Undying (10 page)

Arlan was annoyed that Maggie had brought out the worst in him and that she was now here to remind him of it. He knew he shouldn’t have gone back into the room and left the flower and coffee and donuts.

“I asked you a question,” he said stiffly.

“I’m not a stalker.”

Her tone was dry. Almost amused. She was an interesting person, this HF. She came off so vulnerable, so skittish, and yet she had a backbone.

“I didn’t tell you where I lived.”

“I was hoping to find Fia.” She sipped from her glass, casually glancing around the low-lit pub room.

So she hadn’t come looking for him. Arlan was relieved. Maybe just a little disappointed. “Fia had to go back to the office in Philadelphia. She’s expecting your phone call.”

“I just thought face to face might be better.”

He turned toward her on his barstool and her knees brushed his shins. “You have information for her?”

“I just want to talk to her.”

He looked down at her. “You’re a strange woman, Maggie.”

“You’re pretty odd yourself, Arlan,” she came back.

That made him tilt his head back and laugh.
And
a sense of humor. He loved women with a sense of humor.

“Can I buy you another?” He pointed to her glass.

They each had two more pints and then Arlan decided it was time he called it a night. If he didn’t, he feared he’d end up asking her to come home with him and that was definitely on the top of the list of
very bad ideas.
He stood up and paid the bar tab.

The Hill was already beginning to thin out. Disgruntled sept members had gone home. Arlan was sure he would hear of their displeasure tomorrow, what with him bringing a human into their sanctuary—even though he hadn’t invited her.

“You staying in town tonight?” he asked.

“Hotel down the street.” Maggie picked her bag up off the floor under her barstool. “Guess I got lucky. The old lady at the desk said she was usually booked most of the summer.”

“Ah, Mrs. Cahall. She’s older than the hills. Hard of hearing, too.” He cupped his hand to his ear. “What’s that, missy? You want a
broom
for the night?”

Maggie chuckled, but her laughter was a little sad, much like her demeanor. Arlan wondered if she would ask him back to her room. He shouldn’t say yes, of course, but what if she did? That certainly wasn’t the same as having her back to
his
house.

They walked together toward the exit. By the time he opened the door for her, he had decided that he would say no if she invited him back. He was already in hot water with Fia; he didn’t need to push it to the boiling point.

“Thanks for the beer,” she said out on the sidewalk. “Good night.”

Arlan stood in the dark for a moment, stunned. She hadn’t asked him back to her room. And he was so sure she was going to. She’d just had that look on her face that he knew so well. Lonely and horny.

He walked home alone in the dark, hands stuffed in his pockets, unsure if he was insulted or just plain hurt.

F
ia pressed her back to the brick wall in the alley and slowly slid down until she was sitting on the ground, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was cold despite the heat of the steamy June night. Last call in the bars had been at least half an hour ago. She needed to get home, get cleaned up and catch a couple of hours of sleep before she had to go to work.

First she needed to do something with
him.

She glanced at the unconscious man sitting across from her. He was handcuffed to a drainpipe with one of the disposable plastic ties that she, like most law enforcement agents, always carried with her. He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit. He
had
been wearing a red power tie until he slipped it over Fia’s neck and tried to choke her.

Big mistake on the suit’s part. Wrong miniskirt to cross.

It was a good thing she’d artfully disposed of the drinks he’d ordered for her. At least one of them had been laced with some kind of date rape drug; she had seen him pour the powder from the envelope into her glass when she was on the dance floor. Dumping the martinis in the potted plant had been easy. How stupid had the jerk thought she was?

But there were plenty of women out there naive enough to accept drinks from a good-looking stranger in a five-hundred-dollar suit, and that didn’t mean they deserved to be drugged and sexually assaulted. No one did.

She slipped her hand into her bag and pulled out her cell phone. She dialed from memory. As she listened to it ring, she was surprised by the lump that rose in her throat and the way her chest tightened.
Cry?
She was going to
cry
over something so stupid as a man who had tried to take advantage of her?

The phone continued to ring. He didn’t always keep his cell next to his bed. Maybe it was charging in the kitchen.

Fia was just about to hang up when she heard a click on the other line, then a sleepy male voice.

“’Llo?”

She thought about hanging up. Of course, he would know it was her. He’d check his Received Messages and know she had called at 2:35
A.M
. He’d wonder where she was and what she was doing. He would
know
she was somewhere she shouldn’t be. They’d been together too long.

“Fee?”

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, drawing into a tighter ball. Somehow she’d torn her stockings. “I screwed up,” she said.

“Where are you?”

She closed her eyes. “I don’t know. An alley behind some bar in north Philly. I’ve got an unconscious guy handcuffed to a drainpipe.” She looked up. Even in the dark, her vision was good. Superhuman. There was a large, red egg rising on his temple.

“He alive?”

She watched him for a second. His chest rose and fell. “Oh, yeah. Sure,” she said cheerfully.

“Did you—”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence. She could see the two red bite marks and the glisten of blood, even in the dark. “A little.”

“Fee, you can’t do that!” He groaned on the other end of the phone. “You have to let him go. You have to remove the handcuffs and get the hell out of there before he wakes up.”

“But the bastard tried to slip rhohipnol into my drink. He wanted to play some kind of crazy erotic asphyxiation game with me in the alley. He didn’t even have the good manners to take me back to his apartment or a hotel.”

“Fee, if he wakes up and sees you, you might have to feed again. It could kill him.”

The drinking of blood had a crazy side effect on most humans. They lost their short term memory and never knew what hit them. The suit might vaguely remember meeting Fia in the bar, but he was drunk enough and her blood-taking was hypnotizing enough that he would never remember that she had bit his neck and sucked his blood. However, if he woke up and saw her, he might be able to put the pieces together. If she drank his blood again, so close to the last feeding, it might kill him.

“Fee, you have to let him go.
Now.
”

She closed her eyes, focusing only on his voice. “I was thinking about calling the police.”

“And telling them what? That you tried to pick him up in a bar so you could drink his blood and he played one-up-manship with you?”

“That’s not how it went down! And look who’s handcuffed to a drain-pipe. Not me.”

“Fee, you know better.” His tone was judgmental.

“Arlan…” Her voice nearly cracked with emotion. What was wrong with her? She was losing it. She was losing her professional edge. She was losing her vampire edge. She was becoming so damned…human.

He was quiet for a second. “Do you want me to come get you?”

“No.” She snapped her eyes open. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re hours away.”

“Where’s your HM?”

“Asleep in his bed in his own apartment where he ought to be.”

“He doesn’t know you’re missing?”

“I kept my place,” she admitted. “We just play sleepover. Besides, he thinks I’m still in Clare Point.”

“You’re lying to the boyfriend now?”

The sound of his voice made her cringe. “It’s complicated, Arlan. You know that.”

He sighed on the other end of the phone. “Listen to me, Fia. You cannot call the police. You need to remove the handcuffs and get the hell out of there, do you hear me? Go home before you get into trouble you can’t easily get yourself out of.”

The threat was ominous. There were a lot of ways this could go down if anyone saw her. None would be good for her. At the very least she would be investigated by her own office. Worst, she could be investigated and then punished by the sept. Human blood-feeding was forbidden. Human stalking was absolutely taboo.

“Right.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll just cut the cuffs. He’ll wake up hungover wondering how the hell he got here.” She slipped the red tie off her neck and dropped it over his head so that he wore it like some kind of weird bandana, dangling over one ear. He looked stupid and he deserved it. If she had the time she’d have written something clever on his forehead with her lipstick to make him look like an even bigger idiot.

“Where’s your car?” Arlan asked.

“A few blocks away.”

“Walk straight to it. Speak to no one,” Arlan instructed. “No bums, no one.”

“No bums. No one,” she repeated as she cut the plastic handcuff tie with a pocketknife she always carried in her handbag.

The suit’s hands fell to his lap. His head lolled a little, but the tie stayed in place. Fia walked toward the streetlights at the end of the alley, a tunnel in the darkness.

“I cut the creep free. I’m walking out now,” she told Arlan. She stopped when she reached the sidewalk. The air was cleaner here. Cooler. She felt more like herself again.

“You okay?” Arlan asked.

“I’m okay.” She nodded, even though she knew very well he couldn’t see her.

“Good. Now you call me later and we’ll talk.”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Arlan. We’re just going to pretend it didn’t happen. We’re going to pretend I never called you.”

“Okay,” he said, even though she could tell he wasn’t really going for the idea. “How about Maggie? You want to talk about
her
later?”

“What do you mean?” She walked under a streetlight. She could see her car on the next block. “She call you? I thought she was going to call
me.
”

“She’s here, Fee.”

“There? There where? In your bed?”

“No,” he scoffed, seemingly offended. “Of course she’s not in my bed. She’s in town. Apparently you told her where you
live.
”

“I
live
in Philadelphia, Arlan. She knew about Clare Point because she found me through the beheadings. It was all over the news, remember?” Fia pulled her keys from her bag and unlocked her BMW. “So exactly where is she?”

“She said she was staying at the Lighthouse Inn.”

“And you’re sure she’s there?”

“No, I’m not
sure she’s there.
I’m not the cop, you are. She wants to talk to you, face to face,” Arlan said.

“I don’t want to lose her again. Tell her to call me.” Fia got into her car.

“I don’t even know that I’ll see her.”

“Go to the hotel in the morning and tell her to stay put.” She started the engine. “Better yet, get her to move to Ma’s place. You can keep a better eye on her there.”

“I’m not even sure I can find her, Fee.”

“Just do it,” Fia said. She hung up before she started getting all mushy and thanking Arlan for being there when she needed him.

Arlan fell back on his pillow, cell phone still in his hand, and stared at the ceiling. The paddle fan turned slowly, but it didn’t seem to be cooling off the room.

What the hell was wrong with Fia? He thought she’d put an end to the stalking after she started dating her human. Hadn’t she been working on this with her shrink for years?

Arlan tossed his phone on the nightstand and threw back the sheet. He needed something cold to drink. Water. Better yet, a beer.

He walked nude out of the bedroom and down the hall. In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and light fell on the tile floor. He stared as if something would magically leap out at him.

A sound in the front of the house caught his attention. He had no cat. No dog. His current position in the sept took him away too often to have pets. He grabbed a bottle of Mexican beer and let the refrigerator door swing shut. He walked out into the living room and studied the furniture cloaked in shadows cast by the streetlamp out front. Everything was as he had left it when he went to bed. Books were piled beside his leather recliner. Clean clothes were piled on the couch, waiting to be folded or at least tossed in a dresser drawer.

He shifted his gaze to the open windows that looked out over the front porch. He’d installed central air in the house, but he hated to turn it on. He liked to smell the ocean when he slept. It reminded him of the shores of his homeland of Ireland. It reminded him of when he had once been human.

Twisting the cap on the beer, he padded barefoot to the window. The curtain drifted in the faint breeze. Nothing stirred outside. Everything was so quiet, so still, that he didn’t see her at first. Just the porch rail. The steps. The overgrown forsythia bush. He didn’t see her, but he smelled her. It was a combination of his enhanced senses and her erotic scent that he couldn’t quite get out of his mind.

He walked to the front door and yanked it open.

She rose off the step as if she had been expecting him. She walked past him, into the house, taking his beer as she walked by.

Without a word, she walked through the living room, down the hall.

Arlan followed her in silence.

She dropped her purse just beyond the living room. She stepped out of her jeans, carefully balancing the beer, at the doorway to the spare room. As she walked into his bedroom, her thin T-shirt drifted off her fingertips. She sat down on the end of his bed, her bare skin glistening in the soft moonlight as she took a sip of the beer.

“What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

“What do you think?” She touched the rim of the bottle with the tip of her tongue.

He frowned, remaining a safe distance from her. “I’m serious, Maggie. How did you find me? Did you follow me home?”

“Didn’t have to. In a small town like this, everyone knows everyone’s business. Mrs. Cahall’s nephew has the night desk at the hotel. He was more than happy to give me directions.” She offered the bottle. “Beer?”

He crossed the room, snatching it out of her hand. “What do you want from me?”

She looked up, her pale, beautiful face so earnest. “Do you want me to leave? I can leave if you want.”

He eased down beside her. She smelled amazing. “I just want to know what you want. I’m not used to women following me.” He took a long drink of the cold beer.

“You mean, like, do I want a
relationship
? Marriage, a picket fence, and kids?” Her caustic laugh didn’t seem to match the softness in her face. “Not hardly.” She rested her hand on his bare knee. “I just want to be with you, Arlan. Don’t you want to be with me?”

Her words were over-the-top sexual, but the tone of her voice, the softness in her face, took away the tawdriness of it. From her mouth, the proposition seemed almost chaste.

“You’re scaring me a little, Maggie.” He took another drink. “You sure you’re not a stalker?”

She took the bottle from his hand and climbed across his lap, straddling him. She looked into his eyes, unblinking. “A stalker is the last thing on this earth I would be,” she whispered.

Her mouth lingered just over his, not touching, just hovering. His for the taking.

He thought about Fia. Hadn’t he just ten minutes before told her Maggie wasn’t in his bed? Hadn’t he just chastised her for making poor choices? And now here Maggie was. Here they were naked, already hot for each other.