Had I said something that triggered Bronson’s attack on Mal? Had I forgotten to say something, to show the Master something that could have spared him that pain? Thurston glanced at me, then examined Petr as though he’d just become aware of him. We slowed and turned off the highway. I wouldn’t think about Malcolm being hurt or any other terrible thing. He was smart and, for once, he had plenty of backup. Everything would go fine. We’d move on, farther north, and time would pass and he’d be released. And then…we’d think about that when we got there.
I squirmed and rubbed my palms against my thighs. I hated riding in cars. Driving was one thing. Driving was control and satisfaction wrapped in horsepower. Riding was being stuck in a box, subject to the whims and mistakes of someone else.
The car roared through a yellow light before swinging into a parking lot. A single window was lit on the second level of a three-story building decorated with thick, white columns and surrounded by palm trees. Someone had gotten up early to meet us.
“Is this the hotel?” I asked. It seemed kind of…puny.
“This is a spa.” Petr pulled on a fedora and climbed out of the car. “Mr. Kelly advised you were in need of a makeover. I took the liberty of scheduling services.”
Hell first, then the hotel.
* * *
Hell might have been an exaggeration since the spa did have an excellent array of cosmetics. But it was starting to feel like purgatory when, a hundred million hours later, Mickey leaned down beside me and smiled at our combined reflection in the giant mirror. It was a startling and impressive change. My hair had been stripped of the green and re-dyed a dark, glossy brown. Extensions added enough length that, instead of ending at my nape, my hair now flowed to my elbows. I’d rejected the “streamlining” of my eyebrows, but my short nails were even, shaped, and painted dark purple. I looked soft and pretty and a touch sophisticated, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the plush leather chair.
“You got this, Petr?” I slung my bag over my shoulder, then had to fix my new hair when it tangled in the strap. He looked up from where he stood at the front desk, tapping away on his phone. The makeover wasn’t my idea, so no way was I paying for it.
“It’s already taken care of. We’ll go to the hotel from here.”
I didn’t want to follow the typed schedule from his folio, and I sure as shit didn’t want to ride in his car anymore. I’d rent a damn dune buggy if I had to. That might actually be fun.
“You know, how about this? We’ve just landed and I’m dying for some of the comforts of home. You know, fast food, movie popcorn, lingerie shopping.”
“Yeesss,” Mickey chimed in. “Let us watch a romantic comedy then buy thongs that match. I’m thinking argyle.”
“Purple argyle,” I suggested before turning back to Petr. “So how about you give me the address and we’ll cab it and meet you later?”
Petr dropped a long silver key attached to a short black key chain into my hand. “There will be no cabbing it. Your car has arrived, as specified.” He slid a single sheet of paper out of his folio and handed it to me. “You cannot take this, so memorize the location. Share it with no one.”
“Will it self-destruct after I read it?”
His mouth drew down and one of his eye’s twitched. Zero sense of humor. The hand-drawn map showed an area east-northeast of Scottsdale. The streets around it weren’t named, only the exit off the 101, and it appeared to lie against a rise that wanted to be a mountain. Not the best directions I’d ever received but not the worst, either. I spent a few minutes reviewing the layout of Phoenix and the surrounding towns before we left, and it was easy to incorporate the turns into my mental navigation system. Exit. Right. Right, left, long curve but don’t take the fork, two rights, and then straight into a dead end. I handed the map back to him.
“Thanks. For all this stuff. The car, setting this up.” Even if I hadn’t wanted long hair and skin that smelled like lavender and old-lady lotion.
“Be in before sunset,” he replied. “Watch your profile and where you go. There is a small hive in town, petitioning for sanctuary with one of the other tribes. This is a human city so they will remain in the shadows, but there is a reason they are no longer allowed in the territories.”
Bad bloodsuckers. How unusual. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
He nodded dismissively, and I pulled Mickey through the door before she tried to go back and get something else waxed.
“I thought vampires did not roam your southern states,” she said as we stepped out of the cool salon into a blistering wall of heat. My mouth fell open and all of my freshly scoured pores dropped dead at the same time.
“If they’re asking humans for sanctuary, they’ve worn out their welcome elsewhere. Churches and developing nations do that sometimes, accept vampires, but usually only the ones they can benefit from.” And usually only in places where the vampires got a season of advanced darkness. I shucked my jacket and raised the key. It was bare. No chip. No fob. I squinted as I glanced around the parking lot, trying to match it to a car. My eyes went wide.
“It’s a Buick Skylark,” Petr said as he came outside. Mickey’s hands clasped together in front of her chest.
“Nineteen sixty-six,” she whispered. “That might be original chrome. Should be a 340-bhp.” When she raised her coffee-colored eyes, they were misty. “How fast do you think you can get her to sixty?”
“Fast.” I’d have to buy sunscreen with SPF 90 if I wanted to leave the top down, but it would be worth it. I took two steps toward the pale blue beauty, then rocked to a stop when I noticed the heat waves shimmering around the limo. “Where’s Thurston?”
Petr fixed the brim of his hat, then nodded in the direction I was looking.
“You left him in the car? It’s a thousand degrees out here!”
“If I’d taken him in—even if they allowed it—I wouldn’t have been able to bring him out.”
“That’s inhumane,” Mickey muttered.
“He’s not human, Miss Fuente.”
I stared at the reflective black glass of the window, inwardly kicking myself. The loner vampire was my responsibility, and while I was bitching about having my hair done, he was trapped in a sweltering box as twilight turned into burning daylight. Nice fucking work, Syd.
“Are you going straight to the hotel?” I asked.
“I will get him under cover as soon as I am able, Miss Franklin,” Petr said. His put-upon tone made me want to slap him. After I slapped myself for being thoughtless.
At least Thurston could cool off soon, presuming that AC worked in the back of the vampire-insulated car. I stomped toward the Skylark, my joy at the new toy quashed. I reminded myself that I hadn’t gotten Thurston into this situation. And, if we were keeping score, I was the reason he still existed. That didn’t make me feel any better.
“Movies first or thong shopping?” Mickey asked, elbowing me in the side.
“Neither.”
“But…shopping!”
A wave of heat rolled out when I opened the door and, over the top of the car, I noticed a white pickup start up on the far side of the parking lot. I glanced at Petr and saw his quick nod, aimed at the other driver. And there was our daytime tail. I hadn’t really expected that Malcolm would be comfortable leaving me unattended, even if my own mother wouldn’t recognize me. Part of that strategizing Petr had been so proud of. It must have meant something to an organization freak like him, being depended upon by vampires. Like having truffle pigs complement your sense of smell.
I got into the car, ignoring the burn of the vinyl, and started the engine. Mickey and I smiled at each other as it roared to life and my mood lifted several levels.
“This is a thing of beauty,” I said. “I’m putting the top down.”
“Great!”
“Then we have to go stake out a laboratory.”
“You buy your thongs from a laboratory?”
Chapter Four
Goya Worldwide’s corporat
e headquarters was a steel and glass campus, glaringly bright on its swath of manicured lawn. It didn’t look like it housed a corporation that had designed a drug that could turn a vampire into a nasty killing machine.
Its website advised that teachers could fill out a form and someone would get back to them within six weeks to set up a tour of the facility. I wasn’t going to sit and wait for a written response while suckers could be losing their minds. Never mind clever strategy. Sometimes you just had to move.
“I’m going in,” I said. Mickey shook her cup and tipped it back until a piece of ice fell into her mouth.
“What’re you going to do? Point a finger and accuse them of designing murder? Because then I’m coming, too, so I can record it.”
“I’m going to give them this look.” I slid my sunglasses halfway down my nose and glared. “Betcha a dollar somebody drops to their knees, wailing their confession within one minute.”
“I am already terrified.” Mickey handed me a dollar. “Go get ’em, tigress.”
My boot heels clicked on the bleached flagstones as I marched toward the tinted glass doors. I took a deep breath. The company looked legit, even pleasant. Hell, they had a family of glass ducks in one of their water effects. There was no way they knew their innocent little “radiant glow” skin serum was killing people. Vampire reactions weren’t the sort of thing the FDA tested for.
The lobby was bright and shiny clean, and the people in it wore suits rather than lab coats. The labs were supposed to be on-site, but with this much square footage, it might take me a week to discover where they were. A security guard glanced up and gave me a slow once-over before returning to watching a bank of screens. No double take. No second look. No scowl. Maybe the makeover did serve a purpose.
The woman at the counter was heavily perfumed and plump enough that the buttons of her coral blouse strained. She didn’t bother to hide her glossy celebrity gossip rag when I walked up. I smiled, and she smiled back enthusiastically. The lobby must have been a lonely place.
Three minutes later I was signed in, wearing a visitor’s security badge and frantically reading the “résumé” Petr had provided as the elevator delivered me to the human resources department. My nerves migrated to my stomach and started slapping at each other. I adjusted my bag and took a deep breath. This wasn’t a new delivery address, full of unknown suckers and poachers trying to jack me en route. All I had to face here were humans.
I opened the door to the HR office. No humans. An empty front desk hosted a plant that looked wilted despite being plastic, and mint-green carpet with tiny pink diamonds on it. A minute passed and nobody came out. Probably they’d gone out for coffee then joined a suicide cult so they wouldn’t have to come back to that depressing-ass desk. I followed voices down a pale yellow hallway and peeked into a break room. Two women stood at the counter, bathed in a haze of burned coffee, their backs to me.
“Just because they’re on the night shift doesn’t mean they’re exempt from procedures,” said a woman with gray, helmet-shaped hair. Beside her, a thin woman with long, shiny black hair shook her head and dumped a handful of creamer packets into her mug. The night shift sounded promising. At least, that’s where I’d start if I were going to be marketing to suckers.
“That’s what I keep telling them, that you can get a piss test twenty-four seven.”
“Hell, most of these guys have something in their system. If they don’t want to go to the clinic, the shift supervisors could have them urinate in a baby food jar, stick a popsicle stick in it, and say they popped positive. They’re not going to file a protest when they know they’re dirty.”
Ah, pee and falsified drug test talk. Before it could get any more awkward, I knocked on the wall and tried to look like I hadn’t been standing there listening. They both turned, the older woman suspicious and the younger one looking flustered. I gave what I hoped was a disarming wave.
“Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I’m here about a job.”
Helmethead attempted to look down her nose at me even though she was a couple of inches shorter. “You missed the job fair by a week and the next one’s not for another three months.”
“You only hire quarterly?”
“Unless you’re a microbiologist,” the other one chimed in. “Or want to work in logistics. That’s warehousing and shipping.”
I didn’t want to do either, but I also didn’t want to give Bronson an excuse to go after Mal. Microbiology didn’t sound like something I could fake my way through.
“I delivered parcels around campus while I was in college,” I ventured. Petr had given me a college degree. Surely he could backfill that fake accomplishment with a part-time job. “Never misplaced a package. I’m organized, and can drive and use a hand truck.” And once I’d driven a forklift through midtown Anchorage with a surfboard full of drunk runners across the raised tines, but somehow I didn’t think disclosing that would help my job prospects.
“Oh, honey,” Helmet said, giving her coworker a look that said she was going to handle this nuisance. She bustled up to me. Her coffee smelled like a tire fire laced with artificial vanilla. “Logistics is a lot of lifting and sweating, and the guys are pretty rough around the edges. Not the sort of place for a girl like you.”
Oh, if only she knew the kind of shit a girl like me handled on a regular basis.
“That’s so weird,” I said, sweetening my voice, “because it sounds like you’re refusing to interview me solely because of my gender. Is that the way this company runs?”
“No.” She shook her head, startled, then shook it again. “That’s not what I meant.”
“So girls like me can apply for logistics positions?” I had a guilty twinge at the idea of twisting her comment to my advantage, but if I found something, I could maybe help to save a life. Also, screw her. I rocked at logistics.
“Talk to Ellen,” she snapped. The younger girl gave me a wide-eyed smile.
Twenty minutes later, I was hired. As a part-time employee I wouldn’t get any overtime. Or benefits. Or breaks. The pay also stunk.
I threw myself into the car. Which had heated to about a million degrees while I was gone. Mickey was stretched like a cat, and had cracked her window only a couple of inches.
“I like this heat,” she said.
“I think my sweat is sweating, but good for you. So I have a job.”
“You vacation weird, but I’m happy for you. Does it pay well?”
“No. Humans don’t pay for shit.”
“But at least they will not bite you.”
“No, they’ll just metaphorically chew you up and spit you out. I have to stop at the mall.”
Mickey sprang upright. “Shopping. Finally.”
* * *
I’d never been the kind of girl who needed a guy around. But as we drove toward Tenth World, I wanted Mal next to me. The landscape, once we left the concrete grid of the city, was like the surface of Mars if NASA had paved a two-lane road straight down the center of it. There was nowhere to turn off and nothing to hide behind. In a rig like the Skylark, perfect for floating down freeways but not so hot in the agility department, I wouldn’t even be able to manage a U-turn. Disturbing as things around us were, Mal was comforting to me.
Mickey glared at the side mirror through a giant new pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses. “I think someone’s following us.”
“That’s the bodyguard.”
“Why do we need a bodyguard? And how do you know?”
Richard Abel had used human mercenaries during the day. He didn’t like humans, and only used them when he thought the job would be easy. He’d sent them after me once for a quick bag job, not knowing that Malcolm was around. It had still been a clusterfuck. At least human bodyguards wouldn’t have to worry about the sun burning them out of existence. Mickey would be gone tomorrow morning, so I didn’t trouble her with that little factoid.
“You didn’t notice him when we came out of Victoria’s Secret? The guy who was really,
really interested in the kelp cellulite scrub kiosk?”
“I was distracted by this new bra. I think it’s turned my boobs up to eleven.”
I laughed and glanced at her. “The American judge gives it a ten-point-oh.”
“You know, this is all very exciting for me. Vampires. Your cah-razy hot boyfriend. Credit cards without limits. But I know that you have things to do, so please do not worry about entertaining me at all times.”
“I think I kind of win that exchange,” I said, “but I do have a few things I have to do before we can hang. I’ll crank them out, though.” Anything related to satisfying Bronson wasn’t on the good kind of to-do list.
The resort loomed ahead of us, five stories of sandstone-colored concrete. The buzz of the undead strummed against my nerves. The ground floor had a few windows tucked deep beneath slate awnings and the only uncovered windows were on the top floor.
“Ooh.” Mickey leaned forward against her seat belt. “You see that? That’s their traditional architecture. I saw it on a documentary. The only daylight is on the top floor, where they keep their feeders. They don’t have to contain them because the only way out is through the building. Since they’re so quick, even if their humans try to run, vampires can catch them before they get to the ground. I mean, that’s how it was before it moved to a voluntary employment basis.”
“They could have jumped off the roof.” I sped up and the truck paced me.
“That’s not escape. That’s suicide.”
“Mickey, you need to be careful around them.” My hands twisted on the wheel as I tried to figure out how to explain. “That sucker PR machine spins day and night, but that’s not what they’re really like. Vampires aren’t humans with more time.”
“I know, I know. They’re predators.”
“It’s not even that. It’s not like they’re constantly on the hunt. They acquire. They’re big into owning things, owning people. Just because they can.”
“Vampires are hoarders?”
Falling from the Light (The Night Runner Series Book 3) Page 5
