He stared at me for a long moment.
“Someday,” he said, “I’ll figure out who started the thing with the bad vampire jokes, and fire them.”
I shook my head, partly at myself and partly at him. It was insane to even consider staying at the Den. But outside its walls, there was a world where people hurt and terrorized the ones they were supposed to love, and where thugs tried to extract money that you didn’t have by threatening those closest to you.
Inside, there was a world where we tried to look out for each other when someone was in trouble, and where the boss would quite literally help you hide a body if you asked—or do it for you, apparently. Right now, I needed more of that in my life, even if it came along with a healthy dose of might be literally delusional.
“Oh, come on—don’t be such a downer, boss,” I told him airily. “Without a bit of humor to liven it up, this place would be a real graveyard.”
TEN
THERE WERE TIMES when I regretted not having any real friends outside of work. Sure, I could have talked to Len or Kat or any of my other coworkers who’d been friendly to me. But they weren’t exactly what you’d call objective when it came to the subject of the nightclub. Idly, I wondered if everyone else already knew they were working for an undead being with fangs and a stunted sense of humor. Had I been the only clueless one of the bunch?
A year ago, I could have mustered up a friend or two to offer a sympathetic ear and a helpful opinion, even if I would have needed to tweak the story into something a bit more believable and a bit less certifiably insane.
One of the many, many questionable life choices I’d made in the months since then was lying to my friends, and distancing myself from them to the point that they were barely more than acquaintances these days. When I’d first started getting calls about Richard’s debts, I’d been slogging through night classes to become a paralegal. To be fair, I’d already been on the verge of having to quit school due to a combination of lack of sleep and lack of money. Richard’s debt had just been the final straw.
When my friends asked how things were going with classes, it had been a lot easier to tell them that yes, I was still working on my associate degree than to tell them that I’d given it up in favor of taking on shifts as a phone sex operator.
Go figure.
Of course, the problem with those sorts of lies was that in order to maintain them, you couldn’t let anyone get too close—for fear the curtain might fall down and reveal the ugly truth hiding behind it. And the longer the lies stretched on, the harder it was to extricate yourself from them.
I’d never been what you’d call a social butterfly—being a young single mother living at the poverty level didn’t really lend itself to a busy social calendar. Even so, I’d stubbornly clung to my few hours per week of volunteer work, until a bout of weirdness at the office had soured even that.
The very last person I might have claimed as a girlfriend would probably have been a good choice to act as a sounding board for my current woes, too. Zorah had, after all, been at the epicenter of that creepy office weirdness that had driven me away from the Missouri Mental Health Alliance. But I’d managed to screw up that relationship as well—when she’d called me months later, needing help, I’d already been too far down my own rabbit hole to do her any good.
I was still pretty upset about that, actually.
The practical upshot was that I ended up sitting alone in my crappy apartment after my conversation with Leonides, staring at a cup of coffee that had gone cold quite some time ago. Jace was at his dad’s until tomorrow night, not that I’d dump this kind of craziness in my son’s lap anyway. As for Richard—it was true that he owed me, but any attempt to talk with him these days was an automatic recipe for a shouting match.
Nope, this one was all on me. And while my thoughts had been circling restlessly all day, they kept coming back to one thing. My boss was a vampire, but he also took in strays. And once he’d taken them in... he looked after them.
I couldn’t imagine crawling to him and asking him to somehow fix Richard’s mess. But knowing I had at least one person in my life who wouldn’t shrink from the situation if they found out about it? That knowledge settled over my shoulders like a warm shawl, making me feel ever so slightly better about things.
Outside, the late winter sky darkened toward evening. Rising, I dumped the cold coffee in the sink, and went to find some more aspirin to get me through my shift tonight.
* * *
I’d planned to tell Leonides my decision after close. I hadn’t taken into account that he might have... ahem... company. Which was pretty moronic on my part, since I’d nearly been that same kind of company on the night I met him.
Instead of a night in his bed, though, I’d gotten a front row seat to a paranormal pissing match, and promptly acquired a bad case of selective amnesia.
The Latina woman hanging off my boss’s arm tonight could have been a runway model. The mother in me wanted to tell her to eat a cheeseburger, for god’s sake. But to do that, I would have needed to pull her attention away from nibbling at his neck. Would she think twice about what she was doing if she knew he was a vampire who did more than nibble necks?
Did she know? Or... was it possible she was a vampire, too? It occurred to me that I had no clue about the supernatural world that apparently coexisted with my drab, boring one.
And why the hell should I care if the flavor du jour was hanging all over him at the bar, like she couldn’t wait to get him upstairs? She was probably just another professional girl getting paid for her services, and it was none of my business anyway.
I cleared my throat, but Leonides was already looking at me. For a moment, there was an intensity to his gaze that brought a faint flush to my skin. Then his expression closed off, in the same way it had just before he’d told me he wasn’t safe to be around. He spoke a quiet word to his arm candy. She pouted, but backed off from her assault on his jugular.
“Vonnie,” he greeted evenly.
“Hey, boss,” I said, striving for a casual tone. “Just wanted to let you know, I’m not interested in that do-over. Not this time. It’s all good—I’ll just keep my head down and pour the drinks. The rest of it’s none of my business, right?”
There. That was reasonable, wasn’t it?
Dark eyes drilled into me for a long moment before he nodded. “Like I said, it’s your call. Was there anything else?”
I refused to acknowledge the tiny sting I felt at the curt reply. “Nope. I won’t keep you. Have a good, um, rest of the evening. Both of you.”
Internally, I smacked myself repeatedly upside the head. For god’s sake, it was just as likely that the rest of the evening would involve a quick and dirty blood transfusion via vampire fang, rather than sex. What was wrong with me?
I turned on my heel and walked briskly toward my station, trying not to think about the way the fine hair at my nape prickled. Sally would be by soon to close out my drawer for the night. I’d finish the end-of-shift inventory, go home, and try my best not to think about the craziness that was my life now.
I had tomorrow off. Richard would be dropping Jace off in the evening. In a few days, I’d get paid and have enough to send some money to the creditors—hopefully, enough to keep them off my back for a while. I would leave the nuts and bolts of the newly uncovered paranormal world to people who knew what the hell they were doing, and things would go back to normal.
Everything would be perfectly fine.
* * *
‘Perfectly fine’ lasted an entire week, until the night the demon showed up at the Vixen’s Den after hours and ordered a glass of the most expensive scotch we had.
The seltzer machine was acting up, or I already would have left for the night. I was checking out a DIY troubleshooting video on YouTube, my phone propped on the counter next to the machine, when a faint sound of displaced air made me swing around to look behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a tall man with dark hair going elegantly gray at the
temples appeared in front of the deserted bar, seemingly from nowhere.
“A glass of the Macallan 21, neat, if you please,” he said, ignoring the undignified squeak of surprise I’d let out when I’d turned and found him standing there.
“Umm...” I began, my gaze darting around the empty space. “We’re... actually closed?”
“I am aware,” said the man, his voice a low drawl. “I have business with the owner of this establishment. No doubt he’ll be along momentarily.”
“Vonnie?” Leonides’ familiar voice called from the back of the club, near the elevators. He strode toward us. “What are you still doing here?”
Relief eased the tension in my shoulders. “Seltzer’s broken. I was trying to figure out if it was just a blocked nozzle like last time, or if we needed a service call.” I gestured toward the dark-eyed stranger. “I’m not sure how this guy got in, but he says he knows you?”
Leonides’ wary expression didn’t exactly scream ‘old college buddies,’ but he gave a curt nod. “Oh, yeah. He knows me. Go ahead and pour him a drink, since you’re back there. Then you should head home. I’ll have someone deal with the seltzer machine in the morning.”
I nodded back, giving the new guy a surreptitious onceover as I turned to take down the top-shelf scotch and a glass. Aside from being tall and vaguely intimidating, it was hard to pin him down. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he was certainly striking. On first glance, I’d taken his eyes to be the same dark shade of brown as Leonides’, but a second glance showed them to be roughly the same shade of deep amber as the Macallan single malt he’d just ordered.
He exuded an air of old money—I suspected the finely tailored suit he was wearing cost more than my entire wardrobe budget for the last five years. And... most tellingly... my necklace glowed warm at the base of my throat as I turned back to the bar and poured his drink.
I slid it across to him, and he took it with a small salute.
“Thanks, Vonnie,” Leonides said. “Now, go on home. I already locked up earlier.”
If you locked up, how did this guy get in? I didn’t ask.
“Sure thing,” I said instead, because we’d already established that weird paranormal stuff was way above my pay grade. “’Night, boss.”
The newcomer’s gaze slid over me, pausing briefly on the pendant resting above the v-neck of my black tee. It flared hotter for an instant before returning to its previous soothing warmth. I swallowed and made tracks through the door behind the bar, heading for the employee lockers.
Once I had my bag and coat, I would’ve left like Leonides told me and thought no more about it... if I hadn’t realized that I’d left my phone sitting on the counter by the seltzer machine. For a long moment, I wavered. But there was no landline at the apartment, and Richard would be calling tomorrow to coordinate dropping off Jace. It was ridiculous to think about making a special trip here in the morning just to pick up my phone, when I could duck back behind the bar before I left and grab it in mere seconds.
It was total coincidence that just as I snuck back in and picked it up, I heard the newcomer’s voice from a nearby table.
“I trust you’re already aware that your bartender possesses magic?” he said casually, as though discussing the merits of the scotch.
On sheer instinct, I dropped into a crouch behind the solid wooden bastion of the bar, holding my breath as I strained my ears for the response.
“Yeah,” said my boss. “I’d noticed, thanks. Though I couldn’t tell if it was coming from her, or just the necklace.”
The newcomer made a considering noise. “Human magic is generally weak and poorly focused without some sort of a conductor. However, the conductor on its own is useless. Its use requires some magical aptitude on the part of the bearer.”
My hand lifted to the garnet at my throat.
“Good to know, I guess,” Leonides replied.
I should have left then.
I didn’t leave.
Instead, I cautiously peered around the corner of the bar, relying on the shadows to shield me from view. The newcomer was seated half-facing me, his scotch cradled in his hands as he looked around the club with interest.
“My, but you truly have created your own little world hidden away from the realities around you, haven’t you?” he mused.
Leonides was facing away from me, but his shoulders lifted and lowered on a sigh. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked, sounding tired. “Why are you here, Nigellus?”
“Well, for one thing, the scotch is excellent.” The man—Nigellus, apparently—took a slow sip.
“Is it to do with the Fae?” Leonides demanded.
“Oh, almost certainly.”
“One showed up here out of the blue a few weeks ago,” Leonides said grimly. “Cocky bastard, too—throwing magic around in front of the patrons; threatening one of my security staff with his own gun. There’s been some evidence of intermittent surveillance on the place since then.”
I remembered the couple of occasions when I’d caught glimpses of blond men lurking in the shadows behind the club as I was leaving at night, and shivered.
“Mm,” Nigellus hummed. “Caspian’s replacement in St. Louis is young for a Fae. Eager to prove himself to the Court, no doubt. But I am not here because of Commander Teague.”
“You’re not? Fine, then. Don’t keep me in suspense,” Leonides bit out.
“Human children are disappearing,” Nigellus said without preamble. “On a worldwide scale.”
A beat of silence, as my body went cold—a mother’s instincts stirring.
Then Leonides asked, “What, like a human trafficking ring? I hate to say it, but that stuff goes on all the time, Nigellus. It always has.”
“No,” Nigellus replied. “Not a human trafficking ring.”
More silence, before Leonides said, “Oh, my god—would you just fuck off already, Nigellus. I’m not the supernatural fix-it squad, and this has nothing to do with me. It’s not my problem.”
Nigellus leaned back in his seat, regarding Leonides down the length of his patrician nose. “Left unaddressed, it will become everyone’s problem soon enough. And you’re aware that I’m not permitted to interfere in the human realm directly.
I blinked. Wait. In... the human realm? What the hell...?
The muscles in Leonides’ shoulders bunched. “So get your boy Ransley on it. He’s the white knight with the martyr complex, not me.” He paused. “Wait. I take that back. Don’t get Ransley on it. Because if Rans gets involved, Zorah will get involved—and I don’t want her dragged into whatever this is.”
My breath caught.
Nigellus raised an eyebrow. “As it happens, Ransley and Ms. Bright aren’t currently returning my calls.”
I popped up from my hiding place like a jack-in-the-box. “Hang on. Zorah Bright? How the hell do you two know Zorah?”
Two sets of preternaturally intense eyes swung around to pin me, sending a sudden chill of nervousness skittering up my spine as my brain caught up to what I’d just done.
ELEVEN
LEONIDES SCRUBBED his hand down his face, with the air of someone who really wished he’d stayed in his coffin this morning. “Jesus, Vonnie,” he said. “What happened to keeping your head down? I thought you didn’t want to get sucked into this kind of supernatural shitshow. God knows I don’t.”
Mr. Top-Shelf Scotch raised a slow eyebrow, his gaze moving between us.
“Answer the question,” I snapped at them, drawing courage around me like a cloak. “How do you know Zorah?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” Leonides said wearily. “How do you know Zorah?”
That revelation stopped me cold for a moment. Unbidden, a snippet of conversation from the last phone call I’d had with Zorah floated up from my memory. I’d called her at a ridiculously early hour, hoping it would go to voicemail and I could just leave a quick, apologetic message about not being able to help
her when she’d needed it. Instead, she’d picked up, and it had taken a grand total of thirty seconds or so before she’d been the one asking me if I needed help.
I’d put her off—of course I had. The girl was dealing with stuff way more serious than an ex-boyfriend’s dealings with an unsavory loan shark. But I still remembered her blurted offer of assistance.
“Look, Von—even if you won’t let me help directly with whatever you’re dealing with, at least let me give you the phone number of a guy I know. Well, not really ‘a guy.’ My grandfather. He’s good with money stuff—”
But I’d been embarrassed, and upset, and I’d cut off her tumble of words.
Her grandfather.
Who was good with ‘money stuff.’
Holy crap.
I became aware that I was gaping at my boss like a fish. I snapped my jaw shut with a click and swallowed, puzzle pieces tumbling around in my head as they rearranged themselves. I still had no idea what the resulting picture was supposed to be.
“Um... we... used to be co-workers?” I said faintly, aware that the words came out sounding like a question. “Okay, this just got kind of weird.”
Mr. Top-Shelf... Nigellus... swirled his glass, examining the contents contemplatively. “Well,” he said, “I suppose that explains the odd currents of confluence swirling around this place, at least.”
Leonides gave him a dirty look. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know she was lurking in the shadows.”
Nigellus shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly comment. As I’ve already said, I’m forbidden from interfering on Earth. Though I can hardly be held accountable for humans listening at doors, now can I?”
Leonides glared. “You can be held accountable for being a manipulative ass.”
My brain connections were starting to fire properly again, and it occurred to me that I should just turn around and walk away from this conversation.
Like, right now.
“Zorah’s... what? Mid-twenties? Late twenties?” I said instead. “You’re too young to be her grandfather.”
Vampire Bound: Book One Page 8
