Raven Cursed

Derek said, “We can handle it. If pretty boy knows how to work a headset.”



“I was working com units when you were in knee britches, sonny,” Brandon said.



“Knee britches? Wrong century, white boy.”



“Stop,” I said, waving the waitress over when she appeared uncertain about interrupting with our meals. The tension at the table was making the staff nervous. “Can you work together or not? ’Cause if you’re going to act like twelve-year-olds, I’ll look for other help. Like Chen.” I glanced at Adelaide, who smiled slightly.



Derek snorted. Brandon swiveled to me. I raised my brows at him, mimicking his hoity-toity expression, and stuffed a forkful of pork in my mouth, sauce on my lips. Deliberately crude.



“We’ll manage,” he said.



“Good,” I said through the food. Then I chewed and swallowed. “You boys chat. I gotta go to the ladies room.” I made my way to the room with the cow on the door, a cow wearing three brassieres with six udders stuffed up high and proud. The bull’s room was just as indelicate, but involved something that looked like six feet of horns and a Speedo. I felt, more than saw, Adelaide follow me. Now what?



CHAPTER TEN



I Sleep with Vamps for a Living



I did my business, aware that she did the same. I stopped at the mirror, undoing my hair and rebraiding it, waiting on her. Women wearing stockings or pantyhose took longer than women in jeans. The lighting claimed I needed some color. Lipstick. Blush. Mascara. Something. I braided my hair, watching her feet in the stall. If they spread and braced she might be pulling a weapon.



Adelaide flushed, opened the door—no weapon—and left the stall, meeting my eyes in the mirror; she washed her hands at the sink, standing beside me, still holding my gaze. She was amused, as if she had been betting with herself that I was watching for a gun. I couldn’t help it. I grinned back. She said, “You do yank their chains.”



“Sometimes,” I said.



“As often as possible,” she amended.



I gave a head shrug, a tilt of acceptance. “You wow them with your looks and charm, and keep them in their places panting after you. Looks and charm aren’t my strengths. I have to make do with moxie and muscle.” We still hadn’t met eyes directly, the mirror acting as intermediary. But this woman wanted something from me, and I hadn’t figured out what.



“You really have no idea how beautiful you are.” It was an incredulous statement, not a question, and she looked sad.



I snorted, not trying to be delicate. “I know exactly how beautiful I am. I’m not. I have good bone structure, but striking is the best I can do. Now, when I get all doodied up, and my pal Molly does my face, I do better than striking. But I’ll never be beautiful.”



“Mmm.” Adelaide pulled towels and dried her hands. “They all stared at your backside when you left the table.”



“I have a nice butt. Great legs. No class.”



“You chose to display little class,” she amended again.



I leaned my weight on both hands, against the counter, still holding her eyes in the mirror. I let a bit of snarl enter my voice. “Are you trying to be my best pal?”



“You aren’t making it easy,” she said, exasperated. She leaned in as well, her posture copying mine. “Do you know how difficult it is to find a friend who is as tall as I am? Who doesn’t make me feel like a lumbering giant? Who might understand the life of a blood-servant? Who isn’t chasing after me to get close to my mother?” The last was said with a soft undertone of old anguish.



My face fell. Crap. She was serious. After a long, silent moment, I said, “Yeah. To the tall part.” I studied her cornflower blue eyes. They were earnest, a hard emotion to fake. “So . . . you really are trying to be my friend?”



“And I have no idea why I’ve bothered. You are a pain in the ass.”



I laughed. She didn’t. I stepped away from the mirror and looked at her. She stepped back and met my gaze. “Okay,” I said.



“Okay? Okay what?”



“Yeah. Okay. Let’s be friends.”



An expression I’d never have expected flashed across her face. Delight. Which was just weird. Weird that someone wanted to be my friend. And not because I was famous—sorta—or different, or killed vamps for a living. But because I was tall. And because I understood.



Even Molly had become my best pal because I’d intervened between her and a pack of witch-haters way back when. Adelaide wanted to be my friend because she was tall. And lonely. And that I understood totally. I let one corner of my mouth curl back up. “You do know that I’ll never love dressing up like a girl. We’ll never go shopping or to the spa for facials and pedicures. We’ll never have anything in common.”



“Except height and similar awareness of life-with-vamp,” she said.



“Yeah.” I put out my hand, knowing that this part might ruin the possibility of friendship between us. “Jane Yellowrock. I kill vamps for a living.”



She took my hand. “Adelaide Mooney. I sleep with vamps for a living.”



Which shot ice water through my veins. I clasped her hand tighter, electricity zigzagging through me, chilling my skin. Her palm was soft and delicate, her fingers long and slender but powerful, holding mine. “You don’t have to,” I said softly.



“Neither do you.”



I felt the grin pull across my face. “I don’t want to like you. But I do.”



“Good. BFFs. For real.”



No one said BFFs anymore, but she was eighty years old. It was hard for the older servants to keep up with current jargon. “Okay. Deal.” And honest to God, she teared up, her bluish-lavender eyes swimming. “If you cry every time we agree on something,” I growled, “it’s going to be annoying.”



“No, it’s not,” she said. “We aren’t going to agree on much.”



I laughed, her tinkling laughter skipping across mine like stones on a lake. “There is that,” I said.



Slowly she let go of my hand. “Thank you.”



“Likewise. Now. I gotta get outta here. I need to make an appointment and then get a couple hours of shut-eye, and then I have to hunt werewolves.”



“Sounds like fun.” She produced a card like a prestidigitator. “My transportation service. Tell them I sent you. Set up an account with them and they’ll be at your disposal. But just so you know, they’ll tell me every location where they pick you up and where they take you. So if it’s a secret, don’t use them.”



I took the card. “I like you. And I feel like that’s a huge mistake.”



“Ditto,” she said. “Be safe.” Adelaide left the ladies room while I dialed the number on the card and ordered a ride. Back in the dining room, I finished my pork and then walked out. I had places to be and wolves to track.



* * *



Adelaide’s service turned out to be a chartered driver company, like an upscale taxi service, but run on retainer. I didn’t expect to need it, but who knew? Back at the hotel, crime scene tape had been plastered all over my door. I paused for a moment before entering, shoving the damaged door open, ducking under the tape. A patch of bloody carpet had been removed. The room had been vacuumed by CSI techs. The linens were gone. And my things were no longer in my room. No clothes. No guns on the coffee table. I went to the closet and reached into the back corner, my fingers finding the box with the obfuscation spell on it. I pulled it forward and tucked it under my arm. The contents shifted slightly with the action, a deadened, hollow sound.



“Your belongings and weapons are in our suite.” I turned to see Brian standing behind me, yellow tape between us. I hadn’t heard him, the carpet in the hotel deep enough to muffle his footsteps. He was wearing slacks and a starched white shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a tan holster over it. His feet were bare, which was endearing in an odd sort of way. “All except the weapon you shot the man with,” he continued. “The cops have it and I rather doubt you’ll get it back. Ever.” He fell silent, waiting for me to process what he’d said. The cops weren’t giving my gun back. Cops don’t give weapons back when the victim of a shooting dies. But they had let me go so . . . the man I’d shot had only recently passed on. Kicked the bucket. Died.



Slowly, like a wrecking ball falling, I realized what had happened. I’d killed a human. A thinking, breathing being with a soul. Not a rogue-vamp killing machine. Not a rabid were. I’d ripped him out of existence. And for hours I hadn’t thought about him. Not once. A cold mist of shock billowed slowly through me, expanding, filling me with the icy reality. I looked away from Brian, wondering why I hadn’t thought about the man I had killed until now. Wondered why I hadn’t considered the possibility that I’d killed him. I’d thought him only wounded, and blood-servants don’t kill easy. I killed a human being. I wrapped my arms around me, the box pressing into my side, staring at the bare patch of floor. There was a faint stain of blood on it. I could still smell the stink of gunfire. I killed a human being.



As if he knew what I was feeling, Brian said, “The lead investigator said the guy had no ID on him. Prints came back as a made man out of New York. He disappeared off the law enforcement radar two years ago, possibly going to work as a contract killer for a renegade Mithran.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “Two hits have been laid at his door in the last sixty days, one in New Orleans.” Which meant he had long arms, whoever the vamp master was.



I looked up to see that Brian was wavering. And then I realized my eyes were full of tears. When I managed a breath, the air moving down my throat ached. He continued. “He came in through our room. If we hadn’t both been in Grégoire’s suite you would have been safe.”



“And you might have been”—I swallowed through the tight pain in my throat—“dead.” I moved toward him and ducked beneath the yellow tape, closing the door after me. We stood in the hallway, close enough to smell his aftershave. “So, I’m bunking with you guys?”

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