Chapter Nine – Jack
Chapter Nine
Jack
I woke up and nuzzled the back of Paco’s head. It was dark now—and there were two angry girls in the next room. Sugar was easily dealt with, but Luna? Keeping her here was lunacy. I snorted, kissed Paco’s cheek, and got out of bed.
Sugar wound around my ankles right on cue, but Luna was gone, leaving only a few sheets folded on the couch.
Everything else seemed normal though—even the way the front door was still locked.
How had she managed that? I opened up all the closets, not entirely sure how I would feel if I found her swinging inside one.
When she wasn’t in any closets, or underneath the couch or bed—I didn’t know where she’d gone and I didn’t like it.
I’d been a fool to let her stay during the day.
It would’ve been too easy for her to do something destructive, to haul me out bodily and throw me into sunlight.
Her hurting me was one thing, but if she hurt Paco—killing him before I’d managed his rebirth—I’d never forgive myself.
Whatever her motives and wherever she’d gone, she hadn’t left a note. I unlocked and relocked the door on principle, and got into the shower.
Thirty minutes later I was incredibly early for my nightshift at Dark Ink—but as the New Boss I needed to make a good showing. I swung the door open, heard the bells chime, and who did I see behind the counter?
Luna.
“Hey Jack!”
She was lounging over the counter like she belonged, wearing a short black skirt with a slouchy neon pink shirt that had a graphic black design. It made her skin look pale and her hair look darker.
“Hello, Luna,” I said. I had told her she’d have a job, I just hadn’t expected she’d take me up on it. Nor, apparently, make copies of my apartment keys. The phone rang and she darted into the office to answer.
Jamez emerged from the piercing studio, clearly looking for Luna until he saw me. I pretended not to notice and wound my way through the saloon doors. “How’s it going?”
Merril looked up from a client and lifted his foot off the treadle for his tattoo gun. “A lot of bikers today.” His expression, behind where his client could see, acknowledged that that was odd.
His client, on the other hand, grinned at me.
He had leather pants on, but his vest with its distinctive howling wolf logo was hanging from a nearby chair, and his shirt was off.
I didn’t recognize him—I hadn’t gotten the chance to meet all of the Pack during their recent leadership-changing commotion—but if Nikki had been sending him and others over, I’d return her bra to her personally.
“Bikers do like tattoos,” I said. “Wolf prints?” I guessed.
“Nah. Girlfriend’s name,” the client answered, and his grin got even wider.
Part of the Pack’s recent problem had been their women dying during pregnancy.
If Angela and I had helped manage to solve that, Dark Ink would have a steady stream of clients for years to come.
I grinned back at him, hoping for the best for both of us, and Luna returned from the office to show me a calendar.
“I didn’t know what system you all were using so I’ve been doing this—if you give me a login to the computer, I can make something more formal, and send out booking reminders to artists and clients.”
I surveyed her work. It was full of neatly written names, phone numbers, and email addresses. “Sure.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am surprised.”
She rolled her eyes at me. Her make-up was impeccable but there were light circles below her eyes—she hadn’t slept much.
Human after all. “I was Rosalie’s right hand.
You think a strip club runs itself? If you’re not careful you get forty girls on Saturday, no one makes enough cash to get by, and you’ve got shit performers on your Wednesday night.
” She scooped up the calendar she’d shown me to her chest. “I’m actually good at this. ”
“I believe you,” I said, convinced. “I’ll give you administrator access tonight.”
She nodded primly, sending her straight bangs bobbing. “Thank you.”
The phone rang again. She went to answer it and my gaze followed her.
She was the prettiest, tastiest thing currently in the room, and it was like my hunger woke up and opened its eyes.
I leaned forward onto the counter—and saw Jamez giving her much the same look.
While the hunger was a vampire’s imperative alone, most mortal men were still afflicted.
Jamez used her absence to come up to me. “I’ve been showing your girl the piercing ropes.”
“I appreciate that—but she’s not my girl.” He was a far more suitable candidate for her affections. Lanky, equally goth, and there wasn’t an appendage on him that didn’t have a piece of metal through it.
“I am too, silly. Whether you like it or not,” Luna said, returning, giving me a smile. Attempting to kill me with kindness. I wondered how long she’d keep trying. “I even got you a booking, just now.”
“When? Who?”
“Some lady. Two AM tonight. Didn’t give a name.” Luna flashed me her handwritten calendar again. There was a series of question marks in beside 2 AM. “She just wanted to make sure you’d be here.”
Her eyes flickered to mine. She alone knew my secret—well, her and the werewolf Merril was tattooing. I hadn’t had a choice but to come out to the Pack while helping them and as it turned out something about half-dead vampires was nearly irresistible to them in bed.
“Probably a former client. Wanting to surprise me.” I shrugged one shoulder. Over the course of working at Dark Ink for years, I had slept with an innumerable amount of people, and Vegas was a tourist town. It’d be interesting to see who came back again.
“And who doesn’t like surprises?” Luna said, before giving me a clearly fake grin.
One by one, the evening crowd finished up.
Charla came in and put an outline down on a squirming woman that she practically had to sit on to keep still, managing to do a gorgeous job and earn a fat tip from the woman’s husband who, I suspected from their terse banter, had been wanting to sit on his wife for years.
Then there was a rush of lookie-loos, people enticed by the neon sign but who were too afraid to commit—although Luna did her best to cajole them.
I watched her work the crowd, killing time with us before their reservations at a newly renovated restaurant nearby.
They appreciated the flash art on the walls—some of which I’d just posted—and they appreciated her.
She was perfectly attentive, despite her Wednesday Addams exterior, offering them water or coffee, and telling them more locals-only things to do off Strip—and when they had to go, genuinely telling them she hoped they’d come back.
Jamez and I watched her like she’d grown an extra head.
“Did that just happen?” Jamez asked me.
“Pretty sure, yeah.” Dark Ink Tattoo was a good shop—but we weren’t known for our warmth and out-going nature—unless the part where I slept with clients late at night counted.
“Huh,” he said, before heading back to his autoclave.
Huh, indeed. Luna was drawing a map for one of the stragglers, who would’ve rather been getting her phone number instead, I’d bet. She looked up and over, caught me watching, and waved.
Then clients and artists dwindled, until we were the only two people left in the shop.
“So did you have a good first day?” I asked. I liked what she’d done—and what I’d seen of her in here with other people. I wondered if I pretended to play along, if she’d pretend too.
She hopped up onto the counter. Her skirt was so short, I knew the glass would be cold against her thighs. “It was all right. Different.”
“From Rosalie? I’m sure.”
She waved her hand in between us, like she were polishing a mirror. “Is this really all there is to you, Jack?” Her nose crinkled, like a bunny.
I sighed. I knew without her saying what she was asking. “Yeah. This is pretty much how I want to be. People like me. I get paid to draw on them with needles. Mysterious women and-or men call up to make sex appointments with me. This is good.”
“There’s no drugs? Or mind control? Or torture?” she asked.
I stifled a laugh. “Not on my watch, if I can help it. Normal people don’t want those things.”
Her eyebrows rose. “But you’re not a person, Jack. You’re a vampire.”
“And you’re not normal,” I said. “Why is that? Did Rosalie break you?”
Luna’s head snapped back like I’d hit her. “No. Rosalie…I wanted what she offered, so I offered myself, to her. Once I’d realized what she was, and what she could help me become.”
And here it was, the real reason I was being forced to suffer her attention. “So you don’t want to offer me blood or sex out of the kindness of your own heart, is what you’re saying. You want something in return for it.”
She hopped off the counter. Despite having been on best behavior earlier, and wearing an innocently pink top now, the cravenly hungry Luna I’d met the prior night came back, padding toward me like a jungle cat.
“People pay for things, Jack. There’s no shame in an honest transaction. I want what you have. I’m willing to give things to get it. Commerce makes the world go round.” Her voice dropped an octave, to a throaty purr. I stood unmoved.
“What if I told you that what I have is a curse that I wouldn’t wish on anyone?”
She groaned and rolled her heavily lined eyes. “Then I’d ask why the hell you gave it to Paco.”
“He’s different. He was going to die.”
She picked a pencil up off of the counter behind her and held it with the sharpened tip at her throat. “And if I dug my carotid out to bleed, what would you do?”
I stood still, implacable. “I’d go get some paper towels.”
She watched me for any hint of emotion and then snorted, oddly satisfied. “For someone who thinks they’re so human, you’re not.” She put the pencil down and behind her the bells chimed as someone walked in.
“Hello?”