Chapter 11
Up to this moment, my life had been sadly lacking in brawny six-four vampires wearing booty shorts, cowboy boots, and flowing silky kaftans to a soundtrack of Ella Fitzgerald belting out “I’m Beginning to See the Light” complete with hisses and pops from the record.
Thank goodness that this stellar Wednesday morning had rectified that.
Sach and I cocked our heads sideways in identical movements to better study this fascinating specimen, but we turned at a loud choked noise.
Natán’s female vamp minion from the other night was back on Aviva-stalking duty. She’d stepped into the middle of the street from wherever she’d been hiding to openly gape at Silas.
Our friend’s eyes widened into saucers. “You’re not Darsh.” He slammed the front door shut, leaving Sachie and me stranded on the stoop under overcast skies.
Sach narrowed her eyes at the door. “That robe thing had no pockets. Nowhere to stash a weapon.”
I checked, but the female vamp underling was gone. Hopefully back into her hiding place and not running to tell tales. “Silas is a weapon.”
“There’s that.” My bestie paused. “He did look fetching.”
We both broke into snorted laughs.
The gate swung open with a creak and Darsh strode up his front walk carrying two bags from our favorite bagel place.
One look at my vampire friend with his slinky elegant lethalness and the reasonable guess would be that he lived in a penthouse apartment. Or a crypt. No one ever expected him to live in a crooked little character house, all slanted floors and jewel-tone painted rooms. Oddly, all the sharp edges and pools of sunlight through vampire-safe windows (filters needed only on the brightest of days for Darsh) suited our friend to a T.
“You’re early.” He sailed up the front stairs and unlocked the door.
“Yup,” I said, following him inside and toeing off my shoes. “Like always.”
“Time is a construct,” Sachie said.
The music had been shut off, which was too bad, because that was a great album. Also, the idea of Silas dancing around unselfconsciously made me happy.
Darsh led us through the living room with its plush velvet furniture to the blue and white kitchen. The floors creaked when Sachie and I walked over them, but he glided silently along like he was part hoverboard. He shoved one of the bags into my chest, telling me to cut the bagels.
Sach was already opening the drawer for the bread knife.
Silas lumbered down the stairs and entered with a stiff bow. He’d changed into an ironed plaid cowboy shirt tucked into dark jeans. “Good morning.”
Darsh shook his head. “You didn’t need to put yourself out because of these two.”
“I lost track of time,” Silas said. “Not very professional of me.”
No, Silas was always professional and appropriate. But he’d also confided in me about the dark shit in his head after almost two hundred years of being a vampire. If Darsh brought out a side of Silas that allowed him to live outside some rigid code of behavior and be in a place of color and silkiness and dancing around living rooms, then I was all for it.
“Sorry we startled you,” I said.
Since Sach and I were as familiar with Darsh’s kitchen as our own, we prepped the bagels, putting Silas on coffee duty for the in-need-of-caffeine humans, while Darsh went upstairs to get supplies for my disguise.
He returned hoisting a giant makeup kit and another bag with his hair-styling equipment like they weighed nothing, turning his dining room into a makeshift beauty salon. Admittedly, it was a very orderly salon. Darsh slapped Sachie’s hand away when she moved his array of foundation bottles out of their neat line.
I was allowed half a bagel and two swigs of coffee before Darsh hauled me to the kitchen sink to wash my hair. I tuned out his litany of woes about the shameful condition of my follicles, which lasted until I was seated with a plastic cape around my neck at his dining room table.
My beauty guru, now wearing gloves, picked up the cup with the bleach cream and slathered it on the first hank of hair.
I’d agreed to change my hair color rather than deal with a wig, but I still grimaced at the sight of the bleach.
Sach looked up from her bagel. “That’s going to take some adjusting.”
“Aviva has put herself in my hands and she will look fabulous. Totally unlike her regular self.”
“Was I just insulted?” I said.
“Go with yes,” Sach replied, sneaking me another sip of coffee.
Darsh worked swiftly, half my head soon covered. “I’m still unclear about your role in this operation. You don’t know enough about art to represent Silas and his collection.”
A pit of dread formed in my stomach. I wasn’t supposed to be the one to break the happy news to Darsh. For one, he was going to kill the messenger, and Silas was much harder to dismember than me. “I’m not his broker. I’m his girlfriend.”
Darsh yanked sharply on my hair, and I flinched. “Whoops,” he said with no remorse. “Silas,” he trilled. “You left out an important detail about your triumphant Maccabee return.”
Silas strolled into the dining room. “What’s that?”
“The part where Avi is your girlfriend in this little scheme.”
“Does that matter?” Silas watched him intently.
Darsh slapped more bleach cream on my hair. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
I shot Silas a look. Dude, do not anger the man with the ability to bleach me into baldness.
When he turned away, Sach raised an eyebrow in question at me, but it wasn’t even 10AM and I’d had only a couple mouthfuls of coffee. I was nowhere near ready to deal with this drama.
I bit into a bagel. Crumbs scattered to the plate and Darsh glared at me. I glared back. I had a plate. I was in an eating-designated room. Trust me, I’d made the mistake of snacking in his living room once. Never again. His kvetching still rang in my ears.
While Darsh didn’t like sharing (or messes), he also didn’t like admitting that constantly hanging out with Silas meant anything. Sach and I hadn’t gotten any sexual conquest details thus far, which meant that either: a) nothing had happened, indicating that Darsh was fighting feelings hard, or b) something had happened, and he wasn’t dishing about it. See previous conclusion.
“Ezra is okay with this?” Darsh asked.
“What’s not to be okay with?” I frowned. “We aren’t actually dating.”
“Please.” Darsh waved one gloved hand. “This dinner date is just a formality, and we all know it.”
“First off,” I said snippily, “ we don’t all know anything. Second, if Ezra doesn’t trust me, no matter what the situation, I wouldn’t want to be with him again. And third?—”
“She was talking about her and Silas,” Sachie said. “The not-dating part.”
“Yes. That. Thank you.” I’d pointed at Sachie as I spoke, and light glinted off my Maccabee ring. I was going undercover on an awesome case as a level three operative and the great love of my life wanted to reconcile. I should have been ecstatic, but my ring felt tight because I couldn’t see a way forward for both those things to have a happily-ever-after.
If I was being honest with myself, I hadn’t simply rescheduled on Ezra because of work demands. Saying yes to him would set back my career dreams and years of hard work, but the idea of not taking this second chance made me feel sick.
Darsh snapped off a glove. “The bleach has to sit for half an hour.”
Suddenly he gasped.
I touched a finger to my hair, not that I could see if something had gone wrong, but he was storming over to Silas, who’d ripped a piece off a bagel and popped it in his mouth.
“What,” Darsh said testily, “are you doing?”
Silas swallowed. “Eating? I like to try food now and again.”
“Without a plate?” Darsh toed at the crumbs by Silas’s foot.
“Guess I’m not a very good houseguest.” Silas met Darsh’s gaze, a challenge to the stubborn set of his chin.
Darsh broke the stare down first and stomped upstairs with the bleach and used gloves.
Sach slipped from her chair with a muttered, “I’ll get the broom.”
“Naw. My mess,” Silas said wearily, heading for the kitchen. “I should have known better.”
“You stay with this one, I’ll go upstairs?” I said.
Sach nodded.
I got halfway up the stairs when my phone rang. I’d have ignored it, but it was Michael so I didn’t.
Too bad that I didn’t even get to say hello before she was tearing a strip off me for instructing Gemma to set up a meeting with Roger. The director had just endured the mayor’s wrath for Maccabee insensitivity and the Casey camp was now off-limits to us entirely. To make matters worse, Keira was also furious because her decision to hand Chandra’s murder investigation to the Maccabees was being called into question by the mayor’s office as well.
Resisting the urge to compliment my mother’s lung capacity since she had yet to take a breath, I cut into her rant. “I stand by my decision.” I sat down on the stairs. “You’ve never given a shit about upsetting any of our mayors, so be honest about what’s really going on.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Michael said testily.
“Gee, Mom, you and Kiki have some pretty massive unresolved history.” I lowered my voice to avoid vamp eavesdropping. “Did you cut her out because of me? Does she know?”
“There was no point in telling her.”
“I thought that about Sachie and she’s handled it much better than I anticipated.”
“You thought that about Ezra too.”
I sucked in a breath. “Wow. Ouch.”
“I’m sorry.” She sighed. “That was uncalled for.”
My jaw felt tight; I’d been clenching it without realizing. I relaxed the muscles, rubbing my hand over it to ease the discomfort. “Ezra didn’t…well, not entirely. It doesn’t matter. Is there anything else?” I said waspishly.
“No.” Michael hung up without saying goodbye.
I buried my head in my hands, taking deep breaths until I’d calmed down enough to speak to Darsh.
He sat on the edge of his bed, which, like the guest room mattress, was made up with hospital corners.
I didn’t tease him about it.
He fiddled with the beads on his black leather wrist cuff. For someone who enjoyed changing up his image as much as Darsh did, it was strange he never took that cuff off.
I sat down next to him, our arms brushing, and nodded at it. “That was Patrin’s, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” He gave a quiet wry laugh. “I’m not sure if it’s a token of remembrance or the albatross I’ve condemned myself to bear.”
I digested that a moment before speaking again. “Did you have any children when you were human?”
Darsh leaned back on his elbows, his brown hair spilling over his shoulders and his face wrinkled up. “Ew, no. Looking after my little brother was more than enough, thank you. What brought that question on?”
I told him about reliving the memory of the female vamp who’d taken the test to receive the power word. “The idea of outliving your child is horrific.”
“It happens to humans too,” he said gently.
“But vampires have to watch any human they care about age and die.”
“That’s why many don’t make those attachments.” He touched each bead on the cuff, almost reverently. “The loss is too much. It’s also why vampires tend to flip out at around the two-century mark. Everyone we’ve ever known before as a human is long gone, and we finally feel well and truly alone. We have to figure out how to exist with the burden of immortality.”
“You let humans in.”
“Sachie is a rare and beautiful soul. I meet so few others of her caliber.”
I elbowed him. “Ha. Ha. So, what’s keeping you from admitting to whatever is really going on with Silas?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I’m well aware of my feelings for Ezra. The idea of reconciling with him is…” I briefly closed my eyes, almost feeling Ezra’s arms coming around me from behind like he used to when I was cooking, his chin settling into that perfect spot between my neck and shoulder. “Tempting. But it’s a lot of other things too, and I won’t just jump back into it. I need to be sure.”
“Nothing is sure in life, puiul meu. Do you worry about Ezra watching you age and die?”
Not all momentous occurrences happened with a blaze of fanfare. Nor were they all car crashes that spun your life out of control and smashed its reality into a metaphoric concrete wall. Sometimes, you simply made a choice in the quiet of a moment.
“Not really.” I let my frosted scales bloom over my skin, my eyes go toxic green, and smiled wobblily at my friend.