| 9 | OLD FRIENDS, NEW ENEMIES |
KINGSLEY CAME BY ON Tuesday night after she got off work again, and they repaired to the same bar. He was wearing different clothes, and he had showered, which meant he had a place somewhere, a Venator safe house, maybe—he knew every one in the city. She managed to resist asking him where he’d been last night, and he didn’t offer. He avoided any more talk of Hell’s Bells and refrained from repeating his plea for help, even if it was clear from his presence that he needed her. Mimi hadn’t decided if she would help him. She thought she would, but she also thought it would be fun to torture him a little. Let him beg. She just wanted him to admit he missed her. That he wasn’t just asking for her help, that he wanted to spend time with her.
“What’s your favorite thing about being back?” she asked.
“In New York? I don’t know, everything’s so different.”
“Exactly.”
“I like the new starchitect-designed buildings. It’s great to see something new again, something eye-catching,” he said.
She smiled. “Me, too.”
She was still waiting for him to say something about the dead girl and Hell’s Bells, but instead, he kept his cool, and at the end of the evening, he got up from his seat and tossed several twenty-dollar bills on the table so they fell on the leather-bound check cover.
“That’s it?”
“I mean… I thought you said you needed my help.”
“Well, you don’t seem very interested,” he said.
He had a point there, but Mimi couldn’t believe he was just going to walk away again. “So why’d you come by again? You’re not even going to try to convince me?” she asked.
“What’s the point? I could never get you to do anything you didn’t want to do, not even when we were together,” he said with a smile. “And is it a crime to spend time with my wife?”
It was what she wanted to hear, but she had a feeling he was just placating her. “Where are you going?” she asked, curiosity getting the best of her.
His cool gaze was maddeningly familiar. “Do you really think you can ask me that anymore?”
That Kingsley. In one breath he was calling her his wife and she was feeling everything for him again, and with the next he was pushing her away.
She flushed and would have let it slide, but that was their old pattern—before they were married: letting things slide, never being honest with each other about how they felt, doubting each other, distrusting each other. Marriage had changed that pattern. They had been loving, supportive, honest, and open—and bored, so terribly bored. Mimi felt the spark of a challenge, felt the passion she had felt the first time they had met, when he had been unknowable, his heart a mystery and closed to her. “I just thought…” She shrugged.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to come home with you?”
She looked him square in the eye. “Yes.” Why not admit it? It was what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid of telling him the truth. Maybe they could pick up where they left off, maybe they could start over again somehow—or maybe they could just have a little fun together. Why not? And maybe she would help him with the Coven, with that murder. Maybe.
Kingsley put on his jacket and thought it over. “Well, I don’t see how I can refuse.”
She tried to hide her smile of victory.
They walked out together into the dark of the city, and Mimi felt confident enough to slip her arm through his. He didn’t flinch, but he didn’t squeeze her arm affectionately like he used to, either, or take her hand and keep it warm in his jacket pocket.
“Nice digs,” he said, when they arrived at her place. “You do look good in white.” She lived in a white box in the sky—the loft was kitted out with white shag carpeting, white leather couches, white modern canvases on the white brick walls. Maybe it was a reaction to their former home, or maybe it was as Kingsley had said, she looked good in white, and so she had created the most flattering domicile for herself.
She took off her shoes and her feet sank into the soft white carpet. “Nightcap?” she asked, walking to the bar cart and picking up a bottle of his favorite Scotch.
“Sure,” he agreed. He looked out the window for a while, at the lights and the cars on the West Side Highway: headlights making ribbons in the air, the taxis all bright yellow streaks. “New York, New York.”
“So nice they named it twice,” she said, handing him his glass. “Cheers!” She clinked hers to his and sat down on the couch.
Kingsley moved from the window to study her collection of paintings on the wall. “Interesting,” he said, staring at the small brown square.
“It’s one of our artists. Ivy Druiz. Her work is part of some exhibit they’re having at the Modern for the Four Hundred Ball—a show called Red Blood—isn’t that rich?”
He nodded and didn’t seem to be too surprised to find out that the Coven was having a Four Hundred Ball again.
“You know who else is in the exhibit that I just found out?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Stephen Chase. All the paintings he did of Allegra are being featured. Sort of disgusting when you think about it. Painting her portraits and using his own blood in them.”
Kingsley looked up at her. “Did he ever—Did he ever use her blood in his work?”
“Allegra’s?” she asked. She thought about it. “I don’t think so, no. Pretty sure it was all just his. Why?”
Kingsley looked relieved. “Nothing—I was just—Nothing.” He lit a cigarette and she didn’t protest, although she pointedly opened the glass doors to the balcony.
Then they heard it again, both at the same time. The bells.
“Shit, Kingsley, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, but we have to do something.” He stubbed out his cigarette and paced across the room; with his long limbs he looked like a cat, a black jaguar, sleek and graceful. “Helda told me there’s a book that might help figure it out, one that holds all of the knowledge and history of Hell. It was stolen from her archives a long time ago, but she thinks there might be a copy in the Repository.”
“And you trust her?” Mimi frowned. The queen of the underworld was a tricky, manipulative little wench. Helda and Kingsley shared power over their domain, but it was an uneasy alliance. “She lied to us once. How do you know she’s not doing it again?”
“Maybe, but I can’t exactly accuse her of lying,” Kingsley said, holding up his arms in a helpless gesture.
“Isn’t it always in some book?” she said with a dry smile. “Why not ask the Coven for help? Surely their historians would know something about it? If it’s that important?”
“No!” he said, shocking the two of them with his outburst. He leaned back, shrugging. “I want to keep the Coven out of this for now.”
“You’re not going to warn them about the bells? Not even Oliver?” she asked. “I mean, I know I haven’t gone to say hi or anything, but he was a friend of ours. Don’t you think he deserves to know what’s going on? He is Regent, after all.”
Kingsley brooded and didn’t reply.
“Oliver practically saved the Coven,” Mimi pointed out. “He rebuilt it, contacted everyone who was left, made it what it used to be.”
“I said no,” he said sharply. “We can’t tell him. We can’t tell anyone in the Coven until we know what’s really going on.”
“Why not? Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked. “There is, isn’t there? You know something about the Coven. You know who killed this girl.”
Kingsley slumped back in his chair. “No, I don’t,” he said. “But I have my suspicions.”
“What are they?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say. Not until I’m sure.”
“Not even to me?” she said petulantly. “I thought you said you needed my help.”
“I do,” he said. “But I’m also trying to protect you as much as I can.”
“So you’re going to break into the Repository, is that it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well, whatever’s going on, Oliver is innocent,” she said loyally.
She liked and respected Oliver Hazard-Perry. They had been adversaries at first—okay, fine, she’d admit she wasn’t very nice to him when they were teenagers. She had been cruel and thoughtless, and Oliver hadn’t done much to help himself socially. He had been a nerd and Mimi the queen bee, but somehow they had become friends in the end, before she and Kingsley left for Hell. She had missed their friendship and had been planning on letting him know she was back, but she just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. In any event, Oliver worshipped the vampires; it was why he had wanted to become one of them, because he wanted so much to be part of it. She didn’t think Kingsley was right to doubt him, but she didn’t feel like arguing with her husband, who could be stubborn.
“Well, if you’re not going to tell me what’s going on, why’d you even come here?” she asked, irritated now.
He smiled and put away his drink, his dark hair falling into his bright blue eyes, that slow smile of his making her melt a little. “Because you asked me to.”
Damn it. He had her there. And it was getting late. They might as well get on with it. Mimi yawned casually and stood up. “Unzip me?” she asked, turning her back to him and lifting her thick hair above her neck so that he could reach the zipper on her dress. She waited, but he didn’t move, and when she looked down, he was just sitting there, looking up at her with that smile on his face.
Finally, he stood up and placed a hand on her back, took the zipper and slipped it down slowly, so that his fingers brushed her skin, and she knew he noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra. She waited for him to do something—she was practically offering herself up to him, waiting for him to make a move—and she was almost trembling from excitement and anticipation. “How about we have a little fun?” she whispered, her voice husky. “Celebrate our anniversary?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now,” he said, brushing his lips against her ear and sending shivers down her spine. “Good night, darling,” he said and walked away from her toward the guest room.
Mimi held the dress against her chest, annoyed and exhilarated at the same time. So he was going to play that old game, was he? That old dance between them? Well, she hadn’t forgotten the steps. She could dance, she could parry. She could pretend she wasn’t feeling what she was feeling.
“Good night!” she yelled across the apartment, and when he turned around, she let the dress drop to the floor so he could take a good long look. “Don’t let the vampires bite!”