“No. Walked in. It was locked. Those other dudes always lock it. I’ve checked. But this guy just sauntered through.”
The small hairs rose on my arms. Clearly it was a vampire and a well-paid, and therefore high-powered, mage.
“Suave, you said? Debonair?” I already knew who it was, but needed to be sure before I thought about why he had come.
“Yeah.” He slid that imaginary dollar across the dusty bar again. “Real easy-like.”
I rolled my eyes. “What did they do?”
Mikey sat down on the second step and looked through the opening of the cemetery across the street. “I didn’t want to go in after them. After what happened with your older friend, I figured I should call someone.”
“I hope you didn’t call Smokey…”
“No. I called that old broad. She had given me her card.” He rubbed a spot on his cheek that I was sure had a scar at one point. “I figured she’d know what to do. I thought she’d come barreling down the street with her husband in tow talking placidly about killing things. That guy is nuts. Anyway, they rolled up real slow, stopping down the street where I usually hang out. She had me give her more information: appearance, dress, walk. Even after that, she didn’t burst in with guns blazing. She almost seemed timid.”
Crap. It was definitely Vlad. No one went in blazing where he was concerned. Not even me.
“Did you go in with her?”
“Are you kidding? She said not to in a very calm voice. I know that voice. That’s the voice of a woman about to cut a bitch. I’m not trying to mess with that, her shit”—he meant magic—“and that rich dude and his shit? Girl, you gotta screw loose.”
I held up a hand. “I’m not blaming you. So what happened?”
“Nothing I would have expected, as I said. She went in, no bangs or explosions happened, and then the suave dude came out.” Mikey scratched at his neck and shifted uncomfortably. “Here’s the thing. I was at the side of my porch in the shadows, staying real still and quiet. Nobody else noticed me. But this guy…he walked out like he did”—there was that hand gesture again—“and stopped. His shifty-eyed friend kept walking, but he stopped. Slowly, real fucking slowly, okay? He moved just his head until he was looking right at me. Right fucking at me.” Mikey half jumped and half shifted, then shivered and rolled his neck. I’d never seen him move so much.
Definitely Vlad.
“He stared at me for a moment, right at me, and gave me a little smile. Reagan, it was the worst fucking smile I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some shitty fucking smiles. Serial killers don’t smile like that.”
Vlad was the ultimate serial killer, so yes they did, but I didn’t want to tell Mikey that. He probably already had nightmares.
“And then he just kept on going. Walked down the stairs as if nothing had happened.” Heavy silence hung down on us for a moment. “He knew it was me who ratted him out.”
I nodded slowly. It made sense. The question was, would anything come of it? I’d have to ask Darius. Vlad picked and chose what he cared about. I had no idea how that selection process went. I also had no idea why he was wandering around my house with a mage. Trying to find out more about my secrets, no doubt.
“They got in their Honda and drove away. A second later, I was forced into your house by the old pair for more whiskey.”
I held up a hand. “Wait. A Honda?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t driving the kind of ride your guy likes. Gray Honda. Accord, I think.”
“And he was dressed nicely, with another nicely dressed guy with him?”
“Yeah. He stood out, know what I’m sayin’? But the Honda was plain.”
“Huh.” I thought on that for a minute before shrugging it off. Another question for Darius. “Anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“If you only knew, Mikey. If you only knew.” I trudged back to my house and up the steps, my good mood from the last five days draining away.
Once inside, I poured myself a glass of wine and sighed, taking a moment to enjoy the comfortable feeling of my own house and all my stuff.
I sat down on the couch and sipped my wine, thinking about turning on the TV.
A knock jerked me awake.
I blinked and looked around wildly. Where am I?
Another knock.
My living room came into focus. My TV, the screen black. The wine spilled down my new shirt, across my new hand-stitched leather pants, and into the cracks of my really expensive couch.
Awesome. I’d fallen asleep.
A strange sensation had me tilting my head as the lock turned over.
I couldn’t place the emotion, but I did place the intruder, who had just stopped in front of a hovering ball of my hellfire, guaranteed to split a sucker in half with minimal effort.
Whoop-whoop.
“Reagan,” Moss said, his voice frayed at the edges.
I sat forward, struggling to process what was going on. How could I still be tired after all the sleeping I’d done? And why had I let Moss so totally into my little world of magic?
Another issue for Darius. Poor guy. I was racking up quite a tab on his behalf. Although, let’s be honest, he was now above Vlad on the knowledge scale, so I’d call that even.
“Moss,” I said in a thick voice. I cleared my throat. “Maybe don’t break into my house.”
“Clearly.” He closed the door behind him, shutting himself between the revolving ball of death, and…well, a door. “You are needed.”
I pushed myself off the couch, and wine dribbled off my legs and onto the cream rug. Marie, Darius’s designer, was going to kill me.
“Why?” I tilted my head again, like a dog hearing a dog whistle. What was that feeling?
“Vlad has Darius in the lair.” The lair was the underground vampire home in the Realm.
I paused in rubbing my chest where that strange feeling had lodged. “What do you mean, Vlad has him?”
Darius’s heartbeat was strong and steady, so he wasn’t overly concerned about whatever was happening.
“Your bond is illegal.”
“Vlad’s still pissed about that?” I rolled my eyes and tore down the Ball o’ Death. “What’s the problem? Even if they don’t know who I am, they know some of what I can do. Besides, I have an elder to back me, and Vlad wants me under vampire control.”
“Vlad doesn’t want you for our faction—he wants you for himself. He set that war in the Dark Kingdom in motion after he made sure you knew the demons were coming for you.” He gave me a look that was more than a little judgmental, but I was too busy gaping in shock to care.