Kicking It (17 page)

“Because I want you to stay at the House for a few days while I deal with this.” I put my hand on hers, could feel her trembling with fear, and that killed me. My past, my issues, shouldn’t be used against her. That wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t how the game was played.

“Get your car warmed up,” I said. Her chaotic emotions—fear for herself, concern for me, and a small stitch of intrigue—bobbed at the edge of my consciousness. “Pull up right in front of the House’s gate. I’ll get my car and follow you back to the house. You can drop off Emily’s car and pick up some clothes.”

Rachel was a good girl—a smart girl—and she knew when to get moving. She rose and nodded, slinging the messenger pack over her shoulder. “I’ll be out front.”

I waited until she’d disappeared into the hallway before looking back at Luc.

“That damn magazine cover,” I said, a headache beginning to throb behind my eyes. “I should have known it would lead to something nasty. I should have been more careful.”

“You know what this is,” Luc said, his voice infinitely calmer than mine. But that was his job, after all—responding to crises.

“Just an idea.”

He looked at me for a moment. “This is about New York,” he concluded. “When you were still ‘Rose.’”

I nodded. I’d been born in Iowa, but the Midwest hadn’t been exciting enough for the vampire who’d made me, Delilah. She preferred the freedom and excitement of New York. New York vampires had rejected the Greenwich Presidium, our former European overlord, and the House system it spawned. In Delilah’s opinion, life was better with freedom. So I’d learned how to be a vampire in a coven that didn’t care about anyone else, human or vampire. We partied until dawn, drank bathtub gin in speakeasies, danced with writers and artists. I took my immortality to heart, and I tested the boundaries.

Luc and I had known each other long enough that I’d given him the flavor of my past in the Big Apple, told him about Prohibition, gangsters, jazz.

“I still can’t imagine you as a baby vamp in New York or otherwise. You have an old soul.”

“I have an old soul because I’m old,” I said. “I mean, you know, for a twenty-nine-year-old.”

“Of course,” Luc said lightly, but his eyes were narrowed with concern. “And the threat?”

That, I wasn’t ready to talk about. Wasn’t ready to think about. “It’s a long story, and I need to get going.”

“Then you can tell me on the way to Rachel’s house.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said, my tone clipped. I was shutting down, and I knew it. Shutting down and shutting him out, preparing to focus on the task at hand.

But Luc insisted. “Going without me isn’t an option.” He stood up and grabbed his coat from the back of the chair behind his desk. “Let’s go.”

—

“T
ell me the story,” he said, when he’d gotten permission from Ethan for Rachel’s temporary residence at the House and we were on the road, skirting Lake Michigan as we drove north.

I hesitated. My past wasn’t exactly clean and shiny, and I didn’t like to talk about it. Rehashing the history wouldn’t do any good for anyone, as that magazine proved.

“It still affects you,” Luc said, with his uncanny ability to understand what I was thinking, what worried me. The skill was as irritating as it was relieving.

“It shouldn’t affect me,” I said.

Luc snorted. “That’s all well and good, sunshine, but I’ve got a glossy, paint-spattered magazine that says otherwise. Explain, or I’ll have to call Helen and ask for your personnel file and get all the gory details. And you know she’ll give it to me.”

Helen was Cadogan’s warden, a woman who had very specific taste in vamps. Luc was on her good side; I never had been. That made him right about my personnel file.

I nodded, keeping an eye on the road—and on Rachel’s taillights in front of us. “The first line of the note—‘Madmen know nothing’—is from ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’”

“The Poe short story?”

“The same. It was also the password for our favorite speakeasy.”

Luc nodded. “The Sapphire. That was you and the flower girls, right?” He’d taken to calling them that, the vampires I ran with. Violet, Daisy, Iris, and me, Rose.

“This has something to do with them?”

“They died,” I quietly said after a moment. “They got caught in the cross fire of a gangland feud.”

“Bullets don’t kill vampires,” Luc said.

“A couple of bullets? No. That’s not what this was. It was excessive. It was the first real violence I’d seen, and there was so much of it.”

“That’s when you came to Chicago,” he said.

I nodded. “Took a train and started over. And with your gentle and modest instruction, I learned discipline. I learned self-respect. I tried to put the past behind me. I guess that was naive.”

“Thank you for telling me that,” he said. “For letting me know.”

He sounded sincere, and he
felt
sincere. He hadn’t given me any reason to doubt him. But trust was a funny thing, and not something I knew much about. Not something I was ready for.

The question was, Would I ever be ready?

—

T
he girls’ house looked like most of the others on the block. Two short stories and a front porch held up by thick square columns. It had probably been built during World War II, when families lived here. Now it was home to three college-aged girls and, on one side of the porch, a well-used gingham couch.

We got out of the car and followed Rachel up the steps and into the living room, which had wooden floors, mismatched furniture, and plants that looked like they received as little sunlight as I did. The house smelled of age and fruity perfume.

“My room’s back here,” she said, leading us through a narrow hallway.

Rachel’s room, unlike the rest of the house, was spotless. Small bed. Nightstand. Bookshelf. Large chest of drawers with a mirror on top in a style that matched the rest of the furniture. Wicker baskets held well-organized odds and ends, and the bed was neatly made.

“Where did you find the magazine?” I asked.

“It was on the bed. I grabbed it, saw what it said, and got in the car.”

“Good head on your shoulders,” Luc said. He walked to the bureau, perused a few frames. “And what do we have here?” he asked contemplatively, then turned the photograph so we all could see.

There, in a faded black-and-white print that had seen better days, stood the four of us. I walked to him to get a closer look.

“You are a constant surprise,” he whispered, his eyes wide as he looked over the image.

I wore a sleeveless dress that hit my knees, covered in fringe that shimmied and shook whenever I sauntered in it, which I did with aplomb. The string of pearls, long enough to graze my abdomen, had been a gift from a particularly generous gangster. My hair was short and carefully curled into perfect finger waves that framed my face.

A trio of women stood with me. These were the flower girls: Daisy, Iris, and Violet. Our arms were around one another’s waists, our gartered right legs canted for the camera, Mary Jane heels on our feet.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, glancing back at her.

She flushed, just a little. “It was in a box of stuff I got from Mom—old family photos.”

“It’s definitely old,” I said. “It was a long time ago. And we should hurry.”

She nodded, then picked up a duffel bag and began filling it with clothes from the bureau. I watched her dutifully, but could feel Luc’s eyes on me. He was curious—about my past, and what I hadn’t yet told him.

But there was nearly too much to tell.

Rachel closed the bureau drawers and walked to a door I assumed was a closet. “Couple pairs of shoes,” she said, “and I think I’m ready.”

She turned the knob, and I heard the
click
.

My heart stopped.

“Rachel!” I yelled, leaping toward her and pushing her to the floor, covering her body with mine just as she pulled the door open—and the trigger snapped.

She screamed as a shot rang through the room, the bullet whizzing over our heads and ripping through a framed poster on the opposite wall.

Their sudden fear clawed at me, and I worked to keep my breathing under control.
I am a professional,
I reminded myself. But that didn’t stop the painful thudding of my heart. I looked up, saw the mechanism in the closet. It was a spring gun, an old-fashioned booby trap designed to injure—or kill—an intruder.

“Jesus!” Luc exclaimed, looking up from his crouch. “What the hell was that?”

“Spring gun,” I said, and his gaze flashed to mine, his question obvious:
How did Lindsey know what it was, and that it would go off?

I stood up and glimpsed a hint of gold on the closet floor. Carefully, I moved closer. Beneath the spring gun, in front of a tidy collection of shoes, was a gold coin. I picked it up and smoothed my finger over the embossed image I knew would be there—the outline of a shamrock and the logo of the Green Clare.

I slipped it into my pocket.

“What did you find?”

“A calling card,” I said, standing up and helping Rachel to her feet.

Luc walked toward the closet to inspect the mechanism. “It triggered when she opened the door.” He looked back at me. “You heard it?”

I nodded. “I got lucky,” I said, but we both knew I was lying.

Rachel looked back at me, her eyes wide. Tears were gathering at the corners of her lashes, and her fear and shock permeated the room.

She was in danger because of me—had nearly been killed because of me. She shouldn’t have been part of this. Wouldn’t have been part of this, if the culprits had any sense of honor. You didn’t take your grudges out on innocents.

“Aunt Linds?”

“You’re okay,” I said, wrapping my arms around her.

“They tried to kill me,” she said. “They tried to kill me.” I could hear the shock seeping in.

“And the magazine would have been here for you to find,” Luc said, meeting my gaze over Rachel’s head. “Calling you back to New York.”

I pulled back, just enough to see Rachel’s face. My heart ached, and I pushed the ache down, focusing instead on the task ahead and the journey I was going to have to make. They were calling me back to New York, and I was going to answer.

“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” I assured her, “and everything is going to be fine.”

One way or the other, everything would be fine.

—

W
e drove back in silence, Rachel in the backseat. I checked her constantly in the rearview mirror, as if she could be snatched away. But she stared blankly out the window, the duffel clutched in her hands as if it were her last possession on earth.

Luc decided to call Chuck, Merit’s grandfather and the city’s former head of supernatural affairs. He agreed to talk to his Chicago Police Department contacts, have them clear out the house and find a safe location for the rest of the girls until we addressed the matter.

We parked and entered the House, and Helen met us in the lobby. She had the look of a futuristic military leader. Smart suit. Silver bob, not a single hair out of place. Her hands were crossed in front of her, her heels perfectly shined. I found her creepy.

“You must be Rachel,” she said with an efficient smile. “We’ve prepared the guest suite on the third floor. You must be tired. I can take you upstairs if you’d like to get settled in.”

“Sure,” Rachel said, but cast a glance back at me.

“It’s okay,” I said with a smile. “It’s a really nice suite. Better than any of our rooms, actually. You’ll be living the high life.”

Rachel smiled, just a little, which was probably the best I could hope for, considering she’d nearly been shot by an enemy of mine.

“Thank you, Helen,” I said, as she guided Rachel to the stairs.

I let them get a head start—giving Rachel a bit of distance—then started up after them.

“What’s next?” Luc asked, falling into step beside me.

“I have to go to New York. If I don’t, this will never be over. I go there and I face this, or Rachel has to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life.”

“You haven’t told me everything,” he said in a tone that allowed no argument, no possibility he was wrong. “Tell me the rest. And no skipping the good parts.”

I waited until we were back in my room, and then I closed the door and locked it.

I moved toward the closet and grabbed a duffel bag from the floor, which I put on the bed and unzipped. On my way back to the closet, Luc took my hand, stopping me.

“Hey,” he said softly when I resisted. “Talk to me, Linds.”

Making eye contact with him felt too intimate. The call at Rachel’s house had been too close, and I was walking a high wire of fear. One wrong move, and I might not be able to keep myself together.

“She’s my last relative,” I said. “The only daughter of an only daughter of an only daughter. I have to protect her.”

“Protect her from what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lindsey,” he began, but I shook my head, finally looking at him. There was concern and fear in his eyes, and it scared me. Those emotions were heavy, and they weighed on me more than any others. More than happiness, more than joy. I didn’t want the weight of his fear; I couldn’t bear it.

“It’s the feud, I think. With the girls.”

He nodded, crossing his arms. “Okay.”

“Violet—she was the youngest when she was turned. Only nineteen. She fell in love with a human gangster named Tommy DiLucca. He ran booze throughout the city, and he owned the Sapphire. He was in a feud with another gang over territory, over the liquor supply. That group was led by a guy named Danny O’Hare. He was a vampire, and a brute. Violent. Casually so. Tommy torched a truckload of booze from Danny, and Danny got even.”

“He killed them all?”

I nodded. “Humans and vampires both. We—the girls, I mean—were all at the bar. O’Hare kicked open the door, started shooting. Danny was angry. He was offended. He kept shooting until bodies were hardly recognizable. Until the girls couldn’t regenerate.”

“How’d you get out?” Luc’s voice was quiet now.