Shit!
I’d totally forgotten about Vaughan. It felt like weeks since I’d made the date – back when there were no men on the horizon, before Devereux did whatever he’d done to me – and now I couldn’t even imagine keeping it. I didn’t feel remotely like the same person any more. I wrote a note on the whiteboard on my kitchen wall to remind myself to call him.
I heard the sound of bare feet padding into the kitchen and turned, expecting to find a luscious naked man, and instead burst out laughing. Alan had rooted around in my closet and found an old pair of torn pink sweatsuit bottoms that rode up to his mid-calf and fit him like a second skin, and a very small, tight T-shirt that said ‘Woman Power!’ Even though he should’ve looked ludicrous, it was all I could do to keep myself from leaping on him and finishing what we’d started earlier.
He apparently enjoyed my reaction and strutted around in a circle so I could see all sides of the spectacular presentation.
‘I didn’t want to put on anything that I might stretch out and ruin, and I figured you probably weren’t too attached to these. Besides,’ he said, laughing, ‘I look great in pink, and it takes a real man to be able to say that.’
‘I think you probably look great in anything.’ Not to mention in nothing.
‘Thank you.’ He gave a slow blink and sauntered over, his face serious. ‘I believe you mean that.’
The close proximity of his body and the sudden shift in intensity surprised me and I felt myself melting into a puddle on the floor. I leaned against the counter and cleared my throat. ‘Of course I do.’
We stared at each other for a moment, then I forced my gaze away. As delicious as it would have been to return to my bedroom and spend the rest of the evening exploring each other’s erogenous zones, the shock and confusion of the morning had worn off and fatigue was setting in. It was time to face all the realities I didn’t want to think about.
My stomach growled. ‘Are you as hungry as I am?’
He grinned.
‘For food, I mean?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Shall we have something delivered? What’ll it be? Pizza? Chinese? Mexican? Lady’s choice.’
‘How will the delivery person get through that horde of reporters out there?’
‘I’ll call in and request a police escort to the front door,’ he said.
We negotiated the food and I went into the living room to collapse on the couch while Alan performed the phone duties.
‘I’m going to put my filthy clothes in the washing machine, then we need to talk,’ he said. ‘Something traumatic happened to you last night. Obviously you didn’t disappear of your own volition and I want to hear every detail you can remember, no matter how inconsequential.’ He hesitated for a few seconds. ‘And I have something to tell you.’
The tone of his voice indicated I wasn’t going to like his news, so, being my usual impatient self, I abandoned the couch and followed him into the laundry room.
‘What do you have to tell me?’
‘Hold on a minute.’
I drummed my fingers on the counter while he loaded the washer. ‘Hurry up.’
He shook his head and grinned. ‘Such a control freak. Come on, let’s go back into the living room.’ He grabbed my hand, pulled me to the couch and we sat.
I didn’t say out loud that I thought we had control-freak characteristics in common. Instead, I sighed impatiently. ‘So? You’re starting to make me nervous. Did something bad happen? I mean, something in addition to what happened to me?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Something bad happened. Do you remember the call I got last night at the club? The one about another body being found?’
‘I remember.’
‘The body they found was Emerald Addison’s.’
All the air leaked out of me like a punctured balloon and I sagged back into the couch cushions, speechless.
‘I’m sorry.’ He patted my hand. ‘This must be hard to hear. She was your client.’
I still didn’t correct him. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She was found in the alley behind an apartment building in Capitol Hill. The report said she had a friend living there named Eric Weiss. Her body was drained of blood, same as the others. It was a vampire attack, although the locals aren’t seriously considering that angle.’
I stared at the wall in silence. Poor little Emerald. I wished she really had been my client so I’d have more memories of her than just our brief trip to the hospital. I wondered if Midnight and Ronald had been notified and how they were coping. If they’d heard about my situation, they were probably worried about me, too.
I jumped up and hurried to my desk, intending to search for my briefcase and my current client files.
Alan stood, looking alarmed. ‘What’s happening? What’re you doing?’
‘I’ve got to call a couple of my clients, friends of Emerald’s – you saw them with me at the hospital. They must be feeling terrible.’
I sat at my desk, located their phone numbers, called and got their answering machines. I left messages giving them my cell phone number and asking them to return the call, no matter what time they got my message. I had to do something to help and I hoped someone would give me a clue as to what that might be.
Alan walked around behind my chair and rubbed my shoulders. ‘Do you want to talk more about Emerald, or are you ready to tell me what happened to you last night?’
‘Both, I think.’
He swivelled my chair around until I faced him, took my hands and guided me up from the chair and back over to the couch.
I studied him, searching for answers in his eyes. ‘You said Emerald was killed by vampires. Do you really believe that? Are you telling me the truth? There really are vampires?’ Devereux is really a vampire? I made one more feeble attempt at denial. I didn’t want to believe, but that boat had sailed. I knew what I’d seen in the basement of The Crypt.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m telling you the truth. Nothing in my background, education, or training prepared me to believe vampires really exist, but that’s what I discovered. Beyond any reasonable doubt. For some reason I don’t understand yet, more of the mindless, demented vampires are showing up in Denver.’
None of that made any sense to me. ‘Why is this happening all of a sudden? Has Denver had other murders in the past where the victims were drained of blood?’
‘According to my research, there have been sporadic deaths attributed to massive blood loss, but they were few and far between. It makes sense, because there’ve always been vampires, and some of them would have been the type who needed to kill. The death toll only became significant over the last few months.’ He picked up our coffee mugs, refilled them in the kitchen, and brought them back. The pink sweatsuit bottoms were almost glued to his skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. The view, coming and going, was distracting, but then I remembered what we were talking about.
‘Why Emerald?’
‘That I don’t know. But I promise you, I’ll find out. Now, tell me – what happened to you last night?’
He stretched out his long pink-encased legs and crossed his ankles on the coffee table. I curled up, my legs tucked underneath me, at the end of the couch.
‘Well, after I saw you in the club and we split up to find Tom . . . Hey!’ I sat up straight. ‘That reminds me – you lied to me. You said you were going to help me search for him and then I saw you charge through the doorway to the basement. How am I supposed to trust you if you lie to me? And how do I know you’re not lying about other stuff?’
He studied the carpet and shook his head. ‘Spank me, I’ve been bad.’ He shifted his eyes to gaze up at me from under his unfairly long eyelashes and grinned. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you. But you need to know this about me: I’m dedicated to my work and it wasn’t even in the realm of possibility that I’d go off searching for Tom instead of finding out what was happening with the vampires downstairs. It’s part of the job description of being the kind of obsessive-compulsive I am.’