I pushed open the ladies’ room door and turned the tap on cold, ready to plunge my whole head in the sink. The back of my neck was clammy and sweaty and my cheeks were flushed midlife-crisis-Corvette red. I settled for splashing water on my face instead of the dunking, as I was trying to present a more sophisticated, less stained Sophie Lawson.
“Okay,” I said to my reflection. “Everything is going to be okay. I’m in charge. I’m in charge.” I pushed wet, floppy tendrils of hair behind my ears, wiped the mascara from under my eyes and gave myself the tough-as-nails, sexy chick stare I’d been working on.
“Yeah,” I purred. “I’m in charge.”
With my self-confidence damp but re-inflated, I turned for the door, and busted directly into Vlad LaShay. His black eyes were wide, his lips set in a hard, thin line. Gone was his usual king-of-the-underworld swagger; in its place was something that I had never seen on any vampire, let alone this one: fear.
“Vlad, this is—”
Vlad grabbed both my shoulders in his cold hands and walked me backward back into the ladies’ room, glancing nervously over his shoulder every few feet.
“You’ve got to hide me,” he said finally.
“Who am I hiding you from?”
“Kale.”
My eyes shot around the room. “You realize that this is the girls’ room, right? And that in addition to being pissed off by you, she’s a girl? Who could very possibly have to pee at any given moment?”
Vlad grabbed the trashcan and pulled it in front of the door. “I don’t plan on staying in here all day. I need you to sneak me out of here, and then keep Kale distracted long enough for me to get out of the office and into the elevator.”
Aside from being the demon clearinghouse for everything that went bump (or groan, or splat, or bite) in the night (think DMV with longer lines and check boxes that included dead, undead, and other), the Underworld Detection Agency had also recently become the hotbed for hormonal ancient teen-vampire-slash-teen-witch activity.
It was like the Jersey Shore house with fewer suntans.
At the center of this week’s activities were apparently Vlad—Nina’s nephew, my boss, and the acting head of the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement—and his ladylove (or something), Kale. The fact that Vlad was an immortal sixteen-year-old (now a hundred and thirteen years young) meant that he had ruddy pink cheeks and had perfected that wholly teenage boy look of both scrutiny and complete indifference. The fact that he was my boss made it awkward that he had been couch surfing at my place for the last twenty months and technically had the power to fire me, but apparently not the power to pick up his socks. The fact that he was involved with—nay, head of—the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement meant that he dressed like a less appealing combination of Count Chocula and had every polyester Dracula costume ever sold. Kale, his paramour—or now, predator—is a teen witch who is firmly entrenched in our intern program under a powerful witch-cum-Tupperware saleslady named Lorraine. Lorraine works in the billing department so five days a week Kale answers phones and gets training on accounts receivable, QuickBooks, and how not to make it rain in the Underworld Detection Agency break room.
Several exceptionally soggy bologna sandwiches let me know that she wasn’t exactly great at the latter.
“If I’m going to hide you from cute little Kale”—eighteen, chronologically and supernaturally, with a bunch of wince-inducing piercings, bright blue hair, and an unsavory attraction to the trembling vamp in front of me—“you’re going to need to tell me why.”
Vlad shot yet another glance over his shoulder. “There’s no time.”
I hopped up on the sink and examined my nails. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Fine! Fine. Kale heard that I may have had a little incident with a certain female vampire at one of the VERM meetings.”
“You may have had?”
“All right, I had, okay? I’m sixteen, willpower isn’t exactly my strong point.”
“You’re a hundred and thirteen and, technically, my boss.”
“Are you going to argue what I am and am not, or are you going to help me?”
“Why do you need me? Can’t you just have someone take her out shopping or something? I mean, Kale has a temper. A bad one.” I shuddered.
“That’s why I need you.” Vlad’s eyes were so earnest that I couldn’t help but soften to his plight. “You’re magic immune, so if she tries to fry or filet you, nothing will happen.”
In addition to being one-hundred-percent human and the one and only breather down here in the Underworld, I also have the uncanny ability to not be affected by magic. Though vampire stealth, banshee death screaming, or a witch’s magic might have been more convenient, being immune to the aforementioned fileting and frying had come in handy more times than you’d think.
“Fine.” I hopped down from my perch and shoved the garbage can away from the door, just before it barreled open and I caught a face full of it.
“Crap! Nina!”
Nina’s eyes were wide—coal black, like her nephew’s—and her hand slapped over her open mouth. “Did I get you?”