Under the Gun

by Hannah Jayne

  I looked over my shoulder, the hair on my arms standing on end. Sampson reached out to touch my knee, then seemed to think better of it, his arm falling listlessly to his side. “I don’t want to put you in any danger, Sophie. I’m only here to warn you. I couldn’t stand it if I knew that this”—Sampson turned his hands palms up—“that I, was responsible for anything bad happening to you. I think I’m going to leave tonight. I just needed you to be aware.”

  “You can’t keep running. You said so yourself. They’re just going to keep coming after you.”

  Sampson shrugged. “It’s nothing I’m not used to.”

  “No.” I clamped my hand around Sampson’s arm. “I want to help you.” I paused. “I’m going to help you. Me and Alex—and Will, and Nina—”

  Sampson’s jaw clenched, fire blazing in his eyes. “I told you. No one can know I’m here. It’s my fight.”

  “You said they were coming after the Underworld. It’s our fight now, too.”

  “You don’t understand, Sophie. It’s bad out there.” He gestured absently over his shoulder, toward the San Francisco Bay or the entire world, I couldn’t be sure.

  I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I’m okay with bad. I mean, how bad is bad? Werewolf hunters. Silver bullets, right? Heh, that’s nothing. I was almost blown up. And I was kidnapped. Held hostage in a restroom. A public restroom. ” I raised my eyebrows in Beat that! style.

  “After they attacked our den, they decapitated all the townspeople.”

  My stomach lurched and bile tickled the back of my throat. “That’s nothing,” I whispered hoarsely, my smile painted on.

  “So it’s settled. You’ll stay here.” I looked around my apartment, feeling suddenly hopeful. “Yeah. Yeah, you could stay here. They wouldn’t come looking for you here, no one would.”

  “And what about Nina? You think she won’t notice a big hairy wolf on her couch? Or smell me?”

  “First of all, it’s our couch. And you’re right. Nina smells all my friends.” I cringed. I wasn’t sure what was worse: the need to hide someone I cared about deeply from someone else I cared about deeply, or the fact that I cared deeply about someone who had the tendency to smell all my visitors.

  I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it! I read on the Internet—work is slow, I’ve had some time to read—that drug dealers pack dryer sheets with their pot so dogs won’t be able to smell it. We could do that.”

  Sampson’s smile was staid. “Well that’s . . . offensive.”

  “I could make it work.”

  Suddenly Sampson’s smile was gone.

  His hands closed around my forearms, his eyes wide and dark. He shook his head. “No, Sophie. You can’t tell anyone I’m here. And I don’t want to put you out.”

  “But—”

  “No one. Please. Please tell me I can trust you to keep my secret.”

  I nodded, and the relief was visible on Sampson’s face.

  “Wait—where are you going to go?” I asked. “Where are you going to stay?”

  Sampson’s hands dropped to his sides and the deep look of exhaustion haunted his eyes again. He sighed. “I’ll find somewhere.”

  “But where? And, how will I be able to find you? I’m going to help.”

  “Sophie, I don’t want you to get involved.”

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest, feeling indignant. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  Nina and I sat in my car, silent save for the nattering of the morning DJs on the radio.

  “I didn’t mean to overhear,” she said finally.

  “Oh, I know,” I said, lightly pushing the gas.

  While I was flopping over the couch and narrating an M. Night Shyamalan film, Nina had been in her bedroom finishing off a Zumba DVD.

  For a vampire who could eat all the fat guys she wanted and never gain an ounce, I had to admire her pluck.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I shook my head, gnawing on my bottom lip. “I don’t know. But I can’t just let him go on running. What kind of life is that? Always looking over your shoulder, never getting close to anyone.” A little prick of pride poked at me. “I’m going to help him, Neens. After all he’s done for me? I owe him that. I can totally help him.”

  Nina didn’t even bother to hide her skepticism. “You’re going to help him not be a werewolf?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  My sudden bravado was stemming from the new leaf I had been considering turning over. In my life, I did a lot of crying. And sniveling. And falling down. For a girl whose CONTACTS list was loaded with the undead, the overpowering, and the often stinky, I didn’t have a heck of a whole lot going for myself other than my near infallible ability to screw things up.

  That stopped now.

  “Yeah,” I muttered to the windshield, my super-hero grin widening. “I’m going to save Sampson.”

  Nina eyed me, then squirmed in her seat. She folded her shoulders in and put on a pair of sunglasses that covered up the majority of her flawless pale face. “Sure.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s hot.” She rolled down the window and tucked one of the many pieces of discarded clothing-slash-garbage that I kept in my car just for situations such as these—or just because I’m lazy—in the window. “Didn’t anyone tell the sun that this is summer in San Francisco? You’re off for the season!” she yelled out the window.

  While summer in San Francisco usually consisted of hoodies and hot chocolate, this year the temperatures were unseasonably warm. I loved the opportunity to bare skin that spent the majority of time cuddled in fleece; Nina hated it. I suppose I would, too, if every ray of sunshine made me sizzle and smoke.

  Vampires have sun-free immortality; we breathers have flip-flops, tank tops, and skin cancer.

  When the morning DJs rattled off a string of hotter-than-usual temperatures for the rest of the week, Nina’s lip curled and her nostrils flared.

  “God, I hate global warming.”

  As we inched closer to the police station, my heartbeat started to speed up. Once we pulled into the lot, I was fairly certain my spasming heart would bolt right out of my throat. I swallowed hard and tried my most ordinary grin on Nina.

  “Did you put your jeans in the dryer again?” She cocked a quizzical eyebrow then hovered one perfectly manicured fingernail in front of my perma-grin. “You’re looking a little pinched in the face area.”

  I dialed down the grin and killed the engine.

  Though the Underworld Detection Agency is firmly hidden beneath thirty-five floors of earth and concrete, the very idea of it—and of me, walking through a place that catered to a magical, mind-reading clientele with a secret the size of the Titanic—made my heart pound and my palms sweat.

  Some days I wished I had stuck with my childhood dream of becoming an Avon lady or a pony.

  I closed my eyes and chanted to myself: I’m good at keeping secrets, I’m good at keeping secrets....

  And I am.

  I’ve kept the lid on the entire existence of the demon Underworld, the fact that my roommate is a vampire, and once, when I was on a plane from New York, the winner of American Idol. But walking through an office staffed with the undead, the unearthly, and the unable to keep their noses out of my 100-percent-normal, breather mind, is a different story entirely.

  I felt the surge of pain before I heard her voice. “Jesus crap, Nina, what the hell did you do that for?” I rubbed at the rapid bruise I was sure was forming on my rib cage where Nina had zinged me with her index finger.

  “You were doing your weird, freight-train breathing again. Are you okay?”

  “It’s called relaxation breathing, and I’m just trying to center myself.” My eyes darted to the police station’s double doors. “I need to act calm and normal or people are going to suspect something’s up.”

  Nina leaned over and pulled the biggest hat I’ve ever seen out of her shoulder bag, then worked t
o arrange it on her head. Finally she turned to me and smiled. “Soph, if you walk into the Underworld Detection Agency acting either calm or normal, everyone is going to know something is up.”

  Touché.

  Like I said, the Underworld Detection Agency is housed in the same building as the San Francisco Police Department, but nestled a cool thirty-five floors below. The thin veil that separates the “breathers” (anyone with a beating heart and the breath of life) and the Underworld inhabitants allows our elevators to go straight on down, while theirs sticks to Lower Lobby and above. Hence, the San Francisco Police Department doesn’t even know we’re here.

  But not many breathers do.

  My hand closed around the door handle and a shiver went through me—this one had nothing to do with Sampson, nothing to do with my promise. This one was all about Alex Grace.

  His face flashed in my mind: that cocky half smile, those sweet cherry lips—the surprised look on his face when I walked out of another man’s apartment clad in little more than an oversized soccer jersey and a handful of last night’s clothing.

  We’re not together; we had “the talk,” I reminded myself. I didn’t do anything wrong.

  But deep down in my gut, I was sure that I had.

  I prayed that Alex would already be in his back office, head down, working away—oblivious to the fact that I, Sophie Lawson, traitorous woman, walked among him and his law-and-order associates.

  Nina and I slipped into the police station vestibule and I kept my eyes firmly focused on the prehistoric linoleum in front of me. I counted the cracks and the curled edges, tapping my foot and willing the elevator to move at a slightly more acceptable pace.

  “I can hear your blood rushing from here,” Nina said. “Calm down.”

  When the big steel doors opened and I was still undiscovered, my heart did a joyful double beat and I sent out a blanket thank-you to the universe and the Otis elevator people.

  I stepped inside the elevator, a myriad of feeling pummeling me. I was hoping for another quiet day lining up Post-It notes and changing my outgoing message—“Hi, you’ve reached Sophie Lawson, director of the Fallen Angel Division of the Underworld Detection Agency. If you would like this message to continue in English, please press one.” I didn’t speak any other languages so the message generally ended there.

  Thankfully, the UDA waiting room seemed to be in full-swing, business-as-usual mode. A few ex-clients of mine—my client list had quickly dwindled once I found my first dead dragon—looked over their shoulders at me, then looked at the floor suddenly, as if nappy industrial grade carpet were the most fascinating thing in the underworld.

  Nina linked her arm through mine, her cool, bare arms making gooseflesh rise up on mine immediately. “Don’t worry about it, Soph. Everything is going to go back to normal soon enough, and you’ll be swimming in intake forms and slobber like the rest of us.”

  She smiled, her small fangs even more visible in the overhead light, and though I was up to my ears in nervous twitters, I had to smile back. Nina is my best friend, my roommate, and by far the wisest person I know.

  I was convinced that coming back from the dead must make you super smart.

  She is tall and lanky to my short and square, with perennially perfect black hair that swims over her shoulders and nips at her tiny waist. I like to believe that I have the same lustrous hair just in a deep, radiant auburn. I also like to believe that I look like a kick-ass warrior woman in black leather pants and skimpy tops that crisscross my stair-step abs. But in actuality, my curls have a mind of their own, auburn equals a red not found in nature, and the one and only time I wore leather pants they chafed so badly I had to see a doctor. I do have a decent chest—not remarkable, but passable, especially compared to Nina’s—and strong arms, generally from carrying around loads of Granny-inspired cantaloupe (long story). Nina has a padded bra and jaws that can rip a grown man’s throat out, so I guess she wins again.

  She was born (the first time ’round) in nineteenth-century France and still holds on to the poised countenance of a noblewoman. While I tend to be on the loud and falling-down-a-lot side, Nina tends to glide, to bat her mile-long lashes and purse her heart-shape lips and the world’s population falls at her feet. And if they don’t, she’ll bite them. Luckily for you, centuries of roaming the Earth and a signed-and-sealed contract with the Underworld Detection Agency mean that Nina kept her fangs to herself and breathers like us never have to worry about becoming a vamp snack.

  That’s mainly what we do here—file paperwork, keep demons in line, keep tabs on anyone and anything just passing through. But before you think we work in a dark, dank cave and wield stakes and swords to vanquish and behead, I should tell you that the UDA office pretty much mirrors the humanoid DMV, and the only thing I’ve wielded down here are Swingline staplers and Scotch tape notes. I vanquished a fallen angel with a trident once, but that was strictly on private time.

  The old-school maroon velvet line dividers were up and the waiting room was teeming with all manner of demon and demon offspring, half-breeds, the dead, the undead and the . . . other. The line was zombie heavy again today and I narrowed my eyes at a grayish newbie standing far too close to the announcements board, what remained of her jaw moving in a steady arc as she ate a notice about a missing dog. I considering interrupting, but it was fairly useless with zombies. Once they were chewing they followed through until the item was gone or their teeth fell out. Or both. We lost a lot of pushpins and other clients that way. I just shrugged and made a mental note to update my zombie apocalypse survival kit.

  The waiting room hummed and ticked and although the clientele kept our waiting room at a chilly sixty degrees or so, I felt the sweat starting at my hairline, felt the undeniable anxious heat of keeping information under wraps start to prick at my skin. I felt like everyone was staring at me, taunting me, waiting for me to spill. Suddenly, my body was wracked with those unstoppable titter giggles that blink like an I’VE GOT A SECRET neon sign.

  I focused hard on the carpet and cut through the waiting room as quickly as I dared, when I heard Kale yip, “Hey, Sophie!” as I edged my way past the equine part of a centaur.

  I smiled genuinely when I saw Kale—it was her third day back after a stint in the hospital from a hit-and-run that I still felt partly responsible for.

  “Hey, Kale—you look great.”

  Kale grinned and then her eyebrows shot up. “Oh! I almost forgot!” She dipped under the front desk. “I brought your jacket back.”

  She shoved it over to me and bit her bottom lip. “Lorraine tried to get the tire tread out of it.”

  I gingerly took the coat, unable to look at it. The last time I had seen the thing, it was wrapped around Kale’s crushed body, out of place and sadly limp in an intersection while tires screeched away. Just the memory made my stomach ache. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  Kale gave me a “no big” shoulder shrug. I tucked the jacket under my arm and tried to step around her, but she stayed rooted in front of me, her Manic Monday lips a brilliant shade of purple and pushed up in a smile that went to her eyebrows.

  “Is there something else?” I asked her.

  Kale’s eyes zipped to the vase full of blood-red blooms on her desk and then back to me, expectantly.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “Those are gorgeous.”

  Kale beamed, but didn’t move. “Ask who they’re from,” she whispered.

  I moved my speed-bump coat to my hip and played along. “And who might these be from?”

  “Vlad!” His name practically burst through every pore in her tiny Gestalt witch body; her hair shook and the wattage of her smile could’ve lit homes from here to Tampa. “Can you believe it? He sent me flowers! Again! Almost for no reason this time!”

  “Almost for no reason?”

  Kale flapped her hand. “Well, you know, I got hit by the car and all. But look—they’re beautiful, right?”

  Ah, young love.

 
I would never understand it.

  I zipped into the back office, doing my best to project an air of nonchalant confidence and supreme normalcy. Which isn’t easy to do when the path to your office is lined with a team of angry pixies, a steaming hole in the ground from a wizard who blew himself up (seriously, when was someone going to fix that?), and a new succubus intern who made me want to take my pants off at every turn.

  It was business as usual for them. They were the norm. I was not.

  As usual, there was a small congregation of fairies at the water cooler. Their melodic chatter stopped cold as I approached and they turned, glittery wings scraping the linoleum floor as they glared at me. It wasn’t me they were mad at—it’s just that fairies are notoriously private. And mean. Thanks to Walt Disney, fairies are depicted as pixie-nosed, spirited sprites that smell of sugar cookies and long to be liked by lithe human boys. Down here, there are no facades: fairies are the Mean Girls of the Underworld. Best to avert your eyes and leave them alone. And I was doing just that when I ran smack into Louis “Vlad” LaShay.

  I thunked back from Vlad’s hard marble chest and he looked down his nose at me. “Soph.”

  I narrowed my eyes, mirroring his sneer. “Vlad.”

  Vlad is Nina’s sixteen-year-old nephew and our permanent couch surfer. He’s surly, cranky, and pathologically unable to throw away an empty blood bag or clean up after himself. But, because he’s chronologically well over a hundred years old and the new head of the UDA has a thing for vampire nepotism, Vlad is also my boss.

  Even if he does dress like Bela Lugosi.

  At home I’ve come to love him like my own obnoxious little brother. On occasion I even helped make a protest sign or two for the organization Vlad championed, the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement. It was a group of like-minded vampires who protested the sparkly, soft-fanged portrayals of vampires in the media, and incited all of the organization’s adherents to bring the modern vampire back to the glory days of graveyard dirt and frilly ascots. They were wholly against vampire/demon mixing and sought to restore ultimate power back to the vampire. Adherents were expected to dress in the classic garb (more Nosferatu, less Edward Cullen) and do vampy things like brood and pace. While their up-with-fangs agenda might sound fearsome, the whole movement was basically the equivalent of an orthodontically gifted group of Dungeons & Dragons players.