Nightshifted

“Hey!” I shouted, cupping my hand against one door to keep it open. This time it held. “Why didn’t you erase Shawn’s memory all the way? That night in pediatrics, with the dragon?”

“And miss a chance to feed on all of his delicious subsequent fear?” asked the Shadows’ voice, in return.

I couldn’t see the creature out there anymore—but I could hear its refracted and reflected mirth, resonating up from whatever fragments of humanity it currently had hold of. I stepped back, revolted, and let the doors slide shut in front of me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The elevator rose the requisite forty seconds and then released me into the hallway that it joined. I walked quickly, down the hall and up the stairs, until I reached a room with windows. Dawn, even murky cloud-covered dawn, had never looked so good. But sunlight—shit. I glanced at my watch and sprinted for my car.

Traffic was light driving uptown. People from uptown drove downtown to work, or took trains, or had drivers drop them off. People from downtown didn’t go up so much, unless they were washing other people’s dishes, or mowing lawns—but there wasn’t so much mowing now, in winter.

I stopped at the address the lawyer had given me, a small business park where all the building’s windows were covered in heavily tinted glass. I parked in a spot near a double-parked Jag and gave serious thought to keying his car on principle, before going up to the set of equally tinted glass doors.

I double-checked the address I’d written down, noted that I was thirty minutes late, and tried the door.

It was locked.

“Hello?” I pushed and pulled the simple loop of steel, not so much as rattling the door in its daylight-proof frame. I beat it with the palm of my hand. “Hello?”

Nothing. I looked at my reflection—a little blurry from where my hand had left a smudge print. My ponytail was spiky, there were circles beneath both eyes, and I still had more than just a whiff of were piss about me. Not that I could see that in my reflection, but I could maybe understand why a place like this was also not a place for me.

But on the phone he’d said he’d help. “Come on!” I kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of my shoe.

As this felt particularly satisfying, I was preparing to do it again, when—the door opened inward, slowly. I quickly made to stand on my own two feet and look innocent of any crimes.

“We feared you were not coming, Miss Spence,” said a sensuous female voice.

“I got held up at work. I’m sorry,” I told the darkness in front of me.

As the door’s gap widened, I took a step inside. I could see who was holding the door now, and she was beautiful.

I didn’t excel at being a girl. I could fake it for a night out—I could buy the right clothes, strap up the right shoes, and put on a good game. But it’d always be just that—a game, one that I was fully aware of playing. A façade that was fun to wear, but which would eventually flake. If a guy spent long enough with me, by which I meant maybe forty-eight hours, he’d eventually see frayed jeans, sweatshirts, ratty tennis shoes, and probably one of Minnie’s hairballs dried and forgotten behind the couch. Not even my cat could be counted upon to help create my allure.

But this woman in front of me—she didn’t have to pretend. She’d go to sleep wearing makeup and wake up with it precisely, sexily smudged the next day. Skirts that would be too tight or short on me would fit her perfectly, pertly, and if they were snatched up off the floor after a night out, they would possess wrinkles that were totally in or ahead of style. Her hair would look beautiful in all of its stages, from shower-clean to four-day bedhead, locks merely growing more defined and exotically chunky as time passed, making people on the train—should she ever deign to ride it—bold enough to ask her what styling products she preferred.

Her lips were crimson, naturally so, and her waist-length hair was the color of deep, dark, arterial blood, a blue-red entirely unnatural and entirely unfair.

And as I took all of her in, feeling ashamed for the state in which I’d presented myself, I realized with a start that I’d seen her before. On the train, no less. All of her, except for the part she’d been hiding with watches.

“You’re the girl from the watch ad,” I blurted.

A faint smile set her lips aflame and made her glorious cheekbones rise. “You’re familiar with my work?”

“I’ve seen it before. Them before. The watches.” I pointed to my own empty wrist. I didn’t tell her that the last train I’d ridden in had had a huge cock painted near her face. Maybe not being a fashion model did have some advantages.

Her smile tightened in a way that said she was used to people acting dumb around her, myself included. “Please come in.”

She led me down a short corridor, and I was still staring. I supposed it was rude of me, but it’s not every day you have someone semifamous opening a door for you. I knew some vampires had a look-away power that they used around humans—maybe this was the reverse of that, where my eyes were glued. I glanced at my badge to see if it would show me anything. She paused and opened up a door.

“Please go sit down,” she said.

This new room had no windows, all of the glass outside obviously just for show. The majority of it was decorated in blacks and grays that I could barely differentiate in the low lighting. Now that my eyes had adjusted I could see an elegant-looking man with gray hair and long sideburns. He’d been changed when he was old, elderly, even, looking frail inside a suit the same color as his chair’s upholstery, sitting across an expansive dark wood desk. “We do prefer the night, Miss Spence,” he said, and gestured to a chair across from him.

I walked over and sat down. “I’m sorry. Work.”

“This time, I’ll forgive you. But it does not do to keep those who do you favors waiting.”

I nodded, and glanced over to my left. The model woman sat behind him on a plush leather couch, legs crossed, a lip of skirt pulled tight across her perfect knee. “Are you the man I spoke with?” I asked.

“The same. Not a man, though. But you should know that.” His thin lips pulled into an amused smile, and he stared at me. Through me. My badge glimmered in the room’s eerie twilight.

I put my hand around my badge. His look—it was like Gaius, the vampire boy-child I’d seen, on that other patient’s transfusion night. “Please stop.”

The man shrugged, and my badge went dim. “I just wanted to see what protections your badge afforded you.”

“Apparently not hearing you in my head, or vice versa, is one of them.” I let my badge drop, and kept my best game face on.

“Again, we are the ones doing you favors here, Miss Spence,” he said, regarding me casually with half-lidded eyes.

“Vampires never do anything for free.”

“And yet you saved one, not long ago. Risked your life for her, you told me, on the phone.”

“Yes. But that hasn’t worked out well for me so far.” I scooted to the edge of the chair. Its plush seat and high armrests threatened to envelop me. “So how can I help you help me?”

He laughed, and behind him, the glorious woman smiled. “All right, Miss Spence. I’m sure you are tired, and your occupation requires a certain forthrightness.”

He stood. “My name is Geoffrey Weatherton, Esquire. Before I became a vampire, I was a lawyer, and I am still one now. It runs in my blood, you could say.” His lips pulled wide at his joke, revealing the fanged teeth that would, once revealed outside of this room and on any day but Halloween, give him away.

“You said that you spoke with her, yes? The girl?” he continued.

“Anna.”

“Before she was kidnapped—and she promised to come to your trial?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Then I’ll take your case.” He opened up a folder in front of him—I hadn’t noticed it before, black leather against the mahogany wood. “I just need your signature is all.”

I leaned forward and took the papers he was offering me. “Want to explain this while I read?”

“I’m offering to take your case in exchange for your bloodright. Which would indebt you and any of your children into perpetuity to me and my Throne. Your bloodline would be our donors under permanent retainer.”

I was relieved to find that the pages I held were computer printouts, not handwritten calligraphy on vellum. It made it feel slightly less like a devil’s deal.

“Which Throne do you belong to?” I asked, looking at the papers in my hands.

“The Rose Throne. We have a vested interest in humanity.”

“I bet you do. And who is prosecuting me?”

He smiled. “The Zverskiye.”

I tried not to start. They were Anna’s relatives, the ones that I was sure had Anna now. “And they are?”

“The Beastly Ones, roughly translated.”

I looked from him to my papers and back again. “And how exactly are you all different?”

Geoffrey leaned back in thought. His eyes closed, and I wondered how much longer he could fight the rising sun. “It’s a question of resources and stewardship.” He brought his head forward again, and stared at me, slouching over on one side. “The Rose Throne believes that humanity needs to be cultivated.”

I leaned forward, putting the papers on the desk. I’d never heard anything like that before. “Like educated? Or enlightened?”

Geoffrey’s face took on a bemused expression, and then he laughed. “Like mushrooms. Chickens. Cows. Managed, herded, looked out for.”

I felt stupid for having been rooked. “For your own best interests, of course.”

Geoffrey crossed his bony hands atop the desk, and gently smiled at me. “Well, we are vampires, Miss Spence. The Zver prefer to think of you—of all humans—as free-range meat. Perhaps given that circumstance, you’d rather be a herded cow. Or a stalk of celery.”