Alex’s features hardened, his deduction as to the caller’s identity so obvious I might as well have heard it click into place.
I put my phone back and did my best seductive prowl back up the bed, but he seemed preoccupied. When I straddled him and lowered my face to his, he said, “I’ve been thinking…”
Shit
. Nothing good ever followed that line. Sitting back on his thighs, I looked at him with a pout. “If this is about Constantine, I told you—”
“Nothing to do with him.” Yeah, right. That was why he’d spat out
him
like the word had been drenched in lemon juice. “We’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“Huh? Like how?” I scowled hard enough to almost put my eyebrows in my line of sight. What was he talking about? How could we have been doing the sex wrong?
“We’ve been looking for clues when we don’t have a theory.” Hmmm… so it really had nothing to do with Constantine or our sex life. “We have to take this from the start.”
Did I mention I was straddling him
naked
? And he wanted to talk
shop
?
I slid off his body and covered myself with the sheet. “So let’s.” Suppressing my need to sulk took some effort, but I knew being upset that he could disregard my blatant pass at him was stupid when he wanted to discuss something about the case.
“First off, you were turned—we assume by accident—and left for dead. A vampire who
happened
to be your fan
happened
to come by and spot you. Right so far?”
“Right.” Where was he going with it? We already knew Willoughby and Ted had been working together.
“Okay, so the question is
why
? It was too big a mess: turning you, dumping you, and supposedly discovering you. Why would they do that? What did they hope to accomplish?” He might as well have been directing the questions to himself, his voice was so low.
“A law against turning people was established?”
Alex arched an eyebrow, his look clearly saying what his mouth wouldn’t dare to: I was an idiot if I believed that. “I doubt that was what they were after, since they’re still turning people.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, clutching at the sheet. I wished the cloth could protect more than my nonexistent modesty and warm more than just my skin. The ice-cold fingers that were gripping my still heart showed no intention of melting, however. Remembering I was feeling warm and safe mere moments ago compounded my sense of dread. Things were so fucking volatile. “We don’t know that,” I said in a small voice.
“Okay, you’re right. We don’t
know
that.” Whether he sensed my need for reassurance or because he too needed the contact, he placed his palm between my shoulder blades. I leaned into his touch. “Yet that’s not all they managed, is it?”
I curled in on myself and hugged my knees. Laying my cheek on my knee, I focused on enjoying his caressing my back. “No, it’s not. The old council was overthrown, and a new one replaced it.” They were the ones to benefit the most from my turning; they’d become the ruling body. Nobody controlled or even questioned them.
“If your turning was indeed prearranged, they had to somehow be involved. They were the ones who were supposed to get Willoughby executed and didn’t. The same people you went to for help.” His tone held no accusation, yet I felt guilt add to the cluster of negative feelings that had made a home in my belly. Alex had warned me not to trust them but I’d insisted they were the good guys, and now they knew we were on to something.
They probably knew about Alex too, which put him in even greater danger. It was one thing for a single rogue vampire to be after us, and another altogether for the enemy to be the council itself.
“The council wouldn’t need to outlaw turnings if they planned on continuing them. They could have found another way to go about overturning their predecessors. This must all be a coincidence.” Unless, of course, they had another agenda.
He tugged lightly at a strand of my hair. “You said yourself that we don’t know they’re turning the girls. If they are, maybe not all the council members are in on it.
Probably
not all of them are in on it, or they’d have killed you when you went to meet them. Still, even one of them is enough of a threat.”
And they knew where to find us. The lack of a new attack might have been meant to lull us into a false sense of safety.
“There’s something else your theory doesn’t explain,” I said. “Assuming they
are
taking the girls, why are they doing it?” And what could we do?
“We’ll look into that. First we have to find a safe place. Maybe my apartment.”
I scrunched my nose. “Which floor is it on?”
“What does that matter?”
“It kind of does; if it’s not an underground one, you obviously wanna see me go up in flames.”
A vibration made me jump. This time there was no procrastination; I elbowed Alex in the ribs trying to answer it. The phone call would act as a distraction from the scariness, regardless of who was on the other end of the line.
Only, when the music kicked in, I realized it wasn’t my phone; mine didn’t have “Paparazzi” as a ringtone.
It was Sheena’s.
With a fleeting thought at how our provider rocked for our having reception down in the basement, I looked at the tiny slip of a cell phone that was inching its way toward the edge of the nondescript coffee table we used as a nightstand. The screen flashed an innocent white light.
Alex was staring at it too, but when I climbed over him to get it, he stopped me. “What if it’s
him
?” He wasn’t worried; he was actually asking what I had in mind.
I knew what course of action would appeal the most to me. “I tell him to give me Dotty, unharmed, or I dust him?” I asked with fake cheer.
Alex reached out and picked it up. After one glance at the display, he shook his head. “Out-of-area number.” I realized we were both whispering.
“Let it go to voice mail.”
We remained silent until the cell stopped ringing. We could have waited for an alerting text, but Alex was apparently no more patient than I was. He narrowed his eyes and pressed 1. The phone already looked fragile in his massive palm, but when his index pushed down on the tiny button, I was sure he’d break it. He didn’t, and he managed to turn the speaker on too. I silently prayed Sheena didn’t have a PIN for accessing her messages.
Alex pressed the button once more, drew me so I lay on his chest, and held the phone between our ears.
“
I want a blonde tomorrow night
.” It was him. Willoughby. “
The swimsuit model, if she really is no older than twenty-three. Tell her to meet me in the VIP section of the Dark Sun at eleven. Ask for Mr. Erebus’s booth. If she doesn’t show, I’ll come for you
.” The voice was flat, emotionless.
I shivered, and Alex tightened his grip on me. Once sure the message was over, he tossed the phone back on the table and cradled me. “We’ll get him,” he said before kissing my forehead. “We’ll get him and he’ll pay.”
“How?” The human justice system wasn’t capable of containing or handling him, and more innocent blood would be shed when he escaped.
“Same way his friend did.”
I was happy I couldn’t see his eyes that very moment. Judging by his tone, I was sure the darkness in his expression would scare me more than the notion of one or more council members being after us.
“So we’re going to the Dark Sun tomorrow?” I asked, brushing my lips along his collarbone.
I felt him nod.
“And until then?”
“We’re staying here.”
I looked up at him, shocked. “What about finding a safe place?”
“Even if the leak were fixed, my apartment is on the seventh floor and facing east. Windows with gauzelike curtains all around. Yours?”
“We don’t need an invitation to enter another vamp’s place. Dead people have no threshold to keep the supernatural away.” I averted my face when he tried to capture my lips. “We don’t have to hide together. You could stay at your place, and I’ll stay at mine.” Suggesting that wasn’t my idea of fun, but I didn’t want to risk Alex’s life more than I already had. He was strong and he was trained to fight, but he was still human.
He cupped my chin and turned me to him, our faces so close that I almost went cross-eyed trying to look at him.
“We hide together, we fight together, and—if we have to—we run together,” he said. “Only Willoughby can get in here without an invitation, and if he does, we can take him.”
He sounded so certain that I allowed myself to relax and get lost inside the cocoon his words and presence had built around us.
The semblance of safety and comfort only lasted until he said, “I think we should look through the folder Barbara gave us.”
With a groan, I let him get off the bed and bring the blasted thing over so we could flip through the pages. There were ten more entries that only held pictures and numbers. Ten more young women that had been selected for vampire snacks—or worse. And those were only the ones Sheena’s Models had lined up for Willoughby. Nothing assured us my former agent was his only supplier.
“This blonde has the proportions of a swimsuit model.” I pointed at a young woman’s picture. Her measurements were jotted hastily next to the photo.
“I didn’t know models came in different categories.”
So he thought I was in the same league as, say, Gisele? Could he be more awesome? I felt bad for having to correct him. “They do, actually. Runway models as a rule are really tall but less curvy. Swimsuit models are curvier and often more athletic.” And catalog models, like once-upon-a-time me, can be shorter than runway and more girl next doorish. No reason to point that out, though.
None of them were among the missing ones and Sheena had said there weren’t supposed to be more, so what were they?
Alternatives
? Had she been presenting Willoughby with a buffet? I couldn’t think of what to do about it. We couldn’t exactly start calling them and warning them off a potential supernatural kidnapper/killer.
“Maybe you should take this to your guys?” I said. “They can do more to protect them than we can.”
“My guys are the ones who told us about Sheena’s Models. They have a copy of this by now. I was hoping there’d be just a couple more possible victims so you and I could maybe follow them.” That last sentence was uttered under his breath, like he was talking to himself. His voice rose again when he said, “Roebuck has probably gone by the agency by now and has a copy of this in his hands.” He closed the folder and let it drop to the floor by the bed.
“So he knows we’ve been by asking questions too.”
“Yup.” The single word sounded like a whip cracking.
“Uh-oh?”
“Uh-oh.”
I wondered how long it’d take Barbie to tell
them
Sheena had called in and them to trace that call to Sheena’s house. I hoped Sheena had had the good sense to follow my advice and leave town. If not, she’d have some really interesting explaining to do. The kind that usually results in people being locked up in loony bins…like for claiming vampires exist.
It was the least appropriate time for sex; I knew that. Someone I cared about was missing, people I had trusted had betrayed me, and Alex and I were in grave danger.
I also knew that I needed something to keep my body and mind occupied, and I needed that to be Alex. Whatever came next, even if we were both going to die soon, I needed to feel him inside me again. I needed to cling to what we had before someone took it away from me or I had to give it up.
Nuzzling his wide sternum, I slyly tugged at the sheet between us with my toes in an effort to take it out of the way. Even if we did nothing, I wanted to be touching all of him.
He untangled my hair with his fingers, brushing it to one side in the process. “Cherry, that’s not a good idea right now,” he said, caressing my back.
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” I muttered against his skin before flicking my tongue over his nipple. Lifting my hips, I pulled at the covers, not too discreetly this time.
When I lowered my hips again and started rubbing against him, he grasped my shoulders. “Stop it. This isn’t what you want.”
I stopped, but not because he said so. Well, actually, I
did
stop because of what he said, but not because I agreed with him. “Says who?”
“I do.” He folded his arms around me and rested his chin on top of my head. “You’re not doing this because you want to. You’re doing it because you’re afraid and you’re worried.”
“Now you’re telling me how I’m feeling?” I rolled off him, taking the sheet with me.
“Don’t be like that.” He turned on his side and reached for me, but I shook his hand off.
“I’m not
being
like anything. This is how I
am
, which you wouldn’t know since you’ve known me for all of five seconds.” I knew I was being unreasonable, but I
was
afraid and worried, and I’d been alone for too long to feel comfortable admitting it to another person. Sharing my fears wasn’t something that came naturally to me. I needed action. I wanted sex to keep my mind off all the badness.
“Okay then.” He grabbed my forearm and drew me to him, rolling onto his back at the same time. “Hop on.” There was no hint of lust in his words; he was matter-of-fact.
“Wha—huh?”
He patted his thigh. “Changed my mind. We’re doing it after all.” Taking advantage of my surprise, he coiled an arm around me and lifted me onto his lap.
“Ah, now you’re doing me a favor?” I batted at his arm. “Lemme go!” I could have been free in a blink of an eye and across the room in one more, but that would have defeated the purpose of my winning the argument.
He raised his eyebrows, giving me the distinct notion he was mocking me. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“Not like this.” I’d been upset when he’d declined sex, but my mood was now galloping toward livid. What was wrong with him?
He didn’t let go of me, stroking my breast with his free hand. “How, then? Do you wanna maybe give me instructions? Write them down, so I don’t forget? Since I’ve known you for all of five seconds.”
Narrowing my eyes, I wagged my index finger in front of his face. “Maybe I should. Maybe then you’d get it
right
for a change.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Deeply. It was a stupid, petty,
mean
thing to say, and it was a lie to boot. When it came to sex, Alex was nothing but toe-curlingly praiseworthy.