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Callie was the complete opposite of Cash in every way possible. Small and delicate-looking, she didn’t pull any punches. Yet she knew her limitations. She didn’t let go of me until she brought me up to a penthouse at the Alta Vista, her bodyguard in tow. I’d seen this guy hanging around Cash a lot lately, and I did my best to hide my surprise discovering he actually worked for her. The tension between the two of them was suffocating.
I recognized the apartment from the vampire reality show Immortal Forever. This was where she lived with Tristan, and they filmed here often. A sex tape of the two of them had been floating around the internet recently. I’d seen it many times backstage. Some of the other performers had watched it, wondering why Tristan would choose her over them. Callie slept her way to the top and now everyone was critiquing her methods. I didn’t envy her.
“You can take the rest of the night off, Tony.” She didn’t look back at him as she pulled me through the dark apartment. She poked her head into a room, frowning. Whatever she was looking for wasn’t there.
“You can’t do that.” He followed closely behind us. Her grip tightened on my arm.
Callie whipped around, and I almost hit the wall. “Who in the history of work has ever refused to be done early? What’s your deal?”
“I’m security, Mistress.” Sarcasm dripped from the title. “You went into that apartment with one girl and came out with another. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out something ain’t right.”
He had her there. Turning around and continuing her search, it became obvious we were the only three in the apartment.
“Where is he?” she asked. He could be anyone, and I braced myself for more drama.
Tony leaned back against the wall. “The boss doesn’t check in with me. I was assigned to you tonight.”
Callie didn’t like Tony’s answer. She opened the door to a bedroom, pushing me in before her like a shield. At least she didn’t think whoever he was would hurt me.
As soon as the light was on, I saw who he was, and that he would definitely try to hurt her.
Lennon lay on the bed, underneath Tristan Trevosier, Callie’s boyfriend. The one she dropped her whole life and came to Las Vegas for. The one she ripped Blade’s heart in two over. It took me a minute to register what I saw. He caged her in with his tattooed arms, kissing her neck, sliding his lips down to her breast. Lennon let out the same canned moan that vibrated against my bedroom wall almost every morning. Maybe she hadn’t been so in love with my father after all.
Callie sunk to the floor, screaming. I yelped, trying to stay on my feet, but no one noticed. Neither Lennon nor Tristan acknowledged us as his fangs ripped the flesh of her neck open, but no blood stained the sheets. Looking closer at the vision of the two of them, Tristan rocking his hips against Lennon as she writhed in rhythm, it wavered like it was made of vapor.
Tristan wasn’t actually here, but Cash certainly was. He cast a spell and left it like a calling card.
“Calm down!” I knelt down beside Callie, who was half-screaming, half-sobbing. She didn’t see anything but what was happening on that bed. I brought my lips to her ear, to make sure she heard me. “It’s an illusion.”
She looked at me like I gave her a reason to keep living. “It’s not real?” Her voice seemed so small. She’d been so confident and in control before. Blade couldn’t do it, but my father had figured out how to destroy her.
“No. I know Cash’s work when I see it.” He cast illusions over the audience to make them think his show was just entertainment, and a similar one over Lennon to convince her he cared about her. This wasn’t a stretch. I stood up. “If you let go of me, I’ll show you.”
She dropped her hand, totally defeated, as I approached the bed. I never tried to stop one of Cash’s spells before, and I wasn’t sure I could do it. Lennon was close to climax, her body curled off the mattress to take in all of Tristan. I sat down on the bed hard, hoping to mess up the wavelength. They didn’t stop, but they didn’t acknowledge me, either. Callie watched me like her entire world depended on this moment.
Truthfully, mine did too. It meant that I had power over all of them. Cash, Callie, and Blade. I could break their spells.
I brought my hand down, slicing through Tristan’s head and Lennon’s face, hitting the clean pillow with no difficulty. Callie gasped as I repeated the motion. “See? Not real.”
“What is it?”
“Cash dug inside of you and found your worst nightmare to project to you. He’s trying to throw you off the trail.”
My body temperature shot up. What if he’d done the same thing to me? He led me to the place that I could find my mother, and she rejected me. He figured out a way to separate me from everything I knew, leaving me with only him and Blade.
But why? He confirmed everything I saw at Bethlem after I told him. He drew Lennon to him, and the visions of my mother replayed like a horror movie every time I saw her. Was any of this real, or just what Cash wanted me to see?
“Are you working with Cash, or against him?” Callie’s voice startled me. It was a question I had no idea how to answer.
“I can’t get away from him, but I don’t like what he’s doing.” The only person who knew he was my father was Blade. Callie couldn’t handle any more surprises tonight. “Everything was fine before he showed up.”
Callie bowed her head, shaking it. “How do I shut it off?”
“Stop giving him power over you.” I answered my own question as well as hers. Suddenly, I felt free. “You’d think you’d know your own kind.”
I’d been kept in the dark my whole life, an anomaly that no one knew what to do with. Callie had it easy in comparison. She was a vampire surrounded by vampires. If she was going to lead, she needed to get her shit together. I’d been thrown in the middle of a world I didn’t belong in and somehow became entangled in its survival. Initially I thought she was incredibly strong, but if this made her crumble, there was no way she was prepared to lead a clan.
Callie looked tiny, kneeling on the floor, her head in her hands. She stayed like that for a long time. “They’re gone,” she finally murmured.
“That’s good.” Of course they were. They were never here in the first place. “Can I go home now?”
I had no idea what I’d find when I got there. None of the vampires had much more time tonight, wherever they were; the sky had begun to brighten outside the window. Hopefully Cash would succumb to his sunrise coma before he had a chance to do anything that couldn’t be fixed.
Callie sat next to me on the bed, still wide-eyed and trembling. “Stay with me, and I’ll figure out a way to free you from Cash.”
I tried not to laugh. In theory, I figured out how to do it already—stop letting him have power over me. But the reality wasn’t that easy. “This I’ve got to see.”