by Chloe Garner
Hunter grunted an agreement and Tina shifted.
“So what do we do?” she asked.
Tell laughed gently and shrugged.
“Just what I said. He stays here, doesn’t leave. We can look at it again after a while, but until then, he’s stuck, because there are people out there who will be hunting him, and one of the only places in the world he’d be safe is here.”
“My apartment isn’t that bad,” Hunter said, and Tell arched an eyebrow.
“You want to bunker down in there?” he asked, and Hunter shook his head.
“No. I’ll take the other guest bedroom, thank you.”
“You should only work with Kirsten, for now,” Tell said. “Make sure that you don’t get any assassins sneaking in here by mistake as fountains.”
“Yes, papa,” Hunter said. “I need to take business calls, so I’ll need to set up your den in there for video conference.”
Tell shrugged.
“Order what you need, then have Vince arrange to get it upstairs. No delivery guys.”
“Are you worried about Vince?” Tina asked, and Tell shook his head dismissively.
“Not a bit.”
“So Hunter is going to hide away up here in a keycard access penthouse, and you’re not worried at all about the man down in the lobby?” Tina asked. “Five million dollars is a lot of money.”
Tell snorted.
“The moment Vince is concerned about his well-being, he’ll ask you to come to me for help,” he said. “He’s got his path figured out, and I’m not worried about him.”
Tina looked over at him, shocked, and he winked.
Of course.
Of course he’d known.
Tina looked around the apartment and Tell tipped his head.
“You’re trying to figure out what you would do to break in here for five million dollars, aren’t you?” he asked, and Tina grinned, busted.
“It doesn’t look that hard,” she said.
“Does it involve a helicopter?” Tell asked.
“They aren’t that expensive to rent,” Tina murmured, still working on which of the glass windows was most likely to break easily.
“I’m glad I amuse the two of you,” Hunter said. “But they really are talking about killing me, here.”
“You want someone else’s hospitality, you’re welcome to scurry over to Ginger’s,” Tell said. “Otherwise, Tina is headed to the office to sit and look professional today, and I have a few cases to follow up on.”
“You’re leaving me here by myself?” Hunter asked.
“Seems to me that’s about the right response, when you turn up here drunk and unannounced,” Tina answered. “You were expecting us to drop everything and, what, go hunt her down and kill her for you?”
“Yes, please,” Hunter said. “But. No, really. You aren’t going to stay?”
“I really have cases to catch up on,” Tell said. “And Tina is a big girl who can make up her own mind, but I will remind her that she didn’t feed well this morning.”
“So let’s have a party,” Hunter said. “Have a bunch of fountains over and have a good time, as long as I’ve got to be here.”
“What part of ‘careful’ are you not understanding?” Tell asked. “You can’t just order up a bunch of people to come up here. One of them is going to try to dismember you when no one is looking.”
“So I’m supposed to just sit here all night by myself?” Hunter asked.
“You know how the TV works,” Tell said. “Though…” He snapped his fingers. “Don’t actually connect your conference hardware until I’m back. I have some stuff I want to do to try to disguise where you’re coming from. Not like everyone isn’t going to know, but we may as well not make it any easier than it already is.”
Hunter straightened and shook his head.
“I think that Tina shouldn’t go out, either,” he said. “If they’re trying to lure me out, taking her hostage is one way to do that.”
“Not how it works,” Tell said. “First of all, they have to get her, and that ain’t easy these days, believe me. Even she doesn’t know it yet, but the first guy who takes a swing at that is in for one hell of a surprise. Second of all, someone takes her or hurts her or whatever, they have me to deal with. And even if they aren’t properly afraid of her, they do know me. And they don’t want to bring that down on their heads. Not to mention Ginger.”
“Not to mention Ginger,” Hunter echoed.
“What about her?” Tina asked, and Tell shook his head.
“Wouldn’t make sense, if I told you.”
She raised an eyebrow, then shook her head and went back to cutting through the roof in her head.
Apartments were ultimately giant boxes of air with really thin walls. Almost indefensible, as they went, and only slightly better than standing out in the open.
It was almost only worth the challenge if she forced herself to come up with a plan going through every wall, since any wall was too easy.
“I’d tell you why those don’t work, but I’d rather you not know, in case you are ever not on my side,” Tell said, watching her face. “You want me to drop you at the office?”
She turned to look at Hunter, who looked desperate for company.
She should have snubbed him.
He’d walked out without breathing a word, planning on going to a blood-and-sex party as a hired date, then traipsed back in blackout drunk and begging for help.
It was so outrageous it was almost out of character.
She should have done it.
But she didn’t.
“I’m going to stay,” she said. “Just today. I’ll go in tomorrow night.”
“Suit yourself,” Tell said. “Don’t forget to feed, though. You had a rough day, today.”
She nodded.
“Strange not to have some big project I’m working on,” she said. “I’ll go through your e-mail and see if anything strikes my fancy.”
He nodded, then waved, heading for the elevator.
“I’ll be back before dawn. You should say something to Sherry soon. Don’t let that one go.”
She held up a hand in farewell, then turned her attention to Hunter.
Smiled.
“You wish I’d gone,” she said after a moment. He leaned against the counter, planting his cheekbone against his fist.
“Is that so?” he asked, smiling.
She nodded.
“You are now trapped in this apartment with me. No running off because things get too real.”
He pursed his lips, then shrugged.
“I’m trapped for the foreseeable future. Tonight doesn’t scare me any more than any other night of that. I just know I’d pull my hair out, having to stay here all night by myself. It’s a nice apartment, but I’m too used to action.”
“And being surrounded,” Tina said after a moment. “How much time do you spend genuinely alone?”
“Plenty,” Hunter said. “I travel by myself all the time.”
“But when you get there,” she said. “It’s all parties and clubs and meals and meetings, isn’t it? You barely even sleep alone.”
“Oh, I don’t even do that,” he said, then tucked the corners of his mouth down as though he was supposed to be ashamed but wasn’t.
“Why did you back out on Sophia’s party?” Tina asked. He gave her a half a smile.
“You want me to tell you that it’s because of you?” he asked. “That I had a change of heart because I wanted to run back and be your loyal boy-toy?”
“I want you to tell me the truth,” Tina said.
“Well, the boy-toy thing is the truth,” he said, the smile spreading wider. “I’m actually pretty good at it. At Sophia’s parties, there are a couple hours of just drinking and mingling, and the ladies, they get the sense that having me at beck and call could be an awful lot of fun. Drives the prices up.”
“Why?” Tina asked.
The mirth drained off of his face for a moment, but
what was under it wasn’t serious, either.
“I don’t need the money,” he said. “Why would I turn up someplace just because it’s expected when they aren’t offering anything I need?”
“Because it’s fun,” she said. “Because you like that it’s you and not someone else. Because you want what they’re offering. There are lots of good answers.”
“I do want it,” he said, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. She couldn’t imagine what it looked like at this point, with the mauling Tell had given it. “Being the one that they all pay that much money to spend the night with like that? Sure.”
“So why did you back out?” Tina asked.
“I couldn’t get over what you would say about it,” he said. “I could have just pretended it didn’t happen. Not like I ever tell you anything else I do when I’m not here. But you would have been all up in arms about it, and… I don’t know, maybe I like what you say about it. Reminds me of something I can’t even remember being, but maybe I like it.”
“Am I going to change?” Tina asked, and he frowned.
“Already did,” he said. She shook her head.
“You can’t even remember being human,” she said. “I’m what you were, at the very beginning, so far back you can’t even remember. Am I going to turn…”
“Into me?” he supplemented easily. “Two hundred years, more, is a long time. Anybody could turn into anything in that much time. But…” He shook his head. “You have so much information available to you. And there’s nothing about you that’s struggling for survival. And you aren’t living for your own entertainment. Ginger and I were ignorant and starving and hedonist. We did a lot of things you would never even consider, right off the bat. If anyone ever has been, I was born bad. You and I aren’t alike, and it isn’t just time spent in a vampire’s body that’s done it.”
She paused, nodding.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For… that being you is about the worst thing I can think of.”
He snorted.
“You just got a hit put out on me, rubbing off on me,” he said. “I think being me is one of the worst things I can think of, too. Well, except being a werewolf. Any werewolf. Being me is definitely better than that.”
“Or a fiend who eats Cova juveniles,” Tina said.
“Definitely better than being a fiend,” Hunter said. “Did you stab one of them? Am I remembering that right?”
“Can I have my knife back?” she asked. He frowned, then pointed.
“I think I left it back on the couch. You know you’re still humming, right?”
She sighed.
“Yes.”
He reached out, standing and putting an arm across her shoulders.
“Come on,” he said. “Come sit with me.”
He still wasn’t the gamer that Tell was.
They played cards and they watched a movie, and then they spent more time than Tina cared to admit to playing a video game she’d played in college. He wasn’t anywhere near as good at it as Tell was, but he had a recklessness to him that made her laugh, and it often felt better, easier, sitting with him, splitting a bowl of entirely pointless popcorn - was popcorn ever purposeful? - and killing aliens in their hordes.
She laughed.
Tell often made her chuckle, but with Hunter she laughed so hard her stomach would have hurt, if she’d still been human.
“How are you holding up, darling?” he asked when she finally shut it off.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“With the transition?” he asked.
“You’d know if you hadn’t left,” she said.
“I’m asking now,” he answered, pulling a foot up onto the couch and resting his forearm on it casually.
She shook her head.
“I don’t think I can do this,” she said. “Some days I want to kill Tell for doing it to me.”
“He said you were feeding okay, though, right?”
She nodded.
“It’s still gross, and unthinkable, but I can’t just outwait it, so I’m doing what I have to do.”
“Speaking of,” he said, getting out his cell phone. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded. She’d been waiting for him to bring it up, because she really didn’t want to, but she’d been hungry since before Tell had left.
She was always hungry unless her belly was full.
He called Everyone and Everything and put in an order, then he hung up again and put his phone away.
“So what’s so bad about it?” he asked. “Just the daylight hours, or something else?”
Tina lay across three sections of the couch, putting her feet up on a divider meant for drinks.
“I don’t know who I am,” she said. “I mean, even with you… Anyone, but… I knew who I was and what I wanted and how that related to you right up until I died, and now? I have no idea. What’s changed? Did I change? Am I a fool to think that the way I was before is the way I am now?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You are.”
She laughed.
“Thanks for giving it to me straight,” she said, and he laughed.
“You aren’t who you were, and you aren’t who you were the last time you were a vampire. You’re who you are now. And if anyone can know your own mind, it’s you. You’re just shook up because you don’t know if you can trust yourself, and there, I’m gonna just step in and say that you’re being a giant sissy, afraid of her own shadow. You know who you are.”
She sat up to look at him.
“You told me that everything is politics with vampires,” she said. “And Ginger made a big deal out of us being involved when I was a vampire, when she couldn’t care less when I was a human.”
“Both very compelling points,” he said. “Who do you believe more, me or you?”
She paused.
“Me.”
He nodded.
“Good girl. And what do you think?”
She lay her head back down, closing her eyes and breathing.
“I think I’m hungry and I drink blood and I can’t get up while the sun is up, and that my hearing is better and I’m stronger and faster and I can see in the dark, but that I’m otherwise completely the same person I was, a month ago.”
“And why do you doubt it?” Hunter asked. “Because all vampires are pricks?”
“Seems as good a reason as any,” Tina said.
“No doubt,” Hunter answered. “But they’re all also old.”
“You’re saying old people are pricks?” Tina asked, and he laughed.
“I’m saying when you’ve been removed from consequences for as long as we have, your behaviors get distorted. You’ve really brought Tell back, you know that?” Hunter paused, sliding lower on the couch and laying his head on the arm of it, looking at her. “And I think you might be doing the same thing to me. I canceled on Sophie. For the hottest party of the decade. Because I was too busy thinking about what you would have thought of it, if you’d even known. That’s so unlike me I don’t even… I don’t know what to expect out of myself.”
Tina rolled onto her side, pillowing her head on her arms.
“Tell won’t tell me what to do,” she said. “Says we’ve got to figure it out. I go back and forth between thinking that I need to cut ties with you and never speak to you again and that I need to go charging out into the world and track you down and make you deal with this.”
He shrugged.
“I can see that.”
“Sometimes it’s so easy,” she said.
“I like that, too,” he told her, and she pulled her knees against her chest.
“But in about twenty minutes, you’re going to ask me if I want to take the fountains upstairs for a foursome.”
“In Tell’s room,” Hunter agreed.
She shook her head.
“You aren’t like me.”
“Nope.”
“And i
t’s never going to be easy, all the time,” she said.
“Newsflash: it’s never easy all the time, for anyone,” Hunter said. “Just saying.”
“But you’re a jerk,” she said. “I grew up in a house where if I’d brought home a jerk, my parents would have asked… Well, I never would have done it, because I knew better, and I would have disappointed both of them so much, letting someone treat me like that, because I deserve better, and he doesn’t deserve to treat me like that.”
“Good parents,” Hunter said.
“So what do I do with that?” Tina asked. “You are a jerk. And you don’t deserve to treat me like that. But it’s not because you’re a jerk… really. Is this denial?”
He laughed.
“I’m probably not the person you should be asking,” he said.
“Sherry would tell me to dump you. That’s your girlfriend’s job. To tell you that you’re better than that and that you can do better. I mean. That’s all she was ever going to say about you. You, of all people. Tell won’t talk to me… Who else am I going to talk to? Anton?”
Hunter snorted.
“No, he’d probably ask for your keycard so that he could come up here and kill me,” he said.
“Don’t say that,” Tina chastened, and he grinned.
“He’s a soldier of fortune,” Hunter said. “No shame in that. He wears it as a uniform.”
“Are you dodging, or just distracted?” Tina asked.
“What was the question?” Hunter answered. “I forget.”
“Am I in denial, thinking that being with you is okay, that you aren’t the jerk I think you are, that… Blast, I think I’m the good girl who’s going to fix the bad boy. This is denial.”
“Glad I could help,” Hunter said cheerfully.
“Will you at least try?” Tina asked.
“No,” Hunter answered. “If you decide that you want nothing to do with me, I’d be disappointed, because you are hella fun to be with, but it saves everyone a lot of will-they-won’t-they angst - which is what Tell is avoiding, by the way - and it simplifies things from upfront. I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong, because you’re probably right.”
“Says the one who is constantly trying to blow up any sense of affection he might have accidentally shown me,” Tina said. “You are absolutely maddening.”
