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Desmond came out of the small kitchen and stopped where the tile met carpet, leaning against the doorframe instead of coming farther into the room. “I can’t begin to imagine why. ”
“Oh my God,” I groaned. “Why are you two together in the first place if all you want to do is, like…have a sword fight with your dicks or something?” Note to self, when you’re worried about a love triangle, try not to mention penises. I bit my bottom lip to refrain from saying anything else. This wasn’t my fault. They should know better than to confront me when I’d just woken up.
“It wouldn’t be much of a fight,” Holden said. “I’m led to understand those little cocktail swords don’t hold up well against a real weapon. ” He was looking at his fingernails as though he was perfectly uninterested in the whole discussion. I didn’t miss the hint of a smirk, though someone who didn’t know him well might. Sometimes his face barely moved.
Desmond growled but didn’t rise to the bait. He looked back into the kitchen, maybe hoping to find sanctuary within, but all he was going to find there was a shitty Ikea table and a microwave with dried blood in it.
“The sooner you guys tell me why you’re both here, the sooner you don’t have to be in the same place,” I told them.
“It wasn’t planned,” Desmond replied.
“You both happened to show up at the same time?”
“Unfortunately,” Holden said.
“You first. ” I pointed to the vampire. “Why are you here?” I knew he was here because I’d asked for his help. It was the same reason Desmond would have come. What I needed to know was if either of them had done anything helpful with their good intentions.
“I found out some things about your missing socialite. ”
That got both Desmond’s and my attention. “What do you know?” Desmond brushed past me and went to loom over Holden. If he thought he was going to be able to intimidate a vampire, he had a thing or two to learn about my undead brethren.
“Oh, Secret,” Holden said, gazing up at Desmond. “What big teeth you have. ” He batted his eyelashes once for good measure, then waved Desmond away with his fingers.
“For Christ’s sake, Holden, stop being such a knob. ”
And with that, the smirk was gone, and his expression was shuttered again. When he spoke again, his tone was cold, and all the humor had leached away. “Last night I went to speak to one of Kellen’s friends. I managed to get some details that had been missing from previous versions of the story. ”
“How?” I asked.
He tapped the corner of his left eye. “I can be a persuasive conversationalist. ” So he’d pulled a lie-detector-by-way-of-enthralling. Can’t say I was upset with him for it.
“What’d you find out?”
“Turns out someone did see her after she was dropped off. This friend met her off Canal, and they went to a club called Eleven-B. ”
Not that I was up on the cool club scene in Manhattan, but I’d never heard of the place before listening to the message on Kellen’s machine. I told him as much, and he shrugged one shoulder. “From what this girl told me, it’s very exclusive,” he mimicked a near-perfect high-society ditz voice. “Not for the rabble, you know. ”
“A secret club?” Desmond interjected.
“Sounds like. ”
“Did Kellen’s friend see her leave the club?” I continued, trying to keep the information flowing.
Holden shook her head. “Last this so-called friend saw of Kellen was her going into a private room with someone. She couldn’t say who. After that she was too drunk to care. ”
Some friend.
“Did she tell you how to get there?”
“She did me one better. ” He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and withdrew a small, silver object. “She gave me a key to the front door. ”
Chapter Nineteen
For a secret club in Manhattan I was expecting…more.
When Holden pointed to a dilapidated building a block off Canal Street, I was sure he’d been had. Never mind that he’d enthralled Kellen’s girlfriend into telling him the truth, there was certainly some mistake here.
On one side was a Chinese grocer, whose establishment had the faint dried-fish reek I had come to expect from the shops in and leading up to Chinatown, and on the opposite side a dark-skinned man with ill-advised sideburns was trying to sell a tourist couple a knockoff Coach bag. It was a terrible knockoff too, one where the logo couldn’t have passed muster with a blind fashionista.
