by Rachel Caine
“It’s okay to say I’m not as smart. Not many people are.”
“Very true. And I’m sure you have other sterling qualities. Sports, perhaps. Something like that.”
I kind of wanted to kick his ass, but he did look like he’d had some part of his heart ripped out, so it probably would have been mean. Also, he’d have killed me if I’d tried.
“So, am I done?” I asked him. “Because I need twelve kinds of showers.”
He was looking off into the distance. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose we’re done here.”
“Not until I get paid, man.”
He shook his head, pulled open a drawer, and pulled out a wadded fistful of money. I grabbed for it before it could start falling to the floor, where something might eat it in the chaos. Wow. All hundreds. “Um . . . I think that’s too much.”
“Is it? Oh, never mind; take it and go.”
I didn’t argue about it. I headed for the stairs, and the lights came on to guide my way . . . and lit up the modern, leather-clad Jesse, Lady Grey, sitting halfway down the steps in what would have been the darkness until I’d triggered the motion detectors.
She looked . . . strange.
“Hey, Jess,” I said, and she nodded to me, but her eyes were fixed past me, on Myrnin. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough,” she said. “I’d forgotten. Isn’t that odd? To forget something like that? So much time. Or maybe I wanted to forget.”
Yeah, no doubt, she’d seen it all. From this spot, she’d have had a balcony view of Myrnin’s past, I guessed—and of her own. She was rubbing her arm as if she remembered it being broken.
“Well . . . see you,” I said.
She nodded and stood up as I passed.
Across the room, Myrnin raised his head to meet her eyes, and he straightened, as if wary of what she was going to do. I’m not going to lie—I paused at the top of the steps, and watched.
Jesse crossed slowly to him, and silently held out her hand. He took it.
“Too long,” she said. “Too long. The girl I was then is long gone, you know. I’ve changed.”
“I’ve changed, too,” he said. “Well, I bathe now. And I’m less insane. But yes, it’s been too long. We can’t go back to . . . what never was. It’s for the best.”
“Oh, my sweet fool, that’s not what I meant at all.”
And she kissed him. Same kind of kiss. Same kind of unexpected flash of passion. And Myrnin, caught by surprise, just stood there . . . until he put his hands up, traveling slowly up her sides, her arms, to cup her head as he kissed her more deeply, more fully.
Yeah, I knew how that felt. And I knew where it was heading.
So I left.
What? I’m not a perv. Much.
• • •
I parked the Murdermobile out front, next to Eve’s black hearse—they made a hell of a curbside statement—and jogged up the walk to the front door, keys in hand. Nobody tried to eat my face, which was nice. I got inside, slammed the locks, and turned to see Claire standing in the hallway. She gave me a look that was half-resigned, half-appalled, and all hers.
“Really?” she asked, and sighed. “Wow. And also, you smell.”
“Wow,” I agreed. “Blame your boss. Also, you really need to teach him about money. But maybe not until I do a few more jobs.”
“Funny. How about you go straight upstairs and take at least one layer of dirt off? I guess there must be clothes under that, so maybe throw those in a garbage bag and I’ll do the laundry.”
“Laundry?” Eve popped her head around the corner, and her Goth-rimmed eyes widened. “Holy shit, did you crawl out of a sewer? Because I can smell you from here, and that is a whole world of gross.”
“Hey, nice to see you, too, Vampirella. What did you want?”
“Well, I was going to say that I’d put some stuff in the laundry, too, but again, oh, hell no to that. Try not to get whatever is on you on anything I have to touch, okay?”
I was too tired to give her the finger, but I did it anyway. She winked and pulled her head back around the corner.
I wanted to kiss Claire, but I knew better; there was no way I’d want to kiss me. So I trudged upstairs, trying to keep my grave dirt to myself, and grabbed a garbage bag on the way to bundle my clothes in.
I brushed my teeth to get the taste out. I needed a Silkwood shower, to be honest, something with fire hoses and wire brushes wielded by guys in hazmat suits, but at least the hot water held out long enough for me to use soap and shampoo about four times, until I couldn’t feel the phantom wriggle of worms anymore.
I shut the water off and dripped for a minute, leaning against the wall, before I slid the curtain back . . . and found Claire standing there, holding up a towel. Poker-faced.
“Well,” I said. “This is nice.”
“It gets better,” she said, and when I took the towel, she held out a beer in her other hand. Ice-cold. I dried off fast and reached for the beer, but she pulled it out of reach. “Uh-uh. Not until you tell me you missed me.”
Stepping forward put me solidly against her, and pushed her back against the tiled bathroom wall near the sink. I grabbed the beer from her upraised hand, started to drink, and then put it down on the window ledge.
Then I picked her up and sat her on the bathroom counter and kissed her. Sweet and hot and slow, lots of tongue, and she tasted like heaven to me. Heaven, and home.
“I missed you,” I whispered in her ear, as I trailed kisses down her jawline and up to nibble on her lobe. I felt her gasp and shiver. “Can you tell?”
“I’m convinced,” she said. I liked that she had a shirt with buttons on the front. They opened nicely. She’d also switched to front-hook bras, which was extra fun and convenient. “What are you doing?”
“Getting ready for bed,” I said. “How about you?”
“I should . . . do the . . .”
“Laundry?” I nipped at her neck, licked lightly at the barely visible scars where Myrnin had once bitten her. Bastard. “Really?” I unzipped her jeans. “You should probably put these in, then.”
“Probably,” Claire said, and helped me slide them off. “Probably should put my panties in, too.”
“Seems logical.”
From that point on, there wasn’t much talking, really.
A WHISPER IN THE DARK
This one is a late addition to the Web site’s free stories; it’s another one I started, restarted, edited, and abandoned for a while, only to return to it with fresh eyes and a new story line. I loved the interplay between our gang, especially with Michael still odd-vampire-out at this time in the universe. I really loved the idea that Eve’s background and family tree end up being the central focus of this story, too.
It has a bit of a horror story twist to it, but I think it’s still firmly within the Morganville county lines!
Fun factoid: I also hate cleaning out my fridge. I do it, but I have to force myself. Also, I hate leftovers. You have to forget them in the back only once to have nightmares forever.
Michael Glass leaned against the kitchen counter and thought about the end of the world. Had to be the end of the world, because his best friend, Shane Collins, had on a pair of latex CSI-style gloves and was . . . cleaning.
“Dude, what’s with all the crap in the refrigerator?” Shane asked. He held up one sports bottle after another for his housemate Michael’s benefit, because they were all Michael’s. “Can’t you write an expiration date on these or something?”
Michael snatched one out of Shane’s hand, sniffed it, and said, “It’s good. What’s your problem?”
“My problem? Our fridge is full of bottles of human blood and I can’t find any place to put a Coke. That’s my problem. And what the hell, are you binge eating now? How many of these do you actually need?”
�
��How many Cokes do you need? I know you’re trying to work up to a diabetic coma, but still, give it a break, man.” Michael kept the bottle he was holding, popped the cap, and took a healthy swig. Shane shuddered, shoved two cans of Coke into the open space, and swung the door shut. “What crawled up your ass and made you worry about housekeeping, anyway?”
Shane gave him one of his classic Keep talking looks, grabbed a bag of chips off the counter, and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. It was a mess, piled with dirty dishes, half-full glasses, and junk mail. “Check the schedule,” he said. “You’re on kitchen duty. I’m supposed to do laundry. Eve said if we didn’t get our shit together before she got home, she was going to get extreme. I’ve seen her get extreme. It’s not pretty.” He stripped off the latex gloves, popped some chips in his mouth, and said, “Besides, man, she’s right. This place is a sty. I think I saw a roach crawling into the Lysol bottle this morning. It’s your house, too. Have a little pride.”
“Trade you for laundry,” Michael said. Shane gave him the universal sign for Blow me, and Michael had to grin. “I’ll take that as a no.”
“Unless you want to be explaining that to both our ladies, real good idea.” Shane tossed him the bag of chips, and Michael took a handful. No garlic, thank God. “Not that I wouldn’t pay good money to see you try.”
Michael threw the bag back at him, hard, but Shane got it before it attached itself to his face. Had to give it to him, the boy was quick, for somebody who wasn’t vampire-enhanced. “Don’t you have to go sort some underwear or something? Because if I have to do the kitchen, you’re up in my way. Get your chip-eating ass out of the chair.”
“File the attitude, bro. I’m going.” Shane ate more chips as he stood up, then froze in midchomp. Michael was way ahead of him, turning toward the door as he put his sports bottle carefully down on the counter. Shane’s tone, when it came, was way different this time. “Guests?” he asked.
Michael nodded. “I heard. Maybe you ought to let me take the lead.”
Shane didn’t say anything. On this, at least, they didn’t argue much anymore. . . . Michael was better equipped to take the hits, if the hits were coming, and Shane was a wicked backup for anyone, vampire or not. They were both natives of Morganville, Texas, and had grown up with stress, trauma, and vampires . . . not necessarily in that order.
Shane was right behind him on the way to the front door, and Michael had his hand on the doorknob just before the brisk knock hit the wood.
He knew, before he opened it, that there was a vampire standing on the other side of the door. That vamp was wearing a hat, a coat, a muffler, gloves—he wouldn’t have been out of place in Chicago in the winter. The problem was that it was a million degrees of heat outside in Texas, but to a vampire, that didn’t much matter. Not as much as experiencing fatal sun combustion, anyway. Michael had never met a vampire who’d thought the Texas sun was actually too hot.
Maybe, he thought, because at heart, inside, vampires were always cold. Always. He felt the same brittle chill inside himself, all the time; chill, and silence. Silence where his heartbeat used to be. Blood still moved through his body, slow and thick, but he wasn’t sure how that happened; he wasn’t science-minded like Claire, and he just accepted that it worked, against all natural laws that he’d ever understood. Being a vampire, he’d learned almost immediately, wasn’t about science. It was about something less measurable. Souls, maybe.
But the important thing was that the vampire was staring out at him from under the shrouding muffler and hat, and those icy blue eyes seemed familiar. Not Amelie; the Founder of Morganville didn’t bow to anyone, including the sun.
“May I?” the vampire asked. The two words were tinted with a musical foreign accent.
Shane was looking at him for a clue, and Michael finally shrugged. “Come on inside,” he said, and stepped back. The vampire entered, and the vampire pulled off his hat and muffler and handed them to Shane with the thoughtless arrogance of someone who’d lived his entire life with servants around him.
Michael stifled a laugh at Shane’s expression, but he couldn’t help the smile as Shane dropped the items to the floor and kicked them into a dusty corner.
“Sorry,” Shane said. “I’m all out of hat racks.”
The vamp took off his coat and—with a pretty good-humored display of cooperation—tossed it to the same corner, and then added the gloves. Michael knew him by sight, because the Morganville vampires were a small community, and he likely knew the name, but didn’t know how to match them up. He was blond, short haired, and blue eyed, with an unexceptional round face. In fact, nothing about him, except the eyes, would make him stand out in a crowd.
He directed his attention to Michael, which felt like a laser between the eyes. “I am Kiril Rozhkov. Hello.” He offered a slight nod of his head, and a calm smile. His accent held a strong hint of cold Russian winters.
“Hello,” Michael said, because he felt like one of the Glass House residents ought to be polite, and it damn sure wasn’t likely to be Shane.
“Excuse me,” Rozhkov said, “but I have a matter to discuss with you in privacy, Mr. Glass.”
Mr.? It was a weird sound, and disconnected from the way Michael thought about himself; he saw Shane give him a look that threatened to make it all way too funny. Laughing in the face of a visiting strange vampire wasn’t generally a good idea.
Michael surrendered. “Follow me.”
He led the vamp into the parlor. It was an old-fashioned name for an old-fashioned room; when the house had originally been built, it was an age when neighbors dropped around for tea and lemonade, stiffly formal visits conducted in a room set aside just for that purpose. He and his housemates never used it except to pile boxes and coats and bags in it. The boxes had been shifted out recently, but Claire’s backpack leaned against the leg of one wing chair where she’d abandoned it, and one of Eve’s skull-themed umbrellas flopped on the floor, dusty and dispirited. Not much call for umbrellas out here in West Texas, unless you were using them for sun relief. Rain was rare.
Kiril Rozhkov took in the layers of dust and disuse, and then sat on the broken-down Victorian sofa with an ease and a grace Michael recognized as weirdly foreign. A lot of vampires moved that way—as if they’d been trained from an early age to be graceful and correct. Not a skill people learned anymore.
“I am sorry to intrude on your home, Mr. Glass—,” Rozhkov began.
Michael held up a hand. “Michael. Please.”
“Very well, Michael. Named for an angel; that is a lot to live up to, yes? I myself am named for a saint, and the father of the Russian alphabet. Our fathers expected much from us. I wonder if they were satisfied.” Rozhkov shifted slightly. “You may send your man away. I am no threat to you.”
“He’s not my man,” Michael said, and wondered exactly how Rozhkov meant that. Probably in the antique sense, as if Shane were some soldier in service to a feudal lord. “He lives here. Housemate.”
The other vampire shrugged, as if all these fine distinctions were too much for him to bother with. “It is no matter. I only meant that these matters were for our kind, not his.”
Shane was hovering near the doorway, openly staring; Michael gave him a frown, and Shane ignored it, lounging against the wall. If a vamp told him to go away, he was absolutely going to stay. It was just Shane’s basic nature.
“He’s fine,” Michael said. “What do you want?”
Rozhkov’s pale gold eyebrows twitched just a bit, surprised by what he probably perceived as rudeness; he composed himself almost instantly into an expression of patience. It was irritating. “I wish to meet the girl.”
Claire. They always wanted to meet Claire, sooner or later; for a quiet, somewhat shy girl, she tended to have rock-star status in vampire circles. That was probably because she had the cachet of being the first human to manage to survive working with he
r bipolar vampire boss, Myrnin, in ages—or that she had Amelie’s good favor. Rare for the Founder of Morganville to take such an interest in a human.
“You don’t have to ask my permission,” Michael said. He was genuinely grouchy now. “Claire lives here. I don’t own her.”
“Ah. I see we are misunderstanding one another. I do not mean that one.” Rozhkov dismissed Claire with a tiny wave of his hand. “I mean the one blood-bound to you.”
Eve? Michael sat back. So many ways to respond to that, none of them adequate to the rush of anxiety he felt. Vampires didn’t come asking about Eve. They were almost unanimously content to ignore her and hope she would go away. Claire was accepted by them as a valuable resource; Eve had been seen as an oddity when he’d begun to date her, a temporary thing of no real importance. But since he’d married her, all hell had broken loose. The humans didn’t trust her. Neither did the vampires.
So having a vampire show up specifically to meet her was . . . unsettling.
“Let’s get a few things straight. She’s not my girl,” Michael said. “She’s not blood-bound, whatever that means to you. She’s my wife, but that doesn’t mean I own her.”
“I have heard you are married,” Rozhkov said. He didn’t seem moved at all. “Blessed by the sacraments of the church and by our Founder. To no one’s pleasure but yours, it would seem. It will all end badly.”
Michael took a second to remember why he shouldn’t punch the man right in the superior, thin smile. “Why do you want Eve?”
“That is my business, and not yours, since you so plainly do not—as you put it—own her.”
Shane coughed. It sounded like asshole. No way to tell if Rozhkov caught it at all.
“Eve’s not here,” Michael said. “Sorry. Want to leave your number?”
He got that faint, superior smile again. “No, I do not,” the man said, and rose from his sitting position. “I will try again. Informative to meet you, Michael Glass.”
“Same here.”
It was not quite dangerous, the look they exchanged, but enough to run a shiver down Michael’s spine, like the lightest brush of death-cold fingers. He held the stare. However young he was—human age, and vampire—he knew coming from Amelie’s bloodline gave him power . . . perceived and real. He had some abilities he’d never tried to use. They were there, like boxes on a shelf he’d never opened. He opened one now, and felt a new, strange sensation slide chilly through his nerves. He felt his body shift balance, just a little, and suddenly he could sense Rozhkov’s essence, like a thin shimmering cloud around him. Blues and pale yellows.
