The elevator rose the requisite forty seconds and then released me into the hallway that it joined. I walked quickly, down the hall and up the stairs, until I reached a room with windows. Dawn, even murky cloud-covered dawn, had never looked so good. But sunlight—shit. I glanced at my watch and sprinted for my car.
Traffic was light driving uptown. People from uptown drove downtown to work, or took trains, or had drivers drop them off. People from downtown didn’t go up so much, unless they were washing other people’s dishes, or mowing lawns—but there wasn’t so much mowing now, in winter.
I stopped at the address the lawyer had given me, a small business park where all the building’s windows were covered in heavily tinted glass. I parked in a spot near a double-parked Jag and gave serious thought to keying his car on principle, before going up to the set of equally tinted glass doors.
I double-checked the address I’d written down, noted that I was thirty minutes late, and tried the door.
It was locked.
“Hello?” I pushed and pulled the simple loop of steel, not so much as rattling the door in its daylight-proof frame. I beat it with the palm of my hand. “Hello?”
Nothing. I looked at my reflection—a little blurry from where my hand had left a smudge print. My ponytail was spiky, there were circles beneath both eyes, and I still had more than just a whiff of were piss about me. Not that I could see that in my reflection, but I could maybe understand why a place like this was also not a place for me.
But on the phone he’d said he’d help. “Come on!” I kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of my shoe.
As this felt particularly satisfying, I was preparing to do it again, when—the door opened inward, slowly. I quickly made to stand on my own two feet and look innocent of any crimes.
“We feared you were not coming, Miss Spence,” said a sensuous female voice.
“I got held up at work. I’m sorry,” I told the darkness in front of me.
As the door’s gap widened, I took a step inside. I could see who was holding the door now, and she was beautiful.
I didn’t excel at being a girl. I could fake it for a night out—I could buy the right clothes, strap up the right shoes, and put on a good game. But it’d always be just that—a game, one that I was fully aware of playing. A façade that was fun to wear, but which would eventually flake. If a guy spent long enough with me, by which I meant maybe forty-eight hours, he’d eventually see frayed jeans, sweatshirts, ratty tennis shoes, and probably one of Minnie’s hairballs dried and forgotten behind the couch. Not even my cat could be counted upon to help create my allure.
But this woman in front of me—she didn’t have to pretend. She’d go to sleep wearing makeup and wake up with it precisely, sexily smudged the next day. Skirts that would be too tight or short on me would fit her perfectly, pertly, and if they were snatched up off the floor after a night out, they would possess wrinkles that were totally in or ahead of style. Her hair would look beautiful in all of its stages, from shower-clean to four-day bedhead, locks merely growing more defined and exotically chunky as time passed, making people on the train—should she ever deign to ride it—bold enough to ask her what styling products she preferred.
Her lips were crimson, naturally so, and her waist-length hair was the color of deep, dark, arterial blood, a blue-red entirely unnatural and entirely unfair.
And as I took all of her in, feeling ashamed for the state in which I’d presented myself, I realized with a start that I’d seen her before. On the train, no less. All of her, except for the part she’d been hiding with watches.
“You’re the girl from the watch ad,” I blurted.
A faint smile set her lips aflame and made her glorious cheekbones rise. “You’re familiar with my work?”
“I’ve seen it before. Them before. The watches.” I pointed to my own empty wrist. I didn’t tell her that the last train I’d ridden in had had a huge cock painted near her face. Maybe not being a fashion model did have some advantages.
Her smile tightened in a way that said she was used to people acting dumb around her, myself included. “Please come in.”
She led me down a short corridor, and I was still staring. I supposed it was rude of me, but it’s not every day you have someone semifamous opening a door for you. I knew some vampires had a look-away power that they used around humans—maybe this was the reverse of that, where my eyes were glued. I glanced at my badge to see if it would show me anything. She paused and opened up a door.
“Please go sit down,” she said.
This new room had no windows, all of the glass outside obviously just for show. The majority of it was decorated in blacks and grays that I could barely differentiate in the low lighting. Now that my eyes had adjusted I could see an elegant-looking man with gray hair and long sideburns. He’d been changed when he was old, elderly, even, looking frail inside a suit the same color as his chair’s upholstery, sitting across an expansive dark wood desk. “We do prefer the night, Miss Spence,” he said, and gestured to a chair across from him.
I walked over and sat down. “I’m sorry. Work.”
“This time, I’ll forgive you. But it does not do to keep those who do you favors waiting.”
I nodded, and glanced over to my left. The model woman sat behind him on a plush leather couch, legs crossed, a lip of skirt pulled tight across her perfect knee. “Are you the man I spoke with?” I asked.
“The same. Not a man, though. But you should know that.” His thin lips pulled into an amused smile, and he stared at me. Through me. My badge glimmered in the room’s eerie twilight.
I put my hand around my badge. His look—it was like Gaius, the vampire boy-child I’d seen, on that other patient’s transfusion night. “Please stop.”
The man shrugged, and my badge went dim. “I just wanted to see what protections your badge afforded you.”
“Apparently not hearing you in my head, or vice versa, is one of them.” I let my badge drop, and kept my best game face on.
“Again, we are the ones doing you favors here, Miss Spence,” he said, regarding me casually with half-lidded eyes.
“Vampires never do anything for free.”
“And yet you saved one, not long ago. Risked your life for her, you told me, on the phone.”
“Yes. But that hasn’t worked out well for me so far.” I scooted to the edge of the chair. Its plush seat and high armrests threatened to envelop me. “So how can I help you help me?”
He laughed, and behind him, the glorious woman smiled. “All right, Miss Spence. I’m sure you are tired, and your occupation requires a certain forthrightness.”
He stood. “My name is Geoffrey Weatherton, Esquire. Before I became a vampire, I was a lawyer, and I am still one now. It runs in my blood, you could say.” His lips pulled wide at his joke, revealing the fanged teeth that would, once revealed outside of this room and on any day but Halloween, give him away.
“You said that you spoke with her, yes? The girl?” he continued.
“Anna.”
“Before she was kidnapped—and she promised to come to your trial?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Then I’ll take your case.” He opened up a folder in front of him—I hadn’t noticed it before, black leather against the mahogany wood. “I just need your signature is all.”
I leaned forward and took the papers he was offering me. “Want to explain this while I read?”
“I’m offering to take your case in exchange for your bloodright. Which would indebt you and any of your children into perpetuity to me and my Throne. Your bloodline would be our donors under permanent retainer.”
I was relieved to find that the pages I held were computer printouts, not handwritten calligraphy on vellum. It made it feel slightly less like a devil’s deal.
“Which Throne do you belong to?” I asked, looking at the papers in my hands.
“The Rose Throne. We have a vested interest in humanity.”
“I bet you do. And who is prosecuting me?”
He smiled. “The Zverskiye.”
I tried not to start. They were Anna’s relatives, the ones that I was sure had Anna now. “And they are?”
“The Beastly Ones, roughly translated.”
I looked from him to my papers and back again. “And how exactly are you all different?”
Geoffrey leaned back in thought. His eyes closed, and I wondered how much longer he could fight the rising sun. “It’s a question of resources and stewardship.” He brought his head forward again, and stared at me, slouching over on one side. “The Rose Throne believes that humanity needs to be cultivated.”
I leaned forward, putting the papers on the desk. I’d never heard anything like that before. “Like educated? Or enlightened?”
Geoffrey’s face took on a bemused expression, and then he laughed. “Like mushrooms. Chickens. Cows. Managed, herded, looked out for.”
I felt stupid for having been rooked. “For your own best interests, of course.”
Geoffrey crossed his bony hands atop the desk, and gently smiled at me. “Well, we are vampires, Miss Spence. The Zver prefer to think of you—of all humans—as free-range meat. Perhaps given that circumstance, you’d rather be a herded cow. Or a stalk of celery.”
I grunted without giving an answer, and turned to the pages in my hand. Page after page of legalese. So this was what lawyer vampires did while they were up at night. It was tough going, but I had faith in myself. I’d translated badly written doctor’s notes involving medication names that sounded like porn stars involved in Nigerian e-mail scams. I could manage this. I read through to the very end, and when I reached it, he was asleep, his chin bowed to touch his chest, as though he was a run-down toy. I shook the pages lightly for his attention and he started back awake. “How will you help me, though?” I asked. “Right now, you’re counting on her to keep her word—if she doesn’t, I die. If she does, I’m indebted to you. What do I get from you out of all this?”
“I, and my assistant, will make inquiries after your friend through vampire channels.” He waved two fingers in the air, and the woman nodded, sending a long lock of red hair spilling into her lap. “Sike speaks for me during the day.”
I looked from him to her and back again. “So I’m supposed to trust that you’ll be doing … something? Asking … questions?” I folded the papers together in my lap. “Really? That’s your plan? I’m signing my life away for this?”
His eyes narrowed. “I do have connections, Miss Spence. Connections that you lack. It is possible that I will find her.”
“Possible,” I repeated. The sheaf of papers that I held felt suddenly very heavy, like the low pan of a weighing scale. Which was worse? Being indebted to a vampire for eternity, or death by execution?
“You’re worth slightly more alive to me as a legal blood cow than you are dead,” he followed up. “Worth making an effort for.”
I didn’t trust him further than I could throw the polished marble paperweight at the end of his desk. But what was losing some blood? I’d make more. I liked living. I wasn’t very good at it so far, but that didn’t mean I wanted to stop any time soon.
I slammed the papers on top of his desk, and signed them with my charting pen before I could change my mind.
“A woman of action. I can appreciate that.” Geoffrey Weatherton, Esquire, waited patiently for me to finish the triplicate forms, then took them politely away. He scanned over them, nodding to himself, before looking again at me. “Now, Miss Spence, we are legally bonded.” He rocked back into his chair. “Tell me everything, again.”
It already appeared as though Geoffrey’s attentions were periodically fading, drowsing only for him to shake himself awake again. But I inhaled and retold the story from the beginning, from my first moments meeting and caring for Mr. November—Yuri, Yuri—and what had then followed.
“It does sound dire for you,” Geoffrey said when I’d finished my sad tale. He was braced against his elbows on the desk, his hands sympathetically interwoven out in front of him.
I’d included the parts of my story up until Anna’s kidnapping. “Where did they take her? And why?”
“The Zverskiye’s motivations are ever unknown to us. One of the reasons they and we disagree so often.” He leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. “An ancient blood feud? A well-organized pornography ring? You said you saw the vampire who witnessed the murder there again—”
My mind blanked a bit at this. Murder? I was … a murderer? It was hard to hear it phrased like that, when the deathee in question had exploded into dust and flame. But—I looked down at my hands, and remembered Lady Macbeth. Sure I’d washed my hands a hundred times with hand sanitizer since that night, but the facts remained the same.
“What happens if I give myself up?”
“Then you’ll be drawn and blooded. And when they’re done with your flesh, they’ll continue to keep your soul. At that time, according to the papers you just signed, I will merely inherit your couch.”
“My soul?” I blinked. I’d gone to church plenty of times in my youth, under parental duress, but I’d never gone willingly on my own. “You’re kidding, right?”
“They did send a Husker after you, did they not? What did you think he was there for?” Geoffrey eyed me sorrowfully, and his gaze looked old. I felt distant, like not only was I looking across his desk at him, but across a gulf of time between us too.
“But … really? My soul?”
“Energy is currency, Miss Spence, and entropy rules the day. It’s called psychophagy, and it is, quite literally, a fate worse than death.”
Soul … eating? No way. “Why?”
“Souls are even more potent than blood, Miss Spence.”
“Then why aren’t they out killing people all the time for them?” I asked.
“You can get blood from killing people, yes. But souls? Souls have to be earned.” Geoffrey hunched forward, as if pulling the strength to stay awake from somewhere deep inside himself. “A soul has power only in its transition states, much like you might remember from electrons in chemistry. A good soul that stays good, or a bad soul that stays bad—those maintain their levels, dead or alive. They are predestined, if you will, and neither change the balance.
“But for a good soul to become bad—such a change lets off a quick release of energy.” He snapped his fingers. “Like a photon in motion releases light. There are many eager to harvest these rare events. How often does a human manage to kill a vampire, and thus legally indebt their energy that way? Much less a human who was good to begin with? Not very often at all, Miss Spence. If you weren’t up to die,” he said, smiling at me grimly, “you should be very proud of yourself.”
Small consolation. “So my soul is really what is up for trial?”
“Yes.” Geoffrey’s eyes closed for a long second, then fluttered open again. “I imagine you’ve made some plans to do a little investigating of your own? You don’t seem like the type to wait patiently at home.”
I flushed. “I did make some plans. I have a friend who’ll help.”
“Well, I must advise you to be careful—technically you’re already on trial, and vampire courts don’t believe in innocent until proven guilty. Dying now could leave you in a difficult state.” His lips pursed in disapproval. “You shouldn’t be dragging other mortals into this.”
“He’s a zombie.”
In response, I watched the ropy tendons of Geoffrey’s hands knot and bunch. His face gave nothing away, but it took a moment for his hands to still. “Miss Spence, I tell you this as your legal representative. I am a wolf who is a wolf. Not a wolf who wears sheep’s clothing. Trust that he has his own reasons for helping you.”
My shoulders sank two inches. “I have to do something,” I protested. I wanted to think that Ti had only my best interests at heart. If zombies even had hearts.
“I understand.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a business card. “Call if you find out anything before I do. Sike will answer if I cannot.”
“And if you don’t call me?” I asked.
“Then I will see you at the trial.” He nodded curtly, stood, and walked to the gloom at the back of his office. Momentarily, I heard a closing door.
Sike stood. She walked around a file cabinet, and I heard pouring water before she reemerged with a paper cup in hand. “Water?”
I took it from her. “You’re his daytimer?”
“I prefer dayspeaker, but yes.”
“You don’t look like a daytimer.” Her top showed her neck, and I couldn’t see even one scar.
Her eyes narrowed at my purposeful use of the wrong name. “I do have my career to think of.”
“Won’t it be hard to score that Sports Illustrated cover once you’re a vampire?” I asked.
“I’ll just have to earn it before then, I suppose.” She smiled pleasantly at me, but it was all lip—her cheeks didn’t move, and her eyes didn’t twinkle. Because we both knew the truth. She’d never get to go to Europe or New York to make it big—unless for some reason that was what the Rose Throne wanted her to do.
Just like I’d never get to leave Y4. I set my water down without touching it. “I’m sorry—I’ve gotta get some sleep.”
“Keep in touch,” she said, with a tone of voice that let me know she wished for nothing less.
I drove straight home and didn’t check my messages till I was crawling into bed.
“Hey, Edie—my friend’ll help. Meet me at the Westpark Shopping Center, off of the 85, near the north entrance, at three. Bring that shirt, okay? Sleep tight.”
I saved Ti’s number on my phone, then set it on my nightstand. Asher’s phone number had migrated to be beside it. I crumpled his number up and threw it across the room for Minnie to use as a cat toy. The outpatient clinic hadn’t called back with the results of my tests yet; things were probably fine. Everything was probably fine. Anna was probably fine wherever she was being tortured now. Mr. Galeman was probably fine, post multiple blood transfusions. Sike was probably fine with my pathetic attempts to piss her off out of jealousy, and Geoffrey was probably fine with the fact that I had a zombie on my side, who was himself probably fine as long as eventually we went on a date, where I would again probably be fine as long as he didn’t want to eat my brains.
It’s a good thing I was exhausted, or I never would have gotten to sleep with so much uncertainty.