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The living room had no personality, per se, with the singular exception of the beaded curtain covering the hall closet which was a take on the famous Japanese painting of a big blue wave. I ran my hand over the wooden beads and enjoyed the clicking rattle they made as they tapped against each other.
There was a single loveseat in the room, and it looked too large for the space. Against the wall leading to the kitchen was one empty bookshelf, and next to the front door was an old, antenna-operated television. I didn’t think analog worked in the city anymore, but trust a vampire decorator to be out of the loop on that. At least someone had gotten her a DVD player, and by the looks of it, the first few seasons of Gilmore Girls.
The afghan on the back of the loveseat was a nice touch too.
I stopped playing with the beaded curtain and gave the afghan another, harder look. It was a bit too nice of a touch, and certainly not something anyone rushing to find a home for a newborn vampire would have thought to add.
I walked over to the couch and snatched the blanket up, sniffing it more carefully. It smelled like old hand lotion, age and the faintest hint of the chemical people used for perms. I dropped the blanket in disgust.
This apartment had belonged to someone else. Recently.
I stalked back into the bedroom, which now seemed more incongruous with the rest of the apartment, with its bright white walls and giant bed. I made an angry mental note to ask Sig if they had at least waited for the old lady who once lived here to die before the council annexed her rent-controlled abode.
“…just gave me all these clothes, which is so cool! I mean, I’d rather have gotten them myself, because seriously who’s ever heard of Miss…Mees…Missoni?” She tossed a burgundy sweater out into the room, where it landed on a pile of other discarded clothes.
For someone who had lived the New York party-girl lifestyle when she was alive, Brigit Stewart was blithely unaware of a majority of the fashionable labels most girls her age would kill for. I was willing to bet she had only borrowed my twelve-hundred-dollar shoes because she thought they were pretty.
I pouted to recall those very same shoes would never be the same again after their adventure in Lucas’s pool.
What does it say about me that I can be distracted from wondering about the demise of a nice afghan-knitting little old lady by the thought of shoes? Probably that I’m a bad person.
“Aha. ” The triumphant cry from within the bowels of her closet drew my attention back to the mission at hand.
I had called Brigit after getting Lucas’s message and insisted I needed her help preparing for my date tonight. I figured this way I could check on her, see how she was adjusting to being alone, and I could also find an outfit. I may have a lot of shoes, but I have very little to wear them with. And nothing in my closet screamed date with royalty. On my last date with Lucas I’d felt woefully underdressed.
Not that it mattered, because the whole outfit ended up getting covered in blood anyway.
What I needed for tonight was twofold. I wanted an outfit appropriate for a night out with Lucas, but I needed it to carry on with me for the latter part of the night, which would involve a little lying, troublemaking and general no-goodery.
Plus, my only date-worthy dress had been left at a dry cleaners over a year ago to get bloodstains out, and I hadn’t made it a priority to get it back. Wearing a dress you’d killed someone in was probably bad luck for any date anyway. Especially when the man you would be with might be able to smell the old blood on you.
I have a lot of problems with getting blood on me in my line of work.
“Found one!” the closet doors declared.
I needed to start learning to dress myself for fancy occasions. Getting help from vampires made me feel a little pitiful sometimes.
Brigit re-emerged from the closet, holding something I wouldn’t have imagined any vampire in their right mind choosing, but coming from Brigit it made perfect sense. It was a sweet-looking candy-pink strapless dress, which appeared to have pockets in the skirt. I hated myself for admitting it, but I found the dress charming in spite of how very pink it was.
She held it out to me like a proud cat showing off a dead sparrow.
“Like it?”
“Amazingly enough. ” I took it out of her hands and held it against me so I could assess it in the full-length mirror hanging on her bedroom wall. She clapped delightedly, then collapsed backwards onto the giant pile of clothes behind her. “Thanks, Brigit. ”
“Anytime. Put it on!”
I stripped down, almost embarrassed by my day-to-day uniform of jeans and a V-neck T-shirt, and slipped the dress over my head, thankful one of the many physical traits Brigit and I shared was our dress size. I was also glad whoever had put this dress in the closet for her had considerably underestimated her chest size.
The dress was even better on me than it had been on the hanger. The rose undertones of the fabric provoked the illusion of color in my cheeks, and it somehow managed to make the blonde of my hair look less yellow and more gold. If I’d thought I could wear that dress to do all of my work from then on, I would have.
But there was always the blood to consider.
“Lucas is going to die,” Brigit said cheerfully.
“God, I hope not,” was my all-too-honest reply.
At ten to ten I was standing outside of the Two Moon Grill on Madison, feeling like a high-school girl waiting for her prom date. At least that’s what I imagined the feeling was equal to considering I’d never been to high school or a prom.
