Under Suspicion

Chapter Eleven

I woke up jittery and exhausted, having tossed and turned all night. Images of Kale, of the concrete, of her lolling head, haunted my dreams. I forewent my usual morning jaunt to Philz Coffee and headed into the agency early. We were packed, and the entire waiting room buzzed with a kind of nervous energy. But everything seemed to drop into an awkward silence when I stepped onto the floor. I paused, and clients turned to gape at me—the flat, cold-as-stone eyes of zombies; the sharp, narrowed eyes of vampires. They all seemed to zero in and though I desperately tried to tell myself I was imagining it, I couldn’t quite get over the strange chill of the room.

I shrugged out of my jacket and smiled, anyway, beckoning the first person over.

“I can help who’s next in line.”

Several pairs of eyes (and the occasional single) raked over me, but no one moved. I stepped forward, inclining my head toward the person at the front of the line.

“I can help you right now.”

She was a behemoth of a woman, with a blunt-cut black pageboy and eyes that took up the better half of her face. Her pale lips were quirked in the kind of smile that is meant to be friendly, but it oozed avoidance.

“That’s okay,” she said to me. Her head snapped back to bore through the back of the person in front of her. “They’re almost through here.”

I craned my neck and eyed Nina, who was doing her best to cut off the woman in front of her, who continually kept thrusting photos of her newest grand-demon at her while Nina processed her paperwork.

“I think it’s going to be a while,” I said in what I thought was a friendly tone.

“No, thank you.” Blunt-cut black pageboy kept her eyes fixed; her knuckles turned white as she gripped her paperwork.

“Okay.” I shuffled back to the person behind her, and wished I had kept my jacket on when I realized it was Windigo, a recent Canadian immigrant, with a stack of papers the thickness of my right thigh. Each time he shifted, a waft of frigid air floated from him.

“Hi, Windy. I’m Sophie Lawson. I can process your paperwork if you’ll follow me, please.” I reached out for the stack and Windy blinked at me, a pointed tongue darting out of his ice-tinged mouth as he licked his bottom lip. He didn’t move to hand me his paperwork, and I dropped my hand to my side, frowning.

“I thought you only handled fallen angels now,” he said, his voice an icy rasp.

“Oh, well, that’s true. I do do fallen angels, but I still work with the generals. Especially when there’s a line this long. So, are you ready?”

Windy shifted, taking a small, unsure step toward me. He seemed to think better of it, and then stepped back in line. “I think I’ll wait.”

I stepped closer to Windy, who immediately stiffened and rose to his full height, which was at least two heads taller than I am. His decrepit skin seemed to crack as he did so.

“Is there some reason you don’t want me to help you?”

I saw him considering—the smoky haze in his eyes studying me, as if assessing the challenge. The man was a pointy-toothed man-eater whose breath froze human hearts solid, and he was assessing all five feet two inches of me: fiery red hair, T-shirt with barely faded ketchup stain, oblivious expression (I’m assuming) on my red-cheeked face.

“Look, Sophie,” Windy said, leaning close, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate your willingness to help. It’s just that”—his eyes cut left and right, his voice dropped to an even lower, even chillier octave—“everyone knows that lately any one of us you come into contact with ... well ... dies.” He looked immediately apologetic. “Or at least gets really hurt.”

I felt my mouth drop open and stumbled backward, taking stock of the line of demons—man-eaters, night stalkers, shape-shifters—all avoiding my stare, all frightened of me.

“Is that true? Do you all feel this way?”

No one answered me, but Windy finally nodded, looking half apologetic, half matter-of-fact. “No one wants to take the risk.” His eyes went from my toes to my face. “Not for someone like you, anyway.”

Someone like me.

“Human?”

I watched the deceased remains of Windy’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed heavily.

“Okay.”

I turned around and headed toward my office, not bothering to turn my eyes from the private pixies in the hallway, not needing to avoid Lorraine and her ever-present stack of questionable invoices, because they all avoided me.

I swung into my office with a plan to take a heavy breather and talk myself out of a panic attack. Instead, I opened the door, stepped inside, and felt my mouth drop wide open.

“What the hell happened here?”

Though my desk and obsessive-compulsive straight lines of Post-it notes and pencils remained untouched, I couldn’t say the same for the rest of the office. The walls and carpet showed great rectangular lines of fresh paint and cleanliness, where file cabinets had been removed, and my ever-present spider plant was set gently on the floor, along with a stack of general office tchotchkes. Joining this disarray was a photo of my grandmother and me that usually lived on top of a bookcase normally stuffed with tomes on UDA standard operating procedures, The Modern Classification of Demons, Monsters, and the Undead for Insurance and Appraisal Purposes, stacks of life/afterlife insurance forms, and a tattered copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? The last book remained, but nothing else.

I didn’t know why, but I knew Dixon was behind this. Dixon, or at very least the newly formed fanged triumvirate that was Dixon, Vlad, and Eldridge, top-seated vampire representatives of UDA, VERM, and ... Queer Eye for the (Undead) Straight Guy. White-hot anger roiled through my veins, and I felt my hands automatically roll into fists so tight that my fingernails bored into my palms, cutting through the skin.

I made a beeline to Dixon’s office and didn’t even slow when Eldridge tried to feed me some crap about Dixon being a busy man and me needing an appointment. I breezed past him and kicked open Dixon’s office door, not even stopping to shiver when a series of pale-faced vampires stared up at me, surprised and hunger evident on their faces.

“Where are my files?”

Dixon, chilled as a pre–global warming iceberg, knitted his hands and looked up at me. His brown eyes were wide and open; his mouth pushed up into a calm smile. “Well, Ms. Lawson, what an unexpected surprise. Gentlemen, this is Sophie Lawson, the acting head of our newly established Fallen Angel Division here at the Underworld Detection Agency.”

I felt a snarl tug at my lip. “Acting head?”

Dixon tipped his head from side to side, but made no move to explain. “As you can see here, Ms. Lawson, I’m kind of in the middle of something. Is this something that Eldridge can help you with?”

I finally scanned the faces of the assembled—there were four men, all vampires—sitting around Dixon’s desk. Two I recognized as Dixon’s new promotions, one was Vlad, and the third, brand-new.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, unease walking up my spine.

“Board meeting,” Dixon answered breezily. “Now what did you need?”

“My files,” I said, suddenly uncertain, my anger turning to suspicion.

“We’ve simply lightened your load,” Vlad piped up. “Some of our clientele were looking for a change, a provider a little more in line with their needs. We thought it would also be a great opportunity for you to begin expanding your division.” Vlad’s answer smacked with scripted practice, and his lips curved into that same stupid serene smile that Dixon wore like a mask. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Unable to form a cohesive thought—or a witty response—I turned on my heel and sped back to my office, my mind ticking. I was there for a millisecond before Nina sauntered in, completely oblivious to the spring-cleaning that had cleared out my office, unaware of the gales of pissed-off heat that wafted off me.

“What do you think of Athena Bushant?” she asked.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, willing the thundering headache that was starting behind my eyes to hold off. “What’s an Athena Bushant?”

Nina rolled her eyes and flopped her head back, as if I’d just asked her to ride shotgun in a primer-colored Pinto. “Not what. Who. Athena Bushant.” She thrust out her chest and stepped forward, arms splayed, superstar style.

I shrugged. “Is she new?”

“I am Athena Bushant. Actually, Athena is me. Athena Bushant is my pen name. What do you think? Perfect, right? Just the right combination of mystery and wisdom. And it’ll look great on a dust jacket. I’ve already come up with my bio. Listen to this.”

“Nina, I don’t have time for this right now. Look at my office.” I spun around, with excess room to do so—now that more than half my file cabinets were gone.

“I think it looks great. Now listen. ‘Athena Bushant holds a master’s degree in the mystical arts from Oxford University. When not sailing—’”

“Does Oxford even have a department of mystical arts? Does any school other than Hogwarts?”

“It’s called artistic license.”

“Nina, listen. Dixon, Vlad, and the rest of the Fang Gang board members have moved all my files out. They’re taking over more than half my cases because I’m apparently not”—I made air quotes—“in line with my clients. I basically have nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs all day.”

“Consider yourself lucky. Do you know how hard it is to have a full-time job and be a novelist?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Do you even know where your office is?”

Nina growled at me. “Funny.” She looked around, dark eyes raking over my pillaged space. “Sophie, you’re overreacting. So Dixon came in and handed a few of your cases over.”

“He’s edging me out, Nina, I know he is.”

“He already fired you once.”

“Thanks for never letting me forget that.”

“What I’m saying is, if he wanted you out, he would fire you. He did it before, and he’ll do it again.” Nina held up her hands when I tried to protest. “But it’s probably not that. The economy is bad everywhere. There’s a mass exodus out of the city. Everyone’s workload is getting cut.”

“Is yours?”

“No, but I’ve got the novel.” She flopped her hands around. “I think I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome.”

“Is that even possible? Ugh!” I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “I need some answers. I need help.”

Nina slid her arm across my shoulders and pulled me to her in a marble-cold embrace. “Okay, sorry. What can I do to help, Soph?”

“Aren’t you even the slightest bit concerned about any of this? Mrs. Henderson—she was murdered, Neens. And Bettina, and the centaur.” I swallowed a desperate sob as images burned into my brain.

“I’m immortal.”

“Unless someone knows how to hurt you.”

Nina nibbled her bottom lip as if considering. “Okay. So?”

“So I need you to check up on Dixon.”

“Why me?”

“Because Dixon can smell me a mile away. I just need you to tail him a little bit, find out what’s going on. Everyone on management is a vampire. Are they trying to take over?”

Nina cocked her head. “You realize I’m a vampire, right?”

“But you’re not one of those vampires.”

“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll tail Dixon. I’ll see if I can find his file folder marked ‘Dixon’s Evil Plan.’”

“That’s all I ask.”

Nina’s dark eyes glittered. “I think my vampire romance is going to have a mystery in it, too.” She tapped a perfectly manicured fingernail against her chin; then she pulled her literary-minded half glasses from her sweater pocket and cleared her throat as she began to free associate.

“Cecila LeChambray stared at the mysterious stranger before her. Something about the darkness in his eyes cut her like ... like ...” She scanned my office; then her eyes settled on mine, expectant.

I flopped back into my desk chair, my forehead thunking against the cold wood of my nearly naked desk. “I can’t help with your fiction career right now, Neens. My nonfiction life is out of control.”

I heard Nina spin, and heard her voice dropping as she walked down the hall.

“Cecilia’s best friend, Stephanie Littleman, was of no help at all. An overanxious mortal, she had trouble with looking a gift horse in the mouth... .”

I spent the rest of my workday holed up in my office, determined that neither a vampire management team nor clients who didn’t want me around were going to push me out of the Underworld Detection Agency. By the time the clock rolled around to five, I had organized everything that remained in my office by color and subject, created a master list of “Things That Could Be Responsible for the Underworld Killings” and hung up on Alex’s voice mail six times. Finally I resigned myself and headed out the door, aiming only for a bottle of wine and a good, long session with my down comforter and pillow.

The next morning I woke up to ChaCha’s kibble breath pouring over my face and what passed for sunlight during a San Francisco summer pressing through my window. I growled at the red numbers on my alarm clock—10:52—and rolled out of bed and into a pair of sweats, which were either clean or stained consistently enough to look clean. I was lying on the couch balancing a mammoth bowl of Lucky Charms (I’m donut free, remember?) and watching a string of Disney TV shows when Nina plowed through the front door and gaped at me, eyes wide.

“Don’t tell me you’re wearing that,” Nina said.

“Okay,” I said, mouth filled with cereal, “I won’t.”

Nina snatched the remote and clicked off Hannah Montana smack in the middle of a song about ice cream.

“Hey! I was watching that.”

“Oh, thank God.”

I shot a narrow-eyed stare over my shoulder, where I found Vlad perched at the dining-room table, eyebrows raised over the top of his open laptop screen. “That ice-cream girl was giving me a toothache.”

I pointed my spoon at him. “When did you get here?”

Vlad gave me his disenfranchised-youth grunt. “I’ve been here.”

God, I hated that supersilent vampire thing.

“I’m buying you a bell,” I said.

Nina raked a hand through her glossy black hair and gave me a parental “I’m not angry, just disappointed” look. “Did you forget what today is?” she asked.

I shifted my cereal bowl, chasing a slew of marshmallows with my spoon. I took a heaping bite. “It’s Saturday.”

Nina looked at me expectantly.

“Saturday, the seventeenth?” I asked. “Wait, did I forget our anniversary?” I chuckled, then choked on a particularly substantial marshmallow.

Nina’s face remained stony. “It’s Saturday, the seventeenth, and my beau—and possible future afterlife mate—”

I raised my eyebrows at her, and Nina waved a hand.

“No one lives forever, Soph.” She stuck out a fat lower lip. “Harley is reading from his book today, and you promised you’d be there. You promised you’d come and support me.”

“I did?”

Nina nodded. “You did.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Nina shoved a single suede pump underneath one of my butt cheeks. “You were just about to get in the shower and wear that cute cashmere twinset that I bought for you, right?”

She bared a fang, and I snarled.

“You don’t scare me, Nina.”

She bared another fang, and I lumbered off the couch, shoving a final enormous scoop of the cereal into my mouth, watching in dismay as a shower of crumbs slid from my lap/dining tray. I turned around quickly, fairly sure my blush was visible from the back of my head, too.

“And hurry up! I told Harley we’d be there early to help him set up!”

After the shortest shower in the history of man or vampire, I shimmied into my birthday twinset and a pair of regular jeans, which had somehow turned into skinny jeans. (Maybe I should give up donuts and marshmallow pinwheels?) I was yanking on a sock and fumbling for a pair of boots that matched each other, when Nina came in and silently glared at me, hands on hips, lips pursed.

Though she was my best friend, and by far the most gentle pointy-toothed afterlifer I’d ever met, there is just something about a vampire staring you down that sends shivers up the spine, and made me suddenly have to pee.

I didn’t dare.

Instead, I pasted on a smile and beelined for my shoulder bag. “Ready to go!” I sang.

“In the car!” Nina bellowed.

Nina and I hurried toward the door, but Vlad stayed put. His dark eyes were intent on his computer screen; its light reflected eerily off his pale features. A series of gunshots, screams, and something that sounded squishy exploded from the computer’s speakers. He grinned.

“Shut it, Vlad. We’re going.”

Vlad looked over his screen, and Nina pointed a finger at him. “And don’t even think about protesting this one.”

Vlad rolled his eyes and clicked his laptop shut, grumbling and sighing the whole time.

Note to self: Find teenaged vampire summer camp. Stat.

I was waiting for Nina to grab Vlad by the ear, but she didn’t. We both went out behind Nina, who marched purposefully down the hall. Will popped his head out as we passed his door.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re going to see Nina’s new boyfriend,” I whispered. “Shh, she’s scary.”

Vlad must have heard my whisper because he spun around. He and Will shared one of those exceptionally manly head nods—you know, the one that basically says, “Hey, dude, I see you and acknowledge you without showing any actual emotion.”

“You’re all going?” Will asked.

My left eye twitched and I dropped my voice to a barely audible whisper. “Nina’s making us.”

Will grinned; then he disappeared into his apartment and returned a millisecond later, sliding a red Adidas jacket over his football jersey. “Then she won’t mind me coming along.”

We made it down to Java Script with the minimum of issues, and with my spine almost completely intact. The four of us huddled and squirmed in Nina’s Lexus as she vaulted through intersections. Her pale hand blared the horn as she yelled out admonishments and quirky warnings about tearing out people’s throats.

“She’s charming,” Will said, his smile hinting on crazy.

“Shh,” I hissed. “She can hear you.”

Nina slammed on the brakes and we all catapulted toward the dashboard, where my heart now rested. She turned to us and batted her lashes. “Okay, guys, listen up. Harley is a professional, and there are going to be all sorts of media types and likely some other big-name writers. These will be my peers.”

Will opened his mouth to say something, but I pinned him with a glare that threatened “Say anything and I’ll literally kill you.”

“I’ll need you”—Nina craned her head over her shoulder and eyed Vlad, her coal black eyes stern—“to be on your best ‘I’m a real boy’ behavior. No protests, no VERM, no glamouring any breathers. Understand?”

Vlad rolled his eyes and continued hunching in the backseat, resentment emanating from him. “Yes, ma’am.”

I fished a tube of ChapStick out of my bag. “So I guess you’ll just want me to keep these guys in line while you woo Harley, right?”

“I do not woo. And yes, you will be in charge of the KISS Army back there.”

I raised my eyebrows at Vlad and Will, who shrugged as Nina continued her tirade while using a traffic island as a bumper. “And I expect you to act as my best friend and wingwoman.”

I snorted. “Your wingwoman?”

Nina glared and the tops of my ears went hot.

“Maybe I can hand out some bookmarks or something,” I said with a hollow smile.

I was still shaking and praying that my small intestine would dislodge itself from my rib cage, when Nina’s black Lexus jumped the curb and came to a neat rest, directly in front of Java Script’s double glass doors.

Nina kicked the car into park and clapped her hands delightedly. “We’re here!” She turned to look at us, a smattering of pale faces holding down our lunches after “Nina LaShay’s Wild Ride,” I suspected.

“Ready, everyone? Big smiles!”

Will and Vlad un-pretzeled themselves and filed into Java Script. I was taking up the rear, but Nina stopped me before I could step over the threshold. Her dark eyes clouded, and her heart-shaped mouth started twitching, showing off one angular fang. She poked at my chest.

“All ready, Soph?”

I followed her finger down and fought the urge to giggle. The remains of something unnaturally blue had trailed between my breasts, leaving a cheerful line across the pale yellow knit of my shirt to my belly button.

“It’s not that bad,” I said. “I can just button up the sweater.” I hurriedly did the buttons and frowned at the way they pulled and gaped across my belly. “I guess it shrank in the wash.”

“You have to change your shirt.”

I held up my ultrasmall purse. “Into what? Does this purse look like I can carry a wardrobe?”

Nina pointed to the trunk of the car. “Take your pick and meet me inside.” She dropped her keys into my palm.

My good sense told me to take the car and flee back to the comfort of ChaCha, my couch, and what remained in the Lucky Charms box.

But I knew better.

I rummaged through Nina’s trunk, pushing aside Vlad’s VERM posters and his duct tape, three seasons’ worth of brown boots, and enough bronzer to turn Nina into a member of the Jackson 5. I finally found the clothing spilling out of a Louis Vuitton duffel over the wheel well. I pawed through the things on top: a delicate lace camisole, a few cute tees large enough to fit over my head, and some random shoes. I hunkered deeper into the trunk and gave the bag a yank to get a better look inside, but it was caught on something. One more yank and the bag came flying out—a metal pipe jarred loose and hit the pavement with a loud plink!

I stared down incredulously at the metal pipe. It started to wobble slowly into the street as if showing itself from every angle. I stepped closer, crouching to grab the pipe and return it to the trunk, when I saw the smear on the end. It was just a tinge, easy enough to miss if someone had run a rag hastily over the pipe in an attempt to clean it, but it was there. A dark, rust-colored smear of blood. And pinned to it were a few straggly strands of graying hair.

Suddenly my skin felt too tight. I looked at the pipe and then through the big glass doors of Java Script, where Nina was grinning broadly. Her fangs were hidden behind glossy, cherry red lips as she clung to Harley, her eyes glued to his winsome smile. Vlad stood behind them both, flanked by two Vampire Empowerment henchmen. The trio was almost unnoticed in the shadows, but Vlad stood out, his shoulders hunched, his lips held in a disgusted sneer as his eyes cut across the assembled crowd. He glanced out and caught me staring, standing openmouthed with the trunk open, the Louis Vuitton in my hand, the soiled pipe at my feet. I swallowed hard, broke his gaze, and tossed everything back into the trunk.