“We’re not running. The real payoff will be worth it.”
And Sam wasn’t going to try betraying Ed again.
Before Mim could protest, Lara made it to their booth, and Gerry shoved the account numbers away. They’d already put in their drink orders, each of them having a beer. Sam’s was light enough that when Lara set it down with a napkin already stuck to it, he could see what looked like writing through the bottom of the glass.
If she was passing him her number, she was barking up the very gay tree, and Gerry would be devastated. Sam hoped he was wrong, waiting to peek at the napkin until she’d taken their orders and left. Once he saw what was written there, however, he sincerely wished it had been a phone number.
We need to talk, Mr. Coleman.
Chapter 4
SAM DIDN’T want to alert Mim and Gerry that anything was amiss, but if Lara knew his alias with Ed, they were in trouble.
He waited until she disappeared into the back and then excused himself. He didn’t see anyone at first, wondered if she was just in the bathroom and someone else had slipped him that napkin, but when he turned around to head back to his friends, the Employees Only door behind him opened and a pair of hands wrenched him into the dark.
Sam spun around to take a swing at his attacker, but a knife pressed to the side of his neck as he was slammed against the closed door.
“For someone who gets jumped on the regular in this place and knows he’s being watched, you’re not very good at this,” an unimpressed voice spat.
It was Lara, but she didn’t sound like the sweet waitress they’d known for the past—shit, three weeks, just like Sam’s time with Ed.
“You’re behind this?” he said, holding still to avoid the sharp edge of her blade.
“Behind what exactly?” A wicked smirk curled her lips, her dark eyes glittering with previously veiled mischief.
Sam needed to get better at reading people, but he couldn’t exactly come right out and ask: Are you the one trying to frame the local vampire?
“You hired the Cramers,” he said, sticking to what she must know if she knew the name Coleman. “You’re Midnight?”
“Not me,” she admitted, “but my boss is, which means he basically hired you through them. And you are really throwing a wrench into our plans.” Keeping him at knifepoint, she got up very close and personal for someone so much shorter than him. “You finished the heist but still went back to see Simons today. Why?”
“I… thought of a new deal with the Cramers that pushes your boss out.” No point in making up another lie to keep track of. “Figured I could take Simons for even more than his offshore accounts.”
“Really?” Lara studied him carefully, finally adding, “Or did you learn that his bark isn’t as bad as his bite?”
Sam tried to keep from reacting. He really did.
“You know.” She chuckled. “And you still went back. Are you hiding teeth marks somewhere, Mr. Coleman”—she glanced down his body—“or has he just got you that scared?”
For one terrifying second, Sam wondered if Lara was a vampire, but then she wouldn’t be threatening him with a knife. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She huffed. “Maybe you should wise up, then, because you’ve seen the news, the bodies that keep showing up, haven’t you?”
“Ed had nothing—”
“You were supposed to be next.”
Sam froze, suddenly much more concerned with that knife.
“That’s right,” she purred, clearly enjoying his fear. “The final nail in the coffin, as it were, to make sure the police suspect him.”
“You are trying to frame Ed. Why? They’ll never be able to bring him in.”
Lara just kept grinning and tapped the blade a few times, making Sam hiss as it finally cut into him. “We need updates, intel, so we can rethink our game plan. You’ve made Midnight wonder if there’s a better angle.”
“For what?” Sam couldn’t believe how much he wished Ed was stalking him again tonight instead of Fitz.
“Updates,” she ignored the question. “The inside scoop on Ed Simons, what he knows, what he’s planning.”
“I’m already doing that for the Cramers,” Sam said miserably.
“Caught between a rock, a hard place, and a woodchipper.” She laughed, pressing the knife down hard enough that Sam whimpered at how deeply it cut into him. “Guess which one we are?”
“Okay!”
“You keep coming here like clockwork and giving me updates, no questions asked.”
“I got it. Fine. Yes.”
“Good boy.” Seeming satisfied, she stepped back, taking the knife with her.
Sam reached up instinctively to check the cut and pulled his hand away with a smear of red. “What am I supposed to tell my friends?”
“Whatever you want. You’re the one who put them on the chopping block. Should have told them to run while they had the chance. Now….” Lara shoved the knife at him, flat against his chest for him to scramble to keep it from falling and taking out one of his toes. “I’m going to go bat my eyes at Gerry a little more, and you’re going to keep quiet and play ball, or you or one of your friends will be the next body found by the police.” Grinning wickedly, she twirled her fingers in a dainty wave and pushed past Sam out the door.
He threw the knife into the corner, wondering how the hell he was supposed to play triple agent when he’d finally calmed down enough to play double. After exiting quickly into the bathroom, he took a moment to wash out his wound, got a bandage from Logan behind the bar, and told the others he’d scraped it on one of the stall doors.
“Might need a tetanus shot.” Mim snickered.
Sam tried to laugh it off and act normal, but it wasn’t easy with Lara smiling sweetly and oh so convincingly every time she neared their booth, prompting Gerry to finally ask her out.
She said yes.
At least Gerry was so busy celebrating, and Mim so busy patting him on the back, that neither noticed anything was wrong.
SOMETHING WAS wrong.
“I’m here!” Sam called, but as Ed met him in the foyer, he could already tell Sam’s gait was off.
“What happened?”
Sam bolstered himself as if ready to lie, but then he paused, sighed, and looked at Ed squarely. “I know who’s framing you.”
He knew one of the parties involved, it turned out, but hearing about him getting accosted by that guilty party and that they’d planned to make Sam the next mutilated victim made Ed’s fists clench and his temple twitch.
“They can’t know I told you,” Sam said, sitting with Ed at the kitchen island, nursing a cup of coffee. “I have to keep acting like I’m playing all sides.”
“Of course. I won’t let anything happen to you or your friends. I promised you that.”
Sam relaxed, sagging onto his elbows, and Ed’s hand raised of its own accord to alight gentle fingers on the bandage on his neck.
“I won’t tail your employers anymore. I’ll—”
“No, you have to.” Sam reached up to cover Ed’s hand. “If you watch me, they might catch on. We don’t know who Midnight is. He could be a vampire like you.”
Ed hadn’t wanted to believe that, but anything seemed possible now.
“Nothing has changed,” Sam insisted. “I’ll give them intel like they want, make them think you know nothing, and meanwhile, we keep trying to figure out who’s behind this. Then we take them all out.”
“Then I do,” Ed said.
Sam nodded and slowly dropped his hand so Ed could pull his away too.
Normally, Ed was good at planning in a new city, but he’d never encountered a situation like this. “What do we do next?”
“Did you find anything out about Fitz?”
“Yes.” Ed sneered. “He goes to a club on Forty-seventh. The girls he fancied barely looked eighteen. He spent most of the night there, in a back room with young women, drugs, and drink.”
“Cl
assic creep,” Sam agreed.
“I almost made a premature move against him when he got rougher with a girl than is allowed, but a bouncer intervened.”
“You see why I won’t mourn these people.”
“A few more nights will teach me his other haunts. I followed him home afterward. He keeps to himself when not with his partners. He’ll be easy to get alone.”
“Um… and how are we going to do that when the time comes?”
“I will do it. You don’t need to be there.”
“But you can’t just kill him. It’ll raise an alarm with the others. We need to think of the staging, the aftermath, make sure they don’t realize it has anything to do with us.”
“Who’s to say they won’t think it’s this Midnight?”
That brought a smile to Sam’s face. “That’s it! Everyone knows about the murders. If we get the Cramers thinking they’re being targeted, picked off by their former employer to clean house, we can get both sides to work against each other. They’ll get sloppy.”
“And give us the perfect openings.” Ed smiled too. He’d never had someone to plan things with before.
“I need intel I can feed them, true things so they think I’m getting closer to you. Actually getting closer is a bonus.” After a playful pause, Sam leaned forward to kiss Ed very lightly.
“You know so much already,” Ed said with a wider smile, “but there is one thing I haven’t shown you yet.”
Sam looked wary but went along willingly when Ed led him to the library, behind the bookshelf that hid his secret staircase, and down into the basement. Sam must have expected something vile or concerning, because he gave a great exhale when he saw what the basement held.
Some things were practical, like the extra washer and drier and a small incinerator. But there was also an extra bookcase, and photograph after photograph from decades past with Ed in them, always the same age in appearance, even one of him in front of Big Ben that matched the larger one upstairs. Ed had a darkroom down there as well, and several old paintings and sketches on the walls in intricate frames.
Sam took it all in with awe, but eventually turned to Ed, studying him as if summoning confidence to speak his next words. “Can I… ask you things about what you are?”
“You can.”
“Do you sleep?”
“I don’t need to anymore.”
“And the sun won’t burn you up?”
“No. Prolonged exposure can be painful, but I can go outside without bursting into flames. Most of the other lore you’ve heard are superstitions people told themselves to feel safer.”
“Like needing to be invited into a person’s home?”
“Crosses, garlic, traveling over water.”
“Sleeping in a coffin?”
“Can you imagine?” Ed scoffed, pleased that it made Sam laugh.
“Are you invulnerable?” he asked.
“Are you asking for my weaknesses?”
“N-no, I just….”
“I’m only teasing. I heal quickly. I lost a finger once and it grew back. But I imagine if I lost enough blood, was beheaded, set on fire, things that would kill most people would still kill me.”
“Do any other supernatural creatures exist?”
“Perhaps, anything is possible, but I’ve never met any werewolves or unicorns.”
That cracked a fresh smile on Sam’s face. “What about other vampires? Where are they all?”
“Who knows? I keep in contact with a few, but we never stay in one place for very long. There aren’t many of us. A few hundred years ago, those of us who were left agreed we wouldn’t create any more without real purpose or reason behind it. It’s too dangerous, brings too much attention on all of us, and honestly, most of us had no desire to.
“I don’t think more than a handful have been created since then, if they’re all even still alive. Many of my old acquaintances have gone dark in recent decades. I think some decided they were done living.”
“And you?” Sam asked, looking disconcerted.
“I love life,” Ed assured him. “I never tire of anything. There’s always something new to enjoy, and so many old things I adore centuries after they’ve gone out of fashion. Like bow ties, apparently.” He laughed, making Sam laugh again too. “But it is lonely sometimes.”
“I bet. Centuries,” Sam repeated. “But there was never a vampire lover you wanted to keep with you forever?”
“No,” Ed said softly.
Sam’s smile was unmistakable, maybe because jealousy had prompted the question, but that was also when he cast another perusing gaze around the basement and landed on the most unique and prominent of Ed’s pictures.
It might not have stood out so much if there were others like it, but while there were many rough sketches Ed had drawn before he had the luxury of a camera, other than the few photographs of himself, this was the only picture of a person.
The sketch was simple black and white, drawn meticulously a very long time ago, of a young woman with fair hair and light eyes.
“Shall we go up?” Ed said, noticing how Sam’s attention lingered on the picture. He wasn’t ready to talk about her yet.
“Sure.” Sam glanced back slowly. “We have a lot to do. But thank you for showing me.”
SAM WAS amazed by everything Ed had shown him, the trust he had in him.
He did wonder who that woman was, though.
Their plan from now on was straightforward, mostly revolving around Sam reporting separately to both Lara and the Cramers, while still attending to the job Ed had originally hired him to do—housework, groundskeeping, finances. It was comforting to dust and vacuum and clean the pool, monotonous and habitual enough to help Sam clear his head and not think about how different all this might feel once Ed was ready to claim his first victim.
It was getting dark out. Sam had wanted to get most of his basic chores out of the way so that the rest of the week could be focused on how to pit their two antagonist groups against each other. He was exhausted, probably because he hadn’t slept well in the past two days, but when he was ready to call it a night and looked around for Ed, he was surprised to find him outside, already in the pool. Sam was usually gone before Ed took his swims.
The tricked-out radio by the patio doors was blasting loud enough to carry outside, playing Blue Oyster Cult and making Sam smile. He didn’t fear the reaper so much himself anymore either.
Ed wasn’t doing any complicated strokes, just floating serenely on his back, arms gently moving to keep him up while he gazed at the stars beginning to glitter above him. He’d left the doors open as if to invite Sam to watch, so it was easy to do so without calling much attention to himself.
Ed didn’t look like a predator while swimming, his trunks clinging to him, chest bare. Sometimes it was hard for Sam to accept that dissonance—this version of Ed compared to the swift, brutal one—but then, wasn’t a lion capable of seeming like a housecat even if it was always dangerous?
“Would you like to join me?” Ed called without turning to look at him. “I have an extra suit upstairs.”
Sam wondered if that made him the lion tamer.
Mim and Gerry weren’t expecting him at any particular time, and checking in with Lara and the Cramers could wait until tomorrow.
Enjoying the way Ed’s eyes fixed to his mostly bare body when he descended from upstairs in the spare trunks, Sam took his time walking to the edge of the pool, set his clothes on one of the lounge chairs, and stepped off for a simple, smooth drop into the water. He shook the excess from his hair and face when he resurfaced, seeking out Ed at the other end.
“Tell me,” Sam said, lifting up to float lazily on his back, “even without your telescope, how many of those can you name?”
“The stars? Or constellations?” Ed lifted as well, both watching the sky as they orbited each other.
“Does it matter?”
“No. I can name most of them.”
“Then where am I?”
/>
Ed navigated to drift up beside Sam, tracing over invisible lines in the sky. “Gemini. Sort of like two stick figures holdings hands.”
Sam chuckled. “And you?”
“Pisces is there.” Ed dragged his finger the other direction. “See the way the ends connect and then it makes a sort of tilted V?”
“Doesn’t really look like a fish.”
“We had to be more creative back then.”
Blinking as what Ed was implying sunk in, Sam righted himself, not sure if he could ask, “You mean…?”
“I’m not that old.” Ed grinned. He didn’t clarify how old he was, however.
“You know, one of these days, I’m going to get you up on that roof to use your telescope properly.”
Ed scrunched his nose. “I wasn’t lying about not caring for heights.”
“I figured. Any particular reason?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because there weren’t as many tall buildings in my time.”
“Which was…?” Sam tried again, but Ed glanced away.
“Is this our first date?”
“If it was, would you tell me?”
“I said my age wasn’t a first date reveal, so….”
Sam read Ed’s hesitancy and didn’t want to push. “I don’t think this counts.” He smirked when Ed looked at him with a start. “We need to leave the house for a real date.”
“We’ll have to start thinking about our rain check, then.” Ed smiled back at him.
Drifting closer, Sam slid his hands around Ed’s waist to finally connect and pull him in. Even in the heated pool, Ed’s skin felt bracing. “I guess we will,” he said and started to lean forward.
“Sam.” Ed wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck, but his hands fidgeted, and he held back from letting Sam reach his lips. “You’re not only pretending because you think this is the only way to be safe from me, are you?”
“What?”
The idea that Ed still expected treachery surprised him, but then, Sam almost had betrayed him again, scared as he’d been. Ed was the most powerful and deadly creature he’d ever met, but he was still vulnerable, still so human.
Their Dark Reflections Page 9
