by Chloe Garner
Tell nodded, considering this.
“You make one very compelling point. I haven’t drunk enough tonight for this cold. What you are apparently missing is that I can hear them, and I’m finding this conversation very enlightening.”
Tina looked over at the car, focusing now. She could hear them, in the form of voices through metal and glass, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“I can’t understand them,” she said. “It’s just… mumble mumble mumble, loud mumble with shaking fist.”
Tell snorted.
“Bring my heater with you, when you get back. Cold won’t kill me.”
Tina drew a breath and nodded.
“All right. Keep your phone on. Keys.”
He dug them out of his pocket and handed them to her, eyes not leaving the car.
“Be quick,” he whispered.
“Hunter is not going to be okay with this,” Tina whispered back. “Me just breezing through after what happened this morning.”
“Ignore him,” Tell said. “Better yet, text him on the way over and tell him to leave you alone, if he wants to have a serious conversation about it later.”
“Like he wants that,” Tina muttered, and Tell laughed again as she crept away and jogged back to the car.
The cold was real.
It wasn’t the absolute coldest the winter had been - no, she had reserved those days for tromping around in the woods with Tell a couple months ago - but it was plenty cold to slow her down, and while the snow underfoot was packed down from many many feet going across it since it’d fallen, it paid testament to the fact that the air was still below freezing, and that meant that her blood would freeze, too, eventually. It was just a matter of chilling for long enough.
Like beef in a freezer, Tell had said once. The first thirty degrees between a living body’s normal temperature and a vampire’s room temperature was the fastest to go; after that they both froze at the same rate.
It was on the way down, as her muscles got stiff and her heartbeat started to throw her sideways again - when it did deign to push the blood in her body around a bit - that the fact that she wasn’t a side of beef in a freezer still mattered.
She got in the car and started it, revving the engine a few times to get the heat going and holding her fingers in front of the vent for a moment to make sure that her fingers were working adequately to operate the car.
She picked up her cell to text Hunter - Tell had been right about that.
I need to pick some things up urgently for Tell at the penthouse. I don’t have time to talk while I’m there.
She didn’t intend to sound terse. She thought she’d managed it, but it was hard to tell. That many words was just so easy for a lot of interpretation.
About three minutes later, her phone dinged and she glanced at it at a red light.
Do you want me to have anything waiting for you?
She smiled.
Good friend, at least.
A tracking device and a personal heater.
You got it.
The light turned green and she went on.
Now wasn’t the time to think about it.
It was tempting.
Empty car, empty streets, milk run back to Viella.
The problem was that once she started thinking about it, she was going to be deeply tempted to talk to Hunter about it when she got to the penthouse, and Tell really did need those minutes. Even if she did get back before he froze, it was going to be a while before he would be able to actively defend himself or move quickly. The heater just kept his heart warm enough to keep pumping liquid blood to his extremities - it wasn’t built to defrost him.
She parked underneath Viella and got onto the elevator - normally she went up to the lobby to wave at Vince, but she didn’t have the time right now - and Hunter met her in front of the elevator with a box.
“You should look at that and make sure it’s what you’re here for,” he said. “Is this about me?”
She shook her head.
“Haven’t even started thinking about you. This is a brand new emergency.”
“Typical,” Hunter said. “But he’s okay?”
She nodded, closing up the box after she found the tiny transmitter she’d seen Tell use a few times before.
“Mostly just cold,” she said, then looked Hunter in the eye.
It was the first time she’d done it since the elevator doors had opened, and there was a moment.
She stepped forward and kissed him, once, hard, with just her lips, then she held up the box and got back onto the waiting elevator.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re a jerk.”
“I know,” he answered with a grin as the doors closed again.
All the way back down, into the car, back to Tell.
Round trip, just over an hour.
She jogged back to where she’d left him, not finding the vampire in those bushes. She followed his scent around closer to the car, finding a stark tree and a dumpster much closer to the car that he was using as cover. She handed him the box, helping him open it. He put the heater up his shirt, holding it against his chest for a moment and nodding.
“Used to be I could just get up and stomp around and that would do it,” he whispered. “I don’t remember much, but I do remember that.”
She gave him half a smile and jerked her chin at the car she could no longer see.
“Anything?”
“They calmed down and I had to get closer to hear everything,” Tell whispered. “Too much for here, though. I’m not sure I’ve got the touch to get this on without them noticing me.” He handed her the tracker. “You think you can do it?”
She nodded, standing with her back to the dumpster and listening. She would rather go while they were talking, because they’d be slightly less alert. As it was, she had all of the advantages on her side - she was a vampire dressed in black at night in a parking lot that had declined to light the back row.
One of the men said something that might have started with ‘and you know what else’, and Tina slid out from behind the dumpster, moving in a quick crouch to the side of the car, where she reached under the paneling and attached the magnetic tracker to the inside of the bodywork, almost without stopping.
She went on to the back of the car, pausing there for a moment, then moving straight back away from it until she got to the curb. The second man answered the first, and she slid back over to where Tell was waiting.
He pulled out his phone and pulled up the tracking software.
“Should I tell you that I forgot to turn it on?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t recommend it,” Tina answered. He nodded.
“Looks good. Let’s get out of here before you have to carry me.”
“Again,” Tina said, and he grinned.
“It’s good to have a sidekick,” he said.
“Awesome,” Tina answered. They moved quickly out away from the car, keeping the dumpster in between them and it, then walked more casually back to Tell’s car, where he ran the heat for several minutes before he looked over at her.
“They were talking about Kyle,” he said. “Arguing over what they ought to do with him.”
“What were the options?” Tina asked, and he nodded.
“Either accept him as one of them or use him as a pawn to get to Colette.”
“Accept…?” Tina asked. “He’s trying to become one of them?”
“Sounds like,” Tell said. “I heard a lot of names that I vaguely remember, but I need to… Actually, can you drive? I need to write everything down before I start confusing the details.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got a notebook under the seat, there.”
“Yeah, I know about that,” he said, getting out and walking around. Tina passed him on her way to the driver’s side, and he was already settled in with her spare notebook by the time she got back in again.
“How many people are we talking about?” she asked as she put the car into gea
r again. “Roughly?”
“Depends on who you’re counting,” Tell said. “Like any good cult-like secret society, they’ve got tiers of seniority and everyone is always nipping at each other to get elevated into the next circle up. Only the top two - the grand poobah and his sycophants - were actually there when they managed to resurrect the guy Colette saw. Probably ten or twelve guys. The next group down had maybe fifteen or twenty, and when you get down to the guys who just run around in robes play-acting at the annual meetings, you were looking at maybe three or four hundred. I put a really big hole in them, though, up at the top. Add twenty years to that and I genuinely have no idea how big they might be. I really don’t look forward to going digging through them like that, again, either. Hanging out with people who are that dysfunctional kind of predisposes you to being dysfunctional, yourself, for a while.”
Tina nodded.
“So could we just go kill them all?” she asked. He snorted.
“I do, I really do, like how you think. No we aren’t going to go kill them all, because half of them don’t deserve it. Another quarter have no idea what’s going on and you’d be hard-pressed to say that a study of the dead justifies being killed by a vampire, just on its own merits. It’s that last quarter who are potentially involved in it. A few of the old guys that were there when I went through them, they’ll probably have died by now. Necromancy isn’t the fountain of youth. So you’re talking about… I don’t know. Ten people who were there then who are still there now and might still have a grudge against Colette? Plus the people who look to them for their decisions and who take it on face value that anyone outside of the Order who knows about how to raise someone deserves to die, to protect the Order’s secrets. Maybe thirty people. Maybe a hundred. Maybe five. Let’s face it, I’ve got no idea. Anyway, we don’t know how to tell who is who, right now, and I’m not going to blow through them like I did last time.”
Tina frowned slightly.
“Why not?” Tina asked.
“Because last time I thought that just hurting them would put them off of it,” he said. “But they’re like soldiers on LSD. It doesn’t matter how many times you shoot them, they’re going to keep coming. You have to shoot them in the head.”
“Or just hit them with a garbage truck,” Tina said evenly, and he looked over at her.
“Is this the vampire talking, the bad morning talking, or have I just missed it the whole time?”
“I’m not sure,” Tina said. “It’s bothering me almost as much as you.”
He grinned.
“As long as it’s bothering you,” he said. “I’d hazard a guess that this is your version of wanting to jump off of buildings, this time, just feeling your power, but you got to keep an eye on it, okay? Don’t want you running off and massacring a whole sect of people who haven’t done anything wrong but liking brown robes.”
“The brown ones, then,” Tina said. “I can avoid the blue ones and the red ones.”
“And the white,” Tell agreed. “You’re kind of nuts.”
“I think I am,” Tina answered. “You have everything written down?”
“No,” he said. “Thank you.”
He went back to writing.
Tina resumed driving.
The car continued heating up toward a temperature where Tina could actually feel her face.
All progress in the right directions.
Tina stopped in at the office to get Tell’s file, but she wanted as much time with it as she could get, so she just took it straight back to Viella.
That and she felt bad ditching Hunter there all night on his own.
He was going to have to get used to it, certainly, but if she was just going to be sitting and reading stuff, she could do that on a couch at the penthouse just as easily as at the office.
Much more comfortably, too.
Tell started going through the file as she drove, checking his notes from the night against the ones from twenty years ago, nodding.
“I thought so,” he said a few times, until Tina looked over at him.
“Must you do that?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Every time you say ‘I thought so’, I want to say ‘what?’ and all it does is interrupt your train of thought without me having any possible way of knowing what’s going on, yet.”
He grinned at the papers.
“Sorry.”
She nodded, continuing on to Viella.
Up in the penthouse, it smelled as though Hunter had been trying his hand at cooking something.
And it hadn’t been entirely unsuccessful.
“What do I smell?” Tina asked as Hunter looked over from the counter.
“I have a friend who gave me a tip on how they work the black menu at Redford’s,” he said.
“Is that a fact?” she asked, sniffing the air again. “It was really good.”
“Hunter’s a good cook,” Tell said. “Let me go put this down and we can eat.”
“So are you going to tell me what happened today?” Hunter asked, coming to sit on a couch. Tina looked over at the kitchen and he shrugged. “That’s got another twenty minutes to cool before I want to risk serving it.”
“All right,” Tina said. “Well, Tell has an old client who was in trouble and we were looking into some people who were threatening her. Don’t know that I should tell you more than that unless Tell says it’s okay.”
Hunter shrugged.
“He’s always a bit shady about it,” he nodded. “You two ever in danger?”
“Cold,” she said. “Not more than that, at this point. He’s worried about what happens next.”
He nodded slowly, looking over at where Tell had disappeared into the den.
“What about bounty hunters?” he asked.
“He saw them,” Tina said. “I didn’t.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with you, as angry as you were, leaving,” he said and she looked at her hands for a moment.
“Yeah.”
“First time I’ve ever had a chick get angry at me for saying that she could do anything she wanted,” he said.
“Are we or aren’t we?” Tina demanded.
“Don’t follow,” Hunter answered.
“Are we or aren’t we?” Tina asked once more. The corner of his mouth ticked up and he looked at her innocently.
“I thought I left the ball in your court, when I left.”
“And then you went to that… thing,” Tina said.
“I didn’t say I don’t have bad habits,” he said. “I didn’t go.”
“But I don’t know if I can trust you not to do that stuff,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” he said. “I doubt I make that mistake twice, anyway.”
“You don’t want to ever get married again?” she asked, and he drew his head back.
“You would ever consider marrying me?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Where is this coming from?”
“You,” he said, and she shook her head, trying to figure out exactly what it was she was trying to say.
“You make me so insane,” she said. “Are we or aren’t we?”
He crossed his arms, leaning back against the arm of the couch.
“Tell me what that means, so I can make an informed decision.”
She swallowed.
A specific question with a specific answer.
Now that she’d finally gotten to it, she was almost afraid of it.
Scratch that, she was definitely afraid of it.
“There’s what you want and there’s what I want,” she said after a minute. “And they don’t… I’m not expecting to get all of what I want, but if I never say it, you won’t know, so…”
“So you aren’t making an all-or-nothing opening offer,” he said with a half a smile. “You know that I negotiate complex business deals for a living. Don’t sell yourself short, here, doll. If we close, I’m going to get more out of it than you do. I a
lways do.”
She smiled, on easy footing again.
“No sex with anyone else,” she said. “Either of us. No daytime fountains. No leaving without telling me that you’re going and when you think you’ll be back. I don’t need to know where you’re going every time, but if you know I’d want to know, you shouldn’t hide it from me just because you know I wouldn’t like it. I deserve the right to have a fight with you over it.”
Hunter snorted, but he didn’t say anything. She went on.
“I stay with Tell, keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t want to talk about me moving in with you or you moving in with me… anytime for a while. I want to date. I haven’t… That’s not the rules. I just haven’t dated anyone ever. There have been a couple of guys that we just kind of grew into each other, but I… I really liked dating Anton, and I want to do that. Actually take the time to enjoy each other and get to know each other, not just settle in. You know? I’m not going to ask you to only feed on men and me only feed on women. I get it now, that… It’s easier, when there’s an attraction there, and I need to figure that out before I say it’s bad. But nothing actually romantic with a fountain.”
“You want exclusivity,” he said. “I can stipulate that I know what that means.”
She nodded.
“Okay. I want you to text me when you’re gone, just… I want to talk to you. I want to be a part of your life, even when you aren’t here.”
He pursed his lips.
“Would be too easy to agree to those with a plan to renegotiate in a few months when you actually know what you’re asking for, since I think I’m going to be stuck here for a while and it won’t really matter, but you need to know that, when I go, I’m gone. I am where I am. I’m not going to video chat with you every night and tell you about my day and listen to what happened with you. It’s not what I do.”
“Does that mean that you won’t text me a couple of times and just… Don’t just disappear on me. All of you are so taken with your independence and your ability to just vanish, and… It’s not clingy for me to want you to exist even when you aren’t here.”
Hunter blew air through his lips and wove his fingers behind his head, nodding slowly.
“I haven’t done the girlfriend thing in a really long time. I don’t know that I’m even able. It’s a tricky thing, when you are like we are, but…” He drew an even breath and he nodded. “I can concede to that. I want to see what you really think about it, once you get settled in, but we can play house like that for a while. What I want is to know that you’ll get out, if things go bad with Tell. Like, if it’s complete the mission and die or hit the door now, that you’ll get out. Because I don’t want to deal with picking up the pieces of my girlfriend because she really liked how exciting life was hanging out with Tell. I’ve done that with enough of his women. I want the vampires in town to know that we’re together, and that my prestige is attached to you, but not until we’ve cleared up this Sophie thing, because someone really will figure that you’re an angle if it becomes common knowledge that we are attached. I want you to stay away from Ginger. Completely. I want you to do what you need to, to take care of yourself when you need to, regardless of what you think it reflects on me or us or how you think I should be allowed to act.”
