“I think the‘You know too much’ship has sailed.” I gave her a pointed look as we continued our trek. “If you must know. I found Ludovica first.”
“Were you guys—” Scout made a vulgar gesture with her hands, and I grimaced.
“God, no. She’s literally like a sister to me. I hate her. I care about her, but really, I can’t stand her most of the time.”
She nodded. “I can see that. You two definitely acted like siblings. Okay, so you met her, and then what? When was this?”
I squinted my eyes, trying to remember. “Early two-thousands. I’d been turned for— eight years? I was kind of a solitary guy. My family and I didn’t get along after the curse, so I moved from place to place a lot. Elvie was in a similar situation. We met at a party and got to talking. We discovered that we could pay for hotels if we pooled our money. Then a small apartment. That sucked ass. She’s—well, you’ve seen her.”
Scout laughed. “Lust being high maintenance? Uh, yeah, I’ve seen her.”
I rolled my eyes at her assumptions. “I had no space for my things. We fought nightly about it. I had a mattress and two milk crates for my clothes. One dirty, one clean.”
I chuckled as the memories started to come easier. “Then we met Arsenio. He was using his ridiculous strength at bars. Arm wrestling. He could make a few thousand a night easily. I wanted to be like him. He took us under his wing. He brought us back to his bachelor pad.”
I licked my lips and sighed. “He bragged about how great his place was all night, and then when we got there in the morning, we discovered that it was barely bigger than the rat hole me and Elvie were sharing.”
“What about the others? How did you meet them?” Scout asked.
“Ginata was interested in Arsenio, but they didn’t even make it past first drinks. Dante and Tully were best friends already. We took them for a few rounds of arm wrestling before they decided to stop trying to win and took up with us. Then, Corrine. She found us and made sure we drank every night. Before vampires were exposed, it was a lot harder to feed.”
I glanced over to see her nodding. “Mexico was really bad. They are superstitious as hell. Well, maybe not since we are real.” She laughed. “There were sometimes when I thought I was going to starve.”
“New York in that time wasn’t great either. Too many people in such tight places. There were always eyes and mouths that moved fast. If we got caught, then we’d have to run.”
“How did you get to New York from Michigan?” she asked. I blinked and looked over at her. She stopped moving, and her eyes had gone huge. We both caught her slip. I watched her gulp, and ever so slowly, she shook her head, begging me not to ask. But I couldn’t. I had to.
“How did you know I came from Michigan?”
33
Scout’s refusal to tell me how she knew something I hadn’t told her caused me to regard her with suspicion. I knew, I fucking knew that when she broke her curse, something about me was unlocked. I just didn’t understand why she refused to tell me.
When we finally made it to Chicago, I told her I’d go to see Corrine on my own.
“Fuck you!” She scoffed. “I just walked a bazillion miles for this. I’m not going to sit here and fiddle my thumbs. If she wants me dead, then I need to plead my case, not you.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “It’s not going to work the way you think. Corrine doesn’t see you as a real person. You’re just a name. A body.”A mark.
We fought all night. Eventually, I relented and told her I’d let her go. But then, when she fell asleep in the shitty blood hotel room we’d rented, I decided to risk everything to leave during the day to see Corrine. I made a dozen calls, convincing the driver to cover all the windows he could in his car and then pull into an underground parking garage. I was lucky that Scout had fallen asleep just before sunrise. It gave me enough time to get down here.
The driver had found a partition to put up for me as well, blacking out the back completely.
“How are you going to get inside?” he asked me as he was buzzed through Corrine’s gates.
“I called ahead. Just go wherever they direct.” I said. The humans Corrine employed brought us into an attached garage, and I was let out inside. I paid the driver well and thanked him again.
“Anytime. Good luck,” he said, with what looked like genuine concern in his eyes. I nodded and turned to follow the human security guards into the house.
Corrine looked as creepy and regal as ever. She was dressed in a black dress that went from her chin to well under her feet, like a Victorian Morticia Addams.
“Desiderio. It’s been a long time coming, this visit,” she said as she took me to her tearoom. I had barely sat down before I was served a warm cup of blood. I drank it down quickly and was poured another. Corrine clicked her tongue. “You haven’t been drinking enough.”
“I’ve been drinking. Just gas station blood. Cheap and full of preservatives.”
She grimaced and brought her hand to her trim waist. “That is not good for the body.”
No shit.
