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“Really, that’s charming,” Marjorie said. Her smirk had widened until she looked like a gray-haired jack-o’-lantern. “If you get tired of this one, Sophie darling, I do hope—”
“You want to step outside and talk about it some more?” he interrupted.
“Liam!” Sophie nearly shrieked.
“What? I’m a feminist. ’Sides, she’s probably got six hundred years on me.”
“Eight hundred,” Marjorie said dryly.
“Anyways, I’m an equal opportunity ass-kicker. Nobody talks to me that way. I might be a nobody from some small town, but I’m not…you know. A nobody.”
Sophie fought the urge to bury her face in her hands. Meanwhile, Marjorie’s brow wrinkled as she digested that, and then she smiled, quite naturally. “I don’t want to step outside with you. And I apologize if I offended you. I’m just used to things being…a certain way.”
“Yes, well, just a simple misunderstanding, we must be going now,” Sophie said, almost babbled, seizing Liam’s arm so hard he winced. “Thank you for the information.”
“You’re so welcome.” She shook Liam’s hand. “So nice to meet you. Please stop by anytime. The library is not restricted to the undead.” She said this with such total sincerity, Sophie almost believed her.
“Yeah, well. Guess I got a little hot under the collar.”
“Yes, you did.” Marjorie’s eyes were veiled, and a smoky gray. “It was quite…interesting. As I said. Stop by anytime.”
“Say, anybody ever tell you, you’re kind of cute? I—ow!”
“Good-bye,” Sophie called, and practically dragged him out by the hair.
8
SOPHIE was still crabbing away at him while they were going up the sidewalk. The gist of it was “Never pick fights with vampires,” like any fool didn’t know that. But there was a big difference between keeping your head down and letting someone pull it off and hand it to you. Maybe French people didn’t get that.
“…so unbelievably arrogant, so completely dangerous…”
He let her sweet, accented bitching fade out as he stared around at the place. Summit Avenue in St. Paul was pretty famous for big digs, but this! Every mansion on the street was nicer than the last, and the one they were standing in front of was the nicest of all. It was humongous, like something out of an old movie, a massive white structure with black shutters. It didn’t feel evil, though Sophie told him the queen of the vampires lived there.
“I guess we should go knock,” Sophie said timidly, which startled the hell out of him. He didn’t think she was afraid of anything. Come to think of it, she’d been very deferential to the librarian, too. Maybe she just wasn’t used to being around her own kind. Maybe she’d moved to Embarrass for more than a fresh start. “Yes. Let’s do that. We’ll knock.”
“Okeydokey,” he agreed.
As they stepped up to the gigantic, wraparound porch, the front door suddenly opened and a good-looking young man in his mid-twenties came out. He was wearing green scrubs and had a hospital ID around his neck with a terrible picture on it. His hair was dark and cut very short, and his green eyes were clear and friendly.
“Hi there,” he said, jingling his car keys. “Come to visit? Go on in. I’d stay and, you know, do the polite intros, but I’m late and you’re not here to see me anyway. Right? Right. So, ’bye.”
He hurried down the steps, throwing a distracted wave over his shoulder, then disappeared around the corner toward the detached garage. They watched him go, bemused, then Sophie turned and looked back up at the house.
“We can just…go in?”
“Guess so,” Liam replied and opened the front door. After seeing the outside of the house, he was a little more prepared for the beauty and opulence of the foyer. He could hear voices coming from a large room on their right, and turned in that direction. Sophie clutched his arm, pulling him back. “Sophie, what is with you?”
She was chewing on her lower lip so hard, he expected to see it start bleeding. If she could bleed. “It’s just…I met Nostro. And he was horrible. Horrible. And if she beat him…. But we have to bring this to her,” she added, seeming to straighten with remembered pride. “It’s our—my—responsibility.”
“Right,” he said. “Calm down, ease up. You look great, don’t worry about it.” And she did. Her glossy brown hair was piled up on top of her head, being held in place by the miracle of a single hair clip. She was wearing a dark red suit, light-colored stockings, and black shoes. She was pale, but then, she was always pale. He thought she looked like a million bucks. In fact, as he’d watched her pull up her stockings in their hotel room (he didn’t know gals even wore stockings and garter belts anymore), he’d been unable to resist jumping her bones again, and they’d had a wonderful time rolling around on the floor.
She hadn’t bitten him that time, politely explaining afterward that she was still satisfied from the night before. He knew she was lying; he could tell by the way her gaze kept shifting from his eyes to the bruise forming on his neck. But he didn’t push it, figuring she had other things on her mind.
“You look nice, too,” she told him, which was a laugh, because he was wearing jeans (clean, at least) and an old blue flannel shirt (also clean). Well, he didn’t think the big shot queen would much care what he was wearing.
He gripped Sophie’s hand, surprised as always by its pleasant coolness, and practically pulled her into the next room.
“…and they’re doing really well, pretty well, I mean, they’ll still kill and eat anybody who gets too close, anybody human I mean, but I’m keeping a pretty close watch and, um, I guess that’s all.”
The girl speaking was smaller than Sophie, which was pretty damn small. She had red hair and the skinniest, palest arms and legs Liam had ever seen. She was wearing a pleated black skirt and a white blouse, and little white socks and loafers, looking for all the world like a schoolgirl. In fact, she probably was a schoolgirl. Didn’t look a day over fifteen.
“Very good, Alice,” a deep voice said. Liam looked, then looked again. He’d thought it was a shadowy corner, but there was a man sitting in a tall wingbacked chair, a big man, tall and scary-looking and Liam wanted to turn around, cool as a cuke, and walk right of there and back to the truck and then drive all the way back to Embarrass, checking the rearview the entire time. “Once again, I must ask if you wish to be relieved of your duties. You’ve been at this for several months and—”
“Majesty, I love this job, and I wish to keep on doing it. Before I wanted to because, you know, with the new, uh, regime, I wasn’t really sure of my place. So I figured, you know. But now…I—I kind of like them,” she finished, staring down at her shoes.
“Them?” the man asked, distaste clear in his tone.
“Happy, Skippy, Trippy, Sandy, Benny, Clara, Jane, and George.” She smiled weakly. “George’s my favorite.”
“You’ve named them?”
Liam wondered who them was. He bumped into something, and he suddenly realized he’d backed all the way up into the door, totally unconsciously. He told himself to get a grip. They were just vampires, for Christ’s sake.
He forced himself to look around the room while the vampires talked about them, tearing his gaze away from the scary guy sitting in the corner. There were three other people in the room; the first one he noticed was a petite, great-looking blonde standing behind and slightly to the left of the guy’s chair. Even from across the room, he could see how dark and pretty her big eyes were, fixed now on the girl. And she was so small, she easily fit behind the corner chair. The guy seemed totally unaware of her, but he’d cock his head when she’d bend down to whisper to him, and besides, Liam had the feeling no one snuck up on this guy.
There was also a dark-green couch (he supposed some fancy magazine would call it “moss green” or whatever) in the middle of the room, and two women were sitting on it, playing checkers. The one closest to him was a good-looking black gal (shit, he’d never seen this many gorgeous people outside of a Hollywood movie). She was way too thin, with her hair so tightly pulled back he could practically see her skull throbbing, but her skin was a gorgeous dark brown and she had a look about her he really liked, as if she didn’t take a lot of shit.
