam smelled wholly unique to him, and the desire to bite was always there, but focusing on the rut of their hips kept Ed centered on better things.

  Sam bared his neck with ease, and when they tumbled over the edge together, breaths short and uneven, he rolled up to kiss Ed square on the mouth.

  “Want to rinse off together now?” Sam teased with a wicked grin.

  Ed laughed. “That would be wonderful.”

  EVERYTHING WITH Ed was wonderful, even the parts that shouldn’t be. Sam didn’t even mind his regularly scheduled trips to see his blackmailers, which included facing the Cramers after they finally discovered Fitz’s body.

  “I swear, Goldman, if you know something,” Alverez snarled in his face, but that didn’t make Sam afraid anymore.

  He knew Ed was watching.

  “I don’t,” Sam said.

  “Maybe it was Midnight,” said Shaw. Scared was a strange look on her, usually so tough and unruffled.

  “Then who is he?” Alverez barked, still holding Sam by the collar. “Do you know? Huh?”

  “I don’t,” Sam said again. “Simons doesn’t either. I swear. Not that he’s let on.”

  “We need to get ahead of this,” Brock said, almost betraying that he was scared too. “Extend an olive branch, let Midnight know we’ll give him a cut of our new deal if it’ll keep him off our backs. That must be what he’s after. No enemies where we can make friends, right, Goldman?”

  They weren’t exactly broken up about Fitz’s loss, more just worried what it might mean for them, but without reason to suspect Sam, they let him go.

  Checking in with Lara went less smoothly.

  “I hear the knife cuts on Fitz were too clean and simple to have been done by the original murderer,” she said, having dragged Sam into the back again to slam him up against the wall. “He died much too quick.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Sam said, taking her words for the threat they were. “And knife cuts aren’t Ed’s style.”

  “Still could have been you, working alone.”

  “You really think I’m capable of that?”

  The look she gave him said she didn’t.

  “Not that we’re opposed to the Cramers biting it—” She eyed him warily. “—but we don’t like you and Simons shaking things up without us knowing.”

  “It wasn’t us. Ed figures the Cramers took out Fitz to have more money between them. I thought it was you who killed him, but I think Ed’s right, with the way they’ve been fighting. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried reconnecting with your boss to get more of the original money.”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  But right that moment—Sam couldn’t have planned it better—Lara’s phone buzzed, and the expression she gave the message was worthy of framing.

  “Those idiots. They really are suicidal. The Cramers just messaged Midnight to meet.”

  “Do you need me to tell you where they are?”

  “We know. But you can tell me which of them they could stand to lose most.”

  “Alverez,” Sam said, trying not to sound too pleased, as the tides of this meeting changed for the better too.

  Especially since Lara had been on her way out for another date with Gerry but had to cancel now to address the new play in motion. With any luck, Alverez would be dead next, and Ed could feed from one of the others come Friday.

  That night, Sam slept at the hotel, ignoring the ribbing from his friends, who mentioned his lacking presence lately but said nothing about Fitz, if they knew.

  The less they were involved, the better.

  By Wednesday, the late nights were catching up to Sam. It was easy to ignore the time when he was with Ed. So he returned to the hotel again to catch up on sleep, beating Mim and Gerry back from their day jobs.

  He figured he’d make himself a drink, take a hot shower, and collapse into bed. He got five whole feet into his room too—his, with his own door, separating him from the rest of the suite—before he noticed the body.

  Shaw’s body in the middle of his floor, with her eyes wide, blood everywhere from her gruesome wounds, and a knife sticking out of her neck.

  The one with Sam’s fingerprints and blood on it.

  Chapter 7

  SAM HAD seen several dead bodies now. He’d thought he could handle it after Fitz, but he was wrong.

  It didn’t get easier when it was a surprise.

  “Are you okay?” Ed asked for what must have been the dozenth time.

  Sam had called him as soon as he got his breathing under control. Ed arrived only minutes later, and while sitting on the bed with him was soothing, having Ed gently stroke up and down his spine, Sam couldn’t stop staring at Shaw’s body.

  “No,” he said.

  He’d told Lara that she and Midnight should take out Alverez, and instead Shaw had been laid at his feet.

  “Midnight has to be a vampire.”

  “But the other night,” Ed countered, “whoever was watching you and noticed me in the alley—”

  “Then that was Lara, but this… how else could anyone get away with this without someone seeing?”

  Ceasing the strokes of his hand on Sam’s back, Ed moved closer to wrap his arm around him. “Vampires aren’t the only ones who can be clever and resourceful. Just look at you.”

  The laugh that left Sam sounded pitiful. “I don’t feel like much of either of those things. I should have known they wouldn’t buy all that bullshit we’ve been feeding them.”

  “It doesn’t matter. If Midnight wants to scare us, he can’t scare me. He’s the one who should be afraid. I’ll take care of this, Sam. It’s going to be okay.”

  “Mim and Gerry will be back soon.”

  “I’ll be done before then. Just sit. I’m going to steal supplies from housekeeping. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to get rid of a body from an unfortunate place.”

  Sam nodded, grateful but still numb and queasy about it all. He hardly noticed Ed leave and return, unsure of the time passing until Ed told him to look away.

  He needed to cut up the body in order to dispose of it.

  As soon as Sam registered that sentence and what Ed was going to do, bile rose up in the back of his throat, and he raced for the bathroom to throw up.

  Ed called to him to take his time, that he should stay out of the room until it was over. After emptying his stomach, Sam gladly obeyed, staggering from the bathroom back into the main room to pour himself that drink so he could wash the bitter taste from his mouth.

  He couldn’t have said if an hour passed or only minutes, but Ed announced he was done before there was any sign that Mim and Gerry might be returning.

  “I need to finish this, but I will be back for you, and you can stay with me again tonight. Text your friends or leave a note. I’ll be back soon.”

  Again, Sam nodded, only briefly glancing at Ed, whose hands were bloody even though he’d managed to not get anything on his clothes.

  Sam knew he shouldn’t go back into the room, but he had to. He had to see if it was all really gone.

  Remarkably, it was—every stain, every shred of evidence, the knife. If Sam didn’t know exactly where Shaw’s body had been, he could have believed it was never there.

  “Sam.” Ed’s voice was suddenly at his ear, his hand, cold as always and clean now of any blood, wrapping around Sam’s and taking the empty glass from his grasp. Sam hadn’t realized he’d finished it. “Did you message your friends?”

  “No… I….”

  “I’ll do it.” Ed took the cell phone from Sam’s pocket an
d rapidly fired off a few texts. “It’s going to be okay. I promised you, and that promise remains. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “But Mim and Gerry…. Aren’t they in danger? Maybe I shouldn’t leave them tonight.”

  “If Midnight had wanted to send that message, it would have been one of their bodies instead.”

  Sam shuddered at the thought.

  “They’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah….”

  “Sam,” Ed said more urgently.

  Sam turned to him, really looking at him for the first time since he’d arrived. He was pristine, just like the room. He’d cleaned up, kept himself from getting too dirty to begin with, and had protected Sam just like he promised.

  And he looked so scared for him, so genuinely worried and sorrowful.

  The crease in Ed’s brow and sympathy in his eyes almost made the bile surge up in Sam’s throat again, but instead, he fell forward into Ed’s arms.

  “I promise, when we discover who Midnight is, I will tear him and Lara apart. I will kill all of them for you, anyone who ever threatens you until no one would ever dare again.”

  It was a dark promise, but it comforted Sam, and he nodded against Ed’s shoulder, seeing his shirt stained after all, just with tears.

  “Hang on to me,” Ed said, wrapping his arms more firmly around Sam. “I’ll bring you home.”

  ED DIDN’T want to keep Sam like a pet or a prisoner, but part of him never wanted to let him leave his home again.

  He’d buried Shaw and all the evidence deep in the woods where no one would find her. Now he’d incinerate his and Sam’s clothes to be absolutely sure there was nothing left, since this death had not been part of their plan.

  Not so soon, without any of the blood going to better use.

  It all unfolded so similarly to Fitz, the two of them in the basement, quietly undressing. But that night last week, Sam had turned it all around and shown that he was okay, that he could handle this and what Ed was. Shaw’s death had clearly hit him harder, reminding him of his own mortality.

  They might have been safe enough to simply wash their clothes, but when Ed piled it all into the incinerator, he heard a sigh of relief from Sam, who clearly wanted it all gone. Ed was soon ready to lead them back upstairs when he noticed Sam’s gaze drift to the sketch of the fair-haired woman.