by Kat Cotton
“This is the best-rated cafe in Prague,” the mayor said.
“Is that a rating for best coffee or, like, an overall cafe rating where people care more about the decor and the service? Because I don’t trust decor reviews. I’d eat in a garbage can if the coffee tasted good.”
“Let’s find out,” he said.
He walked over to a table away from the other customers, next to the shelves of battered hardcover books and the fake deer head mounted on the wall.
I picked up the laminated menu from the table. A full breakfast with extra bacon on the side. Yep, that was for me. It might be the middle of the afternoon, but as far as I was concerned, any time was breakfast time.
“So, what’s up?” the mayor asked after we’d ordered some food.
“Huh?”
“You work for the Council, one simple job, and you get protection for your boyfriend and your… whatever. Surely, it’s a no-brainer. I know you can be stubborn, but you’re not that stupid. And those guys are in danger, real danger. Not only is there that ‘kill on sight’ order on all vampires, but they helped you escape. They both rank pretty high on the Council’s shit list.”
I still didn’t trust the mayor, but I had to talk this out.
“Doesn’t it seem to be all a little too convenient?” I asked. “All the pieces falling into place like that? It makes me feel I’ve been set up. And if I agree to this, what happens when I no longer have the leverage of the undead alchemist? Nic and Kisho are screwed, then.”
The mayor wrapped his hands around his coffee cup and narrowed his eyes. “You’re not as stupid as you let on.”
“Thanks. Hey, wait. What do you mean by that?”
“Either way, it’s a setup. At the moment, you have the leverage. The Council are losing patience. Give them the runaround a bit longer, and they’ll cut their losses. They just need someone who’ll work outside the bounds of the Council. That doesn’t have to be you. It could be those German brothers, although they are a bit ax-happy. There are a bunch of other people they could use, and if they decide on that, not just you but your friends will be screwed. Take the deal, Clementine. Buy yourself some time. It’s the only way, really.”
Yeah, that was a way that benefited the mayor, too. He wasn’t so impartial, but I couldn’t deny the sense in what he’d said.
“Okay, I want total freedom for Nic and Kisho. They’re to stay at the same hotel as us, and they are not to be harmed. If any damage happens to either of them, I will take down the entire Council.”
My wrists buzzed, but I didn’t care.
“I’ll see what I can do,” the mayor said. “Great coffee here, by the way.”
We headed back to the hotel, where I had nothing to do but wait for the mayor to negotiate with the Council. Hell, what if it was all a trap? In a way, it was a relief to have given in, though. I couldn’t wait it out forever, and now, at least, I’d be with Kisho.
Finally, the mayor knocked on my door.
“You’ve got the all-clear,” he said. “They’ve agreed to your terms, but we have two weeks. No time to waste.”
There sure wasn’t. I needed to see Kisho, and I needed that immediately.
I pressed Kisho’s number. No zap. Awesome.
He answered. “Clem!”
“Hi, baby. I’m out of the clink.”
God. I’d always known that at some point in my life, I’d say those words to someone, but I’d never thought the circumstances would be this fucked up.
I filled Kisho in on the details.
“The mayor? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. But what can I do? I didn’t exactly have any say in the matter.”
He discussed it with Nic.
“Tell Nic there’s nothing to talk about. You’re in danger unless you get here.”
That guy could be so stubborn, but I needed him to agree to this. I could hear Kisho talking to him. But what was there to discuss?
“Okay,” Kisho said. “Nic and I are checking out of here and moving to your hotel.”
I gave Kisho my room number. “Get your butt over here, asap. We have a lot of sex to catch up on.”
Chapter 11 Breakfast
THE MAYOR WANTED TO go over his notes about the alchemist with me while we waited for Nic and Kisho to arrive, but that was a waste of time. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t focus. I kept sniffing Kisho’s jacket, but his smell had dulled since he gave it to me. Soon Kisho would be here, sharing my bed. I’d be able to wrap my arms around him and smell the real thing.
The mayor had tried to organize a twin room for them. I wasn’t having a bar of that.
“No way. Kisho and I are sharing a room. You know it’s going to end up like that, so we might as well start out that way. Anyway, it’ll work out cheaper, save expenses. You’ll just need to get a single room.”
He booked a single room for Nic. The only one available was on the same floor but on the other side of the hotel. We turned left at the reception desk; Nic would turn right. That suited me. I didn’t want Nic right next door to me. Having the mayor that close would be bad enough once Kisho got here.
It was weird that the rooms were in such short supply. As far as I could tell, there were very few people staying at this hotel. Maybe the long-term booking thing limited the availability. They seemed to get busloads of tourists turning up for a night or two.
“So, did you get that, Clementine?” the mayor asked.
He’d been talking, but I hadn’t been listening. “Not really,” I said.
I checked the time. What was taking them so long? I couldn’t wait to make Kisho smile and see those awesome dimples appear at the corners of his mouth. Or that deep frown he got when he concentrated, making two vertical lines on his forehead.
I couldn’t wait to see Nic, either. All the snark built up inside me was wasted on the mayor. He just chuckled.
I jumped up at the sound of a knock.
“Who’s there?” the mayor asked. He gave me a warning look.
Screw that. I wanted to fling the door open. It wasn’t like it’d be anyone else.
“Me.”
Of course it was Nic. Stupid mayor and his safety precautions. I rushed out into the hallway and threw my arms around Kisho. He was safe and well and right here with me. I squeezed him so tight that my arms ached, but even that wasn’t enough squeezing for my liking.
Nic pushed the pair of us into the room.
“If you’re going to kiss, do it in your room, not out in the hallway. No one wants to see that. There could be kids staying here.”
“We aren’t kissing, we’re hugging,” I said. “It’s Europe. Hugging is a normal greeting here.”
I punched Nic on the arm, then flung myself on the bed with Kisho.
“Nic!” the mayor said, as though they were long-lost besties.
Nic smiled at the mayor. I’d say that was his third best charming smile. The mayor did his “swell guy” smile back. The two of them could keep going like that for hours, trying to out-smile each other, but it really wasn’t a spectator sport. They could do that elsewhere.
“Go, do stuff. Whatever. We’ll see you in the morning,” I said.
“Not too early,” Kisho added, then nibbled on my neck.
“You two are so gross,” Nic said. “All that lovey-dovey stuff.”
I made a face at him. “So? Get out of my room, and you won’t have to see it.”
With that, Nic stomped off down the hallway.
“You do have to work. Remember that, Clementine. We have two weeks.” With that, the mayor left too.
Kisho grabbed my hands. “You still have the cuffs.”
I nodded. “I don’t even want to think too much about it. There’s no point even trying to—”
I jolted back. Damn cuffs.
Kisho nodded, then kissed me. As I linked my arms around his neck, I wondered if I thought just a little about escaping, not enough to fry myself but just enough, if t
hat would be a total turn-on.
It was only when Kisho sank his teeth into my neck that I thought of something else.
“How have you been feeding?” I asked him.
I tensed. I didn’t want to think of him burying his teeth into another girl’s neck, but I could hardly expect him to starve. He was my Kisho, and feeding could be so intimate. He’d be touching her and putting his lips on her and things would get all hot…
“Nic has a source here. We got some blood bags. It’s too risky to feed with that kill order out. But you are so much nicer.”
I grinned. That might not be the best food source for Kisho, but it made me happy that he hadn’t been near anyone else. As much as Nic liked to tease me about Kisho’s slutty side, he’d been the most faithful boyfriend I’d ever had. And snuggly and nice-smelling, with a totally hot body.
I sank into his arms and didn’t surface until breakfast the next morning.
I’d barely slept. Who wanted to sleep after they’d been reunited with their gorgeous boyfriend?
Before I could get to the breakfast buffet, Nic came to our room.
“We need an escape plan,” he said. “This situation is okay to buy us time, but it’s not going to work in the long run. I can thrall you again and—”
“Nope. The Council are onto that. There’s some anti-thrall shit added to the cuffs.”
“Speaking of…” Nic got out his phone. “I need photos. Andre’s going to do some research into them. I’m not sure the photos will help, since they don’t exactly have a model number on them, but he’s asked for them.”
Nic took a bunch of photos.
“Luis and Shelley are doing the research, anything they can find about this guy. Luis knows everyone in the vampire community. He’s putting out feelers. But once we get near the two-week mark, we need to get out of this place, no matter what.”
“Sweet,” I said. “But first, I need breakfast. I’m human, remember? I die without food. No point worrying about escape if I’m going to starve to death first.”
I went to the breakfast room and loaded up my plate. As I sat down, the mayor came into the room and waved at me.
“The ghost tour is the best way,” the mayor said, sitting down at my table. “That’s where he grabs his victims. You go on the tour and try to lure him out.”
“Yeah, but it seems like there are a zillion ghost tours going on in this city. Which tour? This doesn’t seem efficient.”
“He’s been attacking every two or three days, so tonight would be good. You can keep doing the tours. It’s not like you only have one shot at this.”
“I only have one shot at not being bored to death by the tours, though.”
“It’s work, Clementine, not pleasure.”
“Are you coming with me?” I grinned at him, pretty sure what the answer to that would be.
“Hell, no. People are being attacked by vampires on those tours.”
The mayor buttered his croissant. Didn’t he realize that much butter on his croissant might well be a recipe for heart disease? I stuck to the healthy stuff, like bacon and eggs. Even if they’d been sitting in a food warmer for a while and the eggs had kind of gone funny and congealed, they tasted fine and were an awesome source of protein.
“Today, we’re going to investigate alchemy.”
“Yay.” I clapped my hands. I wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic. Alchemy sounded like fun. “Can Kisho come with us?”
“I told you, this is work, not pleasure.”
“But he can help. And he’d be bored stuck at the hotel without me. He can come on the ghost tour, too.”
“The undead alchemist will know if you have another vampire with you. He’s not going to attack you if that’s the case.”
He pulled out his phone and checked his messages. I stole some of his croissant while he did that.
“You know this is a buffet, right?” he said. “You can help yourself to the food. You don’t need to eat mine.”
“But food tastes better from someone else’s plate. You learn that fast when you’re an orphan.”
“Come on, then, Annie. We’ve got work to do.”
“Yeah, right. I love you, Miss Hannigan.” But I grabbed my stuff and followed him out of the breakfast room. “And Kisho can come with us for the alchemy stuff, right? He’s awesome at research.”
The mayor didn’t answer, but his nostrils twitched. I took that as a yes.
Chapter 12 Alchemy
“THERE ARE TWO ALCHEMY museums,” the mayor said as we took the tram. “The second one is more like a cheap tourist attraction, so I’m not sure if it’s worth visiting.”
“Oh, hell, yeah, it is,” I said. “It might have important information that we’d miss otherwise.”
Actually, it sounded like more fun. I loved a cheap tourist attraction.
“True,” said Kisho. “Even if it seems irrelevant at the time, it’s worth checking out.”
“Checking out,” I said, giving him finger guns and a huge grin.
He looked puzzled. I thought he’d done the Czech pun on purpose.
We got to the first museum but had to wait to do the tour.
“Any good cake shops nearby?” I asked.
The museum woman pointed us to a place down the street.
“Clementine, you just had breakfast,” the mayor said.
“This is cake. It’s different. It’ll assist in our investigation.”
While I ate my delicious little raspberry cake, Kisho and the mayor discussed alchemy. Kisho had read up all about it. Fine for him, but research really wasn’t my forte. I was more of a hitting things or trying to have sex with them type of person. It might not be the most logical plan, but it’d served me well. You’ve got to use what you’ve got in this world.
We headed back to the museum. The woman running the place asked for our money. The mayor paid and Kisho paid, then she looked at me.
I shrugged and looked at the mayor.
“You don’t have any money of your own?” he asked. “I just paid for your cake.”
“I don’t have any Czech money.”
“We accept Euros,” the woman said.
“Nope, none of that either.”
The mayor sighed. “You could run to the bank and get some.”
I leaned on the counter. “The lady needs to run her tour,” I said. “We can’t expect her to get behind schedule just so I can go to the bank. It’s not like I’m here of my own volition, anyway.”
The mayor got his wallet back out. Screw him. I wasn’t getting paid for this job, and I couldn’t run my business at a loss. He wanted all that gold at the end of it, so he could front up with some cash.
We followed the guide into the back room. It looked like a typical olden-days study with an old desk in one corner and a bookcase along one entire wall. Well, okay, there were probably more stuffed animals than in a normal study, and more random weird things.
The guide talked about the history of Prague and alchemy. I let Kisho and the mayor absorb all that while I poked around. There were some cool scrolls on the desk. I picked one up. I couldn’t actually read it, since it wasn’t in English. And, from the feel of the paper, it wasn’t authentic.
“Please don’t touch the display,” the guide said.
She kept talking about the history of Prague and the king. This stuff wouldn’t actually help our investigation. Then she mentioned the philosopher’s stone. I’d heard of that.
“So, is it a real thing?” I asked. “How do I get one?”
“That’s a question that’s plagued alchemists for generations,” she said. “No one knows if it exists. Many people think it’s more of a metaphor than a real object.”
Metaphors didn’t make gold. I knew enough about science to know that.
The guide kept talking, then she fiddled with something and the bookcase slid open to reveal a secret passage. Hells. That was my dream, to have one of those bookcases.
We followed her through the s
ecret door and down some twisty stairs to a passage underground to see the alchemy labs. I wasn’t really sure if this tour was helping any. It might be informative, but it wasn’t like I could ask the guide if she knew of any vampire alchemists working in the city.
Kisho had his notebook out, taking down everything she said, and the mayor took a thousand photos, but most of this was just what we’d read in books.
“Are there any other alchemy labs in the city, or just this one?” I asked her.
“There were labs in various locations in the city. In Powder Town and in the castle. Of course, we don’t know where all the labs were. And because Old Town is now a World Heritage Site, no one can excavate to find them.”
Damn. That guy could have his lab anywhere. We didn’t even know where to start looking.
The mayor and Kisho asked a stack of questions at the end of the tour, but I was done. If she couldn’t tell me where the alchemist was or how to make gold, I didn’t need to know the finer details.
After that, we headed across the river to the other museum.
“Clementine, you could try to act more interested,” the mayor said. “You didn’t take any of that in.”
“Yeah, I did. There was this olden-days king, Rudolph. He shagged around and had like a hundred kids, but he was a bit of a whack job with knob rot, so he got all these alchemists to come to the city to fix that shit. But most of them were frauds, so he killed them. Also, there is no such thing as a philosopher’s stone. Is that right?”
The mayor sighed. “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but, yes, that’s about it.”
“You forgot about the extraction process of herbs,” Kisho said. “There’s quite a lot of specialized equipment used in that. Remember, she said the alchemists had to make their own equipment. But, still, the vampire alchemist needs to either buy the equipment somewhere or the supplies to make it. Also, he’d need to gather the herbs.”
Yeah, that made sense. I’d been super-smart, making the mayor include Kisho in this outing, because it totally meant I didn’t need to be smart myself. It was like outsourcing the smarts.
