Once home, I showered and changed in record speed—fast even with Nina’s wrinkled nose and directive to “change into something that doesn’t look like I buried my Aunt Fanny in it.” I interpreted the Aunt Fanny crack to mean a never-been-worn pale blue cashmere sweater and a pair of charcoal-grey slacks that had miraculously become cigarette-slim while living in the back of my closet.
“Way better,” Nina said, handing me a Fresca and a bagel in a brown paper bag. She shrugged. “You should probably go grocery shopping.”
“We’re out of detergent, too,” Vlad chimed in, scaring the bejesus out of me. He poked his head over the top of the couch and grinned.
“Look, I was out all night—”
Nina held her hand out, stop-sign style. “No need to brag about your conquests with a C-H-I-L-D in the room.” Her eyes cut back and forth from the top of Vlad’s head to me.
“I’m not a child,” Vlad snapped. “You’re a child.”
“I wasn’t out conquesting. I was out.” I took a deep breath, trying my best not to recall the image of that gnarled hand, of the makeshift graveyard the police were unearthing as we argued about my nonexistent sex life. “We found some bodies. Several, we think. Out at Battery Townsley.”
Nina blinked and popped a straw into the blood bag she’d helped herself to.
“With Alex or Will?” Vlad asked.
“Both.”
“Kinky.”
I narrowed my eyes and took a big swig of my Fresca. “You’re disgusting.”
“My vote’s for Will, personally,” Vlad said as I gathered my purse.
“No.” Nina hopped off the counter, following me into the living room. “Alex. The whole doomed love is so romantic.”
Vlad snarled. “I don’t like that guy. I’m so over his holier-than-thou shit.”
I grabbed my keys. “You have no soul, Vlad. Everyone is holier than you.”
He resettled himself on the couch. “Not everyone has to act like it.”
I was still grumbling from Vlad and Nina’s lackluster response to our break in the case—but then again, for a couple of undead vampires, the actually dead really did little to pique their interest—when I crossed two lanes of screeching traffic and bolted into the Philz Coffee parking lot.
“Coffee,” I mumbled to absolutely no one.
I yawned and blinked, my eyes stinging and dry from lack of sleep. “Code Thirty-three,” I said to the perky, well-rested barista. “A big one.”
She studied me intently for an uncomfortable beat before reaching out to touch my hand. “You look just like him,” she said, her voice low and breathy.
“Excuse me?” I asked, heat pricking out along my hairline.
She snapped her hand back from mine, but her grin never faltered. “I said that will be $3.71, please.”
I felt my mouth drop open and I worked to push the words past my teeth. “No—no. You said—you said that I looked just like him.”
The barista cocked her head, the sweet smile still plastered across her glossy lips. “I’m sorry, you must have misheard me. Three seventy-one, please.”
I handed over the cash without taking my eyes off her. She gave me my change and I stepped aside, far enough to get out of line, but close enough to hear her should she murmur something else.
She was all business with the next customer.
I must have imagined it or misread her. I really need to get some sleep.
I slurped the last of my Code 33 as I pulled into the UDA parking lot, the octane hitting my bloodstream in one hot, energetic explosion. Thirty-six floors later, the big silver elevator doors slid open on the familiar chaos of the Underworld Detection Agency. Kale was at the reception desk with a cheek full of Hubba Bubba as she cocked her head and listened to a voice screaming on the other end of the phone line. The velvet ropes were bulging with clients already annoyed—a couple of zombies with brand-new papers, a windigo who shot a cool breeze at the oblivious vampire behind him.
I hadn’t even broached the UDA STAFF ONLY door when Sampson caught my eye and made a beeline for me.
“Sophie, great. You picked a perfect day to come back.” He waved toward the crowd. “First of the month. Everyone wants everything renewed or reneged.”
I stepped back. “Oh, I’m—I’m not here to work. I have to get back to the high school.”
Sampson frowned. “But yesterday you asked me to pull you and Will out.”
“Sorry, that was a mistake,” I said, shaking my head. “That was before—we found bodies and symbols and—I think we might actually be on to something.”
“So you have a lead about Alyssa?”
“Not exactly.”
Sampson’s shoulders slumped, the motion barely visible under his steel-gray suit.
“But I expect this thing to unravel really soon. Really soon. I just came down here to see Lorraine.”