Legally Undead (11 page)

“Sure. I’ll see you then.”

It actually took me about an hour and a half. I had to go to three different pharmacies to find the Hemastix. I probably should have called first, but I was too excited about the possibility of figuring out if this stuff really was blood. Don’t ask me why. I knew that it was blood. I wasn’t going to have to prove it in any court. The Hemastix weren’t necessary. I suspect I wanted the Hemastix to prove I was right just because that would make me feel like I was doing something significant, like I was adding to what I knew.

Malcolm was waiting outside my door when I got home. I reached into my purse to pull out my key and—of course—it caught on the baggie full of bloody shirt, ripping the Ziploc bag and spilling it onto the floor.

Malcolm bent to pick it up. “What’s this?”

“Something I found in the trash bag.”

“That looks like blood.”

“I think it is. I got some stuff to test it. What did you figure out about the numbers on that page?” We moved into the apartment and I locked the door behind us.

“They’re stock exchange numbers. I thought they looked familiar. I think this is information about what the guys on this list have been investing in. And if I’m reading it right, they’re making big piles of money.”

“Big enough to kill for?” I asked.

“More than big enough. Think that’s what happened to the guy who was wearing that shirt?”

“Let’s find out.” I pulled the Hemastix out of the plastic store sack I had been carrying. I also pulled out a bottle of water. The instructions on the internet said to use sterile water. I don’t know if reverse osmosis counts as sterilization, but I figured it was close enough. I wasn’t going to send it off for DNA testing; I just wanted to verify that the shirt was blood-soaked.

It was. Malcolm didn’t say anything until after I had finished my test—dipping a Q-tip (also presumably not sterile, but so what?) into the bottle of water, rubbing it across the bloodstain, then rubbing it across the small strip from the Hemastix bottle.

I peered at the strip. It was a sickly shade of green. Yep. Blood.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Malcolm asked.

“Television. And the internet.”

“So you’re sure it’s blood?”

“I was sure before I did the test.” I sat down on the couch, holding the Hemastix test and staring at it despondently.

“You know,” Malcolm said, “this is beginning to feel a lot more serious than it did a few days ago.”

“No kidding.”

“I mean, it was one thing when we were sneaking around offices because your ex-boyfriend was a stalker or something. But I didn’t ever really expect to find anything.”

“Really? Because I did.” Okay, then. This was my opening. If Malcolm was going to live, I needed either to tell him everything or to find a way to make him go away.

I didn’t really want to do either of those things.

But I knew I had to. So I took a deep breath. “You’re right, Malcolm. This is a lot more serious than even I expected. I’m going to call the police.”

“What are you going to tell them? That we broke into your ex’s law office? They’ll arrest us.”

“Nope. They’re not going to do anything to us. They’re not going to know that an ‘us’ even exists. I’m going to tell them that I was unpacking a box from my old apartment and found a bunch of old papers that belonged to my ex-boyfriend, along with a bloody t-shirt. I’m not going to bring you into it at all.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you could say that I was with you when you found the stuff—” his voice trailed off. “No. I guess not. Okay.”

“So I think maybe you’d better go so I can do that. Okay?” I didn’t look up at him.

“Okay.” He whispered, and I realized he was standing just above me.

Then he leaned over and kissed me.

You know those kisses that send electricity through you—that shoot right through your mouth and end up in your stomach somewhere? This one went straight down to my toes. I got goose bumps. I forgot where I was for a moment. I think I forgot
who
I was for a moment. We were both breathing hard when Malcolm finally pulled away from me.

“Call me when you’re done talking to the police, okay?” he whispered.

“I think… I think that maybe I’d better not. I don’t want them to track you down through me.” Oh, God. Surely those words weren’t really coming out of my mouth, were they?

But they were.

“I see.” Malcolm said quietly. He looked hurt and puzzled.

I had to fight myself not to kiss him again, to ask him to stay on my couch, in my bed, on the floor—to do anything other than leave.

But I really did know that this was for the best. I liked him too much to see him get hurt. And as nice as the kiss had been, I wasn’t ready to start seeing someone again. It had only been three weeks since Greg had un-died. So I just let Malcolm leave my apartment.

It was dark outside. I watched him shut the door behind himself, wanting to stop him but knowing I couldn’t. I knew he was hurt. I suspected he’d get angry after the immediate hurt wore off. I guess that’s why I didn’t suspect anything when I didn’t hear from him for six days.

In my own defense, I was distracted—both by Malcolm’s kiss and by what happened after he left.

But I still feel responsible. I should have known that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Chapter 10

I didn’t call the police when Malcolm left, of course. Instead, I tried to figure out how to deal with this problem on my own.

I couldn’t think of anything. Malcolm had left the stock exchange information behind when he’d left, but it meant nothing to me. I never could figure out the whole stock exchange thing. People bought shares in stuff. The shares went up or down and people made or lost money. That was the extent of my knowledge.

So I finished sorting through the garbage. I came up with a lot of trash and not much more. I had a bloody t-shirt, a list of the top New York City vampires and their corporate structure, a list of vampire addresses, and some sort of evidence of their financial solvency. Or immense wealth. Whichever.

The money stuff didn’t surprise me, even if I didn’t fully understand it. If I were going to live forever, I’d figure out a way to be rich, too. I would hate the thought of toiling away at a job for eternity.

Which brought me back to Greg.

Why was he still on the payroll at Forster, Pearson, and Sims? And why did he have all of this information on one of their computers?

With a shrillness that sounded abrupt in my silent apartment, a phone rang. It wasn’t my land line, and it wasn’t my regular cell phone. It was one of the cell phones we’d gotten for The Sting. I picked it up and checked out the caller ID: “Unknown Caller.”

Hoping that maybe it was Malcolm—and equally hoping that it wasn’t—I answered. “Hello?”

“Hello, Elle.”

It was Greg. Just what I needed: another talk with the Undead Ex. “How did you get this number?” I demanded.

“I pulled it from Sheila’s records.”

Oh. Yeah. Right. The secretary. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “I see. So what do you want?”

“I want to talk to you. I’ve been looking for you for days, Elle.”

For some reason that comment irritated me, and I responded as I might have to any ex. “That’s odd. Because it seems to me that if you wanted to get in touch with me that badly, you could have left a message with the History department at Fordham. And I never got a message from you, Greg. So I just don’t think that you were looking for me all that hard.”

“Well it’s not like I could just go up some afternoon and leave a note.”

“And whose fault is that?” I asked. I sounded snippy, but hey, I had the moral high ground here. I wasn’t the vampire.

“Who’s the new boyfriend?” he asked.

“He’s not a new boyfriend. He’s a nobody.”

“Really? Because it looked like you two were in my office together.”

Okay. This was getting ridiculous. I was having a fight on the phone with my ex-boyfriend the vampire. I sighed and tried for a less belligerent tone. “Is that why you called?” I asked. “Because if it is, we can hang up now. I don’t have a new boyfriend. That’s it. The end. Goodbye.”

“Then I want to talk about you and me, Elle. I want you to come home.”

“Home? I am home. I have a home. It’s a home that doesn’t have you anywhere near it. I can’t come home to you. I don’t live there anymore.”

“Just get on the train and come over. It could all be just like it used to be.”

“Just like it used to be? No it couldn’t. This isn’t some strange phase you’re going through. You’re a friggin’ vampire! This isn’t some job with weird hours that you can just quit at any time, Greg. You’re on the permanent night shift now.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m one of the bad guys. I’m on the right side, Elle. I promise.”

“Yeah, right. You’re the good guy bloodsucker. You’re the hero among vampires. You’re doing it all for the greater good of the world.”

“Something like that. I really did do this for the right reasons.”

“Did this? You mean you had some choice in it?” My voice was getting shrill. I could hear it beginning to crack. I had never considered the possibility that Greg had chosen to become a vampire. I had always assumed that the vampire I killed had turned Greg without Greg’s consent. My knees suddenly buckled and I found myself sitting on my couch without any memory of how I got there. “This wasn’t an accident?” I was whispering now.

“No. I did it because Pearson asked me to. He wanted an insider, someone who could learn how and where the vampires were meeting. He knew they were more organized than he’d been able to determine. He wanted to know who their leaders were and how to wipe them out completely.”

“So you volunteered.” My voice had gone completely flat. If Greg had been paying attention, he might have realized that I had reached a point almost past emotion. This seemed like more than I could handle. If I’d still been drinking, I would have wanted a stiff shot of something potent. Something that would burn away all memory of this conversation.

“Pretty much. It was a good career move, Elle.”

“A good career move? That’s the right reason to do something like this?”

“I’m Pearson’s inside guy. I’ve been getting all the information he wanted. I’m on the fast track now.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This Greg wasn’t the one I had known. And worse, I realized that this Greg had been around before he’d been turned into a vampire. He’d made the choice to become a vampire without ever once considering the larger implications, without considering what it would do to our relationship, what it might do to me. The silence on my end of the phone grew longer and longer.

“Elle?”

“I’m still here.”

“Nothing has to change. I promise.”

“Nothing, Greg?” Now I was beginning to get truly angry. “Let’s test that. Hey. I know. Let’s go down to the Jersey shore for a long day at the beach, just like we used to every summer.”

“There’s no need to get sarcastic.”

“You’re the one who said nothing needs to change. Think we can still have a church wedding? No? Okay. Then how about this: let’s go out to dinner. What do you say? I think I’ll order seafood. And you can get some veggie primavera. Oh. Wait. No. You don’t eat real food anymore. Tell me, Greg, how many people have you killed since the last time I saw you?”

“None. I don’t have to kill people to feed, Elle.”

“Oh. So you just suck their blood and let them go?”

“There are plenty of people who are willing to donate. I don’t have to force anyone. Some people actually enjoy it.”

“That’s sick.”

“No more sick than killing animals to eat. Think about it. I don’t ever feed without my food’s permission.”

“So people are just food to you now.” It wasn’t a question—I had exhausted all my questions. “The thing is, Greg, you can’t just be sort of a vampire. It’s either all or nothing. And no matter what you tell me, I don’t believe that vampires are ever the good guys. It doesn’t matter that your victims are willing blood donors. You still have to drink blood to survive. That’s not natural. It’s not okay. You can’t be one of the vampires but not
really
one of them. You either drink blood or you don’t. You do. I don’t. And that’s that.”

“But you could.”

“No, I couldn’t. Not willingly. I couldn’t do what you did. I couldn’t choose to become a vampire. I won’t.” And suddenly I couldn’t think of a single thing more to say to him other than goodbye. “This conversation is over. Don’t call me again. I don’t believe you’re one of the good guys. I don’t think you even know what that means, and I’m suddenly not sure you ever did. I’m not coming back to you. It’s over.”

With that, I disconnected the call and turned the phone off.

I sat on the couch holding the cell phone in my hand. I was having a hard time believing what had just happened. Bad enough that the love of my life had been turned into a vampire. Worse that I’d actually had to break up with him three weeks after the fact. For that matter, I had, for all intents and purposes, broken up with two men that night. This was not turning out to be one of my better days.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Greg had told me—the part about him choosing to become a vampire because he thought it would further his career. Okay. The whole bit about him having to drink blood in order to continue walking around was creepy. But the fact that he’d known what he was getting into before he’d done it was even creepier. I had thought I’d known Greg. But I was suddenly confronted with the possibility that everything I’d known about him had been wrong. He hadn’t always been kind—at least, not to everyone, though he was never deliberately cruel to me—but I’d always thought of him as utterly ethical. But maybe I’d been wrong. The fact that he’d been willing to turn into a creature of the night who preyed on people certainly argued against an inherently ethical nature.

And there was more. He’d been raised Catholic. I was guessing that he no longer went to church. How could someone who believed in the tenets of Catholicism, as I thought he had, be willing to become a vampire? Hell, I
wasn’t
Catholic and I was still disturbed by the whole vampire-as-evil thing—though come to think of it, planning a wedding with a formerly-Catholic vampire might have been easier than it had been with a still-Catholic fiancé. If I’d been willing to marry a vampire. If he hadn’t given up on our entire future by letting himself get turned.