Under Suspicion

Chapter Twenty-Three

I slept restlessly. ChaCha was walking over me and covering me with hot doggie slobber. My mind alternately raced through every Underworld murderer scenario and images of beautiful red roses bursting into flames. I woke up with a start, and went nose to nose with Nina.

“Augh!” I screamed, and clutched at my chest. “My God, Nina, I told you not to do that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I’ll send trumpeters ahead of me next time.”

My heart thundered in my ears. “That would be nice,” I yelled over the beat. “What are you doing in here?”

“I heard you tossing and turning.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, and dug her bare feet underneath my covers. “Want to talk?”

“I thought you were mad at me.”

She shook her head, pushing a lock of silky black hair over her shoulder. “I know you just worry about me.”

I nodded. “Not just you, Neens. This is big. I know I said that before, but I’m scared. This is big and it seems so close.” I looked at her; then I looked back at my bedspread. “And you and Harley are getting so close... .”

Nina slung a frozen arm over my shoulder and pulled me to her. “I told you, Soph, you and I are a package deal. I’m not going to go hightailing it off into the sunset with Harley.”

“Because that would make you burst into flames.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Even when my novel gets picked up—”

“I’m not worried about you running off on a book tour with Harley, Nina. I’m worried about him being dangerous. His book—”

Nina held up a hand. “Soph, two days ago Dixon and VERM were responsible for all of this. A day before that, it was a fallen angel. Before that, it was random acts of demonic violence.”

“I wasn’t sure then.”

“And you’re still not. You’re looking for someone to fit your theory, and you’re making Harley fit. What about VERM? Their one goal in this afterlife is to restore vampires back to their former glory. Well, that and bring back the ascot.” She grinned. “Two major goals.”

“Nina, you know if you’re accusing VERM, you’re accusing Vlad.”

I could see Nina’s jaw stiffen as she gritted her teeth. “Not exactly. Dixon has his hands in VERM, too. He could be using them—using Vlad even—to do his dirty work. It would make sense, you know—the whole pull to bring the vampire population up by bringing the demon population down.”

“You really think VERM would have people out attacking demons—attacking me?”

Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest. The act wasn’t defiant, so much as challenging. “Do you really think my boyfriend would be out attacking demons—or you?”

I wanted to nod. I wanted to tell her, yes, that was exactly what I thought, but I couldn’t push that tiny, three-letter word past my teeth.

Instead, I looked over Nina’s head, looked at the clock, and said, “We’re going to be late for work.”

I spent the majority of my workday hiding in my office reading an ancient Nancy Drew mystery that I found under my bookcase and drawing a crude flow chart of Harley-as-the-Underworld-killer versus Vlad/ VERM-as-the-Underworld-killer. Neither of them got me anywhere, but no one bothered me, and no one came into my office—especially now that I was not only a breathing pariah, but also a pariah with nothing but a broken file drawer stuffed with fast-food menus and a very well-organized line of Post-it notes.

I waited for most of the other employees to leave the office before I gathered my shoulder bag and the remains of my lunch and headed down the hallway. Eldridge was shrugging into his jacket and talking on his cell phone—an animated conversation about meeting someone for a Sound of Music sing-along. He missed me in his enthusiasm, and he also missed locking his office door behind him. I took the opportunity—and my renewed girl-power crime-fighter zeal—to sneak into his office. I clicked the door shut behind me, and dropped to my knees in the darkness. I knew better than to turn on a light, so I dug out my cell phone, crawling toward Eldridge’s desk by the pale, silvery cell phone glow. I slipped open his file drawer and pushed aside a stack of glamour magazines, only to find another stack. His calendar was filled with hair appointments and lunch dates—nothing incriminating. My heartbeat sped up when I looked over my shoulder toward Dixon’s office. The lights were out, and the door was cracked open a half inch. I pressed the cell phone out in front of me once more. Proud of my cat burglar prowess, I took a timid step forward—then another. My cell phone and extended arm were past the threshold into Dixon’s office. My heart was thundering in my ears; the blood coursing through my veins in tidal wave–sized torrents.

I crossed the threshold. I was breaking into a vampire’s private office.

I held my breath, willed my heart to slow to a nonfre-netic pace. And when my cell phone rang, I peed my pants. I also dropped my phone. Grabbing it, I shoved it into my pocket as I sped for the door, taking the corner of Eldridge’s desk to my midthigh. It threw me off balance, as did my shoulder bag loaded with a mushy banana, a bottle of water, and the aforementioned Nancy Drew book. We all went down in an inelegant heap on the industrial carpet. My head hit hard. The Nancy Drew book came around to wallop me in the temple, and I clamped my eyes and my teeth, biting down hard on my tongue. Pain seared through my jaw, and light flashed before my eyes.

It took all of a millisecond to realize the flashing light was coming from the fluorescent light above me and that Dixon was staring down at me, brown eyes sharp, lips pressed into something that resembled annoyance.

“Ms. Lawson?”

He leaned down gallantly and offered me a hand; I took it tentatively, pushing myself up with my other hand.

“Dixon, hi. I’m really sorry.” I looked over both shoulders, worried my bottom lip, trying to stall and buy time to come up with a good explanation. “I thought I heard something in here, and I thought everyone had left, so I just thought ... well, you know, with everything going on and all... . I wanted to make sure that everything in here—everything in here, and with you, was secure. And maybe to see if you needed me to do anything.”

I grinned widely, stupidly, praying that Dixon would see past my terror, sweat, and pee smell—and would send me home or fire me on the spot.

But he didn’t seem to have listened to a word I said.

His eyes were fixed, narrowed, and laser sharp on my lower leg, on the enormous tear in my panty hose. On the velvety red bead of blood that bubbled there.

“Oh.” I looked from the tear to him, at the sharp focus of his eyes, the faint flick of his nostrils. I saw a muscle in his cheek flick, saw the slight bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

He was salivating.

“Dixon?”

Dixon avoided my gaze, his whole body bristling. It looked as though it took effort—physical effort—for him to tear his eyes from my cut, from the blood that had now started to dribble in an anemic, itchy trail.

“You need to go home now, Sophie.”

I picked up my shoulder bag and pointed toward Dixon’s office door. “I need to get my cell phone. I dropped it when I”—I paused, licking my lips—“when I tripped.”

“Get it. And then you need to leave right now, Ms. Lawson. You shouldn’t be in here. My office is private, and I need for you to leave right now.”

“But I just need to—”

Dixon’s mouth was open, his sharp fangs glistening with saliva. “Go!”

His palms were on my chest and he gave me a shove. His push knocked me out into the main hall, making me slide across the linoleum on my butt and lose my breath when I finally hit the wall. My heart was pounding in my throat, and my whole body felt hot, covered in a fine, sticky sweat.

Dixon stood in his office, fists and teeth clenched. I scrambled onto hands and knees, pushed myself onto my feet, and took off at a dead run to the elevators.

I didn’t stop hiccupping, crying, or sucking in great gusts of fresh night air until I was at the base floor of my apartment building. I was able to breathe normally, was able to go a full minute without a snot-filled hiccup, by the time I got to Will’s door.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, love,” he said, opening the door and letting me fall into him. “What happened here?”

I dumped all of my things on the ground and thumped down, too. “Dixon tried to eat me.”

Will’s fawn-colored brows rose. “Isn’t that quite frowned upon at UDA? The boss eating his employees?”

I breathed deeply. “Well, I guess he didn’t try to eat me, so much as he wanted to eat me. And didn’t.”

“Well, that was nice of him. Right?”

I dropped my head in my hands. “What’s happening, Will? My life is coming apart at the seams.”

Will sank down next to me and gathered me in his arms. I sucked in his sweet, toasty scent of hops and sighed. “I’m sorry. It was just a weird day”—I looked up, feeling quite pitiful—“and I should go home.”

“That’s okay. I was just making a curry, if you’d like to stay around and—”

“No. No, but thanks,” I said, pushing myself up to standing. “I really need to go home.” I used the back of my hand to push the tears from my eyes and swept a kiss on Will’s cheek; then I rushed across the hall to my own door.

ChaCha greeted me with her usual series of Alpo-scented yips, while Vlad greeted me with his usual series of brooding vampire/annoyed teenager grunts. Suddenly he appeared over his laptop. “Are you bleeding?”

I dampened a paper towel and dabbed at the half-dried blood on my thigh. “It’s nothing.”

Vlad knitted his eyebrows. “You okay?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, staring at Vlad. I studied the sweet, concerned look on his face, the sharp ends of his fangs pressing over his bottom lip. “I’m fine,” I said again.

I had the oven door open and was pawing through my earthquake stash of marshmallow pinwheels and Coke Zero—San Francisco is thisclose to a fault line, you know—when Nina came strutting out in a silky gown that hugged each of her marble curves. She was clipping on a gorgeous pair of Art Deco diamond drop earrings and scowling about it. Vampires can only wear clip-ons, as a piercing immediately heals itself. I found it creepily cool; Nina found it an affront to fashionistas everywhere.

“Well,” she said, arcing her arms in a flourish, “how do I look?”

I crushed the package of pinwheels to my chest. “You look beautiful. Is that why you left the office at three today?”

Nina just winked at me, and I couldn’t help but admire her for the easy way things slid off her back, for the way that she would never miss a meal or gain an inch. I would be satisfied with eternal life and no earrings if I could have her countenance that simply broadcast “piss me off and I’ll eat you.”

I shoved a whole pinwheel into my mouth and sat down at the dining table. ChaCha must have heard the rustle of the package—anything rustling must be for her, she assumed—as she came bounding up and into my lap.

“You look incredible, Nina,” I said, chocolate dribbling down my chin. “Sometimes I wish I could be like you.”

“Immortal?”

“That”—I popped open a warm Coke Zero and took a swig—“and uncomplicated.”

Nina’s eyes narrowed and the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees. Even ChaCha started to shiver, a stripe of hair on her back standing straight up like spines.

“I didn’t mean you’re uncomplicated,” I backpedaled. “I just meant your life is so much fun. You know, your dad’s not Satan. You can go out with whomever you want, without the fate of the world hanging in the balance.” I fished out a second pinwheel. “Must be nice.”

Nina was going more and more stiff; her lips held tighter and tighter.

I wasn’t making any friends.

“And that’s my cue,” Vlad said, throwing his leather duster over his arm and beelining for the door.

She leaned over so that we were an inch apart. Both her hands lay flat on the dining table; her clip-on earrings swinging.

“Wah, wah, wah! I’m Sophie Lawson and my life is horrible because my dad abandoned me and might be the devil, and I can’t figure out if I want to be with an angel or a Guardian. Wah, wah, WAH!” Nina crossed her arms, and genuine anger roiled in her eyes. “You know, some of us are damned, Sophie. That’s a little bit of a pain in the ass, too. I love you, but I’m getting really tired of your world-is-ending pity parties. All of us have stuff to deal with. You’re looking for your soul mate between Will and Alex? Be happy you have a soul to share.”

Nina snatched her purse and keys from the peg by the door and slammed the door hard behind her. I sat at the table, openmouthed, partially pinwheeled. I felt even worse about myself, feeling a tiny warmth starting at my belly.

A beat passed and I stood up fast, rushing to the front door, throwing it open. “I’m sorry, Nina!” I called out to the empty hall. Will’s doorknob rolled and he poked his head out.

“What’s going on out here?” He looked at me and then frowned—with disgust or concern, I couldn’t be sure. “What happened to you? It’s barely been fifteen minutes and you look like you’ve gone from bad to worse.”

I looked down mournfully at my shirtfront, now heavily flecked with bits of chocolate cookie—and dog pee.

“It’s pinwheel,” I said sadly. “And, apparently, dog pee.”

I dragged my feet over to Will and threw my arms around him. “I suck, Will. I’m a sucky friend and a sucky Underworld protector, and I’m out of pinwheels.”

Will initially arched away from me—likely in an effort to keep himself dog pee free—then held me close to him, patting my back tenderly.

“Tell me about it, love,” he said, his lips nestled just above my ear.