"That"s inhumane," Mickey muttered.
"He"s not human, Miss Fuente."
I stared at the reflective black gla.s.s of the window, inwardly kicking myself. The loner vampire was my responsibility, and while I was b.i.t.c.hing about having my hair done, he was trapped in a sweltering box as twilight turned into burning daylight. Nice f.u.c.king work, Syd.
"Are you going straight to the hotel?" I asked.
"I will get him under cover as soon as I am able, Miss Franklin," Petr said. His put-upon tone made me want to slap him. After I slapped myself for being thoughtless.
At least Thurston could cool off soon, presuming that AC worked in the back of the vampire-insulated car. I stomped toward the Skylark, my joy at the new toy quashed. I reminded myself that I hadn"t gotten Thurston into this situation. And, if we were keeping score, I was the reason he still existed. That didn"t make me feel any better.
"Movies first or thong shopping?" Mickey asked, elbowing me in the side.
"Neither."
"But...shopping!"
A wave of heat rolled out when I opened the door and, over the top of the car, I noticed a white pickup start up on the far side of the parking lot. I glanced at Petr and saw his quick nod, aimed at the other driver. And there was our daytime tail. I hadn"t really expected that Malcolm would be comfortable leaving me unattended, even if my own mother wouldn"t recognize me. Part of that strategizing Petr had been so proud of. It must have meant something to an organization freak like him, being depended upon by vampires. Like having truffle pigs complement your sense of smell.
I got into the car, ignoring the burn of the vinyl, and started the engine. Mickey and I smiled at each other as it roared to life and my mood lifted several levels.
"This is a thing of beauty," I said. "I"m putting the top down."
"Great!"
"Then we have to go stake out a laboratory."
"You buy your thongs from a laboratory?"
Chapter Four.
Goya Worldwide"s corporate headquarters was a steel and gla.s.s campus, glaringly bright on its swath of manicured lawn. It didn"t look like it housed a corporation that had designed a drug that could turn a vampire into a nasty killing machine.
Its website advised that teachers could fill out a form and someone would get back to them within six weeks to set up a tour of the facility. I wasn"t going to sit and wait for a written response while suckers could be losing their minds. Never mind clever strategy. Sometimes you just had to move.
"I"m going in," I said. Mickey shook her cup and tipped it back until a piece of ice fell into her mouth.
"What"re you going to do? Point a finger and accuse them of designing murder? Because then I"m coming, too, so I can record it."
"I"m going to give them this look." I slid my sungla.s.ses halfway down my nose and glared. "Betcha a dollar somebody drops to their knees, wailing their confession within one minute."
"I am already terrified." Mickey handed me a dollar. "Go get "em, tigress."
My boot heels clicked on the bleached flagstones as I marched toward the tinted gla.s.s doors. I took a deep breath. The company looked legit, even pleasant. h.e.l.l, they had a family of gla.s.s ducks in one of their water effects. There was no way they knew their innocent little "radiant glow" skin serum was killing people. Vampire reactions weren"t the sort of thing the FDA tested for.
The lobby was bright and shiny clean, and the people in it wore suits rather than lab coats. The labs were supposed to be on-site, but with this much square footage, it might take me a week to discover where they were. A security guard glanced up and gave me a slow once-over before returning to watching a bank of screens. No double take. No second look. No scowl. Maybe the makeover did serve a purpose.
The woman at the counter was heavily perfumed and plump enough that the b.u.t.tons of her coral blouse strained. She didn"t bother to hide her glossy celebrity gossip rag when I walked up. I smiled, and she smiled back enthusiastically. The lobby must have been a lonely place.
Three minutes later I was signed in, wearing a visitor"s security badge and frantically reading the "resume" Petr had provided as the elevator delivered me to the human resources department. My nerves migrated to my stomach and started slapping at each other. I adjusted my bag and took a deep breath. This wasn"t a new delivery address, full of unknown suckers and poachers trying to jack me en route. All I had to face here were humans.
I opened the door to the HR office. No humans. An empty front desk hosted a plant that looked wilted despite being plastic, and mint-green carpet with tiny pink diamonds on it. A minute pa.s.sed and n.o.body came out. Probably they"d gone out for coffee then joined a suicide cult so they wouldn"t have to come back to that depressing-a.s.s desk. I followed voices down a pale yellow hallway and peeked into a break room. Two women stood at the counter, bathed in a haze of burned coffee, their backs to me.
"Just because they"re on the night shift doesn"t mean they"re exempt from procedures," said a woman with gray, helmet-shaped hair. Beside her, a thin woman with long, shiny black hair shook her head and dumped a handful of creamer packets into her mug. The night shift sounded promising. At least, that"s where I"d start if I were going to be marketing to suckers.
"That"s what I keep telling them, that you can get a p.i.s.s test twenty-four seven."
"h.e.l.l, most of these guys have something in their system. If they don"t want to go to the clinic, the shift supervisors could have them urinate in a baby food jar, stick a popsicle stick in it, and say they popped positive. They"re not going to file a protest when they know they"re dirty."
Ah, pee and falsified drug test talk. Before it could get any more awkward, I knocked on the wall and tried to look like I hadn"t been standing there listening. They both turned, the older woman suspicious and the younger one looking fl.u.s.tered. I gave what I hoped was a disarming wave.
"Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I"m here about a job."
Helmethead attempted to look down her nose at me even though she was a couple of inches shorter. "You missed the job fair by a week and the next one"s not for another three months."
"You only hire quarterly?"
"Unless you"re a microbiologist," the other one chimed in. "Or want to work in logistics. That"s warehousing and shipping."
I didn"t want to do either, but I also didn"t want to give Bronson an excuse to go after Mal. Microbiology didn"t sound like something I could fake my way through.
"I delivered parcels around campus while I was in college," I ventured. Petr had given me a college degree. Surely he could backfill that fake accomplishment with a part-time job. "Never misplaced a package. I"m organized, and can drive and use a hand truck." And once I"d driven a forklift through midtown Anchorage with a surfboard full of drunk runners across the raised tines, but somehow I didn"t think disclosing that would help my job prospects.
"Oh, honey," Helmet said, giving her coworker a look that said she was going to handle this nuisance. She bustled up to me. Her coffee smelled like a tire fire laced with artificial vanilla. "Logistics is a lot of lifting and sweating, and the guys are pretty rough around the edges. Not the sort of place for a girl like you."
Oh, if only she knew the kind of s.h.i.t a girl like me handled on a regular basis.
"That"s so weird," I said, sweetening my voice, "because it sounds like you"re refusing to interview me solely because of my gender. Is that the way this company runs?"
"No." She shook her head, startled, then shook it again. "That"s not what I meant."
"So girls like me can apply for logistics positions?" I had a guilty twinge at the idea of twisting her comment to my advantage, but if I found something, I could maybe help to save a life. Also, screw her. I rocked at logistics.
"Talk to Ellen," she snapped. The younger girl gave me a wide-eyed smile.
Twenty minutes later, I was hired. As a part-time employee I wouldn"t get any overtime. Or benefits. Or breaks. The pay also stunk.
I threw myself into the car. Which had heated to about a million degrees while I was gone. Mickey was stretched like a cat, and had cracked her window only a couple of inches.
"I like this heat," she said.
"I think my sweat is sweating, but good for you. So I have a job."
"You vacation weird, but I"m happy for you. Does it pay well?"
"No. Humans don"t pay for s.h.i.t."
"But at least they will not bite you."
"No, they"ll just metaphorically chew you up and spit you out. I have to stop at the mall."
Mickey sprang upright. "Shopping. Finally."
I"d never been the kind of girl who needed a guy around. But as we drove toward Tenth World, I wanted Mal next to me. The landscape, once we left the concrete grid of the city, was like the surface of Mars if NASA had paved a two-lane road straight down the center of it. There was nowhere to turn off and nothing to hide behind. In a rig like the Skylark, perfect for floating down freeways but not so hot in the agility department, I wouldn"t even be able to manage a U-turn. Disturbing as things around us were, Mal was comforting to me.
Mickey glared at the side mirror through a giant new pair of tortoisesh.e.l.l sungla.s.ses. "I think someone"s following us."
"That"s the bodyguard."
"Why do we need a bodyguard? And how do you know?"
Richard Abel had used human mercenaries during the day. He didn"t like humans, and only used them when he thought the job would be easy. He"d sent them after me once for a quick bag job, not knowing that Malcolm was around. It had still been a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k. At least human bodyguards wouldn"t have to worry about the sun burning them out of existence. Mickey would be gone tomorrow morning, so I didn"t trouble her with that little factoid.
"You didn"t notice him when we came out of Victoria"s Secret? The guy who was really, really interested in the kelp cellulite scrub kiosk?"
"I was distracted by this new bra. I think it"s turned my b.o.o.bs up to eleven."
I laughed and glanced at her. "The American judge gives it a ten-point-oh."
"You know, this is all very exciting for me. Vampires. Your cah-razy hot boyfriend. Credit cards without limits. But I know that you have things to do, so please do not worry about entertaining me at all times."
"I think I kind of win that exchange," I said, "but I do have a few things I have to do before we can hang. I"ll crank them out, though." Anything related to satisfying Bronson wasn"t on the good kind of to-do list.
The resort loomed ahead of us, five stories of sandstone-colored concrete. The buzz of the undead strummed against my nerves. The ground floor had a few windows tucked deep beneath slate awnings and the only uncovered windows were on the top floor.
"Ooh." Mickey leaned forward against her seat belt. "You see that? That"s their traditional architecture. I saw it on a doc.u.mentary. The only daylight is on the top floor, where they keep their feeders. They don"t have to contain them because the only way out is through the building. Since they"re so quick, even if their humans try to run, vampires can catch them before they get to the ground. I mean, that"s how it was before it moved to a voluntary employment basis."
"They could have jumped off the roof." I sped up and the truck paced me.
"That"s not escape. That"s suicide."
"Mickey, you need to be careful around them." My hands twisted on the wheel as I tried to figure out how to explain. "That sucker PR machine spins day and night, but that"s not what they"re really like. Vampires aren"t humans with more time."
"I know, I know. They"re predators."
"It"s not even that. It"s not like they"re constantly on the hunt. They acquire. They"re big into owning things, owning people. Just because they can."
"Vampires are h.o.a.rders?"
"Yeah." I shook my head. "I don"t know. Maybe it"s how they cope with always being hungry."
I turned off the main road, which looped toward a covered valet area, and aimed for the parking garage in the back. Our tail closed to within a couple of car lengths and an old tension wound its way through my limbs. My gaze moved on a steady rotation through the mirrors and out both windows. Being followed, even by a friendly, had me on alert.
Even in the partial shade, the concrete was sizzling when we tumbled out of the car, dragging our bags with us.
"I hope the elevator"s close," Mickey said as we shoved through the door in a frenzy of crinkling bags.
"There probably isn"t one since they require electricity. Vampire bellboys can carry anything the guests might bring, anyway."
The building was clean and very, very quiet. That"s difference number one between a human place and one occupied by vampires. Their s.p.a.ces were quiet-thick walls and doors stuffed with insulation and none of the background hum of electronics. Flashbacks of standing in foyers, hallways, and offices, waiting for vampires to sign my clipboard, rocked through me. But I was a guest here, nothing more.
Yellowish, lacquered wainscoting stretched to the end of the hall. The walls above were covered in fabric rather than wallpaper, light with small red-and-green shapes, like distantly s.p.a.ced paisleys. Oil lamps hung from dropped hooks at even intervals, and the artificial light would have been pleasant if the building wasn"t pressing down like a bunker. The fact that it felt like we were going to turn the corner and find swinging saloon doors was a little disconcerting, but I guess we were in the West. The olde West.
Through the thick walls, a tendril of vampire energy reached for me. Being with Malcolm, opening to him, had made me more sensitive to it. But it wasn"t just him. I could feel them all now, their power and their emotions: interest, antic.i.p.ation, that raw grate of hunger. I"d expected to expand my horizons as I got older, maybe pick up some new hobbies. I hadn"t antic.i.p.ated finding myself intimately aware of people I"d considered dangerous for most of my life.
"Why do you keep looking back?" Mickey asked.
"Wondering if our guy"s coming in." Mal considered this place safe, but he"d never navigated the halls as a human. I wouldn"t mind backup.
"You know-" Mickey gasped, and the temperature in the hallway dropped about fifteen degrees. I spun, my hand diving into my bag in search of pepper spray.
A female vampire stood a few feet from us. She wore a starched white b.u.t.ton-down shirt and black pants. Her hair, also black, was wrapped in an intricate knot at her nape, and the power she emitted nearly bowed the walls away from her. Pulse pounding, I maneuvered around Mickey, nudging her back with my elbow.
The vampiress slipped through the s.p.a.ce between us and I sucked in a breath when she lifted a lock of my hair. The wide expanse of her upper lip drew back, revealing a row of even white teeth and two rippled patches of skin over her eyeteeth, like the scar tissue from a burn. I had no idea what it took to permanently scar a vampire. Not anything good.
"You wear another"s hair." Jewelry clinked on her wrist, metal rings and stone. Her voice was soothing. Her eyes, black and glittery like a snake caught in bright moonlight, were not.
"Mickey," I managed, "go to the room." Maybe Thurston was there. Maybe Mal and Soraya had returned. Maybe, even in a hotel, this vampiress wouldn"t be able to cross the threshold to get to her. The female"s head tilted to the side. Her eyes fixed on Mickey as the girl scrambled past, snagging the bags off my wrist.
"She"s not really anyone you need to worry about," I mumbled. Those dark eyes snapped back on me and I tensed before the trembling started. Most vampires retained habits, motions, from their human lives, or fell back in mixed company. Not this one.
She stared, motionless. No tells, and I couldn"t catch a distinct sense of her. The lamps around us flickered, the flames guttering before they picked up again. What would she do next? Start chanting and pull my still-beating heart out of my chest? Disappear in a plume of bat wings and smoke? Bite my head off, literally? I wanted someone to round the corner at the end of the hall so badly that the print on the wallpaper started swimming in my vision.
"Everyone here is mine to worry about," she said finally, black eyes blinking as though she were waking up. "I am Chev. This is my home."
My home. The atmosphere actually tightened when she said her name, and a big chunk of the ambient power gelled around her before it stretched away. An image of ma.s.sive wings, spanning wider than the building, out over the desert, filled my mind. Jesus. I hadn"t been able to pin her down because her power was everywhere. Master Bronson might be stronger, but his power was threaded throughout a ma.s.sive territory. She had only this building, on a single stamp of land. She could probably tell when worms rolled over under the ground.
"We appreciate your hospitality," I said. If I hadn"t spent years standing up under vampire scrutiny, I couldn"t have managed it.
"I have permitted your presence as a favor to Malcolm Kelly." She nodded absently, as though she was carrying on another conversation in her head. "Which puts us even. Do not interrupt or in any way solicit the guests. Do not venture into the feeding rooms."