on faith, the stuff was ambrosia to me. I didn’t even want to waste the part that was trickling down my chin, so as I reluctantly lowered my bag o’blood and met Brooklyn’s alarmed eyes I used the back of my hand to smear the spilled residue toward my mouth.
“Setup?” I looked quickly about, but I couldn’t see anything that might have alerted her. “Who set us up and how?”
Her gaze traveled coldly over me. “Shove the innocent act, Mata Hari, your cover’s blown. You shoulda kept the bad wig on, or at least stayed in the shadows. You’re Natashya Crosse, the sister of the Daughter and the Healer, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, she is, vamp. Wanna make something of it?”
The measured challenge came from behind me. I whirled around, my heart sinking as I saw the two people I least wanted to encounter tonight.
Megan—she was the one who’d spoken—was wearing your basic Daughter of Lilith black and carrying your basic Daughter of Lilith stake. Kat had never bought into the Healer-Nurturing-Soul-Mother look, so she was dressed as she always was, in something slinky and designer and drop-dead sexy. But their expressions as they looked at me were identical, and I suddenly felt like an old wino chugging from a bottle of Woolite.
“Oh, sweetie, no,” Kat said, her husky voice breaking with appalled compassion.
“Dammit, Tash, you told us you were controlling the hunger!” Megan accused.
“They didn’t know you were here tonight?” Brooklyn’s tone lost its edge. She stepped in front of me and whipped out a tissue. “All down your freakin’ chin, babe,” she murmured as she dabbed at my face before turning to my sisters. “She is controlling it, and if you two weren’t such holier-than-thou bitches, you’d realize that,” she snapped.
I didn’t see Megan’s and Kat’s reactions. I was too busy scanning the alleyway for Heath. He’d been beside me only a moment ago, and I hadn’t seen him leave.
But he was gone. And at the far end of the alleyway I saw a bat rise swiftly over the rooftops and disappear.
Chapter 3
“Oh, shit. Heads up, Tashya—dude with weapon at five o’clock,” Brooklyn said under her breath as a figure detached itself from the shadows and moved to Kat’s side. Her eyes narrowed. “And is that a friggin’ wolf?”
“Holier than thou?” Megan said ominously as her hand fell to the wolf’s silver-tipped black ruff. She kept her gaze on Brooklyn. “I guess we are at that, seeing as how you’re about to go straight to hell, vamp. Step away from her, Tash.”
I heard a door slam and the sound of a dead bolt shooting into its lock. Glancing sideways, I saw old man Schneider had decided discretion was the better part of valor and had closed up shop for the evening. Which was understandable enough, since his clientele had melted away into the darkness during the past few seconds, leaving only me and Brooklyn and the muttering derelict Brook had called Crazy Joe, who’d returned and was now pawing through a garbage can, oblivious to the drama being enacted a few feet away from him. My humiliation at Megan and Kat finding me here was replaced by anger.
“The dude with the nail gun that shoots silver-tipped nails is Kat’s ex-con main squeeze, Jack Rawls. And the wolf’s a shapeshifter named Mikhail. Rumor has it Megan lets him sleep on her bed if he’s been a good dog,” I told Brooklyn, loudly enough for Megan to hear. I switched my attention to my sisters. “No one’s going to hell tonight, Meg,” I declared. “I hear you’ve patrolled this alley before, so you know damn well that the vamps who come here don’t feed off humans. Take your pointy stick and go home, and tell the rest of your little gang they’re not wanted, either. That includes you, Kat.”
“There’s no such thing as a vamp that doesn’t feed off humans.” Beside Kat, Jack’s finger tightened on the nail gun’s trigger. “Only vamps that haven’t fed off humans yet.”
“Sweetie, you know your killer instinct’s one of the things I adore about you, but you’re aiming at my little sister,” Kat drawled. “If you dust her I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth, so dial it down, comprendes? Megan, Tash was just being her usual bratty self with that remark about Mikhail. Lower your stake before Darkheart gets here.”
“Grandfather’s with you?” I thrust my bag of blood at Brooklyn, almost spilling it in my agitation. “Take this. No, don’t just hold it in front of you for everyone to see, stash it somewhere!”
She stared at me. “What’s with you? Your big sisters show up and ten seconds later you’re emotional wreckage?”
“They’re only my big sisters by a matter of minutes,” I said distractedly. “We’re triplets. Just hide the blood, okay, Brook? Kat, I can’t believe you let Megan do this! I’ll bet I know what this is about—our Daughter of Lilith sister’s decided I’m not pulling my weight at Darkheart & Crosse and she’s trying to get me booted from the agency. But since she doesn’t have the guts to Trump me herself, she accidentally-on-purpose arranged for Grandfather Darkheart to see how far down Vamp Avenue I’ve travelled in the past few weeks so he has to tell me I’m fired! All I can say is that when Grammie and Popsie finally come home, you two are going to be in major shit, so there!”
My arms folded across my chest in triumph, I turned to Brooklyn. “Darkheart & Crosse was my brainwave,” I informed her. “After Zena got dusted I figured there’d be a need for an agency that specialized in vampire-related investigations, and I was totally right, but since Megan became a Daughter it’s all about her. She can’t stand that the business I thought up is threatening to overshadow her Daughter of Lilith activities.” I waited for Brooklyn’s reaction but when it came it wasn’t what I’d expected.
“Too bad, babe.” In her ice-green eyes I saw a glimmer of something that looked like disappointment. She held out my bag of blood. “I’m outta here.”
“So am I,” I said, glancing defiantly in Megan’s direction. “You want to hit an after-hours club together, maybe see if we can find a couple of interesting guys? Or in your case, girl,” I amended.
“I thought I had,” Brooklyn said. “Looks like I was wrong. Stay out of the sunlight, Mata Hari.” She turned to go, but then she hesitated. “I sometimes wonder why I got vamped, you know? Like why me, a nice Jewish girl who was good to her Bubbe, kind to small children, only bought lattes made from fair-trade coffee beans? Hell, I’ve got a sister, too—a twin, and except that she’s straight the two of us could be clones. Yet I got turned and Xandra didn’t. I haven’t figured it out yet.” She shrugged. “But if life’s supposed to be more than just a series of random shitstorms, maybe the reason why you received this fun bonus from fate is because being a vamp is your only chance of becoming a real person. I really hope that happens for you, babe. Vamp or not, the little I saw of who you could be was a hell of a lot more intriguing than the bratty younger sister of the Daughter and the Healer.”
In my own defence, I’d like to point out that it had been a long night, what with chickening out of killing myself, playing tug-of-rat with a cat and nearly getting bitten by Stud-Tongue. Not to mention receiving a wicked uppercut to my jaw from my new best friend, finding and losing the man of my fantasies and having my sisters discover I’d progressed to drinking blood. All in all, I wasn’t in the mood to thank Brook for her assessment of me and thoughtfully ask myself if any of what she’d said could be true. I was more in the mood to yell the meanest things I could think of at her as she walked away from me.
Which
