Chapter Twenty-two – Jack
Chapter Twenty-two
Jack
I stepped back into my own apartment, where Zach had mostly assembled himself. “Who were they?” he asked.
“Friends.”
“Both of them?”
“Yeah.”
“He looks dangerous.” The irony of him using his safeword to describe Paco did not elude me. “You two have history?”
“Yep.” I reached for the waist of my jeans. I needed to shower again before I left home. “You’ll find I have a history with a lot of guys. Which is why you should forget me.”
“You’re kidding me—I’m not going to leave you alone until I make you come.”
“I guess that means you’ll just have to keep trying,” I said without thinking as I unzipped my fly. He looked momentarily hopeful. “But not right now.”
“No.” His shoulders slumped. “I’ve got to get to work.”
“I hope you have another uniform. And time for a shower.”
“I do, and barely.”
“Good.” We stood, facing each other like duelists in the old west, his hands in his pockets and my hands on my waistband. “Get going, Zach,” I said, lightly shaking my head.
He swept his shirt up off the ground. “See you—Jack.” He said my name separately, like it was a codeword—and then went for the door. I locked it behind him and sat down with my phone and pulled up Paco’s name and sent him three texts.
Address?
What kind of clients does your boss represent?
And—I can explain.
I tossed my phone onto my bed, and hopped back into the shower.
By the time I came out of shower number two he’d responded with Mark’s address—Mark lived on Eagles Landing Lane, south of Vegas, in hills with a distant view of the Strip—casino interests, and don’t bother.
That’s what I’d been hoping about Mark’s clientele.
You didn’t make a lot of money working the DUI/worker’s comp circuit in this city—to afford Paco and his ilk, he had to be making big bucks, which meant he had big connections, which was good because there was no way I was going to sell my idea to Rosalie otherwise.
I’d realized halfway through my fight with Daziel that I couldn’t take on an entire gang of werewolves alone—and killing them off individually would take too long, and leave Angela far too exposed.
Which meant that I—and Paco, and whomever else Mark had hired—needed back-up: which meant asking Rosalie.
She’d have a price, of course, and it might be too high to afford, but I wouldn’t know until I’d asked her.
I pulled on clean jeans, a nice shirt, and my new leather jacket courtesy of Francesca, and killed a few hours, before hailing an Uber back to my car at Angela’s apartment complex.
Forty-five minutes after that, I was parked outside Vermillion, again. I’d spent the past ten minutes just sitting there, perfecting a pitch in my head and planning how I was going to get in and out without getting roped into doing sexual favors for half the club’s clientele.
After that, I steeled myself, got out of the car, and marched in.
The girls inside flocked around me until they recognized me, and then blew me off, as I walked to the bar.
The night was young, and there were only a few men here, most of them were at tables or waiting by the main stage, and I took my spot in the queue.
“He’s in back,” said the man next to me, companionably.
“He?” I asked, as the back door swung open. And just like in my very infrequent but always traumatizing nightmares, Tamo emerged—only this time he was holding trays of clean glassware.
I should’ve run but I froze instead, refusing to believe that it was him. Then he set the glassware down and looked over, the scar I’d given him on his forehead clearly visible.
“Jack. Long time no see.”
“Yeah.” Did he remember how I killed him? I’d been so careful….
Rosalie came out of the same door. “My two favorite boys!” she said, and clapped her hands, then scanned the room past us until she saw who she liked, gesturing at a girl, and then pointing at the bar.
An unnamed stripper walked forward to man it, as Rosalie went to the side, and looked to me. “Come on back, Jack.”
And like the dutiful vampire she compelled me to be, I followed.
The three of us were in the small kitchen behind Vermillion’s bar, with Tamo taking up most of the space. Death hadn’t made him any thinner.
“I thought you were….” I began slowly.
“Dead? Only for a little while.” He turned and smiled at Rosalie.
“Like a little while at the time? Or like she went and dug you up?”
“Don’t be gauche, Jack. I knew you two didn’t get along, and I didn’t want either of you to come up with ideas, so I’ve been very carefully keeping you apart.”
“Until tonight.”
“I didn’t expect you to visit twice in a row—and I was afraid you’d drop werewolves on my club.
If a werewolf showed up here, you couldn’t blame me for wanting Tamo at my side.
” She was sidled up against him, like a cat, and he wrapped a possessive arm around her—and now I realized why she used me infrequently and had the patience to deal with my refusals—because Tamo was not the refusing type. “So why are you here again?”
I looked from one to the other of them. “Because of the weres—and because of a possible business opportunity.”
Rosalie tilted her head. “I’m listening.”
“Say the woman I’m protecting had the backing of a major casino—what would it take for you to fight by her side?”
Tamo named an absurd amount of money, and Rosalie shook her head. “No—that’s short-sighted. Why would you take a flat fee, when you can install a printing press?”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“A club of my own on the strip, as part of their casino. They’d give us space, we’d leverage their discounts on liquor, and we’d have more of a dance floor for the proles, but we’d keep my extraordinary girls in back to dance, at triple the rates they ask for here.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought about this before,” Tamo said.
“Because I have,” Rosalie agreed, then returned her attention to me. “But there’s only three, maybe four, hotels there that have both the money and the space.”
“What form of protection would you be offering in exchange?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Depends on the contract, and the club. Anything from night-time guards to a private desert bunker.”
I was surprised to hear about that, but Tamo wasn’t. A bunker sounded much more guardable than a house—especially when the vampire guards would be asleep during the day. “How could I guarantee the bunker option?”
“A club at the Fleur De Lis, of course,” she answered without thinking. “I don’t have a French accent for nothing, Jack.”
Only the newest and most expensive hotel on the Strip. I rocked back on my heels. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. But don’t dare dream of involving us until contracts are signed, which, quite frankly, I don’t see happening. And don’t you dare expose our kind to them to get them to sign. None of them must know. Mortals that know begin to get ideas, and I find ideas intolerable.”
I nodded. Her terms were understandable, and I could hardly expect vampires to expose themselves otherwise.
Her expression changed from cruel to cat-like. “So would you like to stick around? I’m sure I can find agreeable work for you to do.” Her lips lifted in a tease.
“No, I’m fine tonight, thank you,” I said quickly, backing out of the kitchen and into the bar.
I went straight from the bar out into the parking lot, and was halfway to my car when, “Jack, wait,” compelled me.
I stood stock still, facing forward, hearing the sound of Rosalie’s heels walk up behind. She rounded me and looked obstinately up. “Did you honestly think I didn’t know what happened?”
And this was why she’d never compelled me to tell her the truth—she already knew it. “I thought he was dead,” I said, trying to play it off. I’d overdosed him on sleeping pills and insulin—one to knock him out, the other to put him into a coma that he’d die from.
“Well I’m sure the dawn was coming, and you couldn’t stick around long enough to find out.”
“But his heart….”
She slapped me, hard. “What do you know of his heart?”
The fierce way she was looking at me now—and the way she’d been with him in the kitchen—my mistress was in love. It was a strange look for her. “He wanted to kill me,” I said, as my hand cradled my cheek—if I were a mere mortal, she would’ve broken my jaw.
“And I should’ve let him, seeing how poorly you’ve repaid me for the gifts I’ve bestowed on you.
” Rosalie folded her hands in and looked unflappable again.
“I’ve known what you’ve done this whole time, and never told you.
Think on that. Think on all the things that I probably know, and as of yet have no cause to share. ”
Paco, Angela—hell, now, even Zach. I grit my teeth and looked down.
“As it was, you merely forced my hand. My sweet Tamo knows nothing, content to enjoy his every day here in the forever-life with me. And while I don’t think he’d regret being turned—I’ve never seen a man take so well to it—he might have cause to be angry about the manner of his turning.
Especially since there was no way you could know I was to save him, and you wanted him to die the final death. ”
“I had to protect myself,” I muttered. She snorted to let me know what she thought of that.
“Come back with a contract in hand, and then we’ll see about helping. Until then, if you die, die alone like a dog,” she said, dismissing me with one hand as she turned to go back to her club. I watched her go and waited until the door had shut behind her to get into my car.