Once Bitten, Twice Shy

by Jennifer Rardin

  “What’re you going to do now? I mean, now that the bad guys know where you’re staying?”

  I shook my head as we exited the elevator and reentered the suite. Trashed by trailer trash. How poetic. I started picking up junk and throwing it into a pile. “Find the one place in Miami that won’t show up on these jerks’ radar.” Bergman frowned heavily as he helped me clean up. After a few minutes he squared his shoulders and said, “I know just the place.”

  “You do?”

  He bobbed his head. “Actually, I’m staying there.”

  I swallowed my spit and it went down the wrong tube. Through the coughing fit that followed I said, “Are you . . . inviting us to stay with you?”

  Bergman nodded unhappily. “I figure it’s the patriotic thing to do.”

  “You figure rightly. Thanks!”

  Boy would Vayl’s jaw drop when he heard this one. Bergman’s privacy, as sacred to him as the Torah, had bowed to the needs of two of the Agency’s most notorious members. I’d have to choose the right time to tell him. Definitely after he’d climbed off the top of the toilet paper cabinet upon which he now roosted.

  After our little confrontation the evening before, I’d expected him to complain when I’d stomped into his room and demanded that he change sleeping quarters so I could leave him during the day without worrying. But he’d just shrugged, grabbed a pillow, and followed me to the darkest corner I could find. I’d covered him with a tarp and disguised the lump he made by placing a row of paint cans along the top edge of the cabinet.

  “Sorry,” I’d said as I’d turned to leave, knowing he was lying in enough mildew to start a spore factory.

  “It is fine,” I heard him say. “There is little a hot shower cannot cure.”

  What a guy. Too bad he’d been mostly dead for centuries.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bergman and I sat on a couple of overturned five-gallon buckets in the basement of Diamond Suites, waiting for night to fall. Any minute now Vayl would stir, and he probably wouldn’t appreciate the audience, but Bergman’s unspoken sense of urgency had rubbed off on me. We really needed to get out before Aidyn and Liliana caught on to our scam and resorted to something more dependable than southern-fried assassins. Like a bomb.

  The last vestige of light left the basement. Yeah, creepy. Bergman and I flicked on our flashlights. Somehow that made it worse. And it was no consolation to know there really could be monsters hiding in the shadows between the boiler and the storage closets. I’d been eyeing the edges of Freakoutland for maybe a minute when I heard a huge, gasping gulp that made me jump up and overturn my bucket despite the fact that I’d been expecting it. It was the sound of magic bringing Vayl back to a life he couldn’t bear to leave.

  When the muttering started, I relaxed. The plastic on top of the cabinet in the farthest corner of the basement creaked as Vayl started to move, his complaints getting louder as he remembered where he was. With our flashlights trained on him, we were mesmerized by the sight of a vamp dressed in blue plastic. We watched him struggle to escape seemingly endless yards of tarp while paint cans dropped off the cabinet’s edge like gum balls from a faulty machine. Still enmeshed from the knees down, Vayl flopped off the cabinet before we realized he needed a hand down, falling fast and hard, like a penguin who hasn’t bought the whole flightless scenario. Somehow he recovered—so quickly his movements were a dizzying blur—and landed on his feet.

  “What are you doing here?” he grumbled, giving Bergman a slight nod to acknowledge his arrival.

  “Waiting for you,” I replied. “Need some coffee, do you?”

  “No.” He looked pointedly at my neck and, this is embarrassing, but I’m pretty sure I blushed. Nonetheless, I barreled on.

  “Bergman needs a day to find you a willing donor—”

  “I told you. I can find my own donors,” he snapped. He took a minute to regroup. “I am sorry. Waking is never pleasant for me. What I meant to say . . .” He stopped, took inward stock, and started over. “What I now realize is that I do not need any donors, not tonight anyway. I woke with the same longing as ever, but without the need. Last night . . . the blood I took last night was more . . . potent . . . than I realized.”

  I cleared my throat. What do you say when you find out your blood is really filling? It’s not a Manwich; it’s a meal! Nope, not going there. “Um, we need to get out of here as soon as possible.” I gave Vayl the short version of Rudy and Amy Jo’s adventures and my distraction theory. I also told him about my visit with Cassandra. His immobile face registered actual shock when I mentioned the Tor-al-Degan.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s supposed to be a mythical creature, am I right?”

  “I certainly thought so.”

  “Well, look, Assan’s goon said they’re doing a ceremony tomorrow for this Tor-al-Degan. The senator’s coming, so you know it’s important. I figure we eliminate Assan tonight after we get the details we need to crash their party and”—like the hero and heroine in a really fine melodrama—“foil their plans.”

  “I agree. But we must anticipate what other distractions they may throw at us to keep us from accomplishing that.”

  Right on cue, my phone rang. It was Cole. “Lucille? My building’s on fire! The pictures! They’re burning!”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here! With the fire trucks!”

  Holy crap! “Listen! It’s not an accident! Assan is onto you! Look around. Do you see any of his men?”

  “No. I don’t know. It’s . . . There are dark patches. They could be hiding.”

  Through the phone I heard an explosive popping noise. “Cole? What’s that?”

  “The windows just exploded! Oh my God, my business!”

  “We’ll work it out for you, Cole. But right now, you need to run—”

  “Hey! What’re you doing! Let me go!”

  “Cole, tell me—”

  “Lucille! They’ve—” The phone went dead.

  I shoved it into my pocket and jumped up. “Assan has Cole!”

  Vayl laid a hand on my shoulder, probably to keep me from sprinting off into the night like some mad cross-country runner. “We will get him back—tonight. But we need to retrieve Cassandra as well. She is the only other person who has had contact with us. They may know about her. They may use her as the next distraction.”

  I wanted to say something stupid like “But she’s not on the way.” I held my tongue. Vayl was right. “I should call her, though. So she’ll be ready to go when we come.”

  “I imagine she already knows.”

  Bergman and I had already packed everything that could be salvaged into the van. The Mercedes would stay put until the dealer came for it at the end of the week. We didn’t exactly tear out of the parking lot, but we wasted no time hitting the road. Bergman drove while Vayl and I sat in the bucket seats behind him, our legs pinned between boxes and trunks. Naturally, since I wasn’t driving, traffic cooperated.

  “I am sorry,” Vayl said, his voice low in my ear. “I know you cherish your privacy, but your emotions are shooting out of you like fireworks. You have every right to be scared and worried, but you cannot let those feelings take you over. Not tonight.”

  A spurt of anger made me want to slap him, as if I was some diva who didn’t get the Double Stuf Oreos she’d demanded before her concert. I took a deep breath and then another. “Okay, rein it in. I understand. I will.”

  Cassandra waited for us on the curb in front of her store, two bags in hand, two on the sidewalk beside her. Even after everything I’d seen and done in my life, the Midwesterner in me thought, Wow, that’s just weird. But weird in a way I deeply appreciated.

  Bergman helped her load her stuff, giving Vayl and I each a bag to hold on our laps. She kept the other two, tucking one beneath her feet and keeping the other in hand.

  “No speeding,” I told Bergman as he settled back behind the wheel. “You hit a bump going over sixty and your exhaust is going to snap off like
a LEGO.”

  “I know, I know, I packed too much. I always do.”

  He sounded so contrite I backed off. “You wouldn’t have brought it if you didn’t need it.”

  “That’s why I like you, Jaz. You never make fun of my craziness.”

  “If you could watch a film of my childhood you’d know why.”

  He chuckled, the way a person will who’s had similar suspicions about insanity in the family. “Where to now?”

  I looked at Vayl. “Bergman’s offered us asylum. We get to stay on his turf as long as we make our beds and put our dirty plates in the dishwasher.”

  “Excellent. Take us there, if you please.” Vayl looked at Cassandra then. “It is good to see you again.”

  “Likewise.” She looked at me and smiled. “Hello, Lucille. Or should I call you Jaz?”

  “Why don’t we stick with Lucille? The less you know about me the better.”

  “But that is why I’m here.”

  “Really?”

  She held my gaze, her eyes like twin wells in the dim light. I nearly kicked in my night sight, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her that clearly. “When we shook hands, the vision of David came strongest,” she told me. “But another crept in, like a shadow, and I could not understand what it meant. So after you left, I consulted the Enkyklios.”

  Vayl nodded as if he knew what that meant, which irritated me. Or maybe it was the fact that Cassandra felt free to nose around my psyche.

  “What’s an Enkyklios?” I asked, the suspicion in my voice causing Bergman to flash me a look of approval.

  Cassandra slipped into lecture mode. “It’s like a metaphysical library. It’s full of the information Seers have whispered to their descendants practically since the beginning of time. For the last several generations we have taken it upon ourselves to travel the world, gathering and storing that information so it won’t be lost forever.”

  “We?” asked Bergman. “Who’s we?”

  “An international guild I belong to called Sisters of the Second Sight.”

  “Never heard of it.” He sounded as snappish and impatient as I felt.

  “No.” Cassandra smiled sweetly. “You wouldn’t have.”

  I cut to the chase before Bergman came up with a conspiracy theory even Julia Roberts wouldn’t buy. “So what did you find in the library?”

  She looked down, hiding her eyes from me. Uh-oh. “I think you need to see it for yourself when we get to a safe place.”

  I sat back in my seat and sighed.

  “What are you afraid of?” Vayl murmured quietly in my ear so no one could overhear.

  I whispered right back, “She’s going to tell me my dad’s a demon and my mom was a harpy. She’s going to uncover the fact that I’m a monster. I don’t guess I’ll be surprised to hear it. I’ve always known at some level. After all, it takes a certain kind of someone to be capable of assassination. You just hate to have your worst traits confirmed by a panel of independent judges, you know?”

  I felt Vayl shrug. “I think your perspective is warped. But if you insist on looking at it that way, is it so bad to be our kind of monster? Look at the evil we have averted in our time together.” He tucked a stray curl behind my ear. “As long as you do not corrupt any monks or paint eyelashes on the Venus de Milo, I would say you have nothing to worry about.”

  Nothing to worry about. Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Bergman pulled into the circular drive in front of his hideaway as Vayl and I gaped at the view out the van’s front window. Tastefully lit by low-wattage lamps and a couple of well-placed spots, the beachfront two-story looked like it would’ve been just as comfortable on Cape Cod. The landscaping, the wraparound porch, the white wicker furniture for cripe’s sake, it might’ve come from the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

  “This is your safe house?” I asked Bergman.

  “Yeah. Why not?” I waited to reply until he got out and opened the side door.

  “Well,” I said, as Vayl and I handed him Cassandra’s luggage, “it’s just so . . . pleasant.” I got out, grabbed a box, and followed him to the front door. “I’d always pictured you in a cave. Or, at the very least, one of those rickety old mansions with droopy shutters and more tunnels than windows.”

  “I prefer a really excellent security system.” He put the bags down, lifted the lion’s head door knocker, and thumbed a switch underneath it. The knocker slid sideways, revealing a square of metal and electronics that took detailed measurements of Bergman’s left eye before deciding he passed muster. The door clicked several times and stopped.

  “Wait,” said Bergman as I reached for the latch. Another couple of seconds passed and then I heard a final click. Bergman nodded, so I turned the knob. As the door swung open, Vayl said, “Just remember, Bergman, sooner or later you will have to give us a way to get inside without the benefit of your eyeball.”

  “No problem. As soon as all our stuff is unloaded I’ll modify the system.”

  I stepped into the front hall and a piercing whistle stopped me in my tracks. Knowing Bergman, if I moved any farther a cannon would descend from the ceiling and blow my head off.

  “What is that?” Vayl asked as Bergman came in to give me a critical look.

  I held up my hands. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “But you did. That’s a wavelength sensor. You’re sending some sort of signal.”

  “Is it the watch?” I asked, snapping the band to see if that stopped the alarm. Nope.

  Bergman had run out to the van. He brought back a box, dug around inside, and came out with a handheld wand that looked like a supersized cigarette lighter. Starting at my head, he swept it down my body. As soon as it reached my navel it sent out its own warning beep.

  I raised my shirt. “It’s your belly ring,” Bergman said, adding urgently, “Give it to me.”

  I took it off and handed it to him. He jumped back into the van, started it up, and raced off. In the time it took us to figure out how to disengage the alarm, he returned. “I planted it on an ice-cream truck. Whoever’s following that signal will hopefully zero in on the truck and forget the signal stopped here for a couple of minutes.”

  “Pete said I had to break it to activate it. That only then would our backup team get involved.”

  Bergman grimaced. “Somebody activated it remotely and sent your team a false ‘okay’ signal.”

  “The same somebody who supplied it in the first place?” wondered Vayl.

  “Well, it’s not one of mine,” said Bergman.

  “That’s how they found us,” I said. “Those God’s Arm fakes on the road. Liliana at the restaurant and then again at the condo. Mr. and Mrs. Magoo in the hotel. All they had to do was follow the belly-ring signal.” I clenched my jaw, trying not to kick a hole in the wall. “When I get hold of this senator I’m going to rip his ears off and stuff them down his throat.”

  “What about Martha?” Vayl asked.

  I waved an impatient hand. “My gut tells me she’s innocent, so until we find some hard evidence nailing her, she’s off my list.” I’d tell him about Albert’s contribution to the evidence search later.

  “And the Raptor?”

  “I’ll leave him to you, as long as you make it vile. God, that pisses me off!” The anger wasn’t going to help me think clearly though, so I tried to walk it off by exploring the house. Its interior lived up to the exterior’s promise. Wooden floors, colorful throw rugs, overstuffed furniture, and antique accessories in twisted iron and oak made the house feel like the set for one of the daytime dramas Granny May used to love to watch. She called them her “stories,” and never failed to shake her head sadly when last season’s true love became this season’s big breakup.

  I just about had my emotions back under control by the time we’d unloaded Bergman’s van into the living room: a light, airy place with pale blue bead-board walls and a huge fishing net hanging from the ceiling. A long, mah
ogany bar separated it from the kitchen/feed-a-party-of-thirty dining room. A hallway, painted pastel green, led to three bedrooms and a bathroom. Stairs just to the right of the doorway led to a large family room, a home office, and a master bedroom with a view that made me wish I could sail. I thought there might be some truth to the idea that surroundings influence mood. Maybe I should paint my apartment.

  Once everything was in, Cassandra and I started unpacking while Bergman and Vayl set everything up. Several of the boxes held computer components, and before long they’d transformed the dining room table into a communications center. Four PCs sat back-to-back, connected to each other, the Internet, and a central printer through a maze of cords that lay like a big, sloppy coil basket in the middle of them all. Our laptop sat beside them and yet separate, a snooty, secretive stepsister. The table was so long that half of it still remained free for other purposes.

  Bergman and Vayl began setting up a minilab on the bar while Cassandra stored the empty boxes in a downstairs bedroom, so I got to work elsewhere.

  “Jaz, why did you rearrange the furniture?” Bergman asked a few minutes later, staring curiously at me over a row of shiny glass beakers.

  “What do you mean? I’m just—” I looked around the living room and realized I’d done it again. Without any conscious thought, as though an entire section of my brain had switched to blackout mode, I’d reproduced the same design I’d created at Diamond Suites. “What the hell?” I murmured.

  Cassandra came down the hallway, took a look at my little project, and sent me a look of trepidation that cut straight to my heart. Vayl’s forehead creased and the corners of his lips drooped. For him it was the equivalent of a thunderous frown.

  “You deceived me about this, did you not?” he demanded, waving his hand to indicate the new room arrangement. “This is not how it once looked at your house.” I shook my head. “I cannot abide liars.” His tone, straight out of the Knuckle Crackers Handbook for Schoolmarms, made me grit my teeth. Before I could defend myself, or plan a massive spitball campaign with Jimmy and Susie that would probably get us expelled but would be well worth the trouble, Cassandra spoke up.