Chapter 13
That night, Nick and I arrive for work at the same time. As I walk down Melrose from my car to the bar, I spot him ambling toward me, approaching from the opposite direction. Tonight, he’s wearing jeans, a plain white tee, a slouchy gray cardigan, and an expression that’s full of uncertainty, as if he’s trying to figure out where we stand with each other.
I know the feeling.
“Hey,” he says tentatively when we come together outside Pete’s.
“Hey,” I return.
“You look nice,” he says.
I readjust the ensemble that Heather selected for me: boyfriend jeans loose enough to camouflage my supermuscular thighs, rolled up at the ankle; a sheer white blouse drapey enough to disguise my upper-body bulk, French tucked to define my waist; and platform sandals to add some height. Heather also insisted that I put on some lip gloss, mascara, and brow pencil to complete the look.
“Thanks,” I say, suddenly pleased that my friend forced me to make the effort. “And I’m sorry for ditching you last night.”
“Well, I’m sorry for…uh…” He thinks a beat. “…everything?”
I smile. “I’m not sure you need to be sorry for everything ,” I tease. “I mean, there must be something going on in the world that’s not your fault.”
“You’re too kind,” says Nick with a sardonic grin. But he seems to relax a little.
I do too.
He pulls the door open. “After you,” he says with a sweeping gesture, ushering me inside.
To any random observer, we probably look like two people meeting for a date, just getting to know each other. Not coworkers who also happen to be supernatural foes, trying to avoid killing each other.
As I enter the bar and Nick follows me in, I wonder if it’s possible for both things to be true.
***
Friday night is usually our busiest time at Pete’s, and the place is already pretty crowded. Nick and I dive into action as soon as we arrive.
While I’m tending my end of the bar and he’s tending his, we don’t have a ton of time to chat. But through quick exchanges at the beer taps and by the cash register, we agree that we’re on for later tonight and that we’ll hit the beach together again to… train .
“Carrie?” I hear a male voice say above the bar noise.
I hold up a finger without looking to see who it is. “Be right with you,” I say as I clear a pair of empty bar glasses and slide a couple their check. Then I turn in the direction of the voice. “What would you like?”
“For starters, how about a hello?” says a guy with short, dark-blond hair and tanned skin. My first glance at his preppy getup of khaki shorts, a white oxford, and loafers makes me wonder if he just stepped out of a Tommy Hilfiger ad or something. But after a moment, I realize he actually stepped out of my past.
“J-Jonathan,” I say, blinking at him in surprise.
There was a time when I would have been thrilled to see him, when the sight of him strolling across the Barnard College campus set my whole body on fire.
But now…
“Wh-what are you doing here?” I ask.
His bright white smile falters a bit. “Your mother said to stop by,” he says. “She said you’d be expecting me.”
Crap .
With everything else going on, I totally forgot what my mom told me on our last Zoom call. I forgot that my ex was coming to town and that she was going to tell him to drop by the bar. And now, goddammit, here he is. And I’ve got no one to blame but myself.
Why did I let her bully me like that? Why didn’t I stick to my guns and make her understand that Jonathan and I are a long freaking way from that perfect-for-each-other couple she imagines us to be?
The two of us started dating the summer before we both left home for college. He was lifeguarding at the country club pool where my sister and I were spending most of our afternoons, and yes, okay, I may have faked a cramp while I was swimming to get a chance to meet him. A girl had to keep her acting skills sharp after all.
I lost my virginity to Jonathan Vanderbilt that Fourth of July, our sweaty eighteen-year-old bodies tangled together in the pool’s storage shed while fireworks literally exploded above us in the midsummer night sky. At the time, it seemed like fate that he was headed for Columbia University in the fall while I’d be attending its nearby sister school, Barnard. And since I’d be matriculating at a women’s college, where meeting guys wouldn’t necessarily be so easy, I was happy to take up residence in my first-year dorm room that August already having a boyfriend I could see on a fairly regular basis, just a subway ride away.
But over the next four years, he became more and more entrenched in the preppy, elitist, frat-boy culture, and I threw myself into my school’s liberal, artsy, theatrical community. By the time we both graduated, other than our schooling and our privileged family backgrounds, we didn’t really have a lot in common anymore.
We still don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him from behind the bar. “But I can’t talk right now. We’re too busy.”
I have to talk to him though—talk straight to him—at some point. I know I do.
“I can wait around for a while,” Jonathan offers.
Involuntarily, I glance down the bar at Nick, who seems to be occupied with a customer, before I respond. “Tonight’s just not a good time.”
Following the direction of my quick gaze, Jonathan frowns. His light eyes are clouded over when he turns back to me. “Okay, then how about tomorrow?” he asks, smiling hopefully. “I have to go to my cousin’s wedding, but it doesn’t start until six. I’m free all day. Maybe we could get together?”
Tomorrow , I think. Yup. I’ll set him straight tomorrow.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s talk then. I’ll text you a time and a place we can meet.”
“Great,” he says. “So I’ll—”
“Uh, hello?” interrupts a loud, impatient voice. “Are you just gonna gab all night, or can we maybe get some beer over here?”
I peer down the bar at the displeased patron. Then I look back at Jonathan. “Sorry,” I say helplessly. “I really do have to get back to work.”
Before Jonathan can say anything else, I make my escape. I’ve never been so happy to wait on someone I know full well isn’t going to tip me.
“Sorry about that,” I tell the customer with a smile. “What can I get you?”
“Pitcher of Miller Lite.”
“Coming right up.”
While I’m grabbing an empty pitcher, I spot the back of Jonathan’s dark-blond head disappearing out the door, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
As I head for the taps, I see Nick is already there. With a sudden sinking feeling in my gut, I remember that he has those dialed-up vampire senses. The way his nostrils are flaring, I can tell he must have recognized my ex. And the way he’s looking at me? I can also tell he must have just overheard everything.
Double crap .
Once again, just when Nick and I seem to be making some headway toward each other, we hit another roadblock.
I take a deep inhale and step up next to him.
“It’s not what you think,” I say proactively as I start to fill up the pitcher.
“That was the guy whose shirt you were wearing yesterday?” asks Nick.
“Well, yes.”
“And he thought you were expecting him tonight?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you just made plans to see him tomorrow?”
I hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then it’s exactly what I think.” he says.
It occurs to me that Nick’s interrogation skills are almost on par with my dad’s.
I try to come up with a response, but it’s like Nick can’t get away from me fast enough—not without using his supernatural superspeed and revealing what he is to the whole bar anyway.
For the next few hours, the vampire proceeds to give me the very cold shoulder.
***
There’s about half an hour to go before closing. The crowd has peaked and is finally starting to drop off as we coast toward last call. I’m opening a fresh bottle of cabernet when I get that feeling. The same feeling I had when I was walking to my car, just after Nick informed me what I was. The feeling of being observed by a vampire.
I peer down the bar at Nick. He’s still playing the ignore-the-crap-out-of-Carrie game, mixing up something in a cocktail shaker, not even looking my way. But I already knew it wasn’t him watching me. The energy I’m picking up on feels stronger. More powerful. More… vampire-y . Like, if Nick is a scotch and soda made with the shitty house stuff, this other presence is a double shot of the top-shelf single malt.
Trying to keep my slayer in check, I pour two glasses of the cab and plunk them down in front of my customers. Then I turn to ring up the sale.
While my back is turned, I hear a smooth male voice with a hint of an accent rise above the chatter. “When you get a chance, love, can you pour me one of those too?”
The words are benign enough, but the intent behind them, I know, is deadly. Because every fiber of my body is telling me that the man who just spoke them isn’t a man at all.
Vampire , I think.
“Be with you in a sec,” I say, tossing the words over my shoulder without turning around.
Has Dracula’s Army grown impatient with simply spying on me from the shadows? Has one of them come here to the bar, invading my space to try to suss out what I am?
Quentin? I wonder. Or Zach?
My slayer doesn’t care about his identity though. She doesn’t care who he is, only what he is. She wants to attack this new arrival, big-time. But she has to get through me first.
Controlling my slayer rage around Nick is challenging, for sure. Challenging but doable. Probably because there are other factors at play. For one thing, he’s my coworker. Has been for a while. I knew him before he became a vampire. And while I didn’t particularly like him all that much back then, I certainly didn’t want to kill him.
And for another thing, now that I’m spending more time with Nick and actually getting to know him? I’m starting to question a lot of the assumptions I made about him. Turns out he may not be the guy I thought he was. Or the vampire my slayer expects him to be. My feelings about him are complicated , to say the least.
However, with the blood drinker standing behind me, there are no such complications. We have no history, and there is no gray area. Everything is simply black and white. He’s a vampire, and I’m a slayer, and right now, even the presence of the human bar patrons isn’t doing a whole hell of a lot to keep my impulse to attack in check. To my supernatural side, he’s a danger to every person in this bar, and it’s my job to eliminate that danger.
Red clouds loom, ready to eclipse my vision. Fire gathers in my core like a storm, preparing to rain down on my enemy. I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to stop this tempest of fury building within me from exploding out of me.
But on a sheer survival level, I know I must stop it. I can’t let this vampire know what I am.
Taking my time at the register, I cast another brief look down the bar, but Nick is still ignoring me, concentrating all his attention on splitting the pink-tinted contents of his stainless-steel shaker between two martini glasses.
Looks like I’m on my own here.
If I dally any longer at the cash register, it will start to look suspicious, so I complete the sale. As I walk over to my previous customers to hand them their bill, I give the newcomer a sidelong glance. Appearing to be in his twenties, he’s wearing the kind of retro-1970s ensemble that, up until now, I thought only Lenny Kravitz could pull off successfully. He’s tall, dark, and very undead.
My body goes taut. As I reach for a wineglass to pour his drink, I feel my temperature rising fast. Too fast. I give everything I have to drive back my slayer, but I’m not sure it will be enough.
The intense heat pulsing from my skin heats up the glass, and I feel it start to crack in my—
“Ow, crap!”
The glass shatters in my hand, cutting a neat slice in the pad of my index finger as the broken shards fall with a clatter to the floor. A few drops of blood bead on my fingertip.
Nick’s head snaps toward me, and all of a sudden, he’s not so intent on garnishing the two cosmopolitans he just poured. With the scent of my blood in the air, it seems he can’t ignore me any longer.
Realizing this, the undead Lenny Kravitz wannabe stops homing in on me and shifts his attention to Nick.
“Nicholas!” he calls out affably, like he’s just spotted him. But I can detect an undertone of concern in his voice.
I watch him move quickly and purposefully down to the other end of the bar, and I wonder…
Did I just stumble into a way out of this screaming-hot mess of a situation?
The vampire I assume is part of Dracula’s Army clasps Nick’s hand across the bar, subtly angling him away from me, distracting him from my blood. Evidently, preventing Nick from revealing his true nature to the crowd is more important than provoking me to reveal mine. First rule of Vampire Club, I guess.
I figure I should take the win and make my getaway.
I grab a clean bar rag and wrap it around my hand. “Be right back,” I call, already heading out from behind the counter. “Need to go take care of this. Health regulations and all.”
***
About twenty minutes later, I hear a knock on the restroom door.
“Carrie?” comes Nick’s voice. “You okay in there?”
Physically, I’m fine. The cut from the wineglass was pretty minor, really. Within a couple of minutes, I found what I needed in the first aid kit under the sink, disinfected my wound, and stuck a Band-Aid on it.
Paranormally, I’m fine too. The self-inflicted injury distracted my inner slayer, and once I put a little distance between myself and all that undeadness , I was able to regain control.
But emotionally? I’m still shaky. After all, I just came perilously close to exposing what I am to my enemy. My lethal enemy. This supernatural shit just got very real.
And speaking of… It just dawned on me that I’ve been so caught up with my own internal battle that I haven’t really stopped to think about Nick, about what he might be going through.
“I’m okay,” I call through the door. “Wh-what about you?”
“Yeah,” says Nick. “All good. Sorry about that.”
“No need to apologize,” I say. “I get it. Unnatural urges and all.” I open the door a couple of inches and peer out at him. When I see his grim expression, I immediately want to cheer him up. “See?” I try, teasing. “I knew there must be something that’s not your fault.”
He gives me a small smile for my effort.
“So does this mean you want to attack me as badly as I want to attack you?” I ask.
Nick raises his eyebrows at me, and in the awkward silence that follows, I realize how sexually suggestive that must have just sounded.
“What I mean is…uh…”
“Relax. I know what you mean,” he says, widening his grin. “And I think it’s similar, but not exactly the same. I want blood, sure. But like I said, Zach has a connection at a blood bank, and he keeps me hooked up with a steady supply. As long as I don’t let myself go too long without it, it’s not really a problem. It’s just, when you cut yourself…” He shakes his head. “That was like somebody waving a Snickers bar right in my face. Kind of hard to resist, you know? Even if you’re not hungry.”
“So you’re comparing me to a Snickers?” I ask.
“A little nutty with a gooey center?” muses Nick. “Sounds about right to me.”
There was a time when I would have gotten into it with him in a major way over “a little nutty.” But thinking back on all those times I was so judgmental with Nick, such a hard-ass to him…
“You really think I have a gooey center?” I ask quietly.
He leans against the doorjamb and peers down at me through the narrow opening in the doorway, and my center most definitely turns to goo.
“I think you can be very hard to resist,” he says. And now I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about his bloodlust. I feel a tug of desire down low in my belly.
I start to open the door all the way when a burst of laughter erupts from the bar area, reminding me that we’re both currently on the clock.
“We still have customers?” I ask, trying to rein in my not-safe-for-work—and possibly not-safe-for- me —impulses.
Picking up on my shift into business mode, Nick stands up straight and clears his throat, nods. “I just finished last call.”
“And what about…uh…”
“Quentin?” says Nick. “He’s not here anymore.”
I open the door all the way. “So that was Quentin, huh?”
“That was Quentin,” he says. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t know he was going to stop by tonight.”
Maybe not , I think. But he did stop by, didn’t he? And not to see you. Clearly, he was targeting me.
If I hadn’t cut my finger, I’m not sure I could have kept myself from exposing my supernatural side. Unlike Nick, I don’t have a nonviolent way to satisfy my urges. I could have found myself in a slay-or-be-slain situation with Quentin tonight. And I don’t know if I would have come out of it alive.
If I needed further proof that I’ve got to get the upper hand with my slayer—and fast—I guess I have it.
“You sure you’re okay?” asks Nick.
“What?” I shake my head, trying to shake off my increasing fear. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m okay. I guess we both had unexpected visitors tonight,” I add without thinking.
But I should have thought. I definitely should have thought. My offhand comment earns me a dark look from Nick.
“I better get back out front,” he grumbles. And before I can say anything else, he’s gone.
***
A little later, Nick and I fall into what’s become our regular nightly routine of closing the bar up together. But as we stack the chairs on the tables, neither of us says anything, and the vibe between us is kind of tense. Finally, I can’t freaking take it anymore.
“Just so you know, I wasn’t expecting my ex to stop by tonight,” I say, breaking the silence. “I mean, my mother told me he was going to be in LA this weekend, but I totally forgot about it. Because even though my mom desperately wants us to get back together, I don’t. I don’t think about him that way anymore. Or any way, really.”
“Then why did you get all dressed up tonight?” asks Nick.
Seriously? That’s what he’s hung up on?
“Oh my God,” I blurt out, slamming a chair down onto a tabletop. “Why do you think?”
He blinks, unsure for a second. Then, gradually, he gets it. The corners of his mouth curl up ever so slightly, inviting his dimples out to play.
I stare across the room at him, and he stares back at me. The ambiance of the room changes. The chilly atmosphere between us lifts, and the air becomes sultry. It feels almost as if we’re back on the beach, when we almost kissed.
We could easily pick up where we left off before we were interrupted.
But the surprise appearance of the other slayer last night stirred up doubts in me about Nick. And mixed in with all the swoony feelings I’m rocking right now, those doubts are still there.
Plus, I’m still reeling a little from my almost confrontation with Quentin.
Not to mention that hooking up in the workplace is simply not professional. Even if it is after hours.
“I mean, thanks to you, half my clothes don’t even fit me anymore,” I say, trying to back off my implicit admission that I got all dressed up for him. “And I need to wear something that hides these muscles.” I realize none of this explains the makeup, and I think Nick realizes it too. He doesn’t call me out on it though.
“Okay,” he says, nodding. “Fair enough.”
We go back to work, stacking the chairs in silence for a while. But this time, it’s more of a comfortable silence. Companionable, even.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spy Nick pushing up the sleeves of his cardigan. That’s when it occurs to me that, in the year or so that we’ve been coworkers, I’ve never seen him wear anything other than T-shirts.
Hmm …
I bite my bottom lip to suppress a smile. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who got all dressed up tonight.