by Kat Cotton
He nodded.
We tried to say goodbye to Nic and the mayor, but I wasn’t even sure if they noticed us leaving. They were too busy discussing their hair and the best hair products. I was pretty sure the mayor had his hand on Nic’s knee.
As we left the bar, I was aware of that presence lurking behind us again.
“Maybe I should go back?” I said to Kisho. “Nic’s not fully functional. We shouldn’t leave him.”
But now that I’d sobered up a bit, I realized whoever was following us wasn’t human.
“There’s a vampire following us,” I whispered to Kisho.
“I know.” He nodded. “But they aren’t going to hurt us. They’re just curious.”
That made me feel much better about leaving Nic behind. Anyway, he was with the mayor, who was the best buddy of the Council. He’d be safe. Well, safe from the Council, not from my mocking. That would never end. We’d gotten thrown out of a bar because he was so drunk. He could never call me uncouth again. The whole night had been worth it, just for that.
Chapter 17 Dash of Shame
I GOT UP EARLY THE next morning to make sure I could hit the breakfast buffet before all the good stuff was gone. You had to be on the ball about that kind of thing, especially when those German tourists were around.
If I slipped a jacket over my PJs, I’d be adequately dressed for breakfasting, and it would give me enough pockets to stow some food away for later. The mayor had kept up his draconian food rationing policy, and Nic had told the old guy not to let me charge things to his room, either. I needed enough supplies to get me through the day.
Best to not get showered and dressed, since I’d go straight back to bed after I ate, anyway. I slipped my phone into my pocket so I could review the photos and video from last night while I ate.
Before I left the room, I nudged Kisho. “Sure you don’t want anything?”
He groaned and turned over. Did vampires get hangovers? ’Cause it sure looked like one to me. Oh, well, it wasn’t like he needed to eat. I’d go to breakfast alone.
As I shut the door gently behind me, a movement in the hallway caught my eye.
Was that the mayor going to breakfast? Damn. I’d have to sit with him and chat, and I didn’t like to talk to people in the morning. But, bonus, I could show him the video of himself. Watching the mayor cringe at his drunken antics would be the sweetest breakfast of all.
Holy crap, that was not the mayor coming out of his room.
Nic?
Oh, it was most definitely Nic. He’d spotted me and had pressed himself against the wall as though he could blend into the brown paisley wallpaper. Ha, as if I couldn’t see him. So he’d been drunk as a skunk, and now he was leaving the mayor’s room in the early morning light, looking all dissolute and shamefaced. It didn’t take a genius in deductive reasoning to work out what had happened there.
Ha.
Double ha.
I stared, my mouth not catching up to my brain. All the things I could say swam in my head. Before they came flooding out, he rushed past me, running down the corridor to his own room. I’d never seen Nic move so fast, and he had vampire speed.
This was way more important than breakfast, and I didn’t often say that. I fumbled with the lock to my door, my hands shaking with excitement.
“Wake up, Kisho!” I jumped on the bed beside him, shaking him awake.
“Err…” He put his pillow over his head.
I shook him harder. “Wake up. I have gossip. Major gossip.”
“Arrgughgh.” Kisho tried to turn away, but I grabbed his shoulders. Why did he have to be so fuzzy-headed at a time like this? He needed to know this, and, more importantly, I needed to tell someone. This gossip burned inside me. If I didn’t get it out soon, I’d explode.
“Listen up. Guess who was leaving the mayor’s room just now?”
“Huh?”
This wasn’t working. I pushed him back and jumped on top of him, straddling his waist. He didn’t wake up, but he did stroke my thighs. That distracted me for a second.
“Wake up, I tell you. Scandal is no fun if it’s not shared. Jeez, I’ll have to ring Luis. What’s the time difference?”
“What are you talking about?” He rubbed his eyes. That was so fucking gorgeous. “Who was leaving the mayor’s room?”
“Who do you think?”
I tickled my fingers down his chest. I loved that chest.
“A maid? The old guy on reception?” He rubbed his eyes again. “Someone from the Demon Fighters’ Council?” He wasn’t even trying.
“Not even close.”
“Who?”
If he kept scrunching his face up like that, we’d end up making out before I could get this gossip out.
“Nic.” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Nic!”
“Nic? Leaving the mayor’s room?”
“Yes. Just now. And acting very guilty.”
Kisho screwed up his face as though he was trying to put the pieces together. Then he broke into a huge grin. “You’re kidding me!”
“Nope. I saw it with my own two eyes. Wearing the same clothes he had on last night, too, except he had his jacket over his shoulder and his shirt unbuttoned and his tie hanging loose. Then he did the walk of shame past me. Well, the vampire dash of shame. Oh, it was so awesome. This is the best thing ever. Nic and the mayor. Bonking. Boinking. Rubbing uglies. This is better than the drunken antics last night.”
“Nic and the mayor, huh? Clem, you shouldn’t tease him. He’ll probably be very sensitive about this.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t tease him. But, you know, that would be totally going against my nature. It would just build up inside me until one day I explode from holding it in. So, teasing Nic is really a health issue.”
Kisho reached for the phone on the bedside table.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Calling Luis.”
I lunged, grabbing the phone from his hands.
“No way. You are not calling Luis. This is my gossip. I’m calling him.”
Kisho pushed me back against the mattress, pinning me down. It was so rare for him to be that dominating, I almost forgot the whole Nic and the mayor thing. I wrapped my legs around him. He’d gotten hard so fast. Maybe this gossip stuff could wait until after we had sex.
He pried the phone out of my fingers.
He’d been playing me. Kisho!
“No way, mister. You’ve been around Nic way too long with those dirty tricks.”
I grabbed the phone from him. You couldn’t steal other people’s gossip like that.
Kisho rested his head on my shoulder as I called.
“Anyway,” I said as the phone rang, “I was the one who saw all the juicy details.”
It was a good thing I’d been dead to the world last night, or I’d have probably heard them going at it. Then I wondered who else I could tell about this. Portia Manchelli, maybe, only I wasn’t talking to her. Francine. No, that might hurt her. Luis would be enough. He’d better pick up his phone or this exploding thing would happen sooner rather than later.
Luis finally answered, and he squealed when I told him. A totally satisfying squeal. “The mayor? The mayor and Nic? No way.”
After I’d told Luis all the details, of which there actually weren’t that many, and had gotten out my phone and sent him all the photos and video, he said he had an update on the undead alchemist.
“This isn’t nearly as entertaining as your news, but there are three alchemists it could be. Of course, some of this could be complete bullshit. These old vamps like to spread it around that they were somebodies in their human life. They call themselves some famous name like Machiavelli, but it ends up they were just Mario the plumber before they turned.”
I laughed. “Yeah, wankers.”
I put my phone on speaker so Kisho could listen too. He grabbed the little pad and pen off the desk.
“So, there is one guy, Albrecht. He claims to have done a
ll kinds of amazing stuff in Prague at one point. Then he disappeared for a few centuries. He was seen around Europe a lot a few decades ago—he was really into the disco scene, for some reason. That’s the last anyone heard of him. He could’ve been staked, or he could’ve taken too many drugs. It’s hard to know. Then there’s the Magical Baron. More of a magician than an alchemist. No one knows much about him other than that he exists. The last is Philbert Marley. Alchemist. Another one who’s disappeared and reappeared through the last couple of centuries. He’s a wily guy. Anyway, they seem the most legit of all the vampires I’ve looked into. I’ll do more digging.”
“Thanks a bunch, Luis. That’s fantastic.”
“Yep, Clem. Got to run now. I’ve got to spread this news. I’ve got some background info on those guys, so I’ll send it through.”
Kisho gave me a nod. He had all that.
Chapter 18 Morning After
KISHO BANGED ON NIC’S door, but there was no answer. He’d been in there all day, not opening the door and not answering when we called. He had to come out some time, though, and Kisho and I had decided that time was now.
“Open up, Nic. We know you’re in there,” I said. “You can’t hide forever.”
Finally, the door creaked open and Nic came out, looking way too haughty. Everything about him suggested false bravado.
I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
He walked down the hallway to the chairs in the lobby and threw himself into one. Of course he sat in the chair with the best light. He wasn’t that hung over. He picked up a faded travel brochure and looked through it as though it was most fascinating literature he’d ever read.
After asking the old guy at the desk for coffee, Kisho and I sat down opposite him, and I grinned at him until he looked away.
“Have we made any progress on getting you free?” Nic asked.
As he said that, my arms tingled. “Well, no, since last night was a huge failure. You said vampires don’t get drunk, but you neglected the bit about absinthe.”
Nic dropped the brochure onto the table. He actually sat up straight and made eye contact with me. “Absinthe? It was the absinthe?”
I nodded. “I Googled it last night. I’d have told you, but you were way too far gone by that stage. You were a mess.”
I hated to be that person, the “morning after” person. The “You were so drunk last night” and the “Don’t you remember what you did?” person. The one who stays sober then drags up everything from the night before and takes pleasure in rubbing in every embarrassing thing you said and did. But—well, no, I didn’t hate it, not one little bit. I enjoyed every twitch of embarrassment Nic made. If it’d been anyone but Nic, I might have gone easy, but this was payback time.
And, seriously, the mayor. The guy who’d tried to kill him. Twice. That was never going to be a match made in heaven.
“Also, every time I tried to ask the mayor about the cuffs, you changed the subject. Don’t you remember?”
He so didn’t remember. This would have been much more hilarious if it hadn’t been about my freedom.
I reached over and patted Nic’s knee. “Did you have a good time last night?” I asked him. Then I winked, just to make sure he got my point.
“Ah, yeah. I guess.”
I smirked. Even Kisho smirked.
“Does he give you tingly feels?” I asked Nic.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. But he turned his head away.
“Oh, he so does. Are they tingly feels here?” I pointed to the place where his heart would have been if he’d had one. “Or down there?”
Nic still didn’t look at me, but he made a general motion to his body areas, all over.
“Did I give you tingly feels?” I shouldn’t ask, but I needed to know.
“No!” he said. Hell, he didn’t need to be so emphatic about it. “Unless you mean repulsion over your hygiene.”
“You obviously weren’t that repulsed. I can’t believe the mayor gives you more tingles than I do. I’m pretty tingle-worthy.”
Kisho nodded. At least he was loyal to me.
“Hey, you have Kisho,” Nic said. “Why do you want me tingling too?”
I tipped my head to the side to think about it. “Just for ego reasons, mainly. I like to think that I’m hotter than the mayor.”
“You most definitely are,” Kisho said.
Nic didn’t need to snort at that.
“We need a better plan, Nic,” I said. “One that doesn’t involve you singing and getting us kicked out of swanky bars.”
Could vampires blush? Because I was pretty sure Nic’s face reddened.
Then he looked up in horror, staring at something behind my chair. Since I had my back to the room, I couldn’t see what caused that terror, but I had a fair inkling.
“Got to go. I forgot my…” Nic rushed off before he could finish that sentence.
I swung around in my chair to see the mayor standing behind us.
“Come on, Clementine. I’m taking you out for coffee,” he said. “And, really, you have to stop hanging out in your pajamas.”
Chapter 19 Tourists
THE MAYOR TOOK ME TO the same hipster cafe we’d gone to last time. It was close to the hotel, and the coffee was great.
“I’m not that hungry,” the mayor said. “Just coffee, I think.”
“Fried eggs and bacon. That’ll fix you.”
The mayor looked a little bilious. He definitely needed the eggs and bacon.
“Did you see Nic this morning?” he asked, trying to be super-casual about it.
Since he’d just seen Nic and me together in the lobby, he didn’t need to ask me that. Obviously, this whole breakfast thing was a way to get information out of me, but he wasn’t sure how to approach it.
“Do you mean in general, or did I see him leaving your room early this morning, half-dressed?”
Oh, yeah, the mayor blushed. He turned away and called the waitress over. But, screw it, I wasn’t going to be like some high school go-between passing messages between them. Next, I’d have to take Nic a note saying, “Do you like me? Tick a box: yes/no.” Actually, I could do that anyway. Forging the mayor’s name. It’d be hilarious. I couldn’t wait to run that idea past Kisho.
We ordered, and I kept silent, waiting for his answer on the Nic question.
“We need to get to work finding this vampire alchemist,” he said.
“Nic?” I widened my eyes.
“This has nothing to do with Nic.”
He could put on that snotty voice, but I noticed the way his nostrils twitched every time I said Nic’s name.
“I need to know,” I said. “What happened? Did you go all the way? How about I just name body parts, and you tell me yes or no?”
“We’re not discussing Nic.”
“Mouth to mouth? Yeah, for sure. There was kissing action going on. Hey, you must’ve been pretty quiet about it, or Kisho and I would’ve heard. Wow, that ‘Hey, Nic, I’d totally go for you if you were a chick’ thing progressed quickly.”
The mayor covered his face with his hands. It made me so happy to see him like that.
“Is it Team Nic and Mayor now? Does this mean you won’t try to kill him again? I have burning questions here.”
“Please don’t go any further, Clementine. This is not the place to discuss it.”
I laughed. No way would I fall for that. He wanted to discuss it. He wanted to know if Nic had said anything. He just didn’t want me to know he wanted it.
“If you remove these cuffs, I’ll never mention it again.”
“Nice try.”
“They’re ugly. They don’t even go with any of my outfits.”
The waitress bought our lattes over. The coffee smelled good. I took a sip. Tasted damn good, too.
“I’ll remove those cuffs when you hand over the alchemist. Deal?”
I wasn’t falling for the mayor’s shoddy deals. That was just desperation talking. I had no idea why the Council
would even have let him in on how to remove these cuffs. They were fools.
“You’ll get the alchemist’s secrets, then stiff me. I know your M.O. I do not trust you.”
The mayor grimaced.
Before he could sweeten the pot, his phone rang. He moved away from the table, and I could barely hear his conversation over the clang of plates and the hum of voices. Seriously, why do people who design cafes never think of the acoustics? People need to eavesdrop on conversations.
While he was gone, my food arrived. The mayor wouldn’t expect me to wait for him before I started. I needed something in my stomach. I’d missed breakfast, and that had been partly the mayor’s fault.
Yum, bacon. I wondered if I could steal some off the mayor’s plate before he returned. I looked up, but he smiled at me. It was like he was watching me on purpose, expecting me to steal his food, even though he hadn’t even wanted the breakfast.
The mayor came back to the table. “The undead alchemist struck again last night. Funny. He was very close to where we were.”
The vampire who’d followed us—had that been him? Who knew? This city could be full of freaky vamps. It did seem likely, though. We’d been so close to him. Pity we’d been so drunk.
I drained my coffee cup. One coffee barely touched the sides. I needed another.
“Okay, what do we have?” I asked. “He attacked last night. Where does that get us?”
“He’s getting more brash. That means the Council are being pressured. As you can imagine, tourist deaths aren’t good for business.”
“It’s not a death, it’s a disappearance. Let’s go investigate the scene of the crime. That might give us some clues.”
“You think?” the mayor said.
I didn’t really think it’d offer much, but it’d give me a chance to hint about shopping. If the mayor had done a better job of packing for me, I wouldn’t be in this situation, so it wouldn’t hurt him to spring for a few new clothes.
I ordered another coffee to take with me, and the mayor and I set off.
“So, you and Nic?” I said.
