The Vampire's Curse (24 page)

"You still think it's Charity?"

"I'm sure she's connected somehow."

"Well, we already checked her out. She's alibied to the eyeballs at the time of the shooting and she doesn't own a car, or even know anyone with a car, that has tinted windows."

Kyle clenched his jaw and thought. There hard to be something he missed. Then it clicked. “Evey was wearing a robe.”

“A what?”

“A reflective robe. Vampires wear them whenever they need to go out in the daylight—”

“I know what you mean. Okay, I got it. So now you think that she might have gotten into a car without tinted windows just because she was wearing a robe?”

“The sun isn’t exactly shining so bright out.”

Carter looked out the windows and into the grey sky. “And the fact that Charity Dodd owns no car?”

Kyle didn’t have an explanation. He was about to suggest something else that could make his theory possible when he stopped. He realized he sounded like a man who wanted someone to be guilty not for justice, but to be proven right.

He decided to just stick with what Carter already told him. "When you checked out where she lives, you didn’t find anything that says she could have housed all those feral vampires?"

Carter shook his head. "Not a damn thing. If it makes you feel any better we're still keeping an eye on her."

It didn't make him feel better. So he decided to go back to Jackie's side, perhaps glare at her mother a bit for playing favorites with the daughter that cursed him in the first place.

Patty took one look at him before quickly turning her head, tightening her hands on her purse as she rose to kiss Jackie's head. "I need to be going now."

"Mom," Kyle heard the pleading in Jackie's voice. Whether it was for her to stay or be more polite to him, he couldn't tell.

"I'll come back to see you later if you're still here. Call me if you get out before then and we can talk some more."

Patty puttered out of the room fast enough for Kyle to know in all certainty that he was the reason she chose to leave.

He sat in the chair that Patty vacated and pulled it closer. "You okay? Thought I felt some tension."

She shrunk in on herself. "Yeah, a little. I guess." She sighed and threw her head back into the pillows. "The doctor said I could leave tomorrow morning. I only need to stay for observation. What did Evey say?"

He tensed. "She checked out this morning. She's not here." He hoped that the half truth would be enough to curb her suspicions.

She looked at him, her eyes sharp now. "I saw the way you and my mom looked at each other when she left. I don't want you to think that she's a bad mother or anything just because she goes easy on Carly whenever she makes a mistake."

He sighed at the quick change of subject. Still, Kyle thought it was an awfully nice way of saying that the mother favored one daughter over the other.

"But, there's a reason for what she does that you don't understand." She continued.

He leaned back and crossed his foot over his knee, trying to look like the picture of patience. "I'll listen if you explain it. If you want to, that is."

She smiled at him, understanding that he only prodded and poked where he didn’t belong because of his worry for her.

She closed her eyes before staring up into the ceiling. "Griffon city is a big place and all, but because of all the secrecy, you can't really come here and expect to get rich and famous, in pretty much anything. If you want to design clothes for celebrities, you have to leave and do it in another city, or you could just stay here and make a small business out of it that no one outside will ever hear of. The most this city has is its own newspaper, a private channel that's mostly for the news, and a radio station.

"Mom wanted to be an actress, but she wasn't brave enough to leave the city to go out and make it on her own. So she stayed here and opened her store. She expected Carly to take it over someday, but she didn't want anything to do with it. Said it was too small and wouldn’t bring her anywhere in her life.”

“Charming thing to say about your mother’s business.”

Jackie ignored the comment and plowed on. “She wanted to model, to be famous like  mom wanted to be. But unlike mom, she was brave enough to leave and do what she wanted. Mom didn't approve, said all the basic things. The odds of making it were as good as no odds at all. They even had a big fight over it. No one who knew Carly expected her to actually make it, and yet she did. Now mom idolizes her for what she did."

"Even though you stayed?"

She nodded and finally looked away from the ceiling. "Right."

He crossed his arms tightly. Despite how she appeared on the outside, even if he didn’t have the ability to read her so well, he could see the bitterness just below. "You're story is really depressing."

That startled her. "What?"

He shrugged. "Well, think about it. Just because your sister went ahead and did something your mother couldn't do isn't much of a reason to favor her over you."

"She loves us both."

Once again Kyle didn't need to be an empath to feel the sad emotions in her voice as she said it. He recalled the last time he tried to talk to her about her mother and decided that he was lucky to hear what he heard because she was in the mood to talk. He wouldn't push her for more.

"I didn’t say that she didn’t love you. Every mother loves her kids.” He thought with some pain of his own mother before getting back on track. “Listen, I'll go to your place and board up the window before anything else happens. There's not much of a point to me being here with all the security."

She looked at him sharply. "When are you coming back?"

He thought about it seriously. He wanted to make a pit stop at the hotel where Carly was staying and have a talk with her. A calm, adult, conversation, but he didn't want Jackie knowing this. "I guess it depends on how long the cleanup will take."

She nodded.

He decided to grant her a bit of good news, even though he questioned it. "Charity wasn't the one who shot at your window."

Her eyes brightened as they went wide. "How do you know?"

"Carter told me. She has an alibi for the time it happened, and when he checked out her apartment they didn't find anything that would convict her of starving vampires."

"Wow, he works fast. You just told him about that this morning."

"I think he just got some people to check it out and then report back to him." Without thinking of his earlier pact to himself to not do so, he leaned down to brush her lips with his.

He pulled away before she could kiss back, licking his lips and tasting her there. "I'll be back soon. Stay safe."

He went to the door and found the guard still thankfully engrossed in his magazine and not paying attention to the kiss he'd given her. He had to try and stop that. Despite what he’d said about avoiding kisses at night, embracing them, encouraging them during the daytime was not much better. Jackie getting shot through her window in the morning light was proof of that.

"You stay safe too."

He stopped and looked behind him. She was sitting up in her bed, looking so fragile where she sat with her arm in a sling in her hospital bed, just watching him.

Telling her where he was going would destroy her. He’d have to keep it to himself for a long while.

***

Jackie sighed and lay back, staring at the boring white ceiling again. She blindly reached out with her good arm for the book her mother brought her to read, a silent apology from the proud woman. Jackie opened it but couldn't read the words right away.

He was going to see Carly. She could feel it deep inside her.

"If she curses you again, don't come crawling back to me," she muttered, snapping it shut and sighing.

Then she snuggled a little deeper into her sheets. Kyle’s kiss still lingered on her mouth, and she grinned.

“He loves me.”

SIXTEEN

Kyle found some large cardboard at a nearby restaurant and used it to seal up the hole in Jackie's apartment, then he drove to the hotel where he knew Sarah was staying. Or Carly, as he should call her now. While at the station where Carly had been questioned, he overheard one of the officers mention the name of the hotel she was staying in.

Turned out that for a place that didn’t get many outsiders, there were still people in the world, otherworldly types, who liked staying in fancy places.

He stared up at the towering glass building before trotting up the polished stone steps. A bellman with long pointy ears wearing a red uniform held the door for him.

Marble pillars accented the gleaming floors and spotless red carpets. Bellboys carried luggage bags on carts with the owners following behind and chatting as though there was no one carrying their bags for them at all.

Old ladies with little dogs, men in suits on cell phones, had it not been for the occasional glimpse of fangs, claws, and more pointed ears on the people around him, Kyle would have thought it all looked normal.

Even though he wasn’t dressed in his best like every other scurrying guest, no one looked twice at him as he walked to the front desk. He made idle, flirty chit chat with the girl behind the counter to get the room number where Carly stayed, reluctantly took her offered number—promising himself he’d throw it out later so as to not hurt any feelings—and moved towards the elevator.

He knocked on room seven 712 and ducked out of the way of the peep hole. As he expected she would, she opened the door to have a look outside when she saw no one standing there. He sprung himself at her and pushed his way into her room, closing his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream.

He released her and shoved her back when the door was safely shut behind them. He didn’t lock it. The last thing he needed was for her to run to the cops and scream kidnapper at him.

She kept her eyes on him while he surveyed the room. The bathroom was empty, and a door stood partly ajar. He didn’t check it. Didn’t need to. His vampire senses must be crossing over because he could smell someone there.

It was fine. If anyone was hiding in there it was for the best. A witness would prove that he came with no intention to harm her.

The room was spacious and expensive, as he expected it to be, colored with shining, dark wooden desks, thick carpet, beige curtains, and chairs, a puffed up double bed and an entertainment system directly in front for relaxation times. It was plush and had a view of the city outside. Her blonde hair was curled today, the puffy bathrobe and tiny red dress laying perfectly on her bed suggested she was preparing to go out. Too early for a club, so probably just dressing up to shop like she usually did. Just the kind of thing he remembered she would like.

Instead of visiting her sister in the hospital she prepared to go out. What he'd been thinking when he fell for her he had no idea. He’d been as blind as she was shallow.

"I'll phone the police," she said. Her legs stiff and hands clasped together. She trembled slightly. Not what he wanted.

He circled her, purposely putting himself out of the way of the door in case she wanted to run for it. "You could do that. Or we can talk about this like adults."

She was careful to keep plenty of distance between them. "You mean like the last time?"

"The last time was a mistake. I hadn't seen you in months, I was angry and not willing to let you disappear again. If I scared you then I'm sorry." But he wasn't sorry at all. He still wanted to run to her, grab her and shake her, demanding answers for what she’d done.

She shook her head. "I don't forgive you."

"That's interesting, because I don't forgive you for what you did either."

She winced, and if possible, tensed further, anymore and her spine would snap.

He sighed. "I’m not blocking the door or standing between you and the phone, but if that’s not enough I'll open the door a bit." He went and did just that, he could feel her eyes on his back, watching his hands should he pull something on her.

She should know him better than that. He wouldn't have wasted his time or risked getting thrown in jail over her. Not while he was calm and in his right of mind.

With the door ajar he turned back to her. "Better?"

She eyed him with her knees bent enough for him to know that she was waiting to bolt.

He sat on her bed, grabbing the little dress and flinging it away from him. It crumpled on the floor and Carly pursed her lips. She probably paid big money to have it pressed. "There, now if you wanted to scream everyone on this side of the city will hear and they'll haul me off. Now we can talk."

She didn't sit next to him, but he didn't invite her to. She wrung her hands together and chewed her bottom lip, getting red lipstick on her teeth.

It was the first sign he’d ever gotten that she felt some remorse. "Look, I really am sorry for what happened—"

"No, you're sorry that you got caught. There's a difference." His eyes hardened. "Do you have any idea of the Hell I've been through because of you? Everyone I asked about you thought I was insane because they'd never even heard of Sarah Valier. My own brother couldn't find anything on you and he's a P.I."