On Sunday we took a train to Nice, then boarded a plane to Newark, New Jersey. As the jet took off, I let out a slow exhale. Beside me, Ridley relaxed, too.
She’d been jumpy and keyed-up ever since Friday night, and my neck had itched the entire time we were waiting for our flight. Frankly, I didn’t trust that bastard Moreau to let me leave France this easily.
We landed at Newark on Monday around noon and made our way out of the jet along with the other passengers.
Ridley had ditched the ugly brown wig in favor of a dark knit hat pulled down over her own hair. She wore a ribbed black tank, Army-green tactical pants and a pair of low, flexible combat boots. Add a little makeup and a change in how she carried herself—shoulders back, chin up, like a woman who knew her worth—and she was 180 degrees from the worn-down thrall who’d approached me in Charles de Gaulle.
I’d kept the scruffy beard and donned a blue Paris soccer cap that we’d picked up at a flea market. As we exited the plane, I amped up the glamour Ridley didn’t think I had, the one that instead of changing my appearance encouraged people to ignore me.
Ridley did a double take when she saw me with my head down and slightly forward, spine curved so my chest caved in. Her fine dark brows formed a disturbed V, but she waited until we were waiting in line for a taxi to say something.
“You look so human.”
Her tone implied my dialed-down appearance was some kind of a trick, but hell, I was supposed to be incognito.
I set my jaw. Ridley and I had arrived at an unspoken truce. I’d accepted that I needed her help to get to New York and figure out what the fuck was going on so I could save my brothers. And she’d accepted I was going to do this my way or not at all.
Yet she continued to examine everything I did for some dark, hidden purpose.
I gave her a hard stare. “Looking human is good, right? Unless you want my father to know I’m back in New York.”
“You’re right.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge and I’m not used to working with someone else. I have no social skills.”
Her frankness and woeful expression disarmed me. I found my lips quirking up. “Social skills are overrated.”
“Says the man who can talk to anyone.”
“I work with a lot of different people. You learn how to get along. Frankly, I’d rather you tell me what you’re really thinking.”
“It goes both ways, you know. I won’t lie to you if you don’t lie to me.”
Our turn for a taxi came. A yellow cab stopped at the curb. I opened the door and nodded at her to go first.
She didn’t get in. “Well? Are you lying to me? And after you.” She waited until I climbed inside, then followed.
She closed the door. I stretched my arm along the seat back and gave her a that-would-be-telling smile.
“Only about the important things.”
The cab dropped us off in midtown Manhattan. We were a block from Times Square, and the streets were crowded with tourists, street performers and peddlers hawking New York souvenirs. On the skyscrapers, video walls streamed ads for everything from Broadway musicals to smartphones. Horns blared, and a clown on stilts walked past.
I inhaled a lungful of exhaust fumes and hot asphalt. Welcome to New York.
My mood lightened. New York wasn’t home, exactly—I’d grown up in a big country house in Maryland—but the Kral Syndicate’s headquarters were in lower Manhattan, and me and my brothers all had apartments in the city.
And right now, New York felt like home. We were in my territory now.
I hefted my new backpack which we’d purchased at the same flea market as my cap, along with another T-shirt (this one a plain black), three pairs of socks and a change of pants—and thought longingly of the loft I owned a few blocks away in the Meatpacking District. Actually, I owned the whole building for security purposes, the top floor for me and the middle floor for my security team. The bottom floor I rented for a dollar a month to a local nonprofit.
Right now, I’d give a dozen cases of my favorite blood-wine to take a hot shower in my own bathroom and then get dressed in my own clothes. Not to mention grabbing some cash.
I was a rich man, even if I gave most of my money to charity, keeping only ten percent of the interest from my trust fund for my own needs. But ten percent of the interest on a billion dollars is still a shitload of money. I wasn’t used to someone else paying for everything, even my goddamn underwear.
“This way.” Ridley moved through the crowd with an easy, ground-covering stride. “I know a squat where we can stay.”
I spared a last thought for that hot shower and fell in beside her. I trusted Xavier, my chief of security, like I did my brothers. But my dad would’ve asked Xavier to keep an eye out for me and I didn’t want to put him in the position of being forced to choose between us.
“A squat. Right. So where is it? And does it have bedbugs?” I added to make her laugh.
I didn’t get a laugh but her cheek creased. “The Bronx. And don’t worry, bedbugs don’t bite dhampirs. Much.”
I grinned down at her, happy to have drawn even a small smile from her.
She’d pulled back into her emotionless-badass shell after that night in Père Lachaise when she’d told me her real name and I’d responded that I thought I could like her, and her face had twisted with yearning.
And I hated it; I missed the Ridley behind the badass, the Ridley I had barely glimpsed but wanted to know better.
So I’d chipped away at her, encouraging her to tease me as a way to break through that flat, businesslike wall she’d erected between us.
I told myself I did it because I needed her on my side, but hell, really it was because I liked seeing her smile.
We headed into the underground maze of the Times Square-42nd Street Station. I didn’t expect to see any of my dad’s people—not in the middle of the day—but I tugged my cap lower and amped up my glamour.
Ridley bought two MetroCards at a kiosk. We joined the crowd fast-walking through the white-tiled tunnels and caught an uptown train to the Bronx. We came out in a neighborhood I’d never been in, a mix of low-rise apartment buildings, and brownstones, mostly well-kept although old. The signs were in both Spanish and English, and bodegas were side-by-side with Italian bakeries and hipster coffee shops.
“The squat’s down this street.” Reaper turned down a side street that gentrification hadn’t reached yet. She stopped in front of a three-story brownstone that was in serious need of some TLC. The doors and windows were covered with plywood, and the roof was missing shingles and bowed in the middle.
We circled around to the backyard. Ridley glanced at me. “Can you keep that human look?”
“Yep. Don’t worry, they won’t recognize me.”
She pursed her lips. “The beard helps, at least. I don’t know how it fools anyone, but it seems to.”
The back door had a cinderblock as its only step. Reaper stepped on the block and knocked: Two short raps, followed by a pause, then another rap and a pause, then another two short.
Footsteps sounded on the other side. “Who’s there?” asked a gravelly voice.
“Tina,” said Ridley.
I eyed her. How many aliases did the woman have?
The door opened. The gravelly voice belonged to a skinny man with wiry black hair. His skin was smooth but his eyes were old. He could’ve been any age from forty to sixty.
He jerked his chin at me. “Who’s that?”
“Kevin.”
“You two together now?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
He narrowed his eyes at me in a look that lasted a full three beats, then stepped back. The door swung shut. Ridley caught it mid-swing and we went inside.
The man had disappeared.
Ridley locked the door. The boarded-up windows blocked most of the sunlight, but enough leaked in around the edges for me to make out a ratty maroon rug, navy-blue couch and two mismatched chairs. In the kitchen, someone was cooking—tacos or maybe chili.
Ridley saw me glance in the kitchen’s direction. “You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
We’d eaten dinner on the jet from Paris, but airplane food was airplane food. Besides, my body was still healing; it craved energy. Basically, I’d reverted to a teenage boy, shoveling anything I could into my mouth, and then two hours later I was starving again.
Ridley glanced at her phone. Dismay flashed across her face, dismay and a touch of fear.
I frowned. “What is it?”
She shook her head and went to put the phone back in her pocket. I snatched it from her hand.
It was a text from someone called Crow. Cryptic as hell, of course.
PK knows. Be on guard.
“Who’s PK? And what do they know?”
Ridley grabbed the phone from me and texted something back. Then she deleted the text and shoved the phone back into her pants pocket. “You wanna eat or not?”
I narrowed my eyes but allowed her to divert me. For now. “Sure.”
She nodded at the kitchen. “Dex is a chef. If I give him a twenty, he’ll cook us dinner.”
Dex was a broad-shouldered man with a torso like a tree trunk and dreadlocks halfway down his back. He wrapped his big arms around ‘Tina.’
I waited for Ridley to pull a blade on him, or at the very least, shove him away. To my surprise, she hugged him back with equal enthusiasm. “It’s good to see you.”
Dex released her. “Where the hell have you been? And who’s this?” He looked me up and down.
“A friend. Kevin.”
“Your friend, huh?” He relaxed—and grinned.
Ridley crossed her arms and jutted her pointed chin. “Yeah.”
I stuck out my hand. “Good to meet you, Dex.”
We shook hands, then he had me take a seat at the scarred plank table. “You hungry?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He was cooking something called Chimi burgers, ground beef which had been sliced and grilled, then served on a pita-bread-like sandwich with cabbage and what he said was his abuela’s secret sauce. We washed it all down with Cokes.
My sandwich was fucking amazing, and I told him so.
He gave a regal nod, an artist accepting his due. “I got the recipe from my abuela. Every family has its own recipe, but my abuela’s is the best, of course.” He grinned.
“Dex is from the Dominican Republic,” Ridley said.
“Yeah?” I said around a mouthful of Chimi burger. “I may have to visit just for the food.”
“My abuela will cook for you. Say the word and I’ll let her know.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.” I stuck out my hand again and we shook on it.
Ridley looked from me to Dex, a tiny line between her eyes.
“What?” I said. “I mean it. This food is good, and I love the islands.”
“You’ve been?” Dex asked.
“Not to the Dominican Republic.” I was about to tell him about my family’s private island off the coast of Florida when I recalled I wasn’t supposed to be a rich man. “But a few other islands—St. John’s, Puerto Rico, Haiti. On business.”
He gave a knowing nod. I was pretty sure he thought “business” meant “illegal drugs,” when actually I’d been coordinating medical crews in the aftermath of hurricanes, but he stopped asking questions.
Ridley’s room was on the second floor. To get there we had to climb a ladder. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bathroom. Ridley’s was the room on the end.
It was hot and cramped and airless, with barely enough for a queen-sized mattress and a chair. The only lighting came from a bulb screwed into a ceiling fixture. The two windows were closed and covered with cheap brown blinds.
Ridley sent me an apologetic look. “I know, it’s like an oven up here. And smelly.” She wrinkled her nose. “I haven’t been here for a while.”
She set her backpack on the chair and turned the window air conditioning unit on high.
“Dex liked you.” She examined me like that was something suspicious.
“Yeah? Good. I liked him too.”
She grunted. “Humans like you. You’re good with them.”
“Doesn’t mean I take advantage of them.”
She pursed her lips. “No, I don’t think you do. But before I met you, I thought you did.”
Well, hallelujah. The wall of her suspicion had developed a crack.
“I figured you used your volunteer work to cover up work you did for your father’s syndicate,” she added, “or to troll for thralls. Or both.”
I expelled a breath. “You must think I’m a first-class asshole.”
“Not anymore. But all you syndicate men are entitled pricks.”
“Well, fuck you too.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Hey, I call them like I see it.”
Something about her expression—dark, but because she was remembering something—made me move closer.
“What happened?” I softened my tone. “This isn’t just about you being a slayer, is it? Something happened to make you hate the syndicates.”
She looked down and to the side as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Then she raised her head and gave me a clear-eyed gray look that almost made me take a step back.
“My mom was murdered by syndicate vampires.”
A sharp shard of compassion lodged in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
She gave a little shake of her head, like she didn’t want my concern. “It was a long time ago.”
“When?”
“Fifteen years ago. I was twelve. They wanted me, too—they asked her where I was—but she didn’t tell them. I got away by fading into the shadows, but she was a human. She couldn’t hide like me. She told me to run and then faced them down by herself.” Flat, matter-of-fact statements that made my heart constrict.
“Twelve years old.” I squeezed my nape. “Shit.”
She shrugged and looked away.
“So that’s why you’re a slayer?” I asked
She dipped her chin. “SI saved my life—in more ways than one. I was on my own for six months until another slayer found me and took me in. I was in pretty bad shape by then—physically, emotionally. Jumpy. Stealing food, eating out of garbage cans. Terrified they’d come back for me. And so full of hate…” She passed a hand over her face. “The slayers gave me a chance to do something about all the hate—gave me a target for it. I was one step away from going feral. I like to think I would’ve killed myself first, but I don’t know.” The last few words were a whisper.
I sank onto the mattress. My belly was full for the first time in weeks, and I’d been feeling a confidence I probably shouldn’t have. I was safely in New York and Ridley had warmed up to me—a little, anyway.
Now a sick sensation settled in the pit of my stomach. What if it had been Kral Syndicate vampires who’d killed Ridley’s mother? My father didn’t make a habit of killing human females, but if the woman had been a spy or betrayed him in some other way…
Ridley sat against the water-stained wall, legs out, the switchblade in her hand. She’d taken it out at some point during her story, although she hadn’t released the blade.
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Do you know what syndicate they were from?”
She understood immediately. “Not yours. They had French accents.”
“We have a few French vampires. Cajun-French, from New Orleans, and even a couple from France.”
“They were from the Paris Syndicate. Three men.”
The sick sensation eased. “You know who they were?”
“Not their names, no. And I didn’t get a good look at their faces. But they were from Paris, trust me. That, I’m sure of. It wasn’t the first time they’d attacked us.” She glanced at her switchblade and firmed her jaw. “And I will find them. I have a lead now, someone who might be able to identify them.”
“Good. And when you do, I hope you send them to a bright, sunny hell.”
Her smile was all teeth. “I intend to.”
We fell silent. It had been a long day. I’d been doing okay, but now a wave of tiredness rolled over me. I yawned and knuckled my eyeballs like a kid.
“Go to sleep.” Ridley nodded at the bed. “You need it. We’re safe here.”
“I think I will.”
I made a trip to the john. It was basically a mildewed closet with a toilet, a shower and a sink with a faucet that only spouted cold water. At least we didn’t have to use a hole in the backyard.
Ridley followed me but stayed on the other side of the door. Back in the room, I stripped to my T-shirt and boxers and curled up on the mattress.
Ridley took off her combat boots and socks and resumed her position against the wall. The switchblade rested on the floor beside her.
I moved closer to the wall. “There’s room for both of us.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m good.”
I sighed and went to sleep. But when I woke up a couple of hours later, she was curled up next to me, still in her tank and tactical pants, her breath slow and even.
I came up on an elbow. Her dark lashes curved against soft, pink-touched cheeks, and her cap of shiny hair was sleep-mussed. She’d taken a shower. She smelled of clean soap and fresh-cut grass.
My chest hollowed out.
Holy crap, she was young. She should be in college or working a first job, not risking her life on a daily basis.
Those vampires who’d murdered her mom deserved to be chained to a post and left to burn in the summer sun. They hadn’t just taken her mom’s life, they’d stolen the life Ridley should’ve been living, pushed her into a high-risk profession.
And she didn’t risk only her life when she went out on a mission, she risked her freedom as well. Not every vampire staked the slayers they captured. Some kept them as blood slaves.
I brushed a hand over her hair. “I should hate you,” I said lowly. “You’re the enemy. I don’t care what you say. You think I don’t know that you’ll have to kill me if I fuck this up?”
She didn’t respond. She was passed out, too exhausted to be wary. I knew the feeling; I’d been there myself a few times.
I drew in her fresh, clean scent. I wanted to cuddle her, to whisper promises I probably couldn’t keep, like that if I got out of this alive, I’d help her find and slay the vampires who’d killed her mom.
She drew a soft breath. Her breasts rose and fell. They were small, but I’d seen enough of her to guess they were perfectly formed.
I enjoyed the view for a few moments, then moved my gaze from her chest—and to the backpack on the floor next to her head.
I tensed. Shot another look at Ridley.
She lay like a vampire in the day sleep—unmoving and almost impossible to wake.
I eased off the mattress, picked up the backpack and moved to the other side of the room. I slid the buckle out of the catch. Slowly, slowly. Keeping an eye on her the whole time.
Because even though her story had gutted me, we weren’t on the same side.
And this wasn’t just about me. My brothers’ lives were in danger, too.
The backpack held clothes and her wallet but no phone. Concealed in an inner pocket were a syringe and two vials of a clear liquid—probably the tranquilizer she’d used on me in Paris.
Insurance, I supposed. Well, fuck that. I set the vials aside.
A second pocket held three switchblades and my wallet. To my joy, the wallet hadn’t been touched—it contained my ID, credit cards, thirty-five euros and a hundred dollars. The cards could be traced, but the cash I could use.
Score.
Ridley’s wallet held about a thousand dollars, the MetroCards and a credit card in yet another alias. I kept a MetroCard, two hundred dollars and one of the switchblades and returned everything else to her pack. Then I scooped up my wallet, leather boots and the vials, and slipped out the door.