CHAPTER TWENTY
When I get to my car in the society parking lot, there is a small piece of folded paper jammed into the crease of the driver’s side window. I look over my shoulder and then open it. The handwritten note says Lula at Kline’s tonight @8. B careful.
I can only assume Viviana wrote it—perhaps to help. Perhaps not. Either way, I don’t trust her, and she is correct; I must be careful. Too much is at stake.
Aspen has Lula and Miriam. Of course, I see from the way he set all this up, what he really wants is Lula. And he wants her without a hassle from me because killing me would raise too much suspicion with the council—two leaders of the Cincinnati Society dead within a week.
I arrive to my studio apartment, finding the door wide open and a scent of fear lingering in the air.
Lula…
I also see that someone took Clive’s can, opened it, and dumped the contents down the kitchen sink.
Though my heart wants to weep, I hold it all in and focus on the facts—what I know and what I do not know.
One, Aspen isn’t without allies, and I must assume that could include someone on the council, someone old enough to know who Clive truly was.
Two, if Aspen had wanted Miriam dead, she would be gone by now. And, given that she is bonded to Jeremy, and now knowing what I do about the mental cluster a bond creates, Jeremy will protect her. All right, at a minimum, he will not kill her unless it serves him.
Three, since someone must be held accountable for Clive’s death (and no vampire in his or her right mind would believe that Miriam bested Clive) it is Lula they’ve chosen to take the fall. My bet is they will come up with a story—that they tried to apprehend her and she resisted, ending in her death. Really what they want is a solid cover for Clive’s murder.
Four, they know who Clive really was and that he made Lula. I cannot see them letting her blood go to waste. They plan to drink her, which will make them stronger.
Five, they know I am not your everyday vampire. Because of my lineage and age, it is a given that I didn’t get this old by taking crap from a bunch of sadistic, sunshine-worshipping, money whores. And my blood is also valuable. My conclusion: they will find a way to kill me, too, eventually. Or perhaps the party tonight is a trap, one where they can tell the council that I came seeking revenge for Lula’s death and that they had no choice but to defend themselves.
Yes, they are expecting me to show up, guns blazing, to rescue Lula.
All of these facts bring me to one conclusion: It is time to dust off four hundred years of vampire skills, including every trick Clive taught me and everything I’ve learned over the course of eight professions.
Also, it looks like I’m going to a party.
I’m one hundred percent certain that Aspen has his people following me given it is what I would do. So before I begin preparations, my first task is to lose them.
Profession #1: game hunter and fur trapper in the 1600s. Taught myself to avoid detection, stalk prey, and to use a bow and arrow. I am also fairly handy with a knife.
I pull up into the airport parking lot to find my hippy friend at the car rental counter, playing a video game on his phone.
“Hey, remember me?” I offer my most charming smile.
“Hey.” He looks at me briefly and jerks his head.
“I am having engine problems. Can you come outside with me and look?”
“I don’t know anything about cars, dude. Let me call the mechan—”
“No. It must be you.” I slide a hundred-dollar bill across the counter. “And if you also let me cut your hair and swap clothes with me, I will throw in another hundred.” I slide another bill across the counter. “And then you will go outside, take my car, get on the highway, and keep driving until you run out of gas—I mean battery.” I slide an envelope stuffed with about two thousand dollars across the counter.
He takes a step back. “Errr… Dude, what is thi—”
“Just say yes.” I give him my signature death-threat look, and unlike the time with the children, this time, I get it right.
“Yes?” he peeps.
“That’s a good boy. Now let’s go outside and fix my engine problem.” I want my reason for being here to look legit.
Twenty minutes later, we’ve removed and replaced the air filter for show, and he and I are in the employee bathroom, where I give him my haircut. Profession #6: barber in the mid-1800s.
“That looks quite nice,” I say. “And I was right. You have very nice bone structure.”
He shrugs. “What next?”
“We trade clothes, and might I add, you really should do the laundry more than once a month.”
“My mom lives really far—like forty minutes.”
I nod, trying not to slap his face. “A real man does his own laundry or pays a service. One does not wait for mommy to tell us when we stink.”
“Whatever.”
“All right, hand ’em over,” I say.
He begins to strip. “You know this is really weird, right?”
“Just remember to get in the car like I told you, drive straight to the highway, and keep going.”
“What do I do when I run out of juice?” he asks.
“You stay in the car until roadside service comes.”
With luck, this will buy me an hour before they realize I’ve slipped away.
We both dress, and I give him a quick once-over. He is almost exactly my height, though he has a thinner build, thus the reason I put on a bulky dark sweater and blazer before leaving my studio. With his similar brown shade of hair, he definitely passes for me from a distance.
“Good. Now get going.” I push him out the door of the back room, and I wait for him to go outside. I watch through the plate-glass window as he gets into my blue rental. The moment he does, I slip out the back way, down the block, to an awaiting Uber on the corner.
Once I’m sure no one has followed, I make my way to another rental place several miles down the road. This time, I get the fastest car I can in case my plan tonight goes wrong.
Of course, it won’t. I happen to be very skilled at performing dangerous and complex tasks. Remember when I said that three hundred years ago, the vampires who resisted our new laws were hunted down and executed? Meet the retired executioner.
Profession #2: assassin.