by P. Kirby
The funny thing was that there was no detectible emotion on his face, but everything about him radiated sadness. She hardly knew the guy, but had no desire to make anyone feel that bad, so she changed the subject.
“So what does Adam do? Is he a cop?”
His eyes turned calculating. As he stood, Maya’s attention wandered to the easy grace in his movements, those fabulous long legs.
“You’ve met him, haven’t you?” he asked, interrupting the beginning of another X-rated movie in her head.
“Met who?” One of his elegant eyebrows arched and she said, “Adam Sayres? No. But I did meet a guy named Adam Richards who—”
“Is the spitting image of Adam Sayres?”
Hearing the mockery in his voice, Maya frowned. Behind him, Delilah shot to the top of the aquarium and slapped her tail on the surface. Benjamin—what else could she call him?—turned, a tiny smile on his face. It wasn’t much of a smile, just a few lifted muscles at the corner of his mouth, but it transformed his face, making him real and vulnerable.
A twinge of stupid jealously darted through her. Don’t smile at my fish. Smile at me.
Unfortunately the smile vanished when he faced her. “Adam Richards is an alias. You’ve met Adam Sayres.”
“He said he worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.” He nodded but said nothing. “I called the local office and he checks out.”
“He’s worked for the ATF for four years.”
“‘Worked’ meaning ‘chased after you’?”
“No, not really.”
“But you’re still a thief—” The teakettle spluttered and started to whistle. Maya’s mouth opened and closed. After a second, she said, “Sugar, milk, lemon?”
“None of the above, thanks.”
Maya poured the water, added sugar and milk to her cup and returned to the living room.
He was gone.
Maya looked around, seeing nothing but familiar furniture and an agitated fish. The plastic shopping bag sat in a disheveled lump on the sofa. “Uh, hello,” she said in a quiet voice. “Ben? Benjamin?” Saying his name out loud sent a little tremor down her spine.
“In here.” His voice came from her studio.
She found him standing a few feet from the ruined easel and painting.
“Thanks,” he said as she handed him the tea. “The fire really did a number on your easel, didn’t it?”
Maya said nothing, her mind on the destroyed painting.
“You’ve got insurance, right?”
“Yeah, but after I factor in the deductible and all-around hassle of dealing with the insurance company, it’s probably not worth filing a claim.”
He pointed at a fantastic landscape, a silhouetted hill, topped with gnarled trees and Baba Yaga’s hut on a giant chicken leg, set against a night sky that blazed with two moons. “Do you have anything in galleries?”
“No.” Maya smiled at the painting, remembering how much fun she had working on it. “This is all just for fun. It’s, you know, silly?”
“Why’s it silly?” Obvious confusion lengthened his face.
“It’s not a real job. It’s a hobby.” Or so she’d been telling herself for years.
“So what makes a job real?”
Maya arched an eyebrow at him, noting something patronizing about his tone. “Regular hours, eight-to-five and a chance for advancement. Respect.”
“And people don’t respect artists?”
“Well…” She swallowed, feeling a smidgen of bitterness. “No.”
“That’s too bad,” Benjamin said. “Because you’re really good.”
Maya smiled at him. “Thanks.” They stood there in silence, gazing on the ruined easel, minds elsewhere. Though Maya expected this kind of silence to be awkward, with Benjamin it felt comfortable. He was a complete stranger to her, a stranger who had assaulted her in her bed, but his presence was quiet and unassuming, and irrationally safe.
Weird. Maybe it’s because he’s already seen me at my worst, in those silly pink pajamas.
“Maya.”
She blinked, and saw that he was handing her the empty teacup. “Oh.”
“Thanks for your hospitality. Do you have a notepad?”
Maya took the cup. “Uh, yes.” She walked over to the computer desk and scooped up a notepad and pen. He scribbled something, tore off the sheet and handed everything back to her.
“Your phone number?” she said.
“In case you manage to figure out a way to get me to EverVerse.”
“Oh.” She stuck the phone number to a corkboard with a pushpin. “I’ll figure something out,” she said as though she believed in EverVerse too. “I’m resourceful.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he replied, and for a second she thought he smiled, but then it passed and she decided it had been her imagination.
With a polite nod, he left her house.
She wandered back to the living room. Delilah gave her a reproachful look and dropped to the bottom of the tank.
“He’s a thief, sweetie,” Maya said to the sulking fish. “And a lunatic. The only way he’s getting to EverVerse is if it’s the name of an insane asylum. Don’t get attached to him.”
Just then something caught her eye—the bag. She grabbed it and ran for the door. A noisy brown Volvo was disappearing around the corner as she flung open the door. Feeling eyes on her she turned and saw Ms. Kalman watching. She waved and shut the door.
She frowned at the bag, suspecting a ploy. The old accidentally-leave-something-at-her-house trick. But then, what reason would he have to do that? He didn’t seem particularly interested in her. Not that it mattered, anyway.
What does a thief buy at a department store? She gave the bag a little shake and something soft bounced in the plastic. A little internal debate waged in her brain.
It’s wrong to snoop.
It’s more wrong to break into someone’s house and threaten them at knifepoint.
Maya cautiously peeled open the top of the bag. Something pink. “Pink’s not your color, Benjamin.” Resigned to her crime, she opened the bag all the way. Pink flannel. She nearly dropped the package.
With shaky legs, she walked to her living room and sat heavily on the couch. Then she pulled out the bag’s contents.
Pink flannel pajamas, almost identical to hers, except these had no pesky bloodstain.
Chapter Eight
Adam Sayres, aka Adam Richards, liked the Mako Café, which was surprising, since there was very little that he and Benjamin both liked.
Despite the out-of-the-way location, the Mako was filthy with all varieties of patrons enjoying Sunday’s all-you-can-eat special. A couple of tables away, four men in white, paint-speckled overalls laughed over the restaurant’s signature giant pizza, the Great White. At another table, a family of four, fresh from Sunday worship, reenacted a modern Norman Rockwell tableau over overloaded plates of salad, pizza and pasta.
Adam, however, had the distinction of having lunch with a demon.
Octel didn’t look terribly impressive as far as demons went. In fact, to the rest of the café’s other patrons, including Peter Angel, Adam’s other lunch companion, Octel looked like a short, stocky and slightly balding man.
Adam had never been able to do significant magic, but he had enough innate power to see through Octel’s thin glamour. The creature that sat across the table from him, placidly munching on a plate of chicken Alfredo, had olive-green skin, skimpy indigo hair (still balding) and pumpkin-orange eyes with horizontal slits for pupils. “This food is shit,” said Peter. “How can you eat that?” He pointed at Octel’s pasta with a nicotine-stained index finger. “It’s got no meat in it.”
Octel panned a slow look from Peter to Adam. “Chicken is meat. It is the flesh of an animal.”
Peter gave a twitchy little sneer. “Chicken is for commie pinkos. Beef is food for real men.”
Adam noted that Peter was wise enough to make no mention of the salad he was curre
ntly working on. “Commie pinko” was an outdated insult, but Peter didn’t have the mental storage capacity to add more contemporary invectives to his repertoire.
Ignoring his lunch companions’ banter, Adam scanned the restaurant, searching for the business’s owner. He spotted him in a far corner of the room, chatting with a couple of sheriff’s deputies.
What was the man’s name—Lane? Adam studied the man, committing the geography of the man’s face to memory. Wherever he went, Benjamin made friends with ordinary Joes who were only good for one thing as far as Adam was concerned. Leverage.
For a little more than ten years, Adam had been saddled with Benjamin Black, unable to travel more than five hundred miles away from the thief. Adam’s move to Santa Fe was one of the few where Benjamin came along willingly, encouraged by the chance to finally Fade to EverVerse. In nearly every other case, Adam had had to use Benjamin’s stupid habit of getting emotionally attached to coerce him to accompany him on his various “business” trips.
“So what’s the plan?” Peter asked, interrupting Adam’s thoughts.
Adam speared a lettuce leaf. “Plan?” he said mildly.
“This here is a business meeting, no?”
“Perhaps I just enjoy the pleasure of your company.” He wasn’t in the habit of joking with subordinates, but the nature of his work in Santa Fe had him unaccountably cheerful.
Octel grinned, getting the joke instantly, but Peter twitched, probably seeing some sort of “homo” overtures in the comment. Not that he’d dare say so.
Adam and Octel exchanged a knowing look. Though not a brain trust, Peter was loyal and he enjoyed getting his hands dirty. Adam had bought Peter’s loyalty by working out a deal that got him probation and time served as opposed to the ten years in the state penitentiary that he deserved.
“Yes,” Adam said, “this is a business lunch.” Peter’s shoulders slumped in relief. Octel just kept eating, his attention riveted on Adam.
“We may be in Santa Fe for a while,” Adam continued.
Before he could say anything else, Peter blurted, “Aw shit, man. Really? I hate this fucking place. You can’t even smoke in restaurants. It’s like…California.”
“I don’t believe my business decisions should be founded on your nicotine habit. Or am I wrong?” Adam spoke without malice, but even Peter recognized the threat.
“Oh, hey. I’m sorry.” He twitched and looked around the café. “You know I could get used to this place.”
“Does this involve your brother?” Octel asked.
“Among others,” Adam replied. “I believe I’ve found a way around my staffing problem as well.”
“Benjamin’s an ass,” Peter said.
“Yes, but he’s my ass,” Adam said, not bothering to conceal his irritation.
“Sorry,” Peter mumbled.
“Staffing, boss?” Octel asked.
The two sheriff’s deputies each shook Lane’s hand and headed out of the restaurant. Adam watched them, wondering how they could be truly content within the narrow confines of their profession. It was really quite pointless, trying to stem the tide of lawlessness. As many of the nonhuman races had noted, chaos was in the nature of humans.
He had hoped, having spent the first ten years of his existence in NeoVerse engaged in a futile game of cat and mouse with Benjamin, that law enforcement in the Real would be more satisfying. It was a small matter to acquire an identity and join the San Diego police force. After a disenchanting six years, he moved on to the ATF. By then he had already set the foundations for a prosperous criminal cartel. The ATF simply gave him greater access to the people and materials he needed to run his business.
“Yes, staffing. Others like myself and my brother.”
“I don’t understand,” Peter said.
“Man is mortal. Even the demon races, those like our friend Octel—” he nodded at the demon “—are mortal.”
Frustration evident on his thin, dried-out face, Peter squinted at Octel. He knew what Octel was, had even seen his real face, but Adam knew it frustrated him that he couldn’t see through the glamour.
“You mean vampires?” Octel set down his fork and dabbed primly at his mouth with a napkin.
“Vampires are immortal but useless on Earth, at least half of the time.” Adam continued, “My brother and I don’t suffer any such prohibition.”
“I still don’t understand,” Peter whined.
Adam said nothing, waiting for his companions to figure it out. He waved at the waitress, a skinny college-age girl with a nice face. She rushed over with a pitcher of iced tea and refilled his glass. She gave him an eager smile, which he returned, out of habit. He preferred his women tall, buxom and blonde, but he enjoyed the effect he had on women.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Octel stare at the girl and lick his lips. Octel’s tastes were simple. He liked his women…female.
The waitress disappeared into the kitchen and Octel turned to Adam, orange eyes shining. “You mean to make more like you. More of the Formed.” When Adam nodded, Octel said, “But how?”
“The same way Benjamin and I came into being.”
“The woman. The one whose house we rigged to burn. She’ll make you more,” Peter said, showing astonishing insight.
“Very good.”
“Will she cooperate?” Octel asked.
Peter giggled. “We’ll make her cooperate.”
Across the room, the waitress was taking another table’s order. She glanced shyly at Adam.
Adam smiled at the waitress and then turned to his companions. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I think she’ll be happy to help.” His gaze wandered to the pretty brunette maître d’ by the front door. “In the meantime, keep an eye on Ms. Stephenson. Make sure she doesn’t get too close to Benjamin.”
“If she does, boss,” said Peter, “then what?”
“I don’t know. Distract her.”
Chapter Nine
Although it had snowed just a few days before, the Monday-morning sky was clear and the temperatures in the mid-fifties. Cold by the standards of southern California, where Benjamin had spent most of his “life,” but warm in New Mexico considering it was mid-December.
His trusty Volvo chortled and spat as he slowed and turned into the apartment complex. The complex was new and sported the canned southwestern architecture typical of anything built within Santa Fe’s city limits in the last decade. Boxy stucco buildings made to emulate cliff dwellings and sparse xeriscape landscaping—winter-scraggly desert willows and other water-thrifty shrubs—sat in seas of pinkish gravel. The few cars in the lot, those that weren’t tucked away in garages or off in a workplace lot, were late model.
The Volvo stuck out like a sore, brown thumb.
He navigated through the small mountains of identical buildings until he reached Building F. Other than a groundskeeper sweeping the sidewalks with a leaf blower—the man’s face bored and the machine sending up gouts of noxious engine smoke and swirling red dust—there was no one else around. Benjamin got out of the car and opened the trunk to pull out a slim briefcase. Building F was made of brownish-green stucco. The door to each apartment was shaded by small porches framed by carved wooded posts, which were painted with Mexican-inspired motifs. The closed, heavy wooden blinds were the only indication of the resident’s true nature. Benjamin stood under apartment 2F’s porch waiting for a reply to his knock.
A couple of minutes passed before Benjamin heard the click of the door unlocking, a power trip on the part of the apartment’s occupant. He had to know it was Benjamin on his doorstep. With his keen senses, he’d have detected Benjamin before the noisy Volvo pulled into the apartment complex.
Benjamin opened the door and entered the apartment. Tile covered the floor and the walls were painted to emulate plaster. The place wasn’t anywhere beyond its resident’s vast means, but it wasn’t cheap either. The kitchen, which Benjamin passed on the way to the living room, was spotless. Benjamin dou
bted the stove had been turned on anytime recently.
Despite the closed blinds, the living room was well lit. Hundreds of library books, a consequence of a ferocious appetite for reading, were piled in awkward stacks against the wall. A television blared a soccer game in Spanish.
“Brazil and…” Benjamin squinted at the screen. “Uruguay?”
The vampire turned his slate-gray gaze on Benjamin. “Yeah. Uruguay’s up by two.” He sat, slouched on a tan leather couch, feet on the coffee table.
“Sorry,” Benjamin said, knowing the vampire’s fondness for Brazilian teams. “How much will you lose?”
“Should I get you some salt? I think you missed a spot in my wound.” The vampire lifted a bottle of beer to his lips and took a long swig. Breas drank blood by necessity, but far preferred beer. “Two hundred dollars. I’m out two hundred bucks.”
“You need a new team, Breas.”
Breas made a noncommittal grunt, and then he tilted his head sideways as though listening. “You smell like blood. A fresh injury. Maybe two days old.”
Benjamin shivered. It was easy to forget what Breas was, sometimes too easy. Other than a lack of a tan, Breas looked more like the quintessential blond heartthrob than a bloodsucking creature of the night.
Breas hadn’t been human for more than two thousand years. Benjamin stared back at Breas’s dark gray eyes, elf gray, a reminder that even before he became a vampire, he hadn’t been entirely human.
“I ran into some trouble.”
“On this job?” Breas asked, pointing at the briefcase.
“No.” Benjamin placed the briefcase on the coffee table. Breas set the beer on the table, which showed evidence of the vampire’s abhorrence for coasters: a cloud of rings marred the finish. He popped the briefcase’s latches with his slim, elongated fingers—another sign of elf heritage.
He paused before opening the case. “You’re thinking of a woman,” he said with a smirk. “And she’s not Isabel.”