B R Kingsolver - [Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill 02] - Night Stalker

by Kingsolver

  I shook my head. “I have a safe place, but I can’t take you there.”

  “You’d be a fool to, anyway. Barclay might have sent me.”

  I gave her a small smile. “I’m not afraid of you. In fact, I may be one of the few people who understand what you’re going through. But I would strongly consider where you want to go next. No matter how any of this vampire crap shakes out, you’re never going to be safe in Westport.”

  When I came down for breakfast the following morning, Michaela was still sitting on the same barstool. She had taken off her coat and was drinking coffee, but other than that, she looked exactly the same, only exhausted. I saw Jill walk over and fill her cup with fresh coffee.

  “Michaela, do you have any spare clothes with you?” I asked as I sat down next to her.

  She jerked, spun to look at me, then looked down at herself, “No, I don’t. Why?”

  “Because you look wildly out of place in the daylight. I can offer you a place to take a shower and a nap now that it’s light outside, but there’s no way any of my clothes will fit you.” She was around six-feet tall, and definitely curvier than I was.

  “Thanks for the offer,” she said, “but I should probably go home. I called my sisters, but they’re still worried. We should be safe until nightfall, and we need to figure things out.”

  “You would all be better off getting out of town until things settle down.”

  “Why haven’t you left?” she countered.

  “No place to go, and no money to get there.”

  Michaela laughed. “We’ll be all right. Perhaps long term you’re right, but I have a score to settle first.”

  She slid off the barstool, picked up her coat, and tossed several hundred-dollar bills on the bar. I thought Jill’s eyes would pop out of her head.

  “Thanks to both of you. You’ve been kind, and that’s not something I’m used to.” She headed toward the door, shrugging on her coat.

  “Who is she? What is she?” Jill asked. “Besides spectacular, I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so perfect. Like a movie star or something.”

  “Dhampir. That’s Harold Gallagher’s newly-orphaned daughter.”

  “Daywalker,” Jill breathed, a tone of awe in her voice.

  CHAPTER 11

  Thankfully, Sam hadn’t been there to witness my meltdown. I told him about it when he came in, minimizing it as best I could, and showed him the pendant Gallagher had given me.

  “And the lesson in this would be?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Don’t trust vampires bearing gifts?

  “Don’t trust vampires. I’d sooner trust the Fae,” he said. “Or a banker.”

  He took the top off a salt shaker, poured the contents into a glass, filled it with water, and dropped the necklace into it.

  “And don’t trust charms. Even if you think it’s dead, finish killing it.”

  After I finished my conversation with Sam, I went out for my morning run, following the jogging path by the creek all the way to downtown. A hotdog stand provided my lunch, then I ran back to Rosie’s. When I went downstairs after my shower, I found Lizzy sitting at the bar playing with her phone.

  “Do you have that many friends?” I asked, planting my butt on the stool beside her. “Or are you playing games?”

  “Huh?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

  “Your phone. You’re always looking at it and tapping on it.”

  She turned the screen so I could see it. Mathematical formulae and calculations. She scrolled the screen, and it went on and on. I had no idea what any of it meant.

  “Homework,” she said.

  “Oh. So, what else is going on?”

  “My mom said that you need to stay away from vampires.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.” She got a very earnest expression on her face, and I could see the concern in her eyes. “Seriously, Erin. The Fae are fed up with all the crap going on. Gallagher’s burning car ended up on the TV news.”

  That wasn’t good. Mages and witches might have been something that normal humans could understand. Vampires and werewolves were familiar from mythology and literature. The Fae were something else again, many of them being the stuff of nightmares. From what I knew, the Fae were even more fanatical about keeping their existence secret than the rest of us were.

  She continued. “A couple of the Fae living here in the city were attacked. That has everyone riled up.”

  “Vampires attacked Fae?”

  “Well, they were glamoured, so the vamps didn’t know who they were,” Lizzy said. “But still. Some of the Unseelie Court are talking about going hunting.” She leaned closer and whispered, “You know, vampire-skin lamps were all the rage about five hundred years ago.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Trevor says some of the rich mages in town already have declared a bounty on them.”

  Lizzy snorted. “Good luck to them if they try and outbid the Fae.”

  I took her word for it. I had learned more about the Fae from the little bit that Lizzy had told me than I had ever known before, but it still wasn’t much. I just knew they were scary.

  “Uh, what happened to the Fae that the vampires attacked?” I asked.

  Lizzy shook her head. “I didn’t ask what happened to the vampires, but my mom heard the story directly from her friend who the vampire tried to bite.”

  As nice as the apartment above the bar was, I didn’t feel comfortable in it. I felt as though I was living in a museum, afraid to touch anything or to get anything dirty. Either Sam, or possibly his friend Eleanor—my landlady—had laid a layer of spells on the place so that it magically cleaned itself. Or maybe they prevented uncleanliness. In spite of the place sitting empty most of the time, I couldn’t find a single cobweb, and there wasn’t any dust. Even on top of the cabinets—I checked. It was sort of eerie.

  So, I chafed at having to stay there. I missed my own apartment, bare and ill-furnished as it was. It was mine and the largest space I had ever been able to call my own.

  My cell in the Palace of the Illuminati had a narrow cot, a small bathroom with a shower, and a cabinet for my limited wardrobe. All of my personal belongings consisted of my weapons and a single brooch that was the insignia of the Hunters’ Guild.

  I was usually provided a larger wardrobe when I was assigned a mission, and I took most of my meals either with one of my Masters or in the Guildhall. At least half of the time I slept in a bed other than my own—in my latter years mostly in Master Benedict’s bed. The bed in my Westport apartment—purchased from Goodwill—had never had a second occupant. It was mine alone, and I could sleep right in the middle if I wanted to.

  My apartment was my sanctuary. Almost no one ever came to visit, and when they did, I didn’t encourage them to stay long. When someone else was there, it felt almost like an invasion. It was mine—as long as I paid the rent on time, of course. When I got up in the morning, I didn’t even bother to dress. I could come home from work and take a bath—a newly-found pleasure—and read a book while drinking a glass of wine, and no one knew I was being slothful and self-indulgent.

  All of those thoughts ran through my head while I worked my shift that evening, along with worrying about the current turmoil of the vampire war in Westport. But as the night wore on, and the end of my shift neared, I found myself longing for my apartment. And trying to sleep in the over-soft bed in Sam’s place didn’t help matters that night.

  But in the middle of that restless night, thinking about Gallagher, and about men in general, I made a decision. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to carry it through, or the intelligence, but one thing Gallagher’s charm had done was unlock some of my feelings.

  The following morning, I rose early, grabbed a quick, light breakfast, and ran all the way to the beach near Trevor’s house. I packed a water bottle and a change of clothes, because I had a plan for the day. One that didn’t include Rosie’s. I needed a good workout, and from my map, I figured the
run at about 12 miles.

  When I finally reached the beach, I walked along the sand for a couple of hundred yards, breathing like a bellows and swearing I would start exercising more regularly. I hated to think how my skill with a sword had probably deteriorated. I wondered if there was a fencing club in town. I would have to learn to fence, of course, since my sword-fighting methods probably wouldn’t be considered very artistic—or very sportsmanlike.

  I walked back to Trevor’s house and rang the doorbell. For about the thousandth time, I thought that I should get a phone. His car was in the driveway, but that didn’t mean he was home.

  When he answered the door, his face showed surprise.

  “Hi. Am I interrupting anything?” I asked, suddenly wondering what I would do if he had a girlfriend I didn’t know about.

  He smiled. “Absolutely not,” and pushed open the screen door.

  “I’ll trade you a pizza and a pitcher of beer if I can use your shower,” I said.

  “Been running? Sure, shower’s in there,” he said, motioning down a hallway. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  I realized I should have brought a towel, as well as shampoo. After a twelve-mile run, my hair was a sweaty, stringy mess.

  Closing the bathroom door and stripping, I found shampoo and cream rinse in the shower. Considering Trevor’s shoulder-length locks, I should have expected he would have the stuff to take care of his hair. I took a long, hot shower. As I dressed and wrapped my wet hair in the towel, I looked in the mirror and realized I had also forgotten to bring any makeup.

  Trevor was in his office, working on the computer. He turned and smiled when I came in the room.

  “Hey, are you hungry yet?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

  “Let me save this file, and I’m ready,” he said, typing for another minute. Then he pushed away from the desk and stood.

  I left the towel in the bathroom, twisting my hair up in a knot on top of my head.

  “Not the prettiest or the most sophisticated hairstyle for asking a guy out, is it?” I felt my face warm.

  “You look great.”

  “And you’re a sweet liar.”

  We walked to the pizza restaurant and sat by the window overlooking the cold waves rolling into shore.

  “People say that the winters here are brutal,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Cold, windy, and wet. The only consolation is we don’t get much snow here in town. The ocean keeps the temperatures above freezing most of the time.”

  “Here in town. Does that mean there’s snow outside of town?”

  He laughed. “We’re surrounded by mountains on the north and east. Lots of snow there. Have you ever skied?”

  “Cross-country. Where I come from, what we called mountains aren’t very big.”

  “We’ll have to go,” he said.

  “You cross-country ski?”

  “Since I was a little boy. My parents taught me.”

  When I lived with the Illuminati, the only way you could go out of the City in the winter was with skis, snowshoes, or in a vehicle called a Sno-Cat, with treads like a tank. The area got buried in several feet of snow that didn’t melt between November and April. Inside the City, of course, magic kept weather from ever being a problem.

  On our way back to Trevor’s house, my courage bolstered by a couple of beers, I said, “I’ve got a question to ask you.”

  “Okay?”

  “Is that invitation to dinner still open?”

  His smile grew larger. “Yes, it is.”

  “I have a second question.” I stopped and faced him, taking a deep breath. “Will you kiss me again?”

  He put his arms around me and drew me close. Then he lowered his face to mine and kissed me. His lips were so soft and full, and he smelled so good. I closed my eyes and kissed him back.

  It seemed as though we stood there on the sidewalk for a long time. When we finally pulled back from each other, I opened my eyes and looked at him looking at me. He was only a couple of inches taller than I was, and we fit together. He felt good. Holding him and having him hold me felt good.

  I turned and started walking down the street, but kept one arm around his waist and leaned against him.

  “You know I’m a bit gun shy,” I said. The last time he kissed me, I got scared and backed out on a planned date.

  “Yeah, I sorta noticed that.”

  “I’ve never had a relationship. I don’t know how. And I’ve spent a very long time living alone in my head. So if that’s what you want, you’re going to have to be patient.”

  He put his fingers under my chin and lifted my head so that I had to meet his eyes.

  “Is that what you want?” He grinned. “I have plenty of time.”

  I couldn’t look at his face, but stared at the ground, feeling my ears burn. “I don’t understand relationships. Maybe I’m not any good at it. I mean, I don’t know how to do a relationship, how it works, or what people really mean when they use that word.”

  What I was thinking—but it sounded too pathetic to say out loud was—If you just want sex, then I can handle that, and it’s a lot less complicated. Sex I understand. I won’t have to learn anything new. I won’t have to understand any new emotions, or a new way of relating to you. We can just be friends. But at least I’ll have someone to hold me sometimes when the loneliness gets too bad.

  I shook my head free and fixed my eyes on his chest. “I don’t know what I want. I like you a lot. I like you differently than I like my other friends. I really enjoy spending time with you. But I don’t understand my feelings, Trevor. The only feelings I understand are anger, fear, and loneliness. And happiness. I know what being happy is. I never felt lonely before, so that’s a new one. I have other feelings, but I don’t know what they are, or what I should do with them.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “let’s start with dinner and hugging and holding hands, and an occasional kiss, and see what happens.”

  I had gone to his house fully expecting that either I would have sex with him, or he would reject me. I hadn’t considered that there might be something in between.

  He smiled, then leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose.

  We walked back to his house with our arms around each other. I was confused as hell, but somehow happier than I had been in a long time.

  He walked me to the train and kissed me good-bye. The way he kissed me made me want to just melt into him. It obviously didn’t have the same effect on him. I had never had that problem before.

  CHAPTER 12

  Detective Mackle came in around eight o’clock that evening, and I could tell she was dragging.

  “Good evening, Detective. Coffee or a Margarita?”

  “How about a double shot of tequila?”

  I stuck out my hand. She stared at it, then looked up with a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Your keys. If you’re going to get hammered, I’ll call you a cab.”

  For a few seconds, I thought she was going to get angry, but then she huffed out her breath, reached into the pocket of her coat, and handed me her keys.

  “I’ll need to get my apartment key,” she said.

  “I’ll give you your keys when you get in the cab. So, what horrors has Westport dreamed up today?” I asked, setting her drink in front of her.

  She took a swallow of the tequila, and I waited while she shook off the effects.

  “Dead vamps, dead shifters, dead humans. Bodies all over the damned place. There’s a war going on out there, and we’re short-handed.”

  “Blair’s not back at work yet?” I asked.

  Mackle shook her head. “Doctors haven’t cleared him yet. But even with him, we need more paranormals on the force. Gods, Erin, they’re slaughtering each other out there. Since Gallagher’s death, things have exploded.” She took another drink. “Frankie’s supposed to meet me here. She said she had some information she wanted to pass by you.”

  I reached under the bar and pul
led out a menu. “If you’re supposed to meet your boss, you’d better put something in your stomach other than tequila.”

  She ordered a vegetarian omelet, and I poured her a glass of orange juice and some coffee.

  “Can you tell me a little more?” I asked. “From what you’ve said so far, I’m afraid to let any of my customers step outside.”

  “We’re starting to find vamps and shifters without their heads. Then this morning, we found three guys—humans—dead in an alley near Gallagher’s office building. They had been torn apart. We also found two big-ass swords and an axe, and they were carrying a bag of sharp wooden stakes. We assume they bit off more than they could chew, so to speak.”

  “Torn apart,” I echoed. “Was there a lot of blood?”

  She shook her head. “Not much. Not like the vamps we found the other day. Those guys looked like they’d been shredded. Black vampire blood splashed all over everything.”

  I remembered Lizzy’s mom’s friend.

  Frankie wandered in almost an hour later, and she didn’t look like she’d had any more sleep than Mackle. She put a folder on the bar and made a show of hauling herself up on the barstool. Considering her height, that couldn’t have been as difficult as she made it seem.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked her. She shook her head, and I gave her a menu. “Read this while I fix your cosmo.”

  I took her order and dealt with drink orders for other customers. The dinner crowd was starting to transition to the party crowd, and the waitresses were busy. A group of six men I had labeled as bounty hunters were having what appeared to be a celebration at a table back in a corner.

  With some food and coffee, Frankie and Cindy relaxed and looked a little better than the beat-down images they presented when they walked in the door.

  “Cindy said you wanted to talk to me?” I prompted.

  Frankie opened up the folder and turned it so I could read it. The first page had a list of names, most of which I recognized. Trevor and I had investigated a secret gentlemen’s club called the Columbia Club, whose members were wealthy and influential paranormals and supernaturals. Basically the shadow rulers of the city. One of them was Frankie’s father, a lawyer.