Alcander started down the stairs. “They didn’t. Knox did. As far as I can tell, he broke his collarbone, probably his hips, and maybe one of his arms, and then slithered down the air duct.” Overhead, motion sensors detected their movement, and the staircase lit itself in increments that mirrored their progress. “I will be putting bars over the vents tonight, I think.”
An archway at the bottom gave way to a tiny foyer with concrete flooring, a coat rack, and little else. Alcander asked all of them to take off their shoes, then led them through a small door into the basement proper.
It looked more like a penthouse apartment in Manhattan than a finished basement. The walls and carpet were white, the matching furniture deep gray. Everything was as neat and orderly as Jasper expected it to be, knowing the vampire, excusing a smear of blood on the wall—a souvenir from the struggle with Knox, most likely. Crimson, who had obviously been there before, was gone from his side in a second.
“This is the living room,” said Alcander to Jasper and Max. “The kitchen is through there.” He pointed through an archway to the left. “As is my lab and my bedroom.” He looked back towards Jasper. “You and Crimson will have to fight over the guest room.” He gestured to the hallway that ran to the right, where Crimson had already gone. “Just please try to refrain from doing so physically.” Jasper didn’t think there was any danger of that. “There is a small library down that way, too, and a full bathroom. I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of food anymore. Since Michael died, there has been little use for the majority of the accommodations.”
“Michael?” repeated Jasper. This name rang a bell, but he could not recall why.
“He and Crimson used to stay here quite often,” explained Alcander. “As did his cousin and her husband.” Alcander’s voice was even and calm, matter-of-fact, but as was so often the case with the little vampire, his eyes gave him away. They seemed distant. Sad.
Jasper cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’d, uh… love to see the library.”
“Of course,” said Alcander. He showed him down the hall. On the way, they passed the guest room, where Crimson was digging for something in the closet. The adjacent door led to a large square room, where the walls were lined from floor to ceiling in neat rows of carefully categorized and labeled books. Additional shelving had been added in the center, making it look quite a great deal like a legitimate library. “I do not know if anything here will suit your tastes,” said Alcander. “I have little interest in fiction, and most of the volumes are mine, but Nightwind, Michael, and Crimson kept some of theirs here as well, and Salem was fond of photography collections.”
Upon closer inspection, Jasper noticed some of the stacks were labeled with their names, and Crimson’s took up a whole corner almost to themselves. No wonder there were so few books at his house. They were all here.
“If you’re into trash romance novels where the girl always gets the guy and they both live happily ever after, I think Mikey had about a thousand of them.” Jasper jumped at the sound of Crimson’s voice suddenly so close. He hated when he did that. They really needed to put a bell or something around his neck. “But if you’re into trash romance novels where the guys tragically convinced he’s Dracula, that’d be more Night’s style.”
Jasper smiled slightly. “What if I’m not into any sort of trash romance novels?”
“Hypothetically, you mean?” Crimson tilted his head to the left, thinking. “I’ve got all the classics. Well, all the ones that don’t suck, anyway.”
“I’ve never seen you read anything,” said Jasper.
Crimson shrugged. “I’m really into movies this century.”
Jasper noticed his hands were clasped behind his back, like he was holding something there. “What’s that?”
Crimson drew a step back. “What’s what?”
“Behind your back.” He tried to lean around him, but Crimson turned slightly, keeping his front towards him.
“It’s just a book. I was returning it.”
“If it’s just a book, why won’t you let me see it?” asked Jasper, making another snatch for it even as he finished his question. Crimson dipped around him, but Jasper caught a glimpse of the cover. A woman in a flowing dark green dress, the shoulders sloping so much that it looked about ready to fall from her swelling breasts, clung to a roguish, shirtless man with long dark hair. He grinned. “It’s a fucking romance, isn’t it?”
Crimson sighed. “Yeah, man.” He set it on the shelf, not in any particular spot, ignoring the way Alcander’s eye twitched. “You wanna come watch a movie?”
“Well, it depends.” Jasper couldn’t stop grinning, the picture of Crimson totally engrossed in one of those cliched will-they-won’t-they romances was too good. “Are you gonna wanna watch some sappy romance movie?”
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” huffed Crimson. “But no. I was actually thinking more along the lines of Mockingbird. It’s just about to start.” He pointed back towards the living room, where the couch was piled with blankets and pillows, no doubt excavated from the closet in the guest room. The television was already on, playing a commercial.
“Okay,” agreed Jasper. “Sounds fun. You guys wanna—”
“No, thank you,” said Al before he had even finished the question. Jasper looked towards Max, who, curiously enough, was not looking at him, but at Crimson.
“Max?”
“Hm? Oh. No. Thanks. I think, uh, I’ll just hang out here and, uh, look over the books. For a while.” He said this in a much more awkward way than Jasper saw cause for, fumbling over the words, looking more over Jasper’s shoulder than directly at his face. Jasper curiously turned to see what Crimson was doing that was so damned interesting, but the werespider was just standing there, looking innocent. Too innocent. “I don’t want to intrude,” added Max.
“Oh… kay.” He didn’t understand how Max could believe he could possibly “intrude” on the relatively nonsocial act of watching a movie, but he wasn’t going to argue with him. “I’ll see you guys later, then.”
The living room was comprised of a large sectional couch and an easy chair with a stand in between, white plush carpet, and a big flat TV almost as wide as the stand it was sitting on. Jasper climbed into the nest of pillows and blankets, putting himself in the corner of the sectional, with his legs stretched out towards the television. Apart from short breaks for food, he had been crammed in the hatchback for nearly eighteen hours straight, and it felt good to lie on something softer and more spacious than a car seat.
Plenty of room was left on the couch, but, after flipping off the table lamp, Crimson sat beside him, his legs curled underneath him, elbow propped on the back of the couch. It wasn’t unusual for the werespider to prefer being near others, and Jasper didn’t mind, so he made no comment.
He had seen the movie before and, as adaptations went, he thought it wasn’t bad. He was having trouble focusing on it, however, the black-and-white images moving in front of his eyes without actually processing. Eventually, the film went to commercial. “So you used to stay here a lot, huh?”
Crimson shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, sometimes.” He plucked a singular piece of lint (probably the only piece that existed in the entire place) off the back of the couch, rolled it between his fingers, and then flicked it away. “The others were fond of Alcander.”
Jasper thought of the pictures he had seen in the file Charlie gave him. Alcander wasn’t in any of them, but there was a man and a woman in one of them—Salem and Nightwind, he supposed. And a younger man, with wavy brown hair and shining blue eyes. Crimson had asked about Adam and about his parents, listening to him ramble on and on about the details of his life that couldn’t have been interesting to anyone else other than Jasper. He knew Crimson’s mate had been a magic user, and he knew his pack died during a raid (though Crimson did not know he knew that). Yet he had never asked him much else about them, and he was starting to feel a little guilty about it.
“Do you
still miss them?”
“Well, yeah.” Crimson hesitated. “I loved Mike, but he was here and gone so fast, and I’m kinda used to that, so I got over it pretty quick. And I never got on so well with Sal. He was Nightwind’s, like… thirteenth husband or something, so I always figured he’d be gone eventually, but I liked him, especially there near the end.” He reached into his pocket, drew out his wallet, and flipped it open. The picture was not the same one he had seen in the file. It was much older. The werespider was sitting at a table, half a glass of whiskey held at an angle, the female werespider leaned over his shoulder, her arms thrown around him in a hug, cheek against his forehead. Her eyes were a strange shade of blue, almost violet, and maybe it was the lighting, but his were a shade he had never seen before. Burgundy. They looked happy. “Mostly, I miss Nightwind.”
“Your cousin?”
The corner of his lip curled. “Technically. She was more like a sister, though. Except for when she was like a mother… or a daughter.” He flipped the wallet closed and replaced it in his pocket. “She was made a year after I was, so we were together for most of our lives.” He paused, ruminating. “She was my best friend.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jasper. He knew how it had hurt to lose Adam, who had been his best friend since he was five. For months afterward he would wake up, convinced it was a nightmare, that, somehow, he was still alive. Of course, in some ways his imagination had been correct about this. Even to this day, the other still haunted his dreams. If Crimson could be believed, he’d known Nightwind for nearly three thousand years. No wonder he spent most of his time trying to drink himself into oblivion.
“Not your fault,” said Crimson. “You probably weren’t even born yet.”
“I’m still sorry. You shouldn’t have to be alone.” The commercial break ended, and the movie returned. Jasper glanced at it, then quickly back at Crimson. On impulse he seized the werespider’s hand, drawing all of his attention. “You’re not alone now. I plan on sticking around for a while.”
Crimson gently cocked one eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Jasper squeezed his hand once and then let go, adjusting one of the many pillows. A small, nervous feeling settled into his belly, and he tried again to watch the movie. “Is that… okay?”
Jasper wasn’t looking at Crimson, but he heard the smile in his voice when he spoke. “Yeah, Jazz, that’s okay.”
#
There was only one guest room, and Jasper could have easily taken the couch, but they intended to stay for a while, and Jasper didn’t feel right forcing Max to sleep on the floor or crammed into the easy chair. Crimson said when he was growing up, his entire family slept in one bed, which wasn’t so much a bed as a sack of straw, and he didn’t see why Jasper needed to make such a fuss about their sharing. Besides, they could both smoke in the guest room, which was something they couldn’t do in the rest of the house. The bed was a king size, significantly larger than the one they’d shared at Max’s.
Jasper decided not to quibble. They were just friends, after all, and it felt ridiculously vain, assuming that the other was going to try something. Crimson could sleep with whomever he wanted. Honestly, why would he even be interested in Jasper?
Crimson didn’t try anything, and after a few nights he was so used to the weight of him on the other side of the bed that he found he didn’t mind it at all. The werespider was a very quiet sleeper, though he woke often, usually in response to some small sound too quiet and far off for Jasper to hear himself. It reminded him of the way a cat slept. And just like a cat, there were a few occasions (three or four) where he burst suddenly awake, seemingly at random, and in an utter panic. Once he even made it all the way out of the bed and onto his feet before Jasper reached across the mattress, touching his wrist and saying his name, bringing him back to reality.
Jasper had his own share of nightmares. Sometimes about Adam. Sometimes about the Hunters. His waking always woke Crimson (the werespider said it was because of the change in the tempo of his heart and the depth of his breathing), but Crimson never seemed to mind. He would lay a palm on his chest, assure him he was safe, tell him it was only a dream.
Alcander was often in his lab, and sometimes Jasper went to visit him. The room was filled with more machines and devices than he cared to count or attempt to identify. Screens poured digital readouts and flashed or pinged with results. One entire wall was taken up by a dry-erase board crammed with numbers and equations in neat rows, the lines differentiated by colors of marker.
Alcander was delighted to have him, and here, safe and surrounded by his machines, he talked excessively. Jasper only understood about a third of what he said, but he liked how excited and at ease the vampire seemed.
Max opted to stay “for now.” He was the only one of them who could cook. Jasper, who had never made anything more complicated than boxed mac ’n cheese, hung around the kitchen during mealtimes, helping with small tasks and trying to learn a thing or two in the process. The reality was that there wasn’t much else to do, and he had to figure it out anyway. There was no agency cantina to go back to, and he couldn’t survive on fast food for the rest of his life, not unless he wanted “the rest of his life” to be about forty.
The days tapered together, his sense of time warped by the lack of sunlight and change.
Crimson cracked before he did.
“I can’t be here anymore,” he told him over coffee one morning (or… perhaps it was evening). “I don’t know how he lives like this. I gotta go somewhere. Do something.”
Jasper was a fan of the mellow vibe the place had, and of the routine he’d settled into. It was a well-needed rest from the absolute chaos of the month past, and with little more to do than talk, he came to know the others quite well, but as the days wore on, he found it lacking. It felt like time to go home.
Chapter Twenty
—
Sleepover
Aside from the spoiled food in the fridge, the house was just as they had left it. They were at Alcander’s for less time than it had felt. Twelve days.
He had no idea how much he would miss fresh air and sunlight. He opened all of the curtains and all of the windows the attic had to offer and cracked the basement door to get a draft going through the broken windows downstairs. A thick layer of dust had built up in their absence, and the place was never that organized to begin with. He tried to clean it up and put it together as best he could without sparing too much effort.
Crimson wasn’t a fan of it, but his complaining was mostly limited to snide remarks, and if he actually minded, Jasper was sure he would put a stop to it.
At first, both were still leery of spending too much time outside the house. Night after night went by, and no one came after them. Soon, it seemed perhaps no one would.
There still wasn’t much in the way of food at Crimson’s house, though Jasper picked up some snacks and frozen pizzas from a small grocery store down the road. He was tired of eating burnt, bland pizza and didn’t feel like bothering Max (who still hadn’t left Alcander’s, and it was looking like he simply wouldn’t) for a home-cooked meal. Crimson’s first suggestion was Rascal’s. They hadn’t been in ages, so Jasper agreed.
The staff greeted Crimson like an old friend, commenting on his sudden disappearance. Crimson laughed good-naturedly and joked with them about his vacation, making the rounds through the bar and collecting free drinks along the way. When he was finally done (for the time being), they grabbed a booth, and Jasper ordered a burger and a beer, not having to worry too much about getting ID’d with the werespider at his side.
Crimson got up to talk to the bartender, who had just entered the bar, and Jasper took out his phone, checking his messages. He hadn’t gotten any in a few days, which probably wasn’t surprising since he only really had Crimson and Al (and Max) as friends. On the way out of Florida, he’d gotten Crimson to text Lindsay for him, telling her to lose his number, and after a flurry of angry messages, she seemed to have decided to do ju
st that. Jasper felt bad. He had liked her, he thought, but there was no other way around the inevitable.
He expected to hear something from Charlie, though. He was dreading it, actually, but thought his father would reach out to him at some point, even just to tell him he was a horrible, awful person. He only received persistent silence, which was somehow worse than knowing what he actually thought.
Jasper drafted a message to Alcander, just saying hi. He wanted to get the vampire to see if any new information had cropped up about him. This not knowing was making him sick.
The message bounced back almost immediately along with another message telling him he didn’t have service and giving him a number to call if he wanted to set up an account.
Jasper frowned.
It took him too long to figure out that his phone had been disconnected, now demoted to a glorified calculator/pocketbook insofar as its function. This probably also meant the agency credit card he was using to pay the bill had been cancelled, which was slightly less of a loss since he was too scared of them tracking his purchases to use it. He should have seen this coming—why would the agency keep his phone active? He’d said so himself, he wasn’t a Hunter anymore, but he was still upset.
He didn’t notice the werewolves join them until one crawled into Crimson’s lap on the other side of the booth. Abby slid in next to him while Alan stuck his tongue down Crimson’s throat. The scent of weed wafted all the way across the table.
“Heya, Charlotte,” Alan said when he came up for air. “Where you been?”
“We went on a sort of vacation,” replied Crimson. It was only half a lie.
“Hi, Alan,” Jasper said pointedly.
“Jensen!” exclaimed Alan, too loudly and too enthusiastically. He climbed out of Crimson’s lap, just barely, and sat next to him, basically hanging off his shoulder. He grinned a stupid, vacant grin. “Good to see you, man.”
“My name is Jasper,” Jasper said and shot Crimson a look, which the werespider chose to ignore.
Strangers in the Night Page 24
