by Sotia Lazu
I gave it some thought. I was lonely, but I wasn’t settling, and I was pursuing something I liked. “Most of the time.”
Chapter Twenty-one
THE VAMPIRES IN MY life came through for me again, and by Tuesday I had more than enough registered hours of investigative work. Carrie accompanied me to get fingerprinted, sit for an exam, and submit my application packet. She used her gaze enough to make sure I wouldn’t have to wait more than a week for my license, but she wouldn’t help me get a firearms permit without completing the training course for real.
It took a month and a little help from my friends, but I had my office set up on the first floor of my building. It had a leather couch in the waiting room, and a huge mahogany desk with a winged desk chair in my inner sanctum. And a full bar, because PIs always served their clients alcohol in old movies.
The girls had insisted I needed a door like the ones in those movies, with a glass upper part and my name printed on it. I told them to go ahead and order one.
I saw the result at the unveiling ceremony—also known as the first day we drank at my office. It read:
CHERRY STEM
Paranormal Private Investigator
The Paranormal part lead to a yelling match, with me saying nobody would take me seriously, and Sally insisting L.A. was all about the paranormal these days.
If it didn’t get us clients, she said, she’d pay to have it taken out of the sign. And to print me new cards. Because I apparently had ten thousand of them as Cherry Stem – PPI.
Notice the us before? If it didn’t get us clients?
I didn’t give the word much thought at the time, but when I stumbled down the stairs the next morning, Sally stood outside my office door, dressed in all black and wearing sensible shoes, which up to that moment I doubted she owned.
And she had a tall latte in each hand.
She grinned and held out one of them. “Ready for our first day, boss?”
Come again?
I raised both hands, to show her I has holding a coffee mug and a set of keys and couldn’t accept her offering. “Our first day?” I asked as I unlocked the door and walked in.
“Yup. I’m going to help you with this thing.”
Saying I didn’t need help would be lying, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I wanted this to be my thing. Though it wasn’t a horrible idea to have a vampire tagging along when I needed things done. “I didn’t realize you wanted to be an investigator too,” I said.
“Eh, modeling is cool, but it’s not a long-term career. People will notice my appearance doesn’t change. And I love to blog, but there’s only so much experience I can gather by hanging with Sheena and the girls all the time. You, on the other hand, seem to know where to find trouble. You keep things interesting. And I’m sup—I like hanging out with you. So am I hired? You’ll only have to cover meals and expenses.” She waggled her eyebrows, and I wished for a scarf to cover my neck. Did she want to feed from me?
“Define meals,” I said.
“Pizza? Chinese? Anything I feel like for lunch, whether we’re at the office or working a case.” Human food doesn’t sustain vampires, but it tastes great, and for someone who’d been counting calories most of her life that was an amazing perk to going undead.
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I said.
“Awesome.” She wrapped her arms around me in an awkward hug, as she balanced the coffees. “I’m going to need a desk and a chair. And supplies. Do I use a company credit card, or—”
“Sally.” I glared.
“Never mind. I’ll spend wisely, and you can pay me back when I return.” Her glee was near-palpable, as she all but flew out the door, taking both coffees with her.
I should make her switch to decaf.
“ANY CALLS?” I CRADLED the received between my shoulder and ear and clicked on a pair of boots. They were stylish but seemed sturdy. Added to my shopping bag.
“Nothing since you last checked.” Sally’s reply carried down the line and from the other side of the door separating my office from the waiting area. “Wanna get something to eat?”
“No. I want a client.” This was our daily routine for a fortnight now. We’d wait at our desks, play online games or shop, have lunch, wait longer, then go home.
I was bored.
I wanted to work.
To do something.
“Should we be like ambulance chasers?” Sally asked.
“Go to situations where people are guaranteed to have spouses cheat on them or business partners steal from them?” I infused my question with a healthy dosage of sarcasm.
“I was thinking more like go to haunted houses or look into unsolved mysteries.” She tossed my sarcasm back to me.
I’d spent time with Sally when we both lived with Constantine, but not one on one. The more I got to know her now, the more I realized the airhead spiel was just that. An act.
Still... “We’re not ghost busters. We’re private investigators.”
“Paranormal ones.” She hung up, and moments later let herself into my office. “We need to play up the paranormal angle. People here love it. They believe in mediums and fortune tellers, and we’re the real deal, Cherry.”
I’d never seen a ghost, and as a human, odds were I never would. “You’re the real deal; I’m in the know.”
“More than anyone else has going for them. Let’s get ourselves out there. I should write about this place on my blog. Get word out.”
We already had that conversation and agreed it was better that her followers not know where she worked. Besides, investigative work had nothing to do with outfit-of-the-day posts.
“You don’t need to worry about promo; I’m in charge of the administrative stuff,” I said. Because I had to do something. This was supposed to be my newly found calling, but she had more ideas than I did.
“Well, administrate. Or let me? I’m so freaking good at PR, you can’t even imagine. I’ll have clients swarming in. Honest.” Sally perched her cute butt on my shiny new desk. “Let me put an ad in the paper? It’ll be awesome, you’ll see.”
“Okay, but I’m still the brains of the operation. You’re the brawn.”
“She said okay,” Sally yelled.
Carrie showed up behind her.
I smiled, confused. “Hey. I didn’t know you were co—”
“Told ya,” Carrie said to Sally. She tossed a folded newspaper on my desk. “The ad ran today, in print and online. Now we sit back and wait.”
We.
“Did I hire you too?” I flipped through the paper, and sure enough, there was a half-page ad with my name in block capitals. Beneath it read:
Is a ghost haunting your house?
Do you suspect your boyfriend is a vampire?
Could your neighbor be a pet-eating shifter?
Whatever your supernatural problem, we’ll kick its butt back to the hell that spawned it.
A nervous giggle bubbled up my chest and spilled from my lips. “Who thought of this?”
“I did.” Sally arched an eyebrow. “And it’s on my blog and Instagram too.”
I tried to stop laughing, but I couldn’t. Until I remembered the vampire council, and the laugh got lodged in my throat. “We need to take it down now. It has to disappear. If the council catches wind of this...”
“Oh, I’m sure Constantine will take care of it.” Sally waved off my concern.
“But you don’t know it. You haven’t cleared it with him.” Panic sent bile churning up my throat. “The council will have us all killed if they decide this might expose us. Expose you, I mean.”
Carrie planted her hands on her hips. “Don’t be a drama queen. It’s no worse than any vampire movie. Those who already believe in us will see it as confirmation we exist. The rest will see it as a gimmick to bring in the gullible. And we don’t say we’re vampires. We say we know how to deal with them.”
I forced my thoughts away from the gruesome scenarios running in my head. “Okay.
We don’t take it down. But you don’t run it again either. Whatever happens happens.”
“But Cherry—” Sally was probably about to protest my decision, but we’d never know, because the unimaginable happened.
My desk phone rang.
I looked from her to the phone and back again. If she was here, she wasn’t calling me. Was it a potential client?
“Hel—Cherry Stem, Private Investigator.” I didn’t trust myself to say the paranormal part without laughing.
“I heard you take on cases others have no interest in.” The male voice on the other end of the line was deep and smooth and reminded me of dark chocolate. And of Constantine. I hadn’t thought of him much while I kept myself busy preparing my business, but his memory never stopped calling to an ache deep inside.
“What is this about?” I asked with as much authority as I could muster.
“It’s a sensitive matter. I’d rather discuss it in person.”
I wanted to tell him to please drop by now now now, and save us from the boredom of the past way-too-many days, but I pulled the threads of my professionalism together. “I’ll connect you to my assistant, and you can arrange an appointment.” I waved frantically at Sally, who flew to her desk, and then I realized I didn’t know how to forward the call.
Carrie shook her head, her expression a mixture of exasperation and amusement. She came closer, grabbed the receiver, and said, “This is Ms. Stem’s assistant. How may I help you?”
I listened to her tell the man we were very busy this morning but had an opening in the afternoon.
“Ms. Stem will see you at nine, Mr....” Pause. “Mr. Hunt. Thank you. Have a nice day.”
“Nine in the evening?” I asked when she hung up.
She shrugged. “He said he has to work late but needs to see you today.”
Chapter Twenty-two
SALLY WAS GONE WHEN Mr. Hunt showed up, so I answered the door, and damn, he looked as delicious as he sounded. He was tall—though not as tall as Alex and Constantine—with dark skin and eyes a brown so light, they looked almost amber. His wide shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs were well defined by a designer suit, and I could see my reflection on his patent shoes as I introduced myself and invited him in.
The man was poise personified, with his elegant moves and perfect manners, but there was a sense of repressed energy coming from him. Like he hid a volcano beneath the sleek exterior. It made me think of Constantine again, and not because I missed him. Mr. Hunt hummed with power that didn’t come with his lawyer career.
He followed me to my office and took a seat across the desk from me. I offered him a drink from my well-stocked bar, but he turned it down. His lips curved at the corners in a permanent hint of a smile, even while he described how his house was broken into and a precious stone stolen from him.
“Can you describe the gem?” I asked. “Any specific characteristics?”
He let out a chuckle that belonged in the Top Ten list of Sexiest Sounds Ever. “You’ll know it when you see it. It’s a sapphire, cornflower blue and two inches in diameter.”
An alarm went off in my head. I doubted there were several stones that fit the bill, and last I’d seen one of them was in a dream, a couple months ago—a vivid, lifelike dream that almost cost me my unlife. And the queen bitch wore it around her neck.
If he was talking about that sapphire, odds were he either knew vampires were real or he was a jewelry thief. Either way, he wasn’t just the big-shot lawyer he presented himself as. “Mr. Hunt—”
“It’s just Hunt.”
His last-name-for-first-name thing added to my suspicions. “Hunt, then. When you called, you asked if we take cases others turn down. It seems to me like the police would be able to help you with this. It’s a straightforward burglary, and I’m sure your insurance will cover the gem.”
“I didn’t report the incident to the police.”
“And why is that, if you’re the legal owner?”
“Because there is no record of purchase for this sapphire, and whoever stole it wasn’t interested in its monetary value, or they would have also taken the diamond bracelet that was stored in the same safe.” He sounded calm and very much in control, despite basically saying he’d stolen the thing first.
“Do you have any idea who would steal it?”
“I suspect my wife’s family. The stone belonged to her, and after Katje was gone”—his tone wavered for the first time—“they demanded I return it to them.”
I wanted to comfort him, but the power he emanated filled the room, suffocating me. Was he a vampire? Was he thralling me right now? “I’m sorry for your loss,” I managed.
He shook his head. “It was a very long time ago. But I need your help. You have to find the sapphire as soon as possible.”
“I’ll do my best. Can you tell me your wife’s full name and any next of kin that live in the wider Los Angeles area?”
“Her name was Catharina Kappel. Her brother Filippus lives in L.A.” He gave me the name and address, and I jotted it down, though the first place I meant to look at was Ádísa’s old place. By vampire law, it had passed to her oldest childe, Constantine, and if I played my cards right, I might get to see him again.
“I’m prepared to pay anything to get the stone back,” Hunt stood and produced a plump envelope from his jacket’s inner pocket. “I trust this will cover the retainer and expenses for a few days.”
He left the envelope on my desk, and I itched to tear it open and count the cash, to see how much this case meant to him. Instead I stood too. “Thank you, Mr. Hunt. I’ll be in touch.”
As I walked him to the waiting area, he said, “Would you have dinner with me this Friday?”
The cogs in my brain halted. If he was a vampire, he was dangerous. For all I knew, he was another of Ádísa’s childer, out for blood. But then why wasn’t he pouncing? He had to realize I was human now. He’d hear my heartbeat. His invitation had to be a trap, but if I turned him down, it might take forever to find out what he was up to.
Sally chose the worst day to leave early, damn it.
An idea slapped me full force, and I beamed a smile at him. “I’m busy Friday evening, but how about lunch, Saturday?”
As far as I knew, only Ruby’s nearest and dearest vamps could move around during the day. If Hunt accepted the invitation and showed up, he wasn’t one of the evil undead.
“I’m afraid I’ll be out of town this weekend.”
Of course. “Another time, then.”
As I closed the door behind him, it occurred to me we never shook hands.
It was late, but I wasn’t sleepy. Instead of going home, I locked up and went to my desk. I should call Constantine and ask for access to Ádísa’s manor, but I needed to steel myself first for his negative reaction to hearing my voice. Maybe tomorrow... First, I was curious about the history of the gem. More so about how Catharina Kappel died.
An extensive search in public records came up with no results on her life or death. I tried Catharina Hunt too, and again got zilch, but if Hunt was a vampire, his wife might have been one too. Or she was never in the States, and he moved here after she passed. I looked for Hunt in California and decided not to bother wading through the pages of results. It’d help if I had a second name for him.
I could lift his fingerprints off the envelope and have someone run them through the system. Where someone equaled Alex. No. Bad idea.
Next time I saw Hunt, I’d shake his hand. See if he was warmer than room temperature. If he wasn’t, I’d ask Constantine or Ruby to check the U.S. vampire census for me.
My eyes felt gritty. I rubbed them with the heels of my hands and checked my phone for the time. After three, and I had to be in at eight. The five floors to my bedroom seemed impossibly far. I made myself comfortable on the sofa in the waiting room and was out like a light before I thought to set an alarm clock.
I was startled awake by knocking. “Did you forget your keys?” I yelled, thinking
it was Sally.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t give me any.” That voice didn’t belong to Sally or any other woman I knew.
“Hunt?” I glanced at the window and the sun sneaking in through the shutters. Daytime. Not a vampire.
I ran my fingers through my hair—never a good idea when your hair isn’t straight, which I kept forgetting mine no longer was—and let him in.
He was dressed in tight jeans and a black T-shirt that defined every single muscle on his torso. He held up a carton with two coffee cups, and a paper bag from a bagel place I knew and loved. “Since you can’t do dinner and I can’t do lunch, I thought we’d settle for breakfast,” he said.
I opened my mouth to respond but didn’t know whether to thank him or say I was busy. I stepped back and waved for him to come in.
“Sorry, sorry. I have a good reason for being late. Honest.” Sally squeezed in between us, rummaging through her bag. “I swear I tossed the keys in here this morn—” She froze, flared her nostrils, and turned to face Hunt.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Hunt, this is Sally. She’s my receptionist-slash-assistant.”
I expected him to offer his hand, but instead he returned Sally’s expression, tilting his head to the side. The power I felt from him yesterday surged all around me, and I took a step back. Sally gave a light shake of her head and relaxed her shoulders. “Good to meet you, Mr. Hunt. I assume you’re our new client.”
I was glad she didn’t say first client.
“Nice to meet you too.” He gave a small bow. “I’ve only brought two coffees, but you can have mine, and there are enough bagels for all of us.”
I thought of offering to go make a coffee at my place, but I didn’t want him to know where I lived. I wasn’t sure I appreciated his gesture. It was undeniably a little creepy.
Sally turned down his coffee, but she was more than happy to partake of the bagels, and was soon moaning over a corn-beef-and-mustard one with extra onion, while texting.
Hunt handed me my coffee, and I touched his fingers on purpose. He felt feverish. I withdrew more quickly than I meant to, and he smiled. “Everything okay?”
