“Hey,” he said, looking unsure of the protocol in this situation. He dropped his hands and stopped doing magic. “Rhonda’s not here.”
“I’m not looking for her,” I said and tried to ignore Mark’s pronounced look of disappointment. He picked up a rag and starting wiping the bar, despite the fact that it looked pretty clean. “Slow night.”
He shrugged. “It’s early.” He pretended to scrub a stubborn spot. “Should you be here?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?” It was a challenge, and after a moment, Mark’s shoulders sank and he lowered his head, focusing his attention on the bar rag in his hand.
“No,” he said. “Guess not.”
I stepped closer and folded my arms over my chest. “So you haven’t heard anyone bragging about getting revenge on me or teaching me a lesson? Maybe something about showing ‘Sun Walkers’ who’s boss?”
Mark dropped the rag somewhere behind the bar and met my eyes. “What do you want from me, Henri? You know I don’t get involved in vampire bullshit.” I glared. He shook his head. “Look, I’ve heard people talk about whether or not they’d take the Cure, and how they think you’re a Blood Traitor, but that was months ago. Now they talk about Cazimir and how no one thought he’d make that kind of choice.”
I opened my mouth, but I was too stunned to form words. People here thought Cazimir had taken the Cure on purpose? That was like thinking a rabbit had purposefully hopped into a hunter’s trap. What a mess. The Factory was pretending Caz was dead, and everyone else thought he’d willfully turned human.
“They’re surprised by it. Some are mad that the Cure exists. And people like me”—meaning witches—“are curious as to how it was done. But that’s it. If anyone’s been plotting against you, they aren’t announcing it while they order drinks.”
“Cazimir didn’t choose to take the Cure. It was done to him against his will.”
Mark held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m sorry you lost your job. You were fun to work with and you always kept things stocked. But as far as I can tell, you’re old news around here.”
Inwardly, I bristled at that. Not because I wanted to be the talk of the town (I didn’t) but because it had only been six months. Sure, it had felt like a lifetime to me, but it shouldn’t be old news so damn fast. The fact that I was still struggling and trying to find my way back when no one else gave a shit was disorienting.
My phone buzzed.
“You want a drink? It’s on me.” Mark gave me a pitying smile. I wanted to slap it off his face.
“No thanks. I have to go.”
He said something devoid of sincerity, like “take care,” but I was already marching back up the stairs, eyes on my phone, and not really paying attention.
The message was from Sean.
* * *
Sean wasn’t one for phones or text messages. He’d been a vampire for around nine hundred years and he preferred conversations to happen face-to-face. He had a cell phone, of course. Last time I saw it, it was the newest model of the iPhone. But when he contacted me, it tended to be by showing up in my apartment uninvited or appearing in front of me on the street like a phantom.
Getting a text from him was so unusual that there was no previous text history with him in my phone, despite the fact that I’d seen him a week ago. Last time he’d texted, it had been years ago, and I’d had a flip phone where you had to press a button three times to get the correct letter.
Tonight’s message read, “We need to talk,” and listed an address.
I texted back a question mark. It was so out of the ordinary that I worried about going at all. What if it was a trick? But desire to see him won out over all the reasons not to go, and I was already heading back up the hill to get my car when he replied, “Just come.”
If it was a trap, whoever was orchestrating it sure had Sean’s infuriating brevity down pat. Back in 1927, Sean had made me into a vampire. Despite how much he frustrated me sometimes, I had trouble denying his requests, even vague and cryptic ones like tonight’s text.
Besides, I figured he may have heard about Caz. Not that we were really plugged into the vampire telegraph anymore, but Sean had a way of knowing things before anyone else, which only made it more infuriating when he wasn’t the first to show up and help.
An hour later, I pulled into the parking lot in front of Gas Works Park. The park was closed and there was only one other car in the lot. No one was inside it and it was parked at the edge of the pavement. I parked near it and walked around the trees that lined the lot and across the grass.
The old refinery towers that sat in the center of the park loomed in front of me like giant, sinister robots. Gas Works Park was a grassy public park on the edge of Lake Union that had once been the sight of a coal refinery plant. The plant had been closed down in the 1950s. When it was turned into a park over a decade later, parts of the plant were given a fresh coat of paint and left intact, so that the red industrial towers loomed over the greenery and shining blue water. In the dark, they looked almost black.
I found Sean on the other side of them, watching the boats on Lake Union. They were lit up like lanterns as they floated across the black water. I was immensely relieved it was him, and a little annoyed he’d made me come all the way out here.
“Where’s your bread?” I asked.
Sean frowned me as though I were making a joke at his expense and now he had to figure out the punchline. “Bread?”
“To feed the ducks. You know, like spies do during their clandestine meetings.”
“Spies?”
I sighed. “Never mind.”
Sean wore jeans and a tight-fitting t-shirt with a vest over it. His dyed black hair was cropped short and his blue eyes shone as they raked over me. He looked at me as though I were a puzzle he could never manage to solve. His vampire skin was bone white and gleamed in the moonlight. His lips looked soft and hid his fangs, and thinking about those fangs made me long for the way they’d scrape against my skin and pierce my veins.
For vampires, blood drinking is intimate. The ultimate intimacy, really.
Plenty of vampires enjoy sex and other forms of closeness, especially those who have mortal lovers. But I’d never been that into sex, even as a mortal the first time around. I’d liked flirting and kissing, but sex had always been a matter of going through the motions. It didn’t do much for me and I had no real interest in it. I found people attractive. I found Sean attractive. But I also didn’t have any desire to take off their pants, unless it was to get at their femoral artery. And as a mortal, I didn’t even want that.
What I wanted was for Sean to take me in his arms and do what he’d done about ninety years ago: make me a vampire.
“You said we needed to talk?” I asked, since clearly Sean wasn’t going to start.
He nodded and turned back toward the water. His serious demeanor made me nervous. “I thought this place would offer the necessary privacy.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s up?”
Sean pulled something out of his vest pocket and held it up. It was a vial. My heart leapt into my throat and then slammed back into my ribs. It was the Cure.
“I found this in Cazimir’s chambers when Lark allowed me to fetch some of his things,” he said. I remembered the box and suitcase full of clothes—most of them Aidan’s—and jewelry—most of it Caz’s—that Sean had dropped off at my apartment a couple of days after leaving Caz in pretty much the same manner.
“You only found one?” I asked over the thrumming of blood in my ears. I trusted Sean more than I trusted almost anyone on this little space rock, but that didn’t mean I liked the thought of him having a supply of the Cure.
Sean’s eyes narrowed. “No. I found three. I destroyed the other two but held this one back at the last moment. After careful consideration.” He held it out to me.
“Why would I want that?” I asked, even though I did, for a dozen reasons: because maybe I could use it to bribe my way back
to immortality; because I didn’t want it in the wrong hands; because it was made with my blood and it was mine, goddamn it. My curse to protect.
“I thought perhaps since science did this to you, it could undo it. In order to make an antidote, you might need a sample of the poison. Isn’t that what you told me?”
I reached for it. He pulled it back out of my reach in one of those too-quick-to-see vampire moves that made it look as if his hand had teleported backwards.
“I’m trusting you with this, Henri, because it’s the object of your destruction and I know you will respect it.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Sean extended the vial and this time, I snatched it from his hands, shoving it into my purse before he could change his mind.
“Don’t be reckless. Only share it with someone who has your best interests at heart. I know you do not wish me to harm that scientist, but she—”
“Doesn’t want to undo the Cure. I know.” Neha wanted to rid the world of monsters. If given a sample of the Cure, she was more likely to recreate it than try to create an antidote, and yet it was tempting to take that gamble anyhow. After all, it wasn’t like the vampires had been keen on helping me. Maybe if they were going to shun people who’d been Cured like we had the plague, they deserved to have it in the world.
Sean reached out, his fingertips brushing my cheek. He took a strand of my blond hair and threaded it through his fingers, pulling it down to its new length before letting it go.
“It’s so strange to see you like this. I doubt I’ll ever get used to it,” he said.
“You could fix it for me. Then you wouldn’t have to.”
“You know why I can’t.” His voice was so soft and tinged with so much regret that it actually made my heart ache a little.
“I’m not worth the risk.” Since no one knew if my “tainted” blood would turn a vampire human, even Sean wasn’t willing to drain me to the point he’d need to in order to make me immortal again. My words were meant to express my hurt and frustration, but they came out sounding angry and bitter.
“A solution will present itself,” Sean said.
“That’s bullshit, in my experience. You usually have to hunt down solutions and beat them into submission.”
Sean smiled. “So you see why I don’t worry about you.”
That stung. It wasn’t that I wanted Sean to fawn over me, but after Neha had stuck me with her needle, I’d felt abandoned. I’d stormed out of her lab to the best of my woozy, new-muscled ability and gone straight to the Factory for help, which should speak volumes about how well my newly mortal brain had been working after the trauma of my body suddenly being switched “on.” When the brain fog cleared, and I’d gotten some sleep and some food in me, I wasn’t surprised I’d been turned away, but that hadn’t made being called a Blood Traitor and run out of the Factory with pitchforks any easier to swallow. So when Sean, my sire, hadn’t bothered to come check on me, it had been another slap in the face.
I didn’t want Sean to worry about me. I wanted him to care.
But there was no point in trying to explain this to Sean, when we’d had this fight a thousand times before. I could already play the whole thing in my head and it would end like it always did: both of us going in opposite directions and not speaking for months or years, only to come back together and pretend it had never happened for the sake of civility. Until it happened again. Sean and I were a storm in a bottle.
“Cazimir is hoping that if he drinks enough vampire blood, it will destroy the Cure in his body and he’ll turn back,” I said, mostly to see what Sean made of that theory.
Sean let out a small breath. “Do me a favor, Henrietta. Let him play guinea pig. I know you’re impatient as hell, but for once, bide your time.” He brushed his fingers over my cheek again. My hair stood on end at the sensation of his cool skin on mine. He smelled of soap and faintly of caustic chemicals from his black dye in his hair, and I breathed in the familiar mix of scents that was him.
Then I cleared my throat. He dropped his hand, pulled away. I regretted not pulling him closer. After a moment of silence, I asked, “Have you heard about anyone trying to teach me a lesson or anything?”
“A lesson?” Sean’s smile faded back into a frown of consternation. “What kind of lesson?”
“The kind taught by leaving a dead body in my apartment,” I said.
Sean’s eyebrows shot up, and for the tiniest fraction of a second, his jaw actually dropped. I felt strangely smug being able to shock him that way. “A vampire?”
“The body was human but drained of blood. Throat slit. I assume it was a vampire who killed him, but these days, who the hell knows who’s got it out for me.” I then told him how the body was of a man who’d come at me with a stake.
Sean listened, remaining unsettlingly statue-still the whole time I spoke, as stoic and unmoving as the refinery towers behind us.
“Why a stake?” he finally asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question.” I ran my fingers through my hair. The breeze was picking up, so strands of hair bounced around my face. Clouds rolled over the moon. It was probably going to rain. “Any theories?”
“None. But perhaps you should…” He grabbed my hand. His hand was cool, and mine was hot despite the chill in the air. “I can send you somewhere.”
“Like where, a tower in the forest with no doors or stairs?” I tore my hand out of his, annoyed. Once again, he was solving problems that didn’t exist while ignoring the one right in front of him. “I don’t need to be sent away, Sean. I need to figure out who’s gunning for me before the police decide I’m a killer and my landlord throws me out on the street.”
“I’ll contact you if I learn anything, of course.” Sean gave me a sad smile. He bent down and leaned in close, brushing his fingers over my cheek again and pressing his cool lips to mine. My lips felt like fire. I longed to kiss him more deeply, but he pulled his face away before I could.
“Stay alive, Henri. I need you to find your way back to me.”
“I’m right here,” I said. My voice was shaky. My heart pounded and my body ached for his fangs in my neck.
Sean offered me a weak smile. Nothing more. And then he was gone in a blur of motion as he raced across the park and out of sight. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to quiet the ache in my center.
To say vampire relationships are complicated is a massive understatement. When you have eternity to connect and disconnect and reconnect, relationships don’t end so much as they evolve, for better or worse. Forever is a long time for wounds to heal or fester. You might not see someone again for decades or centuries, but chances are your paths will cross again and again.
Sean was complicated, too. Always had been, from the moment we’d locked eyes in a smoky jazz club.
I understood, on a practical level, why Sean wouldn’t take the risk of trying to turn me. In his position, I’d probably be just as wary of tainted blood that might steal the life force out of my veins. But on a deeper level, it felt so fucking wrong. Like a betrayal of the unwritten contract that we would always be monsters together.
Chapter 13
When I hit the button to unlock my car in the parking lot, the lights flashed but it didn’t make the “unlock” sound it usually did, and I scrambled to remember if I’d locked it. I was pretty good about those things, but Sean had a way of distracting me.
I opened the door and the interior light came on. Dead eyes stared at me from the passenger seat. The eyes belonged to a body. There was a goddamn body inside my car. I bit back a scream, fear turning into fury. I calmly shut the door, throwing the corpse back into darkness so I could get my bearings. My pulse raced as I looked for signs of anyone—Sean, the perpetrator, potential witnesses—but the parking lot was devoid of life.
I took a deep breath and opened my blue sedan’s door again. The corpse was belted into the front seat, the head twisted to face the driver’s-side door in an unnatural way tha
t made me think the neck was broken. I knew her, just as I’d known the guy in my shower: this unmoving sack of meat strapped to my car had once been Lilith, the mortal girl at the Factory who’d all but spat on me. Her mouth was open and her lips were blue. One of her eyebrow rings had been ripped out, leaving a gash on her face and smear of brownish blood.
“Okay. That’s it!” I screamed to no one, hoping my tormentor would reveal themselves and we could end this crap. No one replied. The parking lot was still deserted. If my stalker was near, they were staying hidden.
I grabbed latex gloves from my trunk before getting into the driver’s seat and shutting the door. With gloves on, I moved Lilith’s head, turning and tilting it to find the wound on her neck. There was no pretense of a knife mark now, just two little holes spaced apart like fangs and a small bruise where the other teeth would have gnashed against her skin. Just ten minutes ago, I’d been imagining this exact mark in a completely different context. Now Sean was gone and I was sitting next to a dead girl.
Her body was warm, too, the temperature of a living being. She’d only been killed moments ago. She’d been out here fighting for her life while Sean and I had been talking. Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed it back.
The fang holes in her neck were small. I jammed my pinky into the flesh until I managed to get her coagulated blood coating the tip of my finger. I shoved it into my mouth before I could think about it too hard.
I saw a figure in shadow, nothing but gleaming eyes in the dark.
“Oh, I’m definitely worthy,” Lilith’s own voice said. I remembered her snarling at me, but now I felt her cockiness waiver. It was just a facade to spackle over her trepidation. There was a blur of motion and the figure was in front of her, too close to make out besides a hint of purple shirt. Hot pain seared into Lilith’s neck. She felt smug satisfaction until she realized something was wrong. She heard someone scream and tried to pull out of the vampire’s grasp, but she couldn’t get free and the vampire wasn’t stopping. Despite feeling woozy with blood loss, she struggled against the creature, but it was futile.
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