Jane looked at me sideways.
“What?” I asked. “It was for a case. They were Professor Redfield’s students. I had to talk to them.”
“Oh, there was more than one?” she asked with doubt in her voice.
“Not more women,” I said. “Mostly guys.”
“But apparently she was the only one Aidan found interesting enough to mention.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “She was clearly the leader of the pack among the film students. I had to soften them up, so I bought everyone a round.”
Jane gathered up her pile of research. Aidan walked past her and over to Connor’s side of the desks, sitting down.
“So let me get this straight,” Jane said, a little of her lethargy shaking off and giving way to anger. “While I was sitting at home worrying over this mark and whatever the hell it’s doing to me, you were out drinking and chatting up this blonde?”
“Technically that’s true, but—”
Jane stepped out of my office area. “I don’t have time to be sitting around here, then,” she said. “If you can’t be bothered to help me get through this, I’m going back to Enchancellor Daniels. . . or maybe even Director Wesker.”
Jane stormed off before I could even process all of it. I looked over to Aidan, who was still sitting at Connor’s desk. “What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“Looks like you and your girlfriend just had a fight.”
“No thanks to you,” I said, anger building up in me. “Did you really think it was smart to bring Elyse up in front of her? You had to go there, didn’t you?”
“Hey, I didn’t know she’d go off like that,” he said. “I just like to make humans sweat a little. It gives the smell in the air such a pleasant hint of blood and fear, but I didn’t think it would get that much of a rise out of her. You must be doing something wrong at home.”
“Okay, genius, then why don’t you enlighten me? I mean, eternal youth has got to count for something after all, right?”
Aidan shrugged. “Don’t ask me for love advice,” he said. “I was the one dating the great vampire betrayer, remember?”
I was ready to jump on that given the trouble he had just stirred up for me, but the sad look on his face killed the words in my mouth.
Aidan set down the pile of papers and began rummaging through his brother’s desk.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m good.”
“What I mean is, what are you doing?” I asked. “Not cool to be rifling through Connor’s stuff. I know you are brothers and all, but I believe even the undead consider privacy something of import, yes?”
Aidan stopped and laid his hands on the desk. “Well, yeah,” he said, “but Connor said I could use his desk while he’s in a This Week in Haunts meeting.”
I checked my watch. “Running long, I see. Or maybe it’s taking longer with fewer agents out there in the field.”
“I guess,” Aidan said. “He looked a bit frantic and pissed off when he was heading in, but that kind of seems to be his thing, you know?”
I laughed at that. “That, I do know,” I said. “That I do.” I grabbed a pen off my desk and tossed it to him. He caught it in perfect position for writing like it was nothing. “Use his desk, then. Just try to make human sounds and all that while you’re working. When you’re all silent and moving about, it creeps me out.”
“I’ll try,” he said, “but sometimes I forget.” He paused. “Sorry about earlier. With getting Jane all riled up on you.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “By the way, if HR comes through and asks why we have a teenage boy filling in at Connor’s desk, good luck explaining it to them.”
Aidan leaned forward and popped his fangs. “Think this will be explanation enough?”
“Doubtful,” I said. “If anything, it’ll just lead to more paperwork for you.”
Aidan retracted his fangs, looking a bit crestfallen. “More?”
I nodded. “For as much hitting squishy things with bats that I get to do, I end up stuck at this desk, writing out the details, an awful lot.”
“Exciting,” Aidan said and resumed looking through his pile of papers. He flew through them with lightning speed.
“That’s one thing I envy about you vampires,” I said.
“Just one thing?” Aidan asked, with a surprised laugh.
“Just one,” I said. “Sorry. Not really keen on the rest of your deal.”
“Fine,” he said. “What is it?”
“Your kind strike me as minimalists,” I said.
Aidan cocked his head. “How so?”
“You dispense with paperwork for the most part,” I said. “I mean, look at the Gibson-Case Center. It’s a city unto itself and yet there wasn’t much of a paper trail when your people built it. Even your history. . . You’ve got some of it written down in that Vampinomicon or whatever it’s called, but let’s face it: if that thing burned up tomorrow, you’d be able to re-create it from an oral tradition because some of you who actually lived that history are still alive. I envy your lack of bureaucracy.”
“I suppose you have a point,” Aidan said, “but you’re forgetting something.”
“I am?” I asked. “What’s that?”
He patted the pile of papers before him. “Time bends for us differently . . .”
“I figured that out when I met your leader and discovered he had named himself after a character from Beverly Hills, 90210. So?”
Aidan grabbed the stack and slowly flipped down through it, page by page. “It means that I get shafted with the mundanely human task of your paperwork thanks to my role as liaison between our two people. For someone whose life is already an eternity, jumping through the hoops of an organization that will most likely wither while all of us still live on makes the task of doing this paperwork a different kind of eternity all its own.”
“Fair point,” I said. “Sorry.”
Aidan picked up a pen and started scrawling at inhuman speeds on one of the detail sheets in front of him. “It’s all right,” he said. “There is some consolation in all this.” Aidan looked up at me, grinning. “I’ll never get those bags under my eyes that you have from all this right now.”
“It’s not the job,” I said. “These are from the hangover.”
“Another thing I’m glad to not really experience,” he said, and fell to his pile of paperwork without another word, blazing through it in a way I could only dream of.
16
Despite the bustling sprawl of New York University from Greenwich Village down to Houston Street, I wasn’t too worried about just how the hell I was supposed to find any of the students I was looking for, thanks to the predictable and cliquish nature of film and theater people. Especially when it came to finding freshmen who were so new to the Big Apple that they latched onto one another like lost, lonely magnets. I started by hanging around Washington Square Park, and it didn’t take me too long to spy Trent and George making their way across the park. George’s platinum blond hair against the brown of his skin stuck out enough that I could have probably spotted him all the way from my apartment down in SoHo.
I followed the two students into one of the film studies buildings, thankful that my Department of Extraordinary Affairs ID was enough to get me in during normal school hours, unlike sneaking around the other night. I never knew when it would or wouldn’t work. It never quite held the weight that an actual police shield did around Manhattan. The two freshmen headed deep into the building’s twist of corridors. I kept losing them in my efforts to shadow them as discreetly as I could, and I had to use my psychometry a few times to flash on which way they had gone, but they were quick hits that didn’t flare up any residual anger issues. Before long, I came to a dead-end corridor with only one door marked with a sign that read EDITING SUITE—FILM & SOUND. I paused outside it to collect myself, trying to decide the best approach once I stepped through it. Last night’s conversation at Eccentric Circles had gone fairly well before they had brushed me off. Maybe the role of one of Mason Redfield’s old students would still hold up.