The Shambling Guide to New York City (16 page)

“We just are extremely careful,” she continued. “There are always ways to get fresh blood. Hunt, yes. There are some safe places; places that are already violent rarely notice coterie movement, but we have to be careful not to hunt too much in any one place. Then there are those who love coterie and wish to become our thralls. While it’s not something we do more than once a
month or so, the prudent ones anyway, every vampire will drink from the living if given a chance.”

Kevin moved from under her hand and got up from the table. He rinsed his thermos out at the sink. Zoë made the final notes on her pad and realized Kevin had come to stand behind her, quite close. She could hear him breathing deeply, and realized he was smelling her. She didn’t look up from her notes. “I think I’m going to assign you the write-ups of the Red Crosses and hospitals in your areas. Kevin, you have Manhattan, Opal, you have the Bronx. When you’re done, we’ll think about the rest of the city. Maybe I’ll see if Bertie can do that. I’ll get a more detailed outline to you soon. Unless we hire more writers, I may need you to cover the feeding details for other coterie races in your areas.”

She paused and looked up at Kevin, who still stood over her, silently, blood wet on his lips. She met his red eyes. “Any questions?”

He licked his lips. “What about hunting grounds?”

She sat back and considered. “I’m not sure. If hunting is illegal, will we want to list them? Would we get in trouble, or cause Public Works to focus on those areas?”

“Ask a human police chief who the drug lords are in his city. He can name names. Knowing where the grounds are doesn’t make it easier to control,” Kevin said, still looking at her as if she were a price piece of meat. “Also, thank you for wearing little personal scent today. You smell wonderful.”

Color rose to her cheeks and she forced a smile. “I’ll trust your judgment on the hunting grounds reporting then. It was nice talking to you both. Thanks for your help.” She dropped her eyes and went back to her notes. Kevin stood there a moment longer, then left the break room.

“Is he always like that?” she asked Opal, who still sipped at her blood thoughtfully.

“He’s a baby yet, and chafing to be his own man,” she said, her voice slightly mournful. “He wants to turn his own companion. I think he’s moving away from me.”

Zoë made another note. “That’s got to be hard for you.”

“It is, but unlike when I was human, I can always have more babies,” Opal said, her voice soft. Zoë looked up and found the vampire staring at her.

She smiled. “I’m not ready for immortality yet. I have yet to master this life.”

Opal nodded. “I’ll abide by Phil’s demands, but you never know. You might like it. Just say the word.”

She left the table and finally Zoë was alone.

She put her head in her hands. This was just getting better and better.

On her way out of the break room, she caught Wesley’s voice drifting from behind the cracked door to his office. “I’ll be ready to accept your resignation this afternoon, Zoë, if you’d like to talk.”

A growing group of humans have decided to live in symbiotic relationships with vampires, giving the coterie a chance to drink from live hosts, and it is beneficial to the hosts as well. Humans suffering from the genetic condition hereditary hemochromatosis have an abundance of iron in their bodies, and the treatment is bloodletting.

With the advent of adventure races among the humans, some enterprising coterie have started the Tough Blooder. You are welcome to enter with a small registration fee, and the humans enter the race for free. They run through the woods and obstacles, and you buy a place on the course to attack and feed from them. This gives the humans the treatment they need and gives the vampires adrenaline-fueled blood.

You are barred from the race if you kill your host, or drink more than one and a half pints. This event is sanctioned by Public Works.

J
ohn came to see Zoë that afternoon as she was working on her outline and swearing at her body’s inability to process Tylenol quickly.

“I hear you’re not feeling well,” he said, gliding into the office with unnatural grace.

No, not unnatural. Just
inhuman
. Zoë couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel if he touched her with those graceful hands, and shook her head to clear it. “Rough night. No matter.”

“Ahhh,” he said, exhaling in just the way she’d expect him to do after climaxing. “I understand. Job stress?”

She grinned despite herself. “A little.” His direct stare made her weak in the knees. She inhaled and said in what she hoped was a businesslike way, “What can I do for you, John?”

She immediately regretted the question as he smiled slowly and widely, sitting down in her visitor chair and leaning back. She fancied she could see every contour of his body underneath his white shirt and khakis. She had met dangerous men before. She’d let her last boss seduce her. She had been threatened by a construct. And yet John was the first man—or rather, sentient being—in a while who had made her fear for her well-being. Probably the first person since she’d encountered Godfrey’s wife.

With John in the room, Zoë felt as if she were looking over the edge of a cliff thinking that the wind through her hair would feel so good on the way down. That image was immediately
replaced with the image of John’s fingers in her hair, and she gritted her teeth and focused again. She realized he was speaking, and watched his lips form the words.

“I know you’re researching the coterie world. I’d love to teach you a little about the ’bus lifestyle. Are you free for dinner?”

With every fiber of her being screaming
yes
, Zoë managed to laugh. “John, I’m new here, but I have done
some
research. I know what you eat for dinner, and although you are very good at creating the reaction in me that you’re looking for, I prefer not to suffer the consequences. I’d love to learn whatever you can teach me—about your world,” she added. “But I would prefer not to learn about your feeding habits firsthand.”

He leaned forward and looked at her intently. “Oh, you would. You would be very interested to learn about my feeding habits. It’s only the aftereffects you would rather not experience. But the feeding habits? Yes, you would enjoy those very much. You would be keenly aware of each bite I took, each morsel I devoured, each droplet I would lick up. And once you had recovered, you would come to me again for the research opportunity.”

Zoë sighed, feeling very much like a trembling rabbit under a circling hawk; instincts screamed at her to run, but if she ran, he would strike. If she had to guess, there were no sexual harassment laws in the coterie world, especially for those working with sex demons. “No means no, John. And regardless of my interest or lack thereof or even just my common sense, I have plans tonight.”

He bowed his head, acquiescing. “Another time, then.” He stood, then paused with his long-fingered hand on her office door. “Oh, and don’t worry. I will never attack you or try to take you by force. That is not a taste I enjoy. You will come to me of your own accord.”

“Will I?” she said flatly.

He grinned at her again, making her heart quicken. Was he
even hotter today than yesterday? Zoë stared after him as he left, then sighed, willing her body to stop reacting to him like a teenager’s. She pulled out her to-do list and wrote, “Talk to GGM about battling incubi” in the “PERSONAL” column. Then she added, “Buy vibrator.” Anything to lessen John’s impact on her.

Morgen came in soon after John. “I saw John in here. Is he bugging you? Want me to kick his ass?”

Zoë ran her fingers through her hair. “How do you hurt an incubus? He looks like he works out.”

“Oh, water droplet,” Morgen said sympathetically, “he looks like whatever you want to see in a guy.”

Zoë hadn’t thought of that. “What do you see?”

“Oh, I just see an average guy, brown skin, black eyes, somewhat heavyset. His power doesn’t have any effect on me. He just wants human sexual energy. Pity, though. Water sprites are pretty wild.”

Zoë laughed. “Let me guess. Asphyxiation games?”

Morgen nodded vigorously. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“And yet less than half is all I want to know, which works out just fine. But I need to come up with plans for tonight, since that’s how I got out of seeing him. What are you doing?”

Morgen clapped her hands. “Oh, I get to show you the city from a sprite’s point of view? Yay! Let’s see. First we’ll go to Blossoms on Fifth Avenue so you can see where the fae eat, and then we’ll go to a club. Has Phil given you a talisman yet?”

Zoë frowned. “No.” She was about to say that she’d meant to remind him, but then remembered that no coterie had told her of the talismans; she was not supposed to know about them yet.

Morgen sighed. “He wanted to hire a human and didn’t prepare her for anything. A talisman is a mark that humans who work with coterie wear, to let others know they didn’t wander in by accident, and that they’re not available for feeding.”

“I thought coterie weren’t supposed to hunt?” Zoë asked.

Morgen dropped her easygoing attitude. “Zoë. If a tiger gets out of her cage at the zoo and eats someone, they shoot it. But if a human is stupid enough to get into the cage with the tiger, do they begrudge it the meal?”

Zoë swallowed. “So how do I use, or get, one of these talismans, then?”

On his way out, Phil informed them that he had indeed left a talisman for Zoë, but he’d left it in her employee folder for Wesley to give to her upon orientation.

Morgen frowned like a rainy afternoon. “Well, it’s beginning to make sense now. Let’s go bully Wesley.”

Zoë groaned.

The abandoned theater was mostly empty, it being after dark and safe for everyone to leave. Only the zombies remained, congregating in the onstage break room.

Morgen poked her head into Wesley’s office, then grinned back at Zoë. “He’s gone.”

Morgen stepped into the room. “I know where he keeps employee files, let me deal with this.”

She went to the file cabinet beside Wesley’s desk and pulled briefly on the top drawer, showing no surprise when it proved locked. She nodded and then put her finger against the keyhole.

Zoë gasped as Morgen’s hand turned watery and translucent, flowing into the keyhole. The water sprite bit her lip in concentration and twisted her wrist slightly, and the drawer popped open. The water flowed back out and formed again into Morgen’s hand.

Zoë leaned against the door, knees weak with shock. “That was amazing.”

Morgen looked up and grinned at her. “Buy me a drink and ask me what happened to the stuff inside Al Capone’s vault. The water sprites know.”

She flipped through the different files and pulled out Zoë’s. “Ah! Zoë Norris. What do we have here? A talisman!” She pulled a black ribbon from the folder and tossed it to Zoë. It was a velvet choker necklace with a silver medallion hanging from it, the medallion engraved with the same symbol she’d seen on Granny Good Mae’s wrist.

“And your typed-up resignation letter, waiting for your signature,” Morgen continued. “I guess he really does have it in for you.”

Zoë had been wrong; aside from the zombies, John was also still in the office. He stood onstage with them, discussing something. Their voices were low and tense.

“What does Wesley have against me?” she asked, mostly rhetorically.

“Oh, what does anyone have against anyone in this world? Some resent a human hanging out here. Some want to see you squirm. Some want to eat you. It’s no big deal. You can handle yourself. Also, don’t stress about it. It may not even be Wesley who’s got it in for you, it’s probably his creator. So work should be a little easier, huh? Knowing it’s not Wesley that hates you?”

Zoë made a face at her. “Yeah. Much better. Thanks.”

The zombies kept mumbling at each other, and Morgen finally raised her voice. “What the hells is the matter with you guys?”

John came over, his strong jaw set. Even concerned, he looked hotter than ever. His brown eyes swept over Zoë briefly before he focused on Morgen.

“Do you guys know anything about missing brains? The zombies’ stash is gone.”

Morgen blanched, looking nearly translucent. “Are they sure? I mean, couldn’t someone have just forgotten to bring some today?”

“They claim not. And they’re getting close to losing their shit.”

“Losing it?” Zoë asked.

John nodded. “Zombies get more mindless and animalistic when they don’t eat. You don’t know that yet?”

Zoë knew. She just found higher thinking hard with John next to her. She grimaced. “Right. Of course.”

John looked at Morgen and pointed at Zoë. “We’d better get her out of here. They’re hungry and I don’t know if they’re going to revert or something.”

“Well, yeah, but we can’t just leave them. If they go hunting like this, they’ll get caught. Can’t they go home and eat?”

“They live in Queens.”

Morgen swore—Zoë assumed—in a language Zoë didn’t recognize. “And they’re that bad off? So fast?”