by Mindy Klasky
Even as I stoked my anger against Richardson, a niggling part of my brain said James had to be involved. There was no other way for a skanky, murderous, outcast vampire to get past Security Level Orange without triggering an alarm.
Mind reeling, I crouched low, keeping my offensive options open as I demanded, “How do I know you aren’t lying?”
For answer, he hawked and spat on the floor, as if he were clearing a nasty taste from his mouth. I knew how he felt. My own throat was raw where his fingers had wrapped around my neck.
He ran a filthy hand through hair that could have used a shampoo or five and a month of leave-in conditioner. I took more pleasure than was strictly appropriate when he winced at the movement, but my glee was checked as he wiped his palm on the front of his black denim jeans. At least, I hoped they were black. The thought of stiff bloodstains turned my stomach.
Finally, he said, “Morton said you’d ask that. I’m supposed to say, ‘The House of Usher is behind your couch and The House of the Seven Gables is next to your nightstand.’”
I’d written my undergraduate thesis on the theme of loneliness in American Gothic literature. I still kept my dog-eared copies of Poe in my living room. Hawthorne held place of pride in my bedroom.
And no vampire—even Maurice Richardson—could have discovered that information on his own. James was the only vampire I’d ever invited to cross my threshold.
I tightened my grip on the dagger, glancing again at the flickering computer screen. “Why did James send you?”
“To give you a warning.”
I twisted my neck inside my collar, trying to ease the after-burn from my attacker’s bony fingers. “Before or after you choked me to death?”
“I didn’t know it was you on those stairs,” he squealed.
“But you recognize me now?”
He whined, the animal sound rising from deep inside his body. “Morton said I was supposed to find you upstairs after I finished here. He said you were the only sphinx working in the courthouse.”
The dagger was slippery in my sweaty palm. I considered switching it to my left hand, but I didn’t trust my enemy not to charge. “Go on, then,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “What were you supposed to say?”
“Morton says to get out of town. Now. While you still can.”
The pure malevolence in the vampire’s voice lifted the small hairs at the nape of my neck. I forced myself to scoff. “Tell James I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I’ve got an indictment hanging over my head.”
“He said you’d say that too.” He hawked up another loogie, then made another swipe at his filthy hair.
My fingers tightened on the dagger. “Then how are you supposed to respond?”
“Morton says no court case is worth your life.”
“You tell him—”
He was faster than I’d imagined he could be. I’d been ready for him to jump me, for him to pin me to the ground and finish the strangling he’d started. I’d never considered that he’d simply knock me to the floor, spring over my body, and race up the stairs.
I dropped my dagger and grabbed at the leg of his jeans. He twisted to get away. I might have held him, even then, but I was startled by a metallic thunk, as something hit the crown of my head.
Blinking away stars, I loosened my fingers, reflexively clutching at my aching head. The vampire tore away, sprinting for the stairs.
“Wait!” I shouted, scrambling for the steps. But the door at the top of the stairwell clanged shut before I set foot on the first riser.
I circled back to see what he’d used to conk me. A flask glinted on the floor, its stainless steel sides scratched and dented. I clutched it and sprinted up the stairs, but the corridor was empty. My only link to James was gone.
Still clutching the flask, I raced to my office. Even as I ran, I realized I couldn’t tell Angelique that I’d caught an invader in the Old Library. She’d mobilize all the forces at her disposal, doing everything in her considerable power to catch the vampire.
And she’d make sure he led her to James.
Even now, after months of silence, after nearly being strangled in my own workplace, after hearing that James had somehow—impossibly—thrown in his lot with Richardson, I couldn’t set him up for Angelique’s revenge.
The night court’s actual Director of Security would certainly be treated as an extreme flight risk. He might accidentally be left in silver handcuffs. He might mistakenly be tied down in a room with full exposure to morning sun. He might just happen to encounter a broken chair leg, a shattered banister, an oak stake that would penetrate his heart.
Instead of storming Angelique’s office, I stumbled over to my desk. Using two fingers, I gingerly opened the steel flask my attacker had thrown at me. A quick whiff of cinnamon told me everything I needed to know about its contents.
Lethe. The potion vampires used to make humans—and most other imperials—forget encounters with the supernatural.
Lethe wouldn’t work on me. My sphinx blood saw to that. But Richardson’s drone had been armed against any other imperial discovering his presence. A quick shot of Lethe and a direct command could make anyone forget they’d seen a vampire.
I had to call Chris. I had to tell him everything that had happened. I had to enlist his help to track the enemy vampire, to follow whatever trail existed back to James, back to Richardson, before the court or the EBI got involved.
Hurtling through my office door, I set the I’ll Be Back clock swaying. I scrambled for my keyboard at the same time that I fumbled for my phone, ready to send an emergency email while I called.
My computer monitor glowed a bright, toxic green.
Crap. We’d upgraded the court’s computers about a year ago. In the intervening time, I’d become spoiled. I hadn’t needed to deal with a single frozen monitor, unlike the nightly blue screens of death that had been the norm when I started my job.
Muttering under my breath, I typed in Control-Alt-Delete, the time-honored three-fingered salute designed to clear a frozen screen.
Nothing.
I tapped on the Escape key, half a dozen urgent pecks.
Nothing.
Swearing, I reached to the back of the monitor to reboot the entire computer. Before I could flip the switch, though, the green screen shimmered. As I stared, a shape rose out of the disturbance. It twisted and rippled, the shocking scarlet of fresh blood.
I blinked, and the distortion resolved into a skull-and-crossbones.
I threw myself back in my chair, instinctively leaping as far from the screen as possible in the tight confines of my desk alcove. As I gaped, words began to stream from the bottom of my screen to the top, jagged blood-red letters that disappeared into the shocking green background like the first reel of a demented Star Wars sequel.
“Pay Up or Else!” said the scroll. “Your computer has been locked! We have access to all Eastern Empire files. Transfer one million dollars to our Bitcoin wallet: ZzZ9y4fRgvf5Rx4HupbE5JjQqXx. A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours before all Eastern Empire records are destroyed.”
8
My fingers flew toward my mouse without my giving them conscious permission. A couple of quick clicks, and I’d turned off the computer.
Nausea twisted my belly. This had to be someone’s idea of a joke. I forced myself to take three deep breaths. All I had to do was turn my computer on. It would cycle through its long boot-up process and then a shiny image of blindfolded justice—the emblem of the District of Columbia court—would appear.
There. Everything was fine. My computer wasn’t possessed. The ransom demand had only been a prank. Everything was working exactly as it should. The computer displayed the appropriate mundane screensaver.
I flicked through the keystrokes to bring up my Eastern Empire files.
“Your computer has been locked!”
The same message appeared as before. Now, though, a countdown clock ticked across the bottom of m
y screen. Scarlet numbers peeled away as I wasted precious seconds.
Why would anyone target me? I was a harmless court clerk. I didn’t wield any sort of power. I had no ability to change anyone’s life in anything approaching a meaningful way.
Anyone. Even as I thought the word, I knew I was lying to myself. The computers hadn’t been sabotaged by just anyone. They’d been hacked by Maurice Richardson.
Even as I turned my computer off again, I remembered the soft whirr of the terminal in the Old Library. The vampire I’d surprised down there must have used that machine to hack into our system.
That’s why James had given him access to the courthouse.
Acid rose in the back of my throat as I turned my computer back on. This time, instead of logging in as me, I tried a dummy account, a fake username and password that I’d created over a year ago, when I was first updating the computer system.
The dummy account was locked too.
And if the dummy account was affected, that implied that every other account on the system had been sabotaged. And if every other account had been sabotaged—
“Sarah!”
I’d recognize Angelique Wilson’s yowl anywhere. I pushed my chair back and scrambled through the Staff Only door.
“Sarah!” Angelique screeched again, barely cutting off her summons as I barreled around the corner into her office.
Automatically, I checked the almanac in my mind.
What? Most people don’t have the phases of the moon committed to memory? Well, most people don’t work for a slave-driver, cat-shifter boss. Most people don’t have to worry about the one night a month when their boss might literally eviscerate them for the slightest mistake in filing.
We were one day past the full moon. I was safe. For now. Except, of course, for the little matter of the crimson letters dripping down the computer screen that Angelique turned toward me.
“What the Fox Terrier is this?” she demanded. Even now, with the computer system shut down around us, Angelique persisted with her idiotic dog-breed curses.
“I don’t know,” I said. “The same thing just showed up on my computer.”
Angelique’s eyes narrowed. Her crimson-painted fingernails reflected the letters on her screen as she typed in some frantic command. I wasn’t sure how she managed to attack the keyboard with nails that extended half an inch, each one filed to a needle-sharp point.
“I don’t have time for your Borzoi,” she muttered as she worked.
“I’ve already tried turning my computer off and turning it back on,” I said, wincing as she toggled her own power button from on to off to on again without a second’s delay. The surge of electricity couldn’t possibly help anything. But from the inexorable countdown clock that filled her screen, it didn’t seem to cause more harm.
As Angelique’s canine profanity scorched her office walls, I schooled my face to stillness. In the past six months, I’d become inured to my boss’s tantrums.
I looked around the office as Angelique continued to explain that she was rather frustrated with her computer, and she truly wished it would function a mite more efficiently, especially because she had been in the middle of drafting a highly detailed and engaging memo about the Office of Security’s annual budget. Or something to that effect.
A glass glinted on the corner of her desk. I recognized the tumbler immediately, one of a pair that should have been locked away in the credenza on the far side of the room. Now that my attention was snagged, I caught a faint breath of cinnamon on the air, almost drowned by the stench of the vampire I’d wrestled downstairs, the reek that still permeated my clothes.
Lethe.
Someone had dosed Angelique Wilson. And my money was on the vampire from downstairs, of course.
But what the hell had he been doing inside Angelique’s office? He must have raced here directly from the Old Library. While I’d been fighting the ransom demand, methodically cycling my computer on and off, waiting for the interminable booting routine to complete—twice—he’d done something to my boss.
But what?
Before I could begin to divine an answer, the telephone rang on Angelique’s desk. It was an internal line; we could both see Judge Finch’s extension displayed on the console. For a moment, I thought Angelique would let the call go to voice mail, but at the beginning of the fourth ring, she grabbed the handset. “Wilson,” she snarled.
I could just make out a fast-paced question.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
More garbled words.
“No, Your Honor.”
Another response, this one shorter and more sharp.
“Right away, Your Honor.”
Angelique cradled the phone, already glaring at me. “Judge Finch wants to see me in her chambers,” she said. “But don’t think we’re finished here. Not by a Labrador long-shot. I know what you’re up to, and you’re not going to get away with it.”
“What I’m up to?”
“Everyone knows your Gordon Setter history with Morton.”
“J—James! What does James have to do with this?” Even as I protested, I felt my bruised neck flush crimson. James wasn’t anything to me, not anymore. Chris was my boyfriend. Chris, who’d just declared he loved me, just six hours earlier.
Angelique’s green eyes narrowed to daggers. “You think I’m an idiot, but I know exactly what’s going on here. Your James Morton is the only imperial I know with access to lock down our entire computer system. He might be roaming the Empire right now, not feeling like coming into the office, but he sure as hell won’t let me or anyone else take his job.”
I gaped. I honestly couldn’t imagine James conspiring to target the Acting Director. If he’d wanted to return to this office, he’d march through the door and claim it. But Angelique certainly wasn’t interested in hearing that protest, not as she tugged on her suit jacket and prepared to face Judge Finch.
“You’ve got two days, Sarah. Unlock these files and turn in James Morton. Because if I don’t have access to my computer before the ransom demand expires, you’re going to be held accountable.”
She held up one long index finger, tipped with its needle claw. “First, you’ll be Foxhound fired.”
Another finger, another claw. “Then, you’ll be Affenpinscher arrested. Again.”
A third finger, a third claw, rotated so that all three daggers pointed directly at my heart. “And then, you’ll be put in German Shepherd jail, where I’ll make it my personal mission to see you rot until you die.”
Before I could respond, she shot her cuffs and strode to the door. She paused on the threshold, turning back to glare at me. “Make no Mastiff-loving mistake. You’re going down for this.”
“Going down?” I couldn’t help it. I laughed. It was either that or melt into a puddle of terror, overwhelmed by how quickly my life could go from normal to insane. “What do you think this is? A cheap remake of The Untouchables?”
She snarled. “You can be touched, Sarah Anderson. You can be torn, limb from limb. And by the time I’m through with you, there’s not an imperial this side of the Mississippi who’ll do anything more than spit on your bleeding corpse.”
Well, that got interesting in a hurry. And what a surprise—when Angelique was threatening bodily mayhem, she dropped her need to swear. She spun on her stiletto heels and headed to Judge Finch’s office before I could stammer a response.
James and I aren’t working together…
I have no idea how to unlock the files…
You can’t send me back to that cell…
All those arguments, and a dozen more, were useless. The only way I could save myself was to find James. Find Richardson.
That, or come up with a million dollars to release our ransomed files.
Right.
My meager bank account barely reached five hard-won figures. Four, after I made my rent payment each month.
The sphinxes might have enough cash on hand to appease Richardson, but I couldn’t imagi
ne convincing the Pride to sign the check—even if I were still a member of the Den. I shook my head, unable to imagine how that request would go.
Out of the corner of my eye, the overhead light glinted on the crystal tumbler that still sat on Angelique’s desk. I stepped close enough to make out the ring of Lethe at the bottom of the glass.
What had Richardson’s drone wanted from Angelique? What had he needed here, that he couldn’t accomplish using the computer down in the Old Library? And what sort of sneak-thief invader left evidence of his tampering in full view?
Angelique had been distracted by the ransom notice. She’d been intent on targeting me. But I was certain she’d notice the tumbler as soon as she returned. As Acting Director of Security, she had to be familiar with Lethe. She’d understand that she’d been dosed, even if she didn’t have any more answers than I did.
And that would pretty much seal James’s arrest warrant, even without my testimony that the vampire in the basement had said James had granted him entrance to the building.
I should let Angelique bring him in. I should have faith in the court’s machinery as they got to the bottom of this unprecedented attack.
But I didn’t have faith. Not in the wake of Judge DuBois’s death.
Not when I knew James was innocent. He had to be innocent.
Even if he’d given my attacker access to the Old Library. Even if every scrap of evidence shouted that James had allied himself with Maurice Richardson.
He wasn’t innocent. But even with that knowledge, I couldn’t imagine turning him in. Not until I’d made one last effort to find him myself. My earlier vision of silver bonds and oaken stakes still held. I had to give James a chance to survive.
That meant I had to deal with the tumbler. I could hide it in my desk. I could even try to carry it home. But given my boss’s current unreasoning rage, she might very well search my workspace. She might even go through my bags before she let me out the door.
The safest thing to do was to return the glass to its proper place inside the credenza. But that meant working the discreet keypad set into the cabinet’s front panel.