Authors: Hannah Jayne
Under Attack (4 page)
“That's right.”
“And she was wonderful with Mr. Sampson,” Nina said, butting in between Dixon and me. “He was absolutely crazy about her.”
Dixon raised one black eyebrow and Nina licked her lips. “In a purely professional way.”
Dixon nodded slowly, his eyes still on me. “Good to know. And lovely to meet you, Sophie. I'll be seeing you around and looking forward to our interview.”
“Likewise,” I said, my voice sounding thin and weak as Dixon nodded to Nina, then turned on his heel, his henchmen following closely behind him.
“Oh. My. God,” Nina said when Dixon was out of earshot. “I thought I was going to explode.”
I stepped back. “Well, don't do it anywhere near me.”
“Do you not think that Dixon Andrade is downright yummy? I mean, look at him!” Nina gestured wildly as Dixon got smaller and smaller as he headed down one of UDA's long hallways. “That is some delicious vamp candy!”
I crossed my arms. “I suppose he's pretty hot. If you're into that hot, good-looking, brooding type.”
“With a smile that could melt butter!”
And fangs that could cut glass. “I guess he's okay,” I finished.
Chapter Three
The plastic bag loaded with takeout Chinese was cutting off the circulation in my fingertips as I tried to shift my stuffâcoat, laptop case, purseâand get my key into the lock. After four tries and an impressive show of inner-thigh muscle as I clenched the sliding bags between my knees, I got the apartment door open, grunting the whole time but managing to keep the mu shu upright. I dropped everythingâexcept the takeout bagâin a heap on the floor when I saw what greeted me: a living room full of vampires, their faces pale and perfect, eyes narrowed, bee-stung lips full and dyed blood red. The house was in disarray and little droplets of blood spattered the coffee table, along with discarded bits of clothing and glasses knocked on their sides, plasma starting to congeal inside. Despite the blood on their lips, these vampires looked hungry. I blew out a sigh.
“Really, Vlad?”
Vlad sprung up from the flower-print easy chair and strode across the room toward me. His cold fingers chilled my arm as he steered me into the hall.
“We're having an Empowerment meeting.”
“You didn't tell me you guys have become the Slob Empowerment Movement.”
“Geez, Sophie, you're as bad as Aunt Nina. I'll clean up when we're done. Promise.”
“Good. I have a meeting, too.” I swung the takeout bag in front of him.
“Another meeting of the Mu Shu Pork Society?” Vlad asked, crossing his arms and jutting out one hip.
I narrowed my eyes. “Just clean it up. You didn't tell me you guys were meeting here today.”
“Do I have to tell you everything?”
I held my glare steady.
Vlad fluffed up his ascot. “We were chased out of the UDA by Lorraine. We need a place to meet. The Empowerment Movement is currently only in its infantile stages, so this is when we are most in need of a nurturing environment.” He smiled, a sweet, boyish smile that reminded me of the earnest kid he must have beenâback in the eighteen hundreds or so.
“Shouldn't you be meeting in a cemetery or something ?”
Vlad's eyes widened. “Do you know one with mausoleum space?”
“Look, just wrap it up and give me fair warning the next time you plan on bringing the fang gang around.” I looked over his shoulder, eyeing the assembled vamps as they flipped through magazines and stuck skinny straws into their blood bags, Ã la Capri Sun. “You know I'm pro-vamp and I support the movement,” I glanced back at Vlad's ascot and black-painted fingernails. “At least most of it. But Alex and I have some important business to discuss tonight.”
“The angel is back?”
Vlad's eyebrows went up, but I stopped him before he could comment. “Yes. But this is just businessâanother case. So, can you wrap it up?”
“Geez,” Vlad said with an eye roll. “I can't wait until I get my own place.”
“Not until you're two hundred,” I muttered parentally as I followed him back into the apartment.
I set my bag down and noddedâgraciously, though nervouslyâto Vlad's vampire friends as they gathered up their trash and filed out the front door, Vlad in tow. I gave them a polite finger wave and then raced to the bathroom, telling myself that I was freshening up as a polite hostess and nothing more as I dabbed on a drywall layer of deodorant and slapped on some Siena Sunset lip stain. I undid the bun on the top of my head and my hair fell in soft, curled tendrils that swooped romantically around my face and stuck up like wheat grass in the back. I spent the next eight minutes pleading with said wheat-grass hair and finally finagled it in a downward direction with a handful of centuries-old Dippity-do that I found in the back of the medicine cabinet.
Deeming myself cosmetically presentable, I went back to the kitchen and unloaded the armful of takeout containers onto the dining room table, trying to arrange them artfully. If I couldn't cook, the least I could do was arrange takeout beautifully. I finished off my Hang chow bounty with a meager-looking daisy stuck in a water glass. Not exactly The Slanted Door, but it would do.
I sucked in an anxious breath when I heard the lock tumble on the front door. My heart gave a little pitter of warmth that dropped down into my nether regions and I imagined myself gripping Alex by the lapels and dragging him into the living room, lip to passionate lip. Instead, I crossed my legs and forced myself to look nonchalant.
“Oh,” I sighed when I opened the door. “It's you.”
Nina gave me a sour look. “Nice way to greet your roommate.”
I wrung my hands. “It's just that I was expecting Alex.”
Nina gaped. “Don't tell me you gave him a key now, too!”
I wagged my head and Nina arched an eyebrow. “I thought you weren't sure you were interested in getting involved with him again.”
“What are you talking about? We're just two old friends meeting for dinner.”
Nina sniffed at the air. “Hang chow?” She sniffed again. “And you sprang for the prawns chow fun.”
“I like prawns.”
Nina squinted and pointed at my pursed lips. “And that's Siena Sunset. That's name-brand product. You don't shell out for shrimp and name-brand product for someone you're not getting involved with. I bet you even shaved your legs.”
I bit my lipâwhoops.
I sighed, a meager attempt to center myself. “I'm not exactly getting involved. I'm helping him with a case.”
And possibly out of his clothes....
I put my hands on my hips. “And I thought you were anti-Alex.”
And possibly out of his clothes....
I put my hands on my hips. “And I thought you were anti-Alex.”
“I'm not anti-Alex. I'm pro-love. You'd be surprised how pro-love one becomes when they're not getting enough blood to their personal parts.”
“So love is all about what gets to your personal parts?”
Nina licked her lips and winked. “Honey, love can be about anything having to do with the personal parts.”
“Silly me. I thought it was about the heart and all that malarkey.”
Nina waved a dismissive hand, twisting her glossy dark hair around her finger. “Eh, it's all the same after a while.” She yanked open the fridge door and rooted around for a blood bag, then pulled herself up onto the kitchen counter and kicked off her shoes, aiming them into the dining room.
“So”âshe took a long sip that crumpled her blood bagâ“back to you and Alex.”
“A case,” I reiterated. “That's all this is about. Shrimp chow fun, name-brand lip glossâwhich was a free sample by the wayâand that's it. Just a case.” I was talking so loudly I was beginning to convince myself. “He's coming over so we can discuss the particulars.”
“Discuss the particulars?” Nina's lips went into a sleazy half-grin. “Something tells me I know the particulars you're interested in... .”
“Uh, hello?”
Alex was standing in the open doorway, head cocked, eyebrows raised. I sucked in a traumatic breath, my body not knowing whether to die of embarrassment or of sheer desire.
Tonight, Alex Grace looked good enough to eat.
His pale grey T-shirt looked soft and was fraying a little at the collar. It stretched across his broad shoulders and the short sleeves were pulled taut against his thick, ropey muscles. His arms were crossed and the bottom edge of his tattooâa single angel's wingâpoked out from underneath the fabric covering his left bicep. I worked hard to keep my eyes welcoming and friendly, but they kept slipping to Alex's slim waist, to the way his well-worn jeans hung on him, and visions of him stepping out of those jeans clouded my “friendly” stance.
Alex held up a six-pack of beer and stepped into the apartment, kicking the door shut behind him. The click of the door and the clink of the beer bottles shook me out of my revelry.
“Hi. Nina and I, we were just ...”
There was a playful look of knowing in Alex's eyes and I felt the heat of embarrassment wash over me. I looked down and went to work opening the beer, certain that my face was flushed as red as a midlife-crisis Corvette.
“So,” Nina began, “Sophie tells me there's another mystery to be solved. Count me in.”
“Great.” Alex walloped the backpack I didn't realize he was carrying onto the dining-room table, making the Chinese food and my pitiful flower jump.
I handed Alex his beer, our fingertips brushing in the exchange. My stomach did a little butterfly flutter and I took a quick pull from my beer, gulping a mouthful of foam.
“Is that mu shu?” Alex asked, sniffing at the air.
“Yes,” I said. Then I pointed at the backpack. “Is that your homework?”
Alex took a pair of chopsticks and the takeout box of mu shu. “I guess it's our homework.”
Nina frowned. “There's going to be reading in this one? I don't know if I want to play anymore.” She pierced her blood bag with a single angled fang, sucked earnestly on what remained and then looked up, her full lips stained a deep red. “What are we after, anyway?”
“The Vessel of Souls,” Alex said in between bites.
I took my own takeout box and chopsticks and dug into some Kung Pao. “Hey, how do we even know the Vessel is here anyway? Shouldn't it be like, in Europeâlike Vatican City or something?”
Nina looked up from her second blood bag, eyebrows raised. “Rome? Okay, I'm back in.”
“The Vessel is definitely here. I'm sure of it.”
“Is your angel sense tingling?” I asked.
A flash of darkness skittered across Alex's cobalt eyes and his smile dropped. “I know it's here because Ophelia is here.”
I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. Alex and I weren't exclusive or even dating, reallyâand I had no idea where he went when he wasn't stretched out drinking a beer on my couch or eating day-old donuts at the police stationâbut I still felt a sudden, illogical pang of jealousy.
“Who's Ophelia?”
Please say your mother, please say your mother, please say your mother
, I silently prayed.
Please say your mother, please say your mother, please say your mother
, I silently prayed.
“Ophelia is a fallen angel.”
“Like you,” Nina said.
“No.” Alex shook his head, holding a piece of mu shu pork between poised chopsticks. “Not like me at all. She's currently the head of the fallen and she's very bad news. Evil bad.”
I had a faint sliver of hope that her being the head of the fallen meant she was horned or cross-eyed or wore gaucho pants.
“The head of the baddies?” Nina looked impressed. “Who do you have to kill to get that gig?”
Alex looked away. “Ophelia was why I left hereâwhy I left San Franciscoâthe first time.”
I swallowed, not tasting my food. Instead I imagined Alex and his fallen-angel friend Ophelia frolicking on clouds and harmoniously strumming harps while I had spent those solitary six months after he disappeared in elastic-waist pants trolling the ice cream aisle at Cala Foods.
“Oh.” My voice came out a choked whisper.
“Noâit wasn'tâwasn't like that. The word got out that she was looking for me. So I decided I'd better find her first.”
“And did you find her?” Nina asked, toes tapping angrily, eyes narrowed in the ultra-protective best-friend mode.
“No.”
I felt remotely better. “So why is she here? And why does that mean the Vessel is, too?”
“Ophelia has been tracking the Vessel ever sinceâ” Alex looked down at his hands, ashamed. “Ever since I lost it. She wants it for herself. She's desperate for itâhas been the whole time I've known her. Ophelia is the kind of woman who gets off on power. Lots of power.” Alex looked at Nina and me. “She'll kill for it. And if she's here, then the Vessel can't be far off.”
I felt a breezeâlike icy breathâcreep up the back of my neck and I shivered. Hollow laughter rang out in my ear and I frowned, going to the kitchen window and scanning for errant, laughing kids. There was nothing but darkness and the occasional sound of horns honking so I slammed the window shut. The breeze went away, but the chill and the sound of laughter hung in my head for another few seconds.
“How do you know she's back here? Have you”âI paused, tasting the bitterness of my wordsâ“seen her?”
Alex wagged his head again, his dark curls bobbing. “No, thank God. But I've heard things. I know she's here.”
I swallowed, waiting for the feeling of relief to wash over me. It didn't.
Alex placed a thick file folder flat on the table and pushed it toward me. I glanced down. “Something tells me this isn't the complete files of the Lolcats.”
I opened the file and the front page of a week-old
San Francisco Chronicle
was folded neatly on top. The headline blared
HUNGARIAN DIPLOMAT AMONG CESSNA DEATHS.
There was a full-color picture of the wreckage of the small plane in a shallow section of the bay; someone had drawn a red circle around a smudge of black on the wing of the plane. “Did you circle this?” I pointed to the smudge and Alex nodded.
San Francisco Chronicle
was folded neatly on top. The headline blared
HUNGARIAN DIPLOMAT AMONG CESSNA DEATHS.
There was a full-color picture of the wreckage of the small plane in a shallow section of the bay; someone had drawn a red circle around a smudge of black on the wing of the plane. “Did you circle this?” I pointed to the smudge and Alex nodded.
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