Legally Undead (Vampirarchy Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  We cleaned up in there pretty quickly. I realized when I emptied the trash into my big plastic garbage bag that my hands were shaking. Badly. But I managed to do a fairly good job of dusting and even managed to block the camera with my body while Malcolm rummaged through the desk.

  That made me think about my exchange with Greg—was it all recorded on the video camera in Pearson’s office? That thought made me break out into a sweat, but since there really wasn’t anything I could do about it, I finally decided to leave it alone.

  In retrospect, I sometimes wonder why I didn’t tell Malcolm that Greg was back in the office. It might have saved us a whole lot of trouble later on. But he’d want to know how Greg had gotten in without attracting our attention and trying to explain that might have led to some sort of explanation of the whole vampire thing, and I really didn’t want to go there. Not yet.

  I should have. I realize that now. But I didn’t.

  So when we walked back into Pearson’s office together to finish the cleaning job I hadn’t really started earlier, I was the only one frantically scanning the shadows for any swirly vampirey shapes.

  I didn’t see any. What I did see was a piece of paper folded in half sitting on Pearson’s desk. I was certain it hadn’t been there before.

  While Malcolm vacuumed, I dusted the room. I waited until his back was to me, then picked up the paper and glanced down at it. I quickly crumpled it into a ball and shoved it into my pocket. My hands were shaking again.

  The note was in Greg’s handwriting. It read, “We’re not done talking. I’ll find you. G.”

  “YOU KNOW, THERE’S SOMETHING a little strange about your ex,” Malcolm said.

  Tell me about it.

  “So,” Malcolm said when I didn’t answer him, “he was the one who was chasing you the other night, right?”

  Damn. I was hoping he hadn’t noticed.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So why didn’t you tell me that before we went in?”

  “I didn’t think he’d be there.” It sounded lame, even to me, but Malcolm just stared at me thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

  We hadn’t spoken much on the way from the law offices to the train station. I had been too busy watching out for vampires.

  I didn’t know the reason for Malcolm’s silence, and frankly, I didn’t care.

  I changed clothes in the bathroom at Grand Central Station. I’d always been amused at the laminated signs up in those bathrooms—they list all the things that one cannot do while in the Grand Central restrooms. The list included things like “bathing.”

  Now I wasn’t quite as amused. After hours of scrubbing out law offices and confronting my undead ex, I would have been happy to sluice myself off in the Grand Central sinks. But I had to satisfy myself with unstuffing my cleaning-lady clothes and peeling off the pantyhose, then shimmying into a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt. I shoved the dirty clothes deep into a trash can as I walked out of the bathroom. I wouldn’t be using a disguise again—it clearly didn’t work against Creepy Vampire Senses—and I really didn’t want to wear anything that Greg had touched. My skin still crawled when I thought about the way I had almost fallen into his eyes.

  Note to self: Eye contact with vampires, bad.

  The files I had printed from Greg’s computer were in a backpack. The note he had left on the desk was in the pocket of my jeans. I had almost thrown it away with the disguise, but at the last minute had decided to fish it out and keep it. I didn’t want it floating around Grand Central.

  I’d been intensely watchful on the train, nervously fingering the chopstick I held in my hand all the way home. More and more, enclosed spaces made me uncomfortable.

  And now we were back in my apartment. The big black garbage bag full of lawyerly trash sat on my apartment floor in front of us.

  But we weren’t sorting through that stuff yet. We were sitting on my couch staring at the wrinkled, sweat-stained printouts from Greg’s computer that lay on my coffee table. I smoothed my hand across them for the fourth or fifth time, trying to flatten out the creases they’d developed when I’d folded them and shoved them down the front of my pants. I think maybe I was hoping they would suddenly say something else. “A little strange” didn’t begin to cover it.

  Across the top of the first page in big, bold, black letters read the word “VAMPIRARCHY.”

  Under that was a name: Salvaggi.

  The rest of the page was divided into five columns. Each of the columns had one of New York’s five boroughs as a heading: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Staten Island. In each column was a list of names, the top name on the list in bold typeface.

  “Vampirarchy? What does that mean?” asked Malcolm.

  I leaned over to the bookshelf against the wall and pulled out a dictionary.

  “Vampire hierarchy,” I said.

  “That’s really a word?”

  “Apparently so.” I slid the dictionary back into its space on the shelf.

  “I thought you said your ex was mixed up with the mob.”

  “I thought he was. Maybe it’s some kind of gang stuff?” I was reaching, but I didn’t think Malcolm was ready for the truth. And more than that, I was getting used to having somebody on my side. I didn’t want him to decide I was crazy and bail on me.

  “Hmm. Maybe. You think there’s some gang out there called The Vampires?”

  “Geez, Malcolm. I don’t know. I’m not the one who wrote the files. I just printed them out.”

  “Okay, okay. I didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s just go on the assumption that this is gang-related. What does this paper tell us?”

  “Well, it tells us that there’s some sort of... overlord? Something like that. Named Salvaggi.”

  The name was familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it before.

  No. Not seen it, not written down. Maybe heard it?

  “Okay. So if Salvaggi is the Big Boss, what does that tell us?”

  “That these guys are regional bosses who report to him, maybe.” I looked back at the names more carefully. “So. Augustus runs Manhattan, Deirdre runs Queens, Moshe runs Brooklyn, Santiago runs the Bronx, and Donatello runs Staten Island?”

  “Augustus, Deirdre, Moshe, Santiago, and Donatello? That does not sound like a list of gang names to me. Maybe this is about drugs?”

  “Maybe.” I knew I sounded distracted, but I had suddenly remembered where I’d heard the name Salvaggi before. Nick had said it to me. That was the name of the vampire guy who had killed Pearson’s father. So if this really was a vampirarchy, then they were more organized than I would have guessed. I mean, inasmuch as I’d ever considered vampires—which was pretty much never until the last few weeks—I always assumed that they were solitary creatures, more prone to skulking around alone than to setting up corporate-style structures. Then again, the fact that the word “vampirarchy” even existed meant that someone knew about this.

  Trust Greg to find the biggest word possible to describe something.

  Anyway, back to the point: If Salvaggi was the big guy, then these other people were regional bosses, and the names under them must be—what? My mind was racing, filling in the corporate metaphor. These other guys must be the vampire equivalent of mid-level managers. There were at least ten guys on each list. Fifty managers. With who knows how many “employee” vampires.

  Oh, God.

  I must have whispered that last part out loud because Malcolm looked over at me. “What? You okay?”

  “Yeah. I think I just realized for the first time exactly how big and bad this thing Greg’s into must be.”

  “He tried to kill you and you’re just now realizing how bad it is?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, I knew it, but it’s different having it all on paper right there in front of you.”

  I flipped to the next page. In the same five-column layout with the same five-borough headings was a list of addresses. There were at least six addresses in each column—ei
ght in the Bronx, seven in Manhattan.

  I was guessing that these were vampire hideouts. And at least two of them were disconcertingly close to Fordham and therefore close to my own home address.

  Great. I was living in Bronxylvania.

  We called it a night after I realized that there were vampire dens all over the city. I needed to think about that fact, and I needed Malcolm to be gone while I thought. Of course, we didn’t stop until we’d looked at all the pages I’d printed out, but the rest of the pages were covered with codes and numbers that made no sense to me. Malcolm offered to take them away to try to make some sense out of them. I agreed—he was the mathematician, after all. Unless they’re dates, numbers just confuse me.

  These clearly weren’t dates.

  I half wanted Malcolm to stay at my place that night. He hadn’t worn a disguise to the law offices and Greg had seen him. And it’s hard to tell if you’ve been followed home when the guy who might be following you can swirl away into any convenient shadows. So for all I knew, Greg knew exactly where we had gone and would be outside waiting for one of us to leave. The thought gave me chills.

  But when I suggested to Malcolm that he might want to stay over on my couch, he gave me a strange, indecipherable look.

  “Your couch? No thanks, not the couch. I’d rather go home.”

  “I’m worried that someone might figure out what we’ve done and come after us, Malcolm. I don’t want you walking home alone. It scares me.”

  “Nobody followed us, Elle. I was watching.”

  Yeah. So was I. But I couldn’t tell him why that wasn’t any guarantee that Greg hadn’t followed us home.

  We finally compromised. He called a cab and I watched him from behind the locked glass door of my apartment building while the car pulled away.

  I don’t know if the whole “invite them into your home” thing about vampires extends to entire apartment buildings. The fact that Nick had hustled me off into a new place indicated that vampires did indeed have to have an invitation to come into individual apartments, but the building itself might be another matter. I mean, my building had locks on both the inner and outer doors and only tenants and their guests were supposed to be able to get in, but I didn’t understand vampire entry rules—so for all I knew, a vampire could be hiding in the elevator waiting for me.

  That thought sent me bounding up the four flights to my place. I was breathing heavily by the time I slammed the door behind me and shot the bolt into its slot to lock it.

  Millie wound herself around my ankles and mewed at me inquisitively. I picked her up and stroked her. “I know, Mill. I haven’t paid enough attention to you lately. Let’s go snuggle up in bed.”

  It was almost 3:00 in the morning by then. I checked out all the darker corners of my apartment (yes, I know, vampires can’t get in without an invitation. But I was scared. I did it more to reassure myself than because I thought there would really be anyone there). And then I crawled into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  At 8:00 the next morning, a thought came to me as I drifted through my morning sleep haze. I sat bolt upright in bed.

  What had Malcolm meant, exactly, when he’d said he didn’t want to stay on my couch?

  Chapter 9

  I spent all morning rolling that thought around in my head. I thought about it all the way through class, all the way back to my apartment.

  Clearly, I was crazy—any sane person would have spent the day worrying about the vampire infestation paperwork we’d discovered last night. But not me. Nope. I was more concerned about why Malcolm had stressed that he didn’t want to sleep on my couch.

  I wondered if he would have stayed if I had invited him to sleep in my bed. That thought worried me.

  Not that I wasn’t interested, at least hypothetically. Any woman in her right mind would be interested. He was attractive, kind, smart, funny, willing to sneak into law offices under false pretenses and steal files. What more could a woman ask for? But the problems with Malcolm wanting to sleep with me were legion—and I mean that in the Biblical “demonic” sense. There were monsters out to get me. For that matter, there was one monster out to get me back, as in “back into his undead life as his girlfriend.”

  I hadn’t realized quite how dangerous this whole thing might be for Malcolm. I’d really only thought about my own need for help. But now I knew that keeping Malcolm involved in this could be just as dangerous for him as it was for me—especially if he had developed a romantic interest in me. I suspected that last bit would piss Greg off. And I didn’t want Greg to focus his attention on Malcolm.

  I had let Malcolm take one of the file printouts home last night.

  Curses. Blast. Damn. Hell. And those were the mild ones.

  I had to get that list of numbers back and I had to get Malcolm off the case. He didn’t know enough about what was really going on. I could get him killed.

  And I didn’t want that. I liked him. Which meant that I had to get rid of him.

  Have I mentioned how much it sucks (no pun intended) to be hunted by a vampire? Ruins your whole day.

  And your whole life, if you’re not careful.

  I’d already lost one boyfriend to the vampires. I wasn’t going to lose another, even if he wasn’t actually my boyfriend.

  So only one question remained: how do you break up with an un-boyfriend?

  I decided to put off answering that question in favor of sorting through the garbage bag. It seemed like the more entertaining option of the two.

  Most of the trash was pretty standard working-late-at-the-office stuff: old Starbucks cups, stale doughnut pieces, take-out boxes. I moved those into another bag for disposal. There were a lot of yellow post-it notes, and I saved all of those. In fact, I saved all the paper I found. Some of it had been through a shredder. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to piece those pages back together, but I saved it anyway.

  And somewhere along about the middle of the bag, I found a plain white t-shirt. Men’s size XL.

  The front of it was covered in blood from the neckband to the bottom hem.

  At least, I assumed it was blood. It was a dark brown crunchy substance that had, when wet, soaked through to the other side of the shirt. And if it was blood, I didn’t see how anyone could have survived losing that much of it.

  Of course, I don’t know that much about blood loss. I tend to get dizzy when I donate blood, so clearly, I believed that even a pint was too much to lose. And I don’t know how much blood it would take to soak through a t-shirt.

  Okay. First things first. I needed to find out if it was even blood.

  The internet is an amazing invention. It allows you to find just about any information you may need with a few clicks of a mouse.

  If, that is, you know how to correctly word your query.

  I knew for a fact that just a few simple chemicals could be combined to show whether or not a substance was blood. I knew this because I’d watched all those crime shows on television.

  I just didn’t know what those chemicals were.

  An hour of web searches later I found it. Hemastix. The website used terms like “blood reagent material that will turn shades of green if blood is present.”

  Okay. Scientific Geek-Speak translation: this stuff tests for blood.

  I discovered something even better than that, though. Hemastix are available in pharmacies.

  They’re used to test for blood in urine samples. I could pop out to my local CVS and pick some up.

  So I did. The t-shirt I shoved into a plastic Ziploc baggie and took with me in my purse. God only knows what someone finding it would make of the fact that I had a bloody t-shirt in my purse, but I didn’t care. I just knew that I didn’t want to leave it behind.

  It probably would have been safer in my apartment.

  I was halfway to the nearest pharmacy when my phone rang.

  “Hey! I think I’ve figured out what those numbers mean. Can I come over?” Malcolm sounded
excited. I hated the idea of telling him that I no longer needed his help, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  No time like the present. But I wanted to do this face-to-face. Breaking up with a partner-in-crime might not be exactly like breaking up with a boyfriend, but I felt that it deserved at least the same directness.

  “I’m on my way to pick something up at the pharmacy. Give me an hour or so?”

  “Sure. I’ll see you then.”

  It actually took me about an hour and a half. I had to go to three different pharmacies to find the Hemastix. I probably should have called first, but I was too excited about the possibility of figuring out if this stuff really was blood. Don’t ask me why. I knew that it was blood. I wasn’t going to have to prove it in any court. The Hemastix weren’t necessary. I suspect I wanted the Hemastix to prove I was right just because that would make me feel like I was doing something significant, like I was adding to what I knew.

  Malcolm was waiting outside my door when I got home. I reached into my purse to pull out my key and—of course—it caught on the baggie full of bloody shirt, ripping the Ziploc bag and spilling it onto the floor.

  Malcolm bent to pick it up. “What’s this?”

  “Something I found in the trash bag.”

  “That looks like blood.”

  “I think it is. I got some stuff to test it. What did you figure out about the numbers on that page?”

  We moved into the apartment and I locked the door behind us.

  “They’re stock exchange numbers. I thought they looked familiar. I think this is information about what the guys on this list have been investing in. And if I’m reading it right, they’re making big piles of money.”

  “Big enough to kill for?” I asked.

  “More than big enough. Think that’s what happened to the guy who was wearing that shirt?”