Chapter 11

“JESUS WEPT, WHAT happened in here?” Sabrina’s voice woke me at an ungodly hour, and I crashed to the floor when I rolled over in bed. That’s when I realized I wasn’t in bed. I patted the floor by my face. Hardwood, or the fake hardwood that we put down in the war room because it’s way easier to get blood out of than the real stuff.

“Bobby, what are you doing here?” Sabrina asked, and the evening all came rushing back to me. I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, gave my head a vigorous shake, and levered myself up onto the couch. Bobby was sprawled on the couch opposite me, and Greg was in his gamer chair a dozen feet away, slowly stirring to life, his gaming headset and VR glasses askew on his face.

Bobby groaned and rolled over, conducting the same gravity experiment I had and with the same level of success. His big body crashed to the floor a lot more solidly than I did, and a half-empty Miller Lite bottle on the end table rocked back and forth before tumbling over to spill the dregs of room-temperature domestic-beer foulness all down Bobby’s neck and back.

“Shit,” he said from the floor. “That’s cold, man.”

“I repeat, what the hell happened in here?” Sabrina asked, perching on the arm of the couch Bobby just fell from and fixing me with a stare that could only be described as baleful. And judge-y. And condemning. Okay, so maybe there were a lot of ways to describe it. But it was a scary- ass look.

“I had to kill her, Sabrina,” I said, dragging myself up to the sofa behind me and surveying the wreckage of the night before. Eight or nine beer bottles littered the coffee table between the couches, and I figured that was Bobby’s contribution to the festivities. My damage took the form of two bottles of Ciroc, a handle of Captain Morgan, and what looked like my best efforts to just drink up anything in the liquor cabinet that had already been opened. Vodka, rum, tequila. Good thing I was already dead, because the sight of that devastating mix of boozes was enough to kill a human.

“I’m sorry, baby. I know that must have been awful.” She came over to my couch and sat next to me, putting her arm around my shoulders.

“I’m guessing your night was no better,” I said. I kept my gaze fixed on the empty bottles on the table, doing my best not to lose my shit again.

“Yeah, it was pretty awful. Notifications are the worst part of my job, and this one . . . well, let’s just say that the CMPD didn’t earn itself any fans with this case. Now did you drink everything in the house, or is there still enough left for me to knock the edge off a little before I try to crash for a few hours?”

“Here,” came a new voice from the back of the room. Abby walked into the room like a backlit angel carrying a case of booze. “I cleaned out the wet bar in your office, Jimmy. We weren’t sure how long you were going to wallow, so we figured we’d better be prepared.” The “we” included William, my executive assistant and the single most together person I’d ever met. I raised an eyebrow at him as he followed Abby in carrying two more cases of assorted booze.

He set the liquor down on the conference table, pulled out a bottle, and walked over to Sabrina. “I will wash a glass for you, Detective Law. The boys and Mr. Reed devastated our clean glassware last night, so it may take a moment.”

“Don’t sweat it, William,” Sabrina said. She peeled the foil off the neck of the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a long draught. She made a face and sat back down next to me. “I hate Scotch.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said.

“Me three,” Greg called from his chair.

“Then why do you keep it around?” Abby asked. “If none of us like it—”

“Mike loved Scotch,” I said, and her mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “I kept it around for Mike, and since he died, nobody really drinks it. But I keep a bottle, and when we run out of everything else—”

“Which we did,” Greg chimed in, struggling to his feet and staggering to the minifridge.

“Then we drink the Scotch,” I finished.

“Yeah, that sounds healthy,” Abby said.

“Binge drinking is not a sign of excellent mental health, Abs,” I said. “So drinking a bottle of booze I hate but keep around in memory of my dead best friend is the least of my worries when I’m pounding alcohol at a good enough clip to get blackout drunk, even with a vampire’s metabolism.”

“Not to mention the living embodiment of a city working to heal you as fast as you can damage yourself,” William added.

“Yeah, that was awkward,” I said. “The Soul of the City really didn’t want me getting sloppy drunk last night.”

“But we persevered,” Greg said, holding up bags of blood in each hand. “A or B?”

“A, please,” I said. He tossed me the bag in his left hand, and I drained it in one long slurp. “That’s a little better.” I walked back over to sit next to Sabrina, tossing the empty bag on the coffee table amidst all the other wreckage. “You okay over there, Bobby?”

“No,” he said. “Do not ever try to drink with vampires. They will wreck your shit.”

“Most humans should just avoid us in general,” I said. “Don’t you have to get the ambulance back?”

His head popped up like a groundhog. “Sonofagun! I’m gonna be so fired.”

“Here,” Sabrina said after another long pull of Scotch. “Give them my card. Tell them you were with me if they give you any problems. They can contact Lieutenant McDaniel if they need any information.”

“I’m still way too drunk to drive,” Bobby said. He looked around the room. “And none of you can go out in the daylight.”

“Well, I can, but I just slammed about six shots in ten minutes, so I shouldn’t get behind the wheel, either,” Sabrina said.

“Come here, Bobby,” I said, pulling out my pocketknife. “This is gonna be kinda gross, but you’ll sober up in seconds.” I sliced the ball of my thumb and held it up. “Drink.”

“What? Whoa, no, man! I don’t want to be a vampire!” He held up both hands and backed up. “I’m feeling a lot more sober, really!”

“You won’t turn unless I drain you first. And I’m not going to drain you. Just drink from me. It’ll heal you and burn out the alcohol. You won’t even have a hangover.” Bobby gave me a dubious look, but he put his mouth to the cut in my thumb and sucked. A couple of seconds later, he stood up, clear-eyed and shaking a little as the poisons purged themselves from his body almost instantly.

“Wow, Jimmy. You need to bottle that stuff. Or maybe not. A person could get hooked on that really easy.” Bobby stepped back again, then turned to go upstairs. “Umm . . . thanks, I guess?”

“Nah, thank you, Bobby,” I said. I stood up and walked over to him, my hand out. He took it, and we shook. “I didn’t want to drink alone. I didn’t want to be alone, and I appreciate you sticking around. I owe you one.”

“Don’t sweat it, man. What are friends for, right?” He gave me a one-armed hug, pounded me on the back twice, and went upstairs. I heard the front door close behind him, and went back to the couch.

“So, we had a shitty night,” I said to Abby and William, who both stood looking over the devastation that was our coffee table. “How was yours?”

“Oh, the usual,” Abby said, grabbing a bottle of Tanqueray and plopping down on the couch opposite me. “Lap dances, nickel bags, broken fingers on handsy customers, bartenders skimming from the till, and annoying bachelor parties trying to get two-for-one dances in the VIP room. Is it considered day drinking if your day job only happens at night?” she asked, taking a swig of the gin. “Totally asking for a friend.”

William busied himself picking up the discarded bottles and blood bags all over the table, then looked at the mess in his arms, the mess remaining on the table, sighed, and went to the kitchen for a trash bag. It was one of those nights. The kind that can’t be cleaned up without breaking out the heavy artillery.

“You guys really got hammered?” Abby asked. “How much booze does that even take?”

“I recorded the consumption for posterity,” Greg said, plugging his phone into a cable on his desk and finally taking off his headset and VR glasses, blinking in the subdued light of our den/war room. “We could watch the whole thing if you want. But you really don’t. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Let’s just say that there was a lot of booze here when we left for work last night,” I said.

“And that we are really glad we don’t get hangovers,” Greg added.

“Did it help?” Abby asked. I looked up at her, and she had a somber expression on her face. I wasn’t used to seeing that from her. Abby’s usually our happy party girl, but this time she wore a shadow across her eyes.

“Not really,” I said. “I forgot for a little bit, but now that I’m awake everything that sucked last night sucks even more.”

“That’s not the answer I was looking for,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. You thinking about Nester?” Michael Nester was a cop, and a friend, who died when we took down the evil sorceress Lilith a few months back. He and Abby were close, maybe closer than any of us knew. She certainly looked a lot more shaken up over his death than if they were just friends.

“No,” she said. “Work sucked tonight.”

“I thought you liked being surrounded by gorgeous women and desperate men,” Greg quipped.

“Well, I do love the scenery, and watching the guys get all worked up and go home frustrated is kinda fun, but tonight . . . tonight was just no fun.”

She sucked on the bottle of gin like a drowning woman stumbling out of a desert, and I knew there was something more to her mood than she was saying. I might not be the most perceptive bloodsucker in the room, but even I can tell something’s off when a woman who literally runs a bar needs a drink when she gets home.

“What’s up, Abs?” I asked.

“Are you asking as my friend, as my kinda boss, or as the Master of the City?”

“Let’s start with as your friend, then we can decide if the conversation needs to get official,” I said. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. Something was bothering her, and nothing bothered Abby.

“An ex-employee has been messing with my girls’ heads.”

“Okay.” I leaned back a bit. “I can’t imagine that’s a new thing. It can’t come as a surprise that somebody doesn’t like being fired, and certainly not from someplace where he was surrounded by gorgeous women.”

“It’s not a big deal if it’s a bartender, or one of the DJs, but this guy is a vampire, and a pretty old one. I don’t like him being around the girls, and then there’s the whole thing about why I fired him in the first place . . .”

Now I leaned forward again. “What happened? Did he hurt one of the girls? Do I need to—”

“It’s handled,” Abby said. “Tonight I gave the bouncers and doormen explicit instructions that if he’s seen anywhere near the premises again, they were to use the silver stakes, no warnings. This guy comes back, he’s dead. Period.”

“Jeez, Abby,” Greg said. “What did this guy do?”

“He was offering extra services from some of the girls to particular clients, if you know what I mean.”

I felt the scowl grow across my face. “Were the girls willing participants in this prostitution ring?”

Abby took another long swig from the bottle. “No.”

“Compelled?” Sabrina asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I asked, feeling my face flush. “Compelling humans, or vampires, into basically sex slavery, is a capital offense in my city.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Abby said. “This guy’s old, Jimmy. He has friends all over the place, even outside of Charlotte. He’s old, and he’s strong, and I didn’t want to put you or your position in danger. If you tried to pass sentence on Ian, you’d have to fight him. And I don’t know if you can win.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I can’t protect anyone in Charlotte if I can’t keep the monsters in line, not even the monsters. Especially not the monsters.”

“Well, he certainly deserves the name ‘monster,’” Abby said. “I fired him a couple months back, and thought it was all done. But tonight, one of my bartenders tells me that she saw him and one of his friends out by the back door, and when I went out there, I found three of my dancers brain-blasted to mush, just staring at the stars.”

“You think he tried to compel them and couldn’t? Or got interrupted?” Greg asked.

“No, I think he knew I was coming, and turned these girls into vegetables as a message. They were gone, Greg. They couldn’t remember their names, nothing.”

“What did you do?” Sabrina asked.

“I removed the compulsion. It was actually pretty simple, once I got over being panicked. I just told them to ignore any orders given by a vampire between the time they got to work and the time I came out the back door, and they snapped back. But it still had me on edge the rest of the night.”

“Thus the kill on sight order,” I said. “Makes sense. I still wish you had come to me sooner.”

“Like I said, it’s handled. I made sure Ian won’t be coming around the club anymore, and I sent his friend packing, too. I’m sure the thing with the girls was just his last little wiener wave on his way out of town. Still sucked, though. And the girls were too shaken to dance worth a shit the rest of the night.” She knocked back another slug of the vodka and laid her head back on the couch. “Why couldn’t I have been a dentist?”

“Because your grades sucked?” Greg offered with a totally not helpful grin.

“Because of your irrational fear of teeth?” I added.

“Because you died before you finished undergrad?” Greg asked.

Abby shot us both the finger, but I could see the smile on her face as she did.

“I’m going to go get a shower,” Sabrina said, standing up. “Then I’m going to sleep for a bit. I’m going to set my alarm for three. Sean’s getting to the station at one to deal with paperwork, but eventually we’re going to have to deal with the fact that there’s no body.” She put her bottle of Scotch on the table and started toward the stairs.

“I’ll come up with something to explain that away,” I said. Sabrina waved at me over her shoulder.

“I can handle that, sir,” William said. “Making people, living or dead, disappear was something I handled for Master Tiram often. I will make some calls this afternoon, and there will be an accidental cremation. Mr. Reed will be completely blameless, but a newly hired intern will unfortunately lose his job for the oversight.”

“And that intern will only exist on paper,” Greg guessed. He started gathering up trash and tossing it into the bag William held. I sat there, observing the first sighting of Greg Knightwood IV cleaning. My best friend since middle school, he had never exhibited even a passing knowledge in the use of a garbage bag before this moment.

“Exactly, Mr. Knightwood,” William said.

“I’ve told you, don’t call me that. I keep looking around for my dad.”

“I shall try to remember,” William lied.

“Then we can all get a little rest before we get onto the important work tonight,” I said.

“Lap dances and backroom weed sales?” Abby asked with a cockeyed grin.

“Not even close,” I said. “We’ve got to find out who’s stupid enough to think he can make a new vampire in my city without me kicking his ass.”