Leonides ran an unamused eye over us. “Good god. I can’t even threaten to fire you any more.”
Kat fluttered her eyelashes at him sweetly, the picture of innocence. I saluted her with my glass.
“Talk soon, okay?” I said. “Is Len on tonight? I want to say hi to him, too.”
“Oh, sure. He’s in the kitchen,” she said. “When you see him, tell him I want first crack at any leftover food tonight. Then go get yourself some rest, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, wondering what new nightmares I’d be adding to my collection tonight, after what had happened earlier today. “Take care, babe.”
Leonides waved me toward the kitchen doors without him, either because he didn’t want to fluster the line cooks with his presence, or because he correctly intuited that I’d be more comfortable talking to Len alone. These days, aside from Zorah, Len was one of the very few people on the short list I called friends. He’d been nice to me since our first meeting in this very room, but it was more than that. I’d seen Len poised to protect my son at the risk of his own life—armed only with a baseball bat, cocked and ready to let fly at whatever mysterious power had just blown his front door off its hinges.
Of course, that ‘mysterious power’ had been me—but Len hadn’t known that. It could just as easily have been armed Russian mafia goons or evil Fae, and he’d been standing firmly between Jace and danger. In that moment, he’d become one of the people I trusted most.
I finished off the bourbon and set the glass on an empty table that needed to be bussed anyway. Checking to make sure that I wasn’t about to get run over by a server on their way out with a tray, I slipped into Len’s domain of heat, clattering dishes, and delicious scents.
Did he know? About Jace... about all of it? I wasn’t sure. The last time I’d seen Len had been right before we left for the airport to put Jace on that fateful cross-country flight. But—unlike Kat—Len was also friends with Zorah, and he seemed to have a closer relationship with Leonides than simply employee and employer.
As usual, Len’s chef uniform was spotless; his hair a shock of electric blue amongst the white and stainless steel of the professional kitchen. Silver piercings glinted in his ears, nose, eyebrow, and lip, while tattoos peeked out from his rolled up sleeves. He oversaw his little domain with easy confidence, but there was a gaunt cast to his pleasant features that seemed exaggerated beneath the harsh overhead lights.
I slipped into a corner where I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way, and waited until his gray gaze caught my presence and held. A look of bleak regret crossed his face, and I knew in that moment that I wouldn’t have to explain what had happened with Jace.
He said a few quick words to the nearest line cook and headed straight for me, wrapping me up in a tight hug without speaking. I buried my face against his crisp white shirt, remembering just in time to picture the imaginary mirror inside my pendant bouncing my magic back to its source as crippling sadness washed over me. I wasn’t sure if there was anything in the kitchen that would respond to my weak powers of lithomancy, but this definitely wasn’t the time to find out.
“Is there any news, Red?” he asked. “Zorah told me what happened.”
I shook my head wordlessly, letting myself burrow into his solid strength for a few moments longer. Len had always been painfully awkward about receiving hugs of thanks, or hugs of friendship. Apparently, that awkwardness went straight out the window when it was someone else who needed comforting.
I would not allow myself to cry, and I would not cling to him for the next hour in hopes that it would make the world go away. Reluctantly, I peeled myself out of his arms and tried to meet his gaze.
“Have you learned anything new?” he asked again. “Anything at all? Because Zorah called me a few days ago. She said they were going to check out the airports?”
I chewed my lip, feeling wretched. “Not really. I mean... there’s a fair amount of evidence piling up that it was the Fae. But nothing useful for... finding him.” My voice cracked on the words.
Len nodded his understanding. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
I lifted a hand to rub up and down his arm a couple of times. “You’re already doing it, Blue. Oh... and Kat says she wants first dibs on leftovers tonight.”
“Kat always wants first dibs on leftovers,” he replied, letting me change the subject without calling me on it. “So, did Gramps the Vamp tell you what he did with this place?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Even for an eccentric rich guy, the whole thing sounds kind of insane. How’s the new boss working out?”
Len’s gaze landed on something over my shoulder. “Oh, she’s great. A paragon of bosses, really. Best boss I ever worked for.”
“She’s totally standing right behind me, isn’t she?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” Len confirmed. “The woman’s like a damned ninja. Hey, Gina. Hey, Gramps.”
“Hello, Len,” said a female voice—mature, with the faint rasp that spoke of a cigarette habit spanning a significant number of years.
I turned to find Leonides standing next to a woman in her fifties. Gina was a few pounds over fashionable, and wore her silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wore a sober, dark gray business suit, along with a deadly pair of red heels and a reserved expression.
“So,” she said, “I take it this is your new lightning rod, Guthrie? I like her. She’s cute.”
TWELVE
“BE NICE, Gina,” Leonides said, sounding tired. “No need for the Wicked Witch routine.”
The woman scoffed. “Don’t give me that, Guthrie. You wouldn’t know ‘nice’ if it put fang marks in your ass.” She returned her attention to me, sticking out a hand. “Gina van der Linde. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Morgan.”
I returned the grip—cool and dry, but not inhumanly so. “Nice to meet you. Uh—thanks for taking over the club and hiring everyone back.”
She let me go, a crooked smile pulling at her ruby lips. “That’s what comes of owing people favors. The G-man here gave me a rundown of everything that’s been happening when he originally floated this plan to me. You holding up all right?”
I wasn’t sure if that rundown included any supernatural aspects or not, though the ‘fang marks’ quip argued it might have done. Either way, the answer was the same.
“Not even close,” I told her. “Complete wreck over here, barely holding it together. Thanks for asking, though.”
She nodded. “You’d be a poor excuse for a mother if that weren’t the case. So, are you going to be up for this?”
I glanced at Leonides in hopes that I would somehow be able to absorb whatever information he’d failed to share with me via the medium of osmosis.
Nope—no joy. I really needed more useful superpowers than the ones I currently had.
“And by ‘this,’ you mean...?” I prompted.
“Coming back to work. Playing ‘happy families’ until this Fae asshole can’t stand it anymore, and shows up to do something about it,” Gina said.
Len let out a startled snort—trying and failing to cover it with a cough.
And... there was one question answered, anyway. Gina definitely knew about the supernatural.
“I didn’t know there even was a plan until a few minutes ago,” I told her truthfully. “I’ve been away for a few days, trying to graduate from Ghetto Hogwarts and randomly getting shot at by men with high-powered rifles. I think playing normal is going to be a stretch... but if pouring drinks and pasting on a fake smile for a shift or three is the thing that gets me closer to finding Jace, I’ll make that happen somehow.”
Again, the crippling guilt of being stuck in one place instead of tearing the world apart in pursuit of my son slammed me like a brick wall. It was a good thing the emotion of guilt wasn’t one of my magical triggers, or things in Len’s kitchen would probably be getting unpleasantly exciting right about now. I tried to maintain a bit of focus on the pendant’s reflective powers, just in case.
&nb
sp; Gina was nodding solemnly in response to my words. “Good girl.”
I swallowed a salty response to the gentle condescension, aware that I was in desperate need of sleep, and probably a good, private cry.
“Right. Well... someone let me know when I’m slated to work my next shift.” The words tasted like ash—public acknowledgement that I was just going to sit here in St. Louis, hoping that pouring drinks for patrons at the Den—no... at The Brown Fox—would magically result in some kind of forward progress toward finding my missing son.
Magically.
Ha.
“Talk to Sally before you leave,” Gina said. “She’ll get you set up for shifts.”
I nodded to show I’d heard. “Will do. It was... ah... nice to meet you, Gina.” Hopefully that wasn’t too familiar of me. Len had called her Gina, after all.
“Go get some sleep,” Gina said. “It sounds like you probably need it.”
“Probably,” I agreed hoarsely, dreading the nightmares to come.
I glanced at Leonides, only to find him staring at me with a faint furrow in his brow. An uncomfortable realization slid over me. This wasn’t his building anymore. Even if he were inclined to let me crash in one of the empty apartments after I’d trashed my last accommodations, he couldn’t. I’d have to find someplace else to stay.
My shoulders sagged under the fresh weight of stress. I straightened them through force of will and managed some sort of reasonably polite goodbye to Len, who was also staring at me with a worried expression. Leonides was a silent shadow as I tracked down Sally, the floor manager, and explained the situation to her. She examined her ever-present clipboard for a few moments, and told me to be here at six p.m. the following day.
When she bustled off to deal with whatever item was next on her carefully maintained list, I found myself alone with Leonides. Or—as alone as you could get in a crowded club, anyway.
“I’ll need to run up to the penthouse so I can grab my bags,” I told him. “Nice of Nigellus to retrieve them for me, I guess.” Even if he popped off and left us alone to face a Fae-controlled SWAT team while he was busy playing bellboy.
“And once you have your bags?” Leonides asked.
I raised a hand to rub at my temples, trying to hold back the headache blossoming there. “No biggie. I’ll just... find a hotel, like I’d planned to do originally.”
Cool fingers touched my wrist, easing my arm down so he could meet my eyes.
“Vonnie. Ivan’s not a concern anymore,” he said quietly. “You can go back to your apartment if you want.” He paused, seeming to struggle with himself for a moment before continuing. “Though I’d feel better if you just took the guest bedroom in the penthouse tonight, honestly.”
God. I was more of a mental wreck than I’d even realized. Like a complete idiot, I’d forgotten. The mafia wasn’t after me anymore, thanks to the man—vampire—standing in front of me. At least, not unless Teague got to Ivan again, and whispered bad things in his ear, anyway.
I could go home.
Then the second part of what he’d said registered, and I frowned at him. “Umm...”
The bland mask that I was truly beginning to hate slid over Leonides’ features. “I’ll take you up and show you the codes. But then I need to come back down here and keep an eye on things until close. I’ll be quiet when I come up later—you won’t be disturbed.”
“Quiet as the grave?” I suggested, because the alternative was to say something too real... too likely to slam the invisible blast doors down between us.
His lips twitched downward before he covered the reaction. “It’s only that... you shouldn’t be driving when you’re this tired. Just... try not to set anything on fire, okay?”
“I think we’re safe on that front,” I said, too exhausted to even feel mortified by the dig. My fiery slip-up in the forest aside, lust was pretty much the last thing on my mind right now. “Thank you,” I added in a whisper.
There was no real reason why the idea of staying in my ex-boss’s penthouse should make me feel like the knots tied up in my chest were loosening incrementally.
The penthouse makes a damn good haven, Zorah had told me once. Evidently, there was something to that.
“It’s nothing, Vonnie,” he said. “Really. We can figure out the rest of it tomorrow, when you’re not about to fall over.”
I nodded. Tomorrow, I would go back to my apartment to check on it. I would press my face to Jace’s pillow to catch the scent of his hair, and probably cry like a damned baby. I would come back and pour drinks downstairs for a few hours, while smiling and pretending my life wasn’t falling apart. And hopefully, that would eventually be enough to draw Teague out of hiding, so I could get some answers.
“Rans and Zorah will be back in town in a few hours,” Leonides said. “They’re catching a red-eye flight, but they shouldn’t be seen here at the club—not with the Fae involved so deeply. We’ll arrange to meet them somewhere else.”
“Yeah. Okay,” I agreed, knowing that if they’d discovered anything truly useful, I would already know about it. Even so, part of me hoped that a fresh brainstorming session with them might yield something of use, no matter how small.
I let Leonides usher me back to the penthouse, where he jotted the security codes on a Post-It note, because I was clearly too far out of it to memorize them on the fly. With my bags already here, I shuffled off to change, while my host left me to return to the club below. I wasn’t sure if he’d already been planning to do so, or if it was merely a convenient excuse to give me space.
I also wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that I actually would have preferred him to stay.
Moot point, so I let it go. It was tempting to play it safe and crash on the patio bench next to the fire pit outside, as I’d done once before. But my earlier point still stood. Lust—the emotion that triggered my abilities with fire—would not be making an appearance tonight. As long as I didn’t put a glass of water next to my bed, about the worst I could do was toss a bit of potting soil out of a planter if I had a sad dream. In the grand scheme of things, a little dirt on the rug wouldn’t be the end of the world.
The guest room was elegantly furnished, and noticeably homier than the more public areas of the penthouse. It boasted a cheerful light blue duvet on the queen-size bed, and yellow blooms in a small vase on the nightstand. I plopped my bags down in an unused corner, and leaned toward the bouquet until the faint perfume of real flowers reached me. As one might expect, there was water in the vase. I gingerly transported it to the living room, where I wouldn’t accidentally freeze and/or vaporize it during the night.
After getting ready for bed, I lay down on my back, with the bedside lamp on its lowest setting, and stared at the ceiling. Sure enough, within minutes tears were trickling down my temples and into my hair. The pendant nestled at the base of my throat, and I did my best to keep my magic contained as Edward had taught me, even though there were no planters of dirt, or objects made of stone in the immediate area.
Jace, baby, I thought, wishing the words could somehow reach him. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m doing everything I can to get to you. Please don’t give up hope. Please fight to get back to me, too.
The idea of my son alone and frightened, convinced that no one was coming to rescue him, had my eyes slipping closed and tears trickling faster down the sides of my face. I lay alone in the unfamiliar room, my chest hitching and jerking with stifled sobs, as mingled guilt, fear, and despair wracked me.
* * *
I must’ve cried myself to sleep, because when I woke, daylight was streaming through the room’s sheer curtains, and my head felt like someone was going at it with a jackhammer.
I stumbled into the kitchen, only to find another omelet waiting for me, along with a vampire who had no business looking as put-together as he did.
“Thought you weren’t a morning person,” I muttered, sliding onto the barstool and digging in.
I didn’t mee
t Leonides’ gaze, but I could guess what he saw when he looked at me—namely, someone who’d spent last night crying like an infant.
“We’re meeting Zorah and Rans at Blueberry Hill at eleven,” he said, rather than address the morning person thing. “Do you know it?”
“Everyone in St. Louis knows that restaurant,” I told him. “I can meet you there. First I need to go check my apartment, though.”
I glanced up, half expecting him to protest, but he only nodded. “Sure. Remember—everything’s normal, everything’s fine. You don’t have a care in the world, right? Because I’m pretty confident that Golden Boy won’t be able to stand that for long, and I want him pissed off.”
“Why?” I pressed, still unconvinced by this nebulous, nonsensical thing currently masquerading as our plan.
“Because angry people make mistakes,” he said. “It’s one of their defining characteristics.”
I shrugged, not able to disagree, exactly... just not sure what kind of mistake he thought would help us right now. “If you say so.”
“Oh, I do.”
After finishing the omelet and a glass of orange juice that I was fairly certain was fresh-squeezed, I took my leave and made my way to the parking garage, where the Taurus sat patiently waiting. My heart sank as I noted the absence of plastic taped over the broken window, assuming that meant someone had broken into it.
Again.
But when I got closer, it was to find that new glass had been installed while I’d been away, playing Magic Schoolgirl with Edward. I blinked at my reflection in the pristine window, and set the revelation aside for later—unable to deal with yet more charity from my former boss just now.
The car’s starter turned over too slowly for a few moments, after sitting abandoned for several days. At least Leonides hadn’t done a full diagnostic and bought me a new battery, as well as replacing the window. If I could get it started, the alternator would probably charge it back up, assuming I took the long way back to my apartment. If worse came to worst, I could find someone there to give me a jump so I could get to Blueberry Hill later.
Vampire Bound: Book Two Page 9
