by Molly Harper
“But I hope that we can still try to make things work between us. So much of what I did was because I was trying to get more time with you. And not because of your ability but because I want you for you.”
“I know I’m new to this parenting thing, but I am certain I am not supposed to be hearing this,” Max muttered. “Danny, let’s go into the kitchen, or maybe the backyard, out of earshot.”
“We have a Sasquatch in the backyard!” Danny told him proudly as they retreated toward the back door.
“You don’t say!” Max said. “You know, I was in Canada once, and I swear I saw one in the parking lot of a Tim Horton’s.”
“No way!” Danny cried as the door closed behind him.
“I will always be grateful to you for turning me,” I told Finn. “And I appreciate the way you’ve tried to help me, easing my transition into being a vampire. But—”
“Uh-oh.”
I started again. “But—”
He shook his head again. “Don’t say the thing.”
“I think we’re going to be better off as friends,” I told him as he bounced his head against the porch railing.
“You said the thing.” He groaned.
“It’s not that I don’t find you attractive, which I do. And it’s not that I don’t think we have chemistry, which we do. It’s that I can’t trust you.”
“You know I would never hurt you or Danny!” he exclaimed.
“Physically, yes, I know you would never hurt me or Danny,” I agreed. “And you seem to feel some sort of protective loyalty to me, because of Max and your friendship with him. But I can’t trust you to tell me the truth. Not some variation of the truth. Not some version of the truth. Not a hint of the truth. The whole truth. You’ve lied to me too many times, Finn.”
“To protect you!”
“From what? From information you didn’t think I was ready to know? Why do you get to be the one who makes that decision? And let’s not forget the part where you neglected to tell me that you broke the Council’s embargo on spending time with me to help you mute your gift and save your own ass.”
“OK, yeah, that’s a bad example,” he admitted.
“I spent most of my life lying. I let my mom think that I was perfectly fine growing up with basically no parenting. I let my husband think I loved him, that I was happy with our life, because I didn’t know how to ask for what I needed. I can’t build a relationship with you when I can’t trust anything you say. I would be like an alcoholic dating a bartender. Not completely dysfunctional but not an awesome idea.”
Finn sighed, his expression sad and contemplative. “I knew that when you met Max it would probably be the end of whatever we’d started.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not saying I don’t want to see you anymore. It just won’t be in a romantic way.”
“I don’t think I can accept that.”
“Well, it’s not up to you to accept it. This is the way it is.”
“I get it.” He sighed. “I don’t like it, but I get it.”
After much more discussion with my wayward sire and my long-lost father, I worked out a delicate agreement with Max. One evening, every other week, he would come over for a visit. No more, no less, unless there was a specific invitation. He would not interfere with my life. He would not spy on me. He would not disappoint Danny or break promises. And if he did, all bets were off, and we would go back to life as if he’d never showed up on our porch. Max agreed to all of these stipulations, which spoke to either his guilt at abandoning me or his desperation to connect with the only family he had left.
Finn, on the other hand, was on strict probation and was only to contact me if I contacted him first. He was pretty graceful about accepting the end of any sort of romantic connection between us, something I suspected would change when he sensed my anger ebbing.
I thought that maybe simplifying my romantic life would help me focus. But it just narrowed my worries to a constant loop about Les’s murder. Who would want to kill him? He’d had no contact with the vampire world until I was turned. What was he doing at the Cellar? Was he meeting with a vampire? Had he been going to the Cellar for long? Was he buying some sort of antivampire defense weapons? A poison? Was that why he’d looked so smug and self-assured the night he died? Because he was going to get rid of me? Was it possible he was El Chupacabra? I thought the man in the mask was a vampire, but maybe Les had found some way to mask his heartbeat. What the hell had Les done differently in the last few weeks that had led to his death?
Then, one morning, the idea bubbled up to the surface of my brain as I was drifting off to sleep. I did take care of things that were important, like Les and Marge’s bank account, which I’d managed since I married Rob. If Les was up to something, maybe some strange activity would show up in their bank statements.
My father-in-law did not understand how online banking or e-mail worked. So Rob had insisted that we help his parents out by paying their bills online, since I was a bookkeeper. Years before, I’d set up their online bank account and taken care of the utilities, mortgage payments, insurance payments. Marge still had the checkbook, and since she hadn’t brought it up, I assumed she’d taken over her own bills, but since her e-mail password was “1234danny,” I guessed she hadn’t taken the time to change the password for her bank account, either.
So at the crack of sundown the next evening, I sat down at my laptop. If my in-laws hadn’t changed their account password and I technically hadn’t been barred from accessing the account, it wasn’t a crime to log in, right? I could call and ask her permission, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted her to know that I suspected Les of chicanery. That would definitely upset the fragile truce we’d reached.
I typed in Marge’s user name. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I tried to rationalize my snooping.
“Seriously? Of all the things I’ve done so far, this is the least ethically offensive,” I muttered, typing in the password.
Marge and Lester’s bank account opened up, showing a meticulous list of payments and credits. I scanned the list, finding the usual debits at the grocery store, the quilt shop, Marge’s hairdresser. They weren’t actual debits, of course, because Les didn’t trust debit cards. But I could see scans of the checks Marge had written. She seemed to have taken on the task of paying her own bills handily, though she hadn’t logged into the online system at all. I suspected my mother-in-law was a lot more capable than she let on.
There were a few odd line items—the payment to the funeral parlor for Les’s service and a payment to a landscaper with the note “weekly mowing service” in the memo line. I shuddered, imagining how Les would react to another man mowing his lawn so soon after his death. I thought he would have preferred that Marge immediately start taking lovers. I scrolled back a couple of pages, to before Les’s death, looking for other unusual vendors.
I noticed that Les had transferred about twenty thousand dollars out of their retirement account and moved it into checking. That was unusual. Les considered their retirement account sacrosanct. He’d toiled at the feed mill for almost fifty years to secure their golden years. He wouldn’t have touched it, unless maybe he was planning to use it to fund their legal fees to obtain custody of Danny? I scanned the vendors for names of law offices and found a two-thousand-dollar retainer paid to Freeman, Newton, and Lahey, a local firm. I also noted that it was paid about a month before I was turned, meaning that Les had been planning on taking custody of Danny while I was still clinging to life. Lovely.
So what was the rest of the money for? I scrolled back to the date of my turning. About a month after I “came out of the coffin” to my in-laws, Les had paid ten thousand dollars to “Argentum Investment Advisers.” My eyes went wide. Les didn’t believe in investing in anything beyond a savings account. When the mill switched over to a 401(k) system, he ranted for days about the instability of the market and the untrustworthiness of stockbrokers. He threatened to withdraw his retirement plan and bury his money in
mayo jars in the backyard. I think the only thing that stopped him was that Marge refused to save the jars because they were “germy.”
I’d heard the word “Argentum” before but couldn’t remember where. Somewhere in my new-vampire reading, maybe? I opened my copy of The Guide for the Newly Undead and checked the index. Silver. “Argentum” was the Latin word for silver. That seemed significant, considering what silver represented to vampires. Itchy, blistery potential death.
I opened my browser window and Googled “Argentum Investment Advisers.”
Nothing.
No Internet presence whatsoever. That seemed impossible. My father-in-law wouldn’t have given ten thousand dollars to a firm unless it had a solid reputation. And a friendly cartoon animal mascot. And commercials during the Super Bowl.
My late father-in-law had been up to something super-shady right before he died. But what? Could he be cheating on Marge? Maybe he had a second family over in Murphy and was sending them money. No, I wasn’t thinking big enough. Les had been killed just a few weeks after this payment had been made. That had to be significant, too.
I rubbed my hands over my eyes. Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
I stared at the screen and tried to will all of the pieces of this puzzle to come together. Unfortunately, I was not a psychic. I was not a private investigator. I was an accountant, and this was beyond my skill level. I needed someone with know-how when it came to this sort of thing. Someone with shady connections. So I went to the shadiest person I knew. I went to Dick Cheney.
Leaving Danny sleeping at home under Kerrianne’s watch, I drove downtown to Specialty Books and parked outside the warm glow of the store’s front windows. Despite her status with the Council, Jane had insisted on continuing to work from her shop. She tried to split her hours, but Andrea had to pick up a lot of slack.
To my surprise, Finn was sitting at one of the coffee tables with Jane and Dick. All three of them wore grave expressions, so I could only guess that they were talking about me. Gabriel and Andrea were behind the bar, cleaning the coffee equipment, pretending not to be listening.
Finn’s face lit up with a grin when he saw me, though Jane and Dick looked concerned.
Before any of them could speak, I approached the table and announced, “I have a question for you, and it will involve discretion and shady connections. Finn, this doesn’t change anything, but it’s probably a good thing that you’re here.”
Finn looked affronted. “That’s . . . No, OK, that’s fair. Frankly, I’m a little insulted you came here before looking for me,” he said. “At least my shady connections are current.”
“Hey, just because I haven’t been in the game for a few years, that doesn’t mean I’ve been forgotten,” Dick protested.
Jane covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe you two are having this argument. Libby, please explain before I lash out and say something I’ll regret.”
I explained my ethical-gray-area investigation of Les and Marge’s bank accounts and its implication of Les’s potential criminal activity. To my surprise, Jane and Dick weren’t all that upset, and they informed me that thanks to some heavy-handed negotiations with the nation’s legal branch, Council representatives didn’t have to put up with pesky details like search warrants or just cause. So technically, I hadn’t broken any laws.
Dick was not, however, thrilled with my plan to drive to Louisville and scope out the address of the mysterious payee.
“Why not just let us send a local Council rep to the address to check it out?” Jane asked. “Less risk. Less chance of tipping off this hit person that you’re aware of them.”
“Because I might see some link to Les that you wouldn’t recognize. Also, I won’t give you the address unless you let me go.”
Dick stared pointedly at Finn. “I blame your influence for this.”
Finn shrugged.
Jane sighed. “Well, we’re going with you. As a member of the Council, I feel an obligation to protect my constituents. Plus, I’m afraid you’ll never come back.”
“Your faith in my fighting skills is a comfort, really,” I told her.
“Yeah, well, my faith in my own fighting skills means we’re taking backup with us,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “You know the great thing about being a Council official? You have a SWAT team on call.”
The almost four-hour drive to Louisville was awkward, to say the least. Finn gamely tried to start polite conversations, but I was too uncomfortable around him to reply, and Jane tended to be cagey around people she didn’t quite trust. Dick tried to bridge the gap between the two, but it mostly ended in fizzled “getting to know you” prompts, like “Finn, didn’t you live in Tibet once? Jane has an amazing collection of Tibetan prayer bowls at the shop.” And it turned out that neither one of them was that interested in talking about prayer bowls.
I couldn’t sleep in the car, because I was mulling over what this confrontation could mean. Yes, finding out that Les was up to some nefarious activities would exonerate me and take a lot off my plate, legally speaking. But it would taint my father-in-law’s memory within the community. People wouldn’t remember him as Les Stratton, the Sunday-school teacher who loved University of Kentucky basketball and bass fishing. He would be that guy who got tangled up in vampire politics and got his throat ripped out for his trouble. Poor Marge. How was she going to deal with this?
We drove into an industrial section of town, poorly lit and barely occupied. The address put us at what looked like an abandoned bulk-dry-cleaning facility. Most of the windows were broken out, save for a small section on the top floor. From the gate, we could see a light in the window, which winked out the moment we pulled into the parking lot.
Jane pulled to a stop just as a van marked “UERT” (undead emergency response team—vampires needed to learn how to make acronyms that spelled actual words) rolled to a silent halt beside us. Jane unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to me.
“Right; you are going to wait in the car where it’s safe, because after all this, I’m not going home to Danny to tell him that his mom survived cancer and getting turned only to be killed by vampire friendly fire.” She turned to Finn. “And you are going to stay here, too, because you walking into the line of said friendly fire would mean a lot of paperwork for me.”
And with that, Dick and Jane closed the doors, leaving me in the least comfortable car in the world. After several long, silent minutes, Finn said, “You know, when I pictured the two of us in the backseat of a car, it was a bit more romantic than this.”
I glared at him.
He tugged at his collar. “You’re right. Not appropriate. It’s just that it’s strange to be around you now without saying that sort of thing.”
“If you want to see me at all, you’re going to have to figure it out,” I told him. “I don’t want to make things awkward for you and Max. I know you two are kind of a package deal. And don’t go blaming Wade for us not being together, because you did this yourself. If you do anything to hurt him, I will not forgive you.”
“I know that I—” Finn stopped talking as we watched the UERT team’s lights sweep around in the windows like Danny’s class was inside playing flashlight tag. Silhouetted against that light, a shape emerged from a dark window one floor below and shimmied down the fire escape ladder.
“What?” I turned the door handle and stepped out of the car.
“Wait, Libby, no!” Finn grabbed for my arm, but I was already on the pavement, walking toward the building. Even my keen eyesight strained to make out the movements of the person climbing down the building.
I heard Finn behind me, quietly creeping out of the car. My nostrils flared as the familiar scent of old burnt coffee hit me with full force. My fangs dropped as I hissed quietly. The figure above dropped to the asphalt with no noise at all, a considerable feat for someone his size.
He stepped into the moonlight, and it was Bob—coffee-hogging Crybaby Bob. The same Bob who sa
t at those damn meetings and whined about not being understood by his family. The same Bob I’d felt sorry for, despite the coffee hogging.
And me without my rake.
“You!” He growled.
I growled back. “You.”
“Libby!” Finn called out in warning, but I’d already ducked under Bob’s swing. I’d learned from our first encounter. I dropped so far down my ass nearly smacked against the pavement, but then I sprang up, fist at the ready, and caught Bob underneath his chin. I put all of my strength into the blow, knocking Bob back off his feet and onto the ground.
“Stay back!” I yelled at Finn.
“Libby!” Finn barked.
“Just let me do this.” I grunted as my boot connected with Bob’s ribs. He caught my leg and rolled, dragging me to the ground. I landed on my back with an oof but jammed my heel into his sternum—hard. I scrambled to a sitting position, straddling his massive chest and punching him in the face.
“Stay back!” I yelled at Finn again as he prepared to spring into the fray. “Let me handle this!”
“This is very emasculating!” Finn yelled.
Bob threw up his hips, tossing me aside like a rag doll. I rolled to my hands and knees, hopping to my feet as he was already charging at me.
“Why won’t you just die?” he yelled as I sidestepped him and shoved him into the wall.
“Force of habit!” I yelled back as he shoved me. My head smacked against the bricks behind me. Ow. “Also, you tried to kill me! I take that personally!”
“I only tried to kill you because your father-in-law paid me to,” he said, swinging his massive fist at me. I ducked again but stumbled over some garbage and ended up taking a kick to the ribs.
So that was it. Les had hired someone to kill me. In the back of my mind, I had known it was a possibility, but it still hurt my feelings that our relationship had deteriorated to the point of murder for hire.
Bob backhanded me across the face. Ow. I would take time to contemplate my hurt feelings later.
“It’s never personal when I take a job. But then you went and humiliated me with that spectacle at the school, resisting, throwing me off my game, blocking my talent. Do you know how long it’s been since I lost a fight?”
