Page 44 of Death is Familiar

Not sure what to do with me, Todd looked to the sky, presumably for strength, then drew his knuckles to the door. But before he could knock, I twisted the handle and stepped into Lenore’s office.

†

The whole move was very anticlimactic.

Lenore was heads down, glasses on the tip of her nose, looking over a thick binder-full of documentation, unfazed by our intrusion.

“Looks like business is booming,” I said, announcing our presence.

“Books on vamps did wonders for recruitment. Now, what can—” She flipped a page before looking up. Her mood shifted. “Ah, the little hellion …” Clearly, she didn’t know my name. “…and her FBI friend, I was wondering when you’d show up. Didn’t you do enough damage to my brand the last time you were here?”

I almost pinched the bridge of my nose to fight off the budding headache triggered by Lenore’s presence. “I’m sorry, Daemonica was good for business? I seem to remember you having a mass-murderer on your hands until I intervened.”

Daemonica was a New York vamp who had escalated things too far. She used gatherings as her hunting ground and had the habit of luring her victims to a secondary location where she’d exsanguinate them. Admittedly, I had gotten involved with the vamp’s case with my opinions on who was responsible already formed. Lenore would remember that.

“Yes, but I would have appreciated if you handled that whole situation with a lot more tact.”

Fine, I also may have been a little heavy handed in my approach. Jezebel, who had gone by another name at the time, and I thought the murders were sanctioned by Lenore as part of running her vamp cult. It took us a while to uncover the truth, that an individual, not the vamps, were responsible.

“But you still offered Jezebel a job.”

“My Jezebel has class. Something you sorely lack.”

What? White splintered across my vision. Why did she have to go there? I could do perfectly well with a few jibes about how I handled things. But pulling me down, and showing possession over someone I considered a friend in the process, got my blood boiling.

Todd took a tender hold of my arm, which meant I must not have been hiding my emotions very well.

At least, he knew better than to tell me to calm down. Instead, he said just about the only thing that would work, “If you need to punch someone. You can punch me. Later.”

He knew what he was doing. Whether or not I chose to act on it, Todd had given me an outlet. And just like that, my anger deflated.

I couldn’t let Lenore’s words get to me. Then she would have won.

“What? What did he say?” Lenore didn’t like not being in control. A trait which seemed to run in the vamp family tree.

“Agent Galt reminded me that we are here for Mercy, Dorian, Celeste, Kian, and Zayd.”

“So?”

“Let me clarify, we are here investigating their murders. It’s looking an awful lot like someone is stepping in on vamp business. We figured you might want to know who.”

Lenore’s face blanched. It looked like she was going to be sick. For all her pomp and circumstance, she was impacted by the news of their deaths. Jez had played her role well and hadn’t said a word about the murders to Lenore—who stood, snapping back into herself and into another round of questioning, “And do you? Do you know who? Because unless you do, it seems like you are wasting my time and bothering my membership.”

“Thought it might ruin your brand.” I didn’t move, didn’t blink. Stillness had an unnerving effect on people. “Do you know anyone who would want to do that?”

“By killing people? No. Absolutely and irrevocably not.”

Well, this was going just about as well as I expected. If anything useful were to come of this conversation, we’d need to get Lenore’s guard down, and my tone was not doing any favors in that department. She cared about her members, she cared about people, that much I knew. But our interaction was not allowing her to feel safe enough to show her soft side.

If this was going to go anywhere at all, I’d need to be as sickeningly sweet as the syrups used by the vamps outside. “Lenore, I⁠—”

“—What.”

“I’m sorry.” Yuck, yuck, yuck. Oh, this felt gross. Maybe I would punch Todd later.

“You’re…what?”

“I’m sorry, even though we did end up catching Daemonica,” I gave Todd a pointed look, emphasizing this success as part of my resume, “that I made snap judgements about you, about your vamps, and that I made things more difficult than they needed to be. I’m sorry for the trouble I caused, and that I put the blame on you before knowing more. Agent Galt and I are not here because we want to make things difficult for you. Or to assign blame. We’re here because we know how much you care, not only about your business, but about your membership, as people.”