I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
He looked at Amy. “And you are?”
“Amy,” she offered without hesitation.
“I’m Quinn,” he said, and nodded at me. “A good friend of Sarah’s here. Isn’t that right?”
I swallowed and glanced at Amy. Her smile held, but I could see accusation in her eyes. She thought this was my mystery man. The real mystery was—how had he found me so easily? I felt sick. Maybe it was fate. He didn’t have to follow me to my apartment. I’d saved him the trouble by walking right into his path.
I was so dead.
"I’m going to take off.” Amy stood up from the table. She swung her purse over her shoulder and gave me a dirty look.
I looked up at her bleakly, but didn’t try to stop her. No reason for her to get hurt, too.
“I’ll call you.”
“Whatever.” She turned her best fake smile in Quinn’s direction. “Nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
She was about to leave and then seemed to hesitate. Good, Amy , I thought. Do something courageous. Make a scene. Anything would be great.
She turned back around and, without making eye contact with me, grabbed the rest of her cheeseburger, wrapped it in some napkins, and shoved it into her bag.
And then, my best friend of the past four years left me in the clutches of a vampire hunter whose wooden stake had my name etched on it. Quinn watched her walk away until she was just a tiny pink dot entering a clothing store at the other end of the mall. Retail therapy to get over her friend’s betrayal.
He turned back to me and presented me with a wide grin. “So, where were we?”
I breathed in slowly through my nose and let it out just as slowly through my mouth. I could remain in control here. I wasn’t going to show him how scared I was.
“Before or after you decided to kill me?”
“I believe we left off at the deciding-to-kill-you part.”
I took another deep breath. “Actually, I think we left off just before your daddy gave you a spanking for being a bad boy.”
His grin faltered, and he took a moment before answering. “He’s a man who’s very hard to please.”
I shrugged. “Your family problems are your own business.”
“You’re right, they are.”
I told myself to shut up and not make things worse, but my mouth wasn’t listening.
“So,” I said, “does your mommy spank you, too, or just your pops?”
The grin didn’t just falter this time, it slid right off his face. “My mother is dead.”
“Oh.” My stomach sank. “I’m sorry.”
What the hell was I apologizing for? I did tend to stick my foot in it sometimes. I suppose apologizing was just my knee-jerk reaction.
“Yeah,” he continued, even though I didn’t want him to. “When I was just a kid, she was killed by one of your kind.”
“An executive assistant?” I offered.
“A vampire. A cold-blooded, vicious, murdering monster like you.”
“You have me all wrong. You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.”
“Look, I’m sorry for your loss. Really. But I’m not what you think.”
He shook his head. “You’re new. I get that. But it doesn’t change anything. You’re one of them. My sole purpose in life is to rid the world of things like you.”
My eyes narrowed. “I don’t much like being called a thing. When was the last time you had a conversation with a real live woman? When it didn’t require a credit card number first, that is?”
He scowled at me. “You have a real mouth on you.”
I sighed. “Look, I just want you to walk away and leave me alone. What’s that going to take?”
“You not being a vampire.”
“So that’s the only qualification needed to end up on the wrong end of a stake with you? What about the fact that I’m totally innocent?”
“Innocent.” He snorted at that. “No vampire is innocent.”
“Yeah, and I used to think that vampires were dangerous and sexy. I’ve managed to blow that theory out of the water.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not dangerous and sexy?”
I paused for a second and studied him. Okay, what was he doing now? Threatening me or flirting with me? I looked around. The food court was packed and noisy. A kid had just dropped his ice-cream cone and was screaming like a banshee a couple of tables away.
“I have a question, Quinn.”
“What’s that?”
“Would your mother be proud of you?”
“What?” The word was like a gunshot.
“Your mother,” I repeated. “Would she be proud of you hunting down helpless, innocent women and killing them all in the name of vengeance? Somehow I doubt it. She’d probably be ashamed to call you her son.”
I took the moment, since I knew it was all I had. In one quick motion I threw the food at him, clobbering him as hard as I could. My untouched retried beans hit him right in the eyes. That would sting. He stood up and slipped on the spilled food and drink and fell to the floor. I grabbed my purse and ran through the crowd, out of the food court. You’d think that with all my running around lately, I would have chosen more sensible shoes. Well, you’d be wrong. I was wearing two-inch platforms that were about a size too small. They looked great with the jeans, but it was at the price of comfort. I pushed open the nearest door to the underground and flew down a flight of stairs and past the subway entrance. The PATH was practically deserted on Saturday afternoons, since it was mostly set up for the Monday-to-Friday business crowd. There were a few stragglers. Some window-shoppers, even though most of the stores were closed up and dark.