Work Text
GABE
“The city is at war,” Gabe opined, leaning against the slick, glittery makeup counter. He was riding a caffeine high, but “languid and lazy” opened more doors when he had something batshit to say, so he lounged a little extra. The beautiful dark-haired girl in white (Victoria, Victoria, like the white cat in Cats—don’t ask why he knew the name of the white cat in Cats) laughed at him. “I’m not kidding!”“I’m not doubting it!” she protested. “I’m mocking your grand pronouncement style. There’s a difference.”Unfazed, Gabe kept pronouncing grandly. “Our times demand it, man. Weekend weather forecast is blood and guts, no doubt. A pal of mine spotted the Bizarres by the waterfront, which will run them right into the Punks, and nobody’ll stop them unless they run into the Munsters, because the Electric Company are the only coven with any tech aside from, you know, the god-given superpowers all vampires wake up with.”It was a lot of information to rattle off, which was on purpose; if she wasn’t in the know, she would laugh it off and ask if she could help him find anything else today, or if he wanted to open a credit card. But the girl leaned in conspiratorially. Her perfume smelled like pink. “Can you keep a secret?”“To my grave,” Gabe promised, hand to his heart.“My friend has a friend, and her friend’s friend is a dealer in artificed weapons.”Gabe, who had been running the calculations on her little word puzzle, twirled an eyeliner pencil between his fingers. “Are you the friend?” She beamed, blinding white in the blinding white store, and he returned it. “May you live in interesting times, Miss Entrepreneur.”“Likewise!” She leaned her cheek against one white-manicured hand. “Wouldn’t it be so funny,” she said—and as the words dripped off her fingers, Gabe knew her languid was as much an act as his, “if the Punks had her number? If only she had the right connections!”She was the one. “Trade you a secret of mine?”“Please.”Gabe glanced over his shoulder. The only other patrons in this joint were muttering authoritatively around a carousel of eyeshadows. He didn’t realize eyeshadow could start such dead-serious controversy. To be fair, he only dabbled in the stuff. Either way, he and his new friend were as far from being watched as you could wish. “Don’t tell anybody, but…I’ve seen you before. In a vision.”She was the one. Anyone else would clock that as a shit pickup line. Hell, he had used it as a shit pickup line. But the girl in white looked at him like she wanted to open his chest with a lockpick. “Good.” She gestured him behind the counter. “Swear it.” Gabe knelt right there (if the counter was slick, the floor was an ice rink, but there would be time later to ask how she navigated it in those heels). “Your name?”“Gabriel. Say the word, my lady.”She laid her hand on his shoulder. “To fame, and success, and all that great shit.”“That’s what I like to hear.” He took her hand and kissed it. They would go far, him and Victoria.
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JO
Of course it was raining, and of course none of the girls had so much as a coat with a hood. “It’s just past the light!” Jo called, hiking her coat over her head, already resigned to a night of bride-of-Frankenstein frizz.“Am I going to get bitten?” Andie said, shielding her glasses from the rain.“Only if they ask you nicely.”“I thought you said it was Angels and something. Angels and Kings,” Trish called over the screech of a passing car as Jo stopped under an awning clearly labeled Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 180. “You said.”“Yeah, man, I know what I said.” Jo hauled open the formerly-automatic door. “But you think they’d just, like, advertise a vampire bar with a big neon sign on the main drag? Does that track with your research?” Trish flipped her off as she went in.Tricia Stump was one of those homeschool hotshot prodigy babies who skipped a few grades and somehow didn’t combust from lack of social development. So even though she was barely older than Jo (four months and five days—but who’s counting?) she was already hard at work on a master’s thesis in cultural anthropology. And since the thesis was about how pre-transformation culture and morals and stuff impacted the city’s vampire covens, “hard at work” meant “interviewing a lot of vampires.” (“Too bad we can’t find Brad Pitt,” Jo said, a joke she made until Andie hung a big Fight Club poster over Jo’s desk.)Jo didn’t believe in vampires. Or she didn’t until she moved in with Trish. Even then, it took a lot of nights playing Scully to Trish’s Mulder before she stopped feeling like she was getting pranked by overenthusiastic haunted-house employees. Or something. (It helped that Trish provably had no theater friends.) But whatever she did or didn’t believe in, she believed in Trish. So did Trish’s co-researcher—Andie Hurley who, if she didn’t get eaten, would live to a hundred and fifty through a strict regimen of clean living and no-fucks-giving. So they became a little research gang. A Starship Enterprise (but don’t let Trish catch you calling it that. “We’re not a coven,” she always said. “We don’t need a quirky name.”)The only trouble was how to meet the right vampires; the ones who would wax poetic about their ethical struggles, not practice them by chowing down on their interviewers. Which was why she figured Trish should meet Pete Wentz.Jo shepherded her dripping friends through the deserted VFW hall and down a tight staircase with zero light. The bar’s main demographic didn’t need it. The door handle at the bottom of the stairs always stuck funny, so she had to squish past Andie and shove Trish’s hand out of the way to force it open with a squeak. Which made their entrance…less than inconspicuous. Great.Trish froze in the doorway, gawking a little at the tall tables of vampires from all factions, mingling like they weren’t entangled in the worst turf war the city had seen in the last century—Punks and Goths fraternizing casually, a lone Bizarre at the bar, even a few rarely-seen Baseball Furies lurking around the pinball machines. And all of them pausing in all of that to turn and stare at the new blood at the door. Halloween had come early, and it was really judgy.“C’mon.” Jo grabbed Trish’s hand and tugged her toward the bar. “Pete! Hey, Pete!”“Sweet Josephine,” said the man himself.Jo didn’t have any stories about meeting Pete Wentz that she felt good telling her grandparents, but whatever, she knew the guy. He was hot if you liked girl jeans on boys (Jo liked them on girls, so she got the appeal conceptually); charming no matter your stance on girl jeans; and most importantly, knew everyone worth knowing in this stupid city.“Sit down, kid. What are you drinking these days?”“Stouts still. I’m a good little metalhead.”“Atta girl.”“Maker’s?” asked Trish.“And a ginger beer,” said Andie.Pete served the requested beverages and joined the girls on their side of the bar, calling “Greta, would you…” to a blond teenager, his wave seeming to mean handle things for a minute.“I’m supposed to warm up in five.” Greta gestured further into the bar, toward an old-timey-vaudeville-looking stage, footlights and all, and a piano that was—not that Jo was an expert in piano prices—probably the most expensive decoration in the whole place.“Fine, fuck it,” said Pete, genuinely unbothered by his staffing shortage. “Break a leg!” He turned back to their party as Greta vanished to some backstage area. “So.”Trish was looking into her glass with that half-smile that meant somebody messed up. “Is this some kind of joke?” she said slowly. It was basically empty.“Oh, shit. No, it’s not.” Pete laughed, grabbed her glass back, and poured her a double to make up for it. “That was a vampire shot.” Trish, of course, had questions; Pete, talking with his hands, explained how vampire blood is dead so the alcohol overwhelms it. Or whatever. He pointed out a particularly macho-looking Goth, shitfaced against the stage. “Swear to God, he drank half a Bud Light.” Jo was never quite sure how old Pete was; older than her with a young face or younger with one of those old souls people never shut up about. Either way, he grinned like a trickster god (Jo watched Trish clock his teeth: no fangs). “Dude, I’ve got so much to show you. You are Trish, yeah?” She nodded. “Jo sent me your papers. You’re, like, a genius. You know that, right?”Trish blushed pink, right up to her ears, and immediately began deflecting and downplaying and all the other things she did when she got a dead-accurate compliment. Jo sighed and took a drink. Maybe she should take a picture for a scrapbook. Or something.So Pete Wentz set them up with every research opportunity three budding vampire anthropologists’ hearts could desire. He called at unholy hours: “Do you want to talk to somebody old? Like, Civil War old?” “I’ve been handing you a lot of white people lately—wanna mix that up?” “Do you want to go on a hunt?” (“Yes,” “Yes,” and “For people? Yeah!”) And he bought drinks—human-sized, not vampire—and dragged them to filthy underground concerts that cost more in gas money than tickets, which was embarrassing for the city’s gas stations, frankly—although in defense of the city’s gas stations, Jo drove a ‘68 Oldsmobile Cutlass that her dad bought from a junkyard to teach her the meaning of hard work, and while it was a masterpiece of restoration, the Trohmans’ repairs didn’t exactly make the old girl energy-efficient. And when Trish, glued to the venue’s back wall, shouted in Pete’s ear about hardcore culture and masculinity or whatever connections she was making instead of listening to his awful music, he slung his arm around her shoulder and smiled at the rafters. Like he was lucky to hang out with the biggest nerds in town.Then one night, just before Christmas, he called, and Trish wasn’t home. Jo let him talk for a bit, his voice thick with Not Expressing Feelings, then gave him a VIP invitation to the household tradition of Drowning Breakup Sorrows in Chocolate. That night, he and Andie and Jo passed out in a pile on the couch. Like cats. Or sorority sisters. It was killer.Then he moved onto the couch long-term, because it was a great, underused couch, and he didn’t seem like the type who could live amiably with an ex. This was also killer, though Andie and Jo did realize making him share Trish’s bathroom had a not-zero impact on their work dynamic.“Is my rent money your biggest source of funding?” he teased over the coffeepot Jo had found at a synagogue yard sale.“I actually have really good grants for this one,” Trish shot back. “So there.”“Am I top five?”“...Yeah. Don’t get smug about it, asshole,” she said, snatching his Snoopy mug, which he should have known was her Snoopy mug.“I’m within one standard deviation of smug assholery. I was at this spot on the bell curve last month, and you let me on the lease anyway, so you can’t complain now.”Andie leaned her head on Jo’s shoulder while they watched them bicker. “Do you think they might be soulmates?” she said sleepily.Jo shuddered. “God, I hope not.”“Huh?”“When Trish is stressed, she daydreams about hitting Pete with the steel chair. If that’s the baseline, I don’t wanna know who my soulmate is.”
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughn Stump
It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen any of the Bizarres* on the street. I would say I hope nothing happened to them, but frankly—and academically off the record—most of them were chauvinist pigs, so I’m not sorry to move on to other interviewees. Pete has been hearing rumors of a new coven that’s moved in nearby. He’s going to call Travie and see if she knows them. I haven’t seen them yet, but ideally they’re cool and amenable to interviews.
*From the glossary: The main gang in our neighborhood is known as the Bizarres. All the founding members are seventeenth-century Dutch tulip speculators who died of either economic crash or the bubonic plague. Their principal traits are cliquishness, high aesthetics, and having opinions about the dot-com bubble. There can’t be more than six or seven of them left these days, and they’re by and large harmless. We could have much worse neighbors.
TRISH
The apartment door jolted, like somebody forgot it wasn’t unlocked again and tried to open it with their shoulder. Sure enough, the jolt was followed by Jo’s grumbling and the key scraping in the lock, and Andie and Jo stumbled in, back from their expedition for veggie burgers.Except they looked like shit.“Did you get ambushed by anti-vegetarian activists?” Trish half-laughed, hurrying out of her desk chair to grab the takeout bags from Jo.Shoulders, elbows, and knees scraped and dirty. Either they rolled down a flight of concrete stairs for fun, or somebody was shoving them around. The smile fell off her face.“In a manner of speaking,” said Andie, tossing her jacket in the laundry corner.“We met our new neighbors!” Jo’s tone of voice was the kind you might use to say you met the Devil. “What’s that movie with the bowler hats?”“Sherlock Holmes,” said Trish.“Mary Poppins?” added Andie.“I think they wear them sometimes in Cabaret,” said Pete, emerging from the bathroom (apparently he really had been working through the house DVDs while the girls were out.)“Fuck all of you,” said Jo. “You know what I mean. We got jumped by a couple of vampires with this whole gentleman-murderer thing going on. Kid gloves. That shit.”“Kid gloves?” Pete laughed and snagged the food.Jo tried to duck after her rapidly-cooling burger, but Trish stopped her with a fresh notebook against her chest. “Are you sure it wasn’t the Bizarres?” she asked.“Not unless their fashion sense moved into the next couple centuries. Cmon, can’t you cross-examine while I eat?”Andie, rolling her sleeves up, stepped between them and sat Jo down at the dining table. “We’re fine, Trish. I checked. No bites.”“No attempts at bites,” Jo added.Trish had to hear that a second time. “What does that mean?”“Burgers, or you don’t get another word out of me.”Trish pulled up a seat, opened her notes, and gestured Pete to bring the bags back from where he was methodically stealing everyone’s fries.
Whoever this new coven is, their calling card is violence for fun. Which is, you know. Fun. Whatever they were doing when they came across Andie and Jo, it wasn’t hunting. It was more like showing off.
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BECKETT
Ah, moving day. The magnificence of a new beginning. The delicious sensation of stretching one’s limbs and allowing them to fit into a new suit of clothes, if you will. The fresh tang of blood on the beige marble-look tiles as the Butcher drained the investment banker whose lovely home they were, shall we say, repossessing.It was of no concern why the Dandies had to relocate from their former territory on the forested outskirts of the city. Fond memories, acquired over decades in that quaint old house, held little worth in the grand arc of the universe. Beckett examined himself in the scroll mirror over the sideboard. Wan, perhaps, and not just because he had gone longer than he preferred without feeding. It was time for a rebirth. A revivification, even. For all of them.In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his dearest third-in-command directing the movers (all thralls, of course. So economical). “Carden!” he cried, draping himself, like her scarf, along her broad shoulders. “Ma chère quaintrelle, where exactly did you hide the rest of our siblings?”“Sent them scouting, mostly. New neighborhood.”They wouldn’t find much in the immediate vicinity. Semi-suburban nests like this were of use only for their proximity to downtown, this albeit a perk that far outweighed its aesthetic shortcomings. They could redecorate. “Brilliant. And the ex-owners?”Carden gave him that look. Around the expansive living room, a handful of pasteled and boat-shoed corpses were littered across the tactlessly modern furniture.“Of course.”“There was a kid upstairs. But Adam ate it,” she admitted.Beckett sighed. “Oh. Butcher, would you get him settled?” The Butcher, despite his alarming penchant for lower-class dress, had a genteel way with Adam that, it must be said, Carden could not match. Though, indeed, she never tried. She had her talents, did lovely May, but they shone the brightest when numbers or limbs needed crunching.The Butcher paused his gnawing on the investment banker’s arm. “Oh, sure. Can I choose my room while I’m up there?”“Your room?”“You said I could have a lab when we got the space,” the Butcher accused. “And now—” He waved at the vaulting ceilings.Beckett bowed grandly. “Far be it from me to renege on my promises! Now go.” The Butcher wiped his mouth on his sleeve and loped up the sweeping staircase, leaving Beckett and Carden alone with the movers and the corpses.Carden shifted her weight. “I don’t like it here,” she said slowly, running her tongue over her teeth like the words tasted bitter. “Half the rank-and-file never hunted in a city with this many other covens in. What if they can’t be quiet?”“Then we’ll make a dramatic entrance!” declared Beckett, throwing his long arms wide. Carden groaned. “Your head, Mikhaila,” he said oh, so soothingly, “has too much and too little in it, as always.” By now, he knew the concerns behind her short complaints, and he ticked off his replies one by one. “Ms. McCoy and I are discussing the needs of the terrain; who else may think they have a claim here—and what might convince them to move along. Besides, these were Brendon’s home hunting grounds.”“Right,” Carden said flatly.“Let us worry about territory. That’s not your concern anymore.” He meant it to calm her nerves, but also to remind her of her place. In another halcyon time, she might have tossed him through the wall for a dig like that, but they were older and wiser, so she took it like she ought, slouching off with her tail between her legs to send the movers to dispose of the exsanguinated bodies. If Carden had wanted to spend her days in a dither over the niceties of land negotiations, she could have stepped up and become lieutenant after Michael left. A thing she decidedly did not do.“God, it’s fucking good to be home!”As if talk of him summoned him—and perhaps it did—Beckett’s current lieutenant threw open the front door. Brendon Urie, on paper, had no reason to be this coven’s second. He was indescribably young: barely fifty, and for reasons no one bothered to unpack, his presence made Carden all bristly, which was funny when it wasn’t fouling up family meetings. But, oh, he had ambition. Vision. Perhaps his blazing need to prove himself came from being trapped in a teenager’s body; Beckett was not one for armchair psychology. Whatever fueled that spirit, he gladly enabled it.“You ate without me?” Brendon pouted.“The advance party cleaned thoroughly, so I have not yet had the pleasure.” As glassy-eyed movers passed, unseeing, with bodies rolled in rugs, Beckett clapped Brendon’s shoulder. “We shall have to go out to eat tonight.”Across the house, a key scraped in a lock.“Is that the kitchen door?” Brendon’s ears visibly pricked up.“Stay out of sight,” Beckett cautioned, and in a rush of cold air, he vanished, reappearing with a graceful step in the subway-tiled kitchen. He ducked into the pantry shadows, shortly followed by Brendon, who hadn’t mastered relocation and so had to run. But he had the energy for it. Such was youth.The kitchen door swung open, letting in a gust of spring wind, and with it the sharp scent of young blood.Brendon grinned. “Looks like we got delivery instead of takeout.”Beckett’s sigh was very long indeed. “Would you please have some decorum?”The tiny figure moved through the dark kitchen with the practiced motions of someone long familiar with the house’s layout. Evidently much more familiar than the vampires, as both of them failed to realize she was reaching for the light switch until they were hissing and recoiling from the sudden incandescence.“Oh my gosh!” The figure was a girl, a young woman, in a cleaning woman’s uniform. Her dark, choppy hair was dashed with a streak of bottle-blonde that she most likely did to herself (the youth sometimes enjoyed looking like raccoons, which was not Beckett’s personal style, but he appreciated any fashion choices made with confidence), and her heartbeat practically raced off the walls as she pulled off her headphones. “Sorry!” she began—likely for walking in on her late employer’s unknown friends (what she thought they were doing in a darkened pantry, Beckett set aside with some amusement).But Brendon pounced, and the apology died on her tongue. The boy held her tight in his arms, his fluorescent-white teeth scraping against her neck.Beckett snapped, “Stay.”Brendon’s eyes flickered up to his captain, but he did not release the girl. The hairs on the back of her neck shot up as his breath ghosted over them.“Sorry,” she whispered. “The Marinos usually don’t mind if I let myself in.”“They remain untroubled by it.” Beckett smirked. It was difficult not to resist dramatic irony, even though his audience never appreciated it.She took too deep a breath, her neck brushing Brendon’s fangs, and she gasped at the sensation. “Are you—friends? Of theirs?”“The Marinos could be considered our benefactors, in a sense. They have recently and most graciously vacated this fine piece of investment real estate so that my family can take up residence.”“Oh. Oh, I get it.” Her big hazel eyes, now they were not wide with fright, were bright and perceptive. He had already watched her notice his fangs to match the ones menacing her, as well as how he squinted slightly in the overbearing light, and he knew she was connecting the dots as to the sounds of bodies being dragged through the further halls. He waited for either the revulsion and horror, or else (as had always been a vocal minority when humans discovered vampirism in their midst) the slavish lust. But neither came, only the gleam of adventure, of an escape room to solve. “Congratulations, it’s a really cool place. I like it a lot. ‘s been a really good job for me, you know.” She inched her hand out to grip the granite counter like it would protect her, like a grounding wire to keep from being struck by lightning. “You have to keep a lot of secrets, you know, working for rich people. And that’s my favorite part of the job,” she said meaningfully. “Feeling trustworthy. Not telling people. What I might have seen, or maybe—or maybe saw wrong! The lights in here are really bad; who knows?”Beckett wished, and by the exasperation on Brendon’s face knew he wished likewise, that the lights were actually really bad. But the gesture was understood, nonetheless. She was charming, with her gritted resolve to look as fearless as possible in the face of likely death—which reminded him of Adam, once upon a time. He swallowed down any further comparisons. “For God’s sake, Brendon, drop it. You look like you’ve been caught with another dog’s bone.”Brendon gave a forced smile and released his hold on the girl’s arms, and she moved, quickly but attempting subtlety, to the opposite side of the kitchen island, from which position she had recourse to the knife block. Tossing a glance over his shoulder at her, Brendon said, “You said we were going to eat.”“I said we’ll go out. Get my coat, would you?” They had no need of coats in this weather. He wanted it anyway. Brendon, not as cowed as Carden had been (for Christ’s sake, he was pulling rank entirely too often today), swept out of the room as if he had been given a critical charge.Beckett perched his long legs over one of the faux-industrial bar stools that lined the near side of the island. The girl matched his posture, folding her hands on the countertop. “My mom knows my work schedule,” she said, another parry for blows he had not struck, and a lie at that. “She knows I’m here.”“I hope, when you call her on your way home this morning, you tell her what a pleasant and uneventful day you had.” It was so nice to trade veiled implications with someone bright enough to catch them. At this morning, her shoulders released some of their pent-up tension. “Maybe you can tell her about your raise. For the inconvenience of the change in employers, and for the discretion you hold so dear.” And perhaps because he still had flickers of memory of being young and mostly-alone and starving for work, now so far away he might simply be remembering the plot of the goddamn little match girl and imagining it to be memory.“Yes, sir, Mr…”“Beckett,” he said, extending his hand. She glanced between his face and hand once or twice, as if weighing whether he were the sort to use the gesture to pull her across the counter and sink his teeth in her wrist—obviously he had thought of it, but only as one thinks occasionally of throwing plates or pulling fire alarms.“Cassadee.” Her fingers were hot and a touch sticky, but of course, she recently had a fright. He noted with respect that she also withheld part of her name. It would be easy enough to find on paperwork if he cared, but the prudence in one so very young was a good look.“Cassadee, Brendon and I are going out. If I were you, I would report to the most frightening woman you can find in this house and tell her we’ve made arrangements for you to stay on in your position at triple your current salary (Cassadee squeaked at this). That should prevent you being, ah, mistaken for an intruder again.”As Brendon returned with their coats, Cassadee babbled her gratitude and scurried away in search of Carden, from whom, he was sure, he would hear nothing but further complaints about keeping humans in the house. She would be won over eventually, he had no doubt of it, but that was not his job to see to. For now, he had a new neighborhood in which to go hunting.He stretched his long arms overhead in anticipation of the hunt. Ah, moving day.
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PETE
The point of a speakeasy was being badly attended, but consistent. You didn’t get Super Bowl crowds at Angels and Kings. Which meant having a dozen new vampires show up all at once should be plenty freaky on its own. But their newness was somehow the least freaky thing about them.First of all, this was Jo and Andie’s Clockwork Orange coven. Or else people were starting to poach styles, not just territory.They glided through the creaky door like a living extension of their leader’s silly cape, spread out through the room until somebody in dad-from-Mary-Poppins drag sat at almost every table. The tallest one (in the silly cape) immediately snaked one spindly arm over Travie McCoy’s shoulders, which made Pete look twice. He couldn’t be new. Travie was friendly with the leaders of the other covens, sure, when they had something the Punks wanted, but this would be awfully bold for two weeks, or however long the dandy-looking assholes had allegedly been in town.“Hey, Trav!” he called.She strolled over. He’d love to see what would convince this woman to run. Or even, like, hurry. That was the perk of being four hundred and fifty-something, apparently: you knew you had all the time in the world.“You cutting me off already?” she asked with a yawn.“You? Never. Who’s the skinny guy?” He could mention later that said skinny guy’s henchmen had been roughing up his friends. Diplomacy, you know, politicking. His parents would be proud. “If there’s friendship going around, I want in.”Travie grinned. “Jealous, jealous, jealous. Beckett!”The other vampire, who’d clearly been listening, watching out of the corner of his eyes like a cat, unfurled from his seat and joined them at the bar. He cocked his head, smiled at Pete like he was some kind of surprise (which was dumb; he knew he looked like any other douchey hipster bartender on this side of town).“Beckett, be cool and greet your host. Pete Wentz is the man to know if you want to know anyone. Got contacts from here to fuckin’ Sacramento.”“Half the time because you introduced me!” he protested.“Yeah, and I’m doing it again. You’re welcome. Beckett is the patriarch of a fine family called the Dandies. He and I got cozy last time they hung out downtown—what, fifty years ago?”“Just about fifty now,” Beckett said thoughtfully. His thin-featured face was just to the left of pretty in a way that forced you to keep looking until you were sold on it, framed by loose hair that suited him great but was too long to be period-accurate. Like he took a detour through the seventies on his way here and picked up some tips about flattering men’s haircuts. Which, maybe he did. “Charmed, Pete.” He offered his hand; Pete stifled a chuckle. Kid gloves. He’d have to tell Jo.“Welcome back to town,” he said as they shook. “First one is on me. Don’t tell the rest of your friends, though—this place has finally been in the black for more than three months in a row, and I wanna keep it like that.”When Beckett smiled, he looked almost like a teenager. Almost. “Naturally! As long as I have the resources to support our neighbors, I intend to do so. A noblesse oblige, if you will. Especially when they’re doing something as deliciously novel as running a vampire bar while human. In fact,” he reached for his wallet, “would you do me a favor?”“What’s up?”Beckett leaned across the bar and clapped Pete on the shoulder. (So it wasn’t just that he and Travie were old friends. He was that touchy kind. Fair enough.) “You see the lady with the swimmer’s arms currently cleaning house at the other kind of pool?”Pete nodded. He’d noticed her coming in, filed in his brain under “women in suits” and “people who might step on me.”“I need you to double everything she orders tonight. Discreetly. And the young man in the cravat?” He pointed to a really young-looking kid chatting animatedly to another, more bored Dandy (the second guy wearing a red vest with so many appliqué roses that he looked like a bridal store threw up over his shoulder). “Virgin drinks only.”Pete laughed in spite of himself. “What the fuck?”Beckett handed him a fifty. “Call it a social experiment.”“Oh, Pete knows all about those,” said Travie. “Don’t you, buddy?” He did, actually. If he was good he’d take notes for Trish.He was not good, and he did not take notes. After alerting Greta to the terms of the game (which she agreed to with a laugh that meant she didn’t see the appeal), Pete let himself get talked into shots with Travie and Beckett, and after that, he might as well have clocked out for all the help he was. Bafflingly, Beckett’s lady lieutenant put away enough alcohol to send even a non-vampire home in a wheelbarrow, and all she did was smile a little wider at dumber shit, while the boy (Brendon), who had been drinking pretty much straight coke and ginger beer all night, acted like a high school senior on Four Lokos.Beckett smiled smugly. “I love being right.”He was a great conversationalist—just on the far side of too willing to talk about himself, but since Pete had his own narcissistic streak and Travie liked to “take up space,” as she called it, all three talked about themselves slightly more than was polite, and between them had a legitimately great talk about their lives and ambitions in the city and beyond. Pete felt like the young buck at the table. It was a nice change. He’d been playing big brother to the girls for too long.Beckett stood with an enormous stretch, and his coven’s attention shifted toward him, waiting for orders. “We really must turn in. I can’t wait to see you again, Pete.”
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughn Stump
I didn’t really get bullied in school, at least not physically. Looking back, there was a solid year where my whole class was excluding the nerdy fat girl, but I’m not sure it worked, because I already wasn’t interested in hanging out unless you had an opinion on Margaret Mead, or more rightly were willing to hear mine. And in fifth grade, that was no one. So no one invited me anywhere, and I stayed home alone and read and thought it was my idea. But no one really even went for a noogie, much less anything more intense.
All this to say, I was completely unprepared for the Dandies* and their welcome wagon. Andie has had me and Jo in the gym, teaching us how to take a punch, how to get shoved against a brick wall without getting knocked silly, how to deal with all the things that probably should have happened to me the first time I got smug at my classmates for not being able to spell National Geographic. As the song says, I guess this is growing up.
When Pete comes home from work, he never seems to get as roughed up as we do. I haven’t asked yet what that’s about. It’s certainly not because he’s better at fighting his way out than Andie. I love him, but I’m fond of him, but he is a cream puff. If he knows a route home with no Edwardian fisticuffs fighters lurking around corners, I wish he would share with the rest of us.
From the glossary: The Dandies hail from Edwardian Chicago originally, though their membership is significantly broader. Motivated by image and status, they travel in large packs and prefer not to get their hands dirty. One wonders how much laundry they do to keep their kid gloves neat. One wonders whether vampires do their own laundry.
Beckett did see Pete again. The Dandies became established patrons at Angels and Kings, never seen alone: at least in twos and threes, but usually more, usually enough that they pretty close to outnumbered any other faction. Beckett in particular was never seen alone. Either he was attended by a few of his minions, flanked by Carden and Brendon, or clinging to Travie or Gabe from Cobra or both, as the three of them took to meeting weekly to discuss business and shit.He was also never seen outside Angels and Kings. At least, Pete never ran into him outside. Fine by him; they had plenty of run-ins with his family now that Dandy territory had expanded to cover not just the Bizzares’ turf in Old Town, but bordering on Angels and Kings itself and definitely surrounding their apartment. You couldn’t take a wrong turn at night without seeing a kid glove or a bowler hat, and if you saw them, you were pretty likely to have some kind of fight. Jo was about ready to start staking on sight, dissertation be damned, and even Trish was about sick of them.Never seeing Beckett in that context made it easier for Pete to distinguish between his budding friendship with the guy and the damage his soldiers were causing in their neighborhood. Obviously, they were affiliated, but here things were chill. Here, everybody could hang out, despite their differences. That was the whole point of this fucking place.The door groaned, and five or six Dandies slunk in, flanking Beckett, who turned immediately to the bar and broke into a wide, sharp smile when he saw Pete.It didn’t make sense to mention him to the girls. They wouldn’t understand.“C’mere, old man.” Pete waved him over. “Meeting anybody?”Beckett took his usual seat at the end of the bar, arranging his spidery legs artfully. “Only some lowlife bartender.”“Oh, really slumming it around, huh.” Pete pulled him a draft.“Call it a fascination with the common man. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He seems to have heard of everyone else. A Pete Wentz.”He’d over-poured, which wasn’t a real problem, because he knew Beckett would have at least three more rounds before morning, but he still leaned against the bar and took a slow drink off the top before passing it across the counter to his customer. “Mm, sounds like a douchebag. But they hire a lot of douchebags around here.” Greta, who basically ran the place these days—best hire he’d ever made—only hire he’d ever made—damn, he had good taste—frowned at him, overhearing. “Douchebag guys and really competent chicks,” he amended. “I’ve heard of the guy.”Beckett drank slowly. “Perhaps you could tell me when he gets off.”Pete laughed. “Not soon enough.”It was a slow night. Greta sang, and while she was onstage, nobody got refills, because he and Beckett had their heads together, laughing like those assholes at the cool lunch table. He was doing a shit job as a business owner. He should figure that out.“Maybe I should sell,” he thought out loud.“The bar?” Beckett raised one eyebrow.“Yeah, I don’t know. It was a fun investment, made some good friends. Not sure I want to do this the rest of my life.”Beckett’s eyes lit up, or maybe they caught the lights behind the bar like a cat’s. “Any other career paths in mind?”Pete laughed hollowly, which meant nope. “I was gonna play soccer. Blew my knee out too soon. Thought about managing a team or something, something where you get to travel and sweet-talk people. But that was a long time ago.” In a way, all the years since he dropped out of college seemed to have blended into one, but sometimes it struck him just how long he’d been drifting. Especially when he was stuck in the apartment while Trish and Andie were on fire about dissertations and graduation plans. Both of them had jobs lined up already—basically, they’d walk across the stage and hang their caps and gowns in new offices halfway across the country. He shook off the anxiety pressing in the middle of his chest. “Don’t mind me. It’s a Wednesday night and I’ve been staring at the same fucking neons since lunchtime. Feels like I’m in a casino or something.”“Understood.” Sometimes Beckett looked too shrewd for his own good, but right now he was listening attentively, eyes wide and engaged. “Rude of me; I only keep you sitting around here night after night.”“It’s not you; I’m on the clock.”“Please. This is your own establishment. Surely you can step out from time to time.”“Maybe I can. What about it?”Beckett ascended from his barstool (that’s the word for what he did; he ascended) and polished off the last drops of his beer. “Far be it from me to insult the quality of your wares, but I’ve heard marvelous things about the taps at the Bagdad.”Pete looked around at his darkened bar. Aside from the Dandies, hunched around their table, there were only three other patrons, and half an hour till close. Greta could handle it. “What the hell. You’re buying, though.”“Naturally; I am a gentleman of honor,” said Beckett, hand over his heart. He gestured gallantly to the door. “I bet you’ll look much nicer by moonlight than you do under these old neons.”“Don’t shit-talk my lighting,” Pete shot back, tugging his phone out of his back pocket as they climbed the stairs. He texted Trish something half-true about lining her up a new interview, along with the address for the Bagdad. Girl code, ya know. Gotta keep the ladies updated on your whereabouts so they don’t freak out.
TRISH
She’d been sitting at her desk, pen in her shaking hand, not writing, for so long she thought something must have broken. If they lived in the matrix, whoever was writing her code was AFK. She hadn’t breathed in too long. She counted five on the inhale and six on the exhale and cursed at herself for how the breath shuddered.
From the Journals of.
Her left hand was leaving spots of blood on the paper. God. Inhale longer than you think you need to. They would turn brown and stay forever, a relic of the project. A memento. Exhale. Longer. Longer. Steadier. Pete’s blood, not hers. She almost made note of that, in case Dr. Van Valkenburgh asked.
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughan Stump.
Behind her back in the dining room, Jo was pacing back and forth because no one actually brought the first aid kit into the main room. Maybe Andie thought it’d be better to let Jo burn off her frantic energy—anxious static that crackled in Trish’s ears—by running errands. She could practically hear Jo biting her lip, could definitely hear Andie murmuring under her breath, speaking all her instructions to herself, to Pete.Could hear nothing at all from Pete, stretched out on the dining table like it was the slab.
Tonight’s attempted interview was aborted.
This was why they’d spent so long at the beginning of the project, she and Andie, learning obscure first aid tactics in books like grimoires, coming up with the code (“the girl code,” Pete had said, his voice solemn but his brown eyes irrepressibly sparkling as he swore himself to it “as one of the girls”). You never go on an interview by yourself. If you’re gone for two hours no contact, you are considered In Danger. And we go after you.Which they did, piled into Jo’s Olds and broke multiple traffic laws to reach the last location Pete had sent them. He was never very good at the code. Not because he wasn’t a girl, but because he was Pete. During the ride, Trish griped that if he’d derailed the investigation because he decided to get laid, she was going to medically castrate him.If he ever woke up, she knew he’d laugh about her crying on his shoulder telling him how much she wished he was getting laid.After no communication with our interview contact, researchers visited the scene.The Bagdad Theater and Pub sat on a corner lot, with a dead-end street behind it where the stage doors let out and the dumpsters loomed like squat bouncers.“There. There!” Andie pointed so insistently Trish thought she was going to grab the wheel and yank it on Jo’s behalf, but Jo took her own initiative and turned them violently into that dead end, chasing the glimpse of the familiar fashionable streetwear. Trish nearly jumped out of the car before it was in park.Pete had fallen (had been thrown?), was lying face down with his cheek against one of the trash bags by the dumpsters. Its normally black, shiny texture was even darker and glossier, and she stared at that bag far too long before realizing it was coated in blood from where he had slid down it, blood that was still gushing from his nose, his cheek—from a tear in his neck. Eyes closed. Not breathing.The stage door rattled once, twice. Only then did she notice someone had jammed the handles. Pete was still warm. He had run. He was being chased.“We gotta go!” she yelled.“Get him back to the house!” Andie shouted.As they turned the second corner onto the main street, they heard the stage door breaking open. Jo wordlessly pressed on the gas, blowing them through a red light and buying them an extra block head start.On the drive back to the house (the way Andie said “house,” not “hospital,” was the most devastating sound in the English language), Trish ended up in the back with Pete lying beside her, head in her lap. It’s not like he would have felt the jostling of the potholes without her, but Andie set him there, and she’d never move him. What they would have done if they’d been pulled over with a. A seemingly comatose, heavily bloodied person (not a body, not yet), fuck only knew. Her hand lay on his shoulder, soaked in blood. Her head tipped against the front seat; Jo’s head leaned against hers through it.She’d always told herself she wouldn’t be one of those “don’t speak ill of the dead” sentimentalists. It went against the necessary objectivity of anthropology. If someone was a little shit in life, you called them what they were in death.Pete seemed much less annoying like this. Nobody was going to steal her Snoopy mug anymore.This was the first point at which she repressed the urge to cry.They managed to carry him into the apartment building through the back laundry entrance in the basement and up the stairs without being interrupted, where Andie laid him out on the dining table, set Jo (who was in tears) to fetching and carrying, and told Trish, with a strong/gentle hand on her face, to take notes. “I’ve got it under control, and we’re going to kick ourselves if we miss out on recording this.”She couldn’t even do that right.In the operating theater that was their dining room, Andie swore under her breath. “Jo, what time is it?”“Four.”They’d been at it for an hour.“Jesus,” said Andie. Trish pressed her palms against her eyes. She knew that tone. It usually meant, “Well, this is fucked,” but this was usually a cooking project—or Andie’s only attempt at knitting—not their friend.Pete gave a huge rattling gasp and sat bolt upright.Everyone screamed. Trish knocked her legs on the underside of the desk from jumping, nearly tipped her chair over trying to turn around.“Dude, you scared us!” Jo rushed forward—to hug him, probably—but Andie grabbed the back of her soccer tee (the one she stole as tribute when Pete dumped his laundry in her pile, the one for the club team he joined for an office he never worked at), holding her back against the dining room wall.“Pete?” Andie said slowly.The man looked genuinely horrible. His face was ashen and hollowed out, his hair fallen in his face. His so-stylish clothes were still torn half off him, bloodsoaked and dirty from falling in the street. Trish shivered. His chest was still; no breath moved his shoulders.“Pete?” she asked.Their eyes locked. His brown eyes were so dark she couldn’t see anything in them. Which she knew better than to try to do. The quickest way to get her to throw out an anthropology paper was for the researcher to describe complex emotions flickering across the subject’s eyes (emotions usually found nowhere in the actual text of the interview). Which was neither here nor there. Because Pete was looking at her, tense and coiled like a mountain lion, or a statue of one.“Pete, talk to me.”His lips curled in a snarl over his fangs.Then he leapt at a speed that shouldn’t be possible given his position on the table—”Oof!” Flat on her back, head almost fallen into the corner of the coffee table—can’t breathe—Pete’s weight on her.Andie and Jo were yelling somewhere behind them.Pete’s cold hand was buried in her hair, yanking her head aside, exposing her neck, his mouth wet against her skin, and somehow! annoyingly! she was going to die thinking about how when she imagined Pete this close to her, she imagined being overwhelmed by the smell of his douchey cologne till she couldn’t think straight. And so on. (Which was embarrassing to have imagined, but she might die, so better make peace with it.) But the only smell was a cold nothing. Like dry winter pavement. Like he wasn’t even left in there.
PETE
He woke up to Andie and Jo dragging him off Trish. He thrashed in their grip—what the fuck were they grabbing him for?—and they fell off him like they’d been snapped off. The room was too bright; his head was exploding, and his hands were too heavy for his arms, and his mouth was killing him—Andie whispered his name like it would defuse a bomb—staring and staring (but not in the good way, not how people are supposed to stare and stare). Jo’s heartbeat tumbled over itself like a bad sprinter. And all he could do was look at Trish, sitting up on her elbows with her gingerbread hair a mess, her breath heavy and her blood singing in his ears.He stepped closer. She tensed. Her big, clear eyes stayed trained on him, unafraid. Someone had taken every thought he’d ever had about this tiny, angry, awkward genius and shot it into her veins till they glowed through with how much he needed. He needed her on his tongue, needed her voice in his ears, needed her to never fucking shut up till he tore into her throat spilled her voice out with her blood—maybe that would stop his teeth hurting, something soft, something—“Pete.” Trish stilled him, her voice rough and low with crying. “I know we just got you back, but if you come near me like that again, I’ll kill you again.”She’d been crying over him. She’d been crying over his dead body, and he almost thanked her for doing what his parents said no one would ever do by drinking her blood.He backed off, sneered, “As if you could.”And he ran to the open window, leapt onto the fire escape, and all but flew down the four stories to the street.He landed light like a cat, and he could feel the movement of the train blocks away in his feet. Maybe he was a cat, one of those indoor-outdoor strays people feed, let rub itself all over the couch in spite of the fleas it might be leaving them, scratch behind the ears until it turns and claws them bloody.He hadn’t tasted blood in years, not since that bad skateboarding accident when he was a kid, mouth full of metal and sunshine in the cul-de-sac.That’s not true.He tasted blood tonight.As he ran, weaving in and out of the green-yellow streetlights, the night came flashing back like bus shelter ads, glowing as he passed.He and Beckett jostling shoulders in a private room at the Bagdad, arguing over who got to pick up the tab.Tossing his hoodie to one of the Dandy lieutenants—they slid in around the booth one after another; nobody said this was gonna be a group hangout, but hey, he was friends with everybody; that was his whole thing.The waitress walking away humming whatever was playing overhead in the restaurant.Kiss Me Deadly. It was some cover of Kiss Me Deadly. Ironic.He made it to the waterfront. The river stretched out in front of him, black and shimmering like something that would quench his thirst.He proposed some kind of dare, he thought. Some sleepover-bullshit that only sounds funny when you’re drunk enough not to remember the bro squad you’re throwing back trendy whiskey with is collectively older than the fucking country.
“If you lose, I’ll have to kiss you, man.”
(Whatever happened next, he knew, remembered clearer than his own birthday, Beckett genuinely fucking blushed when he said that.)One hand holding him close by his scarf, a hand on his wrist, a hand in his hair, a hand on his hip—every one reaching in as cold as the river would be if he leapt past the few midnight cars into its depths.Beckett’s long fingers tilting his jaw aside.He screeched to a halt under the bridge, and only then, in the cool of the shade, did he realize the moonlight had been warming his skin like the summer sun. He’d run two miles, easy, but he wasn’t tired by the workout—no, he could run all the way to the east side, say hi to Deadstop and the Hipsters, if only his head would stop.Long teeth sinking past his skin into his arteries and running them cold.He couldn’t remember whose blood he drank. Maybe everyone’s. It seemed like it was gearing up to be that kind of night.He had to go home. They would let him in. They loved their mangy, miserable stray cat, even if he clawed their hands by mistake. But he couldn’t go back like this, where all he could think about was thick, hot blood like coffee, like melted glass, like Trish’s voice.He needed to eat.A tall, shadowy figure stalked into his periphery. “Kid, the park is closed after dark.”Pete felt a laugh bubbling in his chest—his first laugh as a dead man, and it was as twisted as him. “No problem, officer. You got a map on ya? I’m super turned around.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughan Stump
Pete brought home a coffin. Or what we call a coffin; it’s more of a locker, but once we got it upstairs, lying where the coffee table used to be and lined with blankets and pillows, it did the job pretty well. There’s a joke to be made here about how, of the four of us, Pete is the least likely to have been shoved in a locker back in the day. And yet that’s where he spends his days now. He’s a sound sleeper; we’ve watched TV with our feet kicked up on his bed and he either doesn’t notice or is being way more polite now he’s dead.
It is not the second thing. Not that Pete was ever known for politeness. But he has changed since the turning. He keeps to himself more, in his coffin by day or staying out late at night, and even when he is home and awake, it’s nothing like it used to be. When he used to come home from a night out, we would talk for hours, him telling stories like they were fun secrets, like he brought home a prize for us. Sometimes it was more like bringing home a dead bird. I’m not sure I wanted to know, always. But I can’t help but notice how these nights, he never wants to tell us where he was or what he was doing. He certainly can’t have become prudish, which means it’s not his old sexcapades.
I should ask. I never do.
Sometimes, the way he looks at me, I wonder if he hates me for this. After all, he was only out that night because he was picking up an interview subject for me.
So much of our time in school we spent learning how to keep our anthropology work from harming the cultures we study. They didn’t teach us what to do when the work hurts us.
TRISH
They were watching Always Sunny—starting from the beginning because Jo hadn’t seen it and Trish thought that was important. Jo was curled up with her head in Trish’s lap, one arm free of the blanket to reach the half-burnt kettle corn. “That guy looks like Pete used to,” she mumbled.“Poor guy,” said Andie in passing.Pete wasn’t in the apartment—which was the compilation of a few different Noticings—noticing he wasn’t crashing on any of their beds when she came out of the bathroom, noticing it was Andie making thunderous noise in the kitchen, not him. Of course, noticing he wasn’t watching TV with her and Jo. But she hadn’t put all the Notices together till now. “Andie, did Pete go out?” He couldn’t have left long ago, if he’d left; it was still light when she made kettle corn ten minutes ago.“I let him up on the roof.” Broke him in, more like. Peasants on the fourth floor didn’t get keys to the rooftop deck, but Andie was an assertive egalitarian.“Okay, cool.”Jo was already sitting up before Trish had to move her. “I’ll pause?”“Don’t worry about it.”She didn’t grab a jacket on the way out, so when she shoved open the rooftop door, she mumbled a curse as the temperature drop went right through her shirt.“Come back in.”Pete’s hunched shoulders were just visible across the roof. “You should be asleep.”Trish scoffed. “Nice try. We’ve all been nocturnal for months.” She sat next to him, close enough to kick his leg as needed. Pete picked at a blistered spot on the back of his hand. He must have come outside too soon, even a few minutes before the sun was fully set. The patch was red and raw with scratching. She shoved his other hand away from it. “Pete,” she said softly.“You’re gonna tell me this was your fault,” he said. She frowned at him; he was right, but it wasn’t fair when he called it. “It’s not. You know that, right?”“...Yeah, alright.” Maybe she’d believe it someday, but he didn’t ask about that.Pete’s expensive sneakers squeaked as he scuffed them against the ledge. Their building was six floors, so the only semblance of a view was the office window blinds across the street. But the night air wasn’t bad, especially since Andie was cooking something mushroom-heavy downstairs. “It’s kinda nice to have an excuse for the insomnia now,” he said, watching a couple stroll home from some bar, arm in arm below. “Did you know I can hear people talking on the street—like, actual words, not just the mumbly voices? I’m a crime show’s dream.”“Are you being the vengeance and the night?” she said.“I mean, yeah.” The couple leaned in to each other, whispering trade secrets or sex positions. “You’d think somebody would fucking talk about this guy—he’s taken over half the west side—”Trish put her hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Mr. Wayne.” She didn’t have a Michael Gough impression for shit, but she was the only one in the house who would try, so she won by default. “It’s your turn to pick the homework music. I won’t veto it tonight—not even those loud whoever-the-hell—”“Trish.” He caught her hand as she stood.“Yes?”“Help me kill Beckett.”The ask sounded so simple like that. Out in between them, instead of the thing he kept festering under his clothes so she couldn’t see. A neat little pile of bird bones sat on the ledge. Dinner, apparently.“Will that make it stop?” It wouldn’t.“It’ll make my head quieter.” It might.His brown eyes were too earnest. Pleading. Which was not a good emotion for a declaration of revenge, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. It’s not like “seething with rage” would make her happier. It would have been easier to say no to, though. “That’s all kinds of conflict of interest,” she said, a weak joke.“Then make me your subject. Write about my fucking quest, or whatever.” He used her to pull himself to his feet. “It’ll be fun.” Pete had never once said, “It’ll be fun” about anything actually, inherently fun. But he was always there, so.Trish ran her free hand through her hair and then, unsure what else to do while her arm was moving, touched his face. Cold, even in the warm night. “Shit.”“Yeah.”“I’m going to fix this.”“Fix me?” Pete said, half-smiling. “Girls keep saying that.”She poked his chest. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to fuck you about it, so the methodology will be different from what you’re used to.”“I know,” he said. (Trish shoved Han Solo thoughts to the bottom of her brain).A pair of sirens revved out of the fire station at the north end of the neighborhood, wailing in and out of sync. Ladder truck and engine, maybe. Or engine and ambulance. High damage, high destruction. His hand was still tight on her wrist, blunt nails lined up along the vein; she used the leverage to pull him into a hug. “Shit, Pete,” she mumbled against the zipper of his hoodie.“Yeah.” He wrapped his arm around her neck and buried his nose in her hair.Another pair of sirens joined the noise as the trucks kept fading north. Cop cars. Maybe the chief. Somebody was dying. Somebody was already dead.Pete took a shuddering breath, and his arm slowly stiffened along her neck. “Trish,” he murmured, his voice sending shivers under her collar.“Mm?”“You…should probably go inside.”He was holding back—she couldn’t tell from what—and that alone scared her. “You feel okay?”As she pulled back, the patio light glinted off his teeth. “I feel fine.” Still quiet, like he might wake something up. “It’s just that you smell…really good.”Trish mastered her breath; he would be hearing her rising heart rate already, the rush of fresh, frightened blood. Fix it. Fix it. “I’m sorry.”“Go inside,” he said hoarsely, squeezed her hand, then let go. “Probably lock the door behind you.”“Pete, I can fix this.”“I know.”No good being reckless. No good staying. She backed away, groping for the stairway door. They didn’t break eye contact until it clanged shut between them.Trish stayed up all night, overturning the kitchen. Jo might have wandered in around four for water or something, but she wandered right back out. Probably because the sink was full of all the raw meat in the freezer. By the time Andie buzzed Pete in (he must have gone hunting; she didn’t let herself think too hard about that), she had almost broken the blender and her arms were streaked with red, but a series of full mugs were lined up on the pass-through counter.Pete trudged through the door, his face looking a little less gaunt and a little more colorful (as far as his now constantly-ashen skin could have color. You certainly couldn’t say “with more life”). Still miserable and exhausted. The smell from the kitchen hit him like a truck; he actually took a stagger-step back. “Dude, what did you do?”Scooping a pile of scribbled-over takeout napkins into the trash, Trish said, her lack of energy matching his, “Some fucking research.”He joined her in the kitchen, looking over her shoulder at the array of ingredients scattered over the limited counter space: wrappings of pressed garlic cloves, the Tupperware of rose syrup Andie’s barista partner forgot at their apartment, and of course, all the packaging from the meat. “Is this for me?”“No, actually, I thought your diet was doing great things for your skin, so I figured I’d give it a shot,” she said drily. “Just try that one.” She pointed to the furthest left: a pale, watery pink. “And promise you’ll tell me if it works.”
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughan Stump
Day 3 since the turning: Blend A. This doesn’t do shit. I didn’t expect it to at this dosage, but I figured if the garlic and rose were going to kill Pete again instead of slaking his bloodlust, it would be better to catch that early. He isn’t any deader, but I think it’s only made him hungrier.
Day 5: Blend B. The outsize proportion of garlic has made him break out in hives. And he’s still starving. I wonder if garlic flowers would work better (or at least differently) than bulbs. Where I’m supposed to find flowering garlic in the city, I couldn’t tell you.
Day 8: Blend C. Found the correct proportions to reduce the appearance of hives. I told Pete if he would drink it like a normal person and not the chugging spill-down-the-face maneuver, he might not get skin irritation from something I’m designing to be ingested. Jo said I should shave crucifix wood into the blend, like, in her words, “the cinnamon bark of Jesus.” I…at this point, I’m not willing to write it off, even though it’s the dumbest sentence anyone I’ve been in a room with has ever constructed.
Pete has taken to staying on the roof most nights, closer to us but still distant. I wish I could convince him we’re capable of taking care of ourselves, but with him in this state, I’m not sure how much I even believe myself. We certainly haven’t been doing well against the Dandies, and none of them are a friend who knows us intimately. The cinnamon bark of Jesus worked, a little. Pete swallowed hard and made a face. “You really went for the playground wood-chip texture, huh?” Trish protested that she had never had to use the spice-grating side of Andie’s grater and they could work on texture in later trials. But, importantly, it seemed to keep him full longer. They could go a few more days between Pete waking up glassy-eyed and distant, vanishing all night and coming home with another regret (or without a regret, whichever was worse).“But it’s still not right, is it?” she said, looking up from her notes.“Oh, it sucks so much ass. There was a while in college when I was living on protein powder and antidepressants…this is somehow worse.” He laid on the floor, knees up and one arm over his face like he’d just finished a soccer game. “Better than the guilt of eating you guys in your sleep, I guess.”“I’d kill you before you got that far.”“You fuckin bet, Patricia.” (Her name was not, let us be clear, Patricia. She took deeper offense at that than at being told she couldn’t properly kill a vampire if she had to.)“No, you’re right, though. Something key is missing. I can see the space it should occupy, and the things it should be fixing, but I can’t put my finger on what. It’s gotta be something odd or obvious, or I would have…” Her voice trailed away, and she went back to staring at her notes, worrying the eraser of her mechanical pencil between her teeth. “I need to do some reading. Come on.”“I need cooler friends,” Pete said in the strained voice that meant he was using the words to propel himself to standing so he could follow her out the door.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughn Stump
Modern scholarship (what little exists) has largely moved away from the idea of a cure for vampiric bloodlust. Some people are floating a psychological-therapeutic approach, but I do not have enough confidence in my counseling skills to make that my primary approach to helping Pete get treatment.
In previous centuries, however, vampire medicinal texts were almost as common as alchemical texts. Thus, we took a field trip to find some rare books.
TRISH
The bookstore four blocks from Angels and Kings was one of the largest on this seaboard, a full city block of twisting staircases that went nowhere and far-flung corners to get lost in. Trish had spent days wandering the anthropology and folklore sections throughout her education. At the very top, windowless to protect the wares and guarded by only the most unsettling of employees, was the rare book room. The rare book room had all the antiques--including antique texts on vampires and their potential cures. The rare book room was where Trish took her team as soon as Jo got back with the Oldsmobile, pulling into the parking garage an hour before closing.True to form, the guy behind the desk outside the rare book room was gaunt, with mousy hair falling into his hollow eyes. He looked like the butler in some haunted mansion, if haunted mansions hired their butlers on how fuckable they would be at a poetry open mic.“Is he a vampire?” Jo whispered over Pete’s shoulder as they climbed the last of the stairs.“Who, Tom? No, he’s worked here forever,” Trish muttered back. Jo muttered something about how “worked here forever” was not a reassuring turn of phrase when they were dealing with ancient creatures of the night, but by that time they reached the desk, so she had to shut up.“Hey, Tom, how’s it going?” The top floor was deserted in a way that made you whisper like a library, the only sound a bit of cold rain drizzling on the roof, like a thousand tiny legs skittering around.Tom looked up from his book. “Oh. Hi.”“Is the rare book room open?”He glanced over his shoulder shiftily. “Yeah. Only two at a time in there, though.” He pointed to a basket on the desk with a pair of little laminated tickets hung on lanyards.“Do you want me to come in?” Jo said hopefully. “I can be your bodyguard.”“No, you’re fine.” Trish looked at the rest of the gang. Pete had already pulled out his Sidekick and was typing away to who-knew-who. Which was fine. If people were hanging around while she was trying to read, she wouldn’t get much—“I’ll come with you,” said Andie decisively.“You don’t know what I’m looking for,” Trish said.“I know enough. C’mon, loner genius.” Andie rubbed her shoulders encouragingly, then swiped the passes from the basket, and Trish followed her around the corner to the door of the rare book room.The tall, heavy mahogany door swung open silently, letting out a wave of old-book smell and cool air. Andie stepped into the darkness, reaching for the light switch. “Where is everybody?” she half-whispered as Trish followed her in.“I mean, it’s not exactly peak hours,” she replied, letting the door close softly but firmly behind them. It was strange, though. Most times you visited, there were so many people hoping to get in and wander the antiques; it was why they had to regulate entry with hall passes and Tom’s disquieting stare.“Works for me—oh, there—” Andie clicked on the light.A scream, guttural and hissing, from the corner. “Turn it off!”“Fuck!” On instinct, Andie slammed the switch down, plunging the room back into darkness. But as their eyes readjusted to the dim, dusty lowlight from the stained-glass window inset into the door, they made out a figure hunched over a typewriter at one of the reading tables. “Sorry, man,” she said. “The guy at the front just said two people; we didn’t expect anyone else.”“Would you stop talking?” he snapped. “I’m working.” They’d hardly begun offering another apology when he stood, revealing a lanky frame, ghostly pale. “I’m sorry; that was rude of me. I’m trying to finish my novel, and I thought I could get some peace and quiet up here.”Andie said all the appropriate, diplomatic things about how exciting and had he written novels before and what was this one about, but Trish was glancing at the light switch again. They only had so long before the store closed and she had to abandon her research plans for the weekend. “Do you mind if we just turn on one of these lights?” she blurted out.“Impossible.” The man’s voice was young and hoarse. But if he was up here writing in the dark…well, who knew how well his voice matched his age. Another time, if he was a vampire, it would be worth asking him how immortality affected his creative drive—did it take the pressure off, allow more time to research and polish, or did it just give you more time to procrastinate?“We don’t have to read in here, but I can’t find anything—”“You’re still talking!” His hand hit the table, rattling the typewriter. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I don’t mean to be rude.”Andie rested her hand meaningfully on Trish’s waist. “Leave it,” she whispered. “The library will—”Trish set her jaw, glaring at the strange man, because he could see it just fine. “I’m gonna turn this on for a minute. I have a list; I’ll find my books quick and we’ll get out of your hair.”He hissed. “Don’t. Please don’t do anything rash—”But she already had.He hissed again in the sudden amber light, but instead of recoiling, he lunged forward, long, jagged fingers grasping for them. Trish stumbled back against the nearest bookcase while Andie ducked under his arms, mis-timing her roll and toppling herself and an umbrella stand.His hand closed on Trish’s shirt collar. Her hands flew up to disentangle herself, but for all he was so bony, that vampiric strength only let her pull them closer together. “I’m sorry,” he panted, shoulders hunched against the light. “It was so quiet.” No wonder Jo thought Tom was a vampire; this guy looked haunted in exactly the same way, with sad silent-film-star eyes and the overwhelming smell of a deserted rose garden, like he was trying to cover the nothingness. He ghosted one hand over her neck. “I promised myself, I said I wouldn’t feed till I finished this draft.”Oh, Jesus. She’d had it up to here with sensitive guys who felt really really sorry about trying to suck her blood.“Andie!” she gasped through the strangling.“On it.” Andie pulled off a quick kip-up and leapt onto the vampire’s back, latching onto him like a koala. He staggered backward, releasing Trish, who rushed for the umbrella stand and (no umbrellas; of course—no people) threw the stand at him.Andie grunted as his dodge knocked her off; her back hit the table—and the tables were sturdy; no particle-board stunt-friendly furniture to be seen. So it was a big hit, and a big grunt. “Watch where you’re throwing things!” she complained.“Right. Right.”The vampire, winded by the attack, hissed softly to himself in the corner. Not just to himself. To the pile of papers on the table. Then he looked up, twitching like antennae, and with bared teeth lunged for Andie again.Trish didn’t feel like getting involved in that again. She would have to. But she didn’t want to. While Andie and the vampire traded blows in the tight quarters between the shelves, she inched along the edge of the room, toward the corner where his typewriter and manuscript were. She and Andie locked eyes over the guy’s shoulder, and she silently implored her not to make any fun quips that would give away what she was doing. Andie, ever the perfect support, grabbed the vampire by the scruff of his neck, and threw him against the glass door of a shelving unit. Trish tried to send her another silent, imploring look about being careful of the nice books. This look might or might not have been received, but it didn’t matter, because the maneuver bought her enough time to reach the neat stack of paper. She snatched the first inch of it.“Hey!” she said, holding it in front of her like a crucifix.The man froze against the shelves, wide-eyed and staring. “Put that down,” he rasped.“I get it,” she said. “When I get into writing this dissertation, I’m going to be…exactly this deranged. Just don’t be a dick and let me get these books.”He was hardly listening. “Down. Now.”“Andie, on the bottom shelf behind you—” she started to direct, but with a pained howl, he rushed at her. She dodged inexpertly, heading anywhere, out of the corner she put herself in like a total idiot—he pivoted off the table’s edge and—and yelped as a book hit him in the shoulder. Thanks, Andie. (Oh God, it wasn’t expensive, was it?) With a grunt, he pitched the table back toward her (Oh God, that wasn’t expensive, was it?) and reached again in time to claw Trish’s heel, sending her sprawling face-first toward the door, which she managed to catch herself on the handle of and fall out instead of into—“Jesus fuckin Christ.” Pete was at her side in seconds, hauling her to her feet and shoving her behind him. “Hey, man, what the fuck?” He went chest to chest with the bookstore-vampire (he had to look up a tiny bit, but the guy was so skinny, even Pete could shove him around if he needed). “Back off.”Outside the confines of the rare book room, the strange vampire looked somehow out of his depth. He glanced around himself awkwardly, like he wanted to find a corner to scuttle back into. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just—” His eyes alit on Tom behind the desk. “You said it would be quiet!”Tom didn’t even put his book down as he sighed. “It has been.”“It didn’t stay quiet, did it?”Tom cocked his head up at him. They looked at each other like nobody else was in the room: not like a first date; like a desert island. “When was the last time you ate?”“You let them in!” he accused.“Yeah, so you would eat.”“Oh.” The vampire’s face softened.“Excuse me?” said Trish. “So he would eat—who exactly?” They ignored her.Andie limped out of the rare book room. “I tried to reset the shelves,” she said to no one. “What the fuck just happened? Pete, who are these guys?”“Don’t look at me.”“Since when do we not look at you for knowing vampires?”“Geoff Rickly,” the vampire offered, having finished whatever deep communion he’d been having with Tom the rare book room attendant. He extended his hand, then thought better of it, shoving his hands in his pockets with a sheepish smile. It made him look human, finally; he had a gap between his teeth and his fangs were a little crooked. “We’re not—from around here, but Gabe Saporta raved about this place and how a nerd like me would love it, and—”Before he could continue telling the story of how “we” moved in (just him and Tom? Another coven? Oh, she hadn’t actually talked to any human/vampire pairs traveling alone, if that was the case. She should get their number), Pete stopped him. “Hang on. You know Gabe Saporta? From Cobra?”“Of course. Well. He hadn’t started Cobra when I knew him, but we were—” Geoff rocked back on his heels. “Well—who didn’t know Gabe?”“Oh. Holy shit.” Pete turned on Trish. “Fuck your books, we gotta go home and get changed.”“I’m sorry?”“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!” He bounced on the balls of his feet, looking suddenly, actually purposeful. “Trish, car. Hurley? Car. Jo-Tro?” Jo needed to be shouted around for, until it turned out she’d been in a back corner reading Dark Horse comics with her headphones on. Pete herded them toward the stairs like a determined border collie, barely giving Trish time to dodge him and return the pages of Geoff’s manuscript she was still clutching. “Do you even own party clothes? Doesn’t matter. If you need to find something weird, it’s time we go to a Cobra party.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
TRISH
The Cobra party was the brightest thing Trish had seen in weeks. The brightest thing in the city, probably; watch the skyline from a boat and you’d see the blinding white light of the rapture beaming from this upscale warehouse/penthouse, pulsing with music she didn’t know—probably nobody knew: a sleek, trendy import like all Cobra’s product.Practical effect of the glaring lights: everyone could be seen. Angels and Kings kept their peace on shady good-faith. If your enemies stayed at their tables in the dark, they weren’t there. Here, any brewing tension would fall immediately under the eyes of one of the Cobras, gliding through the party all in white. And Cobra had no qualms icing people who made trouble in their house.Incidental effect of the lights: you could spot every vampire in the place by the sunglasses.She turned to Pete, but he was already putting his on, lips curling in annoyance. “Come on, Vicky,” he mumbled.Jo grinned. “Awesome, man, you look like a douchebag rockstar.”“You’re walking home, you little shit,” he warned. Bold words. Was he even paying attention to where they parked Jo’s car?“Pete, my man! No hostess gift?”Pete’s scowl fell away, and he smiled wider than she remembered he could. “Yeah, well, your taste in liquor’s blown past my budget, and they wouldn’t sell me any flowers that matched the color scheme, cause I said it was for Gabe from Cobra, and they were like ‘no, white flowers are for funerals, and nobody can kill that motherfucker.’”If Trish hadn’t already befriended Travie McCoy, she would have thought Gabe was the tallest person in the world. Which was laughable, because everyone knew the tallest person in the world was Bao Xishun, who was 7 foot 9 and in Mongolia, while Gabe from Cobra was 6 foot something and right here. But Gabe-from-Cobra’s stage presence (there was no other word for it) made you feel like that. Laughable.White grin/tan skin/white suit. Dark eyes. “Trish! Finally!” Very firm handshake. “Pete never fucking shuts up about you, so congrats on getting him to talk about somebody other than—” But he cut off with a laugh as Pete glared murder.She was way underdressed. While Gabe offered similarly teasing greetings to Jo and Andie, she pulled down the sleeves of her button-up, shoved (not rolled) above her elbows like always.“Make yourselves at home, my friends. You will not believe the hors d’oeuvres we’ve got now Suarez is supervising the caterers. I swear, stuffed mushrooms like you can’t get in this realm.” He snatched a flute of champagne from a passing tray and handed it off to Pete. “For the boy of the hour. I bet you’re gonna be a fun lightweight.”“Gabe—” Trish got herself back on track. “This is really nice, but do you maybe have a few minutes to talk business?”“Never this early in the night,” he said, hand over his heart. “I have hosting duties—isn’t that great? Eat. I’m serious. I’ll find you later.”So they ate. Gabe was right. Whoever Suarez was, his oversight made for some premium hors d’oeuvres. Andie found her way to a whole vegan wing of the catering tables, poring over honey-chili figs and vegan shortbreads. Jo loaded her plate with trendy deconstructed/elevated jalapeño poppers that would be un-fucking-recognizable in the Buffalo Wild Wings whence such things were born.The mushrooms really were unlike anything she’d ever eaten, stuffed with bacon and spinach and the nicest cheese she had experienced in her twenty-two years. Between the food and the drink, the food made her feel most intoxicated, relaxed and warm right up to the shoulders. It was like comfort food at home, where just having it on your plate puts you at ease.Pete drank champagne slower than she knew he wanted to, but Andie made them promise to stay in good form, if not sober. This was a business trip, after all. One where anyone might be there.Including two of the Dandies.Jo spotted them first, which was unfortunate. None of them had poker faces, but Jo’s was by far the worst, so when she spotted the bowler hats across the way, her mouth gaped and she poked Trish in the ribs till she yelped.
“What?”
“Aren’t those—”They were. A pair who couldn’t have been old enough to drink when they got turned (oh, vampire bars weren’t only important because vampires didn’t want to fraternize with humans. They also needed places that would serve visibly underage kids). Both of them had aviators shielding their eyes, and expressive mouths that she would have called poetical if she was still in her Shakespeare phase, but that ship sailed as soon as she discovered data analysis. The slightly shorter one was drunk enough to be at ease with the night, but the other’s mouth twisted into polite discomfort, like he would rather be plenty of other places but wouldn’t commit the faux pas of leaving early.“Yeah,” Trish whispered, “that’s them.”Eventually, that one abandoned his companion, wandering away in favor of more coherent conversation, and it was as the dark-haired vampire hung around the neck of one of the Cobras that Pete noticed Jo noticing him.“Hey,” Trish said warningly, her hand against his chest as his fists clenched. “Who is that?”“A piece of shit,” Pete said. “No offense.”“Yeah, great. Who?”He wasn’t trying too hard to shake her off yet, but if he decided to make a run for the guy, there wasn’t gonna be much she could do. “Beckett’s lieutenant.”“Oh.”“He was there.”“Oh.”When he got turned, he meant. That was the moment she realized Pete was absolutely going to rip this guy’s throat out in the middle of Gabe-from-Cobra’s expensive white dance floor, which would make for a hell of a pop song, but would do terrible things to their credibility as academic researchers here in search of magic pharmaceuticals. Which was already not a sentence that inspired credibility.The lieutenant turned his head and laughed, his long, dark eyelashes fallen closed—Pete tensed under her hand, muttered, “I’ll be right back,” and made a beeline across the room.Andie and Jo shouted as they tried to intercept him, but in his rush he bowled past them as well as through a fivesome of socialites before a towering figure reappeared in his path.“Pete, Pete, my man, you’re scaring the ladies,” laughed Gabe.“Don’t you have something to snort somewhere else?” Pete seethed, but with Gabe’s large hands on his shoulders, he would need to make even more of a scene to escape him. Trish wondered if that would actually stop him. He didn’t have much reputation left these days; no more the king of society cultivating friendships wherever he went. Maybe this new Pete, the revenge-driven recluse, wouldn’t mind scandalizing a lot of aspiring models if it meant ripping one of his attackers to pieces.But Gabe, evidently used to dealing with worse than this, patted Pete’s face. “Nothing more important than hanging with my main man. You got somewhere to be?” He followed Pete’s still-glaring eyeline to where the young Dandy, finally noticing the disturbance, sneered at them as he collected his friend and sauntered away. “Ha. Nope. You shoulda got takeout before you came. No eating people at the party.”“He’s—” Pete began.“He’s my guest. And you’re my guest, I don’t play favorites with my guests.” Before Pete could even open his mouth fully this time, Gabe was already saying, “Of course I play favorites, but not enough to let you eat Brendon Urie under our roof. I promised his parents I’d have him home by nine.”“Yeah, speaking of whom—” Pete began.“Pete, baby, I know you own a business, but have you ever done business in your life?” Gabe said through an easy laugh, eyes on the crowd. “My office. Let’s go.”As he ushered them toward the back of the penthouse, a woman in jean shorts caught Gabe’s arm and shouted, “Leaving early?” over the music.“No way,” he replied, “I gotta teach these nerds how to do cocaine!” She laughed and let him go.“Who’s that?” asked Pete. Gabe shrugged: no idea.Gabe’s office looked exactly like you might imagine Gabe-from-Cobra’s office to look—clean-lined and tacky-expensive, like every piece of furniture cost 25% more than it should, just for the name behind it. Trish was struck by the idea that maybe this wasn’t his real office at all. Maybe this was the showroom he took people to when he said, “Let’s go to my office,” and his real work happened in some man-cave downstairs on a leather couch under a neon “It’s Miller Time!” sign.“So,” he said to Trish, taking a seat behind the desk and resting his chin on his hands. “You first. Start talking.”Trish pulled up the chair opposite. (Leaving the rest of the gang standing probably made her look like she had cool bodyguards, which was heartening.) “What do you know about synthetic bloodlust inhibitors?”“Whatever you’re about to tell me.”She dug in her back pocket for the ingredient list she’d copied neatly out of her notebook and flattened it on the desk. “I’ve been trying to work something out, and thus far, it’s, it’s—” She was about to regurgitate her own observations, which was probably stupid considering the primary source was currently opening Gabe’s cabinets. “Pete, would you tell him how you’re—feeling?”“Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “It’s not as bad as it could be. I’m not hungry for a couple days after I drink it, but I’m just fucking pissed the whole time.”“Which, I know I piss him off plenty on my own,” she said with half a smile, ducking her head, “and I’d rather not have my chem-lab experiments make it worse. So, do you—does Cobra—sell anything that would help? Or do you know who would? They say, you know, Cobra is who you go to when you need things.”“Like how they say Pete Wentz is who you go to when you need a person,” Gabe said by way of agreement. “You’re cute and smart, Trish.” Her flattery felt a little bald-faced, but this didn’t seem like the right air for subtlety. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you. We’re all pretty mechanically-minded; Cobra doesn’t dabble in pharmaceuticals—yet. I don’t want to see Pete more rabid than usual either, though, so I’ll ask around.”“I appreciate it.”Gabe fell for a moment into a slightly exaggerated thinking posture. “Now, about your other problem…”Pete began, “The Beckett problem? Yeah—”“Hey, hey.” Gabe raised his hands. “Be nice; I’ve got a soft spot for the guy. Besides, I’m a big believer in neutrality as a corporate virtue. So I’m not gonna stop dealing to the Dandies, if that’s the kind of thing you were thinking about asking.” (That hadn’t even occurred to Trish. Clearly, she had a ways to go in developing her business savvy if she was supposed to operate in this world.)“Gabe,” Pete complained. “There’s seventy of them, and it’s me and three humans. That’s not fucking neutral.”“Does sound tough,” said Gabe, hands behind his head.As Pete paced the office, Trish watched his face. And when his back turned to the desk, the look that flashed over it was familiar. More than familiar; it was Gabe’s. Whatever those two were up to, they’d done it before. “Bro, remember when we went to Seattle with Travie and—”Gabe’s eyes sparkled when he laughed. “Yeah, you still got the tattoo?”“I’m broke, man. Who’s got the cash to get rid of it?”From there, the conversation became functionally impossible to follow. Before long, Pete was sitting on the desk as they swapped inside jokes and made fun of people she’d never heard of. Whatever was going on, it worked, because finally Pete said, “How about, for old times’ sake, you help me…even the playing field.”“For old times’ sake,” Gabe grinned. “I could cut some deals.”“What, like sell us weapons too?” said Jo, who had long since tired of the minimalist decor and was watching the party below through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Gadgets, however, had her attention again.“It is my love language.”Trish half-laughed. “That’s not—”“That’d be pretty rad.”“Jo!”“Listen, man,” she said. “Obviously I’m a fiend with my fists of fury, but we’re getting our asses kicked. Maybe we’d actually have time to do some research instead of just running for our lives all the time!”“It’s like cute Taylor from Social and Cultural Theory said,” Andie added helpfully: “No point in doing fieldwork if you die!”Trish gave a that’s-true-but-still laugh. “Yeah, sure, but—but I respect Gabe’s business too much to ask for a student discount. (“Smart move; we don’t have one,” said Gabe.) “So, sure, buy cool weapons, whatever. With what money?”“Mine!” Jo blurted out. Trish stared as she grabbed her hands. “Listen,” said Jo, deathly earnest, “I believe you. You got me. I believe you that we live in Gotham City with every fathom of my stupid soul. So let me be Batman.”She didn’t have much to say. Jo could do whatever she wanted with her money, no matter how weird it made Trish feel to know their house was buying from arms smugglers. But maybe they weren’t a house. They were roommates, and roommates could spend their independent personal finances as they pleased.Jo and Gabe spent the next hour going over the catalog, pausing to discuss throwing-stakes and the merits of net-guns versus electrified net-guns. Trish firmly abstained—“whatever you get is fine, it’s your idea, it’s your money”—and Pete abstained due to confidence in his own powers, but Jo saw Andie lingering over a two-page spread of silver swords. “Want it?” she said.“You don’t have to,” said Andie firmly.“I know, but now I have to see it, cause you wielding an enchanted silver sword sounds badass.”Which, to be fair, it did.Finally, money changed hands, Jo vibrating with excitement for the first time in what seemed like months as she dug the cash out of her bag. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said as Trish’s eyebrows shot up, “you know the banks by us are overrun.”Gabe shook hands with all parties and led them back down the stairs into the rest of the penthouse. “Pleasure doing business with you, Bro-sephina.” And yes, he lingered over pleasure, exactly how you’d imagine a dude with his shirt that far unbuttoned would, but it didn’t sound like he was leering at Jo. More like he did it to be funny once years ago and got his voice stuck that way. “Let me introduce you to the rest of my team,” Gabe said confidentially, and like everyone at this party could hear him, the Red Sea parted in four different directions, and the rest of Cobra emerged.Nate looked no older than her and Jo. White hoodie, eager to please. “Distribution,” Gabe said. Of what, he didn’t have to say.Ryland and Suarez came in a pair. White scarves/white shoes/distant, clever smiles. If proximity to the supernatural somehow explained the concentration of Insanely Tall People in her life, she wanted her due growth spurt.“And of course, the queen of the hour!” Gabe announced, gesturing grandly at the last Cobra.Victoria. White furs/white gloves—wait.“Victoria—Jesus—Hi!” She was so underdressed!Before her financial aid got fixed at the start of her degree, Trish had worked a hellish three months at a dying Sharper Image in a busy mall. Which meant getting ignored by the multitudes while she played with an overpriced RC car, leaned back in a massage chair. Except there were two massage chairs. And on the only days worth living, the second one was occupied by that sweet, sharp Sephora girl whose lunch break never seemed to end. The one who was apparently queen Cobra now.“Jesus. Hi.”“Hi, Trish!” Cool and effortless. Like they were at a sleepover. Like it made total sense for them to meet again—after all, the lights here glared just as bright as the mall fluorescents, if a little less headachey. Victoria kissed her cheek. (It was pretty hot in here. Probably bad AC in these old buildings.) “Sounds like grad school is going really well, huh?”“It—it has been, yeah. Some weird speed bumps, but we’re making it work, yeah.”“I’m right here,” Pete grumbled.“Not for long,” said Gabe, slinging one arm over Pete’s shoulders and one over Andie’s (arms so long he could reach past Andie and catch Jo’s shirt).As Gabe dragged his new clients away to collect their purchases, the Cobra boys falling in behind and around them like a lazy guard, Victoria looped her arm through Trish’s and led her in the opposite direction. For a while, they sauntered through the thronging guests. The ever-flowing drinks flowed as steadily as ever, and more people moved to the dance floor. Victoria and Trish wound their way across it, through the smell of expensive cologne and just-beginning-to-creep-through sweat; Victoria pointed out guests of note, some from various vampire factions across the city, some out-of-towners, and some plain old celebrities, who almost seemed like a letdown in comparison with a man so old he saw the Viking invasions.Trish was starting to feel antsy. She only had so much social energy (and bargaining used it up at a more accelerated pace), and everyone who saw Victoria, if they weren’t too lost in dancing, wanted to say hello and shake hands with her business-casual accessory.Then they reached the far end of the dance floor, way opposite the entrance; she hadn’t seen this part of the loft yet. Against the wall, a sleek photobooth with a silver curtain welcomed anyone who wanted a memento of the night. Into this, Victoria pulled them both.The seat was surprisingly narrow. Maybe it was designed this way: small enough that couples cramming into the booth would be squished together, all up in each other’s personal space with a curtain between them and the rest of the world. As former work friends, it felt a touch excessive to have her legs practically on top of Victoria’s.The queen Cobra didn’t seem to mind. She leaned forward deliberately and pushed a few buttons, and the photo booth sprang to life, playing encouraging music and counting down from five.“Smile,” she said. Trish did her best. “I want to help you. Against Beckett.”
Flash.
“Isn’t Cobra supposed to not, not play favorites?” It sounded deeply lacking in nuance as it left her mouth.Victoria beamed magnanimously at the camera. “Cobra doesn’t. I am more than Cobra.”
Flash.
She had no idea what was going on, but her cheeks warmed hopefully. “I’d be so grateful. What did you—”“Have in mind? I know everyone says Pete is the guy who knows eeeverybody, but you’ve got to admit his connections are all pretty. You know. Lowbrow.”Trish covered a snort laugh.
Flash.
“When things move in the upper circles. You know. Where Beckett is.” Victoria smiled like a movie star. “I’ll let you know!”She pressed a loud kiss to Trish’s cheek.
Flash.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughan Stump
Despite the fact that our entire city is embroiled in a decades-long struggle for land and position that has a death toll no one seems interested in counting, the leaders of the various covens (and non-vampire factions like Cobra) socialize like they’re opposing football coaches or stock traders. This is the value of neutral territories like Angels and Kings. Many of the factions have their own partisan bars and hangouts, but a space like this where they can meet on equal turf as friends is apparently more valuable to everyone than it would be to possess that piece of land.
BECKETT
It had been a tiresome week, as weeks went. Many weeks had been since his abortive attempt to bring Pete into the fold, the insufferable little shit. In dull times such as these, the old pleasures were more critical than ever.Gabe had arrived first, as he always did somehow to Angels and Kings, despite otherwise being the most chronically late creature Beckett had ever known. He had saved them the usual high table, their drinks of choice arrayed around it and his long legs kicked out across the second chair (Beckett’s chair, judging by his drink at it).“Gabe,” he said, bowing slightly before shoving his old friend’s legs away to take his rightful seat.“What’s up?” said he. “Missed you.”“Flirt.”Travie arrived not long afterward. He always admired the way she dressed. He and his family, of course, dressed so thoroughly aloof they could not be mistaken for people of this century. Over the sixty, no, seventy years he’d known her, Travie had shown the opposite instinct with the same result. While her style and that of the Punks was ever-changing, molding itself with the artistic materials of whatever era they found themselves in, she in particular always managed to arrive looking both perfectly at home and completely unique among her fellows. He was in no hurry to abandon his suits, but he admired it nonetheless.When they were seated and attentive, Travie leaned in. “So. What are we going to do about the Scooby gang?”Perhaps he should not have understood the reference so immediately, but Adam had watched the old program for a spate in the seventies, and it was difficult not to see the resemblance. “You’ve been struggling with them too?”“Most times they aren’t on our turf, but we’ve had a few run-ins lately, and I don’t like that they’re armed now.”“Armed?” He cocked his head to the left, where the Cobra was examining his white fingernails. “When Brendon and Ryan told me they spotted them at the Cobra penthouse, I assumed they were visiting for some tepid little PBS interview. Don’t tell me you’re selling to humans now.”Gabe smiled languidly. “Becks, I sell to everybody. Besides, dealing in overpriced weapons tech is the only acceptable way to take advantage of college girls.”Beckett rolled his eyes, amused despite himself. “You always were a scoundrel.”“Don’t we know it,” grinned Travie.He rested one gloved hand on Gabe’s thigh, and the whites blended together, as if they belonged. “I wish I could convince you to deal more exclusively…”“I wish you could too, just cause I’d love to see what you come up with,” Gabe shot back, not unaffectionately. “Come on, man, don’t tell me you’re scared of Nancy Drew and her backup singers. I’m not scared of them. Definitely not scared enough to go monogamous.”“Scared is hardly the word. Inconvenienced, certainly. Bothered, maybe. Pissed off—we’re getting there. I had thought to bide my time. Surely, I thought, Pete’s vampire nature would take over soon enough, and as we continued gaining territory near wherever his squalid little nest is, he would have no choice but to be honest with himself and join us.” He sighed longsufferingly. “My existence is never so simple as one would wish. These…upstart academics have decided to dabble in politics.”“They aren’t taking your takeover lying down?” said Travie, mock-shocked.Beckett frowned witheringly. “It’s hardly effective yet, but you don’t have to be scared of a mosquito to want it flattened under a book.”Gabe looked around for that little thing who ran the bar since Pete started hiding from him—what was her name—Greta—to fetch another round. “I might be able to make it up to you. And not just by buying.”“Though you are doing that,” Travie confirmed.“Pete and the gang didn’t just come to me for weapons,” he said conspiratorially. “In fact, that’s not what they showed up for at all.”“Oh?”“Nah, Trish wanted to know what I knew about synthetic bloodlust inhibitors.”Beckett cast a glance to Travie, who responded knowingly. This was an old practice, but since the dawn of medicine commercials on television especially, every too-clever-for-their-own-good medical researcher thought they could invent a proprietary blend of anti-vampiric ingredients that would stop the bloodlust and turn vampires into normal, productive members of society.Of course, if one was as old as Beckett—and certainly if one was as old as Travie—one had seen many a trend come and go in vampiric “cures,” and the old guard, the covens who still grew and thrived in this modern world, were uniformly those who rejected such nonsense outright. Most of these quack panaceas were merely the twentieth century’s answer to those miracle elixirs street urchins once peddled for a penny a bottle (he still remembered the insufferable jingles and the overwhelming smell of whatever unholy liquids they actually contained). Even if they were not, mind you, because most were exactly that, even a working “cure” had no appeal. He was not in the habit of repressing his nature.This being said, the Butcher had absolutely done preliminary research into these inhibitors. Just because none of the Dandies needed repressing did not mean they had no enemies who might. He was put out that Pete’s miserable sidekicks considered him one of those enemies.“And what exactly did you tell little Trish about synthetic bloodlust inhibitors?”“Told her my specialty is cures that are a little more physical,” Gabe grinned.“Oh, Gabriel, disgusting.”“I sold her stun guns, my friend. I don’t do medicine.” He stretched again, feet on the crossbar of Beckett’s stool. “Maybe I should. Cobra Venom Antihistamines, huh?”“Boo,” Travie heckled. “Skip straight to molly.” Gabe grinned and flicked the crumpled straw wrapper from his drink into hers.Beckett rolled his eyes. “And what did she tell you? Was she looking for anything in particular?”“I dunno. She didn’t show me any notes.”“You didn’t ask.”“I didn’t realize you’d have your pants on fire about it, or I would have. ”Gabe Saporta was his dearest friend outside his family. He was a magnetic force, not only useful to have around but desirable. They had grown uniquely close over the decades, understood one another at an almost psychic level, and their destinies were bound together in more ways than one. He was also one of the more irritating bastards he had the misfortune to do business with.“Beckett,” said Travie, examining her nails, “how much would you give me for making your whole week?”He reached across the table and clasped her hand. “Anything you ask, up to half my kingdom.”“Promise?”“Don’t be ridiculous. What do you have?”Smiling slowly, she reached into her back pocket and withdrew a small folded stack of takeout napkins, each covered in notes written in a slightly lumpy print. “Came across some recipe notes from our little friend Trish.”He leaned in, eyes alight. “Where?”“Come on, man, don’t tell me you don’t keep any of your boys on dumpster-diving retainer.”Gabe, tipped back so far in his chair he was about to topple, laughed as he searched again in vain for a server. “They’d crease their pants.” (He could crane his neck until his head fell off; this bar had one server, and she was at that moment singing jazz standards so heartfelt they were discordant in this irony-poisoned venue.)Travie held the notes loosely in one hand, as if dangling them in front of him. Ms. Travie McCoy, unlike the fickle and infuriating Gabe, was in fact his most favored accomplice and dearest friend, and he turned his back fully on Gabe to make that clear while they bargained. It would never do to lowball her now; financial insults had no place at this table.“Ten thousand.”“Twelve.”“Done.”They shook hands, the notes clasped between them. He did not bother to examine them as he withdrew his hand—another expression of distrust; merely tucked them in his breast pocket for safekeeping. “Always an honor, Ms. McCoy.”“One man’s trash…” she said, sitting back contentedly.In the morning, she would send her collections man to meet with Carden, who would complain endlessly before writing the check. But tonight, there would be no more business to discuss. It always served their turn to do some dramatic exchange before calling it a night and getting incredibly intoxicated. One liked to feel productive. Gabe reached over and clasped his shoulder. Yes, things were going well.Greta finished her song. It was not for lack of talent he considered offering to hire her a proper floor show. It was no place for the owner to also have to song-and-dance for the masses. His table applauded.“That was for you, Mr. Beckett!” she said, blowing him a kiss.“Enchanting as always.”“Will you turn me now?” she asked, teasing. Oh, this was an old game, though the more she asked him, the less he was inclined to treat it like a joke. Tonight, though, the many witnesses made it pay to stay charming.“But you’re so pretty like this!” This, pink-cheeked with the exertion of performance, breath slowing. It was a lovely picture, and if he didn’t have other concerns in play, she would hardly be the worst charge he could take on.Greta hopped off the stage with a little bounce on her toes, her hands shoved in the pockets of her dress. “What would you want for it?” she said in a voice meant to sound shrewd. “Is there a bite fee? Free drinks for life?” She caught herself and chuckled. “Free drinks for afterlife?”He leaned his chin on his hand, as if really considering it. “Would you tell me where your boss vanished to? I’ve been dying to talk. He ran off so quickly last time we met.”Her shoulders slumped; it was no lie when she admitted, “I haven’t seen him in weeks.”“Don’t trouble your head about it. I wouldn’t have done it anyway.”It was teasing. It was meant to shut her down (or, had it worked, meant to set him on the hunt for Pete again), but her face set stubbornly, and she snatched his and Gabe’s empty glasses from their table. “You’re being mean.”“Come on, darling,” he called as she marched to the bar. “Why would someone like you want to be a vampire?”“Can’t a girl defend herself?” she grumbled, dunking the glasses in the sink with more force than such delicate drinkware strictly required.He crossed after her with long, slow steps. No need to shout across the place. “Unnecessary.” She frowned and returned to her washing-up. “You’re too important to our operation as a fully intact human. No harm will come to you from us.”Her lips moved in what might be a doubtful “from you,” but what she said aloud was a spiteful, “Well, maybe I want it for fun, then!” as she came out from behind the bar, black dish towel over her shoulder.His men were watching now. Much as he loved an audience, he suspected she also enjoyed the attention, as well as the understood support from the jury of spectatorship. Not that he bowed to public opinion, but it didn’t do for her to think it would help. His voice dropped in pitch, no longer its light, florid self. “This little dance was cute,” he said coldly, “the first time. I will not turn you. Don’t ask me again.”She glared now, tried to march past. “See if I need you,” she muttered.He caught her arm. “Ah. Good try. No one else will touch you either.”This was evidently a deeply unpleasant surprise. She shook off his grip. “What? Why?”“Because I’ll kill them; you’re welcome.”
“Why?”
He loomed over her. “Because the tense geopolitics of our situation require neutral territory on which to conduct business and a human liaison to maintain that territory, both of which we have right here! Isn’t that convenient? And neither of which I will risk because a barmaid is chasing a life she should be thanking God on her knees she knows nothing about.”Her jaw stiffened, and the blood rushed to her cheeks. With a glance around the room, she knelt in the middle of the floor. He had no place to complain of weaponized theatricality, he and Gabe and Travie (the bastards watching the entire proceedings with ever-increasing amusement) and, let us be honest, the entire city knew it. Someone should spare him from it anyway. “Thank you, Mr. Beckett!” she said, her hands clasped, her voice lisping and pathetic. “Thank you so much for rescuing me from my own silly, stupid, girlish wishes!”“Greta—”“Now get out of my bar.”Beckett stepped in to help her to her feet. “Greta—”She dodged his hand. “We’re closing. Go away. Come back tomorrow with a nice apology.”Gabe, behind Greta’s head, gave Beckett a look that said well, it’s been a fun day and gestured those sitting nearest him to pack up and split. There was nothing else to be done. After all, he had just declared her absolute necessity to his operations and sworn her safety in public. It was not a retreat. It was a concession. All part of the show. Ryan helped him into his cape, and before he left, he dug a twenty from his wallet and left it flat on the bar. “For your disappointment.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
CASSADEE
As jobs go, “cleaning girl at the vampire mansion” was, shockingly? Better than barista-ing, which she thought was gonna be the best job a girl could get before graduation. It was definitely (weirder-ly?) better than “cleaning girl at the normal rich people mansion.” At least the vampires were weird jerks in interesting ways and not office-worker ways.Most of them left her pretty well alone, probably cause Mr. Beckett thought she was alright and didn’t want people messing with her. They got their kicks out of scaring her, but it was so Halloween. Like, a fun little game lurking in dark corners just to see her scream when they jumped out. But she’d been there a few months now, and not a single one of those jumpscares had gotten her eaten or even chewed on a little. So by this point, it was part of the fun of the job. It got easy to forget her bosses were bloodthirsty monsters of the night. Which was okay, yknow? Like, it would be a total bummer to have to think about that nonstop while you also had to vacuum.Usually, when she showed up in the morning to clean, nothing too crazy was going on. (Mr. Beckett let her keep her old schedule, even though instead of “everybody’s gone for work so nobody’ll bother you,” now she was doing the, like, “sweep under everybody’s feet while they go to bed” schedule.) The hunting parties from the night came in, full and tired, and they’d swap stories with whoever was lounging around the house, listen to the vampire piano player Mr. Beckett kept on retainer to play movie soundtracks and old timey jazz, and also, like, smoke cigarettes indoors, which, yuck, but it did feel like she was in the old Ocean’s Eleven with Frank Sinatra that her mom used to watch all the time may she rest in peace.Today, she let herself in the kitchen door, and the whole house was on high alert.“Who the fuck—oh. It’s just you.” Miss Carden was marching through the kitchen high-speed, like you do when you’re about to be late for work but you can’t remember where you left your keys.“Should I come back later?”“That’d be stupid. Just don’t go…poking around,” And she hurried away, frowning really intensely.This was 100% the wrong thing to say, but that’s not a diss! It’d been at least a hundred and something million years since she was a teenager, and hundred-and-something-year-old women didn’t remember that poking around is the number one thing teenage girls do for fun.The other Dandies (isn’t that a silly name?) were shifty like Miss Carden, hurrying around but trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal, like Miss Carden’s keys would know if people were too stressed about finding them and would hide worse just to piss her off. She’d lost her keys on the way to work before. That’s exactly how it works.Jonwalker (he always got a full name like that, all one word. JonWalker) leaned against the wall, muttering with Brendon (who did not get last-named when she thought about him. She was still offended that he tried to eat her when they first met).“I could take a couple folks and canvas the yard,” said Jonwalker.“He’s not gonna go outside,” said Brendon. “He hasn’t been outside in for fucking ever.”So it wasn’t keys. It was a he. Maybe a burglar. She kept her eyes peeled.To get to the cleaning closet, you had to go down the longest fricking confusing-est hallways anyone had ever designed. Which was sorta inconvenient, because all the things she had to clean with the supplies from the cleaning closet were on the other end of the long confusing hallways. But she figured it was sorta like a workout. Because gyms were expensive and scary. (Scarier than vampire mansions? Who’s to say!) When the Dandies took over from the Marinos, she thought about asking if she could move the stuff. At least to the closet under the basement stairs, which wouldn’t do anything about the stair climbing, but even one hallway less would be nice. And last time she poked her head in there, it was pretty big. Big enough to fit a whole person.This time she poked her head in there (just to confirm it was as big and useful as she remembered before she made appeals to her Very Busy Bosses), unrelated to how much cleaning supplies it could fit, it was making noises.She froze.The closet wasn’t making noise. Closets do not make noise. Maybe vampire closets do, but they don’t talk about it in any of the important literature, so that would be a weird thing to spring on a person. No, it wasn’t the closet. There was definitely a something in the darkness. Something that made a lone clack like metal hitting the floor, then a thin, reedy voice muttering, “Shhhit!”Probably she should have walked right out, because if there was somebody in here that everybody else was looking for in an antsy-fidgety way, it might not be the sort of person you wanted to surprise with a bright light and the fact they were cornered.She reached blindly for the little push-battery light on the wall.“Ooh!”“Shit!”There was a boy under the stairs. (Which sounded like a book or something. Somebody should write that.) Anyway, he was a boy her age (maybe) made of angles, poky elbows and pointy chin. He stared at her, crouched next to the stack of the Marinos’ extra golf bags.“Who are you?” he said, his voice a little rusty. He was sorta sweet-looking, with messy cinnamon-colored curls getting all in his face, but it was definitely the sorta sweet that’s like, a dog on the side of the road who’ll probably jump on you no matter how much you wanna take it home and give it a bath. Look-but-don’t-touch. “Nobody told me there were more girls here.”“I’m the housekeeper.”“Why?”“Because we have Standards?” (It was Mr. Beckett’s excuse when Miss Carden asked why exactly they hired cleaning staff.) She held out her hand—though what he was gonna do with it, she couldn’t tell. Hold it, or shake it. Or bite it off. “I’m Cassadee.”The boy didn’t take her hand, but he smiled. “That’s a good name.”“What about—” she started, because it seemed polite to reciprocate, but right then, a shadow fell over them; somebody stepped between them and the lightbulb.“You stupid fuck.”Cassadee jumped, but Miss Carden wasn’t talking to her. When she leapt out of the way, squishing herself against the wall with the suitcases, the tall lady was looking at the boy, half-pissed, half-scared, half-fond (which was three halfs, technically, but that just tells you how much was going on in her Look). “Cmon.”The boy bristled like he still thought it’d be fun to jump on somebody, but Miss Carden didn’t have to say anything else, just kept staring alarmingly till he slunk past her. She ushered the strange boy upstairs, ruffling his hair when she thought nobody was looking. Cassadee followed at a little distance in case she was gonna get chewed out for poking around when she got told really specifically to not do that.“It was nice to meet you!” Cassadee offered.The boy stopped on the landing and gave her a grand bow, sorta floppy, like in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when Caractacus is pretending to be a puppet so he folds right in half to bow to people. But nobody had ever bowed to her. So even if it was not a controlled bow, it was very exciting. Her hands jumped to her cheeks, and they were pink-warm. “The pleasure was all mine!” he announced grandly. Then he disappeared up the stairs! Like he’d never been there at all!She sighed. Well, that was probably definitely maybe the most exciting thing that would happen to her all day.“Cassadee.” Miss Carden was leaning with her elbows on the railing, her hair falling in her face so Cassadee couldn’t tell how mad she was. “Come here.”Well, it was nice knowing you all. Guiltily, she climbed the stairs, halfway through making up an apology.“Did you know,” Miss Carden said, in the lazy kind of voice that meant she was gonna tell a story, “we had a break-in when we lived in Philadelphia.”“Oh?” Maybe she was getting accused of stealing. That would be a plot twist.“We did. Some jackasses from out of town. Called themselves the Kings; seven, eight of them, maybe, who fuckin knows. I sure can’t remember. But none of us were home, so they tried to kidnap Adam, some godforsaken reason.” Oh, Adam. His name was Adam. That was a good name. “I say tried. Do you know why?” She shook her head. Miss Carden was definitely smiling now. “He ate all of them.”Cassadee giggled before she could stop herself. “Oh, you’re messing with me.”Miss Carden shrugged. “Think that if you want. You’ll be easier to clean up than the Kings were.” It still kinda seemed like a joke, but not one she was in on anymore. It didn’t sound like there was any more story, so she giggled again awkwardly and excused herself. As she tried to pass her, Miss Carden caught her arm. “I’m not kidding. Leave him alone.”
CARDEN
Fuckin figured Adam would get out of that stupid attic. Nobody’d made a decent lock in decades. She shook her head as she stomped up the stairs after him. For how much this house cost, the fixtures really were shit (not that they paid for it, but the last family should have complained).“Might as well lock your doors with fucking spaghetti,” she muttered as she shoved open the attic door. Sorry. The lab. Butcher had done a lot with the place since they took over, when it was a drafty space with extra insulation and stacks of moving boxes. (Adam tried to eat the insulation the first day. Looked too much like cotton candy. He learned his lesson.)“Hi, May,” called the Butcher from where his head was buried in one of his drawers.“Butcher.”Adam was lying on the floor, throwing a carpenter’s pencil at the ceiling. When he heard the floor creaking, he tipped his head to see who it was, then stuck his tongue out at Carden. She flipped him off and threw her scarf at his head, then took off her hat and coat and hung them on an exposed nail. It was fucking warm up here.“Thanks for finding Adam,” Butcher said.“Oh, I didn’t. It was Cass.”“Well, thank you to her, wherever she is.”Butcher tinkered with microscopes and test tubes, occasionally calling Adam over to measure things and stir them, while Carden leaned against the fuse box and watched them work, almost dozing in the stuffy August heat. Even after everything that had happened, they still worked like two halves of the same weirdo.“Butcher!!!” Beckett’s singsong voice carried up the stairs, followed by the man, scaling the ladder till his shaggy head appeared through the trapdoor.“Milord?” said the Butcher in a posh little accent he saved for special occasions.Beckett smelled like strawberries, and his movements were even more fluid than usual. Apparently the meeting went alright. “If one was to brew a blood inhibitor, to quench one’s thirst in a cowardly and,” he laughed breathlessly, “boring way.”“Yup?”Here Beckett rattled off a list of ingredients, all of which sounded disgusting. Who actually drank any of this shit? Carden had long since lost track of what each would do when he concluded, “What is missing?”“Oh, holy water,” Butcher said easily.“Ha!”“Should I mix some later? In case hunting gets bad?”Unhearing, Beckett dropped to a seat on the broken-in couch. These days, he was prim about moves like that, even in private, but all of a sudden, he didn’t seem to care if his legs went sprawling peasant-like, or whatever adjective he thought he had to correct for. Gabe was the only one who could get him like this nowadays. Fucking Cobra. “That’s the best thing you could have said. It’s so simple!” Adam crept out from unscrewing the legs of Butcher’s table.“Wanna make it simple for everybody else?” Carden said.Adam tipped his head against the couch cushions, and Beckett idly ran his fingers through his curls while he talked. “That insufferable ragtag girl gang is trying to keep Pete—my Pete—from his nature. They’re stifling him. On purpose. Their Butcher (no candle to the real thing) is missing holy water, but it won’t take her long to figure it out, I’m sure, in which case we are going to be the ones to deliver it.”“Thought you didn’t want him stifled.” Carden thought he could do with a good stifling, if he was the Pete she was thinking of.“I don’t, but I must admit, in his present state, we may as well encourage a certain docility until we can, shall we say, talk him round to our family.” He must have caught Carden’s slow smile, because he added, “And I do mean talking this time.”“Fine. That why we’re having this talk without Brendon?”Maybe she shouldn’t jab. He picked his second. Let him figure that shit out himself. But Beckett shrugged his thin shoulders and granted her the point. “I’ll tell him after I leave. But you’re right, it won’t be his job; it calls for a measured touch. Butcher, it’s been a while since you’ve been out in the wide world. Thoughts on undercover work?”“And leave me alone?” Adam’s eyes, which had fallen shut, popped back open in interest.Butcher shook his head. “He’s right. I’ve got a lot of work anyway that’s more fun than theater. Sorry.”Beckett jutted his chin out. He could have made Butcher do it, but he knew better than anybody they needed him at home. And none of their other prospects were great. It was tough he had to come up with a plan that depended on disguise when the point of the person they wanted to fool was that he knew everybody.The empty feeling right in her throat meant an idea nobody was gonna like but had to get said out loud. “You know who we need…”Beckett’s eyes went cold. “We do not need him.” Butcher perked up immediately, which only made Beckett stiffen further.Carden pushed on. “Pete from the bar, yeah? He knows all of us on sight. Anyone walks in his house alone, we’re gone. You want a long-term undercover man. You need somebody he hasn’t seen. Who likes us. Who knows how we work.”“Likes us,” Beckett scoffed under his breath.“Yeah, likes us, fuck you!” What went wrong in the universe that she was defending Michael leaving now?“He won’t do it,” Beckett said, like his word settled it.In response, Carden snapped for Adam to give back her scarf, and grabbed her hat and coat. “We’ll see.”The little house perched right on the edge where suburbs petered off into winding roads and unfinished developments. Of course, when he bought the place thirty years ago, the point was to move into the fucking woods. Time and tide, or whatever. Carden stood just off the front step, out of the porch light in case the neighbors were looking out the window. It seemed like a place that would have busybody neighbors now. Time and fucking tide.She shouldn’t be nervous visiting Chislett of all people. Except that was the thing, wasn’t it, was sometimes you visited someone you never had to be nervous about before, somebody who made sense, only it was long enough that maybe one of you had changed and then there you’d be. Nervous. Like an idiot.She straightened her shoulders and banged on the door.And he opened it.“Mike.” Not Carden, not May, not even Beckett’s fond, affected Mikhaila. “Mike, what are you doing here?”“Come out of retirement,” she demanded.“No.”“Come out of retirement or I’ll break your skull.”Michael smiled lazily. “Whatever Beckett wants me for, I can’t do it if I’m a zombie-vampire hybrid.”Carden let out a huffy little laugh. “Right. ‘d be cooler if you were one, though.”He stepped aside to let her in without saying anything else, which meant at least he hadn’t uninvited her since the last time they talked. Good signs.“You want a drink?” he called over his shoulder, already heading for the kitchen.Carden scoped out the living room chairs, dropping heavily into the squishiest-looking one and groaning as she sank almost to the floor. The pleather cubes back at the nest had to go. Fuck that shit. “Whatcha got?”“Blood of Christ?”She squinted at the bottle. It was no murder attempt—she knew his church didn’t do the transmogrification stuff. But it’s not like he could keep a straight face anyway—he was cracking up before he finished the phrase.“Yeah. Fucker,” she added, in case he thought he was funny.They split a glass and Carden asked him stupid small talk questions. Naomi was great, visiting her old coven in Sydney. Books were great. The garden was great. The studio was great. Great great great great great.Then, awkwardly, Michael asked, “How is—everyone?”She had planned on being sunny about the whole situation. Cause, you know, she was trying to trick him back into it. But: “Man, they fucking suck!” Leaning back in the awesome chair, she went on in a rush. “You know we had to move out of the old house, which sucked, and everyone’s been a bunch of bitches ever since. Maybe their brains got lost in the moving boxes, I dunno. Butcher got a lab so I never see him, Brendon is lieutenant now, which is going exactly as fucking well as you’d think—so thank you, thank you, Michael Guy Chislett, for leaving him such an awe-inspiring power vacuum. The only rank-and-file I can trust to tie his shoes is this 300-year-old child with baby-doll eyes who never talks. Fuck, man!”Michael grinned. “So you don’t actually need my skills, you just need your one brother who doesn’t make you pull your hair out.”Carden let her free arm fall over her eyes. “Yeah, actually. That would be tight.” They shut up for a while then, quiet enough she could hear a fucking stream bubbling in the backyard. Of course they moved into a place with a stream.“Did…” He sighed and shifted in his chair. “Did Beckett ask for me, or did you?”She sat up (as best she could). “Don’t do that. Either way, he needs you.”His laugh was only a hint bitter. “I figured. For what?”“To play a priest.”“What?” Michael doubled over, and this laugh was a full-on wheeze. He’d probably been expecting some mission involving diplomacy or languages or his actual skills, which was, you know, a fair assumption. “Are you telling me—”“No, no, it’s not because you’re—religious, or whatever. It’s not the same thing anyway—”“It’s not.”“—so you’ll be just as shit at priesthood as the rest of us.”“Hey, I’ll be a little better—” he protested.“So you’ll do it?”He ran his fingers through his stringy blond hair. “What do you want me to say?” She had options, but he was too quick. “Other than ‘yes’—I know you want me to say yes, dumbass. That’s not me anymore. The whole—” He gestured at her, suit and all. Maybe she should have dressed down for the visit. “Make Brendon do it, seems like a good lieutenant job…”“Can’t be. Beckett’s chasing a new boy who needs convincing. And for once it’s not a mobster euphemism. So it’s got to be someone he’s never seen.”“And he’s seen all the rank-and-file already?”“Didn’t I just say they’re dipshits who can’t wet their toothbrushes? It’s gotta be you. Michael. It’s gotta. That’s the only way this works.”“Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”Her guts felt like an airplane somebody busted a window out of. “Right.” She couldn’t read his face. Maybe he was still teasing. “Listen, I—I should have—” Called? Visited when I didn’t need a favor? Dragged you and your wife back to the nest thirty years ago and made you stay because damn you, we were family? She stood abruptly, shoved her glass back into his hands. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll make Brendon—if his disguise sucks he’ll get aced by the vampire hunters and I won’t have to deal with him anym—”“Mike.” Michael stopped her with her hand on the door. “Quit acting like a dude. Did Beckett ask for me, or did you?”“Of course I did!” she said helplessly.“Then I’ll do it.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughn Stump
I hate to admit it, but it has become significantly easier to complete research assignments now my research assistants are open-carrying stakes. On the other hand, it has become slightly harder to get information for Pete. Easier to say, “I’d love to hear about your views on family loyalty” without getting messed with. Harder to say, “Do you know where Beckett and the Dandies live?” without it sounding like the threat it is. But that was hard even before Jo and Andie were carrying. Due to extenuating factors.
TRISH
“Okay, so.” Victoria’s voice was bright over the phone, even though, in the small talk before they reached this point, she’d admitted to being out all that night and the night before. “So you didn’t hear this from me, of course. And you’re not allowed to ask how I know things. I just do. Call me a fairy godmother.” There was a smile in her voice at this, as if at some inside joke.“Got it,” Trish said, pacing the narrow loop of the living/dining room.Victoria paused; Trish imagined her glancing over her shoulder to make sure none of Cobra’s constant guests were listening in. “You know the Dandies and the Munsters are close, right?”“I don’t think I did. The Munsters?”“Isn’t that funny? I thought that was such a funny match. But yes. I know for a fact that Beckett was Out the other night, cozy as you please with Mark from the Munsters. So I thought, I’ve got to tell Trish right away, because we know Mark, so I don’t even have to make introductions for you! Which I would, no questions, but who needs it?”“Oh my God, you’re right.”“Anyway, have so much fun. Get Auntie Anne’s for me or something. Tell Mark I say hi.”(When she told the gang where they were going, they first—understandably—wanted to know why. When she explained why, which was the first they’d heard of her having a one-woman network of high-society informants, Pete was so proud of her she might burst.)“I’ve only been back, like, twice since I quit,” Trish whispered as they walked through the parking garage doors into her old mall on the other side of the river. (The safe-passage agreement she’d set up with Travie and the Punks had made their bridge travel way smoother, so she was still riding the high of being a good negotiator.)“You haven’t gone ice skating?” said Jo.“I haven’t been invited to many sixth-grade birthday parties.”Jo muttered that she would have a skating rink birthday party and invite Trish, but none of them could shake the feeling that those innocent times were mostly past. It didn’t do to host birthday parties in a mall where every third store was a front for a gang that may or may not, depending on exactly how close Mark and Beckett were, be on the lookout for your best friend.The mall was quiet—they’d slipped in right as the doors closed for the evening—but lots of rank-and-file Munsters slunk around, dressed in slouchy skatewear. The Zumiez on the first floor and Journeys on the third (two households both alike in dignity) must be doing spectacular business! They were meeting in the food court, because the Munsters liked coming across as regular joes, despite the money that comes with owning the most popular mall in the city. Funny that people like that would fall in with the Dandies. But that was part of the line of questioning tonight.Mark was waiting for them, lounged against the railing overlooking the lower floors, sipping a limeade from Hot Dog on a Stick. Munsters memorabilia tee: probably ironic. Ill-fitting jeans and cartoon-pointy hair: again, that chill-guy thing. When Trish knew him, it was as the guy who bitched out the Sharper Image manager about their lease while she tried to sell cheap tripods. So Mark Hoppus, coven leader was definitely an adjustment.Mark’s right-hand man, a silent vampire with eight million tattoos and an aversion to shirts, hung out further down the railing. Far enough for a private meeting, close enough to step in as needed. Hopefully not needed. (Jo took one look at the guy and assumed a similar nonchalant-bodyguard position equidistant, one hand casually-meaningfully on her hip. Andie took one look at Jo and stuck with her.)Mark greeted Trish—very warmly, considering how thin their acquaintance had been—and likewise said hi from afar to Jo and Andie. Then his frighteningly clear blue eyes fell on Pete. A bemused, knowing laugh. Trish glanced to Pete as well. Stony, flushed recognition. But they shook hands like bros, and Mark showed them to a table and let Trish ask her questions, no trouble. So apparently things were fine.Her interview material started off innocuously, and on a train of thought she was genuinely interested in. She asked a few questions about maintaining balance in a mixed coven, which (he knew, of course) was unique, at least in this city.“It’s pretty chill, honestly,” said Mark, “as long as you’re not a dick. Like, that’s the only reason you’d have a problem hanging with werewolves.” She had written a long paper about vampire-werewolf relations on Long Island and upper New Jersey the year before, so it was fascinating hearing him boil it down that frankly. “But yeah, we kick ass and have a great time. Did some restructuring in the leadership recently—certain interstellar adventurers got called back to the fucking mothership.” He smiled. “Like I said. The dicks weed themselves out.”Mark kept talking, Trish kept taking notes, the Munsters kept filtering in and out like movie extras, and it all felt weirder and weirder. He was so friendly and easygoing and everything was going way too well considering he definitely knew Pete and neither of them would acknowledge it. But she was here to help Pete, so she couldn’t be the one to bring it up. So she pushed ahead.“How do the other covens in the city see you? Does it affect how you do business? Socialize? I’ve heard some of them can get pretty…”“Elitist,” Pete finished for her.“Insular. Especially some of the older-oriented covens like the Bizarres. Or the Dandies.”“Oh, yeah.” The California drawl in Mark’s voice tipped from natural to a little forced. “The Dandies—isn’t that supposed to be your crew now, Pete?”“I’m not supposed to have anything to do with those freaks. Actually.”“Be cool,” Trish said through her teeth.“That’s just what I heard, that Beckett’s your liege lord now, so you’re legally his boy toy or something.”“Hey, just asking, who the fuck do you think you are?”Mark tossed his empty drink into the trash and cracked his neck. “Let’s not pretend it doesn’t sound like your idea.” It didn’t, to Trish, at least not the Pete she knew. Obviously that knowledge wasn’t exhaustive. Mark shrugged at Pete’s scoff. “No stress, man. I’m just saying it’d be cooler. Could be hanging with us instead of making friendship bracelets at your girlie sleepovers.” Pete growled, and Trish felt Jo likewise steaming behind them. “If you want to keep being an asshole about it, though, I could have Travis call Beckett, let him know where you are.”The tattooed vampire smirked like it would be his distinct pleasure.A guttural hiss ripped from behind Pete’s bared fangs, and he pounced. Overturning the table and sending Trish sprawling as she dodged him, he knocked Mark to the ground. Andie and Jo rushed forward—“Don’t!” Trish said, unsure if she meant help Pete or stop him. She was so used to watching Pete fight other vampires—watching Mark fold under him like Gumby felt uncanny, too easy to be violent, someone should stop him—“Hey. Hey Pete.” Mark’s free hand lifted to point past Pete’s shoulder, up toward the atrium skylight. The clouds, hurried along by a stiff autumn wind, parted to reveal a huge moon, orange and full. Mark grinned, canines bright in the moonlight. “Better luck next time, baby boy.”Pete froze. Then his hand at Mark’s throat flew back as thick brown fur burst out all over him.Trish didn’t get to watch the whole transformation. The other Munsters, who had drawn back into the shadows, now converged on the food court, yelling wildly. The closest one yanked her around by the shoulder and was about to take a chunk out of her arm when Andie flew in with a perfect leap and slashed him across the chest. The silver sword hissed and burned as it cut, and the vampire fell back in pain.“I’m gonna kill Pete!” Trish shouted over the din.“You might not have to!” Andie shouted back, pulling her behind an upturned table. “Look.” Pete was locked in battle with a giant wolf—okay, she’d studied and written about werewolves, but this was her first time seeing one in full transformation, and holy shit he was bigger than they looked in pictures, still half-man in proportion, so taller and angular and almost bipedal, which gave him an advantage in the wrestling match laying waste to the food court tables.She had to admit the majesty of the creature was a bit spoiled by the gingham boxers: the only article of clothing not entirely shredded in the change.Oh, that was something to think about. “I wonder if the Munsters’ style is so laid-back because half of them are ripping their clothes once a month—” she began out loud.Andie sighed, fond exasperation. “No time for that—run!”Pros of fighting a vampire/werewolf coven on a full moon: you didn’t waste any vampire-specific weapons, because you knew who was who. Using stakes against werewolves was like bringing a wooden sword to a gunfight. Cons of fighting a vampire/werewolf coven on a full moon: well!Andie was the hero of the night, wielding the silver sword against multiple combatants like she was the Witcher. “Where did you pick this up?” Trish said, legitimately awestruck.“Some of us use the school gym without being dragged there!” she said, executing a perfect disengage/riposte that skewered a werewolf to the wall by her tail. “Dude, we should go. Go get Pete.”“Me?”“He’ll listen to you. Go!”Andie covered her flight, but before she could get past the pretzel stand, she collided with another snapback-clad vampire, who snarled and threw her across the atrium. She tumbled to the tile, rolling over and over till she stopped against someone’s foot.Blinking and blurry-eyed, she looked up past a pair of docs and black jeans into a face that screamed “manager not getting paid enough to deal with this shit.” The store she almost crashed into was the Journeys, right between Yankee Candle and the gifts-from-around-the-world place. Probably would have broken more shit falling into either of those. Good aim. Not relevant. Her brain wasn’t braining properly.The manager muttered something imprecatory in (Greek?), then Trish spluttered as she got a face full of cold water.“Hey! What the fuck?” Her hands flailed uselessly, but no more water attacks came.“You’re not a vampire,” said the manager.“No! What was that?”“I thought you were a vampire,” she said unapologetically.Trish would have appreciated a hand up, but she struggled to her feet unaided, and as she took in the Journeys manager’s un-offered hands, her head cleared enough to take in the weapon in them.Oh.Oh, she was dumb dumb.“Is that holy water?” She pointed to the glass bottle with its gold cap and the etched cross. It was. “What would that have done if I’d been a vampire? Would it burn? Or is it the opposite, is it more like an aloe—”“Politely, get the fuck out of my storefront. And take your shitty friends. Jesus, I have to close by myself and now there’s a fucking throwdown…”The shitty friend in question was Jo, who had broken from the fight to check on Trish and got a solid spritzing of holy water for her troubles. “Oh, that’s not—” she spluttered. “That’s so unnecessary, ma’am.”“If I wanted fights in my store I’d have taken the one downtown like my district manager wanted. Move it!”“Jesus. Yes ma’am.” Jo dusted Trish off, and they skedaddled, by which point they could see a path to Pete, or at least one Jo could clear out hand-to-hand. He was still tangled with Mark and Travis. Figured he’d spend the whole time on the boss fight while the rest of them were getting swarmed.“Pete!” she yelled.“Yes, my genius?”“We’re leaving.”There was more to be said, probably, or maybe even a rescue to effect, but she had a splitting headache and never wanted to see a mall again. By the time Andie met her and Jo at the parking garage, fending off one last really gung-ho little werewolf, Pete was not far behind, looking rakish and exhilarated and unrepentant, an artful three-clawed slash across his shirt that would advertise to everybody that he fought a werewolf and survived to tell the tale. He’d probably get it framed.As they headed home, Andie driving so Jo could clean and wrap her knuckles, Trish kept an eye out for any churches with their phone number on their signs.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughan Stump
Another day, another fight with the undead. I’m getting so many bruises that Dr. Van Valkenburgh pulled me aside before class to see if I was in trouble—“trouble,” by her tone, implying that Pete might be beating me. It is his fault, but there’s not a good way to explain that nuance in the three minutes before Culture and Cognition, so I told her I started kickboxing. Judging by everything about me, it should be easy to believe I’m bad enough to get this beat up.
ANDIE
“Your prof thinks I’m your asshole boyfriend?”Andie was re-taping her nunchucks in the beanbag while Trish journaled. Originally, they were both journaling about the process, but it turned out Trish was better at finding the words for what went on, so Andie’s notebook now kept the transcriptions and Trish’s the analysis and feelings. (Jo was probably napping; despite enjoying it the most, she’d taken to nocturnal life the hardest and now slept more than anyone.) Pete had apparently woken up in the mood to start shit, because she watched him creep up behind Trish and read the whole journal entry over her shoulder, hands in the pockets of his red striped hoodie.When he announced himself, Trish jumped. “Fucking—Jesus. You scared me. Stop reading that.” She slammed her journal shut and spun to face him.He smiled down at her. “Did you tell her I’m so much worse?”With a roll of her eyes and a mumbled, “Fuck off. I’m working,” Trish tried to get back to it.Usually Trish was telling anyone who would listen (and most people who wouldn’t) what was going on in their research, and Pete could be a shit, but he knew when to back off. Usually. They’d been on edge since the fight at the mall. You’d think they had cabin fever. And right now, Pete reached in for Trish's pen. “I want to add my perspective on this issue.”The sound that came out of her was more a snarl than anything else. “I will stake you to the wall!”“Can you even do that?”“I’ll have Andie do it.” Oh no, she would not. Andie glanced to the weapons cabinet. Locked. Good.Pete draped his arms around Trish’s neck. “Trish, baby girl,” he cooed, “if you want me pinned to the wall, just say the word.”Trish stood so fast Pete had to dodge her falling chair. “That was the word, asshole,” she spat, and before Andie could decide whether she wanted to step in, much less how, Trish had Pete shoved against the corkboard, arm on his throat. This seemed like something they needed to work out by themselves. Ideally in a separate room. She slumped further into her beanbag.Then someone knocked on the door.“Trish, I think that’s the door!” Andie said helpfully, because there was not enough of a retreat happening by the corkboard.“Yeah—would you get that?” Trish muttered. Her face red, she let Pete go and disappeared into the bathroom.Andie glared at Pete, who grinned back, showing off his fangs. She pointed at him. “Be cool to my best friend.”“Hey, she’s my best friend too!” he said as she left him leaning against the corkboard to answer the door.The man on the welcome mat was pretty young—probably not much older than them—and his black coat and black briefcase made her think ever so briefly of the bad guy from the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it wasn’t a very good association beyond that; he was blond (as every good Ark-of-the-Covenant-hunting Nazi ought to be), but his hair was a little shaggy, his face soft and unthreatening, and his voice, when he spoke, lilted in a way that she placed about three sentences in as Australian.“Can I help you?” she said.“Yes, I—I mean, I’m Father Michael, from Saint Gerard Majella’s over in Bonny Slope.” As he spoke, reaching a hand to shake hers, his coat shifted, revealing a flash of white collar. She shook, firmly so he knew she was not to be fucked with. “Are you Trish Stump?”“Nope. What are you looking for?”“Oh—” He dug in his pockets for a torn-out yellow pad page with their address, in case he was bothering the wrong people entirely. “She emailed about…about her, uh, chemistry project.”“Hi, Father Conrad, hi.” At this point, Trish, who had apparently splashed cold water on her face and was looking purposely bright-eyed, came to the door. “I forgot to tell Andie you were coming today.”At the name, Andie glanced at the man. He rushed to explain the discrepancy. “Sorry, yeah, you were emailing with Father Conrad, weren’t you. He’s visiting our sister parish, so I’m his—I’m filling his shoes for a bit. Father Michael.”Trish didn’t skip a beat. “Father Michael. I appreciate it. Please, come in. You can—oh—you can leave your coat over the shelf there; we’ve got so much shit in the closet—sorry.” And she ushered the strange priest into their entryway.As Trish helped Father Michael make himself at home, Andie cleaned her glasses, frowning at the nonexistent smudges. Obviously, it wasn’t a sin to forget to update her. The inhibitors had been Trish’s particular focus. But she didn’t even know she was talking to a priest. Again, not a sin. The opposite of one, actually, if you were Catholic. (None of them were.) Just a long process to forget to mention anything about at any point.Father Michael set his bag on the dining table. “I brought a little more than you asked for, in case you need spare for testing, or it gets spilled, or…” As he spoke, he clicked open the latches and withdrew a series of small, green glass bottles, each with a small raised cross in the side.“That’s very thoughtful; thank you, Father.”“...and of course, if you need me for anything else, I’m only a phone call away.”“Do I have your number yet?” Trish asked, pulling out her phone to check. She didn’t, so they exchanged the necessary contact info, and he closed his briefcase and prepared to leave. Before he could turn to the door, she blurted out, “Bless me, Father?”This was weird. Trish was not religious. She wasn’t opposed—you had to at least not be a dick about religion to be a halfway decent anthropologist—but this was easily the first time Andie had seen her partake of anything stronger than going to the singing Christmas tree their classmate joined one year.Father Michael seemed almost as startled by the request as Andie. He stumbled over his words a few times, but eventually said, “Of course, my child.” He placed his hand on her shoulder and said, in a slightly different register, “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always.”“Amen.”Usually, Andie thought, you were supposed to bow your head or something when you were being blessed, but Trish met his eyes as he did it, and the look on her face was somewhere close to desperation.Pete scoffed audibly.When Father Michael saw the young man sprawled out on the couch, he smiled a closed-mouth smile. “Pete, I assume?”“Saint Peter himself. Patron saint of living in hell.”“That’s a pretty good one,” said Father Michael. “Most people just come up with ‘patron saint of booze’ or ‘tits’ or something when they’re trying to shock me.”Andie stifled a giggle.Pete sat up, sneering. “I’m a feminist. If there’s a patron saint of tits, it’s—it’s a chick.” He’d definitely been about to drop someone’s name (and his lightning glance might have been revealing), but the pivot was smarter if he wanted his feminism to not be an immediate joke.“Good point. Sounds like your time as a vampire has been rough on your body so far.”“Sounds like it.”Father Michael twisted his hat in his hands—not, Andie thought, a nervous tic, more like something soothing. Like he was supposed to be having this conversation while kneading bread or painting an orphanage. “How’s your soul doing?”“Called in sick last I checked.” Pete stretched and hopped off the couch, sauntering to the fridge for a tupperware of inhibitor. “You trying to save it?”“Just here to offer counsel if you need,” he said modestly.“Why bother? Isn’t that the whole point of me? I’ve read the books. I’m a creature of the damned, God’s favorite chew toy.”“You’re still conscious, aren’t you? Still sentient, still exercising a human will and desires?”“I’m the undead.”“And I preach from the book where a valley of skeletons gets reanimated. We’re damned when we get to the judgment seat of God, not before.” Everyone stared. “Sorry,” he said, withdrawing at the attention, but Pete clapped him on the shoulder.“Can I buy you a drink, Father? It’d be cool to talk to you more.”“Any time,” he said, tacking on a “my child” at the end to tape up his priestly demeanor.“Let’s, uh, let’s go for a walk.” So Pete, suddenly attentive and, if not respectful, at least engaged, showed Father Michael to the door, leaving Trish and Andie alone in the main room.“Well, that went. Better than I expected,” said Trish, collecting the bottles of holy water and lining all but one of them up in the free space in the spice cabinet. She looked up, realizing Andie hadn’t spoken since their visitor arrived. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ahead of time. I didn’t think you’d approve.”“Trish, you’re already using my nutmeg grater to grate crucifixes; if I was going to get weird about religion, it would have happened.” She headed over to the kitchen and hopped up to sit on the pass-through counter while Trish pulled a spaghetti jar of the most recent blend out of the fridge, measured out half the bottle of holy water, and stirred it in. (Someday she’d buy the house a matching set of jars, if this was going to be a regular fixture of their fridge.) “Do you think this will work?”Trish’s smile was determined. “I do, actually.”
TRISH
It did.Victoria from Cobra invited her out for coffee, which meant they went to the most expensive minimalist-monochrome tea bar in the Pearl just before closing, and Victoria smiled just right at the barista to get her to leave them alone in the place.As the lock clicked behind the barista, Victoria took a long sip of her cold brew and smiled at Trish. “I could have called, I know. But I wanted to get out of the house! How’s your tea?”She was drinking, since Victoria told her seven times that it was her treat, an elaborate brown sugar bubble tea from Japan with some milk substitute, served in a glass jar and costing a solid eight dollars. It made her feel like the girl in A Little Princess getting her first taste of rich food after years in the shitty attic. “Unreal, honestly.”“Good. I’ve got a lead.”“Oh! Great!” She dug a spiral notebook out of her bag, which made Victoria laugh, which made Trish blush. “I appreciate this.”“Any time. Okay, so, remember, you’re not allowed to ask how I know things. I just do.”“My fairy godmother.”“Exactly.” Victoria beamed at her. “But, I heard the Dandies themselves are having tea in the park tomorrow night.”“Which…which park?” Trish’s pen hovered over the notebook.It was Washington Park, further south than they’d heard any rumors of Dandy activity. Of any gang activity, actually. Which might make this an invasive action. Which meant it took every fiber of her being to finish this social encounter and not jump out of her seat and hug Victoria goodbye and catch the first bus home to start packing.She was very strong and lasted three whole minutes.Jo had assumed “the Dandies are having tea in the park” was code for “satanic ritual” or “murder plot,” and she said so—while they hid in the bushes watching the Dandies have tea in a park.“No, they’re committed to the lifestyle,” Trish said. Six or seven of them had taken over the playground and were pouring cream and sugar and passing scones, one rotating slowly on the merry-go-round. She didn’t recognize any of them, but Pete said the one who seemed to be the leader was Jon, a friendly-looking young man with a frilly cravat and a cloud of weed smoke around his head.“Decent guy,” Pete said. “Never liked me.” He didn’t elaborate, and this was not the time to ask.They were hidden just close enough for Pete to overhear their conversations and relay them back to the girls without their whispering being overheard itself. But the longer they sat surrounded by branches with their asses in the cold dirt, the more skeptical they got that they’d learn anything useful. It was like the Dandies were on a strict no-business-talk policy. Gossip, of course, but somehow completely meaningless gossip, all talk about didn’t the Munsters look tacky at the last vampire ball and was it true the Coffin Club had an invite-only VIP and did you hear Dallon Weekes swore off coven life entirely. Not a word about themselves that would lead anyone close to their nest or their leader. Trish had to admit, begrudgingly, they were pretty good at this.“What was all this for if they’re not on coven business?” Andie whispered as the Dandies returned their tea things to their elaborate antique wicker picnic basket. “Why not hang out at home?”“This is coven business,” said Pete. “If they can come out here and have pure social hour without getting fucked with, they own this park. And—” He gestured around the empty park as if to point out the complete lack of getting-fucked-with going on.“Do we want to fuck with them?” Jo looked to Pete, because she knew if she looked at Trish, the answer would be no. “Keep another neighborhood out of their hands.”Pete didn’t have to reply for Trish to know what was ticking in his brain. They could spite Beckett by slowing his advance into other neighborhoods…they could get information more directly…there were literally no downsides…There were downsides, of course. But before she could articulate them quietly and quickly, the Dandies glided past them on the path to the park entrance, and as soon as they were past, Pete stepped out into the path behind them, Jo and Andie (and Trish) not far behind.“HOA rules say you gotta reserve park gatherings two weeks in advance.”Jon heaved a longsuffering sigh as the Dandies turned to face them. “Why’d you have to come out here, man? Nobody wanted to see you; we were having a nice time, and now I’ve gotta work on my off day.”Trish noticed that for all Jon’s professed reluctance, it did not make fighting him any easier.What did make a difference was how Pete fought. He was always a little frightening to watch (though always compelling too); messy and bright and dangerous, like crackling lightning. But now the lightning wasn’t the spider-web kind, scattered across the sky, but a bolt ripping an old tree apart, jumping from one target to the next with—not precision exactly, but a focus she’d never seen before.She couldn’t look away.She could, and did, because otherwise she would have been attacked by Dandies. But it was like she could feel the static electricity on the back of her neck.Later, she would feel bad about how constant the electric imagery had been in her mental narration, like it was prophetic somehow.They had all but won, and Pete had Jon by the shoulders. “Where can we find Beckett? Where is he?”Pete’s eyes were glowing. Strange; there weren’t any streetlamps on that side of the park to reflect—ZZZAP! Smoke and the smell of (grilling?) (Oh god gross). Jon fell away unconscious, the marks of electrical burns where Pete’s hands had been.The party, which had frozen at the sound, fell into a chaotic retreat, scrambling away into the shadows like so many scared cats when the light gets turned on them.“Holy shit…” Pete said, half shock/half excitement, staring at his hands.“Holy shit,” said Andie, clearly thinking about the same paper Trish was thinking about and how both of them had bemoaned not having any vampires like that in the city to talk to.“What was that?” Jo shouted as the last of the Dandies fled, taking Jon with them.“That was so fucking rad!” Pete's voice rose so high with excitement it was almost a giggle. He wheeled on Trish, beaming. “What did you do to me?”“What did I—”“It’s the blend, it has to be. You figured it out.” He tossed Andie her dropped scarf. “I felt focused, finally—and not just focused on how pissed off and hungry I am. I’ve got, like, clarity.” (“Love that record,” said Jo.) “Was that just the holy water?”“I should have thought of it sooner. I thought two holy symbols might be overkill, but? It’s like…” Trish took her first proper breath in who knew how long to buy herself the time to find the right words. “The crucifix is the blood, right. It, ah, it’s got the blood of Christ sort of implied in it. Which, you know, sates the blood thirst. And then the holy water chills you out cause it represents, like, the peace of the church. I didn’t expect that to get you enough focus to unlock superpowers, but…”Pete couldn’t repress his laugh (even though he should have tried, the asshole). “Dude, who are you?”Really feeling like she had just thrown what was left of her dear beloved academic credibility off the fire escape, she spluttered, “Leave me alone! I don’t know! Do you know how far afield any of this is from Introductory Pharmacology? I’m doing spellcasting and potions in the kitchen sink!”“And we love you for it,” he said soothingly; “you’re our genius alchemist, you’re fuckin’ Isaac Newton—I’ll buy you a wizard hat—”“Hold on—hold on!” she said, wriggling out of his soothing hug and head-pats. “You know Isaac Newton was an alchemist, but you think he wore a wizard hat?”“Probably while he did wizard shit,” Pete shrugged. “Come on Newton, take me home. I’m too hyped. I might start shit just to try this out on more unsuspecting victims.”
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CASSADEE
As jobs went, “cleaning girl at the vampire mansion” continued to be awesomer than any post-high-school job on the market, and totally mopped the floor with “cleaning girl at the regular mansion.” Sorry. It had to be said. The snooping was SO much more fun?! The Marinos’ biggest drama was about something called “insider trading” (which she Googled one time and honestly? Did not sound like a real crime). Mr. Beckett’s vampire family had cool shit going on! Seductions! Intrigues!! She’d always wanted to be Intrigued. People were constantly swooping around in dapper suits, saying things like, “You must be a bigger fool than I thought to bring me bad news with a smile,” and “Tell Flanigan his days are numbered.” Miss Carden was meeting behind closed doors with a priest, only they kept talking about some guy’s confessions, which was bad priest behavior—which meant probably he was a fake priest, because that’s the sort of character you ran into when your life was a Mafia AU all of a sudden!Of course, the intrigue that Intrigued her most was the boy from the stairs. He had to be in the attic. Had to be! She’d cleaned everywhere else. On the one hand, it would be awesome to find him again and ask what his deal was. On the other hand, if Miss Carden wasn’t just telling scary stories to mess with her (it had been known to happen), he would eat her as soon as look at her. But that was a feeling she got about a lot of them, honestly.And Miss Carden had just left to get the fake priest, which meant she wouldn’t be back for more than an hour.So maybe she could sneak up and check things out.The way to the attic wasn’t very impressive—they didn’t live in the ancient creaky kind of mansion with secret passageways and spiral staircases. (She wished. Mr. Beckett wished too; he told her so.) But what it lacked in coolness, it made up for in being able to navigate without people noticing her. Although honestly, she thought, as she stashed her duster behind an ugly fake ivy, these guys were not super picky about where she went. They were like, “oh, there goes the Young Woman, doing her Chores,” and didn’t think anything about it. She thought, as she climbed the main stairs to the very very very top floor, she could probably bring in a bomb, or a giraffe, and they’d assume it was part of Mr. Beckett’s grand scheme for the mansion.Not Miss Carden. But like we just said. She just left to get the fake priest.So nobody thought twice as Cassadee jumped for the string that pulled down the attic ladder. It was one of the only things in this house that didn’t have a Coat of Something put on it to make it seem expensive. Just a plain old wooden ladder that wobbled on the floor and led all the way up to—A pointy face grinning down at her.“Jesus!” she yelped.There he was! She felt a little bad for yelling at him, but what would you do if a Face appeared from a dark attic? Exactly. You’d yell.Even though she’d been thinking about the boy since the first time they met, and she’d gone on this whole little quest to find him, with him actually existing in front of her, she felt shy about it.“Psst. Hey. C’mere,” said the boy from the top of the ladder. “I won’t eat you.”Cassadee frowned up at him. “You’ve eaten people before. A lot of people.”“Not you, though.” His eyebrows knit together, like he was thinking about it. “I haven’t eaten you before.”She couldn’t argue with that! She stepped up a couple steps. “Miss Carden called you Adam.”His face totally lit up. He’d been waiting for somebody to ask. “It’s like Frankenstein. You’ve seen Frankenstein, right? We watched that movie, and I laughed and laughed and LAUGHED and LAUGHED;” his eyes widening with every word.“Why?”“Because it’s me!” he said, thrilled. “I’m a Frankenstein.”“Shut up, you are not.”“Why do you think my hands fall off sometimes?” She didn’t know they could do that. Hopefully he didn’t demonstrate. “I used to bite the stitches, but I don’t now. The Butcher built me in a lab.”Cassadee’s nose wrinkled in a laugh. “What did he do that for?”Adam wrinkled his nose right back. “Who wouldn’t want a me?” He backed away from the opening. “Are you coming or what?”So, obviously, she climbed up.For what was apparently a mad science lab, it still also looked a lot like an attic. Her grandma’s house in Fresno had an attic just like it, except instead of suitcases of old-people clothes and the world’s scariest dollhouse, this one had, like. Mad science stuff. But still the pink insulation that felt like dust-flavored cotton candy. (“It does, doesn’t it?” Adam cried. “That’s what I thought!”)“Oh, company.”Cassadee yelled again, which, again, she felt bad for, but people kept lurking in dark corners! This lurker was a guy with a nice smile, a beard the same color as Adam’s hair, and one of those big leather aprons mad scientists wore. So it was his lab.“Cassadee, please meet my best pal the Butcher,” said Adam with his best Becketty politeness. “The Butcher, this is Cassadee from under the stairs.”“Hiya.” The Butcher put down one hand’s worth of beakers to shake with her.“Cassadee came to visit,” said Adam.“Is that okay?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Now there was, like, slightly more of an adult around, she had to behave.“Oh, yeah,” said the Butcher. “I’ve been meaning to find Adam a jack-o-lantern.”“A what?”“You know how when you have the tigers at the zoo, around Halloween you put a jack-o-lantern full of raw meat in their enclosure for them to bat around.”“For enrichment!” Adam piped in.“Exactly.”“And I’m…a jack-o-lantern full of raw meat?” Cassadee faltered.“Aren’t we all,” the Butcher said thoughtfully. And he went back to his sciencing (she peeked over his shoulder, and it looked like he was building a ViewMaster). Adam, done with the pleasantries, whistled her over to his side of the attic, hidden behind a stack of shiny black coffins.“What are these for?” she whispered.“Extra beds if they get New Recruits,” Adam said. “This one’s your size.” When she shuddered, he laughed. “I’m kidding. I don’t want you to be a vampire. You’re interesting this way. Can you stand on your head?”“I think so. Do you want me to try?”She was halfway into the motion when he laughed again. “No, no, take off your head and stand on it.”“Oh my God, no. Can you? Don’t answer that!” she added, pretty sure it wasn’t possible but definitely not interested in finding out.“Well, you should do the other kind, then.”Talking to Adam was like that, both creepy-morbid and rollercoastery, but it was sweet, and it made her feel paid attention to. Most of her high school friendships were pretty dry. Nobody asked her if she could stand on her head any sort of way, and even if they did, they wouldn’t actually be excited about the answer. This was nice. It was different.The next day she came to the mansion, she barely made it through the front door before things were even more Different.
“Cassadee.”
The voice was coming from up, somewhere. Not, like, the top of the stairs up. The vents up. She’d never been in a house where a spooky voice called her name through the vents. That felt like a little much for a Tuesday morning.
“CaaAAaaaSSAADDdeeEEEee.”
Everybody in the living room was looking around like it was a little much for a Tuesday morning for them too. Andrew McMahon leaned back on his piano stool to stare at the nearest vent. “What is that?”Jonwalker glanced across the way at her and grinned. “Adam’s got a girlfriend.”She thought about correcting them—they were Not boyfriend and girlfriend, actually, because first of all, nobody was anybody’s girlfriend until somebody had a conversation about What We Are. But second of all, Adam was not a potential boyfriend you would have that conversation with. He was her mystery. He was like the Hound of the Baskervilles or, like. The Old Clock, as in The Secret Of. Which, if you thought about it, was cooler than a boyfriend.
From the Journals of Tricia Vaughn Stump
Dear dumb diary,
When was the last time I actually told you about research? When was the last time I did anything resembling objective study and analysis? I will. I’ll get back to it this week, as long as nobody calls with any more hot tips. Maybe if I changed my number, I could graduate on time.
But then Pete wouldn’t have anyone.
I say that, but I haven’t seen much of him lately. He’s been seeing Father Michael for counseling. I did hope Pete would like him. He has a surprisingly robust theology of vampires, which is encouraging. And it’s probably good Pete found a sympathetic outside ear, someone he isn’t sharing a bathroom with. I hope everything is going well; I hope the way he’s pulled back from me us is just building healthy boundaries and not. Anything else. But I’m sure it’s fine. Father Michael is a good guy.
CARDEN
“Sorry about this,” Carden said, knotting the blindfold behind Michael’s head.“No, you’re not,” he laughed.“I’m not.” One broad hand on the back of his head, she guided him down into the car.This system had a lot of inefficiencies—and inefficiencies were her job to assess. They could meet in this dark strip-mall parking lot and not bother going to the nest at all. But that was easy to explain away; vampires fucking loved dark parking lots, and she didn’t need any other covens snooping. She certainly could have sent one of the rank-and-file with the car. Chauffeuring had always been below her pay grade. But—and it’s not that she could point to anyone who would pull some shit with the knowledge, but she didn’t even like giving them the option—that would mean telling other people where Michael had gone to get away, where he lived now. Which was none of their business. He told her, thirty years ago, and she told nobody. Fuck ‘em.The winding hill road between his side of town and the nest was half-deserted, as it always was at this time of the evening. She glanced in the rearview. They wouldn’t be followed. And they weren’t.“Your thinking is so loud,” Michael said, leaning back in the passenger seat like he wasn’t being taken to a secret location in an unmarked car.“Yeah, that’s all the big important coven business. ‘S why your head is so quiet.”He chuckled. “I don’t mind this, really,” shifting the blindfold over the bridge of his turned-up nose. “I want everyone to feel comfortable with me being brought back in; I’m sure that was…I’m sure that was a controversial ask.”“Butcher was psyched.”“Fuck, I miss the Butcher. Good man.”They reached the nest well after most of the family went out to hunt, so they didn’t meet anyone as she led him, hands on his shoulders, into the house and through the halls to the back-bedroom-turned-office that Beckett never used because he did all his business over tea or drinks or whatever.She sat behind the desk, leaving Michael the guest chair on the other side. It used to be they’d sit side by side to deal with shit, not even having to look at each other. But (and this wasn’t to say she was thinking it out in the moment, but it seemed true anyway), she had to pull rank nowadays, because to sit at his level would be to sit all the way outside the family. Which Brendon would love. Which Beckett. Beckett might or might not be mad about. But she wasn’t letting it happen.“So. How are things going?” She clicked her pen obnoxiously, ready to take notes.“Pretty alright, all things considered.” Michael fidgeted with his collar. Probably overkill that he kept it on when he wasn’t with Pete and friends. But she couldn’t make fun of the guy for committing to undercover work when she dragged him out of a happy retirement to do exactly that.“Hot under the collar, Father?” She could make fun of him a little.He laughed. “Beckett didn’t pick an easy one. He never does, I guess.” Wasn’t that the truth. “But I feel like we’re not rehashing arguments, which is encouraging. He’s started to warm up to the idea that, well, he is fundamentally different from the girls—but that it’s not a bad thing; I don’t want to send him into despair.”“You could send him into a little despair if you wanted. Might light a fire under his ass.”Michael cocked his head at her. “You know I’m not gonna do that.”“I know.”“I don’t think I need to. I think it’ll be enough to say hey, what you are is special and important and needs to be nurtured—celebrated, and to do that right, you really should be part of a real family—your real family.”He filled her in on a few more particulars, when he and Pete talked (a lot), how long (long), how well the holy water blend was keeping him out of trouble (not well). She filled him in on how things were going at the nest, which was unnecessary from a mission standpoint but felt important; told him about Brendon’s posturing and Jon’s injury and how little work Beckett had done on anything that wasn’t an embarrassingly complicated plot to seduce Pete Wentz.Like talking about him summoned him—and maybe it fucking did, who knew—the door swung open, and Beckett was in the office he never used. Carden stood instinctively. Michael didn’t.“Mikhaila, how go the debriefings?” Beckett rested his long fingers on the desktop, head turning lazily to Michael, who met the look no problem. Michael wasn’t a Quaker or anything like it, but he had that same even-keeled, polite refusal to grant anybody status that drove people who wanted status fucking crazy.“Really well,” she said, squinting at the back of his head. Beckett would read her notes after; credit where it was due, he acted like a useless—well, a useless dandy, but it really was an act. Which meant this little meet-and-greet had nothing to do with business.“May’s been telling me all you’ve done. I’m glad, honestly I am, the family’s doing so well,” said Michael.Beckett looked mollified. “Yes, well. We’re very pleased with how things are developing.” He gave Michael another once-over as he pushed himself up to standing straight—or as straight as a giant marionette like him ever stood. “Being back in business looks good on you, Michael. I can’t think why you ever left.”Carden’s eyes shot up to Beckett as he sauntered to the door. Jesus, he had the nerve after— “Hey,” she hissed, catching him in the doorway. “Don’t be a dick.”“Me?” His face all open and innocent.It should have been easy to say. You shoved him out, asshole. He’s doing you a favor, dick. Maybe I want to see both of you in the same room without an electric fence, motherfucker. But she just swallowed hard and said, “I’ve got this handled.”“I can see that,” he said icily, and he was gone.She must not have hidden her frustration well—what’s new—because Michael chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully as she sank back into her seat. After too long a pause, he said, “I wish I’d asked you to come with us.”The room felt way small. Her throat was tight as she said gruffly, “I wouldn’t have left.”
“Why not?”
His tone was the closest she’d ever heard him get to shit-talking Beckett. Another way the scene was playing out all wrong. That was her job. Michael was kind, no regrets, no grudges. The patio lights cut through the blinds, striping them in murder-movie shadows.Carden rubbed the back of her neck slowly. “I’d be dead, wouldn’t I. If it weren’t for him. We’d all be.”“We all are,” Michael corrected, but she pushed back.“Fuck you, you don’t believe that. ‘Still conscious, still sentient, human will and desires’ fuck off. I mean a gravestone nobody visits. Decor for somebody’s Memorial Day picnic.”Michael crossed his arms to stop fidgeting. “So he saved your life.”“Fucking ruined it,” she fired back, lying on instinct. She had everything she wanted, almost. Family, power, money. Fuck, she was hotter than before she died.“I get it,” he said softly. “No hard feelings—it’s never been any hard feelings.”So they were both lying now. Fun.“Well.” Both hands slapping the arms of the chair, she stood quick, which meant let’s get you home. He took the hint and stood too, handing her back the blindfold. She hesitated tightening it.“Stay for breakfast? McMahon’s playing the Star Wars soundtrack.”Michael smiled. “Can’t. Calling the wife.”She scoffed and tied it up. “Yeah, yeah, tell her I say hi.”Naomi was gonna kill her when she found out Michael was working again. Or maybe she wouldn’t; just look at her with the saddest fucking eyes known to woman until she felt like shit and groveled a bunch.“Hey.” She caught Michael by the upper arm. “Fucker. You know what you are is special and important, right?”He put his free hand over hers. “Mike, you know where my loyalties are.”They almost ran into Cassadee on the way out, who made a big show of not noticing anything as she passed with the duster. It was ridiculous, but she was (Carden had to admit) a good kid. Adam would have done the same.
CASSADEE
Basically overnight, she had gone from having the highlight of her job be using the nicest vacuum in human history, to having it be visiting with a strange undead boy in an attic. And it’s not that the vacuum wasn’t really satisfying. So it was a heck of an upgrade! Every day she came to the mansion, once she got done with whatever needed doing, she put away the cleaning supplies and snuck into the attic.The Butcher was always around, like the chaperones in Jane Austen movies, but he minded his own business mostly, and the attic was big enough that when they were done looking at bubbling science experiments, Adam had plenty of hidey-holes and box-fort-things they could hang out in and feel totally alone.As he showed her politely to one of these, she said, “Why was everybody so freaked out when you left the attic?”“Because I’m a Danger to Myself and Others.” He wiggled his eyebrows dramatically. “Apparently I came back wrong, and so I can’t be trusted not to make a mess. I don’t think it’s a big deal. But it’s concerning to my housemates.”“Oh. Right, because you were dead before you were a Frankenstein,” she said, cross-legged on a box of “Holiday Dishtowels.”“Right.”“Who do you think you were before?”“That’s really none of my concern,” said Adam, nose in the air. “Who were you before you were born?” Of course, she didn’t have an answer. “Exactly.”He seemed sort of offended, so she apologized, and he accepted it, because he was nice like that, and they went on with the morning, like nothing had ever happened. Only not completely like nothing. Because he still looked thoughtful-worried, and they didn’t talk about the past anymore, not then or the next day or the next or the next.They had one of those days that was freakishly warm in the middle of fall, you know the kind. So they’d been sitting in the attic with their sleeves and pant legs shoved up, laying around all lazy from the heat. But their laying around kept getting interrupted, because the Butcher kept calling Adam away to taste-test things and then answer questions that made him a bit more annoyed every time. It was like when you’re hanging out with a friend at their house, and you can tell they were getting into it with their mom before you showed up (their mom who, until this moment, they’ve been besties with), so it feels super awkward to sit in their kitchen drinking soda while they circle around each other sort of pointedly not-being-in-a-bad-mood-cause-there’s-company.“Well, I should probably go—do homework,” she said, which was a lame excuse even if it was true.“Thanks for coming up, Cass,” said the Butcher. She really did like him.Adam followed her to the attic trapdoor like her dog. “Can I tell you a secret?” he said when she got a few steps down, laying on his stomach so he could hang over the trapdoor.“Yeah, of course.”He looked over his shoulder, like, making sure the Butcher wasn’t listening. “I don’t think I am who they think I am,” he said. “Beckett and Carden and Butcher. They think I’m somebody to them, and I think—I’m not.”She didn’t know what she had expected the secret to be, but it wasn’t that. She crossed her arms on the step and rested her chin on them. “That they brought back the wrong guy?”“No, that I did come back wrong, and now I’m my own person.” His thin face was screwed up thoughtfully. “And I think they aren’t going to figure that out. So I think I gotta go.”“Go…”“Leave.”“Oh. For where?”“I don’t know. They’re great,” he said. “Just to be clear. Butcher is my best friend, and the others are good to me too. I know they love me. I like being loved. But I think I wanna play around with the memories I’ve got, for a while anyway. Without the people who think I’m missing something. You know?”“Yeah, I know,” said Cassadee. “Like you want to be loved for what you are, not what you—”“Used to be, yeah. Because you do.”Her little gasp of surprise wasn’t because she didn’t—even though maybe you weren’t supposed to love your mysteries. It was just having words put to it for the first time.“And I think other people might also like me like this, if they get to know me. Because you did.”“I think they will too.” Their faces were close enough to whisper, looking up at his eyes that were so hopeful. The conversation was really nice and positive, but it made her feel sick to her stomach, like she was about to get bad news.“So will you help me get out?”Oh, yeah, that was bad.She had all kinds of reasons that was a bad idea. Like she said. This wasn’t the kind of house with secret passages. Which meant sneaking him out past everybody, and everybody included her bosses who were, as she sometimes forgot but was definitely remembering right now, people-eating vampires. And she thought they liked her. They sure acted like it. But if they were keeping their friend-of-some-kind in the attic on purpose and she crossed them. Well! They might not like her enough!But, “Yeah,” she said. “For sure.”So the next few days, they plotted. The problem with any scheme they came up with was the Butcher was always around. It was like trying to sneak out of a dorm if you and your dormmate also did all your classes and ate and everything in your room. “But when it’s time, I’ll let you know?” he said.“I’ll be there. I promise.”“Cassadeeeeeee,” came the dramatic spooky voice. “Come see this fuckin spider.”And because everybody in the house knew it was just Adam calling his girlfriend, nobody on their way to bed thought anything about Cassadee hauling her cleaning cart all the way up the stairs to the attic.“Now?” she said when Adam appeared in the attic door.“Butcher had to go fix Jon,” Adam said. “Jon and the guys came back from tea all fucked up. Lemme down?”She wasn’t even standing on the ladder in the way, but she still said, “Yeah, come down,” like it was her permission to give.Adam took a quick little breath and climbed down. When his feet were on the carpet, he took another breath. “Okay.”“That’s the first step done!” she said encouragingly.She basically never used the cleaning cart. It was a stupid thing to use in a house with no elevator, unless she only wanted to clean the first floor (and maybe some days she wanted to! But she definitely got hired to do more). But the one thing the cart had that was SUPER useful was a big giant hamper for towels, like at a hotel. A hamper the size of one skinny Frankenstein.Adam dove into the hamper. There was just enough space, when he curled up in the bottom, for her to pile all the towels she had on his head, which made them both giggle even though it was a tense moment.“Okay,” she said, more to hype herself up than for anybody else—God knew Adam couldn’t hear her under all that soundproofing—put up the attic ladder, and shoved the cart off down the hall.It was really not a great plan. If they had had literally any other ideas, she would have gone for them over dragging a cart full of person down four flights of stairs. But you remember when she said she could bring a giraffe through the house and nobody would take a second look? Apparently that was true for “cleaning cart full of person” too. At least one of the Dandies poked their head out of their bedroom while she went clunking by, and they just scoffed and went back to bed. There went that Young Woman doing her Chores!The whole getting-ignored thing did not make escape any more relaxing, and by the time she got to the kitchen, her heart was so loud in her ears she figured any vampire in a mile radius could hear it and would come eat her about it. But she hauled the cart down the back driveway, and finally, in the dark Detached Garage with the curtains she nailed up a couple days ago “in case anybody wants to see the tools!” she let Adam out.“The back door leads kinda straight into the hedge,” she said, “and if you get through, you can get down the hill through people’s backyards to the next street. Do you got—”He did got; in the cart he’d kitted himself out in the full-coverage anti-sun-wear she’d left in the hamper. He looked like a marshmallow man, and she said so, but her voice squeaked!“Don’t cry!” he said quickly.“I’m gonna miss you!” she protested.“Well, that’s probably true.”“Are you sure you couldn’t just, like, run away to some other neighborhood? I live in Southeast, and it’s kinda okay and there definitely aren’t any Dandies.”Adam frowned. “I don’t think so. Clean break, you know.”She sniffed. “Well, if you get a phone ever—” and she shoved a piece of paper with her number on it into his winter-gloved hand. “Okay, now you go and I’ll make a bunch more noise in the house.”“Okay.” He bounced from one foot to the other like he wasn’t sure which way to go, then did both at once: bounced forward and kissed her cheek, then dashed out the back garage door. The hedges rustled like a squirrel had got into them, then nothing.She stuffed down the prickly crying feeling. She did a Good Deed, right? She solved the mystery! It wasn’t very comforting, but it was a good thing to think about. You always wanted to have good reasons to tell yourself why you were dumb for being sad, just so you knew.Normally, she was almost done with cleaning by this point in the morning, but she had to play catch-up because the cart-dragging took plenty of time. Still, nobody paid her any mind, which was fine, because if somebody tried to jumpscare her for fun in this mood, she'd probably lay down and die, honestly. For the first time since the Marinos, she grabbed her headphones from the car and cleaned with music to shut everything out.Which meant she didn’t notice the disturbance upstairs until she ran into Brendon.He snatched the swiffer, which is when she realized he was talking to her and pulled back her headphones. “Sorry?”“Whatever you did," he said, "you shouldn’t have come to work today,” and grabbed her arm so she definitely couldn’t fix that now.By the time they got to the living room, it felt like she was on trial; half the Dandies had come out of bed, and the other half were creeping in one by one, rubbing their eyes and mostly-sort-of-undressed, and she would have thought it was super interesting to see their pajamas if she didn’t know exactly why they were up. Miss Carden was staring out the tall windows that overlooked the backyard; she was mostly hidden from the morning sun behind the curtains, but the one hand holding them open a few inches was blistering.Brendon let go of her in the middle of the floor. She immediately tried to back out of the spotlight, but ended up backing into the piano. Miss Carden dropped the curtain and shoved her burnt hand into her pocket with a grimace.Then Mr. Beckett came down the stairs slowly, right towards her, and his face looked like nothing she’d ever seen before.She didn’t think very often about how crazy tall Mr. Beckett was, but the first time they met she thought it, and right now she was thinking it, like maybe she was a bug he wanted to step on. He came so close he could have if he tried. She cringed back against the piano—the edge of the lid jabbed her in the back.“What…have you done?” he said, the pause there so his voice wouldn’t wobble.“Why do you think it was me?” So so so quiet.He laughed once, more of a scoff-sigh-laugh, and held up a note in Adam’s scribbly handwriting. It was too far and too scribbly to read. But she didn’t need to. Since she just did everything in it.“You’re fired.”She really shouldn’t have said anything. Shoulda gone and got her raincoat and purse and left her keys on the kitchen counter—and it’s not that she meant anything by it! She just felt, and it was silly to feel it, since, like everybody here had told her in their posh accents, she was a silly girl. But! Mr. Beckett had been really nice to her for a cannibalistic mob boss, and this was—she didn’t want him to feel—“He’s not who you think he is.”“I’m sorry?”“He said—he said you thought he was somebody else before—and maybe he was? Maybe that was a hard change? But he’s—he doesn’t…know. Who that is. It wasn’t a hard feelings thing. But you know. You were keeping a stranger in your attic.”Mr. Beckett’s face crumpled, just for a second, and when he put it back together, it was scary. Not jump-out-of-a-dark-corner scary. Smother-you-in-your-sleep. He leaned in closer and put one hand on her shoulder. Just gentle, not even grabbing, but the weight felt like a million pounds. “Get out of my house, before I do something reckless and terrible.”He didn’t wait for her to leave. He stormed back upstairs, leaving the living room dead silent.The other Dandies crept back to their rooms, till only Cassadee and Miss Carden were left.Miss Carden shook her head slowly. Her jaw was so tight it looked cut out of stone. Without looking at Cassadee, looking up the stairs after Mr. Beckett, she started talking, as stiffly as she was standing.“Adam was our little brother. Beckett’s,” she corrected herself, “but ours. Butcher’s been working on a way to get his memories back. He was getting close. Damn close. We could have had him back for real.” Finally, she looked at Cassadee, pure disgust. “You stupid bitch.”The words hit her like a stab wound. She staggered a couple steps, feeling even smaller as she went, until she had to turn her back and run.She almost didn’t even bother getting her car, thought about running down the street, but honestly? The saddest part was she couldn’t afford another one. So she got it out of the garage. Rainclouds were blowing in. Figured.She realized, as she drove down the curvy roads, away from the mansion, into the real world, that she didn’t say goodbye to the Butcher. She thought about him, sitting by himself up there in that old attic, trying to get Adam’s memories back for his family. But you couldn’t think thoughts that miserable and also drive safely at this speed.
GABE
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Suarez, steering the Jaguar into street parking. “Do we need another sign?”Gabe leaned up from the back row to see the junker parked in front of their garage door. No idea whose, though with the rain coming down so thickly, nobody was seeing much detail. “We need somebody to jinx the street.”Victoria had been asked to present an award for a philanthropic society banquet, which was both a novelty in their social calendar and a total bore compared to the three parties they had to turn down to go to this one. But it was worth it to sit at a table in the back, listen to Suarez roast the caterers, and see what was going on in the human world while their paranormal friends committed horrible, violent crimes. And maybe they still found time to stop by a party or two till morning.The Cobras slipped out of the car and circled the intruder, who cranked down the window.“Oh, damn.” Gabe wrapped his arms around Victoria’s waist so he could whisper in her ear. “Vicky, that’s Beckett’s cleaning girl.”“I’m not loitering,” she said quickly. “I ran out of gas. I was gonna walk back to the Shell once it stopped raining. Sorry, I’m having a shitty morning—I just got fired and—” The “and” was apparently even sadder than the getting fired, because she couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out for crying.“You wanna come in for a little something until the rain stops, girlie?” said Victoria, holding her hand out to the girl in the car. She got out and let herself be led into the warehouse and upstairs (Gabe gave Ryland a pointed glance so he’d stay back and move the girl’s car. They were not leaving the Jag street-parked.)The girl hovered around the penthouse, accepting tea and letting people bring her blankets and Kleenex, clearly wanting to pass out, but too polite and miserable to ask. And the longer she lingered, her black uniform standing out in their home like a word on a page, the more he could tell Victoria was dying to keep her. Finally, after the boys set her up with a spot on the couch to curl into for the day, Victoria cozied up to him and whispered, “Should I ask?”He smiled, arms crossed. “Why the fuck not?”So she knelt by the couch. “Can I have your name before you doze off, sweetheart?”Victoria wasn’t known for her bedside manner, but she faked it pretty well, because the girl rolled over and, like she thought Victoria was a nurse who needed to fill out a chart, gave her her full name, spelled out and everything.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
GRETA
The boy in the audience was soft and pretty, the kind that made you forget the vampire strength under it all. He watched her sing every night from the second row, leaning in with his elbows on his knees, mouth fallen open just a little, just enough to see his fangs.“Did you like it?” she asked one night.He looked up from his phone. “I’m sorry?” Half his fellow Dandies were in the bar, but apparently, he didn’t feel the need to be with them.“The show.”“Well, yeah,” he said. Like she should have known. “I’m Ryan.”She sat backward on the chair in front of him. “I’m Greta.”His mouth twisted into a smile. “Yeah, I know.” He gestured back toward the bar, and the stake hung over the mirror with its little calligraphy sign: “Fucking Behave Yourselves. Greta. xo.”Her cheeks burned. “Am I being really obvious tonight?”“I hope so.”He was a poet, unfortunately, like her, like Pete, like everyone. Unfortunate in that poets tended to disappear. No one had heard from Pete since he left her in charge of this place. And it was hard to stay a poet here. But until Ryan disappeared in turn, she invited him backstage and let him sit against the velvet-sleek piano while she practiced, or squish beside her on the piano bench, teasing the keys with cold fingers that made her shiver when they brushed hers.“What does it feel like?” she asked, focusing on the music to not look eager. Getting turned.She felt his shoulders tense beside her. “I don’t remember.”“Would you do it—if I asked?”But he didn’t hear.The next night, she overplayed her cards with Beckett. For half a second, as her knees hit the floor, she wondered if she could make him angry enough to bite her out of spite. But he only rolled his eyes and tried to help her up. Like he pitied her. So she threw him out.As Ryan helped him into his cape, their eyes met. Sorry, he whispered.The night after, he was waiting downstairs when she came to open the bar, hands in his pockets as if he wanted passersby to think it was as meaningless to arrive so early as it would be to stand at the bus stop. “You don’t deserve to be talked to like that,” he said, and she let the warmth sit with her as she unlocked the door.“I picked the fight,” she said. “It was mine to lose. We don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want.” Which meant let’s not talk about him.Instead, they talked about things he remembered—old things, old music. He was terribly old, you see. Maybe it should bother her, but it never did in these kinds of stories. It helped that he didn’t seem it. Sad, yes, and quiet. One of those old souls nobody ever shut up about. And he certainly didn’t look it. Soft was the word ticking in her head as she watched his eyelashes fall low in the stage lights. He was something sweet taken out of the oven too soon, too gentle in how he touched her hair or smiled at her in the dressing-room mirror.Ryan was the only soft thing she had left, Greta thought.Beckett would tell her she was being dramatic, because he had nothing less than the audacity. Pete would have told her to take that to a poetry night and win thirty bucks and buy a better lock for her apartment door. But she didn’t tell either of them; just said it to herself, wistfully, as she checked the hallway three times before walking outside. Maybe Beckett would set a guard for her, if she was so all-fire necessary, but she never asked for one, no matter how hard it got to sleep. After all, she thought, would hearing a fight in the alleys be any better if it was because someone was trying to stop her being attacked? Her street had what she needed. From her apartment stairs, she could get to Angels and Kings to her left or the corner grocery to her right without having to be out of doors for more than a minute or two. So she didn’t. And no one missed her, because it is hard to make daytime friends as the proprietress and floor show of a vampire speakeasy.Meanwhile, Greta planned.As everyone knew, the way to become a vampire was to drink a vampire’s blood. Everyone also thought you must be bitten first, but this part seemed negotiable, rather like chocolate chip cookie recipes that claimed you had to use the same brand of everything. For best results. You didn’t, actually, but the people selling that brand would like you to think it was a necessity. “For best results, be bitten first,” said the vampires.Which meant she had to find vampire’s blood. There was so much of it around her every day! The trick was to get it out of the vampires, who had been sworn not to give her any. She dreamed about blood sometimes, dripping thick from her bedroom ceiling like the water stains from rainy nights. But dreaming was too passive; girls schemed these days. It was more fun than home ec.It was a grocery day, and one on which she had not expected guests, so she was startled to find Ryan waiting outside, sheltered under a black umbrella from the last fuzzy rays of sunset poking between the gathering clouds.“It’s Monday,” she said.“So it is,” he said.“We’re closed Mondays,” she said.“So you are,” he said.She smiled. “Come inside; you’ll get rained on.”A delivery had been left for the bar, so he sat cross-legged on the bartop while she loaded lemons and limes into the refrigerator beneath him. She always felt a bit like Amy March on these days, with such a great quantity of limes. Maybe she would visit a bookstore after she was turned; she left her childhood books at her parents’, and had been feeling their loss keenly. “Are you reading much?” she asked.Ryan was always good at following her train of thought, even when the tracks spent so much time in the tunnels of her brain—probably because his conversations worked the same way. He shrugged. “Not as much as I’d like. We’ve been hunting so much.”The delivery was unloaded. “Come upstairs? Bring a bottle of wine if you like,” she said, gesturing behind the bar.“What will you drink?”“None,” she shuddered.“No one’s looking,” he said.“It’s repulsive, she said.He picked out a red for himself. “No judgment. Just asking.”“It’s alright.” She fished the keys out of her bag and led him up the two flights of stairs, from the bar to the VFW hall, from the back of the VFW hall to the small apartments above. The key stuck in her lock; she grunted as she forced it. “That’s what happens when you leave a teenager in charge of a bar; you get an alcoholic or a teetotaler.”Ryan stopped fixing his cuffs and tilted his head knowingly. “Do you hate him?”Greta coughed out a half-laugh, backlit as her door swung open. “Of course, silly!” Pete and Ryan had been close; whispered conversations in the doorway of the bar, which is why she put a tiny bit of extra vitriol into saying, “You would too, if you were me. But I don’t speak ill of the dead. Which is why I’m so nice to all of you.”That last was calculated to make him smile, and so he did, ducking his head as he laughed, following her into the little studio at her invitation.She cooked dinner for herself while he watched, pasta in red sauce and bread and salad to last a week—if she was not going to die in the next few days, it was nice to have a good dinner at hand.They were quiet tonight, and perhaps she should be panicking more about it—if you ran out of things to talk about in a matter of months, how were you to make it through the centuries?—but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like peace. Everyone always wanted to talk to her at work, otherwise she was alone in her room. She found it immensely pleasant to discover a third option, in which a handsome young man might pass his evening examining the few books on your shelf and the art on the wall by the television, might look over your shoulder while you minded your pots on the stove, slip his hands along your apron strings and press his lips to the crook of your neck, all without feeling the need to say much of anything.It was over dinner, which consisted of her eating and him still looking, still watching, sipping the red wine from downstairs with a soft smile, that she felt her imposition must be too much.“I am glad you’re here,” she said, fork buried in her salad, “first of all, hear my heart on that; I don’t wish you were gone, but—but you didn’t have to visit today, you know.”Ryan’s smile widened until it crinkled his brown eyes. “Of course. But I was always going to. You don’t have to visit the girl you love, any more than you have to look at the night sky, or listen to music, or…” Dinner forgotten, she circled the table in a half-daze, then froze an inch in front of him with her hands clasped behind her back, as if she might do something truly reckless if they were free. “Yes?” he said in amusement.“Kiss me?”“Come here.” He ditched the wine glass to make space for her to sit in his lap, arms thrown round his neck. “Do you know—” he began, but cut himself off as if thinking better of it, drawing her face down to his. After all, it was an evening that needed little talk.She did not have much of a bed to invite him back to, as his fingers toyed with the hem of her skirt; only the pink pull-out couch bought with her first paychecks, but to this they retired anyway, because kissing is a delicacy best enjoyed horizontally. If you have not tried it, or not done it in long enough that you’ve forgotten, it has the added loveliness of being much warmer than the same action performed upright, even in the same drafty room, even when the handsome young man above you has such cold hands.When they finally fell apart, lazy and satisfied, Greta had lost track of time, and more so what she had planned to ask when she invited him up in the first place. “This is nice,” she said lamely instead.Ryan agreed. “I haven’t been in a quiet house in too long.”“I would think,” she said, tracing the embroidery on his shirt, “the Dandies would live in one of those grand, silent old houses full of ghosts. Since you’re all so very dignified.” This was a tiny bit of a fudge; she had seen enough of them get wasted that the facade was a little thin. Still, she did genuinely imagine them living in a great hollow mansion with crypts beneath. They didn’t have many in the city—downside of it only being founded so many years ago—but surely they would have found something suitable.“It’s grand enough, as they go,” he said idly. “But never silent. Unless people are giving one another the silent treatment, which does happen.”“You don’t get along, then.”“I mind my own business. What other people feel the need to bitch about is between them and whoever sticks around for the shouting match.” This was news, actually. Despite all that getting wasted, the Dandies presented a united, peaceful front to observers at Angels and Kings—a front, what was more, that did not react to outside provocation. She said so to Ryan, who hummed knowingly. “Well, of course we don’t fight there. That would be Bad for Business. Besides, Beckett would kill us.”Oh. She remembered what she had been planning. “Not for anything?”“We like having the space to play in, so we’re damn militant about playing well with others. Another coven could spit in our face, and we’d turn the other cheek. One must be a gentleman, you know,” he said tartly.“But your own?”“I wouldn’t. But I do think…” He trailed off with a short little laugh.“Oh?”He tipped his chin up to look at the ceiling stain. “I’m probably the only reason Brendon hasn’t had his lights knocked out yet. You’d think he wanted Carden to flatten him like a can.”She laughed breathlessly. This was closer to what she needed. “You can’t just say things like that and then not tell the story.”“I don’t know the story,” he corrected; “whatever is wrong between them went wrong long before I arrived. When Chislett quit and the lieutenancy went up, and he got it, and she didn’t even try for it. And you would think, if that was the case, everybody would be content, since they all got what they wanted. But it’s like a Shakespeare. Everyone gloating about what they’ve got and glowering about what they don’t have and leering about what they might get, and all I’ll say is Brendon will get himself punched about it one of these days, and I’ll patch him up afterward, of course, but—” He sighed and petted Greta’s hair back from her face. “I wish you were around; it would be so nice.”She felt a rush of hope, sweet at the top of her chest, for the first time in ages.The scheme was set. Greta did her opening chores with an uncharacteristic spring in her step, and smiled so wide when she welcomed in the first guests that Jon of the Dandies made a joke about how she was supposed to keep it dark in here and not blind them all with sunshine like that.It was Saturday night, so it was a busy night. Water is wet, vampires hate garlic, Saturdays are busy. A little cadre of Goths commandeered the piano to have drunken Siouxsie karaoke. The Dandies came in late, as usual. The room went quiet as all eyes fell on them: Brendon at the head of the triangle they always traveled in, fanning out like the wake of a ship as they filed through the creaking door. Carden glared meaningfully at a few single vamps at the choice center tables; they gathered their belongings and scampered away to less desirable seating.“Welcome in,” Greta called.“The usual, Greta!” Brendon called back, and she tipped her head to the side and pretended to think before rattling off the list perfectly. She had a cheat sheet under the bar with everyone’s usual orders; they tipped better when they felt special. Ryan, sat at a tall table with Jon and a few others, smiled warmly at her; she felt her feet grow lighter. Everything was so near to being so lovely. She just had to be a little bit horrible first.It was a very simple scheme, one with all sorts of ways out and plausible deniability should it go wrong. But of course, with low risk came low chance of success, and it was the only chance she had. As the Dandies sauntered over one by one to collect their drinks, tipping their bowler hats with kid-gloved hands or touching their canes to their brims in appreciation, she greeted everyone kindly. Brendon’s and Carden’s she brought to the table. Two old fashioneds, one with cherry, one without. Ice cold and deceptively strong. Then she let things simmer, refilled as requested with generous pours and winks that meant “doubles are on the house.” She asked questions about everyone’s days, about the new territory, about the division of labor around the coven and who seemed to enjoy the city the most. Most responses were politick and inoffensive; no matter, what mattered was that everyone knew that everyone was talking about it.Brendon was chatty and gregarious, gliding from table to table like a politician on the campaign trail. Carden slouched at one of the far tables with her back to the wall, legs akimbo, tracing the rim of her glass lazily with one finger, like she was tracing the pattern Brendon took around the room. Her dark-lidded eyes never stopped darting from one victim to the next.When Brendon finally ran out of people to chat up, falling breathlessly into the seat across from his glowering subordinate, Greta screwed her little courage to the sticking place and went over to join them.It was all in the acting. It was all in the bright eyes and the way she brushed right past Brendon, his drink made not quite right. “I heard congratulations are in order!” she said, setting Carden’s on the table.“For what?” said the older woman, eyes narrowed.“I heard…oh, maybe I was wrong…” She had heard, or so she said, the Dandies’ hierarchy was changing, that Carden had taken over as second-in-command or else would very soon. Most importantly, and she dropped this carefully so it would be certain to be understood, she had heard everyone was thrilled. Couldn’t be more pleased, really, and had been hoping for this for some time.It was all in the acting, in the way she turned to Brendon, whose mouth was already turned down over his slipshod drink, and said, with a lilt of surprise, “Oh dear! Had you not heard? I hope I didn’t spoil any pleasant surprises.”And then, and this was hardest, it was all in knowing when to stop, in excusing herself with an I-must-see-to-the-other-guests, in retreating to the edge of the stage to clean a spill and listen.Brendon had a high laugh when he was unhappy. “What was that about?”“I don’t know. Some bullshit.”“Is it?”“Yeah. It’s bullshit,” Carden said from the apparently limitless wells of uncaring disdain she had to draw from.Her comrade, however, was not so pacified. His fingernails tapped menacingly on the table. “You know I don’t believe you.”“Well, you should.”“I’ve been waiting for this, you know. For you to get so jealous you couldn’t stand it. That your brother chose me over you, that I deserved it more. I know it’s been eating at you. I know you’re not as cool and unbothered as you pretend. I’ve been waiting for you to snap.”“Well, that’s because you’re fucking delusional.” She barely shifted in her seat, but the muscles in her thighs tensed, and her shoulders squared, and suddenly she looked like she might block out the sun if she were in its path.The spill Greta was hovering over was bigger and stickier than she thought possible, given that they were not an establishment that sold such things as margarita pitchers, but if she moved to get the mop, someone might pounce like she was a gazelle interrupting a lions’ argument. So she stayed frozen.Carden cracked her knuckles. “If you’re feeling insecure, why don’t you suck Beckett’s dick again?”“Because that worked so well for you? 0 for 2 on keeping men interested, aren’t you—”
CRACK.
Carden’s fist smashed into Brendon’s jaw, sending him flying out of his chair to crash on the uneven hardwood floor. Before he could even scramble to his feet, she was back on him, dragging him up by the lapels to punch him again. This one knocked him back against Jon and Ryan’s table; they leapt to collect their lieutenant, now laughing through a mouthful of blood.“Dude, what the hell?” Leaving Brendon in Ryan’s hands, Jon marched up to Carden and shoved her hard. The Goth karaoke night ground to a halt.Carden was finally smiling tightly. “Fuck off, Jon.” And she picked him up by the scruff of his collar like a shaggy dog and lobbed him bodily into a table of four or five Bordens. It was like a bat to a beehive—they surged up from their seats, all electric-pink hair and safety-pinned bustles, and latched onto Carden. Hissing and sparking and the smell of singed fabric emanated from the scrum. They were trying to shock her into submission, but no one could get close enough to get more than the tail of her jacket or scarf. Finally, a very brave Borden lunged in and got a hand to Carden’s chest. Carden broke her fingers for her trouble, and they all fell away screeching.There were now no enemies between Carden and Brendon. He glanced around like he might duck behind someone else, but only for a moment. With a proud gleam in his eyes, he swept up an abandoned chair in one hand and swung it straight for her head.It was about as good a hit as Greta imagined he could have made—Carden grunted in pain as it glanced off her shoulder, her dodge just too slow, but the deflection also sent the chair careening out of its path and into another table, shattering glasses and splashing whiskey and tequila all over the enraged Punks. They shouted at the offense, and Brendon diplomatically retorted, “Get fucked!”Then it was chaos.A vampire barroom brawl is very like the barroom brawls in Westerns, because after all, many of them were present at the originals, only their greater resilience and strength lead to much more broken furniture and much longer periods of time before any damage gets bad enough to cause a knockout.It was all rather beautiful, like setting up dominoes that fall just so. It was also terrifying, like if those dominoes were six feet tall and fell with malicious intent. Greta abandoned all pretense of cleaning—that would be mopping the Titanic, now—and pressed herself against the wall, out of the growing melee in the middle of the floor. The bar was not very far, but the going was slow, as her path was continually blocked by thrown fists and thrown chairs. Finally, she made it behind the bar, not to take shelter, but to fetch an empty wine bottle from the recycling tub. She hefted it in her fist and whispered a preemptive sorry before slipping back into the fray.No one paid any mind to a slight blonde human girl among the combatants. It seemed the cordiality that had been the byword of Angels and Kings was only a smokescreen, because at the first excuse for violence, everyone in the room leapt into it with what could only be described as glee, trading blows and switching partners like they were in a country dance.If it was a dance, Ryan was the wallflower. He allegedly supported Brendon in his fights, but with very little enthusiasm and a lot of judicious retreats that kept him on the outskirts. This was very convenient for Greta’s intentions.I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, she chanted under her breath, and she crept along the wall nearest him, raised the bottle high—and cracked him in the side of the head with it.He staggered to his knees without seeing his attacker, blood seeping out from under his hairline onto his pretty forehead.“Oh, my God!” she cried, and she didn’t need to act the shock and adrenaline at all. “Oh, my God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—come here, let’s get out of the way—let me clean you up.”Dazed, Ryan let himself be led along the edge of the brawl to the dressing room. (It was really just a back pantry with a sink, the dressing room. But they kept so little stock, the space would go to waste otherwise, and it made her feel a little special to put a Craigslist vanity in there and pretend.) She had set a few things up before it all went down, just a few, just in case: a bowl on the edge of the sink, rag towels that were okay to get bloody.“Come here—sit down.” Carefully, she sat him on the dressing room bench: the former piano bench, banished when it wobbled too frighteningly to be used onstage. He didn’t speak while she ran a rag under the cold water, and only winced a little when she knelt beside him and dabbed gently at the copious blood coming from the wound on his forehead.As she soaked up the blood, the metallic scent thick between them, she was struck by the impulse to kiss the wound then and there, get her teeth wet with it, no more scheming, no more delicate workarounds. But his eyes fluttered up to meet hers and froze her still. There was no telling how much blood she’d need to turn, and if she were discovered too soon, this would all be for nothing.“How do you feel?” she said softly.“Fine,” he said, which seemed somewhere close to true.Sounds of punches and hissing vampires were fewer and farther between, but they had far from died out.The rag was saturated. She got up, wrung it out—into the bowl, not down the drain—then returned for another round, her fingers now stained red.Ryan shrugged off his brocade jacket, rolled his sleeves. “Did you see who got me?”Greta shook her head. She knelt on the bench beside him, tipped his head up to her with one hand so she could see better.His hand drifted to her waist, steadying her as she worked. She felt his breath soft against her throat. “You think you’re an angel.”“What?” The words should be demeaning, but his tone was not. “I don’t—”“You don’t have to be modest,” he shrugged. “You’re right.”Her face flushed, and she covered for it by going to wring out the rag again, the sensation of his fingers still hot against her waist. A good inch of blood and water covered the bottom of the bowl. She made a wish and a prayer over it before returning; God grant me no need of thee.“I wish—” she began aloud.“What?”“I wish I didn’t have to live in fear all the time.” She flavored her words with just a hint of martyr’s resolve. “A horrible brawl like this—if I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, I could have been hurt, or killed.”“I know.”The sounds of the fight outside were finally over. Hopefully, everyone had limped home to lick their wounds somewhere off her property. “I’m so fragile.”“I know.” His voice grew stronger, steadier every time he spoke, and he was watching her intently, so every move she made had to be right.She brushed his hair back off his forehead with gentle fingers. “If I were like you, I could protect myself. If someone would do that for me—turn me—”He stumbled to his feet as if stung. “No—Greta—”“Ryan, please.” She reached for his hand, but he jerked it away.“You don’t know what you’re asking. The change is irrevocable, and it twists you down to your soul; it’s done damage to strong people; it would ruin you. Trust me.”Her heart raced with rejection; she was kneeling in the middle of the bar being pitied all over again. “You sound like Beckett.”“We’ve lived this life a little more than you;” he paced, only tossing a glance her way, “forgive me for knowing better—”“What if I told you I know you’re full of it?” she declared. “I can see it in your eyes—you’re just as young and stupid and scared as I am.”The thing is, she didn’t know. It was a thing you say to bring your partner down to your level. Stupid she meant, and scared, but young had been a figure of speech. Except instead of brushing it off, his head snapped to her. “How did you know?”“What?”“How could you possibly know?” A human would have been concussed, but he had recovered from the blow much faster than she liked. Not that she wanted him injured. But he was staring at her with precision and horror, leaning in on the bench like he could smell secrets on her. “Did Pete tell you? I’ll kill him.”She didn’t bother to ask why Pete would know whatever he thought she would know. “Tell me you’re—what? If you’re killing him on my account, don’t—don’t make it for that. We didn’t talk about you.” He sat back, but his eyes didn’t leave her. “I promise.” She slowly draped the rag over the bench. “Ryan, how old are you?”“Twenty,” he said. “August. Virgo; isn’t that right?”It felt terrible to say it—this was hardly the time for book references. But it had to be said. “How long have you been twenty?”He laughed tunelessly through his teeth. “A year and two months.”Oh, my God. She rubbed her temples. “...I assume there's a story there.”There was. “I was running from Las Vegas,” he said. “Who isn’t? I would have done anything to get out. But my best friend and I—” Pain, too heavy for his delicate features, flashed across his expression. “Well. Sometimes you end up in back rooms you shouldn’t end up in. And sometimes women want things you don’t expect to give.” He reached out and ran his fingers down the side of Greta’s face. “You think it’s so pretty and romantic to be turned.”“It could be.”“It’s not. It’s about power. It’s filthy and sordid and consumes everything about you.” His hand stilled against her neck. She closed her eyes to the touch. “She drained him dry, and as my best friend, my brother lay bloodless and dead on some sticky casino kitchen floor, she turned me. Didn’t have the decency to drain me too. Must not have been hungry enough.” She was barely breathing now, frozen like a prey animal. “But no matter.” He pulled away. “I ran as soon as I woke up. Funny how the thing that finally got me out of Las Vegas was the thing that meant to keep me there. But obviously it’s not safe to be traveling young and alone—you know—and I didn’t know if she would look for me; put out a search for a new, helpless vampire who was rightfully hers. So, you know, I didn’t tell anyone I was new and helpless.” Greta knew she was letting him monologue shamelessly, but she couldn’t resist. They sat a breath apart, across the bench from one another, his face a storm, like she could dive into the ache.“Everyone here thinks you’re three hundred,” she prompted.“It’s laughably easy to convince them of it,” he scoffed. “I’ve always been an old soul. You know this.”She cocked her head at him. “You lied to me. You said you loved me, but you lied.”Softly, so softly and regretfully it felt like a mercy killing. “Oh, Greta. Not about that. Never about that.”“Then please—”“Don’t ask me again!” His big brown eyes were flecked with tears. “I won’t. I can’t.”Her hands fell to her lap helplessly. “Aren’t I good company? Don’t you want me around?”“Of course I do.” He tilted her chin to him with his fingertips. His kiss was just like him: soft and unyielding. Greta clutched at his vest as he pulled away, his fangs scraping her bottom lip. “But not enough to get killed by Beckett for it.”He stood and straightened his vest. Methodically, he draped his jacket over his arm and surveyed the room, carefully avoiding her eyes. His gaze fell on the bowl perched on the edge of the sink. He crossed the room in a few smooth steps, looked down into it, at the repository of blood and water. She knew what he was about to do, but she didn’t have it in her to do anything more than stifle a sob as he tipped its contents down the drain.
“How could you?”
“I’m sorry.”Then he was gone.She sat in her horrid little closet with its chipped vanity and always-clogging sink until she heard the door to the stairs open and shut. Then she dared to face the wreckage of her bar.The place was thrashed; tables were knocked every which way, chairs shattered as if they’d been broken over people’s heads. Half the pictures on the walls hung crooked off their nails, and the piano—oh, the piano was in pieces. And all of it she would have been glad to sacrifice, to turn and never look back. But now, now the only thing her future held was cleaning this up?It was the worst sort of cry, the kind with absolutely no relief behind it, wracking her inside out for nothing, nothing, nothing. She sat, half-blind, on the edge of the stage and dug her fists into her eyes to keep the sobs from twisting her face too violently.“What the fuck did you do to this place?”Greta jolted up. In her state, Travie McCoy had made it past the creaky door without alerting her, and she stood in the middle of the floor with half a smile, like she’d caught her favorite dog digging in the flowerpots.“Nothing.”“Gabe is on his way over.” Greta noted without interest that she didn’t mention Beckett. If she weren’t so thoroughly miserable, she might have wondered further if that non-mention had anything to do with his absence at the bar over the past few days. But she was miserable indeed, so she considered it no further. “We were supposed to meet here tonight. I assume I should tell him we’ll walk and talk?”We’re closed early—for the holiday.”“Giving yourself a week off for Halloween? I know we’re spooky people out here, but it’s not exactly a federal holiday.”“Oh, bite me,” Greta threw out without thinking.Travie crossed her arms and fixed Greta with a searching look. She drew every word out slow, like pulling bubblegum through her teeth. “Is that what you’re still on?”Greta had room to maneuver anywhere in the bar, so why did she feel so pinned down by Travie’s gaze? Apparently it was obvious, so no good pretending she wasn’t as pathetic as she was. She shrugged. She didn’t expect the acknowledgement to get a laugh.“Shit, is that all? I’ll do it for you.”That had to be a joke. It simply had to be, because if it had been so easy all along, she would cry again. “Don’t be mean.”“If you want Prince Charming to do it instead…”“He won’t,” she admitted, barely audibly. “Beckett said—”“Whatever you think about me, I hope you know better than to think I let anyone run my life. Love him, but that’s not how I do things. Be honest. How bad do you want to turn?”“Look at me!” she said, and her voice cracked, just to help make her point.“Yeah, I see you. Is this,” Travie waved a hand over her whole state, “bad enough to hand over Angels and Kings?”Oh. Greta sniffed a couple times and rubbed her eyes. “It’s not mine on paper. If Pete comes back…”“Then I’ll deal with him.”“Take it.” Resolute, chin up, trying valiantly not to look like a little girl. “Maybe let me sing sometimes?”Travie grinned. “Whenever you want, sweet thing.”So they shook hands on it.Travie made her put it in writing, laid out an upside-down menu on the bar and made it all official with the rose-patterned pen for signing credit card receipts. A shiver ran up Greta's spine as she wrote “last will and testament.” Then the paper was folded in Travie’s back pocket, and she didn’t have to worry about stocking cheap wines with fancy names or mopping that spot under the taps that was always sticky no matter how strong she made the cleaning solution, not ever again.All she had to worry about was, of course, dying.She perched on the edge of a bar stool, hands twisted in her lap, starting and abandoning a thousand questions. “Should I—do anything? Am I alright?”“You’re doing great,” said Travie. “Do you want a drink?” She did not. “You’re gonna pass out when the venom kicks in, and wake up tomorrow fucking starved. I’ll stay with you so you don’t go on a rampage. I assume you don’t want to go on a rampage.” She definitely did not. “And is it okay if I kiss you?”Her eyes snapped up. “What?”“It hurts the least that way. So they tell me.”“Oh. Of course!” Greta tucked her hair behind her ears. “You’ve done this a lot.”The look that crossed Travie’s face seemed to have a lot of memories behind it. “Yeah, most of the Punks are my kids. Little shits.” She shifted, stood, her knees brushing Greta’s. “You’re not very punk, but that’s alright. You’ll make it just fine.” With one tattooed hand, she cupped Greta’s cheek, rubbing off an eyeliner smudge with her thumb. “Planned any fancy last words?”“I couldn’t think of any,” said Greta, her voice suddenly very small. She had to tip her head way, way up to meet Travie’s eyes.“No problem—that’s all grandstanding anyway. You have plenty more time to talk.”Travie winced briefly, then smiled to reveal blood coating her fangs—oh, she bit her tongue, oh—and before Greta’s nerves had time to stretch any tighter, the older woman leaned down and kissed her.It was nicer than kissing Ryan; she hated to admit it. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she gripped the stool and tried to relax. It was warm, easy, all lips and tongue and—then teeth, and blood; her teeth tasted like iron bars shooting up into her skull; warm turned fire hot. At some point so smooth she didn’t notice the transition, Travie pulled back, squatting beside her with one hand on her back so she didn’t slip off the stool, which wasn’t likely because she was clinging so tight the metal was bending around her fingers. Fever heat traced her veins like a hot-knife, which meant she was styrofoam melting and peeling back along every line of the charts of the circulatory system they showed you in high school, which was a thing she’d never go back to, either; did they have memorials for dropout alumnae and could she stand in the back to see who was brave enough to make something up about noticing her—and then it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt in blood and teeth and blood it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt—
VICTORIA
More than parties, Victoria liked prepping for parties. Which was saying something, because she really liked parties. For ever ago, they decided parties were important to their publicity, not to mention networking, and she refused to leave those to Gabe. But then, they also decided they couldn’t host too often. After all, it didn’t make sense to open their home to strangers with any regularity. So, she went out whenever she got the chance.Tonight, she had an after-hours party at the art museum. The Bordens captured the park blocks from the Electric Company a few months back, and they’d been meaning to host a housewarming soiree at the crown jewel of their new turf. Gabe made an appearance when the Electric Company threw a shindig last week, just to smooth things over—though they could go to hell, acting like they didn’t need to do business with Cobra just because they had the rustiest grandpa gadgets you’d ever seen. Some people were so vain. Which meant she was free to visit Lzzy and the Bordens; welcome them to the neighborhood. Make them really feel at home. Drop a business card or two.If Lzzy was there, she needed to pull out all the stops. She could already see them having some sexy angel/devil banter in the sculpture gallery, her in her white chiffon mini with the glitter heels and the ermine Beckett brought her from the 1910s, Lzzy in red boots and some sort of femme moto jacket that was so not formal (but who was complaining when there was so little under it?) She leaned in to her vanity mirror and smiled as she dragged the eyeliner pen across her lid, a little stronger than usual, just to fit in.Maybe somebody would comment about her being a work of art too, posed among the masterpieces. Or maybe she’d say it first. Who knew where the night would lead?The party was no-boys-allowed, of course. But Lzzy would bring her boys, of course. So she was bringing Alex. Of course. Except he and Ryland and Nate had gone out for some fucking thing and not come back. And she planned on them showing up late—obviously—but there was late where you drew all black-shadowed eyes to yourself as you glided through the galleries, and there was late where people forgot you were supposed to show. She had zero intention of being the second kind.There was some huge scuffle downstairs. The boys were home, apparently. As the scuffling came closer and closer to the penthouse, she thought she heard a girl’s voice in the mix. Weird. The contour on her temples was crooked. She snapped her fingers, and the lights around the mirror turned up brighter.A knock on her door. “Victoria?” Ryland’s genteel inquiry.“Entrez!”All three of the boys came in (Gabe was out with Travie, surely; Beckett was sick)—and they brought company. Alex and Ryland were half-carrying a young lady who looked so completely pissed to be there that Victoria had to laugh. “What is that?” she said.“She tried to eat Nate!”“She tried to eat me!” complained Nate.Apparently, they had an epidemic of cute teenage girls appearing on their doorstep. Instead of blotchy from crying like the last one, this one was murder-ready, so that was a fun twist on the pattern.The girl wasn’t super intimidating, but neither was Nate, so it’d probably been a pretty even matchup. She was absolutely tiny, with big golden hair and a vintage face, which would have been prettier if it wasn’t contorted with rage for no reason. She looked like Alice in Wonderland. You know. How Alice in Wonderland in the books is tiny and blonde and always so annoyed because she’s surrounded by idiots with stupid rules (relatable as always, Alice).In that vein, “Who are you?” she said to the girl. She didn’t smoke anymore. If she did, she would have blown the little smoke rings on the line, just to make it feel extra on-the-nose.The girl snarled and snapped.“Watch it.” Ryland, steady as ever, pulled her back out of lunging distance from Victoria. “Mind your manners.”“Mind your manners,” she sang back with a toss of her head, and her lisp—like she had something in her mouth she wasn’t used to speaking around yet—made it click.“Hey,” said Victoria meaningfully, “what’s the deal with her mouth?” Which was the exact wrong/right thing to say, because the girl full-mouth hissed this time, revealing bright white baby fangs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hey fellas, why are we bringing home newborn vamps? Any reason?” She waved for someone to come zip her up, which Alex did, scooting her over on the vanity stool so he could share it.“She tried to eat Nate!” he said, like that explained it.“Baby, look at Nate. He looks delicious. Who wouldn’t?”(“Thank you,” said Nate quietly.)His hands were chilly on the back of her neck—which is what comes of touching vampires (reminder to self! wear gloves to see Lzzy). “She was wandering outside the warehouse when we were on our way back, and we thought she might be on something, so we decided to be polite—”“—and ask if she had any left to share,” added Ryland.“No dice,” Alex shrugged. “Anyway, Nate attack, brought her here, bing bang boom, we’re up to the present moment. Story over.” He finished the clasp at the top of her dress and kissed her cheek.“Huh!” Having exhausted her need for Alex as a dresser, she turned him into a more comfortable seat, pulling him closer by one leg and leaning against him (she could feel him chuckle against her back; what was Cobra if not a friend group who were always willing to be sat on?). It felt very Cleopatra to be doing interrogations in such a posture. She should do this more often. Maybe the boys should bring home more interlopers. “Okay, so whose are you? Like, who do I have to call to come pick you up?” She gave the girl’s vintage-inspired outfit a once-over. “Are you one of Beckett’s?”“No!” the girl spat, kicking one flat against the marble floor like his face was down there, or like she’d flip him off if her hands were free. “He wouldn’t have me, the hateful—”Victoria giggled despite herself. “That struck a nerve, huh? Jesus, it’s fine. You don’t have to like Beckett.”“We all do,” said Ryland, “but to be fair, we are also deeply pretentious and annoying people.”“What are we now—” Alex stage-whispered in Victoria’s ear, “a dumping ground for lost puppies and Dandy rejects?”“Hey!”“You’re the puppy, Nate baby, not the reject,” said Victoria.“Like a Christmas puppy, with a lovely red ribbon and everything,” added Ryland helpfully.The girl could barely stand still, grinding her teeth and wriggling like Ryland’s hands on her upper arms were some kind of torture device. This wasn’t ‘I’ve been a vamp for a few weeks but I’m still angry’ bloodlust. Oh.“Oh. How new are you?”“I—” She took a shuddery little breath, like she wanted to calm down and give a civil answer to a civil question. “Today. Tonight?”All four of the Cobras sighed sympathetically. “Oh, sweetheart,” said Victoria. “Yeah, you shouldn’t be alone. Unfortunately, we can’t stay with you, because I have a party with a lot of hot people to be seen at. We don’t have to call your parent if you don’t know them or don’t want to talk to them right now, but—who’s your emergency contact? Anybody we can drop you with who’ll take good care of you?”A weird, menacing little look flashed over the girl’s round little Alice-face. “Do you know where to find Pete Wentz?”“Yeah, of course!”“Him,” she said decidedly. “I need to talk to Pete.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
ANDIE
She wondered, sometimes, how she had reached the point where fighting vampires for her life was mind-numbingly boring. Some people wanted this kind of adventure. Even if you didn’t want it, it was supposed to be shocking, upsetting. At least a horrifying thrill.But God, she was so bored. The only things that changed were what outfits the vampires wore and what street tore up her skin as she took falls on it. Every night, it was the same pattern; the calls from one or another of Pete’s contacts, the tense, silent drive, jammed into Jo’s Olds with the radio off. The scenes of brutality—the bodies, when they showed up too late. The standoffs that were supposed to end with an exchange of information and the vampires going home, but never did. The constant, constant fighting. Her hands were always bruised now, her legs practically imprinted with the rough pavement. The heavy rush of adrenaline in your stomach, like having to get drunk before you go onstage; it sounds on paper like it should be fun, but it just feels like sickness and responsibility.When she closed her eyes, curtains pulled tight against the morning, shattered streetlights flickered behind her eyelids.Some nights, though, were special. Some nights, the call came not from Pete’s allies in the Hipsters or the Electric Company, but from Victoria. You could always tell those calls, because Trish would perk up hopefully (Trish, who used to be out the door before a contact could even say hello and now locked the apartment door slowly behind her as if she’d never open it again).They had gotten one of those calls that Sunday night, and the worst part was it was nearly morning. They’d almost had a night to themselves. But there was Victoria’s melodic voice “just letting them know!” a few Dandies were hunting on the border of Cobra territory. And this time, Carden was with them. Pete reached the weapons cabinet first, tossing Jo and Andie their favorites (could you call it a favorite anymore? Their specialties) while Trish thanked Victoria politely. Pete’s relentless, morbid energy was the only thing keeping them going, it seemed. That, and whatever guilt Trish was trying to absolve herself from by saving the day.They didn’t even get the pretense of “talking it out” this time. When they piled out of the Olds, ranged across the empty pre-dawn street at arms, Carden dropped the liquor-store employee she had been menacing, took one look at them, and laughed. And then attacked. They were sloppy, tired—so were the Dandies, interestingly—but relentless, so they circled the same few blocks, throwing shit and breathing too hard.Finally, the thinnest lines of sunrise cut between the buildings, washing the scene out in greenish light. Carden took one last heavy swing at Andie’s head, knocking off her glasses and connecting with a dull thuk that sent her staggering to her knees. “I don’t have fucking time for this,” she muttered. She whistled shortly, and her Dandy companions abandoned their fights and slunk back into formation around her. Carden sneered down at Andie. “Stay down for a while.” Andie let herself fall back onto the sidewalk, the streetlights red blurs above her, counting as the train rumbled past until the footsteps were gone and they were alone again.Pete pulled her to her feet grimly. Jo and Trish dusted each other off across the street. Jo picked up one of the Dandies’ fallen walking sticks, swinging it in the direction they disappeared.That whole encounter did not feel right. With Pete’s hand still on her arm, she pulled him out of the faint dawn to stand under a doorway till the girls caught their breath. Not just the terrible state of the fight itself, although she hadn’t felt as out of her depth since their first weeks outside a gym. No, something felt off about the way the Dandies slunk out, instead of—“Pete, nobody tried to capture you.”“They couldn’t if they tried,” he growled, still coming down from the high of the fight (you couldn’t exactly call it adrenaline, in his case, but there was a rush there, no doubt).It was a sign of how beat they were that nobody teased him for his macho-man proclamation. “They haven’t yet,” she agreed, “but they do always try.”This threw him slightly. “Maybe we startled them, threw off their battle plan.”“Maybe…” she said, half to herself, as Pete yawned and stretched.“Well, you all look like shit,” he said, which was true. Andie thought achingly of a hot shower—or even a lukewarm one, if Trish went first and used up the water—and of cold sheets... “Better get home and clean up, before—”“Andie.” Trish’s tone was dark as she handed over her glasses.“Yeah?”“We’re meeting Dr. Van Valkenburgh at seven.”She might as well have said they were meeting a firing squad for the look on her face.Andie slid open her phone. 6:43. “Right. Okay.”The thing about their advisor meeting was, from just reading a transcript, it wouldn’t sound so horrible. Jo and Pete dropped them off with a few minutes to spare. They both had the right words in the right order, the correct checkpoints completed and assessments met. But the longer they were on campus, the more Andie felt irrationally sure she was not a thing meant to be seen under the sun anymore.Dr. Van Valkenburgh’s office was beautifully lit, with a golden-orange maple tree waving through the tall window. She had all her books organized, and her glasses matched her dress. That was one of the things the girls fell in love with her for in the first place. “I haven’t had a teacher have this much fun with her clothes since Ms. Frizzle,” Trish said their first week in her class. Now it felt like a judgment. Andie scraped asphalt out from under her nails; it fell on the carpet by her boots.“We, uh, I missed our first appointment with the writing center, but I—I rescheduled, so I can—next Monday, Monday?” Trish mumbled, casting a beseeching glance to Andie, who nodded Monday.“I’m so sorry, I didn’t catch the end of that.” Dr. Van Valkenburgh’s sharp eyes calculated the new scratches Trish’s long sleeves couldn’t cover, the shining bruise on her cheekbone that her cap pulled low couldn’t cover.“We’re meeting with the writing assistants Monday,” Andie said. She remembered, as Dr. Van Valkenburgh turned to her with some alarm, that she was pretty beat up herself. In the early days, Trish took more hits because she just didn’t know how not to, but Andie had let too much get past her lately. Whatever their advisor thought was going on at home and was politely letting them come forward about when they felt comfortable, Andie watched it expand and grow more concerning to encompass both of them.“I look forward to reading your results,” she said kindly, but she didn’t stop gazing hawk-eyed at the boot-print bruise marking Trish’s chest between the tails of her scarf. “You know, of course, your financial aid expires at the end of this year, but your admission to the graduate program is still valid, however much extra time you need to take to finish this degree.”“I know,” said Trish, like she wanted to drop through the floor. The risen sun glowing through the maple leaves made her cringe, and Andie saw her eyes flit around the room like she was looking for Pete to make sure he was hidden from the light. She knew that’s what she was doing, because she was doing the same herself.When Dr. Van Valkenburgh let them go, Trish was so quick to the door that she ran straight into one of the older guys in their cohort, waiting outside for his own meeting.“Sorry, jeez, I’m—Matt—I'm so sorry.” Trish pulled back her hand, and it came away leaving flecks of brown blood on his white shirt. “Sorry.” As she made an abortive attempt to close in again, to wipe it away or something, Matt recoiled, and Trish’s face burned. Andie’s chest tightened with embarrassment (mostly on Trish’s behalf, she’d never given the guy the time of day, but he and Trish swapped R&B study playlists once in a way that felt meaningful). Bruises aside, they reeked of wet dog from the rainy night.“Sorry, man,” Andie said, exhausted, and she took both him and Trish by the scruff of the necks and made them switch places so he could go on his way to his uneventful advisor meeting and she and Trish could escape the social sciences wing without having to make eye contact with any more living humans.They took a taxi home. Andie’s mom gave her money for transportation expenses as part of her Christmas present last year. She’d stashed most of it in a jar under her bed, re-budgeted for “Doomsday Necessities.” But it wasn’t precluded from transportation expenses. So she called a taxi and held Trish’s hand under the bus shelter until it arrived, willing the students passing by to pull their hoods tighter against the rain and ignore them.The cab door shut; Andie gave the driver their address. Trish tried to say, “Fuck them,” spitefully, but it came out more like a squeak. With a last really piteous look (which, yeah, if after all this your voice is going to betray you too!), she choked out a sob and sank into Andie’s lap like a grimy Disney princess.“Oh, babe,” Andie whispered, running her fingers through Trish’s tangled hair, between her shoulder blades like that would soothe their shaking as she cried, gasping sobs—still trying to stay quiet for the taxi driver even as her tears soaked Andie’s jeans.“Don’t tell—” she begged, which was promised before it was even asked. When the taxi dropped them off (too soon) outside their apartment, Trish wiped her eyes aggressively in the stairwell and beelined to her bedroom. The door slam woke Jo, who picked her head up from the couch with a muffled the fuck. “How was the, uh, the meeting?” she asked blearily.“Well, we’re gonna graduate,” Andie said, and left it at that.
PETE
After they dropped Trish and Andie at their advisor meeting, he and Jo went home, and she napped while he hung out in the laundry room downstairs and called Father Michael for an hour or so, which he definitely needed. It was good, when the fight was at its lowest and hardest, to have people you could count on.He all but skipped up the stairs (bypassing the fluorescent, horror-movie elevator that always had some judgmental white woman in it, no matter what time it was) and breezed through the apartment.Trish’s door at the end of the hall was shut, but there wasn’t the rustling in the closet that would have meant she was changing, so he entered on his knock.“I need to buy you flowers.”“What?”She was curled up in bed, her eyes shining red, not even changed out of the clothes they fought in the night before. Which meant their advisor was probably holding them hostage over a late assignment and she needed to be reminded she wasn’t a failure, even if sometimes she did school like a mortal and not like a paper-writing robot.“Talked to Father Michael while you guys were gone,” he said. “For real, I owe you for introducing us. This guy is like, my Rasputin. He’s helped me come to grips with myself—you know, not just burnt out in self-loathing—we all have fallenness, brokenness in our nature, but it’s what you do with it. I haven’t felt this clearheaded in months.” He smiled. “When I get a clear shot at Beckett, I won’t miss.”For what he thought was a pretty clear compliment, she wasn’t picking it up; she sat, knees to her chest, skeptical. “Are you sure that’s what he meant?”“That’s what I got.”“Hm.” Her heartbeat ticked higher. “Well. Glad you’ve got such a rad dude encouraging you.”He sighed. “Are you PMSing?”“You’d be able to smell it if I was,” she retorted acidly.“Well, then don’t get PMSy about me going to Father Michael for counseling. You said you couldn’t do it. Conflict of interest; not your area; too much on your plate—”“—I just don’t like not knowing—!”“—You don’t want to know—”“—what’s going on with you!”“—you wrote that in your journal!” he accused. “Lying to Dr. Van V.?”“You don’t get to call her—” She sat up on her knees. “Pete, fuck, when you ignore me, I get left to dry. I had everything handled at the mall, I was getting your information you needed, but you blew it up cause you had to fight some 1v1 boss battle with your seventh evil ex who you didn’t tell me about.”“Are you still mad about the mall? Dude, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you Mark and I were friends—”“I don’t give a shit what you and Mark were!”He couldn’t hold back a laugh; if she tried, she couldn’t have picked a tone that said more clearly how much of a shit she gave. “Come on, Katy Perry, don’t go hot and cold on me;” crawling onto her bed so they were at the same level. “You came to me last year because you wanted somebody who knew people. Now every time you meet somebody I know, you get all hurt.”“Because every time I meet somebody you know, I see my future. And if I knew that, I wouldn’t have ruined my life over you.”“Hey,” he said, voice low in his chest, exactly where her words had hit. “Easy, slugger.”“You are the only thing I think about. And I’m just another weirdo in your sideshow—collection you pick from when you need banter and a favor—” Her hands knotted into fists with nowhere to go, her short, shallow breaths holding back her tears so she could force the words past them. “I don’t—I wanted to write this paper in a coffee shop—a library—I miss libraries—and talk to my peers about exciting developments in my research. I can’t even hold a conversation in daylight anymore—” A strangled sob escaped her, and angry, humiliated blood rushed to her face. “I wish I never heard of Angels and Kings, I wish I never met you, you turned me into a freak.”Pete flinched. Trish’s fists came up like she wanted to punch him or hide her face or—He left. What was he supposed to do? He climbed in his coffin and pulled the lid over himself, staring at the underside with the family pictures they’d taped up to make it feel more homey.Pete could hear Trish cry in bed until he fell back asleep, and her door was still shut when he woke up that night.“You weren’t expecting anybody, were you?”Pete groaned as Andie threw open the lid of his coffin. She predicted his answer by pulling the blinds on her way to the weapons cabinet. The knife-block in the kitchen made a shhhink; Jo armed herself too.He stumbled out of the coffin, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. A melodic series of knocks on the door. “Who the fuck…” He pressed one eye to the peephole. “Jesus. Stand down.” He swung the door open. “Vicky. To what do we owe the honor?”Victoria and the other Cobras swept into their apartment, their almost-glowing white outfits turning the room even dingier and worse-lit than it was, and immediately made themselves at home. Victoria smiled fondly at the photos on the wall. Nate hurried to the fire escape window and glanced up and down to see if they got followed, while Ryland and Suarez brought in—He hadn’t thought of Greta since his last day at Angels and Kings, asking her to close while he and Beckett—“Hi, boss.”He could smell something different on her. “Dude, what did you do?”She bared her fangs. “I had to protect myself. Got left in charge of a vampire bar. That’s pretty scary for an eighteen-year-old.”“You stayed?” Maybe he should have assumed, given he never heard rumors of the place closing. “Fuck the bar, why—”“That’s what I said! That’s why I’m here, and Travie McCoy owns Angels and Kings.”“Whoa, what the fuck—”“You left! I thought you died, but I thought well, a job is a job, and I need a job, and Beckett made it sound like an important one, so I stayed, but you weren’t dead. You were just fucking around, you selfish, selfish, selfish…”Pete, still barely awake, tried to snap that to be clear, he was definitely dead, but Andie glared him into silence as she grabbed a plastic cup of smoothie mix from the fridge and hurried to Greta’s side. Greta snapped halfheartedly at her, but Andie, with all the gentleness of the Crocodile Hunter, took one of her wrists out of Ryland Cobra’s grip and closed her hand around the cup. “Careful, you’re stronger than you think,” she said softly. Greta’s nose wrinkled, but she drank anyway.Victoria leaned her chin on Pete’s shoulder. “The boys found her on our doorstep! And she said you were her emergency contact—well, she said she wanted to talk to you, which I guess meant ‘chew you out for abandonment.’ Really, babe, you weren’t even gonna call in sick?”“I died. Don’t start with me.” He turned on Vicky. “I’m getting yelled at by too many cute girls today.” He phrased it in a way she would laugh at, because it was better than letting it slip that for the first time since the night on the roof, he was unsure of his next step, and even less sure of his footing when he made that step.“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. Alex and I are currently more-than-fashionably late to a party at the art museum, so we simply must jet. I’ll tell Lzzy Borden you say hi.”Before Pete could protest that he would WAY rather get wasted at the art museum with the Bordens than sit here, Victoria kissed his cheeks and waved her goodbyes, and the rest of Cobra followed her out the door, leaving nothing but the scent of four conflicting perfumes—and Greta in a sad little pile on the living room rug.Jo strolled out of the kitchen, still holding a carving knife. “What the fuck just happened?”Pete groaned. “The thing about a gift from Cobra is you don’t get to say no. And usually it’s awesome, but sometimes…”He groaned again and hurried to the window. They’d wasted too much time; he had to get out on the streets again and search for Beckett—“Hold on.” Andie stopped him with one foot on the fire escape. He could have shaken off her hand, but it was Andie, and unfortunately, she hadn’t yet held him back for something lame. She tipped her head close to his. “What are we going to do about her?”“I don’t give a fuck.”“That’s consistent with Greta’s feelings for sure. How about taking a little responsibility?”Pete was about to spit the word back at Andie—and she knew it, the micro-pressure increase of her hand on his shoulder said so—but behind her he could see Greta, big eyes locked on him. Her face looked sunken and washed out; way older than eighteen. But also eighteen forever now, like the customers she used to watch in fascinated awe across the bar. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, honestly. At least dying at twenty-seven came with some Hendrix panache and a face that could get you a rental car.“Fine,” he huffed, shaking off Andie’s hand. “Come on,” he called.“What for?” Greta said uneasily.“You gotta cool off. We’re going for a walk, c’mon.”“I’ll come too,” Andie added. Just in case, she meant. The smoothie seemed to be doing its job, but they’d never actually tested it on a newborn vamp.If he was good, he’d take notes for Trish.He shook off that thought and held the window open wider for Greta to crawl through.
TRISH
The first hour, probably, after fighting with Pete, she lay in bed rehashing the argument, thinking of all the things she wished she’d said and the cutting ways she could have said them, angry and crying and angry that she was crying, until pure exhaustion took her out and she fell into the worst kind of stress dreams, where she was working alone at the mall again, digging through the empty back rooms for some product whose name kept changing every time she tried to remember it.When she finally woke, it was dark again, and she was starving. If there’d been a sound of motion in the apartment, she would have laid there and starved before having to face Pete (dumb move, not to storm out when she had the chance—that’s what he would have done). But the apartment was silent and still. So after brushing her hair and touching her puffy, blotched face despairingly, she risked the kitchen.Jo was in her room, face blue in the glow of her phone. “Evening.”“Jesus, you scared me.”“Just me. Pete and Andie went out on patrol with our new recruit.”“With our…”“Greta who used to work at the bar—long story. But I stayed. In case you need anything?”“Great.”The kitchen looked like it should on finals week: dishes stacked in the sink, half the knives out of the knife block, fridge still open half an inch. She opened it fully. One of the blends was gone ahead of schedule. New recruit. She’d have to make more. She’d have to call—Phone.Trish scrambled for it, expecting Andie saying something had gone catastrophic already.Oh. Speak of the. Well. “Father Michael?”“Hello, Trish?” said he. “I’m sorry for calling after hours.”“You know us, Father. We’re awake.”Who is that? Jo mouthed in passing as she scrounged from the fridge. Trish briefly held the phone away from her ear for Jo to see caller ID, though it made her miss the beginning of his sentence. “Sorry, what’s in the church basement?”“That’s what I hoped you could tell me. But it does look like a vampire nest.”“From a coven we know, or a new one?”Hesitation on the other end of the line. Dandies. “Shit. Pete and Andie are out; I don’t know that we’d make much of a dent—”“Of course, no, I understand. That’s fine—that’s ideal, actually. I like Pete, but things tend to escalate when he’s involved.”Trish couldn’t repress her little scoff. “So do you want us to come talk to them?”“Not even that much. No one seems to be in it just now, so if you wouldn’t mind scoping it out. I’d just love to know if I should cancel mass tomorrow morning.”“Text me the address.”Trish leaned in Jo's door. Jo was reading Nightwing with the leftover Taco Bell spread balanced on her legs. Correction: pretending to read. Not her usual way; Trish was the one who ate in bed.“Given up on tables?”“Eh, they keep turning.”St. Gerard Majella was out of the way, on one of those suburban roads with no sidewalk and nothing else on it besides spaced-out apartment complexes. Father Michael waited in the shadowed doorway, and he showed her and Jo quickly to the basement (with many gratitudes for showing up and a promise to be in his office if they had questions or needed to report back).As they climbed the carpeted stairs into the darkness, past bulletin boards for potluck dinners and youth group skate nights, Trish felt vindictively pleased that they got out of the house before the others came home. She could do this alone; could use this fucked-up skill set to help people other than—She shivered as Jo broke the silence.“Nice to finally see you.”“We live together, Jo.”The basement light switch didn’t work. Wonderful. She swung her flashlight beam across the wood-paneled walls, looking for another switch. The room—the “fellowship hall”—was low and wide, tiled both floor and ceiling, with a rack of folding tables against the near wall for the advertised potlucks.“I’m checking the kitchen,” she whispered, pointing to the pass-through window opposite.Jo stayed in the main hall obediently and checked the closets. “I didn’t mean—I mean we used to do this more. Go on little quests, just us, like—or not even quests. We used to hang out like friends.”“Spit it out,” Trish said over her shoulder. None of the usual signs of a vampire nest. The place was deserted.“Pete was my friend first, but you—”She could see where that line of attack was going and couldn’t stand to let it land. “Pete got murdered,” she said, putting sharp weight on the words. “I promise, when an evil, spider-legged Gilded-Age banker murders you, I will spend exactly this much time saving you.”“It’s fine. You love him. I get it.”Trish felt her mouth open and shut like one of those stupid fish. For the first time in the entire conversation, she realized Jo was not in her head, had not heard her and Pete tearing into each other in her bedroom that morning. What she should have said, the easy defense, was, “Don’t worry; he doesn’t reciprocate.” What her mouth said was, “Of course. Duh.” Which was not the reassurance she meant it to be, at least judging by Jo’s stricken “oh god.” “I love you. I love Andie; she’s the only one not pissing me off. I love you,” she repeated firmly. “But you don’t need me.”Jo’s reply was guttural, an echo in the hall. “Do I have to need you? Can’t I just—” The end of her sentence choked her. “Would you catch up on Always Sunny with me? Please? I can’t watch without you.”“Jo.” Trish wanted to grab her by the shoulders, not sure what she was about to do or even how she felt, but sure some response was warranted.But the name caught on her tongue, and she could not move. The faint sound of a faraway waltz trickled golden behind her eyes. As if turned by a firm hand, she shut the cabinets she had been investigating and faced the dark back stairs. In the blackness, she saw the dim outline of two hands in white kid gloves.
Jo!
This cry didn’t even get as far as her throat. The hands drew her irresistibly closer, until she recognized the figure they were attached to—Beckett’s young lieutenant Pete had tried to kill at the Cobra party. She recoiled—or tried; the shudder overtook her inside, but when she tried to run, to swing a fist at him or even just dig her heels in the floor or scream, she felt her feet move even lighter and more delicately, until they were so close she could see the whites of his eyes and feel the chill rolling off his skin as he smiled wide and grabbed her by the wrists—Her flashlight dropped to the floor with a clatter—and went out.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
CARDEN
The problem was things had been going too well. That was always the fucking thing. Whenever they were on top of the world, something fucked always happened and knocked them back on their asses for a few years. Has to happen when you’re this rich and powerful, or else you get cocky.Things were running like fucking clockwork; the new house (she had to admit through gritted teeth) offered them way better eyes on the streets, so their progress through the Bizarres’ old territory was (again, against her will she admitted this) faster and smoother than she expected. The rank-and-file behaved themselves, everyone else behaved themselves, and the covens they knew last time they were in town welcomed them back like no time had passed. Michael was working undercover. Butcher was working minor miracles. It felt like the old days.Then Adam ran away.More accurately, Adam got fucking chased out by the human girl Beckett let stay around because he developed a soft spot for her spunk or whatever, and all of a sudden their house felt like it’d taken a sledgehammer to the foundations. She wished she could be like Beckett, sometimes. Wished she’d built the kind of reputation that would let her retire to her bedchambers in grief, just lay around and wallow in the giant hole that lived behind her ribcage now and hadn’t gone away for days. That’d be pretty fucking neat.But she hadn’t. Anyway. Somebody had to stay on their feet and run this operation.Which was the other way fate was knocking her on her ass. Because Beckett went into deep mourning—or whatever he was doing in his room all night instead of making business deals and googly eyes at Gabe from Cobra like he was supposed to. And, just like he did last time, Brendon saw an open seat at the table and fucking ran for it.She came home from hunting one day to find Brendon directing enthralled movers in— “Are you replacing the curtains?” she demanded.“They were hideous,” he said nonchalantly.“Okay, great. Did you run that by budget?” Herself.“I’ll send you the invoices later.”Do you know who got to send her invoices later? The head of their fucking coven, who, last she checked, was a six-foot-two Chicagoan with grasshopper legs and a stutter nobody else got to know about. But said giant Chicagoan was not around to back her up (if he even would; who knew these days), so she glared at the offending little man and stalked upstairs to brood in the lab until it was time to meet with Michael.She did get to beat the shit out of him at the bar. Brendon. Only because he pushed her; if they were gonna talk big shit about a gentleman’s honor in this family, she should get to defend hers. Beckett would have given her hell for infighting in public, but she figured whatever punishments Brendon could devise would get moderated by the fact she’d just broken his nose and would gladly do it again. But he came at his little revenge more cleverly than she wanted to give him credit for.“So,” he said fake-casually, leaning against the sideboard and rolling his white bowler between his hands, “you’ve been meeting with Chislett since…”“It’s been a couple months since we reconnected, yeah.” She crossed her arms. She didn’t like this “getting ambushed halfway to the kitchen on a task” thing; not that she ever liked being ambushed, but she could feel herself forgetting what she’d been headed there for.“What’s that about?” he asked.“Beckett’s got me on that job,” she said.“Right.” He threw her contempt back in her face. “Beckett’s clearly incapacitated since Adam left.” (She thought about punching a few of his teeth out for being able to say it out loud.) “And in his absence, I’m in charge of the coven.”“Like fuck you are—” she began, but he pushed himself off the sideboard and advanced on her.“I know I hurt your feelings, getting this lieutenancy when you thought Beckett should hand it to you, but that’s where hard work gets you, not to mention good behavior. You act coarse and common and unbefitting an officer of your station—” He winced from the leftover bruising as he tried to sneer—which proved his point. “I don’t know how he let you go anywhere.”Her fists clenched. “I’d love to see you stop me.”“Oh, you swore to a lot when you joined this family.” (She bit her tongue, because fuck this guy, he wasn’t born when she joined this family!) “We use a lot of big words, big ideas in those promises. Loyalty, respect. A gentleman’s honor. Do you know what all that means?”“You’re gonna tell me anyway—”“It means I’m your lord, and you need to fucking act like it!” For the first time, she thought the kid might actually be capable of killing her, his face white with rage and something vicious behind his eyes. She hated him more than ever, but unfortunately, not in a way she could dismiss.Disgusted by his own display, Brendon put himself back together. “As your sworn leader, I’d like the details of your job with Chislett.”So she gave them to him. She did, in fact, swear a lot of oaths to this family, and if she wanted it to still be in one piece when Beckett came back to himself, she couldn’t fucking well mutiny right out the gate. Paying back bullshit was a matter of honor; disobeying direct orders was not.As she talked, Brendon’s always-expressive face went through a series of reactions; interest, annoyance (probably that he’d been left out of the fun stuff), unimpressed. As she finished talking, a shrewd look bubbled up. This was never a good sign.“I appreciate your cooperation,” he said, bowing shortly. “We will, of course, be changing course on that completely.”
TRISH
Pain in her shoulders. Somebody pulling her arms over her head. “Where’s Jo?” Trish mumbled, not opening her eyes.“Who?”“Good.” She escaped, or they missed her. Good either way.The cold click of metal. It was time to face her problems like an adult, unfortunately. Her eyes flickered open, blinking to take in the darkness. She was handcuffed to…a closet rod, which meant she was in a closet. That’s how these things worked, right? A nice closet; sturdy, handsome built-ins that would definitely not collapse if tugged on by a five-foot nerd with no leverage. Congratulations to whoever did the installation.The cold hands adjusting the handcuffs belonged to the boy from the Cobra party, skin almost glowing in the dim light around the closet door. “Hello, sunshine,” he sing-songed into her ear.She shuddered. Typical kidnapping behavior. So the church had been a set-up. Out loud: “So Father Michael is one of yours.”“One of Carden’s, anyway,” he said with a meaningful chuckle that meant nothing to Trish. (She almost shit herself when somebody scoffed from the corner; apparently he had a friend lurking to offer color commentary.)“Enthralled, or…?”“Oh, no. He’s been working for Beckett since the beginning.” She could practically feel his smug smile. “Does that bother you?”“Great, okay.” Go back over her notes on his theology and change them from reflecting a sympathetic outsider’s perspective on vampires and salvation to being from a personal source. “Did he convert before or after he turned?—Actually, I should interview him if he’s around—”“Oh, my God,” Brendon drawled, “would you shut up?”Right. Her life was in danger. “What’s the game, then?”“You may have heard,” he said, pleased to storytell, “that our progenitor took a shine to Pete. A shine that apparently was not as reciprocated as Beckett hoped.” Trish thought about mentioning that killing someone and drinking their blood on a night out was a pretty common turn-off outside their circles, but her arms really were at an uncomfortable angle. “So it’s been his Great Quest to show Pete the light and bring him into the family. But his original plan turned out too…” He sighed and cast his eyes to heaven, like the word was above him somewhere. “Subtle.”“Which isn’t your style,” smirked his friend. Now that her sight had adjusted to the darkness, she could see the third person in the closet was the other boy from the Cobra party.“You’ve met Ryan,” Brendon said.“We go to the same parties,” Trish said wryly, and Ryan rolled his eyes.“So,” Brendon continued, “we put Michael to better use, and now you’re having a stay at the Hotel Dandy! We’ll send Pete a friendly note, and he can pick you up from the airport, if you will. Call it motivational.”“Call it incentive,” said Ryan.“Call it a hiring bonus!”Trish stood on her toes to relieve some of the pressure in her shoulders. “He won’t come.”Brendon doubled over laughing, wiping his eyes while artfully avoiding smudging his eyeliner. “That’s not even a good lie!” She bit her tongue. Even in her worst estimation of Pete’s character, no matter how much she might have hurt him, and especially no matter how it might ruin the Dandies’ plans, she didn’t actually believe Pete would leave her. (If nothing else, Andie and Jo would kill him.) “He’ll come. And then you can be on your way, with our best wishes.”Her mouth moved before she could quite decide whether to shut it. “But he hates you. If he traded himself for me, what’s to stop him deserting when I’m free? You won’t have any continued leverage. Unless the idea is he’ll be so enamored of the lifestyle—”Ryan crossed his arms. “What is to stop him?”Brendon shot him a poisonous look, but what frightened Trish was the ingratiating smile he turned back on her. “That’s such a good point. I’m glad you offered.”“Offered?”“To stay.”She used to get in trouble in school all the time for processing out loud. If any of her grade-school teachers had said, “One day, that bad habit of yours is going to get you kidnapped indefinitely by Edwardian vampires,”—well, she would have said disdainfully that vampires were not real. She was a very rational child.“God, can you imagine?” said Ryan.“We can dandy them both up,” Brendon looked Trish over like he was fitting her for a suit as they talked. “Can you imagine,” he repeated.She could, actually. Pete trapped with the people he hated most in the world—trapped with her, who put him there because she tried too hard to prove she worked at all without him. Resentment every time they looked at each other, filling every corner of the mansion like tear gas, inescapable and burning, worse than never seeing him again, worse than never having met him at all.“What do I get if I stay?” she said, with as much gumption as she could muster.“Get?” Brendon launched into another of his best, most villainous laughs.“Everyone knows where I am—or at least,” she amended honestly, “who has me. They’ll make you miserable if they get the chance. They already make me miserable half the time, and I didn’t kidnap anyone they love. But if I talk to Pete for you. Get him to come quietly.”At this, Brendon’s ears pricked up. “Why would you do that?”“Well, a big battle would get in the way of my research.” Another snort from Brendon, but he motioned her to keep talking. “Would Beckett be open to interviews?”“That’s not possible at this juncture.”“Later, maybe! Clearly, I’ll have all the time in the world for him to get used to me being around. I’m just wondering.” She didn’t use it often, because she considered it demeaning, but if she carried herself right, softened her face just so, she could look seventeen and cherubic, like one of those Precious Moments figurines her mom had lined up in the cabinets back home. And everyone who saw her like that felt the need to tell her whatever she wanted to hear, and maybe give her candy, depending. “I’m so curious what it’s like here. You know?”Brendon did some quick thinking. He didn’t look like he’d come prepared for this question, but to be fair, most hostages weren’t also researching their kidnappers, so what kidnapper preps for that? “Who wouldn’t be?” he landed on, which wasn’t a yes or a no, but sounded more than a little flattered.For the first time, she felt a stab of hope. If she could talk to Pete alone, even for a minute, tell him to save himself—“That sounds like bullshit,” Ryan interjected from his corner. “If you want her to stay and Pete to come quietly, you don’t need to bargain. Just—” And he waved his hand with magical intent.Brendon’s nostrils flared with a huff. “Right as always, Ryan Ross,” he said with a fake little laugh. (She almost wished she had her journal; the status dynamics at play in this closet would have been worth writing about another day.)He leaned closer to Trish, and made a swift, fluid gesture with one hand between them. As if he’d been conducting, she heard the faint sound of the faraway waltz with a thrill of fear up her back. Sure enough, when she tried to speak, now her mouth wouldn’t do what she bid it. Traitor.“Well,” said Brendon, “this has been a nice chat, hasn’t it? Haven’t we all had a good time? Now, honestly, I’d love to get back to running my coven. If there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, don’t hesitate to let us know. Is there anything? Shake your head no.”Like she was a marionette, Trish felt her head shake slowly no.“So glad to hear it! Have a great night!”And they left her alone.She looked around the closet for something to escape with. God knows Nancy Drew escaped kidnappers enough times in the long line of yellow hardcovers on her childhood bookshelf that if there had been so much as a stray bobby pin, she could have at least tried. But even if there had been—and there wasn’t—she could barely move.Anxiety raced to fill her lungs like water, but after the initial rush, it never went anywhere; the gold threads of the waltz, pulling themselves out of the clothes on their hangers, kept her artificially placid. Tears welled up and spilled over her cheeks without anything to stop them, but while her crying back at the apartment had been a rage, this was something else. Just darkness.When Pete left her room without saying anything, not even fighting back, her future flashed before her eyes—months of silence after he moved out, then maybe, someday far down the line, being casual colleagues again. After she got over herself. But there was no way to warn Pete about the trap Brendon was setting for him, no way to get out and keep him from having to walk into it in the first place. Even if he escaped this, she didn’t feel great about their odds of coming back from two colossal fuck-ups in twenty-four hours.She should have pretended to be asleep—should have accepted his thanks for setting him up with Father Michael—gratitude was a type of attention. It wouldn’t have been so bad on the shelf; every so often he’d take her down and smile at her. But it was no good even wishing for that back, not when they were both about to end up in Beckett’s collection.It’d be a great time to be reassured by thoughts about how Pete had ruined her life. The evidence was sure all around. But she didn’t want to wallow in that; she wanted to rescue the people she loved. And that was the one thing she could not do.
CARDEN
On the one hand, it’d be nice to have a better-soundproofed coffin, because she lived in a full nest of loudmouths and was always getting woken up by shit like duels and piano sonatas at ungodly hours.On the other hand, she needed to be woken up by emergencies, and whatever commotion was happening downstairs sounded like it qualified.She dressed fast and made it into the hall in time to see a handful of the rank-and-file running by. These guys didn’t run. Something was up. She collared Ryan as he hurried past. “Congrats, you’ve been randomly selected to explain what the fuck is going on.”He shrugged. “Brendon mobilized everyone. I’ll know as much as you until I actually get downstairs.”She shoved him away, muttering, “Prick.”Her detour to recon from the front balcony ended up being the right call: Brendon was posing there like he was an ancient vampire lord on his Transylvanian castle ramparts and not a dude born in the late fifties on the balcony of his suburban McMansion. Good tactical spot, though. Credit where it was due.He barely acknowledged her as she joined him, out of habit coming to his left shoulder. “I’ll tell you again in case you’re stupid,” he called to whoever was below. “You can deal with me now.”The voice calling up from the ground was among the last voices Carden wanted to hear on this fine midnight. “And I’ll tell you again because I know you’re stupid,” said Pete Wentz, “I want to talk to Beckett.”“Why is he here?” she hissed out the side of her mouth. Brendon didn’t answer, though his thin smile looked a little smug. She sighed. “Fuck out of here, Wentz,” she called, leaning on the railing. “Beckett’s not entertaining tonight—”The words died and fell into the hedges below them. Pete was in their driveway, yeah, in his stupid gay scarf with his stupid emo hair, him and his curly-haired friend and Greta from the bar for some fucking reason.And Michael. In handcuffs, for some fucking reason.“Carden, I thought I smelled you,” said Pete. “Heard this guy was one of your special ops.” She bit her tongue until it bled. “I wouldn’t have cared if he’d just been spying. I’d be flattered. But he kidnapped Trish, so you’re gonna give her back before things get ugly.”Carden stiffened. “He what?” she hissed. “Bren, tell me he’s bullshitting.”Brendon’s musical laugh grated. “Whyever would we do that, when it’s done exactly what it was meant to? We took her, and it brought you here. All according to plan.”You can’t tear your commanding officer’s arms off in the middle of a hostage situation. It’s bad form and, more importantly, it’s bad tactics, even if your side apparently also has hostages because your commanding officer took them without telling anyone. Carden repeated this truth like she could spellcast herself into following it.“Was killing Andie according to your plan too?”Carden crossed her arms. Bad tactics bad tactics bad tactics bad tactics. She glanced at Brendon. Apparently that hadn’t been according to plan; his eyebrows furrowed for a split-second, and he didn’t have some quip ready about collateral damage. Michael, what did you do, buddy? It had to have been an accident, but that didn’t fucking matter because Pete was seething with rage.“It’s only fair,” he shouted. “Blood for blood. Bring Trish out or I’m killing your man for Andie.”Michael winced as Pete’s grip on his arm broke skin.Fuck tactics.She grabbed Brendon’s arm and wheeled around, dragging him through the balcony door, slamming him against the wall opposite. “Where’d you put the girl?”“That’s above your concern.”Her hand closed around his skinny neck. “I’ll pop your head off like a tick and tear this house apart afterward. Save us both the time.” He grabbed weakly at her arm, but his eyes were frantic-wide as she squeezed. “Where?”“Second walk-in.” He fell to his knees when she let him go, gasping in air, but she hauled him back up and shoved him to the door.“Make shit up until I get back,” she said, jabbing her finger in his direction, already headed down the hall, “and if Michael dies because you’re as shit at negotiating as the rest of your job, you’ll pray I kill you as quick.”She hated the stupid priest plan when Beckett came up with it, but it turned out there were way worse options! Turns out you could think of “Things to Do with a Fake Priest” that were dumber and more likely to backfire than “give your target evil therapy until he joins you of his own accord.” She choked down the fear rising in the back of her throat like vomit. Michael was going to be fine, because she was going to make it happen. Because she was the only person who made anything happen. Because if she didn’t…Beckett’s door was on the way to the second master. It made her stop, like the heavy thing had its own gravity. Fuck it, fuck everything. She barged in and started talking before Beckett even raised his head from where he was sprawled in the antique four-poster bed.“You wanted me jealous, it worked. But I’m not begging for my place. I’ve been your second this whole time. Not Brendon. And if you don’t know it, you’re gonna know it when you get the fuck out of bed and see what your pet hotshot got us into outside.” She swallowed. “Just saying.”Beckett sat up, like her words marionetted him into the air. “Y—you horrendous bitch,” he said slowly, incredulously. With that tone, if he wasn’t bedridden, he’d probably rip her heart out. For once, for fucking once, every trace of the Dandy prince was gone from his voice. He sounded like the kid she met a hundred years ago, sneaking into the same gentlemen’s club in stolen shoes. “Do you mean I could have had you running things this whole time, but instead you sat back and whined under your breath for years because you want—wanted to be—what? Courted?” That was the short of it. Didn’t sound flattering that way. But nice to hear she was wanted. “You’re acting like me—which is unacceptable behavior in anyone else. Get out of my bedroom.”Carden chuckled, low and dark in her throat. “Haven’t heard that one since the twenties.”“Get out!” He chucked a pillow after her as she left.She took a deep breath as she marched down the hall. If Brendon got her killed by Pete Wentz’s field trip group, at least she and Beckett had cleared the air—in their own way.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
MICHAEL
He paced the priest’s office at St. Gerard Majella fifteen times while Jo and Trish investigated the basement, moving anything that would give away who really served there: taking down Father Conrad’s name sign, hiding the photos of the man with his siblings and their children—although with the room lit by streetlight through the window, only a serious investigation would betray him.Brendon had tried to rope him into the job itself, but he demurred. “I’m doing you a favor, remember. I’m retired. I’ll set up the encounter, but I’m not laying a hand on her.”When Jo appeared at the office door, shaking and panicked, he was struck by what a meaningless self-reassurance the distinction had been.“Father, Trish is gone.” The girl rushed past him, like maybe her friend had come up early for mediocre church coffee and was hiding out. “I don’t have service out here and Trish is gone. There’s no nest, by the way, you’re fine to have church tomorrow. But she’s gone—anyway.” Michael shut the office door quietly. Jo was almost as tall as him, but as she ran her hands through her wild hair, she seemed to shrink. “Father, I don’t know—I think I fucked up, maybe?”As she said it out loud, it became real, and she burst into tears.“Here.” What he was going to say next was, “Sit down”—the comfortable blue chair by the bookshelf was probably meant for exactly this situation, but before he could specify, Jo threw herself into his arms and sobbed against his chest. And at that point, he wasn’t about to correct her. “It’s alright,” he said, patting her shoulder with the sinking knowledge that everything was eighty miles from alright.“I shouldn’t have said anything, I should have shut my big mouth,” she mumbled into his jacket. By this time, Brendon would have Trish well on their way back to the nest, leaving the church cavernously empty. “Father, are you supposed to tell your friend you love them when they...love...your other friend?”As he made out the word puzzle, it gave him a hollow sense of familiarity. “Well. I didn’t. And honestly, I’m not sure how that’s worked out for us yet. But I can tell you I know for a fact Trish did not leave because of what you said.”“For a fact?” she repeated skeptically, clearly expecting platitudes on the nature of real friendship.He smiled uncomfortably. “Ironically, given the—all this,” he said, gesturing to his clothes, “I have to confess something to you.”
PETE
Andie had to hold him back at swordpoint for several minutes to stop him from killing Father Michael when the lying scumbag showed up at their door with Jo and confessed that he sold Trish out to the Dandies. But the guy had always been a good listener, so he took Pete’s abuse with the right amount of looking like he wanted to kill himself.Finally, Pete had almost exhausted himself with swearing, so Andie let him up off the couch. He paced the living room restlessly, stopping once or twice to squeeze Jo’s shoulder where she sat white-faced on the floor by the coffin. He wasn’t going to say it in front of Jo (she might want to be like him, but it didn’t have to be in quantity of self-loathing), but he couldn’t stop thinking about Trish alone in the Dandies’ nest. They wouldn’t kill her—not while she might get them him—but...To the credit of the biggest traitor he knew, Father Michael didn’t defend himself with any of the usual bullshits: no “I didn’t know!” no “following orders,” no “didn’t realize this might ruin people’s lives.” Which Pete had to respect. No one was innocent down here, and the only people worth dealing with owned it.“I felt weird about it from the beginning,” he said, “counseling you. But it was good to see Mike again—”“Who?”“May Carden, she’s—”“Oh, we do know who that is.”“Anyway, to know she wanted me back in the game. I’d do a lot to not let her down.” Pete scoffed, but couldn’t pretend he didn’t know the feeling. “I should have pushed back when Brendon told me the plan was changing.” He’d taken Pete’s seat on the couch, Andie sitting on the arm between them with her sword across her lap in case anybody got itchy. “When you’re in that life as long as we were, you do a lot of things—” He paused to self-correct. “I was going to say that you’re not proud of, but I was proud of it all, because everyone else was proud of me, and when you spend long enough doing awful things for survival, I mean, it feels like the weight’s been lifted, doesn’t it, to find people who want you for those very things. But I’ve spent thirty years off, just me and my wife and our massively overgrown garden, and. The longer you stay away…”He’d fidgeted with his hat till it started to crease, which he noticed and put it aside to stop it taking any more damage. Without it to focus him, though, he looked around like he’d never given a speech in his life. Pete should have known, probably, that this dude didn’t preach on Sundays. Life lessons for next time someone impersonates a priest around you. “You know it’s not actually normal? Being the way we were—they still are?” Andie rested a hand on his shoulder, and the grounding presence that worked so well on their gang worked its magic on Father Michael too. (Just Michael, technically, but that felt weird, so no way it was getting said out loud.) He looked up from his hands. “I wish this was still fun. I really do, but it’s just not.”Trish would have been taking an embarrassing amount of notes throughout this, so maybe it was okay she was kidnapped.“So what now, now you’ve repented or whatever?”“I help make things right, somehow. I found a lot of peace the last thirty years. I’d like to go back to it with a clean conscience.” He stood and rested his hand on Pete’s shoulder. Pete flinched for half a second, but the touch was too genuine, like it’d always been. “I know there’s more scheming and lying and fighting to do, but when this is all over, Pete, I hope you can find some of that peace for yourself.”Jo finally looked up from the taser she’d been fucking with. “Okay, great, so you can take us to the Dandies’ nest now, right?”Michael shook his head. “They never let me see the way in or out. It’s somewhere in the west hills, but a thousand houses look like the inside of that house looked.”“Surely they’ll send a ransom note,” said Andie, “you know, demands, a meetup.”“I’m not waiting that long!” Pete snarled.“Alright,” she said placidly, refusing to rise to his bad mood, which would have been infuriating if it wasn’t exactly how she’d been as long as he knew her. “Then where do you want to start?”“I don’t know.” His pacing got faster, until he was nearly skidding on the worn wood floors as he turned. “I can’t think in this stupid apartment. Somebody wake Greta up and see if she’s still got the keys to Angels and Kings.”For the first time in days, Jo cracked a crooked grin. “You forgot the keys to your own bar?”Pete threw open the front door. “Don’t start with me, Josie. Literally everybody except you forgets their keys on the way to a hookup, and that’s only because you’re not getting any.”Jo retorted that if you weren’t getting any, you also couldn’t get your blood sucked by hookups, but he was well out the door by then.Finally, they were moving. The endgame was in sight. It was gonna be him or Beckett.“I still can’t believe you sold my bar to Travie McCoy.” Pete frowned at the sign at the bottom of the VFW stairs declaring that Angels and Kings was closed for refurbishment and would reopen soon under new management.“I called child protective services for your bar, that’s what I did,” retorted Greta, “on account of its abandonment by its deadbeat father.”“The position of tiny smartass in my life has been filled, so don’t bother auditioning.” Pete rapped hard on the door. “Trav? Hey Travie!” No response. “Greta, did you bring—”But they didn’t need Greta’s keys after all. The door swung open with an ominous creak, a mood betrayed almost instantly by the tall black vampire smiling down at them.“What’s up, Pete Wentz? Everybody’s been saying you’re dead.”Pete shook hands with the Punk lieutenant. “It’s not for lack of trying. Disashi, is Travie here?”“Oh yeah, we’ve been cleaning the place out since Greta—hi Greta!—handed it over. You got a lot of tacky shit in here, dude.”Pete waved off the diss as he brushed past him. Travie was kicked back at the bar with a Jack and coke, roasting the wall decor while a few other Punks pulled it down.When she saw Pete, she smiled slowly and pulled what looked like a contract written on the back of their menu out of her shirt pocket. “No take-backs, my man. Got it in writing.”“I don’t—” He stopped short, took a breath, “—want the bar anymore.” He felt Jo shift in surprise behind him; probably this was some deep character development moment, but he couldn’t think about that, or what he would do after tonight—if anything came after tonight. “I need your help.”It turned out Travie didn’t know, any more than they did, where the Dandies’ nest was. “Never necessary,” she said. “I always knew how to get Beckett if I needed him.”“Well, we need him.”She shrugged her shoulders. “I just asked Gabe.”Pete groaned and went back to pacing. “We don’t have time to wait for Gabe to turn up.”“Don’t have to. We can go to him.”Pete added a biting retort about also not having time to drive around Dandy turf to the industrial waterfront, which made Travie furrow her brow and say, “You know about the door, right?”“The what?”“Huh. So he didn’t tell you either.”“Must have slipped his mind,” Pete said through gritted teeth. If getting as old as some of these vampires were meant you always turned enigmatic and confusing, he’d have to have Jo stake him before he hit a hundred.Like she was showing them a fun magic trick, Travie ushered the ragtag party of heroes through the back hall, past the restrooms to the third door at the end that was always locked. By the layout of the building, it should have led into, at most, an electrical closet (but more likely the foundation), so when Travie opened it to the black sky and a wave of cold night wind, Pete shuddered both with the cold and the unsettling.“After you.”The door that until three seconds ago had been attached to a downtown underground dive bar was now built into the exterior of the long, gray warehouse next door to Cobra’s penthouse. “How long has this been in my building?” said Pete.“Apparently, since Gabe decided it was his favorite hangout and wanted quick access.”“Did you know?” he rounded on Greta. She shook her head.“You sure found your way to it,” Travie said to her. “After you got past me last night, I had a look around and found this. It definitely adds to the market value of the building,” she commented casually. “Obviously at the moment my men can pass through Dandy territory friendly enough if we want to get up north. But that might not always be true. Always nice to conduct business in the area as needed. Or visit my pal Gabe.” Saying so, she rang the doorbell.Victoria’s voice floated down through the night air. “Perfect timing: an afterparty! Come up!” And without anyone touching it, the door sprung open and let them in.The Cobras were scattered around their all-white living room, posed on various expensive, uncomfortable pieces of furniture. They looked like a statue garden for the Greek gods; pretty and powerful and allegedly helpful if you caught them in the right mood. And always down for messy drama.“Returning my visit so soon?” Victoria brightened when she saw them from her spot on the chaise, putting down whatever floral tea she was drinking. “The museum was great; Lzzy sends her love. Hi Travie darling!”“Hello, Victoria,” Travie said in full schmoozing mode, with a gallant kiss of her hand. “Gabe at home?”“Haven’t seen him all day.” When Pete sighed through his teeth, she added wryly, “Missing your boy?”At this point, Nate, who had been discreetly putting distance between himself and Greta for some reason, backed into a glass sculpture shaped like a Dr. Seuss drawing of the intestinal tract. He jumped as it clattered to the ground, and in the noise, a fifth figure in white appeared in the door.It wasn’t Gabe. It was a girl probably Greta’s age, wrapped in a faux fur blanket of the same glaring white as the rest of the apartment. She blinked sleepily and pushed her choppy hair out of her eyes, glancing around the room with that sleep-induced fearlessness that comes from not having enough of your wits about you to realize ten strangers are looking at you. “How was the party?” she mumbled. “Did you make tea?” Then her eyes fell on Michael. “Oh!”The recognition was immediate, and just as immediately followed by a look of I-shouldn’t-have-done-that. She glanced with fake non-concern at Victoria for something else to do with herself.“Hello, Cassadee,” Michael said, with equal surprise. “What…uh, what brings you here?”Victoria, who caught the whole series of Meaningful Looks, got up from the chaise so she could wrap her arm around Cassadee’s shoulders. “Cassadee has been our guest lately.” She glanced Michael up and down. “She part of your parish, Father?”“Well, uh,” Michael laughed bewilderedly. “Sort of, actually. Do you mind if I, uh, if we—”Victoria looked at Cassadee, who nodded, still clearly a little out of it but coming back to earth fast. “The salon is just through there,” said Victoria, and Michael offered Cassadee his arm. The last thing they heard her say before they disappeared into the next room was, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again—this is so weird—but hi!”“Dude, who the fuck is that?” Pete said.“Nosy, nosy, nosy.” Victoria paced the room to sink onto the white mid-century modern sectional next to Suarez. “Why didn’t Trish come with you? She’s so rude.”“The Dandies took her,” Jo blurted out.“Oh.” Vicky’s head cocked to the side, her dark lips a thin line. “Huh! Interesting.” And the room sat in tense silence until Michael and Cassadee came back, the girl looking thoughtful and resolved. “We’ll get out of your hair,” said Michael to the Cobras. “Thank you so much for your time.” His eyes met Pete’s, and he nodded.“See ya round if we don’t get killed,” said Pete as his crew filtered to the door. “Tell Gabe to answer his fuckin phone.”Cassadee hugged Michael goodbye fiercely before they left.On the other side of the Angels and Kings door—which Pete was still offended his buddy hadn’t thought to tell him he’d built in his bar—Michael said, “Cassadee gave me the mansion’s address. We can be there in ten minutes if we leave now.”“Okay, there’s a story there,” said Pete.“Another time, maybe,” Michael deferred politely.Pete thought about making a crack about how his confessions clearly hadn’t been confidential, so he should get a refund in the form of hearing other people’s, but the night was passing quicker than he liked, and every minute they wasted on small talk was a minute Beckett was getting one over on him. “Fine. Car. Andie? Jo? Trav?”“What, to storm the castle?” said Travie. “I love you, man, but no fucking way.”“If you help me kill Beckett, you can have all the Dandy territory after he’s dead.”“Is that how that works?” she smirked. “I already helped you. What are you gonna give me for that?” Pete paused, abashed. “This was between friends, and a retirement gift for leaving the bar so peacefully. Full-frontal assault has never been my style.”“Fine,” said Pete, adding begrudgingly, “Thanks.”“Greta, you going with them or sticking with me?”Greta, who’d been standing in the back of the party sipping the blood blend Andie brought along for her, dug the toe of her ballet flat into the floor. “I’ve been sitting in the bar for a long time. I want out for a bit.”“I hear that.”“But I’d like it if this didn’t have to be a binding decision for all time,” she said. “Maybe I could come back?”“Listen, if you want to roll with the Punks, Angels and Kings is the least of our turf,” said Travie, a jerk of her head directing her men to pull down Pete’s Motley Crue poster, which he glared at. “Just don’t stay out so long that I gotta dress Sashi like a priest to seduce you back.”“Oh, I wasn’t doing any seducing,” Michael clarified.“Don’t sell yourself short, thunder from down under,” Pete said with a wink that made Michael go red.But there was only so much time for quips. Jo kept a street map in her glove box because she wasn’t raised to believe in MapQuest, and she brought it in to lay out on a table for them to huddle around like British generals in some World War Two movie. They plotted their advance, sweeping north through Cobra territory until the last minute to avoid notice, then schemed their plan of attack. They needed an ace in the hole; since the point of Trish as a hostage was to get Pete, if he just waltzed up to their door empty-handed, he’d be playing directly into theirs.It was Michael’s idea to offer himself as a hostage. It was Pete’s idea to embellish the story and raise the stakes. Originally, Jo was the victim Michael killed in some scuffle at the church, but Andie suggested herself instead. “It’s a question of how distraught we want Trish to be.”“Say more,” Michael prompted.“Because it’s plausible,” she pointed out. “You could have killed Jo. Does anyone else know who went to the church?” No one. “Then it was me you killed. They’ll buy it, Trish won’t. Emotional stability achieved. Besides,” she said, pleased with herself, “I’m stealthier than Jo.” Jo spluttered, but everyone who had been woken up by her late-night quests for water and munchies knew it was true.As Greta and Michael followed Jo out front to the Oldsmobile, Pete reached out and stopped Andie in the stairwell. “How do you do it?”“How do I what?”He forgot, sometimes, because she read him so well, that she couldn’t see his face in the dark as clearly as he saw hers now. “You know, hold it together. The rest of us are in fucking shambles all the time, and you’re rock solid.”She shifted back a stair thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I wonder—sometimes—if a breakdown would feel good. Like, am I missing out on something…quintessentially human? I’m young, I guess. Maybe I should be falling apart more. But it would feel weird to force it, you know?”“You’re a fucking superhuman, Andie Hurley.”“No,” she half laughed. “It’s just not my turn yet. But I’m not worried. I’ll have you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
CARDEN
Since it was always good to count your blessings when you were about to blow your fucking top, at least Brendon actually told her where Trish was and didn’t send her on a wild goose chase around the house. The girl hung uselessly by her wrists, eyes glazed over—so Brendon still had her enthralled. Overkill as usual. “We’re not fucking keeping you,” she muttered, snapping the chain off the handcuffs with one hand and catching Trish mid-collapse with the other. With a low grunt, she threw the girl over her shoulder and stalked out.The rank-and-file were assembled by the front doors, waiting for the signal from their new fearless leader. They all shifted to look at her. “What’s the word?” said Jon. She always liked Jon.“Hold your positions. I’m ending this bullshit.”And she marched out, blinking in the warm moonlight. As soon as she saw the whites of Pete Wentz’s stupid puppy eyes, she put down the human she was carrying like a camping tent. “Here’s your girl,” she said, interrupting whatever monologue Brendon was improvising on the balcony above her. “Give him back. Now.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she grimaced.Michael, who’d been studying his hands the whole time, finally looked at her. Mike, you know where my loyalties are, he’d said. Yeah, fucker. And you know mine. Don’t look so shocked.Luckily, Pete was too busy trying to make psychic contact or whatever with Trish to notice Carden’s momentary weakness. She didn’t see the appeal, personally. Trish’s blood smelled totally average. But of course, that didn’t mean anything. If Pete had been even a fraction this insane about her before he turned, she’d be totally irresistible after. It was a stupid system, but being superhuman had to have some drawbacks, she guessed.They shouted a few more posturing threats back and forth, then Pete unlocked Michael’s handcuffs and Carden shoved Trish forward, and they were almost done.The girl, still totally out of it, stumbled on the cobblestone driveway; the blood of her scraped knees spiked the night air. But instead of rushing forward to hug her and dust her off and all that unprofessional shit, Pete and his friends froze, staring behind Carden to the front door.She turned around to chew out the other Dandies. “Jon, what did I fucking say—”Beckett was out of bed.He looked great. Tall and imposing and focused, the best dressed there, cape and all, he leaned with easy confidence on the mahogany walking stick she got him in London for his hundredth birthday, his blood vibrant and humming in her ears. He felt like a killer again.“I heard we had unexpected guests.” His eyes darkened as they fell on Pete. The rest of the Dandies filtered out behind him, spreading across the front of the house like the ivy. “Carden, ma chère, have you not invited them in?”Jesus fuck, she’d missed his showboating ass.She had no time to answer, because at the sight of Beckett, Pete crouched like a big cat, snarl and all. “He’s mine!” And he charged.So they were brawling today after all. Fun!Carden cracked her knuckles. “Like fuck he is,” she said, and she intercepted Pete’s charge and backhanded him out of the way, where Jon and McMahon and the Butcher (down from the attic!) were there to collect him. Brendon landed gracefully beside her in time to engage the curly-haired human, who pulled a stake on him. They were gonna wake the neighbors for sure. Maybe that could be post-battle breakfast. The melee swelled around her as she looked for the one person she actually needed to keep an eye on.The second she got her hands on Michael, she yanked him aside by the lapels of his stupid priest jacket. For half a second, she imagined them fighting back to back again, like old times, but what she said instead was, “Go home.” And shook him to get it through his head. “Hear me? Go the fuck home!”He did, to his credit. Put his cold hand on the crook of her neck with a look that she got, then turned on his heel and vanished.“Don’t tell your wife!” she shouted after him. He would. They were like that. But Carden would take the “I can’t believe you recklessly endangered Michael” visit over the “It’s your fault Michael is a pile of ash” visit any night.Beckett was surveying the scene from the front steps. She saluted, and he bowed to her.
TRISH
She had vaguely followed the events after Carden retrieved her from the closet, but distantly and strangely, like an IMAX movie at the science museum; it was all around her, but she couldn’t touch it, and, aside from the 4D special effects in her seat, it couldn’t touch her. Even the driveway scraping her knees and palms only felt like the static when your foot falls asleep.They were fighting. There was a fight, and she wasn’t very good at fighting. She should get out of the way. The golden music still played; everyone was moving in time to it. How strange.She blinked heavily. Jo was sparring with Brendon. If there was a way to warn her that he could enchant people, she didn’t know it, but probably ought to figure it out, though she couldn’t remember why it was important.With the best softball-pitcher form she had, Jo threw a stake. It pinned Brendon to the climbing ivy through his shoulder.As he howled, glass shattered in Trish’s mind.“Oh my God!” The world came back into screaming color—and so did the screaming pain in her shoulders from having her arms wrenched above her for so many hours. “Jo!” she blurted, like the name had been waiting in her throat to be said since the church basement. Jo turned to her, shoving back the curls that had fallen out of her ponytail. “Good shot, Batman.”Jo beamed. “Take this!” She pulled the net stun-gun from its holster on her back and tossed it across the driveway.Trish only fumbled the catch a little, and most of that she could blame on her sore arms. “Okay,” she mumbled. “I know how to use this.” She turned toward the mass battle, cocking it. “I’m a capable graduate student.” Squinting down the sight, she pulled the trigger. Not a good hit, but she did tangle the legs of a long-faced vampire as he jumped on Andie’s back. Andie gave her an acknowledging wave that turned into a “now get out of the wide open ground” wave.Right. There was a fight, and she was not very good at fighting.
GRETA
She was not properly dressed for a fight, still in the dress from her last night at the bar, stained with blood from mending Ryan’s forehead in the dressing room.In a way, it could have been an intimidation tactic, since it was he she found herself facing.“Why are you with them?” he asked, chasing her away from the heaviest battle.“I found people who would give me what I wanted.” Still unused to her new strength, she hurdled the low hedge bordering the driveway and landed heavily in the grass.“I said I was sorry!” he said. “But now that it’s done, and you’re one of us…” He caught her wrist as she threw a (again, very unskilled) punch and pulled her in, other hand catching her waist. “Join us.”She lingered in his grip a moment longer than was proper, then broke the hold and dodged among the box hedges. “I can’t!”“So you’re teasing me to pay me back for not turning you?” he complained, following her path like a dance. “You were meant to be one of us; look at you.”This exertion would once have had her long out of breath—she was a singer, not a dancer. But it was as easy now as singing to run. “Travie McCoy turned me; she’s my vampire mother now. And I gave her my word I’d return after tonight—if I wasn’t killed.”“You won’t be killed,” said Ryan irritably. They were entirely on the other side of the fountain now from the rest of the battlers, and as he tripped her to sprawl in the grass, they were lit only by the stars, which were brighter in the hills than they ever shone downtown. He pinned her down, knees on either side of her, and she imagined her hair must be splayed just so, golden across the starlit ground. After months and months of squinting over dimly lit receipts, hovering under tiny reading lights, it felt like magic to see as clear as day, Ryan leaning over her, his brown eyes dark-lined and his pretty mouth fallen open. “I can’t believe you’re becoming a Punk,” he said. “Will I ever see you again?”“You must!” She reached up to push his hair out of his eyes. “After all, if Travie and Beckett meet every single week, surely we’ll be able to.”This seemed to please Ryan. He glanced over his shoulder and scrambled to his feet, pulling her after him. A bloody stake whizzed past his ear and buried itself in the ground at Greta’s feet.“Fuck!”“Oh, God!”Brendon had freed himself from where Jo Trohman had him pinned. “Ryan,” he chided, one hand pressed to his shoulder wound.“You called?” Ryan said.“Don’t make me tell Beckett you’re pulling your punches.”Ryan sighed again. “Better keep your word,” he murmured. “Run home.”“Will you chase me?” she said daringly.He kissed her hard. “Run.”
TRISH
The sounds of the battle were nonstop and everywhere; she could only imagine how much worse it must be for the vampires with their enhanced senses. She was staying out from underfoot as best she could. It would be some Greek-tragedy bullshit if they went to all this trouble to rescue her and she got herself killed on the way out the door.She saw Andie on the steps facing Beckett alone, silver sword out. Beckett laughed slowly and pulled a sword of his own out of his cane. (Those were not street-legal in this state, but that was not remotely relevant at the moment.) Andie held her own better than anyone could, short of Pete, but Beckett pushed her down the steps of the mansion and the driveway, till she was backed against the hood of the Olds. Without breaking eye contact, she climbed onto the car, and they kept at it, raised on an island in the sea of battle.Keep breathing regularly, keep looking out on all sides. One of the Dandies’ known traits was how they fought in packs; their full strength had her head spinning trying to track it all between the dim driveway lights. Pete was pinned by at least three opponents at all times, buzzing round him like a school of piranhas, and Jo was—somewhere, doing something brave and foolish.Stay low to the ground and out of the lights. She got off a couple more shots with the net stun-gun from a distance, so she wasn’t totally useless. If the Duel of the Fates wasn’t going down on top of Jo’s car, she’d almost consider calling a run for it.As if Pete would leave. He had Beckett in his sights. The least she could do was let him finally accomplish it.Stay low, breathe steady, and look over your—Shoulder.Carden loomed over her, smiling grimly. She grabbed a handful of her hair with one hand and knocked the gun from her grip with the other, dragged her to her feet and shoved her against one of the columns. Trish scratched at her arm, trying to gasp enough wind back to scream. She wished hopelessly that she’d fallen into literally anyone else’s hands, someone who might gloat and monologue for a while, Brendon, or even Beckett.But Beckett was Pete’s tonight. He was so close.“No!” Jo vaulted the hedge, stake drawn.Carden’s head snapped toward the intrusion. Her smile widened; she caught Jo’s arm with the hand not holding Trish against the column—and broke it.Jo fell like she’d been shot.“No!” Trish wheezed against the pressure of the vampire’s arm across her chest. Carden returned her attention to her, fangs bared, eyes bright with battle. “Please,” she gasped. Pete said she’d been a vampire hunter, until she joined them. They looked the same age. Pete would also say there was something sexy about getting killed in a mirror.A stab of cold at her throat, a rush of heat.
PETE
The battle was chaotic in his ears, but he took a vicious consolation in how it would bother the rest of the vampires exactly that much. It turned into white noise anyway, as he scanned the driveway for the man he was searching for. He hadn’t made progress since the beginning, never left alone to fight one-on-one; the rank-and-file Dandies knew he was their target. And they wouldn’t have been too much trouble—he’d been fighting them since April—but he was getting special attention from everybody else too. When Beckett said over drinks he had an associate called the Butcher who remained at home, Pete assumed that was horror-movie monologuing. It was another thing to face down the guy, cleaver and apron and manic gleam in his eyes and all.“Butcher!” Brendon appeared out of the darkness who-fucking-knew-where and made a beeline to where Andie and Beckett were doing the Pirates of the Caribbean water wheel fight on top of the car.“Yep!”“To Beckett!”“Got it!” said the Butcher, taking another good swing at Pete’s head, which he flipped to dodge. The two Dandies converged on the car, pulling Andie away from their leader.Pete grabbed Jon Walker by the pretentious vest and threw him overhead into the fountain. “Andie!”“I’m fine!” she called, holding Brendon back with a foot on his chest.Then he saw it.With the three of them out of the way, he had a clear shot at Beckett.They stared into each other’s eyes across the battlefield, a gaze they hadn’t exchanged since the night at the Bagdad, Pete leaning in, if you lose I’m gonna have to kiss you (are you sure that’s losing? Beckett had said, so close their noses brushed). With Andie gone, Beckett hadn’t picked a new opponent; he was lounging on the car, long legs propped up on it rakishly, and his smile was slow and his gaze was fearless.Pete bared his fangs and ran. With one leap, he knocked Beckett to the roof of the car, his hands fisted in his lapels and a knee on his chest.“Are you going to kill me, Pete?” Beckett said breathlessly, eyes sparkling.“Yes,” Pete hissed.“After all the fun we’ve had?”Pure hate welled up in his chest, and he was about to do it, burn his heart out, put his head on a pike, quiet the gnawing voice of revenge that had never been quiet for a second while he existed like this, half-alive and hating. Beckett lifted his chin as if daring him to do it, and he would—Jo cried out. Pete’s head snapped to the mansion.Jo was crumpled at Carden’s feet.Carden, who had Trish pinned against one of the Tuscan-look columns.Who looked over her shoulder, shot him a mean smile, then bit into Trish’s throat.His vision went red like sirens like streetlights like Trish’s blood, gushing from the wound in her neck over Carden’s glowing-pale scarf—“If you don’t take your shot now,” said Beckett, “I won’t give you another.”Pete spat. “You’ll rot in hell either way.”And he flew over the hood and careened into Carden. The force knocked her back into the entry, but that was still too close—too close when her fangs were coated with Trish’s blood. They grappled, grunting until Pete threw her down the stairs.“Andie!” he screamed. His voice didn’t sound like his own, hoarse and pleading.“I know!” she shouted, running to meet them, silver sword dark with blood. “I know, I’m here.” She hauled Jo further back into the entry, then took her place between her friends and the Dandies.Pete sank to the ground beside Trish, slumped against the column where Carden dropped her. He tried to stem her bleeding with one hand, but all it did was let him feel how faintly her pulse beat. “Trish,” he mumbled, “Trish, listen, hey,” babbling nonsense to see if she’d respond. “Come back to me come back come back come—”She blinked slowly at him, eyes unfocused. “You had him.”“Him—who—” It took him too long to even track what she meant. “No, fuck him, I have you, I’ve got you. Always you.” He could feel it; she had a minute left, maybe, and no way to save her life, no way to—Oh. Fuck. He laughed, eyes stinging. “I’m gonna do something, and it’s gonna look douchey. So just know—” he winced as he bit his tongue, “—that I know, and I hate me for it too.”Travie told him about this trick once over drinks. “It’s for the people you turn because you like ‘em,” she said with a deep laugh.He tilted Trish’s deathly-pale face to his, more gently than they had time for. “Hey?” he said, hoping for some kind of permission. “It’ll be fun. I promise.” She squeezed his hand with her last strength. Before he could psych himself out about what this should have been, he kissed her.Since the invention of the kiss, there'd been five kisses that were ranked the most passionate, the hottest and sexiest. He was pretty sure he’d had one of them, sunburnt and sticky-sweet under a summer sunset. He’d also had way worse, hungover and loveless in the gray light of morning apartment blinds. So he knew the range. Kissing Trish with a mouthful of both their blood as she died in his arms and an evil vampire gang closed in on them was high in passion and catastrophically low in every other ranking. But in two hundred years they’d look back on it fondly; the badly-angled, metallic-tasting, one-partner-only-sort-of-responding discomfort was worth it the second he pulled away.Trish's eyes fluttered open, and her hand came to cup his face. “If you ever kiss me like that again, I’ll kill you.”On a normal night, “like that” would mean teasing her about whether she meant “at all” or just “with such vigor and so much tongue,” and if chaste goodnight kisses had been on the table all this time. But she had ten seconds of consciousness left, and he was still almost crying from her almost-death, so he just grinned and said, “You might actually be able to now.”Which meant she was halfway through arguing she could have killed him just fine as a human when the venom hit.
BECKETT
As he stood from the car with a stretch that made his joints crack, he couldn’t resist a rush of satisfaction. With a snap of his fingers, his men fell in around him, Brendon and Carden at his right and left. The patch of resistance on his front porch looked so small as to be laughable. Two were unconscious or nearly so, one was nowhere to be found (he’d have words with Ryan later; he had said particularly Greta was not to be turned), and the other two—well, they were formidable foes, but they were only two.The foot lighting along the driveway cast long shadows across Pete’s battered form as they advanced.“You fought so bravely,” he said smoothly. In the sudden silence of the night, his voice carried. The low hum of a car driving up the hill distracted him briefly, but it was not relevant. “And you brought me another convert. How sweet.” Andie and Pete angled themselves between him and Trish’s rigid body. “It’s only a matter of hours before she wakes up starving. Surely it would be more fun to spend that first night with the best hunters in the city, hm?”The car was only growing louder. He shook his head as if to shake water out of his ears. None of their neighbors were the late-night gadabout type. It had been one of the particular draws of moving onto this street.Headlights flared behind him. “What in God’s name—”An absurdly long Jeep limousine, shining white in the driveway lights, rolled into the driveway, parking opposite Pete’s clunky Oldsmobile. Music bumped from the innards of the car, slinky and self-consciously modern, so loud one could see the entire vehicle shaking with the bass.Only one party would announce themselves so.Sure enough, the limousine driver opened the door, and out stepped Cobra, Victoria first, with Gabe on her arm, and the others behind them. But their normally laissez-faire formation was tight and controlled, their gazes lingering too long wherever they turned their unblinking, snakelike eyes.
Beckett had not seen them like this in a very long time. They did not come as friends. But until they named their business, he strolled out of formation to greet them simply as the second set of uninvited guests who had interrupted his night. “Victoire,” he said, arms wide.
“So kind of you to grace us with your presence.”
She walked the cobblestones easily, even in her sky-high heels, and kissed his cheeks. “Becks, babe, it’s been too long. Why weren’t you at our party in August?” The words were plain enough, but there was something uncanny, inhuman in her cadence.
“I’ve had,” he said sourly, “a great deal going on of late.”
“So I hear! I have come to collect our property that was delivered to your house by—I’m
sure
—an innocent mistake.” The determined set of her jaw meant she believed those words as little as he did. She pointed to the party huddled on his front step. “At the party
you did not come to
, they ate our food. A lot of it.” His fists clenched involuntarily as a stab of apprehension chilled his heart. After all this, after coming so far…
“They are mine.”
“You wouldn’t dare collect on that,” He forced more unconcern into his tone than he strictly felt.“I would. I am. They belong to the fae court.”“What the fuck?” Pete mumbled, half-forgotten.Beckett smirked at his ignorance, though knowledge was not proving to be as great a power as the adage claimed. “And if I refuse?”Victoria smirked, tilting her head to Gabe so her glitter eyeshadow caught the light. “Thought you might say that.”Gabe broke ranks and crossed the no-man’s-land between their parties. He rested one arm on Beckett’s shoulder, creating a boundary between the two of them and the listening Dandies. “Come on, man. Don’t make this weird.”“No one asked you to poke your well-shaped nose into matters that didn’t concern you.”“You know everything concerns us.” He caught Beckett’s chin with his finger, lifted his head. There were precious few to whom he had to look up. Gabe was the only one who could get that close. “William,” he said, so low no one else could hear. And oh, the nail-point shudders that name sent down his back like a chalkboard. He could no more resist anything Gabe would ask now than his own thralls could. A filthy trick.“What.” If resistance was not possible, petty delay was.“Give them to us.”“Go fuck yourself, Gabe,” he said, but there was no power behind it. “I’ll never forgive you.”“Yeah, right. I’ll buy you a drink in fifteen years.”Gabe motioned to the rest of the Cobras, and Beckett held up a hand to keep his men from intervening as they collected his prisoners from where they sat in stupid silence on the steps. “Nate can take your car…” said Ryland helpfully; “we laid out garbage bags so you don’t get blood all over our seats…” So they went, carrying Trish between them. Pete cast one last look over his shoulder as he climbed into the limousine. Beckett did not dignify him by meeting his eyes.Gabe was the last to go.“Leaving without so much as a kiss goodbye?” Beckett called after him. “Scoundrel.”Gabe turned around, exasperation and hunger in his dark eyes. “Never.” And he kissed him, deep and slow and full of promise, and Beckett smirked into it, because—though he didn’t say it now—someday he’d twit Gabe with how easily Gabe did what he wanted without name magic.Carden joined him to watch as the white limousine finally drove away, fading spiritlike into the darkness down the road. “So. Have we all learned a lesson about human boys—and the fucking fae?” she said out of the corner of her mouth.“I preferred you when you were resentfully and silently obedient.”“Tough.”They stood in silence together, the other Dandies quietly picking up the aftermath of the battle and filtering, one by one, back into the mansion.“I thought,” he said, voice measured lest he admit too much by it, “you might have gone this time.”“Are you kidding?” And she broke out into a mean smile, his own May again. “Brendon staged a coup. I have to watch you court-martial him.”The first gray shafts of sunrise began to dim the stars. With a flick of his cape, he swept back toward the mansion, Carden at his side. Victoria had made a decisive move, and the pieces on his own side of the board needed rearranging, but the game played on.
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TRISH
“Oh,” she gagged. “The texture really is awful.” Get a finer grater and look into additive flavorings. The ache in her mouth didn’t subside as she drank, but at least she wasn’t seeing double on top of it.She had slept through the day and into the night, and the nightmares she had, she might never write down. But to go from the jolt awake, screaming and starving, into Andie’s warm hands on her shoulders, helping her sit up on the ugly old couch, pressing a drink into her hand, to Jo hanging back against the wall, waiting till it was safe to hug her with her good arm, face buried in her neck—the difference was so stark she could cry.She had always been pale.“Told you it sucked.” Pete brought her a half-shot of Maker’s in the Snoopy mug to wash it down. She looked up questioningly at him as their hands touched over the mug—he remembered; he couldn’t remember garbage day after ten months in the apartment, but he remembered what she drank the first day they met. Always you. “We should switch neighborhoods,” he said. Or something like it. She nodded, unhearing. Pete’s eyes were golden in the dark, and she could hear his blood singing in her ears. And there was so much to write.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
GABE
Ryland and Suarez had already set things up with a broker to sell the warehouse furniture, as well as the building itself. Nate let their contacts know their forwarding address—at least the contacts they cared to stay in touch with. Cassadee, who was part of the family now, stacked the six white suitcases at the top of the stairs for the limo driver, then spent the hour before he showed up buzzing around for more to do until Victoria demanded her she stop helping and relax on pain of banishment.“Are you sure you’re alright with this?” said Victoria as they stood in the empty penthouse, taking one dramatic last look out the tall windows over the city they’d conquered.“We’d never be able to top this exit,” he said. “Are you kidding?”“Until next time,” she said.“Obviously.”He’d done this before. You make your name, make the city know you and need you and love you or fear you (or both; that’s always sexy), then you leave them wanting more.This was the first time he’d moved on with other people. He had to admit, as Victoria slipped her white-gloved hand into his and pulled him downstairs where the rest of the team were waiting, it had its charms.He held open the limo door. “Where to now?”“I’m so sick of the rain,” she said. “Would you follow me to Los Angeles?”The driver pulled out, headed for the freeway.“That sounds perfect,” said Cassadee.“I’m there,” said Nate.“Naturally,” said Ryland.“You’ve got me,” said Suarez, passing out champagne glasses.“Anywhere, my lady,” said Gabe. “But I’m glad you didn’t say somewhere lame.” Everyone fell into debating the shittiest city they’d still follow Victoria to (which included an awful lot of Jersey slander for guys from Florida). Yeah, there were perks to being a roving charlatan with friends.Gabe lifted his glass. “To fame, and success, and all that great shit.”
End.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Baseball Furies:
Who doesn’t love a baseball-themed vampire gang? The Furies have a deal with the Bizarres to keep most of Goose Hollow (including, of course, the stadium), not because they’re not capable of fucking shit up, but because they’re from the older crowd, where that sort of gentlemen’s agreement was much more common. I love the mental image of these guys in baseball uniforms and face paint striking important deals with the Bizarres in their Dutch Golden Age traders’ regalia.
Bizarres:
The main gang in our neighborhood is known as the Bizarres. All the founding members are seventeenth-century Dutch tulip speculators who died of either economic crash or the bubonic plague. Their principal traits are cliquishness, high aesthetics, and having opinions about the dot-com bubble. There can’t be more than six or seven of them left these days, and they’re by and large harmless.
Bordens:
The Bordens get a lot of shit because they only eat men and turn women (for a fuller discussion of how pre-transformation culture impacts a coven’s dietary ethics, using the Bordens as a test case, you’ll have to actually read the paper). It seems like a myth. There have definitely been men reported at Borden events. Possibly just Goths dating across coven lines; the dress styles are remarkably similar. Lzzy, the leader of the Bordens, is about as old as my mom, which is practically a baby by vampire standards. She’s a lot more upwardly mobile than their past leaders. Stay tuned to see if they make a move to get bigger than their current status as a niche interest.
Electric Company:
The most tech-forward of the covens—at least until Cobra came to town and started arming everyone (more about Cobra elsewhere). They throw good parties and seem welcoming to outsiders, but it seems like that may be hiding some insecurity about their position in the city. We’ll see if their tech lets them keep the prominence they had when some of these younger covens get their footing.
Goths:
A generation ago, the Goths were the most prevalent group we had. Stories are mixed on what led to their decline (Pete likes to say it happened when they banned CFC’s in aerosol hairspray, because, he says, a Goth without their puffy teased hair is just some fucking emo. Do with that story as you will).
Whatever the truth, Goth territory is highly restricted these days. However, because their look is so quintessentially…well, Goth, they’re able to hide in plain sight in a way other covens can’t. We visited the Coffin Club (their HQ) to see a show a few months ago, and it’s mixed-company, but you could
not
tell who was actually a vampire and who was just really big into the Cure. Probably some of both. Robert Smith himself could have been there and he might have gotten offered a blood cocktail.
Hipsters:
The Hipsters are a splinter group from the Punks, but they remain begrudging allies, so if you’re on the wrong side of either of them, good fucking luck getting across the Burnside Bridge. Pete’s buddy Deadstop leads the Hipsters out of a converted arcade on the inner east side, just south of the Munsters’ territory.
Munsters:
The Munsters are a joint vampire/werewolf gang who run in the areas around the arena and the mall across the river. Fun anecdote: I used to work at that mall! Nobody bothered me; I didn’t find out until way after I quit that half the stores were a front for the Munsters. Especially the plasma donation clinic. I probably should have seen that one coming. Maybe I should also have realized the guys who own the mall weren’t entirely human, but sometimes you don’t figure these things out until Pete introduces you to your former employers at a werewolf bar.
Punks:
At the time of writing, the Punks are by far the most impactful coven in the city. They control the whole waterfront and seven of the bridges, so anyone hoping to cross the river either has to go way south and risk getting too far into human country, WAY north and cross Cobra, or just play really fucking nice with Travie McCoy. Full disclosure: she’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. And I’ve told her so to her face, which is why I get to cross bridges so often.