Chapter 22

GETTING EMILY BACK to our place safely was a lot easier said than done, but it was helped by Bobby raiding the employees’ Lost & Found for some extra clothes. The T-shirt and scrub pants she wore weren’t nearly enough to provide decent coverage from the sun, and I didn’t know if being that close to mortal would give her a few extra seconds of time in the sun, or if her youth would make her more flammable, and I didn’t want to take any chance with my newly restored niece, kinda.

Sabrina and Fitzpatrick stayed behind to deal with forensics, and to fabricate some paperwork about transferring the body to a funeral home that existed only on paper but did a whole lot of business whenever a corpse needed to disappear from the official record. William picked us up at the loading dock in a blacked-out SUV, covered head to toe in heavy fabric, including a balaclava and ski goggles.

Emily giggled a little as she slid into the backseat. “Does your driver moonlight for ISIS?”

“No, but my driver doesn’t want to burst into flames if the UV protection on the windshield is degraded,” I said.

“I would also rather not have my eyes melt in their sockets,” William added, his voice muffled by the heavy cloth. “I’ve seen that happen. It isn’t pretty.”

“Do you have some kind of underground Batcave or something where you park?” Emily asked, all her amusement gone at the matter-of- fact discussion of the possible immolation we were trying to avoid.

“Nope,” I said.

“Garage?”

“Nada,” Greg said from her other side.

“Then what do you do when you get to your house?”

“We run,” I said. “Really fast. And unlock the door from the car.”

“Yeah, that last part is important,” Greg said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

“I only forgot once!” I protested.

“Once is usually enough,” he shot back.

“I remember you now,” Emily said to me. “How have you guys been vampires this long and stayed such giant dorks?”

I looked at Greg, who looked back at me and shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I guess we just stick with what we’re good at.”

His kid sister just looked at us both and muttered, “All the vampires in the world, and do I get anything even close to a Skarsgård? Nope, I get my goofy brother and his friend who looks like DJ Qualls having a bad hair day.”

I didn’t bother to reply, just pulled out the new phone William had brought me and checked email for the rest of the trip. She just didn’t know how cool we really were, that’s all. When we pulled up in front of the house, William disengaged the security system from his key fob, we all threw tarps over ourselves and sprinted for the door like really weird Casper the Ghost cosplayers.

A beep of the car alarm and a slam of the front door later, and everyone was safely inside the house, with all the blackout shades engaged. Emily looked around the place, blinking in confusion. “This place . . . seems familiar somehow. But I’ve never been here before.”

“Yeah,” I said, “about that . . .” I told her about seeing her a few years before, when she was the prisoner of a vampire known as The Professor, who owned this house. Greg and I put an end to him, with extreme prejudice, and mind-wiped Emily so she wouldn’t remember the incident, but coming to the house must have triggered the buried memories.

“But you said we were somewhere else when you saw me?” she asked.

“Yeah, but all The Professor’s idiot goons lived here,” Greg said. “And since you were in college at the time, it’s not out of the question that they brought you here first, then downtown. That’s probably why this place feels familiar.”

“I guess,” Emily said. “I’m going to let the whole brainwashing thing slide for now, but that’s a conversation we’re going to address later, when we don’t need to find the asshole that murdered me and turned me into a vampire. Deal?” The look she gave her brother made it very clear that she wasn’t taking “no” for an answer.

“Deal,” Greg said, a chagrined look on his face. I had to admit, it was kinda nice to have my buddy be the one in trouble for a change.

We led Emily downstairs, ignoring the running commentary on the decor, or lack thereof. I’ll admit, part of me wasn’t nuts about taking design critique from the millennial baby sister of my best friend, but the larger part of me knew she was right. We hadn’t really done much in the way of decorating other than tossing up a few Spawn and Sandman posters, and that did give the downstairs more than a slight mid-90s comic shop feel. I made a mental note to let William, Abby, and Sabrina cut loose on the place as soon as we got a week where nobody wanted to murder me.

I led Emily over to the couches and sat down on one while I motioned for her to sit on the other. She looked at me with a cockeyed smile. “Are you a shrink now, Jimmy?”

I knew she barely remembered me, but that smile held all the bright promise she’d shown as a little kid, and part of me knotted up inside knowing that she was never going to live a normal life now. Whatever dreams she had of marriage, children, and picnics on the beach in the summer sun were gone, thanks to an asshole vampire with a bad habit of dropping bodies in my city.

“Nah,” I said, leaning back against the sofa. “I’ve got way too many issues to try to help anybody else work through their shit. I just want you to help us figure out what happened to you, so I want you to close your eyes and walk us through the evening. Start as far back as you need to. Just go back to a spot where the memories are super-clear. The smallest detail can prove important, and sometimes you won’t even remember everything you saw subconsciously. Lying down and closing your eyes can help you shut out distractions.”

“Maybe if my brother will stop pacing,” she said.

I looked over at my partner, who shrugged and sat down on the other end of the couch. I swiped over to the recorder app on my new phone and set the device on the coffee table between us. “Okay, Emily, just tell me what you remember about last night.”

“God, was it just last night? Seems like forever ago.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. I watched as the tension slowly faded from her brow, leaving her a pretty, but not beautiful, young woman. Her dark hair made a striking contrast to the light leather sofa, and her high cheekbones and thin nose favored her Asian mother, while Greg looked like the spitting image of his Scotch-Irish dad, just frozen in his early twenties before he developed the roadmap of blood vessels in his broad nose.

“I’m in a bar. I’m out with Shelly and Quinn, trolling for guys. We’re not really looking to hook up, just a little catch-and-release action. Get a few free drinks, a nice chat, maybe a phone number. Nothing serious. We obviously picked the wrong bar, because Quinn is getting a lot more traction than either of us girls. I swear, that boy can find the one gay man in any room, and this room has a lot more than one. He must have four new numbers in his phone, and we haven’t been here an hour yet. Too bad for them Quinn’s totally in love with his boyfriend. He didn’t even want to come tonight, he’s just along to cockblock the creepers and douchebros.”

“Where are you? What bar?” Greg asks. He keeps his voice calm, the cadence even, not wanting to break Emily’s memory.

“It’s a new place downtown. Not at Epicentre, down the street. It used to be BAR Charlotte, but it’s got a new name now, something stupid. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it has cheap Jagerbombs and the DJ is awesome. She’s this totally hot Amazon-looking chick dressed up like a superhero. I’m way more into her than any of the guys at this bar.”

“Let’s start with the guys. Does anyone look out of place?” I asked. “Is there someone who just doesn’t fit in with the people around them, that looks too still, or isn’t talking to anyone?”

Emily’s eyes scan back and forth behind her eyelids as if she’s looking around the bar, then she speaks. “There’s two guys at a high-top table in the corner. They look weird because they’re both on the same side of the table, with their backs to the walls, just looking out over the room. No, never mind, they’re waiting on a pair of girls who just got back from the bathroom. There’s one guy . . . nope, super-gay. He’s just staring at Quinn. I swear, if I could bottle whatever that guy’s got going on . . .”

She lay there for a few more seconds, eyes flicking from memory to memory, then she froze. “That guy. He’s been watching our table for a while now, but he’s way far away. I can only see him when the crowd parts, but every time it does, he’s staring at us. I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or Shel, but he’s got his eyes locked on one of us. Shelly grabs my arm. She says she’s gotta pee, but I know she just wants to strut through the whole bar in her new corset without her jacket, teasing the boys with what they aren’t getting. I play along, but I leave my jacket on. I’m not dressed to trawl for boys tonight, just a scoop-neck blouse and jeans with some cute boots, but I look good and I could stand to touch up my lipstick.”

“The guy at the corner of the bar watches us as we walk past. I didn’t pay attention the first time, but he looks at us like he’s hungry. Not the standard ‘I want to bang you’ look, but something darker. Jesus. If I’d seen that shit, I would have been out of there like a shot.”

“You only would have seen him if he wanted you to,” I said. “This dude is a pro. He’s hunted and killed three women this week, so he knows how to get in and out of places full of people without attracting attention. What else do you notice?”

“When we get back from the bathroom he’s not there anymore. I can’t see him anywhere, but the guys in the corner are alone again, and there are two drinks waiting at our table for us. Quinn says the corner table guys sent them over, and they bought him a Crown and Coke, too. Then he gives us both a kiss on the cheek and walks away, right over to the bar where this super-cute Latino guy is smiling at him. I swear, this dude looks like Ricky Martin, only younger, and it looks like Quinn’s stretch of monogamy has come screeching to a halt. Shel and I talk about it for a minute, then walk over to the corner table with our new drinks.”

“What did they buy you?” Greg asked.

“They got Shel an Amaretto Sour, and me another Jagerbomb. Mine tastes a little off, like maybe they used Sugar-Free Red Bull or something. Shel makes a face, too, like her drink isn’t quite right, and I start to get a little worried. I pull out my phone to text Quinn that I think something’s wrong, but one of the guys at the table snatches the phone out of my hand.”

Emily’s eyes snapped open, and she sat up. She turned to us and said, “Those bastards roofied us. They sent us roofied drinks, and then they killed me. What assholes.”