Roarke reached down, took her hand. “Knowing monsters exist, as you and I do, Eve, may not always make for easy sleep, or even an easy heart. But it arms us against them.”
“It was like he knew.” She tightened her grip on his hand. There was no one else she could have told such things to. There had been a time when there’d been no one at all she could have told such things to. “I know it was my imagination, my own…demons, I guess you could say, but when he stared back into me, it was like he knew. Like he could see what was small and scared inside of me.”
“You’re wrong on that. What he saw was a woman who won’t stand down.”
“I hope so, because for a couple seconds I wanted to run. Just rabbit the hell out of there.” She let out a shaky breath. “There are all kinds of vampires, you said that, too. Isn’t that what my father was? Trying to suck the life out of me, trying to make me into something less than human? I put a knife into him instead of a stake. Maybe that’s why he keeps coming back in my head.”
“It’s you who made you.” He leaned down now, framed her face with his hands. “And what you are your father would never have understood. Neither would Vadim. No matter how he looks, he’ll never really see you.”
“He thinks he does.”
“His mistake. Eve, do you want to talk to Mira about this?”
“No.” She considered it another moment, then shook her head and repeated, “No, not now anyway. Dumping on you levels it out a little. Taking him down, all the way down-that’ll take care of the rest.”
For a moment she studied their joined hands, then shifted her gaze up to his. “I didn’t want to tell you I’d been scared, much less why. I guess that was stupid.”
“It was.”
She scowled. “Aren’t you supposed to say something like ‘No, it wasn’t. Blah, blah, support, stroke, let me get you some chocolate’?”
“You haven’t read the marriage handbook, footnotes. It’s another woman who does that sort of thing. I believe I’m allowed to be more blunt, then ask if you’d like a quick shag.”
“Shag yourself,” she said and made him laugh. “But thanks anyway.”
“Offer’s always on the table.”
“Yeah, yeah, and the floor, in the closet, or on the front stairs. Time to work, ace, not to play.”
She pushed up to study and circle her murder board, and he knew she was soothed and settled.
“Prior bad acts, and plenty of them. Mysterious income. Contact with the vic, and the profile fits him like a tailor-made suit. Bullshit alibi. He’s running a game in that club, skinning rich idiots with his vampire fantasy, maybe blackmailing them, selling illegals. But that’s only part of the picture. He’s got something,” she said in a mutter now. “He’s got something, and he’s feeling fucking smug about it.”
“Heads up, Lieutenant,” Roarke warned.
She glanced his way, caught the candy bar he tossed across the room. She grinned, tore the wrapper, and biting in, continued to study her board.
When Allesseria finished her shift, she was careful not to rush, careful to do everything just as she did every night. She closed down her tabs, keyed in her codes, passed her station off to her replacement.
She stretched her back as she walked, casually, to the employee-only area where she stowed her bag and her jacket every shift. Even there, behind closed doors, she kept her expression neutral and her movements routine. Everyone knew there were cameras in every section of the club, the boss had made that clear.
You never knew who was watching.
Her yawn wasn’t entirely feigned. It had been a long shift, and a busy one as the crowds that patronized Bloodbath liked to stay thoroughly lubed. As she always did, she transferred her tips to her bag, zipped them into its inside pocket. After fitting the bag’s strap across her body, she put her jacket over it.
She hung the illuminated cards, given to all employees, around her neck so that one glowed between her breasts, the other between her shoulder blades.
With the gleaming gold pentagram with its boldly red double B’s in the center like a shield front and back, nobody would bother her on the way out of the club, on the nasty route through the tunnels. It was something else Dorian had made clear from the get-go, and he’d made an example of a souped-up chemi-head who’d tried a move on one of the waitresses the first week the club opened.
Rumor was the guy had ended up in pieces, and there hadn’t been enough blood left to so much as stain the ground.
It was probably bullshit. Probably. But it was enough to keep the path clear for anyone coming or going from Bloodbath who wore the sign.
Still, she checked her pocket, as she always did, for her ministunner and panic button.
An ounce of prevention was worth a lot of peace of mind.
She headed out, and as was usual at shift changes, she left the club with a group of other employees. Safety in numbers. There wasn’t much chatter, there rarely was, so she could huddle inside her own thoughts as they wound through the stink and the shadows, through the pounding music and wailing screams.
She’d thought she could handle it, the money was too good to pass up. With salary and tips, if she was frugal, she could move out of the city, plunk down a down payment on a nice little house.
A yard for her kid, a day job.
It seemed like the perfect plan, and she knew how to take care of herself. But it was too much, she had to face that now. The club, the tunnels, the boss himself. It was all too much, and she was going to have to go back to working street level, pulling doubles just to put a few extra aside every week. The house in Queens, the yard, the dog, would all just have to wait a few more years.
She’d walked out of Bloodbath for the last time.
She’d send in written notice, that’s what she’d do, Allesseria decided as she finally came out to the sidewalk. She’d use her son as an excuse. Dorian knew she had joint custody, but she could use the night work as too strenuous, too difficult.
Nothing he could do about it, she assured herself as she pulled off the glowing cards and stuffed them in her pocket. Nothing, that she could think of, that he’d want to do. At the salary he offered, he’d replace her in one crook of the finger.
Let somebody else mix pig’s blood-God, she hoped it was just pig’s blood-in gin to make Bloody Martinis, or handle dry ice to make a Graveyard. She was done.
The cops had been the last straw. She couldn’t take any more.
He’d made her lie for him, so there was a reason he needed the lie.
As Allesseria went underground again, this time to catch the subway home, she admitted she’d lied before he’d asked. Something had warned her she’d be better off playing dumb.
Never seen that face before.
Tiara Kent, who’d knocked back a half-dozen Bloodies on her first visit to the club-and had spent a hell of a lot of time up in Dorian’s private office.
Okay, she hadn’t seen them leave together, but in fact, she hadn’t seen either of them leave when Tiara had come to the club. Which meant they might have slipped out through Dorian’s office.
And Allesseria hadn’t seen Dorian from sometime before midnight last shift. He hadn’t come down to work the floor as she’d told the cop he had. He hadn’t worked the floor, not once that she’d noticed, after Tiara Kent had gone up those stairs with him.
And she always noticed him because of the way her skin started to crawl.
He could’ve killed Tiara Kent. He could’ve done it.
With her arms protectively crossed over her torso, Allesseria sat on the train, struggling with what she should do, could do. A dozen times she told herself just walking away was enough. It wasn’t her responsibility, and she’d be smarter to just mind her own business. Quitting was enough. More than enough.