Into the Woods (20 page)

She and Kisten lived in the converted apartment that took up the entire top floor of the old shipping warehouse. Ivy liked the openness, arbitrarily dividing it into spaces with folding screens and strategically placed furniture. The windows were spacious and smeared on the outside with the dirt and grime of forty years. Piscary didn’t like being that exposed, and this granted the two of them a measure of security.

Wine bottles clinking, Ivy set them on the table at the top of the stairs, thinking she and Kisten were like two abused children, craving the attention of the very person who had warped them, loving him out of desperation. It was an old thought, one that had lost its sting long ago.

Shuffling off her coat, she set it and her purse by the wine. “Kist?” she called, her voice filling the silence. “I’m home.” She picked the bottles back up and frowned. Maybe she should have gotten three.

There was no answer, and as she headed back toward the kitchen to chill the wine, the scent of blood shivered through her like an electrical current. It wasn’t Kisten’s.

Her feet stopped, and she breathed deeply. Her head swiveled to the corner where the deliverymen had put her baby grand last week. It had dented her finances more than the bike, but the sound of it in this emptiness made her forget everything until the echoes faded.

“Kist?”

She heard him take a breath, but didn’t see him. Her face blanked and every muscle tightened as she paced to the couches arranged about her piano. The dirty sunshine pooling in glinted on the black sheen of the wood, and she found him there, kneeling on the white Persian rug between the couch and the piano, a girl in tight jeans, a black lacy shirt, and a worn leather coat sprawled before him.

Kisten lifted his head, an unusual panic in his blue eyes. “I didn’t do it,” he said, his bloodied hands hovering over the corpse.

Shit
. Dropping the bottles on the couch, Ivy swung into motion, moving to kneel before them. Habit made her check for a pulse, but it was obvious by her pallor and the gentle mauling on her neck that the petite blonde was dead despite her warmth.

“I didn’t do it,” Kisten said again, shifting his trim, pretty-boy body back a few inches. His hands, strong and muscular, were shaking, the tops of his fingernails red with a light sheen. Ivy looked from them to his face, seeing the fear in his almost delicate features that he hid behind a reddish blond beard. A smear of blood was on his forehead behind his brown bangs, and she stifled an urge to kiss it away that both disgusted and intrigued her.
This is not who I wanted to be
.

“I didn’t do it, Ivy!” he exclaimed at her continued silence, and she reached over the girl and brushed his too-long bangs back. The gentle swelling of black in his gaze made her breath catch. God, he was beautiful when he was agitated.

“I know you didn’t,” she said, and Kisten’s wide shoulders relaxed, making her wonder if that was why he was upset. It wasn’t that he had to take care of Piscary’s mistake, but that Ivy might think he had killed her. And somewhere in there, she found that he loved her.

The pretty woman was Piscary’s favorite body type with long fair hair and an angular face. She probably had blue eyes.
Shit, shit, and more shit
. Mind calculating how to minimize the damage, she asked, “How long has she been dead?”

“Minutes. No more than that.” Kisten’s resonant voice dropped to a more familiar pitch. “I was trying to find out where she was staying and get her cleaned up, but she died right here on the couch. Piscary . . .” He met her eyes, reaching up to tug on a twin pair of diamond-stud earrings. “Piscary told me to take care of it.”

Ivy shifted her weight to her feet, easing back to sit on the edge of the nearby couch. It wasn’t like Kisten to panic like this. He was Piscary’s scion, the person the undead vampire had tapped to manage the bar, do his daylight work, and clean up his mistakes. Mistakes that were usually four foot eleven, blond, and a hundred pounds. Damn it all to hell. Piscary hadn’t slipped like this since she had left to finish high school on the West Coast.

“Did she sign the release papers?” she asked.

“Do you think I’d be this upset if she had?” Kisten arranged the small woman’s hair as if it would help. God, she looked fourteen, though Ivy knew she’d be closer to twenty.

Ivy’s lips pressed together and she sighed. So much for getting any sleep this morning. “Get the plastic wrap from the piano out of the recycling bin,” she said in decision, and Kisten rose, tugging the tails of his silk shirt down over the tops of his jeans. “We open in eight hours for the early Inderland crowd, and I don’t want the place smelling like dead girl.”

Kisten rocked into motion, headed for the stairs. “Move faster, unless you want to have the carpet steam cleaned!” Ivy called, and she heard him jump to the floor from midway down.

Tired, Ivy looked at the woman’s abandoned purse on the couch, too emotionally exhausted to figure out how she should feel. Kisten was Piscary’s scion, but it was Ivy who did most of the thinking in a pinch. It wasn’t that Kisten was stupid—far from it—but he was used to having her take over. Expected it. Liked it.

Wondering if Piscary had killed the girl on purpose to force Kisten to take responsibility, Ivy stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes going to the filthy windows and the river hazy in the morning sun. It sounded just like the manipulative bastard. If Ivy had succumbed to Art, she would have spent the morning at his place—not only obediently taking the next step to the management position Piscary wanted for her, but forcing Kisten to handle this alone. That things hadn’t gone the way he planned probably delighted Piscary; he took pride in her defiance, anticipating a more delicious fall when she could fight no longer.

Warped, ruined, ugly
, she thought, watching the tourist paddleboats steam as they stoked their boilers. Was there any time she hadn’t been?

The sliding sound of plastic brought her around, and with no wasted motion or eye contact, she and Kisten rolled the woman onto it before her bowels released. Crossing her arms over her like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped her tightly. Ivy watched her hands, not the plastic-blurred face of the woman, trying to divorce herself from what they were doing as they passed the duct tape Kisten had brought around her like lights on a Christmas tree.

Only when she had been transformed from a person to an object did Kisten exhale, slow and long. Ivy would cry for her later. Then cry for herself. But only when no one could hear.

“Refrigerator,” Ivy said, and Kisten balked. Ivy looked at him as she stood bent over the corpse with her hands already under the woman’s shoulders. “Just until we decide what to do. Danny will be here in four hours to start the dough and press the pasta. We don’t have time to ditch the body
and
clean up.”

Kisten’s eyes went to the blood-smeared rug. He lifted a foot and winced at the tacky brown smear on it, tracked downstairs and back again. “Yeah,” he said, his fake British accent gone, then took the long bundle entirely from Ivy and hoisted it over his shoulder.

Ivy couldn’t help but feel proud of him for catching his breath so quickly. He was only twenty-three, having taken on Piscary’s scion position at the age of seventeen when Ivy’s mother had accidentally died five years ago and abdicated the position. Piscary was active in his control of Cincinnati, and Kisten had little more to do than tidy up after the master vamp and keep him happy. Stifling her tinge of jealousy that Kisten had the coveted position was easy.

Piscary’s savage tutorial had made her old before she had begun to live. She wouldn’t think about what she was doing until it was over. Kisten hadn’t yet learned the trick and lived every moment as it happened, instead of over and over in his mind as she did. It made him slower to react, more . . . human. And she loved him for it.

“Is there a car to get rid of?” she asked, already on damage control. She hadn’t noticed one in the parking lot, but she hadn’t been looking.

“No.” Kisten headed downstairs with her following, his vampire strength handling the weight without stress. “She came in with Piscary right around midnight.”

“Off the street?” she asked in disbelief, glad the restaurant had been closed.

“No. The bus station. Apparently she’s an old friend.”

Ivy glanced at the woman over his shoulder. She was only twenty at the most. How old a friend could she be? Piscary didn’t like children, despite her size. It was looking more and more likely Piscary
had
orchestrated this to help Kisten stand on his own. Not only planned it, but built in the net of the woman’s cryptic origins in case Kisten should fall. The master vamp hadn’t counted on Ivy catching him first, and she felt a pang of what she would call love for Kisten—if she knew she could feel the emotion without tainting it with the desire for blood.

Ivy caught sight of Kisten’s grimace when she moved to open the door to the kitchen. “Piscary killed her on purpose,” he said, adjusting the woman’s weight on his shoulder, and Ivy nodded, not wanting to tell him about her own part in the lesson.

Tucking a fabric napkin from the waiting stack into her waistband, she yanked up the handle of the walk-in refrigerator and slid a box with her foot to prop it open. Kisten was right behind her, and in the odd combination of moist coldness Piscary insisted his cheese be kept at, she moved a side of lamb thawing out for Friday’s buffet, insulating her hands with the napkin to prevent heat marks from making it obvious someone had moved it.

Behind the hanging slab was a long low bed of boxes, and Kisten laid the woman there, covering the blur of human features with a tablecloth. Ivy had the fleeting memory of seeing a similar bundle there once before. She and Kisten had been ten and playing hide-and-seek while their parents finished their wine and conversation. Piscary had told them she was someone from a fairy tale and to play in the abandoned upstairs. Seemed like they were still playing upstairs, but now the games were more convoluted and less under their control.

Kisten met her eyes, their deep blue full of recollection. “Sleeping Beauty,” he said, and Ivy nodded. That was what they had called the corpse. Feeling like a little girl hiding a broken dish, she moved the slab of lamb back to partially hide the body.

Cold from more than the temperature, she followed him out, kicking the box out of the way and leaning against the door when it shut. Her eyes went to the time clock by the door. “I’ll get the living room and stairs if you take the elevator,” she said, not wanting to chance running into Piscary. He wouldn’t be angry with her for helping Kisten. No, he’d be so amused she had put off Art again that he would invite her into his bed, and she would quiver inside and go to him, forgetting all about Kisten and what she had been doing. God, she hated herself.

Kisten reached for the mop and she added, “Use a new mop head, then put the old one back on when you’re done. We’re going to have to burn it along with the rug.”

“Right,” he said, his jaw flushing as it clenched. While Kisten filled a bucket, Ivy made a fresh batch of the spray they wiped the restaurant tables down with. Diluted, it removed the residual vamp pheromones, but at full strength, it would break down the blood enzymes that most cleaning detergents left behind. Maybe it was a little overkill, but she was a careful girl.

It would be unlikely to have the woman traced here, but it wasn’t so much for eliminating her presence from a snooping I.S. or FIB agent as it was avoiding having the restaurant smell like blood other than hers and Kisten’s. That might lead to questions concerning whether the restaurant’s mixed public license, or MPL, had been violated. Ivy didn’t think her explanation that, no, no one had been bitten on the premises—Piscary had drained a woman in his private apartments—and therefore the MPL was intact, would go over well. From the amount of aggravation Piscary had endured to get his MPL reinstated the last time some fool Were high on Brimstone had drawn blood, she thought he’d prefer a trial and jail to losing his MPL again. But the real reason Ivy was being so thorough was that she didn’t want her apartment smelling like anyone but her and Kisten.

Her thoughts brought her gaze back to him. He looked nice with his head bowed over the bucket, his light bangs shifting in the water droplets being flung up as it filled.

Clearly unaware of her scrutiny, he turned the water off. “I am such an ass,” he said, watching the ripples settle.

“That’s what I like about you,” she said, worried she might have made him feel inadequate by taking over.

“I am.” He didn’t look at her, hands clenching the rim of the plastic bucket. “I froze. I was so damn worried about what you were going to say when you came home and found me with a dead girl, I couldn’t think.”

Finding a compliment in there, she smiled, digging through a drawer to get a new mop head. “I knew you didn’t kill her. She had Piscary all over her.”

“Damn it, Ivy!” Kisten exclaimed, lashing the flat of his hand out to hit the spigot, and there was a crack of metal. “I should be better than this! I’m his fucking scion!”

Ivy’s shoulders dropped. Sliding the drawer shut, she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. They were hard with tension, and he did nothing to acknowledge her touch. Tugging into him, she pressed her cheek against his back, smelling the lingering fear on him, and the woman’s blood. Eyes closing, she felt her bloodlust assert itself. Death and blood didn’t turn on a vampire. Fear and the chance to
take
blood did. There was a difference.

Her hands eased around his front, fingers slipping past the buttons to find his abs. Only now did Kist bow his head, softening into her touch. Her teeth were inches from an old scar she had given him. The intoxicating smell of their scents mixing hit her, and she swallowed. The headiest lure of all. Her chest pressed into him as she breathed deep, intentionally bringing his scent into her, luring fingers of sexual excitement to stir along her spine. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, her voice low.

“You’d be a better scion then I am,” he said bitterly. “Why did he pick me?”