by Mindy Klasky
“Forget about the article,” I said without thinking.
“You don’t really mean that.”
Yes, I did.
Strike that. I had meant it, in the split second that it took for me to make the suggestion. But even as I said the words, I knew that Chris was right. I didn’t want him to walk away from the article, from everything he’d worked for. The article was important to him. Journalism was his livelihood. He had to turn in something to the paper, or he would have wasted all the time we’d spent together.
Besides, a tiny voice reminded me. The article had a purpose. It was going to help James, help all the imperials, the entire Eastern Empire. It was going to get Dan Feld off our case, once and for all, if only I fed Chris the right information.
“No,” I said slowly. “You’re right. I don’t really mean that.”
He squared his shoulders, and I could see a net of professionalism settle over him. “I’m almost ready to start writing,” he said. “I’m going to pull my notes together tomorrow. Or is it ‘today’ already?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really care. I wondered what would happen when he was through with the article. Was that going to be it? Would that be the last time I saw him? Or would the article open up another door for us, one where we didn’t have to worry about pesky things like journalistic ethics?
Chris went on, as if I’d given him a verbal answer. “Let me pull my notes together tomorrow, see what gaps I have to fill. Will you meet me on Tuesday morning, after your shift? Away from the courthouse, so that we can talk.”
What had James said on Friday night, when he brought me back into Judge DuBois’s courtroom? I had to get back on the horse? Well, I’d taken a nasty tumble here, in my apartment, throwing myself at a man who clearly wasn’t available. But I could make it right if I just followed the path Chris was clearing for us. I had to see this through. I had to restore the balance. “Tuesday morning,” I agreed.
“How about the public library? The main one, downtown?”
I nodded. The building wasn’t too far from the courthouse. And it was public. There’d be plenty of people around to keep me from making an idiot out of myself. Again.
“They open at nine. Is that too late for you?”
By nine o’clock, I’d be exhausted. But now it seemed more important than ever to finish this process, to get to the end of the interviews, to let Chris write his article.
“Nine is perfect,” I said. I even faked a smile. Then I nodded toward the bucket of paint in the corner. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for carrying that in. And for, um, everything.”
Implied obligation. That’s what I created when I thanked him. For the first time, I truly understood why vampires shied away from the social nicety.
“You’re welcome,” Chris said, holding my gaze for just a fraction of a second too long. “So, I’ll see you on Tuesday.”
I locked the door behind him, and I turned off the porch light once I knew he’d gone.
There’s really only one problem with being a night owl, one problem with sitting up, wide awake, as the hours turn from one to two to three to four: you can’t call your best friend, just to chat. You can’t share the dating fiasco that your life has become. You can’t even try to work out your best friend’s problems, figure out what’s real and what’s imagined, what’s just a big misunderstanding.
When you’re a night owl, you have to face everything alone, asking yourself the same questions in a thousand different ways. And even when you fall asleep at dawn, even when you toss and turn in feverish, restless sleep during normal people’s daytime, your dreams keep asking you the same questions, over and over, without any hint of offering up an answer.
CHAPTER 10
IT WAS HARD to concentrate at work on Monday night; my mind kept drifting back to the mess I’d made of things with Chris. I tried to devote myself to clearing a backlog of paper from my inbox.
At least it was a slow night. By 11:30, the human attorneys had all finished their business. I began to think about the vampire proceedings in Judge DuBois’s courtroom, wondering how many witnesses were left to call, how long it would be before Karl Schmidt took the stand in his own defense, how long before the case finally drew to an end. I could picture Clarice Martin, standing beside her client in her flawless suit, her expertly bobbed hair glinting in the overhead lights as she asked her questions with all the tenacity of a bulldog.
“Miss Anderson.”
The voice made me leap up from my desk. Clarice Martin herself was standing at the counter, as if my speculation had somehow conjured her into existence. One of James’s hired guards, a vampire, stood at attention behind her, like a dark-suited shadow policing the imperial attorney’s free passage through the courthouse.
I thought about crossing myself, even though I’d never been a religious person. Instead, I settled on being polite. “May I help you?”
“I need a copy of the criminal information from Clans versus Holmgren.” She rattled off a case number, which I automatically wrote down on the pad of paper I kept lined up beside my keyboard.
“That’s from 1952,” I said, parsing the number to get the date. “It’s not scanned into the system.”
“I’ll wait while you retrieve it.”
Gee. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
I had to run down five flights of stairs to the Old Library, find the file, and climb back up the five flights. The ancient photocopy machine in my office had already overheated twice that evening; I’d have to find one that was working in another office, somewhere down the hall. “It might take me half an hour.”
“Then you’d best get started, so that we don’t keep Judge DuBois waiting.”
I forced myself to smile politely. “Why don’t you go on to the courtroom? I’ll bring it once I’ve retrieved the file.”
“Miss Anderson, are you refusing to promptly produce a document legally requested by defense counsel?”
“No, I— “
“If you’d prefer, I can go into the courtroom right now and tell Judge DuBois that his clerk is being insubordinate.”
“I’m not— “
She looked at the huge clock on the wall. “Then you’d best hurry. I certainly don’t intend to keep His Honor waiting.”
I gritted my teeth and locked down my computer with a password.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have left Clarice Martin alone in my office. I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw the decrepit three-ton monitor on my desk. I exchanged a tight look with James’s guard, though. He nodded at my unspoken question, like a Marine accepting an assignment. He’d watch over Clarice. He’d make sure that nothing went wrong.
In the end, it took me over an hour to complete my task. The case number that Clarice had given me didn’t match up with the name. I had to page through all the records from 1952, lugging dusty file after dusty file over to the huge table in the Old Library. Nothing. No Holmgren, anywhere. I was going to give up altogether, when I forced myself to try to think like a vampire. The passage of time meant almost nothing to them. They were lousy at keeping records, and a couple of juxtaposed digits wouldn’t matter much to their way of thinking.
Sure enough, Clans v. Holmgren was a 1925 case. I hefted the file, locked the door, and started to climb the stairs.
With each step, though, I became more suspicious of Clarice Martin. I hadn’t taken the time to read through the entire Holmgren case once I finally located it, but at first glance it had absolutely nothing to do with the action against Karl Schmidt. Holmgren had been brought up on charges of swearing a false oath to the Clans. No blood herds, no extortion. Not even a hint of money laundering.
A shiver of apprehension pricked my spine. I’d been working at the court for three weeks, and Clarice hadn’t needed a single document until now. She’d certainly never come to my office, with or without her silent vampire guard.
I took the rest of the steps two at a time, and I flew down the hall to the nearest security phone.
I lifted the red handset and punched in 9-1-1 on the telephone keypad. The emergency code would page James wherever he was in the building, automatically indicating where I stood.
I pawed through the dusty green file, skimming over the information again. Holmgren had been brought before the court on a minor claim, the equivalent of a human misdemeanor. I knew that I only had one year of mundane law school under my belt, but I couldn’t see how the action against Holmgren could possibly fit into the one unfolding in Judge DuBois’s courtroom.
“Sarah,” James said, as he turned the corner into the hallway. “What is it?”
I shoved the case file toward toward him. “Clarice Martin had me retrieve this for her. She strong-armed me into getting it, insisted that she needed it for tonight’s session, but then she gave me the wrong case number. And when I look at the case, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Schmidt.”
Okay. When I recited it like that, it sure didn’t seem like anything was really wrong. What was one more pushy attorney, demanding a document? What was a lousy transposition of numbers on a file? Who was I to judge which cases were relevant to a defense and which were not?
But there was something out of order. Something not in place. Something was wrong. I felt it tugging at me like the same compulsion that made me iron my permanent press sheets, the same urge that drove me to fold my socks into perfect thirds before placing them in my underwear drawer.
I braced for James to tell me I was insane. Instead, he said, “Well, Martin’s in the courtroom now. She’s been there since the session opened, at midnight sharp.” Of course he knew that. It was his job to know the whereabouts of suspicious characters, whenever they were in the vicinity.
He took the folder out of my hand and started paging through the file, quick-stepping back to my office. I jogged beside him, explaining, “I only left her there because of your guard.”
“My guard?”
“One of the…” I glanced around the public hallway, reluctant to say the word “vampire.” “One of the security specialists you called in two weeks ago.”
James’s shot a look at me, and his stride lengthened. “Braxton?”
“I don’t know his name. He was in the courtroom the other night, though. Standing near the defense table.”
“He phoned in sick tonight. I haven’t had time to replace him.”
He hadn’t been sick. I’d seen him right there. In flesh and blood. Well, flesh anyway. And whatever passed for blood in a vampire’s veins when he wasn’t feeding. I’d left him in my office, put him in charge of watching Clarice Martin. James and I broke into a run at the same time.
The door to the clerk’s office gaped wide. There was no one in sight. I glanced at my computer. The mundane locked screen still displayed on my monitor, blind Justice turning eternally, holding up her unbalanced scales.
James headed to the door marked Staff Only. He planted his palm in the middle of the A, shoving the door back with enough force that it hit the wall behind. I dashed after him as he got to his office, as he shook the doorknob. It was locked firmly, refusing to yield, even when he yanked on it twice.
Obviously not satisfied, James stalked back to my office. His nostrils flared as he tested the air, as if he were confirming my story, verifying that Clarice and Braxton had both been there. I edged back to my desk, staring at my computer screen as if I could divine what Clarice had been up to, as if I could judge what she had manipulated.
And then I saw it.
The side drawer on my desk was splintered. It had taken a fair amount of force for someone to pull it out of place; I kept it locked all the time.
“James,” I said, pointing, and my voice broke on his name.
He saw the broken lock in an instant. He yanked on the drawer hard enough to pull everything to the front. “What’s missing?” he demanded.
“I— “ I glanced at the jumble, already itching to put the thumbtacks and staples, the ruler and highlighters back in order.
“Sarah, you know this. What’s missing?”
“The key,” I said, my belly dropping as I realized the answer. “The key to the supply closet.”
James swore and turned on his heel. I followed James to the door that Clarice or Braxton had used my key to access. They’d been clever enough to shut things up when they were done; James had to dig out his own key, jam it into the lock.
Chaos. An entire bank of heavy metal shelving had been pulled from the wall, sending dozens of three-ring binders crashing to the ground. It looked as if some enraged superhero had smashed his way through the gypsum board behind the shelves, ripping through the dusty material with heavy fists.
James kept up a constant stream of oaths as he ducked through the ruined wall. He had to lower his head, and he turned to the side to avoid a metal support, but nothing kept him from passing into the next room. From passing into his own office.
Gypsum footprints—broad wing-tips traced in white dust—told the rest of the story. Braxton had crossed James’s office. He had ripped the drawers out of the mahogany desk. In frustration or out of spite, he’d tossed the largest one across the room, crashing it into the wall above the credenza. The glass decanter that had once held cinnamon water was shattered.
“God damn it!” James shouted, lunging for his phone.
“What?” I asked, but he was already shouting at the person who answered after he punched in four digits.
“Level Five,” he said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Level Five now!”
As he crashed the phone back onto its receiver, I asked, “What is going on?”
“He took a thumb drive with confidential information.”
“How can you be sure?”
For answer, he merely snarled, grabbing my arm and marching me back to my desk. “Sit,” he said. “Do not leave here with anyone other than me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but— “ He was gone before I could ask for more information, before I could offer to help in any way.
My heart pounding, I tried to pull up my computer files. Maybe, just possibly, there was something in the staff manual about “Level Five”, whatever that was. If I couldn’t find it in the human records, I might be able to locate it on the vampire side. When I tried to break out of the screensaver, though, the computer refused to accept my password. I tried three times, typing each letter and number as precisely as my trembling fingers would let me, but the system was completely shut down.
I forced myself to go through my breathing exercises, calming my heart rate, slowing my breath. When one cycle still left me feeling wildly out of control, I tried a second, then a third. Only when I was swaddled in an eerie sense of false calm did I start to sort through my splintered desk drawer, restoring order to my forlorn office supplies.
I’d done this. I’d let Braxton into my office. I’d asked him to stay. Trusted him to keep an eye on things.
I went back over my conversation with Clarice. She’d played me the entire time, manipulated me to get me out of the way. Even when I’d paged James, I’d wasted valuable time. I’d been so stupid. Clarice had never wanted access to my desk, to my office. Her entire goal had been to leave Braxton behind, to go into Judge Dubois’s courtroom as if nothing at all was happening out of the ordinary. She’d let James’s hired muscle do her dirty work.
A full hour passed. Another. Half of a third.
I started to head down to the courtroom half a dozen times. In the crush of questioning Clarice, James must have forgotten about me, forgotten that he’d ordered me to wait for him. Each time I got to my office door, though, I pictured the unadulterated rage on his face. I could not violate his express command. I could not leave my office.
Not when I already had so much to atone for.
My eightieth round of self-condemnation was interrupted by my office door slamming open, crashing back on its hinges with enough force that the entire wall behind it shuddered. Without thinking, I leaped up from my desk, landing in a p
rotective crouch that would have made James proud. If, that was, James had been anywhere in sight.
Instead, Eleanor Owens filled the doorway. She’d drawn her gun before making her Rambo entry; she held the firearm in both hands, her wrists locked firmly in front of her. With a sweeping motion, she took in my entire office, apparently confirming that I was alone, that no one was actually doing anything dangerous, like filing a motion in a case. Or, you know, holding me hostage.
Eleanor’s nostrils twitched as she pounced into the room. I barely had time to notice her emerald eyeshadow, matching mascara, and trashy pseudo-jade jewelry before she pushed past me, revolver still at the ready. “Watch her!” she shouted over her shoulder as she leaped through the Staff Only door.
Only then did I realize that the bailiff was not alone on her commando raid of the clerk’s office. Alex Bennett followed behind her. He looked far less threatening, slight as ever, almost disappearing in his all-black wardrobe. The color heightened his ordinary pallor, shrinking him, making him seem even more ineffectual than usual. Except for the steel poniard in his hand. I was willing to bet that he could hit a moving target at twenty paces. His fingers just looked competent on the pommel.
For one fleeting moment, I thought of the stock of weapons down in the Old Library. I wished that I had taken something when I retrieved Clarice’s file—anything, one of the staffs, or a sword. Even if I didn’t know how to use the weapon, I longed for something substantial in my hand. I was pretty sure that the closest thing I had to a stake—a sharpened pencil—wasn’t going to cut it.
Not that I needed a weapon. Not yet. Alex was protecting me.
Or so I gathered, after he slammed shut my office door and pushed me into the corner behind my desk. He turned his back to me, the better to watch over the entrance. Trying to control my ragged breathing, I croaked, “What the hell is going on?”
Alex merely growled, a surprisingly menacing sound from a sprite.
“Where is James?” I insisted. “Alex?” Before I could make him answer me, Eleanor strode back into the office. “Eleanor! What are you doing here?”
