“Oh.” Jordan exhaled. “He’s got lawyers with him. He claims they’re here in a ‘friendly’ capacity. Just out for a night of fun… part of his entourage or whatever. But we should assume they’ll guard anything he says, and probably shove us out of the room if he gets too hammered. Or starts saying things that could get him in trouble—”
“They,” Nick corrected. “Them.”
“What?”
“You keep saying ‘he’ and ‘him.’ Remember, it’s ‘they’ and ‘them’ when we’re in there. Morley said they’re touchy about the gendered pronoun thing. We don’t want to piss them off.”
“Oh… right. Thanks. He looks really male tonight.”
“They. Not he. They look really male tonight.”
“Okay, okay… ‘they’ look really male tonight.”
“Try to remember when we’re in there. You heard Morley. He wouldn’t have said anything if it wasn’t an issue. And Straven is a celebrity. They’re always a bit… different. They’ll expect us to bow and scrape. They’re used to adulation.”
Jordan exhaled in exasperation. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Before Nick could respond, the human’s voice sharpened.
“…Just wrap up your own personal crazy, Midnight. At least for now. And stop playing Mr. Rational. I just saw you act like a lunatic for over an hour… not to mention earning a slap in the face from the nice principal lady. One I’m sure you deserved.”
Humor reached his friend’s voice when he added,
“I’m glad you two got to kiss and make up, but don’t freak out on her date, either. Go nuts on your own time, okay? I’m heading back there now. And I’m telling him to clear the room, that you’re right behind me. Don’t make me a liar.”
“Them,” Nick repeated. “You’re telling them to clear the room, Damon—”
“Okay! I get it, Tanaka.”
“Then say it. Think it, at least. Get in the habit.” Nick frowned, glancing at Wynter as something else occurred to him. “Hey, Jordan. Those lawyers. Are they vampires? Or human?”
There was a silence.
“Human, I think. Why?”
“Straven said that? That they were human?”
There was another pause.
“They’re human,” Jordan said then, sounding more sure. “I remember him saying something about their ‘delicate constitutions’… and how he needed champagne brought in for the one lawyer in particular, or he wouldn’t make it through the interview.”
Nick nodded. “Okay.”
“Does it matter?” Jordan said.
Nick pursed his lips. “You’re still saying him. And he. It’s them. And they.”
Letting out an annoyed exhale, Jordan clicked off, terminating their link.
Frowning faintly, Nick refocused on Wynter.
She was staring at him, but her expression had changed.
Clearly, she knew Nick had been talking to someone.
She also likely knew who, considering who she’d seen him walk in here with.
Returning her stare, Nick growled, blunt, “You want to meet Straven?”
Wynter blinked. “What?”
“The architect. Artist. Designer. Whatever. You want to meet them? I’m going in for an interview now. I could use your…” He hesitated, glancing at the blond vampire standing there. “…Help. In a professional capacity.”
Disbelief bled back into her blue-green eyes. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I’m on a date, Nick.”
“I’m aware of that.” Nick didn’t look over at the blond vampire that time, but his voice deepened. “Ditch him. I’ll take you home after.”
“Hey,” the blond vampire said. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Wynter didn’t so much as glance at him.
Her eyes remained locked on Nick’s.
“Home?” she said to Nick. “…As in my home? You’re offering to take me to my home, Naoko? Seriously?”
“Whichever,” Nick said. “My home. Your home. Either.”
He saw Jordan walking around the bar, motioning to him from that side of the room. When he caught Nick’s eye, the human cop’s expression grew openly impatient as he tapped an imaginary watch.
Nick nodded to him, then glanced back at Wynter.
“…I really do have to go talk to Straven right now. Come with me. You can decide after. Or I can put you in a taxi, and you can tell me to fuck off as I swipe my barcode, and send you…”
He glared at the blond vampire.
“…Wherever. Wherever you want to go. Even to this fucker’s house. If that’s what you really want.”
“Listen, asshole—” the blond began angrily.
Nick flashed his fangs at him.
His voice came out of his chest, a full-blown snarl.
He didn’t plan that, either.
He also didn’t regret it.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “I don’t need an excuse to kill you, so just shut up and stand there. Don’t speak.”
The vampire glared at him.
Nick got the impression the guy knew who he was, though.
That impression strengthened when the vampire looked him over, fury in his eyes, even as he backed down, giving him a reluctant and rage-filled bow, his fangs briefly visible.
It was vampire-speak, and Nick understood it one hundred percent.
The guy hated his guts.
He wanted to rip out his throat.
He was also submitting.
He was submitting because he knew Nick could kill him.
“He does,” Wynter said, folding her arms in annoyance. “He does know who you are, Nick. He asked me how I knew you when you were staring at the two of us like a creepy weirdo. Which, let me tell you, was fun. Especially when even my date wants to blather about your current fight record and hint they want me to introduce you to them…”
Nick glanced at the blond, then back at her.
Her words briefly knocked him off-center again.
Not a little, either.
He was struggling on more than one level now.
How the hell had she heard his thoughts? She couldn’t have just guessed what he was thinking just now, could she?
“Nick?” Jordan said in his ear. “Come on, man. Deal with this shit on your own time. Remember why we’re here.”
Nick fought to hear that, too.
But he couldn’t walk away from her.
He couldn’t, even apart from this blond asshole who couldn’t dance and who probably got a blowjob from Nick’s girlfriend on the car ride over here already—probably while he fed on her, since Wynter seemed so goddamned determined to get bit.
Even apart from all that, Nick couldn’t walk away.
The fact that she just casually seemed to know what he was thinking made all of that worse. How did she know what he was thinking? How was that even fucking possible? How did she seem to know more about what he was thinking every time he saw her, even when he hadn’t seen her in months?
The unanswerable question made his confusion worse.
It also made him aware of a pain in his chest—a pain he’d been feeling off and on for weeks, without letting himself think about that either, or its cause.
Vampires didn’t get that kind of pain.
Seers couldn’t read vampires.
Hybrids couldn’t read vampires.
And vampires didn’t get fucking seer separation pain.
“Come with me,” he growled. “Please, Wynter.”
He glanced at the other end of the bar.
Jordan had disappeared through a beaded curtain there, into a pitch-black corridor that presumably led to the private rooms in the back, where Straven was.
Nick looked back at Wynter.
“Please,” he said, gruff. “Please come with me, honey. Please.”
He didn’t fully realize what he’d said until he saw her flinch.
Her eyes brightened, so quickly it shock
ed him.
She looked away before he could fully take it in.
He was hard again, but fought to ignore that, too.
He was apparently ignoring everything tonight.
Everything he knew. Everything he’d told himself, for weeks now.
It all went out the fucking window, as soon as he saw her.
He’d known that would happen, though.
Some part of him had always known.
It was the same reason he hadn’t gone up to see Tai, to try and mend things with Malek’s little sister. He’d been afraid to go. He’d known there was some chance he’d see Wynter up there. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to handle it, if he did.
So he avoided the kid, like a damned coward.
When he looked at Wynter next, her eyes were even brighter.
She nodded while he looked at him, seemingly to herself.
Nick watched her do it, feeling that pain worsen in his chest.
Still, most of what he felt was frustration still.
He had no idea what the nodding meant, not until she turned towards the blond vampire.
“I’m sorry—” she began.
“Oh, fuck off,” the vampire cut in, glaring at her, then at Nick. “You’re both batshit crazy. You deserve each other.”
Without waiting for either of them to reply, he stomped off, leaving them in the middle of the dance floor. Nick just stood there, looking at Wynter, watching her face as the couples dancing salsa moved around them, avoiding them as if a circle of hot lava separated him and her from the rest of the tile dance floor with its morphing lights.
Nick looked at her.
She looked at him.
Then he tilted his head towards the beaded curtain.
“Straven?” he said.
She frowned, but nodded.
Before he could reach for her, she slid her fingers into his.
Chapter 6
They Are Genius
Jordan’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline when Wynter walked through the door behind Nick, her fingers twined lightly around his.
Nick gripped her tighter, doing it unconsciously.
When he glanced down, Jordan was staring at him now, his dark eyes a mixture of Are you kidding me? and a sharper wariness, like he actually wondered if Nick was losing his mind. Then, looking past Nick, Jordan smiled at Wynter herself, making room for both of them on the pink, disturbingly fuzzy couch where he sat.
“Hey, Ms. James,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Damon. Thanks. It’s nice to see you.”
“You too, Ms. James. I like that dress.”
She smiled. “Call me Wynter, please. And thanks. I was told it was… appropriate.” She glanced at Nick, frowning faintly. “For dancing.”
Nick didn’t comment, but felt his jaw tighten.
Jordan glanced at Nick, as if feeling the tension there. He also didn’t seem to know how much he should ask Wynter about… well, anything, really.
Ignoring the questioning look in his partner’s eyes, Nick glanced at the three people seated across from them on a matching pink furry couch that wrapped towards the one where Jordan sat in a mirroring “L” shape.
Nick had no doubt which of them was Straven, even before the vampire seated in the middle of the two humans rose smoothly and silently to their feet.
Straven straightened to their full height, even as Nick studied their face.
The androgynous vampire looked to be less than a half-inch shorter than Nick.
They stood nearly eye to eye as a result. Their crystal eyes should have mirrored one another’s as well, but the famous vampire architect wore some kind of enhancement on their irises, what looked like AR-capable semi-permanent implants.
Whatever they were precisely, they made Straven’s eyes shimmer a vibrant green inside the normal, crystal color.
Overall, Straven was older and taller than Nick expected.
Not that the famous vampire looked old.
If they’d been human, Nick would have pegged them at mid- to late-thirties. But they were vampire-old, something Nick could pick up on more now that he was over the two-hundred-year mark himself.
Unlike in the media images Nick scanned with Jordan on their way to the club, the vampire’s hair was no longer black with red streaks, as it had been for the most recent gala event.
Instead it was shocking white with gunmetal gray, bright silver, pink and baby-blue streaks woven into the white in artful patterns. The colored strands had some element of organics in the dye—or extensions, or whatever they were. In any case, those organics made them spark, twinkle, shimmer and vibrate in the dim light of the room.
On the sides and back, the vampire’s hair was shorn almost to the skin; on top, it was so full and thick, so full of product and precisely mussed, it stuck up in a curly, spiked mass above their head, adding about a foot of height to their already impressive stature.
The clothes Straven wore looked like some kind of Halloween costume.
Nick got the “male” thing Jordan mentioned.
What Jordan neglected to mention was that the “male” Straven approximated would have been alive at some point in the late-1700s.
Apart from the hair and the shimmering, AR-enhanced lenses on Straven’s crystal-colored eyes, Straven looked like a 16th Century duke, in a dark blue jacket with gold-embroidery of suns and flames. The jacket hung down almost to Straven’s knees in back and was cut high in front, curving inward without buttons and showing off an even more heavily embroidered vest.
Short pants of the same dark, metallic blue hugged the bottom of their lean form.
White silk socks and faux-leather shoes with brass buckles completed the ensemble, along with a handkerchief in Straven’s upper pocket, and a headset that looked like something from a futuristic movie about badly-blending aliens.
Blinking once he’d taken all of that in, Nick extended a hand.
“Sorry for the delay,” he said, gruff. “I hope you don’t mind. I ran into a friend on the dance floor. She wanted to meet you.”
Nick glanced at Wynter, raising an eyebrow at her, a smile toying at his lips even as a warning touched his eyes.
“…She’s a fan,” he added, looking back at Straven. “She’s also cleared to be in here. I wondered if she might be able to sit in on our interview? Assuming you have no objection?”
Jordan gaped at Nick, not hiding his disbelief.
One of the lawyers noticed, and pursed his lips, glancing at Nick, then at Wynter.
Luckily, Straven themself didn’t notice.
The artist’s face broke out in a delighted smile.
“Objection?” they said. Straven’s words burst out like their smile, openly appreciative, bordering on gushing. “Why on earth would I object to sharing a room with such a lovely vision as this?”
Straven reached for Wynter’s hand, even as the tall, white-haired vampire executed a graceful, overdone bow, their fingers grazing the baby-blue shag rug that covered the floor under the matching, bright pink, fuzzy-bordering-on-hairy couches.
Nick wondered if the vampire actually dyed their hair to match this room.
Smiling at the two lawyers, Nick extended his hand again.
“Detective Tanaka,” he said.
The first one grimaced a little, keeping his hands tightly in his lap and leaning back to avoid Nick’s offered hand. When Nick straightened, pulling back his arm, the thin, rat-faced human slid back even further on the couch, crossing his legs like Nick had just threatened to molest him, or perhaps to sneeze on him.
“Don’t you mean Detective Midnight?” the man muttered, loud enough that it was clearly for Nick’s benefit.
Nick looked him over, taking in the expensive, modern, one-piece black suit, and the vastly more expensive, old-fashioned Rolex watch.
Lowering his hand the rest of the way to his side, he glanced at the other lawyer, who was about fifty pounds heavier than the first one, and at least a decade
younger. Nick was pretty sure he was wearing a toupee.
If he was, it was an expensive one.
Too expensive for Nick to be sure.
That lawyer was staring at Wynter, his eyes going from her legs to her ass, even as he watched and listened to her talk to Straven.
To that one, Nick might not have been in the room at all.
Nick glanced at Jordan, who rolled his eyes, letting out a low snort.
For the first time in a while, it crossed Nick’s mind to appreciate the other detective.
Like, really appreciate him.
He walked back to the pink couch on their side of the room, nudging the detective with his foot to get him to move down a little more so he could sit.
Once Jordan slid over, frowning, Nick sank to the couch next to him.
Rather than watching Straven with Wynter, or looking at either of Straven’s dickhead lawyers, he glanced around the rest of the square room as casually as he could, taking in their surroundings. He only listened with half an ear as Straven continued to gush over Wynter, complimenting her dress, her face, her eyes, her jewelry, holding her hand in both of theirs as they asked her all about herself.
Fighting not to care about that, or the open, unguarded flirtation in the older vampire’s words and voice, Nick marked the physical space in rote, noting the room’s dimensions.
Only one way in or out.
His stare took in a half-dozen lines of white powder on a mirror that sat on a shelf behind the first couch, the shimmering low table that obviously doubled as a console, champagne bottles in two ice buckets on stands, two trays of champagne glasses and a bowl filled with pale blue pills… not to mention the twelve hookah pipes on a ledge near a decorative glass wall.
Nick smelled a pungent, burning perfume and looked around until he found the source—a massive, Japanese-style incense burner painted all over in koi and belching white smoke. Colored lava lamps decorated the same shelf, along with a row of doll’s heads that appeared to have cameras for eyes.
Maybe not cameras—projectors.
Possibly both.
Probably both.
Glancing around at the thought, Nick noted that every wall in there, even the glass one, and the ceiling, was covered in a thin, transparent film, visible to his vampire eyes only because he could pick up the heat signature of an organic along with it.
The Prescient: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 3) Page 10