7
Older vampires are more prone to office intrigues than humans. Centuries of living under the human radar and negotiating vampire politics instill a strong need for the rush of subterfuge. Frankly, it’s better to let them get it out of their systems as long as no one gets hurt. A bored vampire is a dangerous vampire.
—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
“Get up.” Nik was shaky, but he helped pull me to my feet. He seemed to be looking around the parking lot for his car. “I am kidnapping you.”
I groaned, stretching and gingerly testing my bruised arms. Nik nodded toward a black SUV and clicked the keyless entry. “Shouldn’t you be using an unmarked white panel van and some candy for this?”
“Very funny,” he grumped, rubbing at the side I’d Tasered. “Now, call your sister and make some excuse that will keep her from activating the LoJack chip she installed in your neck while you were sleeping.”
“She was only kidding about that,” I huffed, pulling out my phone. “I’m ninety percent sure.”
I was never so grateful for a call to go through to Iris’s voice mail. Because I’m sure that the presence of her vampire superpowers on the other end of the line would have resulted in Iris guessing that I was lying about going out for a late breakfast with my coworkers. I could lie to a machine, but I couldn’t lie to my sister.
Nik opened the passenger door and handed me inside. Honestly, he offered me his hand and helped me in, as if I was climbing into a horse-drawn carriage. The elegance of the gesture—compared with guys my age who not only walked through doors before me but didn’t bother holding said doors open long enough so they wouldn’t smack me in the face—touched that part of my heart that secretly enjoyed Jane Austen movie night with Iris and the girls. There were definitely perks to this “Old World guy” thing.
We were silent on the drive down the Hollow’s country roads to . . . I wasn’t sure where. And that’s when it occurred to me, once again, how potentially stupid it was to drive anywhere with someone who had been lunging for my jugular just moments before. But somehow, with Nik, it made sense, in a way I would never ever explain to Cal, because the mocking would be extreme. Zombie Nik and my Nik weren’t the same person. And so far, I’d been able to handle zombie Nik pretty easily.
I needed answers. I needed time to figure out what was happening and what was going on inside Nik’s head. And to do that, I needed to trust that he wasn’t going to space out and try to kill me again . . . despite all evidence to the contrary.
I’d just guaranteed my own “dumb human trick” hashtag on Twitter.
And still, I stayed in the car. I didn’t employ the Charlie’s Angels roll that Cal had taught me to escape a moving vehicle. Information—I needed it, and Nik had it, or at least, he had more of it than I did. So I would just have to trust, while keeping my hold on Mr. Sparky.
I’d expected him to live in some vampire-friendly extended-stay hotel or one of the renovated condos downtown, but he took me to the old Victorian house where Nola lived. The duplex was owned by Dick Cheney and had been split into two rental units years before. Nola and Jed lived in one half. And apparently, Nik lived in the other.
“Ophelia arranged a short-term rental for me,” Nik said, as he handed me out of the car. “My neighbors were out of town until a few days ago, and Dick was eager to have at least half of the house occupied while they were gone. Something about invasive possums.”
“They are aggressive,” I said, nodding.
“Well, it is not much, but it is definitely more luxurious than some places I have stayed over the years,” he said, as he unlocked the door.
Nik’s half of the house was comfortable but impersonal. The door led into a large parlor and, beyond that, a small beige dining-room-turned-kitchen. The polished living-room floor was covered with an extra-large faded blue rag rug. The furniture was sturdy, manly, no-nonsense. Several large bookshelves flanked his windows, but they were empty. There were no personal touches, no pictures, no personality. And no laptop. It might as well have been a hotel room.
Stairs led to a second story, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to see that part of the house, because if I did, I would probably end up losing all of my clothes. They would just spontaneously fall off. And that would be embarrassing.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, crossing into the kitchen.
“That’s always a loaded question, coming from a vampire,” I said, leaning against his counter. “I am not one for O positive.”
“I have human drinks. I arranged for my Beeline representative to stock them. I thought you might be coming by.” He opened the refrigerator door to show me a stunning array of sodas, juices, mineral waters, and wine coolers mixed in with his bagged donor blood. My mouth fell open at the sheer quantity of beverages weighing down his fridge shelves.
“I did not know what you would like.”
“That’s kind of adorable.” I tried my hardest to keep my smile in check, but I failed. “Diet Dr Pepper is my favorite.”
“Do not patronize me,” he grumbled. “Why not get more comfortable, and we will talk? I will get your drink. We will sit down and have a normal talk, like two normal people.”
I turned toward the living room but hesitated as I surveyed the seating options. A recliner and a couch. If I sat in the recliner, it was a pretty clear message that I didn’t want to sit anywhere near him. Or that I had a bad back. If I took the couch, he might think I was angling for snuggle time. If I continued standing, it was going to get weird.
It was already weird.
Nik stepped closer and rubbed his palms along my arms, his gaze intent and absent of any sort of glaze-y hostility. Before I could adjust to this new proximity, he yanked me against his chest and zipped across the room at vampire speed. I yelped as he gently dropped me at one end of his couch. I bounced a little, but before I landed, he had arranged the cushions behind me in the perfect vegging-out position and spread a soft blue chenille throw over my legs. I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d already disappeared into the kitchen in a blur, retrieving my soda and placing it on the coffee table. On a coaster.
If Iris ever got over her irrational “attacking Gigi” hang-up toward Nik, she would love him.
“See?” he said, dropping gracefully against the opposite end of the couch. “Perfectly normal.”
“Not quite,” I told him. “But it was a nice effort.”
There was an awkward silence as I paused to open my drink. How exactly did you start a conversation like this? Someone should write a book about upsetting conversations with undead potential boyfriends with memory issues. Note to self: Talk to Jane to see if she has any books about upsetting conversations with undead potential boyfriends with memory issues. If not available, force her to write said book at stake-point.
A curious, slack expression crossed Nik’s face. He reached for me, tracing the curves of my face with his hands like a blind man. His thumbs ran rings around the moonstone earrings at my lobes, and his eyes went hazy. It looked like his zombie phase, only his pupils retained their color. I scrambled back across the couch, perching on the arm, just in case he was phasing into zombie Nik. I could make the ten-foot dash to the door as long as he was stumbling around.
This was a really weird relationship.
“Cal did not threaten that boy.” His voice was odd, as if he was just remembering the words as he spoke them.
“Yes, we have established this,” I agreed.
“Cal did not threaten that boy. I did.”
I nodded, pursing my lips. “Once again, this is not exactly news.”
“Cal knew I was in the area, on a job. He called me, said he needed a favor, and asked me to visit your college campus. He gave me your schedule and told me that you were not to see me. He did not want you to know he was interfering. He told me the boy’s name and the nights when he would be walking around campus. I tracked him down and told him that if he so much as looked at you in a way that you found discomforting, I would remove the parts he held most dear.”
“You would have done it, too, wouldn’t you?” I asked, unsure whether I really wanted the answer to that question.
He nodded, a precise and decisive movement. “Without a second thought. One, because it was a favor for Cal. And two, because he was bothering you. And that made me angry enough to want to see him hurt, very badly hurt.”
I slid back into my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. “Suddenly, everything makes sense.”
“That was the first time I saw you,” he said. He looked so pleased, scooting closer to me and shoving the throw out of the way so he could pull me into his lap.
“How are you remembering this?”
“I do not know,” he said.
He kissed me, once and then twice, my breathy little laugh lost against his mouth as he sealed his lips over mine. I’d dreamed of him as a historical hero, but there was nothing chaste about this kiss. Nik wanted me—badly, if the hardening bulge against my thigh was any indication. And the only thought my brain—a brain my professors touted as brilliant and innovative, I might add—could cobble together was Naked, yay!
“You were walking across a courtyard, with a friend, and you were smiling.” He slid his hand into my hair and made a makeshift bun at my crown. “Your hair was piled up on top of your head. I heard you laugh. It sounded like music that only I could hear. It made the hair on my arms stand up.” Another kiss, lingering and open, teasing his tongue against mine. “And all I wanted to do was follow you so I could hear more. I have been on this earth for hundreds of years, but I have never wanted something so much in my whole existence as I wanted to make you laugh.”
Speechless. For the first time in my short but relatively remarkable life, I was speechless. He remembered me. He’d admired me. And my laugh. No man, living or dead, had ever said anything so magical or sweet to me.
“But I knew that following you would make Cal unhappy, so I left.”
That was less magical. “It would also make me unhappy, because that would be very creepy behavior,” I murmured against his mouth, before leaning away from him and adding testily, “Also, it didn’t keep you from following me when I came home for the holidays. You just kept popping up at random times, like a vampire Where’s Waldo?”
“I came to the Hollow over Christmas to discuss the position at the Council. I did not mean to see you. In fact, I was trying to avoid you.” With every sentence, he sounded more and more excited, and his speech sped up. He pulled me closer, tracing the lines of my collarbone with the tip of his nose. “But then you came to the Council office, for your interview, I suppose, and there you were. I knew I should not have followed you. I did not mean to scare you. But I could not find a way to talk to you without sounding like a madman.”
He licked a soft, wet path up the hollow of my throat, kissed my chin, and claimed my mouth. I threaded my fingers through his hair and ground my hips down.
He moaned, pulling away, staring up at me with wide, shocked eyes. “I have kissed you before.”
“Of course you have. Earlier this week, in fact. If you tell me you don’t remember that, I will be very hurt.”
“No, I have kissed you before!” he exclaimed. “It was cold. And your cheeks were bright pink. And you were looking at something in a window that made you smile . . .” He glanced up at my ears and cupped my jaw. He let out a long breath, and his forehead crinkled in concentration. “I kissed you.”
“Ran across the street and kissed me, like some thief in the night,” I told him, as his hand slipped under the tail of my shirt. His thumb stroked the base of my spine, making my hips jerk toward him. “A—a kissing thief. And then you ran away, and I never saw you again. Until you jumped me in the parking lot. You really hurt me. It hurt that you didn’t remember me.”
His eyes cleared to their usual golden brown, and he pressed his forehead just over my heart. “I wish I had. Really and truly.”
“Do you remember why you didn’t just talk to me then?”
“Because I was not supposed to,” he said. His hands worked their way around my waist, tugging my shirt loose and pulling it over my head. I might have objected, but at some point, I seemed to have unbuttoned his shirt, too. And I was pushing it from his shoulders, revealing smooth white skin and a muscled torso that tapered down to narrow hips.
I was not intimidated by his marble-toned damn-near-perfection. I was not self-conscious about my body. I’d always been athletic, but training with Cal’s people had put a considerable amount of muscle on my frame. I actually had abs and definable tone in my thighs, not to mention a rack I was pretty darn proud of. As far as I was concerned, Nik and his godlike physique could bring it on.
“Cal asked me not to contact you directly because he did not want you to realize you were being followed,” Nik said, pushing me back onto the couch and cradling my legs around his hips.
He trailed his lips from the lace connecting my bra cups, down my stomach to ring my belly button.
“But when you returned from school, I found that I missed seeing you. I tried to keep you from seeing me. But you have solid instincts for a human; you picked up on my cues. That is all I remember, admiring your ability to sense me, even when you could not see me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, resting his chin on my sternum. “Probably because you have spent a lot of time around vampires and do not let fear cloud your ability to process the environment around you.”
“No, not that!” I cackled. “Why wouldn’t you just ignore Cal and come to see me anyway? It would have saved us some drama. Also, I wouldn’t have spent months thinking I was nuts and had imagined the whole thing, which would have been nice.” I pulled him closer, looping my legs around his and locking them in place.
He frowned and tried to sit up, but I held fast, and he took me with him. We landed against the beige upholstery with a thud. “You will not pull away from me that easily. Consider me the giant squid of potential romantic partners.” When he snickered, I said, “It’s an unsexy but illustrative thought.”
He let out a long breath and pressed his ear against my heart, listening to its erratic beat. “I told you, I killed my sire. I did not have any supervision as a young vampire, and I enjoyed my adolescence a little bit too much. I have done things, Gigi, that make even other vampires uncomfortable. I have killed many people, and in some cases, I enjoyed that killing very much. And I make no apologies for that. I am what I am.”
“You’re the vampire Popeye?”
He groaned, dropping his forehead against the hollow of my throat. “You make it easy to forget you are so young, and then you say something like that. Even though I want you for myself, I am sure that I am no good for you. And even more sure that I do not care.”
“News flash, Skippy, everyone on earth is young compared to you,” I told him, digging my knuckles into his ribs. He yelped, and I cupped my hand around his jaw. “So you get that noble, self-sacrificing bullshit out of your head right now.” I traced the lines of his pecs with my fingertips, barely brushing over his nipples. “I have seen more in my short lifetime than a lot of vampires you know. I’ve lost people I loved.” I skirted my hands down his ribs and settled them over his hips. “I’ve been threatened and seen people hurt because of my bad choices. I’ve loved someone enough to put their happiness before my own comfort. I am walking into this with my eyes wide open. I have accepted the risks and am really, really looking forward to the rewards.” I popped the button on his jeans and slipped my hand against the sensitive skin over his pelvis. He gasped and thunked his forehead against my collarbone. “Now, admit that I’m a very mature person, or by all that’s holy, I will give you a purple nurple.”
His smooth white shoulders were shaking, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he was laughing or because I was still teasing my fingers just under the band of his shorts. My free hand skimmed up his torso and mercilessly tweaked his nipple. “Ah!” he yelled. “You are a very mature person!”
“That’s more like it.” I preened.
“Centuries of spreading terror and bloodshed across the globe, and I think I just became the girl in this relationship,” he muttered.
“Yep,” I said, letting my lips pop over the “p” sound.
Nik let out an indignant snort. “Oh, you think it is funny, do you?” He poked his fingers into my ribs, tickling me at vampire speed.
“Hilarious!” I giggled, trying fruitlessly to push his hands away. “Side-splitting, even!”
My giggles were interrupted by a series of sharp raps on the wall Nik shared with Nola and Jed.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, which barely muffled a whole new wave of laughter. “Whoops.”
“You are a vicious, bloodthirsty creature to treat your vampire so,” he murmured against the skin of my throat, even as his hands teased and plucked at my ticklish places. My pulse skipped at the mention of him being “my” vampire. Nik’s ears must have picked up on the change, because he spread his hand over my heart to feel it thrum.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, though I was still laughing, and he was pulling my slacks over my hips with his free hand. “We’re going to get you kicked out of your apartment.”
“Worth it,” he assured me, while nibbling on my ear. “After what I overheard the other night, they deserve to lose some sleep. It sounded like an obscene nature special over there.”
I shoved his jeans down his thighs with my feet. “Nola and Jed are good people. They just got back from Ireland, and they’re probably just jet-lagged.” Then I gasped and sat up, sending Nik toppling off the couch.
He landed on his hands and knees, because of the whole vampire-reflexes thing, but he didn’t look very happy about it. “You know, if you want to slow down, you just have to say so.”
“Nola!” I yelled. “We need to talk to Nola.”
Nik glanced down at the pants bunched around his ankles. “Right now?”
“Right now!” I insisted, yanking up my slacks.
“No, wait, do not do that,” he said, as I slid into my black shirt. He groaned. “You did it.”
“Put your pants on, and let’s go meet your neighbors.”
• • •
I was careful to make sure that we were both buttoned and zipped properly before we left Nik’s apartment. I felt bad for not having a bottle of wine or a Bundt cake or something while knocking on Nola and Jed’s door in the wee hours with supernatural problems. Then again, we never knocked on each other’s doors in the wee hours with natural problems, so she should expect it by now.
It took a few knocks, but eventually, the porch light clicked on, and an enormous bipedal shark creature opened the door. Rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight from under the creature’s conical nose. Its dead black eyes narrowed as a low, menacing growl rumbled from its humanoid chest. Nik stumbled back, grabbing my arm and dragging me away from the threat.
I rolled my eyes and patted Nik’s hand in a comforting gesture, completely ignoring the walking fish-man.
“Damn it, Nola, I told you not to let him watch Shark Week!” I called over the creature’s shoulders. “You know it gives him weird ideas.”
“Gigi!” Nola’s voice rose from behind evil bipedal Bruce. A slender woman with coffee-colored hair and wide brown eyes appeared in the doorway. She shoved the drooling shark creature aside. “What in blazes are you doing here at this time of night?”
It was always a bit of a shock to hear Nola’s accent, a mix of Irish lilt and nasal Boston drawl, a by-product of her international upbringing. Nola was the last of Dick’s line, the previously unknown granddaughter Mr. Wainwright had left behind in Ireland. She was also the leader of a very large, very talented coven of witches. She’d come to the Hollow a few years before on a sort of supernatural scavenger hunt, searching for magical items that would settle a generations-long interclan feud. But since the late Mr. Wainwright had some hoarding tendencies and Jane had some compulsive organizing tendencies, those items were spread out all over the Hollow, and it took a bit longer than she’d expected, giving her time to be adopted by Jane and Company. She and her boyfriend, Jed, now spent several months each year in Ireland, running her family’s clinic in Kilcairy, and the rest here in the Hollow, working for the local free clinics in both spots.
Nola saw Nik standing next to me, and her dark eyes narrowed. A low, threatening hiss issued from the shark’s maw. “Oh, Jed, seriously, can you not be a mutant land shark right now?”
A bluish shimmer of light rippled along the shark’s skin, and the outline of the creature gave way to a handsome, shirtless, shape-shifting redneck who looked like a Greek statue and pouted like a grumpy panda. “You never let me be a mutant land shark.”
“I’m not saying you can’t shapeshift. I’m just saying, why not a giant badger or a were-bear? The shark doesn’t make any bloody sense!” she exclaimed, pulling her robe closed over her skimpy green sleep shorts and tank top. “We’re hundreds of miles inland. How are intruders supposed to be afraid of you when they’re too busy asking themselves how the bloody hell that mutant shark wandered so far from the ocean? Unless there are six-foot-tall, walking shark creatures living in Barkley Lake now, and the local media has neglected to report it because of tourism concerns.”
“Are they insane or magical?” Nik asked, pulling me closer to his side, as if he expected Jed to shift into another scary sea-creature hybrid at any moment.
“A little bit of both,” I whispered back. “Uh, guys? I’m sorry to interrupt the shark debate—Jed, it’s awesome but implausible—but there’s a reason we knocked on your door at this time of night.”
“Also, could he put on a shirt?” Nik asked, pointing to Jed’s broad chest, tanned and well muscled from the construction work he did for Sam.
“You came knockin’ on my door, bud. I’ll wear what I want,” Jed said, snorting, but he did grab a T-shirt from the couch while Nola hustled us inside.
“Is this Nik, then?” Nola asked.
“Nik, this is Nola Leary of the McGavock clan. Nola, this is Nikolai Dragomirov,” I said. Nik beamed at me. “What?”
He shrugged, but the silly smile didn’t fade. “It just sounds nice, hearing you say my full name like that.”
“I think Cal would want me to shift back into the land shark right now,” Jed whispered to Nola. “For the sake of brotherly honor.”
“Jed, please be the one person I know and love who doesn’t threaten my special vampire gentleman friend.”
And there went the pouty-panda face again. Jed protested, his strange Cajun-meets-backwoods accent growing thicker with every syllable. “Everybody threatened him without me?”
“We have been out of town, sweetie,” Nola said, soothing him.
“But he’s a vampire, and he’s clearly dating Gigi. Cal is going to destroy him!” he exclaimed. “I should get to join in on the hazing. I’ve paid my dues. I’m a full-fledged member of the group!”
“Well, you’ve missed a lot,” I told him. “And for right now, can we maybe not tell Iris that you saw us? Together?” I pulled a spare dollar from my pocket and pressed it into Nola’s hand before she could object. “Also, please consider me a paying client and therefore subject to any confidentiality that as a medical professional and a magical practitioner you would offer any patient.”
“Is that how it works?” Jed asked.
Nola’s eyebrows rose, and she tucked the dollar into her pocket. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
• • •
Nola and Jed’s side of the house was a much more colorful, personalized mirror image of Nik’s apartment. The pictures and tchotchkes that were missing from Nik’s shelves were found in abundance here: a framed photo of Jed and Nola smiling together from rolling green hills, white candles inscribed with Celtic knot symbols, a green glazed ceramic bowl filled with dried herbs, a photo of Jed holding an empty pint glass aloft as two men who bore a stunning resemblance to Nola seemed to be shouting in good-natured protest. Despite being from two wildly different backgrounds, they’d made a comfortable home together. And even though I couldn’t help but feel a little envious of them, it gave me hope that Nik and I could find that kind of common ground.
As far as I was concerned, Nola was the coolest among our little family-friend-undead circle. Sure, vampires and werewolves were all right, but Nola could heal wounds and light candles from across the room. I begged her to teach me how to do stuff, but she said magic was the sort of thing you had to be born with. If I tried the wrong spell, I could permanently remove my eyebrows or something. And I liked my eyebrows right where they were.
Over tea, I explained my brief history with Nik, his spotty memory and occasional bite-y states, plus the various developments she’d missed over Christmas. Nola sipped her peppermint tea and quietly absorbed the information, while Jed looked at Nik with more and more hostility. Oh, goody.
Nola poured another cup of the jasmine green tea I favored and pressed it into my hands. “That doesn’t sound like normal vampire behavior.”
“Tell me about it.” I snorted.
“Why are we telling her about it?” Nik asked, eyeing Jed warily. He hadn’t touched the warmed bottled blood Nola had served him, as if he suspected that the land shark might have snuck into the kitchen to tamper with it somehow. “This seems like an odd conversation to have when we should be worrying about the approaching sunrise and the fact that they could report us to Cal and your sister for violating the unofficial no-contact order.”
“Nola wouldn’t do that. It would violate her ethics as a nurse. And as a medical empath. Medical empaths have ethics, right?” I asked. Nola shrugged. “Anyway, ethical quandaries aside, Nola can sense a medical problem just by standing near someone. Jane couldn’t sense anything wrong with your brain; maybe Nola can sense something going on with you medically, or magically.”
“It’s hard for me to get a read on vampires,” Nola said. “Different systems.”
“So maybe you can sense some sort of evil whammy,” I said. “This whole situation reeks of misused mojo. And if you can sense what sort of mojo, maybe we can undo it.”
“I’ve told you, there is no magical control-Z.”
“Everything’s negotiable,” I told her.
“I’m a little uncomfortable with this, Geeg,” Nola said. “If Iris doesn’t want you spending time with this guy, maybe you should do as she asks. No offense, Nik.”
Nik waved off her concern. “I am getting used to it.”
“Please, Nola, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” I said. Then I amended, “If Nik wasn’t really important to me. And as much as I respect Iris’s opinion, who I see is my business. What would you have done if someone had told you that you shouldn’t be with Jed because he could shift into a porcupine creature in the middle of the night?”
“That’s not really the same thing!” Jed protested. “I couldn’t hurt Nola. My claws and quills aren’t real. They’re projections. His fangs are very real and right in front of my face.”
“OK, what if your family told you not to live with Nola because she could turn you into a toad?”
“Actually, he did have an aunt who told him that,” Nola noted.
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Like turning her into a toad,” Nola muttered.
“OK, so get with the empathing!” I cried. “The sooner we figure out what’s going on, the sooner we can fix it, and the sooner I can stop acting like the tragic, put-upon teen waif in a reimagined Shakespearean rom-com!”
“Did you understand that one?” Jed asked Nik, who shook his head.
Nola looked to Jed, who shrugged his shoulders. She sighed, though she was warming up her hands, clearly intent on examining Nik. “Fine, but we’re doing this now, before I change my mind.”
“Doing what?” Nik asked, sounding more than a little alarmed as Nola crouched in front of him. “What is she going to do?”
“Relax,” Nola said. “This isn’t going to hurt in the slightest. But if Iris asks, I dug through his aura like a Roto-Rooter.”
“Roto what?” Nik’s indignant grunt was cut off as Nola placed her hands on his and closed her eyes. She winced but seemed to push through whatever discomfort she felt, blowing out a low breath. She stayed still and silent for a long while, so long I worried about Nik being caught in the rapidly approaching sunrise.
Nola’s eyes snapped open. There was this strange moment when I felt as if I was waiting at the doctor’s office to find out whether my husband had a serious disease. She shuddered and gave Nik’s hands a squeeze. “Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that you’ve been cursed. There is a pall hanging over your energy, like a cancer, eating away at your intentions, your memories. It’s like little gray moths surrounding your head, blinking in and out of focus.”
“How is that the good news?” I asked, as Nola pulled a black medical bag from her end table and prepared what looked like a syringe and a vacu-tube.
“Because the curse means that he’s not a psycho who slips into altered states to give him an excuse to brutally drain you?” she suggested, swiping at his inner elbow with an alcohol pad.
“That is good news,” I agreed.
“I think that hurts my feelings,” Nik said, wincing when Nola inserted a needle into his arm. “On several levels.”
“The additional good news is that if it’s a curse, there has to be a way to break it. Those are the rules.” Nola attached a test tube to the needle and drew an alarming amount of Nik’s blood with quiet competency. The fact that I didn’t want to look directly at the needle slipping into Nik’s skin was yet another sign that I’d made the right choice in not going into nursing.
“Who makes up the magical rules?” I asked.
“We have a big meeting every year at a Hyatt in Jersey City.”
“I’m going to assume you’re kidding but accept that you might not be.” I watched Nola fill one tube and then another with Nik’s blood sample and asked, “OK, Nik’s cursed. What do we do about it?”
“Well, that’s the bad news. I don’t know what kind of curse it is. While you’re setting off a very strong ping on my magical radar, Nik, you’re not giving off any particular magical signature, which is rather clever on the caster’s part. Unless I was with you and the caster at the same time, I probably wouldn’t pick up on him or her as the originator of the spell. There may be a way to pick up on the caster’s energy without Nik or me being present, but I’ll have to look into it, give my cousins a call and see if they have any ideas. And I’ll test his blood, see if I can spot any abnormalities or poisons. It would help if I had Iris’s cooperation on that front, considering that she quite literally wrote the book on vampires and organic poisons.”
Despite myself, I smiled proudly at the mention of Iris’s book, which she wrote after her experience with Cal and got published through a small academic press. Bitten Botanicals hadn’t exactly set the bestseller lists on fire, but the profits were enough to allow Iris to pay her own way through finishing a vampire-friendly PhD program, something she’d always regretted abandoning.
“Could you ask her on behalf of a troubled but unnamed neighbor?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “And I won’t tell you to stay away from each other, because I think you should be the one to make that call.”
“Thank you, Nola, that means a lot.”
“Also, because I know you wouldn’t listen either way,” she noted, pulling the syringe out of Nik’s arm with a practiced air. Nik rubbed absently at the wound, which was already closed up.
“You’re probably right,” I conceded. “Nola, could a human cast a curse on a vampire?” I asked.
Nola shrugged. “A magical human or a regular human?”
“Regular.”
“Probably not. She could hire a witch to do it for her. But a nonwitch couldn’t pull this kind of power.”
“And is there a way to figure out whether someone’s a witch? Since you’re magical, can you tell just by looking at her?”
She shook her head. “No, she would have to do magic somewhere near me. You could have Jane listen to her brain, but that won’t work if she’s handy with a mental shield.”
“Can’t I just do some sort of forensic test, like swab her for magical residue?”
“On the next episode of CSI: Half-Moon Hollow?”
“Come on, there has to be something,” I wheedled.
“I’ll look into it.”
“It is possible that someone in my life is behind this phenomenon,” Nik said uneasily. “When you do the work that I do for the Council, you make enemies. If someone sensed that Gigi was important to me, they could have placed this curse on me.”
“Can you think of anyone specific?” I asked, even as the chill of dread crept up my spine.
“It would take a while to make a list,” Nik said. “A very long while.”
“Well, for now, let’s focus on the field that’s not so wide it terrifies me, OK?” I suggested.
“I am sorry, my Gigi,” he said quietly. “For a long time, I have lived without a thought to how it might hurt the people closest to me. I have not had people close to me. I am sorry you are caught in the crossfire. I can change.”
“I wouldn’t want you to change,” I told him. “Much.”
Nola slapped a Hello Kitty bandage on Nik’s arm, which was completely unnecessary, and pronounced him “all done.”
“Is it not customary to get a lollipop after you have been poked and prodded?” Nik muttered.
Nola ruffled his blond hair, which Nik did not appreciate. “Do they make blood-flavored lollipops?”
Nik blanched. “If there is any justice in the world, no.”
She smiled sweetly. “Then, no.”