16. Scotty #2
I sigh and look up at the stars twinkling overhead. For a second, you could almost forget that there’s a riot of debauchery and death mere feet away from us. “Not great,” I say.
“How many?” Elias asks.
I blink.
He takes out a cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it. “How many people this time, Scott?”
“Twelve,” I lie. It was four. But no one needs to know that.
“It was four,” Elias says.
“Dammit,” I mutter, and work my jaw. “You and Ava have to stop that shit.”
“We will when you start answering your coven with honesty,” he says.
“Well, maybe I don’t want to always tell the truth. Because the truth sucks ass, Eli. And I know what you’re going to say,” I snap. Harriett’s eyes aren’t gleaming anymore. They look sad. Her mouth turns into a frown, and I pat her on the back of the head. “It’s fine, Freckles.”
Elias’s throat bobs before he takes another drag of his cigarette. “You have done your best. It’s commendable. You are resilient. Hard working. Dedicated.”
I pinch the space between my brows. Oh, here we go again. The sales pitch. “Eli—”
“But I believe it is time to revisit reality, Scott. Come work for me. We are doing good, important work. And I have a place for you,” he says, taking a step closer.
Instinctively, I take a step back. Harriett drops her arms from my waist as I move, and she watches me like I’m a spooked rabbit about to bolt. Maybe I am.
“Please, Scott,” he continues. “Think about it. Your future. Our future as a species. You won’t have to live in that apartment anymore.”
I frown and drop my arm to the side. “I like my apartment.”
He makes a soft click with his tongue. He’s always thought the apartment complex I live in, the nest, is beneath me. Beneath all of us. I appreciate what Eli is trying to do, I really do, but I’m no suit. I’m not cut out for corporate life.
“I’d be working in the mailroom,” I say, my voice taking on a steely edge.
Elias lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Only to start.”
“And then what? Then I’d be a gopher. Running around getting you suit-fangs your bottles of blood for your meetings?”
He nods. “Yes. And then you would move up to secretary. My secretary. And then, who knows?”
“Sounds delightful,” I snark, and begin to turn away. But Harriett grabs my hand, stopping me.
“Please, Scotty?” she mewls, and my heart shatters. “You can still play your music! But you’d also have money for … for things.”
Harriett has always been my biggest cheerleader. The one who encouraged me to keep playing when no one else would. And now she’s parroting Eli’s bullshit. My head throbs from the lack of sustenance and from the anger roiling within.
“Fine,” I say, and turn around slowly. “Fine. I’ll at least check it out.”
Elias’s stern face melts into something much softer. “Truly? Well, I … I will put you on the books for Monday evening, then. I will give you a tour of the facilities myself.”
Elias works at Fletcher and Co., the biggest insurance company in New York City.
But it’s not just an insurance company. That’s just its cover.
Oh, they’ll totally sell you insurance …
but what its primary objective is? The one none of the humans know about?
They’re developing synthetic blood to sell to the masses.
They have offices in Paris, Tokyo, London, and Shanghai.
The day vampires live in the shadows is coming to an end, or so Elias says.
After centuries of being burned, decapitated, and staked …
our people might finally have hope for survival.
No, not just survival. We could actually live like normal people in society.
It sounded like a pipe dream when Eli first told me about his job, but after getting to know him …
I think he’s the real deal. He’s going to make it happen for us.
I look over my shoulder and watch as several vamps rip apart a human torso like a pack of wolves. Both Elias and I sneer at the carnage, and Harriett looks away, averting her gaze to the stars.
“I’m going to take Freckles home,” I say, and run my palm down my face.
This is disgusting. And none of the police will come down here, either.
Not after the massacre last year, where Ava took out several cops.
The police think this is all just human gang warfare shit, and the homeless people wind up as collateral damage.
Coming out to society is going to be impossible when our people are still doing … this.
“Good idea,” Elias agrees, and places a firm hand on my shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Scott. You are exactly the sort of leadership our people need. The kind humanity needs to see when the time comes.”
I laugh and hang my head. “Yeah, right.”
“I didn’t like that so much,” Harriett says as she opens up the door to my fridge. “And why is your fridge empty?”
I let out a groan as I get all snuggle-y under a blanket on the sofa. “Because I haven’t had time to hit up the hospital yet. Sorry, Freckles.”
Harriett closes the door to the fridge and makes her way to the sofa to sit next to me. “I’m happy you’re taking the job, though. I think it’ll be good for you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving my hand dismissively and pulling the blanket over my head.
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, and so was I when I said I didn’t want to be a suit,” I say from under the blanket. “Sounds like shite.”
“You know I can’t understand your accent when you’re under there,” she says. I peer at her from the top of the blanket and narrow my eyes. “Okay, fine. I can barely understand you, anyway.”
She lets out a soft sigh, and I yank the blanket off my head to grab my guitar from the floor, then place it in my lap to pluck out a few notes.
“Let me come to your next show,” she says.
I shake my head. “Sorry, sweetcheeks. This country’s got weird laws. Twenty-one and over.”
“I can glamour myself to look older,” she says, inching closer to me.
I arch an eyebrow at her. “You’re five.”
She lobs a pillow at my head, and it bounces off my face onto the ground. “I’m twenty-one, Scotty. I can go!”
“You’re five. Your human life stopped at sixteen. Now you’re five. You can’t glamour shit, girlie,” I say, grinning at her with my fangs out.
“But it says on my ID I was born in seventy-six. They’ll figure it out. I want to believe that there are still some intelligent people out there,” she says.
“It also says you’re legally dead,” I say, booping her on the nose with my guitar pick. “And before you try to argue with me … no, we’re not going down that road again. We don’t loiter with humans. We don’t give them a reason to dig, remember?”
When it comes to humans, the less they know about us, the better. Even I can’t glamour myself like the other vamps can. Which is why I wear my hood up whenever playing a gig so that people can’t see my face. Get too curious.
Harriett predictably lets out a groan and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “So, I’m doomed to be sixteen forever, then? I’ll never be allowed inside the clubs, ever?”
I smirk at her. “In a perfect world, yeah. You’d stay out of those clubs and avoid all that shite.
” She opens her mouth to argue with me, but I continue.
“But when you’re a bit older, you’ll be able to glamour the humans so they see you however old you want to look. So, no. You won’t be a child forever.”
“I’m not a child now,” she retorts.
I let out a soft snicker. “Sixteen’s a child. And you’re only five. So you’re doubly a child now, love.”
Harriett storms off to look inside my fridge again, then slams the door shut when she realizes it hasn’t miraculously refilled itself. “I’m hungry.”
“Then let’s go get something to eat,” I say, and put my guitar down.
“But you eat … rats,” she says, shuddering. “I want real food.”
“We could go get kebab,” I say, making my way to the door. “Is that real enough for you?”
“Sounds awful,” she says. “But … fine. We can scarf and barf and then go eat a rapist.”
My hand lingers on the doorknob as I stare down at her. “Excuse me? Rapists, now? You’re hanging out with Marcus and Ava too much. The rats are fine. They’ll keep you alive.”
“But they taste like sweaty gym socks,” she says as we make our way down the hall.
“How do you know what sweaty gym socks taste like?” I hit the button to call the lift. “Do I want to know?”
When the doors to the lift open, I grab my little sister in a headlock and drag her in with me. Her giggles and shrieks of delight follow us all the way down.