The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire (10 page)

“You did not even feel me take it off,” he said smugly.

“You could have used your vampire speed to do that,” I said, snatching it out of his hand and hooking it around my wrist.

“But I did not,” he said, and somehow, he had managed to get the dang bracelet back and was dangling it from his fingertips again.

“Stop that!”

“When it stops being funny,” he said with what almost sounded like contrition. “I toddled along that way for years, until I sent a very superstitious fellow—who I didn't know was a vampire—for a palm reading. Katya predicted a long and lonely life for him, and he lashed out, turning me to prove her wrong. He told her that he would keep me with him for all eternity.”

I was not able to suppress my shudder. All of the vampires I knew, with the exception of Andrea, had been turned by people they knew and trusted, or eventually came to know and trust. And Andrea's horrible sire had been given the Trial, the triple whammy of vampire capital punishment, making way for her husband to take his place as a mentor. I couldn't imagine being turned by someone who was basically an emotional albatross. “Did that work out for him?”

Nik shook his head. “No, I rose three days later, and the moment he turned his back, I staked him and ran.”

“Seems fair.”

“There are certain benefits to being turned by a vampire who is not particularly smart,” he said. “Or fast.”

“And then what happened?”

He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, as if all that history was boring. “Eh. Enough about me.”

“But your story is so much more interesting than mine,” I protested. “My life story is sadly lacking in circus folk.”

“To you, it is less interesting, maybe. But I have so many questions about a girl named Gladiola Grace and her strange vampire upbringing.”

“We're coming back to your awkward vampire adolescence,” I told him, but when I pointed my finger at him, I realized my bracelet was missing again. “Damn it, Nik!” I snatched it back from him.

He asked, “So what was it like, growing up with one human parent and one vampire?”

“I didn't grow up with Cal,” I said, closing my bracelet around my wrist. “He sort of swept in under the wire and filled that big-brother role right before I flung myself out of the nest for college.”

“You are going to have to learn to use fewer metaphors.”

I pulled his hands into mine, so I could study them, trace the outline of his scarred palms with my fingertips. How could hands that still seemed so young and strong have survived for so long? How many countries had these hands touched? How many lives? Trying to estimate made me a little dizzy. How could he stand to see so much, to know so much? How could he drum up enthusiasm for each new stage in history? And how could I seem at all interesting compared with any of that?

I cleared my throat and shook off those crippling feelings of inadequacy, because I refused to be
that
girl in this strange undead love story. “Our parents died when I was around twelve. A drunk driver hit their car on the way home from a party. Iris was already in college and she tried to fold me into her life so she could finish up her degree. But that didn't work. It was hard enough to try to get along, just the two of us, without adding the stress of living in a big city, no connections, no help. Iris gave up school so she could take care of me. We moved back to our parents' house in the Hollow. For the longest time, it was just Iris and me. We were together, and we were as content as you could hope to be under the circumstances, but it was so hard on Iris, being the only adult in the house. And there was always this fear nagging at the back of our minds. We never talked about it, but I knew it was there, the fear that at any moment, we could lose it all. One bad accident, one slow month with Iris's business, and we could teeter right into financial disaster. We could have lost the house. We could have ended up living in our car. And then Cal came along with his ‘grrr, I must protect all of the womenfolk'-ness and endless pots of money. And for the first time, we felt safe. So many of our worries seemed to just melt away. We could enjoy each other's company in a way we hadn't before. And then there was the added fun of freaking Cal out whenever we could. I mean, the man fought in the Trojan War, but seeing a bra hanging over a shower-curtain rod makes him stammer like a choirboy.”

Nik burst out laughing. “I will have to remember that.”

“Cal was the kind of big brother you always wanted, but he was kind of a nightmare at the same time. He loved us fiercely, but it was always just a little twisted. I mean, he decided he wanted to do an Easter egg hunt the first spring we were all together, and he filled all of the eggs with twenty-dollar bills. But then he
buried
them because he thought it was funny. He scared the hell out of Ben, even though he liked Ben, just because he could. There was a boy in one of my classes at UK who wouldn't take no for an answer when I didn't want to go out with him, and I didn't know what happened, but I figured Cal threatened him with something, and then next thing I know, this kid runs across the campus when he sees me coming. And then he dropped out of school . . . which I suppose you already know about because you were there. Do you often do favors like that for Cal?”

“When I am not doing business for the Council, I occasionally offer my services to friends, yes.”

“Business like attending terrifying staff meetings where fangs are crushed with pliers?” I asked wryly.

“That was a special favor to Ophelia,” he said. “I am in the Hollow because Ophelia requested my assistance with a series of thefts from vampires in the area. My special talent is well known among vampires. My presence at the meeting gave her intimidating claims more credence. To be honest, I hoped that I would not have to demonstrate in front of the room. I do not particularly like performing in public, even after my circus years.”

I nodded. Almost all vampires had some sort of special talent, like Jane's mind-reading or Dick's gift of persuasion. Iris had yet to discover her special vampire gift, which Cal assured us was perfectly normal. It could take years to cultivate a special talent. And even then, it could be something completely off the wall like finding lost objects or talking to woodland creatures. Though, personally, I think the lost-object thing would be kind of cool.

“So far, we haven't figured out what Iris's is yet. I am really rooting for that ability to talk to squirrels thing, because that would be weird and awesome. Oh, wait, let me guess yours. Is it wearing clothes really, really well? Or sneaking up on people in locations where they park cars?”

He lowered his head until we were nose-to-nose and growled softly, reminding me once again that I had a bad habit of poking at predators. But then he grinned broadly, and I felt all off-balance again. He was
really
alarmingly good at that. “My vampiric gift is psychometry. I touch an object, and I get images of past events that occurred around the object.”

“So why don't you use your gift to try to recover your memories of me?” I exclaimed, smacking his arm.

“I have tried!” he said, batting my swinging hands aside like harmless flies. “Have you not noticed how often I touch you? I am not getting any sort of read from you.”

“But how does it work?”

He thought about it for a long moment, as if trying to find an explanation I could handle. That made me nervous. “Every time you touch an object, you leave fingerprints behind, yes? You also leave an echo of your soul.”

I frowned. “Like a Horcrux in
Harry Potter
?”

I would never get tired of seeing him rub his hand over his face like that. “No,” he said. “You leave a little bit of the emotions you are feeling when you touch an object. If the emotions are strong, whether they are positive or negative, the echo is much stronger. When I pick up an object, that echo bounces into my head and shows up like a movie on a screen. Only the movies are always unpleasant.”

“Always?”

“Almost always. People seem more open to feeling strong negative emotions than positive ones.”

“Well, that's depressing.” I stuck my bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout.

“I can see what they saw, feel what they felt, hear what they heard. If the echo is very strong, I can hear their thoughts in my head. It takes me away from myself, out of my own head.”

Suddenly, his not needing a laptop for his work made much more sense. He literally had to be “hands-on” while conducting his research for the Council. Not much use for Google there. I tilted my head at a curious angle. “Does it work with people?”

“People have too many emotions going on at once. It is almost impossible to get a clear reading. It is like white noise. If I opened my mind up to it, I would go insane.”

“Well, I'd hate for you to risk that,” I admitted.

He took my hands in his. “I hate the idea that I could not remember our first moments together. I hate that you might feel alone in this. I never want you to feel anything but—”

He stopped, jerking his head toward the house, as if he was hearing something I couldn't. Which was likely.

“Cal and Iris are moving upstairs,” he said. “Dawn is coming, and I must rest for the day. I will walk you back to the house.”

“Wait, you were going to say something,” I said, as we moved out of the trees. “Something about feelings?”

“Some other time, Gigi. The wonderful thing about being undead is that I have all the time in the world.”

“Well, I don't. I am a human. I have a limited shelf life,” I protested quietly as we neared my window. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he picked me up bridal-style and leaped up to my open window. He employed the whole catlike-grace thing again, landing with no effort on the windowsill and passing me through the open window. We entered the room noiselessly so as not to provoke my undead housemates.

“You do not have to have a shelf life,” he whispered. “I am sure there are any number of vampires who would be willing to turn you.”

I laughed, even though I knew he was right. Though Iris still held out hope that I would grow up to be a happy, well-adjusted soccer mom, I knew that if it came down to my dying or becoming a vampire, she would turn me. Or Cal would. Jane, Dick, Jamie, or even Gabriel would turn me if I needed help. And frankly, the prospect didn't scare me. Yes, I recognized that there were things I would have to give up, if and when I was ever turned. Motherhood, graceful aging, a natural death, though, given my circle of friends and family, that was probably unlikely. But I'd had several years to ponder these sacrifices, and as far as I was concerned, they were worth it if I got to live out my days with the people I loved. And of course, being faster, stronger, more attractive, and more likely to win a fight weren't exactly downsides, either.

Besides, between working for the Council and my usual all-night coding parties, I was basically keeping vampire hours and sun exposure levels already. But these were not issues that I was ready to share with Nik just yet.

“If we can't have the feelings conversation due to time constraints, we are definitely not having the ‘do you want to be turned' conversation,” I whispered back. “You just take your Old World charm and frustrating conversational tactics and remove your person from my room, sir.”

He chuckled, brushing my hair back from my face. “Will you see me again?”

My eyes narrowed. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“This does not count as a date?”

“No. This was a walk. In the dark. In my pajamas. Dates include leaving the house for a planned activity. And I didn't say I would go out with you.”

He grinned at me. “I think I could persuade you.”

Before I could gather my forces of snark, Nik yanked me close, sweeping me into one of those swoony, back-bending kisses also featured on the covers of Iris's romance novels, all soft, sliding lips and clever flicks of the tongue. My eyes went wide, and I couldn't help but notice, at this intimate distance, that Nik closed his eyes. Five hundred years on this earth, countless kisses with countless women, and he still closed his eyes when he kissed. I didn't care if he was potentially evil. My heart melted a little, even when his hands slipped down my back and cupped my ass through my pink pajama pants.

“Still not persuaded,” I told him cheekily, when he finally pulled away.

“I will have to dig deeper into my bag of tricks.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Because you are a perverse, sly creature.” He pecked me on the lips, a quick, mischievous kiss, before he ducked out of the window and back-flipped onto the grass.

I peered down from the open window, shaking my head at his antics. “Good night, Nikolai.”

“Good night, my Gigi.”

6

Arguing with a vampire over office policy is generally pointless. They can outlive you, and really, when one party is alive and the other is dead, right or wrong doesn't matter much.

—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace

T
hree days later, Sammy Palona, a permanent “coffee and sandwich” guy, was appointed to keep us humans from needing to leave the office during work hours. He set up a mini-deli in the human break room and kept a constantly circulating batch of espresso flowing to the overnight crowd. Also, there were several new video cameras installed in the parking lot, but I wasn't sure if that was Nik's doing or Cal's. Neither one of them wanted me wandering around darkened streets at night.

But Sammy was a perfectly nice, enormous Samoan guy who knew his way around a skinny peppermint mocha, so I wasn't going to complain about my brother-in-law and/or vampire crush's possible interference in my workspace. Sammy's genius did not extend to sushi, however, so I continued to bring my own vampire-prepared California rolls from home. I even kept a bottle of soy sauce with my name on it in our office's “nonblood” mini-fridge. I liked to think of it as marking my place as an official Council staffer.

Of course, Ophelia had refused to meet with me twice so far when I'd asked to talk to her about my position as project leader. Both times, she had been unavailable. I tried to tell myself it was because of her busy schedule, but I was sure it had more to do with Jamie than a jam-packed day planner.

Oddly enough, her assistant, Margaret, had wandered in every night, shuffling through our archive files. She seemed to be looking for something. But when we asked her if she needed help, she got this weird deer-in-the-headlights look on her face and scuttled out of the room.

The project seemed to be flowing easily into the initial stages. We'd divided up our tasks and were scheduled to start testing that Friday using a program created by our regional manager. And as much as I enjoyed my work, I hadn't seen Nik in almost a week, and frankly, I was getting a little twitchy. After his initial, blatant violation of the embargo, he'd kept his word to Cal, not calling, not coming by the house or ambushing me outside my office. And even though he'd had a meeting with Ophelia, he'd managed to get in and out of the office without seeing me. I lived in a Nik-free bubble. This, of course, meant that he occupied most of my waking thoughts. I wondered where he was, what he was doing, where he was staying in the Hollow.

I threw myself into work for a distraction. My skin went paler and paler as I spent my nights glued to my monitor, music blasting into my headphones as I wove coding magic. I was living on fancy coffee and sushi. And despite the fact that I was getting plenty of sleep during the day, the disruption of my circadian rhythms left me with dark circles under my eyes. I was starting to look like a vampire, albeit a vampire of below-average hotness. And no, no matter how many folders I searched through, I did not see information on living descendants Nik might have.

Meanwhile, I was getting past that awkward “I think we might get along, but you could also secretly be a colossal jerk” phase with my new coworkers. The problem with working in the IT field was that when you grouped a bunch of superintelligent people used to being the “weird kids” in their classes, they tended to try to outdo one another in their “out-there-ness.” Marty was on a “brain-boosting” diet of quinoa and wild-caught salmon and therefore refused to eat anything that his mother hadn't packed for him. Aaron kept zombie-apocalypse supplies in his desk, just in case. Jordan regularly waged war between her My Little Pony and Dr. Who figurines on her coffee breaks. The Ponies always won, crushing the pretend sonic screwdrivers under their ruthless plastic hooves.

Fortunately, I'd spent most of my formative years as a member of the jock semipopular crowd, so I was used to the sort of diplomacy required to navigate interpersonal insanity. Pony carnage aside, I enjoyed spending time with Jordan. At first, I thought she didn't like me, based on her multiple eye rolls on the first day. But I eventually figured out that was her basic mode of communication. One eye roll meant she thought something was a good idea. Two eye rolls meant she was doubtful. A full three eye rolls meant she thought you were an idiot.

But since she only gave me two eye rolls when I told her I was a Ninth Doctor girl, I considered us friends.

Marty was a mixed bag. Sometimes he could be downright sweet, dropping a handful of my favorite mini Reese's peanut butter cups off on my desk or bringing me a
Wired
article he thought I would like. He friended me on Facebook and occasionally left me links to funny YouTube videos on my wall. And there were other times, like when he called me Gladiola or when he insisted on walking me to my car, even when I asked him not to, when he was sort of irritating. I figured it was all part of the grown-up workplace experience, finding ways to cooperate with people who grated on your nerves, even though you spent more time with them than you did with your family.

Aaron had this thing where he pretended to be lazy and sketchy, but he was actually a very talented programmer. He managed to cut through the layers of bull to find the real problem before the rest of us could grasp what was going on. He just didn't want to be in a leadership position. It took up too much time when he could be doing actual work. I had to admire that about him.

Besides my warren mates and Sammy the coffee god, I didn't see many of our coworkers on a daily basis. Each office had its function and seemed to work as its own little biosphere of productivity. I ventured out of my office for runs to Sammy for coffee and to the copy room, and that was about it. On one such expedition, I was scurrying down the hall from the copy room and happened to pass Ophelia's partially open office door.

“What do you mean, it's ‘missing'?” Ophelia shrieked.

I stopped in my tracks. She sounded displeased, and by displeased, I mean volcanically angry. As scary as she was in everyday interactions, it was pretty unusual to hear her raise her voice. Ophelia was more of a “let your anatomically elaborate threats do your talking for you” kind of gal.

“I don't know where it could have gone, Miss Lambert,” Margaret whimpered. “The last time I saw a red file, it was on your desk, waiting to be returned to the archive. That's the only one I've seen since I started working here. Normally, they're kept in the special archives.”

“I know that they're normally kept in the special archives, Margaret. The fact that the folder is
red
indicates that it's a record of some importance. You find that file, Margaret. I won't even bother to threaten you with the consequences of not finding it. Just have it on my desk before you outlive your usefulness.”

Cringing, I backed away from the door, hoping I could escape before Margaret emerged and I had to make awkward “I heard you getting your ass handed to you” eye contact.

“How was it spelled again?” Margaret asked, her voice quivering.

“Linoge,” Ophelia spat. “L-I-N-O-G-E.”

I froze.

Linoge, as in the red folder I'd found in the archive stack on my first day of work? As in the file folder still tucked away in the recesses of my desk, Linoge? As in the vampire who was executed for “excessive feeding” due to his girlfriend's evil magical influence? That Linoge?

A familiar sensation buzzed through my brain, the click of puzzle pieces falling into alignment. Linoge was executed for violent, out-of-character behavior linked to magic. Nik was experiencing violent, out-of-character behavior, which, frankly, stank of magical whammy. Could the two vampires be linked? Could I get some clues to Nik's memory issues if I could figure out how Linoge was cursed?

I needed to get back to my desk. Now.

I motored down the quiet, gray hallway as quickly as I could, while still appearing casual. I opened the door to find an empty office. All the desks were empty. The muffled strains of Sia rang out from Jordan's abandoned My Little Pony headphones.

Well, this was incredibly creepy. Maybe my team members had decided to take their own simultaneous smoke breaks . . . after simultaneously suddenly deciding to take up smoking? Still, I was grateful for the chance to retrieve the folder from my desk without making my coworkers liabilities . . . I mean, witnesses.

That still sounded wrong.

I opened the drawer where I'd stashed the binder containing the file. I scanned the paperwork, but it was just as skimpy with information as it had been the first time I read it. Basic information about Linoge only, no hints to who or where his descendants were. I wasn't even sure if it was worth holding on to the file, except that it irritated Ophelia, and that was sort of fun. But something told me to hide it away, to keep it as some sort of leverage against my mercurial boss, just in case. I wasn't dumb enough to steal Council property and take it home, so I shoved it into a drawer, under my lady supplies and contact solution, and prayed that no one would see it.

Right, so where did this leave me?

I needed to find more information about Linoge. Given the somewhat, let's say, “creative” information-storage methods used by the Council, it was more than likely that there was another file on Linoge on the server completely unrelated to his kin, probably something to do with taxes or flossing habits or something. I couldn't use my own computer now that the network administrators had assigned us all IDs and done away with the generalized “new employee” login. I would imagine that the IT staff would ask why I was looking at areas of the server I had no business opening, searching for a file I shouldn't know existed. And using my coworkers' stations was weasely and mean.

Right, accessing scary vampire networks without it being traced back to me or my computer. Something to ponder. For now, I needed to do some actual work so I didn't get fired before I could do something that could get me murdered or, at least, scolded in a stern fashion.

I'd no sooner logged back into the server when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped about a foot, throwing my coffee cup aside and knocking it into my wastebasket. And somehow I did it without spilling a drop. God bless lids.

“Whoa,” Aaron said, jumping back from me, hands raised. “You're right. It was bad coffee.” Aaron sent a mocking glare into the wastebasket. “Bad coffee.”

“Sorry, a little too much caffeine today,” I said, laughing nervously. “What's up?”

Aaron brushed his hair out of his eyes long enough to look distinctly uncomfortable. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then stopped, dashed over to the office door, and shut it. “I don't want to break the unspoken rules about office tattling.”

My eyes went wide. Crap. He knew about my file hoarding.

I cleared my throat, willing my blood to go back into my facial muscles so I could appear nonchalant. “I don't think those are an actual thing.”

He grimaced. “It's just that Marty accidentally saved a copy of the file he's been working on in my folder on the server. And I was curious.”

Relief flooded through me, like sipping a hot drink after feeling cold for days, and I was able to smile and appear truly nonchalant. “Because you're competitive and wanted to know if you're better than he is,” I said, my tone teasing.

“No comment,” he said primly. He nudged me aside gently to open his server folder on my computer.

“If you give me a virus, there will be consequences,” I told him.

Aaron snickered. “Anyway, I went over this section of code that Marty just finished, and it's not working. It's like he isn't even using the same language we are.”

“What?” I scoffed. “That can't be right.”

I opened Marty's work and ran it through the test program that would show what the final results would look like live. And the result was gobbledygook. Just a bunch of random letters.

“Wow, that's a steaming-hot mess,” I marveled. “Maybe he's just nervous? Sometimes when I'm feeling uneasy, it puts me off my game.”

Aaron shook his head. “Almost every file in his work folder is like this.”

“What are you doing opening all of his files?” I asked him seriously.

“No comment,” he said again, clicking as many server folders as my monitor would allow.

“You've got to wonder how he got the job,” Aaron murmured, as each piece of Marty's work failed the testing program.

“Uh, yeah, I barely got the job, and I'm competent,” I grumbled. Beyond the initial test to prove that I'd mastered basic programming, Ophelia had locked me in an outdated archive and asked me to find the living descendants of Geraldine Dvorak, who was not, in fact, a vampire but the actress who played Dracula's bride in the Bela Lugosi classics. I was only allowed to use the resources in the room, which did not include a computer—which I'd found a little odd, considering that I was being hired for a programming position. I'd only managed to find the answer because Ophe­lia failed to pat me down for my smartphone. “Hey, speaking of which, how did you get past Ophelia's insane test?”