Vamp-Hire (20 page)

They rode in silence after greeting each
other. Nick realized then he was angry at Lucky. This made the
second hostile situation he’d walked into because of him and for
all he knew he was about to walk into a third. Intellectually, Nick
knew he couldn’t blame Lucky. He had been provided with all
available information and had made the big boy decision to go
anyway whether it was enough or not the night he had gone to
Nancy’s house. And had it not been for Ti’s intervention, he might
be in a pen or worse, dead right now.

“How’s that kid doing?” Nick asked. “The one
from the Big Pig?”

“Kip?” Lucky gave him a sidelong glance. “Had
to stay in the hospital overnight.”

“Did you get him the job at the Pig?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just asking.”

“No, you’re not. I can tell by your
tone.”

“Tone? What tone? I’m just saying.”

“Saying what, though?” Lucky’s tone was equal
parts curiosity and mild hostility.

Nick felt backed into a corner. He hadn’t
intended to blame Lucky for what had happened to Kip but somehow
had taken a circuitous path to the accusation’s doorstep. Common
sense dictated he back off, apologize, find some other avenue of
conversation. The weather, politics, just about anything would be
more innocuous than this. Despite that voice shouting from some
universe inside his brain, he couldn’t stop. That lone voice was a
drowning man in a sea of a bad ideas and Nick was charging his way
in.

“You.” Nick shook his head. “That guy, Keith,
tried to take my head off because of you.”

“You mean, like, literally?”

Nick got his meaning, that to deliver the
coup de grace to a vampire it was generally accepted that it must
be decapitated. It annoyed him even more that Lucky had taken him
literally and he had been responsible for the two of them being in
each other’s company.

“Yes!” he shouted. “Coco tried to chop my
head off! And you all but delivered me to him on a plate! Are you
disappointed we didn’t kill one another?”

Lucky pulled to a stop in front of a
house.

“If you weren’t doing a job for me right now
I’d punch you in the mouth, man.”

“Oh, you? Really? Or would you call Ti to do
it?”

“Is that what this is about? You mad because
you got your ham saved by a girl?”

“No. I’m mad because someone who I thought
was my friend didn’t tell me I was in danger.” Nick threw open the
door and got out. “And what about that kid who called me this
morning? Why’d you give him my number?”

“What kid?” Lucky pulled a face like he had
no idea what Nick was talking about.

“Thomas Barker?” Nick stressed the name. “He
said you told him I could help.”

Lucky shook his head. “Look, I book jobs for
you. If they call you directly, how do I get paid?”

Nick hadn’t thought about that and while he
was, Lucky seized the opportunity to continue the original
argument.

“First off, I didn’t know you were in danger.
I asked Ti to follow you just in case. I think a hunch of a
possibility paid off big time unless you’d prefer to be the gimp in
somebody’s basement. Second—”

“Maybe if you’d given me the head’s up that
wouldn’t have been necessary. Do you realize I am an adult?”

“And what would you have done? Run? By the
time you saw them, you’d already be in the trunk.”

“I am not a kid.”

“It’s not about you being a kid, it’s about
somebody having your back because you can’t do it all alone.”

“Just like you had Kip’s back?” Lucky made a
face, not understanding Nick’s change in direction. “You could have
been preemptive there too. You could have reported those cameras
not working and maybe he wouldn’t have had a trip to the
hospital.”

Although Nick knew that was unfair, the words
had come out of him full of hot and felt justified. Never mind the
fact they didn’t suit his argument, he was winning.

“Get out,” Lucky said.

“What?”

“I said get out.”

Nick paused for a few beats, wanting to say
something, but there didn’t seem to be any words that would
fit.

“Fine.” He threw open the door, stepped out,
and slammed it. He stalked around the car, across the narrow strip
of grass, and onto the sidewalk. After a brief bit of pacing, he
turned back to the car. “How do I get to the job?”

Lucky rolled down the window. “You’re
standing in front of it.” His voice sounded too controlled. Nick
realized he’d crossed a boundary, still too angry to see himself as
being in the wrong. He looked up at the house.

“Keep my commission. You’re going to need all
the help you can get.”

That burned. Before Nick could turn for a
retort—the next nonsensical volley intending to be a statement that
was the direct opposite of what Lucky had said (although, forcibly
paying him his commission didn’t seem to be in keeping with proper
one-upmanship)—the tires of the Fusion chirped as it pulled away.
Nick narrowed his eyes at the rear of the car as it grew smaller
until turning around a corner.

“Fine,” he said again. It wasn’t, really.
He’d probably just cost himself the only friend he had unless he
could count Phoebe, and they weren’t exactly in a good place,
either. It wasn’t his business whether or not Randy was a vamp,
Nick just wanted to know.

He trudged up the stairs, stomping his anger
out with each step, and actually managed to feel a little better by
the time he got to the door. He closed his eyes and silently
counted to a hundred before opening them again.

A hawkish-looking woman was staring back at
him by the time he’d finished, managing to open her front door
without making a sound. She was tall, late-fortyish, with blonde,
nest-like hair frosted with gray that barely came down past her
ears.

“Are you Nick?” she asked in a voice that
wasn’t unappealing. It was somewhere in the direction of sultry.
Nick could imagine going to sleep listening to her speak.

“I am,” he said. He waited for her to open
the security door. She slowly looked him up and down as if scanning
through his clothes for weapons or other dangerous materials. As
near as he could tell she was human, though there was something…
odd about her.

She took a hand out of her black and white
checkered robe and inserted a key into the lock. She pulled open
the door for Nick, pressing her tall frame back to allow him
inside.

“Come in.”

Nick crossed the threshold and was
immediately assaulted by the smell of old lemon scented cleaner and
even older sweat. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, only the faintest
retraces remained. Probably the people who had lived here before
this woman. Nick took another deep inhale and yes, it definitely
smelled like old people.

“You and your friend were arguing outside. I
saw you through the window.”

“Oh, no, that was a misunderstanding,” Nick
said. “We kind of got lost on our way over. Nick immediately
regretted his lie. Lucky had met with this woman earlier and it was
quite possible it had been here. There was something about her that
suggested she didn’t go outside much. She didn’t say anything to
contradict what Nick said or give a look like she hadn’t believed
him.

“I don’t have too many details,” Nick began,
“and I prefer it that way. I want to get a feel of the place
myself.” He was making it up as he went. It sounded good and he
found the more he heard his external voice, the more quiet his
internal one was, the one telling him how big a jerk he’d just
gotten through being. “Which walls—no wait—” he held up his index
fingers as if to pause whatever it had been she was about to say—
“let me sense for myself.”

“Do you do this often? Is this a specialty of
yours?” She had weaved her fingers together and was currently
wrestling nervously with her hands.

“A few times.” Nick didn’t know exactly what
‘this’ was supposed to be. What, look for people hiding inside of
walls? He didn’t think that was the sort of thing you could do a
Google search for.

Nick dug into his bag without looking and
found the tiny box of latex gloves. He didn’t really need them for
anything, had grabbed them one day as a just-in-case. They had
stayed in his bag for almost the entire time he’d had it. Now was
as good a time as any to use them.

The woman was staying a steady three paces
behind him, taking a step each time he took one, the two of them
slow-shuffling down a narrow hallway and into the kitchen in an
odd, no-contact-at-all sort of dance.

“I’m sorry, I meant to ask your name.” Nick
looked at her.

“Valerie,” she said and he held out his
gloved hand. She shook it with a long, thin-boned hand. “Do you
need to change that?” she said, referring to the glove he hadn’t
thought to take off.

“What? Oh, no. This isn’t for you, this is
for whatever may be in here with us.”

“It’s not a what. It’s a man. I heard—”

Nick put a finger to his lips.

The house was older but the kitchen appeared
to have been redone in recent years. The appliances were silver and
the sink had a deep double pan with the kind of faucet head that
could detach to spray hard to reach areas like unsuspecting people
standing a few feet away. Phoebe had a similar sort of faucet and
had sprayed Randy on several occasions. The counters were marble
and there was a small square table big enough for only two
people.

“I’m getting nothing here,” Nick said.
Valerie nodded appreciably, raising one hand and pointing up with a
finger.

“It might be because he’s upstairs. Are you
sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Positive.” Nick didn’t know what he was
supposed to be searching for. Leavings? Empty pizza boxes and
bottles of beer? He turned to her. “After you.”

She led him upstairs to a hallway made even
narrower by an old bookshelf, filled with books so old the smell of
the pages were the predominant scent in the air. They walked past a
bathroom and a bedroom with an old mutt disinterestedly watching a
small color television lighting the dark room. Though dogs
traditionally didn’t like vamps, this one only managed to lift his
head and pronounce a half-hearted wuff before they’d passed by.
Nick was surprised to see it, as the Conflict had done far more
damage to the canine population than the human one. That had
primarily been from humans who had turned on the animals because of
small percentages of feral dogs that had attacked and trained
attack dogs that had come down with a lethal illness after biting
vampires. The two sets of occurrences had blended somehow, giving
people the belief that vampires held influence over them,
controlling their behavior, and thus dooming man’s best friend to
public enemy number two.

They stepped into an empty bedroom,
white-walled and devoid of any window treatments.

“Barney and I first heard him in here about a
week ago,” Valerie said. Nick figured Barney had to be the dog.

“Who heard him first? You or Barney.” Valerie
gave him a look like she didn’t understand the question.

“Well, we heard him at the same time. I tried
figuring where he got in, but I don’t get out much anymore.”

Although weird, Valerie didn’t seem to have
any physical handicaps. Even if she had a bad back or something all
she had to do was walk outside, he figured.

“Is this the only room where you heard
him?”

“No, I usually hear him when I’m in the
bedroom with Barney. He makes so much noise it wakes me up.”

“No, I mean does he go into other rooms?”

“Oh, all over the house. I tried leaving out
some cookies for him one morning, you know? Obviously, he didn’t go
for that.”

“Obviously.” Nick nodded as if that made all
the sense in the world. He figured it was best to ask. “Why was
that obvious? And why didn’t you call the police?”

“Well, it’s only Barney and me and Barney
woulda said somethin’. And he didn’t eat the cookies anyway. The
man, not Barney. Chocolate gives Barney diarrhea.”

“And the police?”

“I’m not a crazy. I didn’t tell them I had
somebody in my walls. I told them I had an intruder. They sent a
guy and he didn’t find anything. Of course, he wasn’t gonna find
anything.”

“Hmm?”

“Y’know. On account o’ the government
protecting your kind.”

“My kind?”

“Yeah. He’s a vamp. Like you. I told you I’m
not a crazy. I don’t think there’s somebody in my wall, I know
there is. Matter o’ fact, I had to clean up after the mess he made
yesterday mornin’.”

Nick noticed the change in speech.

“Mess?” he asked. “Where?”

She pointed to a general area on the floor
between them. “Thereabouts.”

There was a slight stain on the floor that
explained the heavy scent of bleach. It looked like it had been
blood before a heavy-duty cleaning. He had to ask her even though
he was certain of the answer.

“Why haven’t you left yet?”

Something dangerous had happened in this
house, although he didn’t know the extent.

“Because he loves me.”

Nick whirled on her.

“He sleeps in your walls. He left blood on
your floor. He might have killed someone.” Her eyes were glassy,
faraway. The obvious question came to mind. “What’s the real reason
you asked me here?”

“I want you to coax him out. I want him to
know I don’t mind ‘im here. We can be together.”

Even someone who was possibly a murderer had
a place he could call home if he wanted, but Nick was still in
residential limbo.

He scratched at his ear. His hearing had
begun to sound scratchy out of his left. He wiped a tear away from
his eye on the same side, feeling a tingly sensation in his
cheek.

“Could I have some… water?” he asked. “I
think I need to sit.” He didn’t wait for an invitation, plopping
down on the floor. He felt vertigo and tasted the coppery tang at
the back corners of his mouth, intense nausea hitting him so fast
he almost dry heaved. Nick absolutely hated throwing up. Even if it
resulted in him feeling better after he’d rather be sick a whole
day than lose his lunch even once.