“Not long,” Quinn said when the waiter left. “Only a few weeks so far. Actually, I was planning on leaving soon, but things change. I may end up staying here permanently.”
“Well, I hope for Sarah’s sake that you do.” Amy grinned and grabbed a sesame-seed bread stick. She crunched on it thoughtfully. “Peter’s new in town, too. You guys sure have a lot in common.”
And that was about the point I began to feel an odd sense of dread concerning Peter, the mysterious pest controller. I started putting two and two together, but instead of adding up to four, they added up to a gnawing, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Amy glanced up. “Finally! Here he is.” She leaned over the table toward me and grabbed my hand. “Try not to look at the eye patch too much,” she whispered. “He’s very sensitive about it.”
I swallowed the huge lump of dismay that was forming in my throat and slowly turned around in my seat. Amy was right. Peter was very attractive. He wore a dark suit with a T-shirt underneath that, along with his blond hair, gave him a vaguely Miami Vice look. He wore a black eye patch over his injured eye. He gave Amy a wide smile of sparkling white teeth as he approached the table. The smile drained from his face as he noticed I was sitting across from his new girlfriend. My last memory of White-teeth had been feeling my big toe making squishy contact with his left eye. Just before Thierry and I had jumped off the bridge nearly a week ago.
Now he was walking toward me at least a thousand feet above street level. I wasn’t planning on jumping from that height, but the night was still young. He hesitated. I could practically see his brain churning out different scenarios, different reactions to seeing me. His eyes flicked to Quinn, and he immediately seemed to relax at the sight of a fellow vampire hunter. He approached the table and leaned over to give Amy a quick kiss. His good eye never left me.
“Hey, darlin‘,” he said to Amy. “Sorry I’m late.”
He sat down directly across the table from me. I felt like I might melt into a puddle of goo right there on the floor of the 360 Restaurant with the intensity of hate in his single eye. Amy, perhaps blissfully, remained unaware of the bad vibes shooting over the top of the bread basket.
“Peter,” she said and took hold of the sleeve of his jacket, “this is Sarah. I’ve told you so much about her that you probably feel like you already know her, right?”
“Yeah.” Peter’s voice was low and gravelly. Barely restrained. “Feels like I already know you… Sarah.”
“And,” Amy continued, “this is Sarah’s boyfriend, Quinn.”
Quinn glanced at me after hearing Amy’s choice of introduction. Then he looked back at Peter and smiled. “Small world, man.”
Peter grinned at that and clasped Quinn’s outstretched hand. “You can say that again.”
“You two know each other?” Amy asked with surprise.
“We do,” Peter said.
“See?” Amy smiled at both of them. “I knew you had a lot in common with the whole pest-control thing, but it never occurred to me that you might already know each other.”
I sat there as quietly as I could. Maybe I could just slide under the table, crawl through the crowded restaurant, past the bustling waiters, toward the elevator. No one would even notice. Then again, what was I so worried about, anyhow? We were in the middle of a restaurant full of well-dressed, potential witnesses. Also, he wouldn’t dare murder me in front of Amy. It would be doubtful she’d date him after that, or at least I’d like to think so.
“Pest control, huh?” Peter said to Quinn as he raked his eye over me. “Looks like you have some work ahead of you tonight.”
Quinn’s closed-mouth grin held. I noticed he wasn’t taking a chance of showing his fangs.
“You can say that again.”
An uncomfortable hush fell at the table, and I felt everyone staring at me. I grabbed a piece of bread for lack of anything else to do and buttered it violently.
“So, Peter”—I felt the sudden and overwhelming urge to break the silence—“what the hell happened to your eye?”
All five eyes at the table shot to me.
“Sarah!” Amy said, appalled.
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “I’m just curious. So sue me. I simply want to know if my best friend is dating someone with a real injury or if it’s just some weird pirate fetish.”
The seething rage came off Peter in hot waves. I cocked my head to one side and tried to give him a friendly smile. It would have worked better if I hadn’t felt as if I’d just had my lips Botoxed.
He stroked the patch tenderly. “An unfortunate workplace accident. But you know what they say, don’t you, darlin‘? ’An eye for an eye‘?”
Amy frowned. “I thought you only called me ‘darlin’. I thought that was our thing, like when I call you ‘pooky.’ ”
“Pooky?” Quinn asked.
Peter gritted his teeth. I was honestly surprised that he hadn’t reached across the table and attempted to kill me with my butter knife yet.
“What are you going to order?” Amy asked me as she glanced down at her menu. She had drawn a little away from Peter, her annoyance about the pet-name faux pas obvious.
“I’m fine with the drink,” I said.
Amy closed her menu. “Don’t be silly. Order whatever you like. Peter said he’d pick up the tab this time, didn’t you?” She nudged him.
Peter clenched his jaw.
I gave him a closed-mouth smile. “Gee, that’s so nice of you, Peter. In that case”—I scanned the menu for the most expensive item—“I think I’ll have the prime rib. And maybe we should order another bottle of wine.”
“That sounds great,” Amy said. “I’ll have the same thing.”
I turned to Quinn. “Okay, why don’t you tell me all about how you two know each other?”
“It’s not a very interesting story.”
“No, come on, Quinn,” Peter prompted. “Let’s tell your new girlfriend all about it.”
Did he think I was completely oblivious to the fact that Quinn was a vampire hunter?
Well, ex-vampire hunter. He said it as if it would come as a complete shock to me when the truth finally came out. What a moron.
“We’ve worked together on occasion,” Quinn said after a long swig from his bottle of Heineken. “We’re more acquaintances than close friends, actually.”
“Come on, Quinn,” Peter said with an unpleasant grin. “We’ve done a whole lot of pest control together over the years. Long days, even longer nights. The search, the hunt, and then the incredible kill. The satisfaction of knowing you’ve snuffed out an evil creature with your bare hands.”
Amy made a squeamish face as she probably imagined her handsome new boyfriend killing cockroaches and spiders in the palm of his hand.
“That’s true,” Quinn said with a glance toward me. “But I’m thinking it may be time for a change in careers.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Peter said. “Even after what happened last night? Taking down that”—he looked at Amy—“uh, that nest of disgusting insects? Come on, that was a rush.
Best time we’ve had in months.”
My eyes widened at that. Last night? I stared at Quinn, wanting him to deny it, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. My heart was jumping inside my chest. Quinn was going about business as usual, even though he was now a vampire himself? Even though he had acknowledged to me that he no longer believed vamps were all evil? The thought of him joining the other hunters on a raid made me feel sick. I wanted to hit him, slap him so hard that his ears rang. I wanted him to say it wasn’t true, even if it meant he had to lie to me. How could I keep on being such a bad judge of character? Was I honestly that stupid? Don’t answer that. Peter was still grinning at the memory of whatever had gone down last night. The waiter came to take our order, but Amy told him we needed a few more minutes. He brought us more ice water instead.
Quinn finally looked at me. He didn’t share Thierry’s ability to have an expressionless face. Every emotion he was feeling, every thought he was thinking, was etched into his features. Unless he was just an amazing actor. Maybe that would be easier for me to stomach.