I nodded again, scurrying toward the back door with Cal’s files cradled safely against my chest. Slow down, I commanded my legs. Running would make me seem guilty and frightened. The fact that I was guilty and frightened was neither here nor there. I needed to get home, to process Ophelia’s cryptic suggestions and Mr. Crown’s derisive, yet insightful, insults.
I stopped, glancing back to see if Mr. Crown was still watching me. But he was gone, off to cow some other human with his undiluted contempt. Was it wrong to wish spontaneous combustion on someone? What if you only wished the flames to affect one area of the body, say, the zipper of his pants?
Still wrong, I supposed.
Probably.
I really needed some M&M’s.
10
We cannot emphasize enough our warnings against trying to get vampires to share their feelings.
—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
Despite the fact that she’d been “studying” at Ben’s, Gigi was sitting at the kitchen table, her homework spread around her, when I walked through the door. Cal was sitting with her, holding a case file in one hand while he argued with her about the known facts of the Trojan War. The vampiric target of my wrath was indignantly rejecting Gigi’s textbook’s assertions that Helen’s “abduction” led to the war. When Gigi called Helen “the face that launched a thousand ships,” Cal was downright offended.
“Helen was acceptable,” he insisted. “Nothing more. Personally, I thought my own wife was prettier, but I might have been biased. Helen was a spoiled, silly girl who was unhappy with the way her fate had twisted. Honestly, she wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Agamemnon would have used any excuse to attack Troy. A perceived insult to his family honor was a convenient ploy. Humans love attaching sweeping romantic notions to history, because they need to see order in it, reason. The truth is that events that shape history are rarely black and white, reasonable. They rarely make sense until we can see them in hindsight.”
Gigi was doing her Pied Piper thing, leading Cal deeper into the conversation without his realizing it. I really had to figure out how she did that. “How close were you?”
“What, to the machinations of war?” he asked. “I was a common soldier, but my captain, Palamedes, helped organize the troops in the early days. I was clever and loyal, so he trusted me with errands and messages and to guard his back on the field. So I was witness to hundreds of bizarre little dramas. You see, Menelaus demanded that all of Helen’s old suitors fulfill their oaths that they would assist him in defending her honor. Removed from the lure of Helen’s pretty face, those suitors had regained their senses, and many of them had no desire to join his fight. Odysseus pretended to be insane until my master tricked him into admitting that he was sound. The king of a small Cyprian kingdom promised Agamemnon fifty ships for the Greek fleet, and he provided them—but only one was a real vessel, commanded by his own son. The rest of his armada consisted of clay toys.”
“And did the Trojans really fall for the wooden-horse gag?”
“Nearly ten years later, yes. And it wasn’t a gag. There was a horse, a small one, beautifully carved from a single tree. And it was left outside the Trojan gate, surrounded with the entire army’s store of wine. Believing that we’d abandoned the field in despair, the Trojan army used it for their celebration, and after they’d drunk themselves into oblivion, the gates were rather easy to overtake.”
She frowned. “I feel like everything I know about history is a lie.”
“Most popular history is. It’s all very romanticized and clean. Real life is very rarely like that. It’s hard to spot the real heroes, the real villains.”
“Well, you can hardly expect them to walk around wearing name tags,” Gigi muttered. Brightening, she grinned at him and added, “I’m so going to ace this AP history essay.”
Cal scratched his chin in an effort to cover the fond little smile quirking his lips. Do not be dissuaded by someone else potentially appreciating Gigi as much you do, I told myself. He is a bad man who thinks you’re a desperate, horny loser. Granted, he’s only wrong on one count … Never mind which one it is.
Moving on.
“Is it considered cheating to use a witness to the historical event as a source?” I asked. Cal gave me a little nod of greeting, which I returned with a cold stare.
“Not if we don’t tell anybody, it’s not,” Gigi singsonged.
I held up a takeout box from Pete’s Pies. My sister’s face lit up with delight, and she lunged for me.
“Pepperoni and pineapple?” she cried, opening the box and doing a happy dance.
“That sounds revolting.” Cal shuddered.
“It is,” I assured him dryly.
“Iris always orders plain cheese,” Gigi told him, halfway through her first slice. “Booooo-ring.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, while Gigi dragged plates and cups out of the cupboards.
“Oh, I need to talk to you, too.” His expression shifted to livid while my sister’s back was turned. “Gigi, would you excuse us?”
“Sure,” she said, waving us away as she returned to her pizza.
Cal’s fingers wrapped around my arm just as my fingers caught my tote bag. He dragged me down the hall to my bedroom and shut the door behind us. Given my current mood, I rather welcomed the manhandling. It gave me an excuse to stomp on his toes. He grunted and lost his grip on my arm, spinning me rather unceremoniously toward the bed. I bounced off the mattress.
“Have you lost your mind?” he demanded. “You took off without a word, without waking me up. Do you know how stupid that was?”
I crossed my arms, meeting his rage with stone-faced indifference.
“Let’s not even explore how humiliating it is to be awakened naked, on the floor, by the screams of a hysterical teenage girl, demanding to know why I’m naked and what I’ve done to her sister. Or the fact that I had to comfort said hysterical teenager and assure her that I had not, in fact, murdered you but had no clue where you were or when you would be home—all the while unable to reach my pants because they were across the room. But for now, let’s focus on the fact that despite my telling you not to out of concern for your well-being, you went to the Council offices anyway! I won’t allow it, Iris. I will not cower behind a woman’s skirts while she runs off to—”
“Get the information you need without incident?” I supplied in a tone so saccharine that it should have tipped him off that his testicular health was in serious peril. I reached into the bag and waved the scanner at him. He scowled at me, so I crossed the room, popped out the memory card, and inserted it directly into my laptop. I opened the drive and selected “Print all files,” and the printer began spitting out the reports Cal needed. As I dropped document after document into his hands, I let him absorb the information. I even gave him a moment to be pleased with me. And then I moved in for the kill.
“But you know what I really found interesting?” I tossed the “Beeline” file with my background information at him. The folder flapped open like a drunken bird, the loose sheets hitting his chest before fluttering to the ground. He watched as the papers floated down, eyes widening when he recognized the handwriting. “It’s not shocking, I suppose, that you did a background check on someone who would be coming into your home, Cal. But why act like you’d never heard my name before? Why ask me all of those questions about my background? Why pretend to be interested in my ‘stupid little life’?”
“Because it helped you relax around me,” he admitted quietly. “It made you feel a connection to me. And I was curious about how much you would share with me.”
“So sleeping with me, was that just part of forming a connection? Or were you just curious about whether I would spontaneously combust from sexual frustration?”
“Iris, no—”
“I want you out of my house.” I snarled, poking my finger into his chest. “I got your files. You’re clearly feeling better. It’s time for you to go. I’m sure someone with your resources will have no trouble anonymously renting a hotel room. I don’t want you anywhere near me or Gigi.”
“I can’t leave now,” he insisted. “For one thing, there’s the matter of my investigation. I need a solid, discreet base of operations. We agreed on a week. I need the full week. And don’t pretend that you can do without the rest of my payment, because we both know that you were just scraping by. There’s also the small matter of the person hell-bent on killing me. And the vampire who attacked you at my house. You may not believe me, but I won’t leave you and Gigi unprotected.”
“Yes, I feel supersecure with a lying, untrustworthy vampire skulking around my house.”
“You can trust me. You’re just a little angry with me right now,” he said, ducking deftly out of the way as I lobbed the soapstone rabbit at his head. It bounced off the wall behind him with a thunk, leaving a basketballsized dent in the drywall.
“Oh, I’m not a little angry. I’m fricking furious with you!” I shouted. “The things I told you, I don’t tell people. I haven’t even told Paul. I don’t know what’s more disturbing, the fact that you can lie to me and not even change the expression on your face or the fact that I didn’t pick up on it. You’re a vampire. That sort of thing comes naturally to you. I should expect it. I mean, were you really even poisoned? Was this ‘defenseless, wounded vampire’ thing just an act so you could con me into providing an off-the-grid hiding spot? You did your homework. I’m sure my profile suggested that poor Iris Scanlon would do anything for money. And hey, if you throw her a bone and sleep with her, she’ll be so grateful that she’ll let you get a meal straight from the source!”
I pulled angrily at my collar, revealing the bruised bite wound on my chest. His expression shifted from defiance to sympathy, and the look of pity made me exponentially angrier. So I grabbed another figurine, a chipmunk, and slung it at him.
“Where did your mother buy this concussive menagerie?” he yelped as he sidestepped airborne statuary. In answer, I threw a fawn and a cardinal and a raccoon in rapid succession. Cal ducked through the field of flying woodland creatures and grabbed my arms. We struggled for control of the final figurine, a matching cardinal.
“I didn’t mean to lie to you. I didn’t know you’d be—I didn’t know that I would want to know who you are. That you would be worth so much more than just safe passage and survival. I know you, Iris. I may not have met you in childhood. I might have missed the awkward adolescent ‘flower child’ stage. But I know you.”
Please note that he didn’t say he liked what he knew about me.
“I wouldn’t do anything to bring you harm,” he murmured. “I need to know that you’re safe before I leave. Please don’t send me away now.”
I refused to look up at him. I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I’d already done too much to show him how much he’d hurt me.
“You’re gone in three days,” I said, my voice quiet and flat. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I was safe passage for you. Now you’re a meal ticket to me, nothing more.”
I brushed past him, returning to the kitchen. Gigi was pretending to work, her fingers anxiously shredding a paper towel. I squeezed her shoulder and gave her a little half smile. Behind me, I heard the cellar door slam, indicating that Cal had retired for the evening.
“What gives?” Gigi asked, nibbling on a pizza crust. “Does our vampire have PMS?”
“I don’t understand living men,” I muttered, picking at a slice of pizza. “Do you think I understand undead ones?”