by H. D. Gordon
“Um, yeah,” I said. “That’s why I called.”
She stood, her shoulders square and her chin lifted so that she looked down at me past her nose. “Very well. I’ll pick you up at your apartment at midnight. Be ready to go when I arrive.”
She turned to go.
“Wait,” I said. “How do you know where I live?”
Vivian Night smirked as if this was a stupid question, and vanished out the door, melting in the shadows like the creature of the night that she was.
With that concluded, I headed over to the docks for my next meeting of the evening, the one where I would find out if my boss was betraying me.
CHAPTER 34
I stopped and grabbed some food before finding a good vantage point near the docks by 3rd and Brewer. Stakeouts, after all, are better when there’s something to munch on, just like most activities.
I found a spot near enough to the docks where I could go unnoticed but still hear anything that would be said. I did my best to remain calm, but as the hour of the meet drew nearer, I found myself becoming more and more anxious. I hoped Matt was wrong about Rose. I really didn’t want to have her alleged treachery confirmed.
I sat on the rooftop of a nearby building, lying on my back and staring up at the handful of stars that were visible with the light pollution of the city. The city was quiet because the curfew was in full effect, and the nighttime activity that usually buzzed through the place had been silenced. I could hear the rumble of the train not too far in the distance, sliding over the tracks and forging through the dark. The moon was almost full, and it provided a blue glow that bathed the earth in an eerie, reverent light.
Waiting here provided me some much needed time to think over the happenings of the past week, to order my mind a bit so that I didn’t feel so overwhelmed, but the more I went over things, the further I felt myself slipping down into my familiar depression, so I ended up clearing my thoughts instead and meditating.
At ten p.m. I heard footsteps below me on the dock, and recognized the gait before I sat up and peeked over the ledge of the building on which I’d perched. Sure enough, with a sink in my heart, I saw Rose, bundled in a spring overcoat with a hat pulled low over her head, walking out over the water on an old wooden dock.
“What are you up to, Rose?” I whispered, shoving a last piece of glazed donut into my mouth and pulling out a pair of binoculars, even though my own eyes were strong enough for a good view. Like the food, the binoculars just seemed like a necessity for this sort of activity. The fact that they were a cheap pair I’d gotten in a kid’s meal from a fast food joint a few months back made no difference.
Rose stood there under the moonlight, and a minute or two passed before a sleek black car pulled up on the street accessing the dock. I’d seen a similar car when I’d first moved to Grant City and had stopped some goons from kidnapping a bunch of women. The car pulled to a silent stop and the engine remained running. The back door of the car opened, and out stepped a man I recognized.
I set the binoculars aside, accepting that they were useless and I could see better without them, and picked my brain from where I knew the man. Then, it hit me, and I couldn’t believe I’d let the encounter slip from my mind so easily. Seeing him now, in this setting, and watching the way Rose’s aura spiked with fear as he approached, it came flooding back to me.
This was the man who’d visited the flower shop a handful of days prior. He wore as fine a suit as when I’d seen him the last time, tailored to fit his lean build like a glove. His dark eyes flashed around, checking to make sure Rose was alone, and the watch on his wrist reflected the moonlight like water.
I studied his aura closely, wishing I’d done so before, when he’d been in closer range, and couldn’t pin down his race. Now that I was really looking, I could see he wasn’t human—or at least, not entirely human, and that whoever he was, he was a bad, bad man.
He swiveled on his heels, his gaze roaming in my direction, and I ducked down like a reverse jack-in-the-box so that he wouldn’t see me. I held my breath, my hand going over my heart to feel it racing there beneath my skin, which had gone hot and clammy all of a sudden.
I didn’t peek my head back up again until I heard them start talking, peering over the ledge of the building and narrowing my eyes at the scene below.
Tilting my head to the side, I listened intently.
“I don’t have anything new to report,” Rose said, and there was a quiver in her voice that almost evoked my sympathy.
“That’s not very promising, Rose,” replied the man.
Tears sprang from Rose’s eyes, and she held her hands out to him, pleading. “She’s still working at the flower shop, going to school… I think she joined the lacrosse team. I don’t see her much anymore. My daughter, her situation is… deteriorating. I’ve told you everything I know.”
The man moved in a step closer and smiled a snakelike smirk when Rose cowered backward. “I think you know more than you realize. Her friends, what are their names?”
“Matt Brown is one of them. He’s also working at the shop now, and the other one… Samantha… Samantha something. They’re just kids, though. I can’t imagine they’d be any threat to you.”
I couldn’t see his face from this angle, but whatever look he gave Rose had her snapping her mouth shut.
“Do you have the paperwork I requested?”
Reaching into her overcoat, Rose pulled out a manila folder and handed it over. The man tore it open and read whatever was on it. His head tilted back as he looked up at her. “This is her current address? All of this is up to date?”
Rose nodded. “Those are the forms she filled out when I hired her. As far as I know, it’s all accurate.”
I wasn’t aware of it, but the air had stopped up in my chest, and my eyes were beginning to burn a little. Even though I was witnessing her treachery firsthand, a part of me just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was the only female worker at Rose’s flower shop, so there was only one possibility regarding who she was talking about, and she’d just given an obviously dangerous man my address.
My address. The place where I slept and ate and was supposed to feel safe.
I wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that she’d so clearly betrayed me, or the fact that I would never have expected it if it weren’t for Matt.
“So there’s nothing else? Nothing else to report? Nothing else in that head of yours, Roseanne?”
Rose shook her head, her eyes watering and lips trembling. “That’s all. I swear.”
“I see.”
“What… what are you going to do to her? She’s just a child.”
The man was silent a moment, his eyes studying Rose without pity. “That doesn’t concern you, and since you’ve got nothing more to offer, you’ve outlived your usefulness, haven’t you?”
Now it was not just fear in Rose’s aura, but terror. What happened next occurred so quickly that there was little more I could do than watch from where I was with slow dawning horror.
The car door opened and out stepped a man that was big enough to have Giant blood in his ancestry. He was carrying a large metal anchor attached to a thick chain, and he brought it over to the man in the suit with a silence I doubted he often broke.
“Hold this for me, Rose,” said the bad man, and he tossed the anchor at her, leaving her no choice but to reach up and grab it so that it wouldn’t smash her feet. The other man wrapped the chain around Rose’s waist, and with one swift kick, knocked her over the edge of the dock. She hit the water with a terrific splash and promptly sunk out of sight, the only evidence of her having been there the bubbles that appeared on the surface.
A gasp escaped me. The man and his goon got back into the car and drove away while I leapt off the rooftop of the building where I’d been hiding and raced toward the black water of the Grant City Bay.
***
The Atlantic water was cold as all heck, a shock to the system. My mind was running on a loop
, unable to process anything other than rescuing Rose as I swam deeper and deeper into the dark sea.
I couldn’t see a thing. I just swam down and down in the spot where I thought she’d hit the water, my hands searching blindly in the shadows.
I was just beginning to think that it was hopeless, that I’d have to surface and take a gulp of precious air, when my hand brushed something metal. With a frantic morsel of hope dashing across my chest, I floundered around until I felt something fleshy, and when it clawed and clung to me, I found the chains wrapped around it and yanked hard enough to snap the metal. By the time I accomplished this, Rose was no longer moving.
Once that was done, I grabbed her around the waist and swam with all my might toward the surface. This was a much harder task than one might think. First of all, I was effectively blind in the dark water, and Rose was now unresponsive, her body limp in my arms. I gasped for air when my head broke out of the water. The terror I’d been feeling seconds ago when I didn’t know how far from topside I was subsided to be replaced with a new fear when I realized that I needed to get Rose breathing or she would die.
With one arm wrapped around her and the other one paddling, I kicked and swam toward the dock, where there was an old ladder that led down into the water. I grabbed onto this and held tight, pulling myself out of the water with grunts of effort as I heaved Rose’s unconscious body up after me.
Once I got us both onto the dock, there was no time to rest. I rolled Rose onto her back and pumped her chest fifteen times with both hands. I tilted her head back, plugged her nose, and breathed deeply into her mouth.
She gave no response. I repeated the process again.
And again.
Tears were stinging my eyes, blurring my vision. “Come on,” I said, pumping the muscle in her chest, pleading with it to start back up again.
I was about to collapse to the side, tears streaming down my wet face in defeat, when Rose sputtered and coughed, brackish water erupting from her mouth. I turned her to the side so that she could get it all out, patting her back and breathing a sigh of relief that felt enormous.
After a few seconds of this, her eyes blinked open and she looked up at me as if she’d never seen me before.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“Aria?” she said, her voice hoarse, tears breaking free of her eyes. “Aria… What are you doing here?” She lifted her head from the dock, taking in the surroundings. “Did you… did you save me?”
I nodded, more relieved than I would let on that she’d survived.
“Did you… How long have you been here?”
I met her gaze, not sure what was behind mine. “The whole time,” I answered.
Rose began crying full on now, her body wracking with sobs. She covered her face with her hands and made indistinguishable noises.
Feeling bad for her against my better judgment, I pulled myself to my feet and turned to go. I’d had enough for one night, and she could see herself home.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, calling out to me, still sitting on the dock in a puddle. “Aria, please. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know,” I mumbled, and kept on walking.
CHAPTER 35
I set an alarm for ten minutes to midnight and promptly fell asleep on my foldout bed. I would only get to nap for an hour or so, but diving into the bay and dragging out a full grown, deceitful woman could really take it out of you.
When the alarm went off, I was of half a mind to throw my dang phone out the window and let the world get on without me, but I knew the Brokers well enough to know that if I didn’t follow through and show Vivian Night the underground lab of Halflings tonight, they would not be giving me a second chance.
So I pulled myself up and redid my ponytail, grabbing a hoodie and throwing it on as well. Right on time, a jeep pulled up outside my apartment building, Vivian sitting behind the driver’s seat. She looked over at me, then at my apartment building behind me, with its peeling paint and cracked pavement, and told me to buckle up as if I were a child.
I did as I was asked, saw her eyeballing me, and snapped, “What?”
She nodded at the building. “That’s where you live?”
“And you drink blood when you’re thirsty, so what’s it to you?”
Vivian only raised a brow and pulled away from the curb, following my directions out of Grant City. Most of the ride we remained silent. No music played from the stereo, and Vivian made no attempt at small talk, for which I was grateful. I was tired, so I rested my head back against my seat and watched as the pine trees on the side of the road zipped by.
I would have preferred riding along in this way, but I could tell something was nagging at Vivian by her aura, her curiosity practically leaking over to me, so I turned to face her.
“What?” I asked. “What do you want to know?”
She smirked, running a hand over her slicked-back ponytail. “How do you know I want to know something?”
I rolled my eyes, fixing my gaze back on the trees. “I’m half Fae.”
It took her a second, but then she got it. “Oh, so you’re doing that creepy aura-reading thing you guys do. Don’t do that.”
“Okay.”
Silence held for a moment.
“You’re still doing it, aren’t you?”
Now it was my turn to smirk.
“Ugh, my kind do something similar. Well, the Searchers, anyway.”
I looked back over at her again. “And you’re a Broken vamp?”
She nodded, stole a glance at me, and then turned back to the road. “I was just wondering…”
I sighed. “Then spit it out.”
“I’ve never known of any Halflings who left the Brokers,” she said, after a moment’s debate. “I was just wondering why you left, and how that’s working out for you.”
My eyes narrowed. “Did they tell you to ask that? And, yes, I’ll know by your aura if you’re lying.”
She shook her head. “Pure curiosity,” she said.
I watched and saw that this was the truth, so I let out a slow breath and stared at the trees again. “I had my reasons.”
“I’m the Vampire, remember? I’m the one who’s supposed to be mysterious.”
I almost smiled, and decided that if we were under different circumstances, I might actually like Vivian Night. I took a moment to decide how to answer, and came to the conclusion that I may as well tell the truth. It wasn’t like I belonged to the Brokers anymore. It wasn’t like I had anything to hide.
“After I got kicked out, I found a new life,” I said. “I found real friends, a home. I don’t think I ever really had that with the Peace Brokers, and now that I do, I don’t want to go on without it. I don’t want to give it up. So I stayed. When they told me I could come back… I just stayed.”
All sorts of things swirled through Vivian’s aura, and I got the feeling she understood this on some level. She glanced at me again, her fangs poking out just barely on her full bottom lip. “Do you regret it?” she asked. “Do you wish you’d chosen differently?”
A short, humorless laugh escaped me. “Some days, yeah. Like when I’m worried about how I’m going to afford to eat, how to keep the lights on in my crappy apartment, how I’m going to pay for college and what I’ll major in if I do go… Or when I find out that people I cared about have conspired against me…” I swallowed. “But for the most part… No. No, I don’t regret it, because I’m free, and what I do with my life now is my choice. How I use my abilities, who I choose to help. It’s all me, and there’s a certain power that comes with that. It can be scary but…” I shrugged.
Vivian said nothing to this, only stared straight ahead, both hands gripping the steering wheel. Now that I was really looking at her, I guessed that she was about my age, and that she may not be verbally responding, but she was thinking about what I had said. I didn’t pry because it’s not in my nature, and also because we had reached our destination.
<
br /> “Park out here,” I said. “Pull the jeep as far into that tall grass as you can, and we’ll go on foot.”
Vivian looked over at me with a half smile, her fangs more visible now. “Aren’t you afraid of walking through the dark with a Vampire, Aria Fae?”
I think I actually smiled. “Half vamp,” I replied. “And I could ask you the same question. Remember, I’m not the one who has to follow orders.”
***
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It was here. It was right here.”
Vivian wandered around the empty cavern, spread her hands. “Well, it’s not here now.”
My mouth was pressed into a tight line, my brows lifted in confusion. “It was just yesterday. How could they have moved it so fast?”
“You didn’t take any pictures? Collect any evidence?”
“No,” I snapped, not really angry with Vivian but more so upset with myself for not doing so. As a former Broker, not snapping a few photos with my phone the last time I’d been here had been a rookie mistake. The whole thing had just shocked me, and I’d been so wrapped up in the sight of all those unconscious Halflings laying atop their metal tables, hooked up to the machines with wires and tubes.
I cursed and slammed my fist into the wall, making a bit of dirt rain down from the cavern ceiling and leaving an indentation where my fist connected.
“I swear, Vivian,” I said. “They were right here. Hundreds of them. Halfling children.”
Vivian bit her lip, her right fang poking out a bit. She gave me a sympathetic look. “I believe you,” she said. “I really do, but you know how things work. I don’t have to explain it to you. The superiors will want something definitive. I really wish you would’ve taken some pictures, video, something. Without it…” She spread her hands.
I finished for her. “Without it, I’m on my own.”
Vivian let out a small sigh.
I wandered around a few steps, still trying to process the emptiness of the hidden room. The tunnel leading here, where Thomas and I had overheard the doctors and knocked out the guards, was just as empty. It was as if I’d dreamed up the whole thing. If not for the lingering sense of hopeless I’d gathered from all those Halfling auras, I might not believe it myself.
