Under Attack

Chapter Ten

I cracked one eye and a bleary face with coal-black eyes, intent on me, came into view. I blinked twice and the face became clear and sharp, angled planes leaning toward me.

“Holy crap!” I sprang out of bed, blankets flying, landing with an inglorious thud on the floor.

“Hey, there, boo,” Nina said, her face breaking into a sweet smile. “Didja sleep okay?” She cocked her head, her thick black hair in sweet Shirley Temple curls that bounced over her shoulders.

“What is going on, Nina?”

“I made you some breakfast. Are you hungry?”

Nina’s gentle smile, her wide, innocent eyes, and her vintage Donna Reed dress completely creeped me out. Something wasn’t right.

“Ophelia?” I whispered. “Is that you?” Nina looked taken aback and I sprung up on bare feet, snatching the closest weapon I could find—a flyswatter in the shape of a flip-flop—and brandished it at this body-snatcher Nina. “What have you done with my best friend?”

“Sophie, it’s me!”

“Look, bitch,” I spat, teeth gritted, “I know my best friend and you are not her. Nina loves me. She would never cook for me.”

Faux Nina stomped her foot and put her small fists on her hips. “Good God, Sophie, would you get your bony ass out of here and eat the breakfast I so lovingly made for you?”

I dropped my flyswatter and leaned closer to Nina, staring into her eyes. I poked her cold marble chest. “It is you.”

Nina rolled her dark eyes with an exasperated groan and stomped out of my room. I snatched my comforter off my bed, wrapped it around my shoulders, and followed her into the living room.

“Oh my ...” My eyes were wide, taking in the spread Nina had laid on the dining-room table: bagels, juice, limp bacon, half-raw eggs with runny yolks, a full pineapple, and a chocolate cake with pink icing roses, the words Happy Birthday, Sophie in cursive scrawl across the front.

“Ta-da!” Nina shouted, dancing around the table.

I took a tentative step back toward my bedroom. “What is this all about, Nina?” I pointed at the cake. “It’s not my birthday. You know that, right?”

Nina shrugged. “I know. But you try and find a cake at nine am. Let’s just hope little Stella doesn’t miss it today.”

I frowned, seeing where the kid’s name had been scraped off and replaced by mine. “Oh.” I looked at Nina. “And this is for what again?”

Nina bounded toward me, threaded her arm through mine. “What are you talking about, silly? Can’t a best friend do something for her fantastically talented best friend?”

“Yes. But you can’t. And I’m not talented. So, what’s going on?”

Nina was silent, a wide smile on her face. I rubbed my eyes. “Look, Nina, in the last week I was almost killed twice, was introduced to my new mortal enemy, and learned that I very well might be the fruit of Satan’s loins. So I’ll ask you again: What is going on?”

Nina skipped to her closed bedroom door—bedroom being a loose term as vampires don’t sleep, thus don’t own beds—and pushed open the door. “Sophie Lawson, meet ChaCha!” Nina said.

I looked down, incredulous, as the little ball of fur vaulted and yapped, throwing his full three-pound body against my ankles. “Oh, Nina, he’s adorable!” I said, scooping up the puppy into my arms. I nuzzled the tiny brown terrier against my cheek, and he responded with a series of introductory yips followed by a full-face tongue wash. “He’s so cute! Wait—” I held the puppy out and eyed Nina suspiciously. “You’re not going to eat him or anything, are you?”

Nina looked horrified. “What kind of monster do you think I am?” She scratched ChaCha on his little puppy head and he rolled his big, chocolate brown eyes skyward, trying to see her. “I don’t eat puppies. I got him for you! You know, as a pet. I thought you could use a little cheering up.”

I snuggled ChaCha close and pulled Nina into a one-armed hug. “Oh, Nina, thank you! He’s so cute! I love him! You are so thoughtful!”

Nina stroked ChaCha once on the head, then took my hand in hers. “Sophie, sit down. I have something to tell you.”

I let Nina lead me to the couch. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?” I looked down at ChaCha and skipped a breath. “It’s puppy-bad news? Oh Lord, I don’t know if I can take any more bad news.”

“It’s about Dixon.”

I looked around. “Are you moving out? Are you moving in with him?”

“No. Not yet. It is about Dixon ... and you.”

I slapped the heel of my hand to my forehead and ChaCha jumped at the sound, then licked my chin. “Don’t tell me—he wants to kill me, too?” I looked down into ChaCha’s sweet, too-sensitive face. “That’s it, right? This is what this is all about? Oh, geez. How about I lay down so you can kick me?”

Nina crossed her arms. “Are you through?”

“No. I can’t believe you’re trying to make me feel good because someone else wants to kill me. Someone you’re in love with! Oh, man!”

Nina took both my hands. “No! No,” she said, her voice soft. “I would never be in love with someone who wanted to kill you, Sophie, no matter how long his fangs were. I love you; you’re my best friend.”

“That’s good. I really don’t think I could survive another assassination attempt.” I paused, swallowed hard, patted ChaCha’s velvet-soft nose. “So, what is it?”

“I promise, Sophie, Dixon doesn’t want to kill you,” Nina said, a relieved smile on her face. “He just wants me to fire you.”

Someone let all the air out of the room. I gasped, sputtered, and coughed, and Nina ran toward me with a glass. She held it to my lips and I drank gratefully, then hiccupped.

“What is this?”

“A mimosa,” she said with a grin.

I hiccupped again. “I think you forgot the orange juice.”

Nina knitted her brows, set the tumbler full of champagne on the coffee table. “So you’re okay with this?”

I picked the tumbler back up and downed it. “No, I’m not okay. I’m fired? Fired?” I felt the sting of tears at the corners of my eyes—but whether they were tears of sadness or anger, I wasn’t sure.

“Technically, we’re laying you off.”

“Is anyone else being laid off ?”

She bit her lip. “No. Dixon just thought it would be best for the company.”

“What?” I stood up and ChaCha rolled to the floor, then bit down on the leg of my pink pajama pants, growling ferociously.

“Well.” Nina stood up, too, and patted my arm affectionately. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I tried to talk him out of it. He just doesn’t think you’re UDA material.”

“Not UDA material? I’ve been with UDA longer than half the staff !”

“But you’re, you know”—Nina lowered her voice to a whisper—“human. Dixon thinks an all-demon staff would make our clientele feel more comfortable.”

“Our clientele loves me! No one has had any problems with me! Most of them hate you! He wants to fire me because I’m human ? That’s discrimination! That’s race—or life—that’s lifeism!”

“Is that even a word?”

“No!” I said miserably. “This is because of the VERM movement, isn’t it? Dixon is a supporter. I feel so betrayed! I let Vlad sleep on our couch.”

Nina held up a finger. “Actually, vampires don’t sl—” I snarled and she waved her hand. “Never mind. Vlad had nothing to do with this. It was just Dixon. I don’t even think VERM knows about it.”

I flopped onto the couch, pulling my comforter over my head. “I’ve never been fired before.”

I sniffed, letting the tears flow freely over my cheeks. Nina patted my head. “We’ll find you something else, Sophie. How about being a doctor? You love those surgery shows on Discovery Health. I’ll bet the hospital is hiring.”

I threw the blanket off my head and gaped at Nina. “I can’t just be a doctor. You can’t just walk into a hospital and be a surgeon!”

Nina crossed her arms. “Not if you’re going to be so negative, you’re not. We’ll find you another job. It’s not like the Underworld Detection Agency was your life.”

But it kind of was.

My life—even pre-Satan’s kid knowledge—had never been white-bread normal. I was raised by a woman who read palms, fortunes, and tea leaves and who advertised that fact with a six-foot neon hand that flashed in our living-room window. Not exactly the stucco-tract home simplicity that high school popularity demanded. I tried to separate my home life from my school life and I had succeeded for a while—until a group of perfect plastic senior girls thought it would be a hoot to have their fortunes read and showed up on my doorstep one Saturday morning. By Monday morning my grandmother’s profession was all over school and the fact that I was related to the “crazy palm lady” spread like wildfire. I could no longer stay silent in the back of the cafeteria, masquerading as an exotic foreign exchange student who lived with a host family somewhere in Marin. I was dubbed “Special Sophie” and lived out the rest of my high school existence slinking in the hallways and avoiding crystal-ball and “I see dead people” jokes.

It wasn’t any easier once I got home. While most kids can sink into normalcy once the three o’clock bell rang, I usually opened the door on one of Grandma’s mah-jongg games—her regulars being a pink-haired pixie named Lulabell, a pair of zombie twins who often left fingertips on the game board, and a centaur named Alistair who, I think, was a little light in the hooves.

I attempted a normalcy reinvention in college, but my magical immunity prevented that. While most girls joined sororities and chatted about boys, professors and term papers, I knew that the woman who slopped slaw in the Lone Mountain cafeteria was actually a level-four witch who had had her magiks revoked and that the history professor was, in fact, the expert on the Civil War—having been a general there (pre-vampire bite). For me the supernaturals never crawled out of the woodwork—they always seemed to be in the living room, feet up, drinking a beer out of my mini-fridge. When Grandma introduced me to Pete Sampson and the Underworld Detection Agency, I felt like I finally belonged. It’s true that my pumping heart and flesh and blood made me an anomaly among the majority of the UDA staff, but they thought my “issues” were as normal as any other demon issues—like Mrs. Henderson who spent most of her time setting her loved ones on fire (accidentally, of course), or the hobgoblins, who had to have every document laminated to prevent spoilage by hobgoblin slobber. I never had to second-guess at the Underworld Detection Agency and among the other above-world rejects, I was, blissfully, just one of the crowd.

I sniffed. “I’m jobless. Destitute.” I pulled my comforter up over my head a second time; ChaCha bounded up and snuggled underneath with me.

“I have something that might make you feel better,” Nina said.

“Eggs won’t make me feel better. Ditto bacon.” I considered. “Maybe the cake, though.” I stuck out my hand, hoping she’d bring it to me.

My palm remained empty.

“Oh, Nina! I’m miserable. Unsavable.” I stuck out my lower lip. “And cake-less.”

I felt Nina tug on my comforter. “Sophie ...”

I poked out my head, opened one eye. “Did you get me a kitten, too?”

“I hope you still have time to cancel the caterer for your little pity party.”

I stuck my tongue out at Nina and went back to my blanket cave.

“Dixon promised to write you a glowing letter of recommendation, you know.”

I glared at her from the folds of my comforter and felt the fist of anger settle low in my belly. “A glowing letter from a dead guy is supposed to make me feel better?”

If it were possible for Nina to pale, she did so. Her lips dipped into a sharp frown. “I’m really sorry, Sophie.”

“I just want to be alone right now.”

“Oh ... okay.” I watched Nina scramble around the apartment, gathering up her purse and coat. She gave me a plaintive look before she slipped out the front door and headed off to work at the UDA.

It was just ChaCha and me alone in the apartment. “Well, ChaCha, it’s my first day as an unemployed woman. What should we do?”

ChaCha cocked her little terrier head at me, big brown eyes searching. Then she promptly rolled over and went to sleep. “Lot of help you are,” I told her.

There was a soft knock at the door and I stiffened, my heart going from zero to sixty in a millisecond. I crept to the door and pressed one hand against it, holding my body as far away as possible, lest I get another door-in-the-face visitor.

“Who is it?” I hissed.

“It’s me, Lawson, open up.”

I peeled up on my tiptoes, squinted through the peephole. Alex stood in my hallway, arms crossed in front of his navy-blue T-shirt, jeans cinched with a brown belt, lips pursed and looking slightly annoyed.

My hand hovered above the knob. “How do I know you’re Alex and not Ophelia pretending to be Alex?”

I could practically hear Alex’s eyes roll through the front door.

“I don’t know ... because I know you like to eat marshmallow Pinwheels in the bathtub.”

I crossed my arms, considering. “Lucky guess. What else?”

“Um, okay. I know you have a heart-shaped birthmark on your—”

I threw the lock and tugged the door open, snatching Alex by his shirtfront and pulling him into the apartment.

“Are you crazy? My neighbors already think I’m nutso enough; I don’t want them to think I’m a slut showing off my naked body to the world, too.”

Alex chuckled. “Your naked body.”

“Grow up, deadso. What are you doing here, anyway? How did you even know I would be home?”

Alex followed me to the kitchen. “Nina told me what happened. I’m really sorry about the job.”

“Me, too,” I said, pulling a box of frozen waffles from the freezer. “Want one?” I shook the box at Alex and he declined, but I popped two in the toaster anyway and stood by with peanut butter and jelly.

“It’s going to be okay, though, you know,” Alex said, patting me awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Right. Did Nina tell you I was going to be a doctor?”

“Don’t you need to go to school—”

I shot him an icy glare.

“You know I would help you out if you needed any money,” he said.

“Get an advance on your heavenly paycheck, did you?”

Alex rolled his eyes.

“So, what are you doing here?” I wanted to know.

“Frankly, I’m worried about you being here alone.”

My waffles popped up and I slathered them with peanut butter and jelly and slapped them together, sandwich style.

“I have a gun,” I said, mouth full of peanut-buttery-waffle goodness.

“I know,” Alex said, reaching out for my peanut-butter waffle-wich. He took a big bite. “Your gun smells like grape Hubba Bubba.”

I was indignant and snatched my waffle back, then pointed at him with it.

“Look, buddy, living in the city affords me a lot of opportunities where going in packing heat would solve a lot of problems. Like parking during the Christmas season or trying to make a left turn off of Market Street. You should be thankful that I keep the gun in a safe and non-emotionally charged place.”

“And the bullets?”

“When I’m stressed, I can reach for bullets or ice cream.” I polished off the last of my waffle and licked my fingers, satisfied.

Alex scratched his chin. “I think I’ve been earthbound for way too long. That’s actually starting to make a lot of sense.”

I grinned, vindicated.

“But that doesn’t mean that I feel better about you being unprotected—frozen ammo or no.”

“I told you, I have a vampire, too.”

“And Ophelia has the hounds of Hell and an entire army of the fallen behind her. Plus her Nephilim goon squad.”

“I have a dog, now, too,” I remembered. “Nina got her for me as a lovely parting gift.” I pointed to ChaCha in the living room.

Alex looked at her, snoring away in her Nina-furnished little pink doggie bed, rhinestoned PRINCESS inscription sparkling above her splayed furry belly.

Alex looked unimpressed. “Ophelia has Cerberus and you have ...”

“ChaCha,” I supplied with a smug smile.

“ChaCha. Excellent. Well, despite your obviously ironclad protection system”—again Alex’s eyes scanned my crime-busting paraphernalia: the bubble gum–scented, unloaded gun, the three-pound Chihuahua-terrier mix in her pink leatherette collar—“I think you should have this.” Alex produced a hard-sided black plastic case, just a bit smaller than a shoebox. He slid it across the table to me.

I popped the lock on the plastic box and opened it, staring at the device inside, encased in its own red velveteen–molded casing. I took the black-handled device out, and frowned. “You want me to shave Ophelia’s legs?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “It’s a stun gun, not an electric razor.” He cocked his head, taking the gun from my hands. “Although I can see where it does look a little bit like that.”

He used his index finger to depress the side trigger and the two metal tines shared a hairline-thin electric blue charge. I involuntarily jumped as the jolt of electricity crackled in his hands.

“That would definitely give you a close shave.”

“Do you know how to use one of these?”

The electric current crackled again and my saliva went metallic. Little pinpricks of cold sweat budded on my upper lips and palms and I felt myself go stiff. “I’ve had one used on me.”

Alex squeezed my hand softly. “Even more reason why you need to be prepared.”

I took the stun gun from Alex and felt its weight in my hand.

“Flip the trigger,” Alex suggested.

I licked my lips and slid my finger over the trigger button without depressing it. “I think I’ve got the picture.”

Alex reached into his pocket and produced two extra cartridges. “Don’t keep these in the freezer, okay?”

I nodded and Alex took the stun gun from me and slipped it into the smaller carrying case in the box, then handed the whole thing to me. “And for the love of God, this time, if something or someone comes after you, use the stun gun on them.” He raised one brow. “And that doesn’t mean throw it at them.”

I nodded curtly and slipped the gun case closer toward me. “Noted.”

Alex grinned. “Good.”

I crossed my arms and glowered. “I still don’t see why I need all this. Shouldn’t I be okay if I’ve got you around?” I waggled my eyebrows in an effort to look suggestive and adorable. “Like my guardian angel?”

The muscle in Alex’s jaw jumped and I watched his lips purse, nostrils flare. I don’t think Alex got either my suggestive or adorable vibe.

“Don’t you see, Lawson? That’s just it. I’m not always going to be around to protect you. I wanted to stick around here today to look in on you, but the department has me working on a case today out in Hunter’s Point.”

My heart swelled as I considered Alex’s sweet, protective side—but then the nag of anger overlooked it when I thought about Alex’s need to “look in” on me as though I were a charge he was babysitting.

“I’m fine, Alex.”

Alex ignored me, seemed to be lost in his own thought. His eyes were focused on the table as he mumbled, “You can’t ... you can’t just depend on me all the time.”

I was taken aback. “Oh. Right. You mean because you’re a fallen angel. And you guys are inherently unreliable.”

“I mean because I won’t always be here.”

I swallowed thickly. “You want to go home.”

Alex looked at the ground. “That’s what this is about. That’s what this has always been about.”

“You want to find the Vessel so you’ll be restored.”

Alex nodded but avoided my gaze.

“So it’s never been about us. Or me.” I could feel the tears starting, but I refused to let them flow, refused to let Alex know that I had, once again, stupidly fallen in love. “It’s always just been about you finding the Vessel.”

“No, Lawson, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You may not have meant it that way, but that’s exactly what it is, right?”

Alex opened his mouth and then closed it, dumbly, still avoiding my gaze. Instead he stood up, plucked his keys from the table where he had left them, and pressed the black plastic Taser box toward me. “Promise me you’ll be safe, okay?”

I sat at the table, staring at the plastic box until I heard Alex walk out the front door, clicking it shut behind him. I swallowed the lump in my throat and slid the Taser box into my purse, then brushed all thoughts of Alex and the Vessel aside. ChaCha stood up in her little dog bed and yawned mightily, and then trotted over to me, her toenails making a comforting tap-tap sound on the linoleum. I scooped her up and nuzzled her.

“You’re not going anywhere, are you, ChaCha?”

She licked my face agreeably and I smiled, handing her a dog bone and feeling an immediate sense of prideful dog ownership. “Let’s go for a walk!”