And yeah. That was fair.
She found Lanny outside, sitting on a low concrete retaining wall that had been backfilled with dirt and planted with St. John’s wort. He looked almost serene, with his shirtsleeves pushed up and his head tipped back, eyes closed. The sun fell full on his face – that rich, hot, baking late summer sun that always felt so good when you’d been trapped in air-conditioned buildings all day – and Trina was struck by the difference in him. Gone were the bruise-dark circles around his eyes, the grayish pallor of his skin. His face seemed fuller, too; the face of a man with healthy eating habits and a regular workout routine. It was only now, when faced with the stark contrast, that she realized that he’d been sliding down for a long time; she should have noticed. She hated herself for not.
His eyes cracked open a slit. “How’d it go?”
“Better that you weren’t in there trying to lick the dried blood off the bodies.”
“That’s fucking disgusting,” he said, and shut his eyes again.
Trina sat down next to him on the wall, forcing herself to push past the prickling unease that told her not to sit too close, getting in tight enough that their shoulders brushed. His arm felt warm through both their sleeves, and she wondered why she’d expected it to feel any different.
Lanny hummed a little sound that was mostly content. “Who’d’ve thought vampires could sit in the sun, huh? Betcha I can eat garlic, too, which is a damn good thing, ‘cause my ma wouldn’t understand if I suddenly stopped coming by for pasta night.”
“Guess most of the old myths were wrong,” Trina said, hearing a hollowness in her voice.
“Hey, do you think I can walk into a church without lighting on fire? Maybe I can still go to Mass.”
She didn’t answer right away, turned to glance at him, and found that he was smiling at her, the expression more than a little bitter.
“These are the kinda questions I gotta ask myself, you know?” he said, voice bitter, too. “Can I still pray? Can I see my reflection to shave in the mornings? Can I still” – his breath hitched – “be with you without wanting to drink your damn blood?”
She sucked in a breath.
His smile twitched, fell, and he glanced away.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “It’s hard for you to even wanna sit here with me, isn’t it?”
Her pulse throbbed in her temples, caught painfully in her ears, like they needed to pop. They were valid questions, all of them. But she thought of Nikita, of how he was nothing like Rasputin. Thought of Alexei, the entitled prince. And poor sweet Jamie, who hadn’t asked for any of this.
She took another breath, this one deep and measured. “I can see your reflection in the grill of that car right there,” she said, pointing to the Cadillac parked in front of them, “so that answers that question. And for the rest of it. Lanny, the thing that happened to you was physical. It changed the way your body works – maybe even what your body needs – but it didn’t change your mind. Or your heart. You’re still you. Just…healthy.”
“And required to drink blood.”
“Think of it as medicine. Like insulin for a diabetic.”
He barked a short, startled laugh. “Holy shit.”
“Maybe it’s even something you can inject. We can ask Nikita. Then you wouldn’t have to feel like it was actually blood.”
“You’re serious?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because it’s fucking weird,” he said, frustration bleeding through.
“Yeah, but it’s your life now.”
He sighed.
“We’ll figure it out.”
He gave her a sideways look from the corner of his eye, expression hard to read. He shook his head and glanced out toward the parking lot – and bumped her shoulder with his. “So feral werewolves are a thing and they’re in New York eating people.”
It was a relief to change the subject. “Apparently.”
“What’re we gonna tell the captain?”
Trina glanced over, startled. “We.”
He shrugged. “You said I was still me, right? So I’m still a cop. Just, maybe…” He curled his hand into a fist in his lap, turning it over, examining it with sudden, intense focus, brows tucking low. “Maybe a cop who’s a lot stronger.”
*
Jamie was an only child, but he thought this must be what it felt like to be someone’s younger brother, tagging along for the ride, no one asking for his opinion about anything. It was annoying, sure, but he wasn’t the sort of person who liked to make a fuss. He was generally content to go with the flow and deviate when he had the chance.
Except right now he was a brand-new vampire with a lot of fucking questions, and was apparently sitting next to a member of the long-dead Russian royal family.
Okay.
“They’re hunting us,” Nikita said, grimly, on the other side of the booth.
“Who is?” Jamie asked.
Alexei scoffed. “Coincidence.” But when Jamie glanced over at him, he looked pale. His lower lip trembled, fractionally, as he took a breath.
“No,” Nikita said, voice hard. “It’s not. Your little protégé” – he spat the word – “decided to go on a turning binge.” He gestured to Jamie, and Jamie felt his stomach grab unpleasantly. He wanted to be offended, but he certainly hadn’t asked to be turned.
As if sensing his distress – and didn’t dogs, wolves, sense that sort of thing? – Sasha sent Jamie a fleeting smile.
“The video of Chad walking out of the morgue is all over the Internet,” Nikita went on, scowling. “And then feral wolves try to find Lanny? That’s not a coincidence, and you know it.”
Alexei shrugged and sipped his coffee, eyes a little wild.
Around them, the restaurant hosted a modest afternoon crowd, a mix of students and businesspeople eating craft burgers. (Sasha had picked the place, saying it was one of his favorites.) There was local art on the walls, and James Brown playing softly over the sound system, and Jamie might have enjoyed it if they weren’t discussing being hunted by werewolves who ate people.
It was all too much, suddenly. The absurd turn his quiet life had taken.
“Okay.” He slapped his hand down on the table, harder then he’d ever been able; all their water glasses jumped. Whatever. He wasn’t sorry. “What are we going to do? What am I–” He broke off, throat tightening. “What am I going to do?”
Sasha looked sympathetic.
Nikita looked like an asshole – because he was one.
“We’ll find somewhere for you to lay low,” he said, dismissive. “Until we figure out–”
“No,” Jamie said, through his teeth this time. “What am I going to do? With my life? I’m legally dead, and I…” Oh shit, he was breathing too hard, loud and rough enough to attract a concerned glance from the next table. “I…”
Alexei laid his hand over top of Jamie’s, and Jamie jerked out from under it, almost dumping his plate in his lap.
Alexei sighed. “You should calm down.”
“I can’t. My roommate saw me getting coffee this morning, and she screamed. And I can never go home…”
When he was thirteen, and weighed no more than a wet cat, according to his grandmother, Brent Hardman had taken a box cutter to the oil painting he’d spent three months painstakingly perfecting in hopes of entering it into a local youth art show. He’d left it in the art room at school, and went in early one morning, flipped on the lights. The canvas in tatters. The yellow-handled box cutter – the same one Brent had been flipping over and over on the bus yesterday, the one he’d tucked in his pocket before the driver could see – on the table beside it. No painting; no entry for the contest; no chance to get into the exclusive May-Thorough summer program for gifted young artists…
He’d tilted the box cutter under the harsh lights, watched the light catch its blade. And he’d wondered. He’d almost…thought about the way his blood would look, welling against his too-white skin. Running off his wrist, dripping onto the tile. An art piece all its own.