by Kayleigh Sky
He dropped the paper on the porch and took a swallow of his coffee. The liquid boiled in his gut, and pain bloomed in his head again. He shifted his position and leaned back against the porch post.
How are you getting out of this mess?
His job wasn’t coming back, he was pretty sure of that. If he broke down and agreed to the shrink maybe, but the truth was, he’d lived in rage and hate for so long he wasn’t sure how not to anymore.
Was he anybody beside Maisie’s brother? Her final mourner? An uneasy feeling even that had no meaning anymore broke him out in a sweat.
Concentrate.
He needed to look ahead and forget the past for a while.
He took another swallow of coffee and checked off the things he knew.
One, he didn’t trust Prydwen Wrythin for shit. He was a vampire. Not to mention, a dead fish.
Two, Brillen Acalliona had been living a life Otto related to—empty. He’d been fifty-seven, a successful businessman who’d employed between twenty and twenty-five people at any given time. He was quiet, seldom seen by his neighbors, and belonged to a now defunct merchant guild. No family, no friends, yet always friendly with business associates. He travelled to several conventions, plus Gem Fest in Pacific Grove each year. He appeared to have no hobbies, unless painting on a fake tattoo and drinking human blood counted as a hobby. Had he been addicted to it?
Otto stared into his cup. An oily shine glimmered on the surface like the rainbows he’d found in puddles when he was a kid. He’d played outside every opportunity he’d gotten when his mom was dying. Not long after—
Vampires.
Like the thin-nosed, freckle-faced vampire that begged to be thrown down on a bed and ravished to within an inch of his life. Nothing Otto imagined Prydwen doing. Nothing Otto was going to do, for fuck’s sake.
With a grunt, he struggled to his feet and staggered when the ground shuddered underneath him. He steadied himself with a hand on the post beside him, went inside, and set his cup in the sink. After he found his keys on the dresser, he located his jacket on the floor of the hall closet. For fuck’s sake. He picked it up and shrugged it on, still standing in the doorway, gaze settling on a shoe box on the shelf over his head. Family photos. The thing had sat there unseen for years, a part of the woodwork. He had no idea why it would register now, but it superimposed on an image of patio furniture, a crystal blue pool, and a grinning vampire. What the hell kind of connection was that?
None.
No connection.
What he needed was some of his old instinct to kick in, but he was getting fuck all. He headed outside, got into his car, and drove to Denny’s.
After pancakes and more coffee, he headed off again, a weird panic spiraling in his gut when he realized he had nowhere to go and nothing to do.
He followed the flow of light traffic past the shopping center where the Captain’s Chest, one of his favorite bars, hid away in the back corner, small and dark inside. But he passed the shopping center, swung around at the next signal light and drove to the Hamilton warehouse.
The yellow tape was gone.
Climbing out of his car, Otto looked at the camera and followed its trajectory into the field. Why here? Was it Acalliona’s choice or Mateo’s? Acalliona’s probably. It was too close to the Sheraton to be coincidence.
He stared at the shops on the other side of the field. The coffee shop was open, and somebody exited a chiropractor’s office and strode away down the block. Otto watched until the guy disappeared and the area was quiet again except for the fluttering of the tall grass in the field. Flowers bloomed, sparse and multi-colored.
Gold Star.
Jessa’s eyes had lit like fireworks.
Otto strode into the field, wading through the weeds. Most of the flowers were white with occasional spots of yellow and lavender. He stooped when he reached the approximate spot where he’d seen Jessa when he’d given chase and found a tiny flower with five orange-spotted yellow petals. Parting the weeds, he found a few more.
Bent down as he was, the blood pounded at the front of his head. Wincing, he straightened and looked around. Most of the commercial space here was empty. He left the field and crossed to C Street. One car stood against the curb at the far end. On the other side, a shattered building grinned like a snaggletoothed vampire. War and the Upheaval marked the world with the sign of failure like a drainer’s ink.
But here the pale sun lay on the street like a cleansing glow, and the bridal shop beside him had a newly painted sign on the door and shadows moving on the other side of the glass front. Across the street was a purple door with B & B in gold lettering. Bangles and Beauties Co-op was written in the same gold lettering on the bottom corner of the window. The glass was tinted, but a few shadows moved behind it. A narrow walkway cut through the row of businesses to a service alley in back. A few garbage bins stood against the wall of the next block of buildings. Otto followed the alley back to the cross street alongside the field. At night there’d be any number of places to hide and no one to see.
Where would a scared kid run?
Otto returned to his car and pulled back onto the street.
Mateo’s employee records made no mention of family or a former address, but Mateo wouldn’t be the only one to lose his family in the Upheaval. Was it possible he was hiding in Comity House? Was Prydwen lying? Would Isaac lie? Otto would, to protect a friend. If he had any friends, but he didn’t. He had an obsession that waned with every year Maisie was gone. She’d hate him for the shadow of a life he was living. She’d had the lowest opinion of people of anybody he’d ever known, but she’d loved them too. She never backed away from friendship. Which was why that idiot Prosper had spent weeks combing through the dozens of people who’d loved her, looking for a hidden enemy instead of the drainer who’d killed her. Though in his more rational moments, Otto admitted he might have done the same.
“Somebody always knows something.”
But Prosper hadn’t found the right somebody and a murderer walked free.
Who was the right somebody this time?
Otto parked on a corner near Comity House and settled back in his seat. Maybe the stars would align and Mateo would saunter up the street. Maybe he wasn’t involved in the murder at all and was nothing more than a flighty kid who’d picked an inopportune time to disappear.
As he sat there, the sun slid low, and another temblor rocked through his car. He gripped his steering wheel, waiting it out. After another hour, darkness fell, and lights winked on. This had been a good year for power so far, only two brownouts. In the early years, he’d lived by his Coleman lantern.
A few blocks from Comity House, lights spilled through the open doors of a bowling alley and cars packed the parking lot. He found a spot in a distant corner, shut off his engine, and headed inside.
The place drew families, and oddly, kids looking to hook up. He pushed through the bodies in the lobby, head already pounding from the clack of balls and pins and people shouting over the racket. By the time he made it to the lounge, his shirt clung to his sweaty skin. He got his drink and sat at a small table in the corner. It was blissfully quieter in here. A few other patrons sat around him, but there was ample space. He watched people walking by the door until Isaac appeared, hands in the pockets of his jacket, shoulders rolled high as he crossed the room and sat at Otto’s table.
“Want something to drink?” Otto asked.
Isaac shook his head. “I just wanted to say thanks for sticking up for me. I’m sorry you lost your job.”
Otto shrugged. “It’s not exactly lost.”
Circling the drain though, and he wasn’t going to do anything to stop it. No shrink for him. He didn’t care how fucking mandatory it was.
He pulled his glass over but didn’t pick it up.
“No clue where Mateo is?”
A glower settled on Isaac’s face, and he pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “I told you.”
Otto nodded. “Right
. What about where he came from? Family?”
“I don’t know. He never talked about anybody.”
“Ever moonlight too?”
Isaac didn’t ask what Otto meant by moonlighting and didn’t seem offended, though he said, “I’m not a whore.”
“Know anybody at Comity House who is?”
“No. It’s against the rules.”
“Right,” Otto murmured again. He picked up his glass. Got it halfway to his lips this time before he set it back down. “Any suspicions?”
Isaac snorted and looked away. “I don’t spy on people, and I don’t care either. I pretty much keep to myself.”
“Why’s that?”
Isaac sneered. “So I don’t get caught up in things like this.”
“Why are you here, Isaac? You don’t owe me anything.”
Isaac was silent. He stared at the tinted windows that looked onto the bowling alley with a strained expression, as though looking for somebody he knew he wasn’t going to find. Finally, he looked back.
“Jessa’s scared of something. Sometimes I think it’s Mr. Wrythin, but I can’t be sure. I can’t really come out and ask him. I just let him know he can talk to me if he wants to.”
“Is it typical for a donor and feeder to become friends?”
Isaac’s grimace had a sour look to it. “It’s not encouraged. I like Jessa though.”
“How old are you, Isaac?”
“Twenty-two. I’ve been a donor for four years, over two with Jessa.”
Otto had no idea what that was like, letting somebody feed off him. It was surreal. He’d clung to his job and his home. The normalcy of work and his neighborhood. But Isaac didn’t have that. Maybe that made him more resilient. Or more susceptible to the smallest amount of affection. It hadn’t been Otto who’d set this meeting up, but the postcard that had appeared in his mailbox hadn’t particularly surprised him. He was easy enough to find. He didn’t hide.
“What are we doing here, kid?”
A slow seep of air whistled past Isaac’s lips. “I think somebody’s following him.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I told you. He’s scared.”
“Lots of reasons for that.”
“I figured you might help.”
“You figured wrong. I don’t have a job anymore.”
“Is that what it takes? You have to get a paycheck? Something in return? Do you want something?”
“What are you offering?”
For a moment, Isaac said nothing. He stared, but his eyes were distant.
“Me.”
Otto’s stomach churned. He wanted his drink but didn’t want to show the shake in his fingers. He was an asshole, for sure, making Isaac whore himself out. He told himself he wanted to see how far Isaac would go for a friend, but maybe he really only wanted to spread his pain over everyone else. He clenched his teeth until his stomach settled.
“I don’t know if I can do much of anything.”
A light shone through the shadow over Isaac’s eyes. “Will you try?”
“I’ll try.”
Isaac nodded, swallowed. “So how do we do this?”
“You go home and let me do my job.”
The smile that tugged at Isaac’s lips when he realized Otto wasn’t going to make him pay up compensated for a lot of crap in the world.
“Thanks.”
“We’ll see whether I earn it.”
He waited until Isaac was gone before he reached for his glass and brought it all the way to his lips this time. Its fumes filled his head and made his mouth water.
I figured you might help.
Why? Why had the dumb kid figured that?
A cheer rose in the bowling alley and somebody near the door of the lounge clapped their hands.
He swallowed and set the glass back down. His last time dry had lasted four months. He’d had a reason for quitting, but he’d forgotten what it was now. He’d forgotten most of last month. Most of last year. Nothing special had marked a single day of his life for the last ten years. Thinking he had any kind of special murder-solving talent anymore was a damn joke. He was empty as fuck. Had he saved lives? Or had he just stumbled and blundered through his cases the way Prosper had with Maisie? He’d been hanging onto his job by a thread for months.
He got up and went home.
The next day, after a stop at Denny’s again, he drove to the mountain. The Upheaval had thrust it high above the earth’s crust, and it was now a good three hundred feet higher than it had once been. Still rocky, dotted with canyons and meadows and pines above the oaks and alders and cottonwoods. Back in the day there’d been a coal, then glass-quality sand mine in the foothills. After it closed, the area had become part of a regional park and now was Senera property. It was useless, much of it still caved in, but vampires loved anything to do with glass and many of the old shafts had been excavated though never brought back into use. Maybe the Seneras hoped to reopen it one day after the earth settled down. Supposedly, the Seneras had a difficult relationship with the Dinallahs, the first of the seven royal families. Maybe a source of private wealth wouldn’t hurt their standing.
Side roads branched off into the foothills, but Otto took the one up the mountainside. Patches of mustard still glowed in the spring sun.
He’d never been this way before the interview with the family. The peacefulness of the countryside probably belied the watchful eyes on him. Where the road turned to drop down into Senera Valley, the shoulder widened into a dusty, tree-studded field. Otto swung his vehicle onto the dirt and parked in the shade. A Steller’s jay yelled, and a handful of leaves fell on his hood. He rolled down his window, listened to the buzzing of insects, and gazed down on the valley.
What a place to live. You’d hardly notice anything awful had happened to the world. That castle full of vampires had once belonged to humans, and now the bastards nested in it like a real family.
Otto half expected Jessa to suddenly materialize and hunt flowers in the meadow. What a coddled little vamp. Otto had lived with a dad who’d checked out. Put his badge in a drawer and never took it out again. Up until he’d dropped his badge on his lieutenant’s desk, Otto had thought they were nothing alike.
God.
He dropped his head and scrubbed at his face. When he opened his eyes a moment later, a car appeared on the road, heading away from the castle. It blurred in the fading light, silver and sleek, but large and comfortable too, not made for speed. Five minutes later, it disappeared as it began the climb to Otto’s lookout. Then it passed. Wen and Isaac. Isaac’s mouth was moving, his face turned slightly toward Wen.
After a few minutes, Otto followed.
The next day, he sat outside Comity House, but nothing happened. He didn’t drink. He read the newspaper in the evening and went to bed. The next day he did the same thing. There was no reason to do this day after day other than a promise.
But the promise was enough, and he didn’t stop.
16
Secret Life
Clouds covered the sky and a drizzle hung in the air. Wen’s tires rolling across the gravel whistled. Isaac waved through the rear window, and Jessa waved back. An ache in his belly told him he was still hungry, but he didn’t want to take too much. No matter what Isaac said about Jessa not hurting him, Jessa doubted his saliva was as regenerative as a full vampire’s. Sometimes, he’d feed from Mateo to give Isaac a respite, but now Mateo was gone. And Jessa hadn’t much liked him anyway.
When the car was halfway across the meadow, he turned and went back inside. His footsteps thundered on the tile. Usually, he bypassed this part of the castle. The huge reception area and the dining room behind it were too formal, though Rune had softened its angularity with giant hanging tapestries.
Ducking into a narrow hallway that led back to the kitchen and the servants’s stairs, Jessa headed down into the basement. Cold seeped from the thick stone walls. Here his footsteps fell without a sound on the heavy rug-covered floors.
At the end of the hall, a wood door stood open. Jessa paused on the threshold. Rune faced away from him, gazing at a glass figurine on a table. The figure was the size of a child but from its position on the table Rune had to look up at it. It twisted torturously like a creature writhing under impossible forces. The glass was red and gold.
Naked from the waist up, Rune’s exposed back was its own piece of art, tattooed down the spine with the symbols of the Revelatory Passion. The Lessons of the Fall they were called. Love, sacrifice, forgiveness, God, resurrection, hell, heaven, and broken. Jessa wore the symbol for broken on his neck. “It’s the same symbol for God,” Rune had told him once. “Just an imperfect one.”
Without Rune and Mal, who would Jessa be?
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Rune turned, his pale skin shiny in the heat. “Not like you, blossom. What are you doing?”
“I’m bored.”
“You’re spoiled.”
“I couldn’t be.”
“Come here.”
He followed Rune to a massive table piled high with giant sheets of paper. Some were detailed, computerized maps, others only loose hand-drawn sketches. Rune rifled through several, dragging some aside until he said, “This one,” and pulled out a sheet he pushed toward Jessa. The map meant nothing to him, mostly a large body of water surrounded by marks meant to be mountains and valleys, areas of occupations, and a key for distances and measurements. “This,” said Rune, tapping the body of water, “is an inland sea, and this island in the middle of it was once, what is now left, of Chicago. A major city. Now it’s an island, lifted on a ridge of rock, the rest underwater like Atlantis.” Rune’s face grew soft and wistful. “I love the cities that have slipped underwater. I can explore them for hours. They seem preserved somehow. Even the dead, trapped in their cars and homes, feel almost alive.”
Jessa shivered. How close was he to being trapped alive? Coddled into forgetting the life going on out of reach?
He forced a laugh. “Well, that’s cheerful. What are you trying to tell me?”
