Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (33 page)

That set him off on another laughing jag, and I found myself trying not to smile.  It wasn’t easy.  He looked so innocent and sweet when he laughed.  But he wasn’t.  He was a crime lord who could have me quacking like a duck until Judgment Day.  He could make me rob a bank or jump off a cliff.  But the thought that really wiped that smile off my face was that this little munchkin could make me kill the people I loved with just a thought. 

I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover, huh?

“Come, Miss Blaylock.  I insist you have a drink with me,” Skippy said once his laughing fit had died off again.

“Why?” I asked, suddenly wary.

“Because I find you interesting,” he said, shrugging.  “Besides, you are far past due for your dose of Nexus and I have a ready supply—which, as I have already told your friends, I will hold hostage until you agree to talk with me for a while.”

He waited to see what I would do, apparently enjoying my indecision.  On the one hand, I wanted to talk to him.  I was just me, but he was a vampire crime lord.  Of the two of us, I thought he was far more fascinating. 

On the other hand, I didn’t trust him.  A puppet on a string, that’s what Zan had said.  Yeah, that was
so
not going to happen to me.  I already had one vampire control freak that could pull that crap with me, thanks to my pretty little mark.  I really didn’t need another one. 

Unable to decide for myself, I called for help.

Nathan?

What’s wrong, baby?
came the immediate reply. 

I couldn’t help but smile.  As pissed as he might be at me, he hadn’t ignored me.  That was something, right?

Um, Skippy wants me to have a drink with him.  What should I do?

Where are you?

Some kind of office at the end of the hall on level one…I think,
I told him, watching as Skippy’s head tilted into a better position to study me like I was a new life form that was so enthralling he couldn’t look away. 

Once again, I was struck by how sweet he looked and suddenly felt kind of ridiculous for being afraid of him.  I mean, it was a
drink
.  What could it hurt?

I’m going to do it,
I told Nathan before he could say anything else.

Just don’t go anywhere with him,
Nathan said, not sounding very happy about the situation. 
If you feel even a little bit uncomfortable, I want you to call for me immediately.

Got it.  Just…if I don’t walk out of here the same person I was when I walked in, promise me you’ll kill the little
ankle biter.

I heard his warm, seductive laughter in my mind and smiled as I walked over and took the seat across from Skippy.  I took that to mean he would.  He
’d better.  If he didn’t and I became a mindless zombie, I was taking him out first.

“I take it Nathaniel has given you his blessing?” Skippy asked with a grin.

“I don’t need Nathan’s permission to do anything.  I just thought it was a good idea to let someone know where I was.  You know, just in case I started barking or became a serial killer or something.  I should warn you, if I do, Grams will spend the rest of her life finding scary and creative ways to make your life a living hell.”  He arched an eyebrow at me and I shrugged.  “Just sayin’.”

“I will take that under advisement,” he said, chuckling and getting up to retrieve a bottle from the shelf behind him.  “Though I would be much more apprehensive about the effect any alteration of your unique mind would have on our Nathaniel and that poor, besotted fool of an angel.  I believe their anger would be much more worrisome than that of your dear grandmother.”

Uh-huh.  He obviously
didn’t know Grams.

The bottle he took down was dusty.  The liquid inside was a light golden color that reminded me of sunlight.  I watched as he poured half a glass for me and then blinked in surprise when he set his blood aside and poured a glass for himself, as well.  I picked up my glass and held it up to the light.  It looked even more like sunlight outside of the dusty bottle.  It had a shimmer to it that was kind of hypnotizing.  I took a tentative sniff, and thought I had died and gone to heaven.  It had a warm, floral scent that immediately had my
mouth watering in seconds.

“Nice, yes?” Skippy said, holding his glass up in kind of a toast.

“What is it?” I asked, not daring to take a drink until I saw him take one.  For all I knew, he had roofied the entire bottle and was just waiting for me to suck it down so he could play with my brain without any resistance.

“Fairy dust.”  He scowled into his glass, swirling the golden liquid.  “I have no idea what is actually in it.  I have asked multiple times, of course, but the secretive
little nuisances refuse to tell me.”

I watched closely as he took a healthy drink.  He winked at me as he lowered the glass again, and I knew he was on to me.  Deciding it was safe, I took a tentative sip and felt the flavor burst on my tongue.  It was just as good as it smelled and I had to bite back a moan of sheer bliss as it trickled down my throat.

“Delicious, isn’t it?” Skippy asked, genuinely smiling, when I lowered my glass.  “It’s highly addictive if not diluted and almost as rare as angel blood.”

“Fairy dust,” I murmured, swirling the glimmering liquid in my glass just to watch it catch the light.  “I swear I learn something new every day.  There really are
fairies
?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, eagerly.  “There are also bean sidhes, sirens, and elves, amongst others.  Every beautiful, mystical creature you read about in fairy tales actually exists.”

“And the not so beautiful ones?”

I was old enough to know you didn’t get one without the other.  For everything good and beautiful in the world, there was also something
equally as terrible and ugly.  It was just the way it was.  Balance.  Without ugliness, you couldn’t appreciate beauty.  Without evil there would be no good.

“Yes, those too,” he said, smiling and lifting his glass in salute.  “You are a very intuitive young woman.  Abominably rude, but obviously intelligent.  You are also exceptionally lovely.  Tell me, why would you do that,” he gestured to my hair with a look of distaste, “to such beautiful hair?  Do you
not understand how rare that particular color has become?  You should be ashamed!”

I took another sip of my drink and pulled my fingers through my hair self-consciously.  I wasn’t about to explain what had inspired my radical makeover.  Talking to Kim and Blake and Tyler about it had been one thing, but I wasn’t going to share something that personal with a strange vampire I wasn’t even sure I could trust.  Looking at it, though, I realized it really wasn’t as great as I
first thought it was.  I kind of missed my curls.

“I thought I needed a change,” I told Skippy, brushing the hair back over my shoulder.  “I thought if I had a makeover I could become someone else.  I was
wrong, though.  My curls minus the black streaks suited me much better.”

“So all of that glorious hair curls,” he sighed, a wistful look in his eyes.  “Yes, that would suit you so much better.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just forced my lips into a smile and took another sip of my drink.  Really, the little vampire that the guys were so terrified I was going to offend wasn’t at all what I’d expected.  He actually really
was
kind of sweet.  Since I didn’t need a teenage vampire with a crush following me around, though, I decided to move on to a different subject.  The way he was watching me, his pretty eyes all soft and sentimental, was making me a little uncomfortable.

“Why did you call Tyler that?” I asked as I curled my feet beneath me in my chair and settled back, trying to look like he hadn’t gotten to me. 

“A poor, besotted fool?”  Following my example, Skippy put his feet back up, looking totally relaxed again.  He gave me a long, assessing look and then laughed softly.  “You truly don’t know, do you?  I called him that, my dear, because that is what he is.  Can you really not see that he is in love with you?”

I choked on my drink.  Tyler was
not
in love with me!  We were friends.  He cared about me, sure, and I cared about him.  Blake and I cared about each other, too, but he wasn’t in love with me, either.  No, Skippy had to be wrong.  I would have known it if Tyler was in love with me.  I would have seen the signs.  More importantly, Nathan would have known it and he would have said something to me.

Wouldn’t he?

“Oh, this is just too good,” Skippy said, chuckling again.  “Truly, the young are such innocents.”

“And let me guess,” I drawled acidly.  “You got that from reading his mind, right?”

“Actually, no,” Skippy said, shaking his head.  “As powerful as my gift is, even
I
am not privy to the thoughts of an angel, Miss Blaylock.  In this case, however, there would have been no need.  It is displayed right there on his handsome face for the world to see.  Only a blind man—or a young lady who deliberately refuses to see it—would mistake his feelings for you for mere friendship.”

I scowled at him and took another drink, trying to find a way to change the subject again.  I didn’t want to talk about Tyler and feelings I would rather he didn’t have for me.  It wasn’t fair to him, being in love with me when I only wanted Nathan. 

Tyler deserved better than that.  He deserved someone who loved him as much as he was capable of loving.  When he finally found her, she was going to be the luckiest female alive.  The thought of that nameless, faceless girl irritated me, too, though, and I couldn’t figure out why.

“Love is such a tricky little devil,” Skippy said thoughtfully, watching my expression like he was trying to get inside my head without actually
getting
inside my head.  “It cares not for our wants, our needs.  It carves our path and leaves us with no choice but to take the road it gives us.  However, on the rare occasion we discover a fork in the path, we find ourselves faced with a terrible choice.  Though happiness may very well lie at the end of either path, no matter which way we travel we feel the loss of what could have been had we gone the other direction.”

I sat there, staring into my drink, and tried to figure out that eloquently spoken riddle.  Seriously, it was like being in a room with a Confucius-Shakespeare hybrid.  In other words, as beautiful as what he had said was, it didn’t make any sense at all.

“Why do you talk like that?” I tilted my head, studying him like he had studied me.

“Pardon me?”  He looked really confused by my question.  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Miss Blaylock.  Is there something wrong with the way I speak?”

“Yes and no,” I told him, shrugging.  “You’re just so…proper.  It’s like I’m stuck in a movie about Renaissance England.”

“I am very old and set in my ways,” he said, shrugging.  “Because of my position, I am not forced to mingle with the masses of humanity as so many of my kind are. 
Modern terminology often escapes me.”

“You watch TV, though, right?”  I rolled my eyes.  Even if he didn’t ‘mingle with the masses’ he should have picked up modern speech from watching TV.

“But, of course!” he exclaimed, chuckling.  “I am old, Miss Blaylock, not dead.”

“What do you watch?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.  “No, wait!  Let me guess!  CNN and MSNBC?”

“Are there any other channels?” he countered, grinning.  “Everything else is brainless chatter.  Sitcoms are mind-numbingly mundane, reality television bores me to tears, and the so-called dramas are laughable.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I really couldn’t without being a hypocrite.  I wasn’t big on television myself.  I would rather have a good book and an iPod.  It was odd, finding something I had in common with him.  Odd, but kind of nice at the same time.  It made him seem more…human to me.

“What about music?” I asked eagerly, wanting to solidify the image of the human Skippy in my mind.  “You
do
like music, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” he said, nodding enthusiastically.  “What would the world be without music and literature and art?  We would become complete barbarians, would we not?”

He got up to refill our glasses and I frowned.  I hadn’t even realized mine was empty and gave it a rather suspicious look.  The word ‘addictive’ suddenly flashed across my mind, and I put my hand over my glass when he leaned over to pour me a second.

“Do you have anything else?” I asked tentatively, wondering if he would be offended.  I was starting to get comfortable with him and I didn’t want to have to start all over just because I didn’t want to overindulge in his drink of choice.  “I don’t really do the addictive substances, Skippy.”

“Of course,” he said, nodding and turning back to the shelf.  “Very wise, Miss Blaylock.”

He tapped his chin as his eyes ran over the bottles there, then reached out and took another dusty bottle from a shelf a little higher up.  He uncorked the bottle and took a deep breath, his lips curving up in delight.  I didn’t move my hand when he leaned forward over the desk again and he gave me a questioning look.

“You first,” I told him, smiling sweetly.  “Think of yourself as the dude who tasted Caesar’s food before he ate it so he couldn’t be poisoned.  In other words, if I’m going, so are you.”