Demon Blood (Vampire in the City Book 5) (7 page)

Alex nodded curtly. “Is there anything else you remember that may be of any use?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure.” 

“What is it?”

I paused, embarrassed. The only thing that kept me talking was the knowledge that Alex could hypnotize me to get the rest of it anyway. “There was, like, this weird attraction. Like I knew he was there before I even saw him. And I wanted him desperately, almost like it was more than a physical thing.”

Finally, I convinced myself to stop talking. By then Tammy had an amused grin on her face. 

Alex stood to roll the chair back behind the desk. “I will provide that description to the individuals who work at the door. Thank you.”

“Wait!” I yelped, suddenly having a flash of memory. “There is something else.” 

My mind had gone back to when I first grabbed the man’s arm. “He had a tattoo.”

“What was it?” Alex asked.

“It was all black, and on the back of his right hand,” I said. “It was a symbol or something. I think that I could draw it, but it’s hard to describe.”

I was immediately handed a pad of paper and a pen, and started to draw it out in a shaky hand. When I was done, both Alex and Tammy leaned over to look at it. It was sort of a stylized Z with a line through it and a circle on the bottom.

Tammy shook her head and took another gulp of her drink. “It looks like a magical symbol, but I don’t know it off-hand.”

Alex took the paper from me and put it in the printer on the desk, which spewed out a few copies. He handed one to Tammy, saying, “Here is a copy, if you would like to do some research.” 

She put it in her bag without comment and drained her drink, handing the glass to him in return. “We should probably head out soon. I at least have to go to work tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling somewhat numb in the aftermath of my mind control experiment. I also wanted to talk some more with Alex, especially since our conversation from earlier had been cut short, but I didn’t know exactly what to say.

“It would probably be better if I let the two of you out the back way,” Alex said, opening the office door. 

Tammy got up from the sofa, and seeing my hesitation, offered me a hand. I stood up and allowed myself to be led behind her without comment. 

Once out in the hallway, we turned in the opposite direction of the club, where Alex opened a door that was marked as a fire exit. 

“We will be in touch.” He opened it and held it for us, and Tammy pulled me through, into the dark alley. 

Chapter Eight

Our trip home was quiet and uneventful. I felt like I would burst into tears at any minute, so I refrained from saying much of anything. Tammy was a bit tipsy, and perhaps sensed my bad mood, so she regaled me with stories of how we used to try to sneak into clubs while we were in high school.

But as soon as we sat down on the train, Tammy fell asleep, and I was left to my own thoughts. I wasn’t even quite sure what I had wanted from Alex, but whatever it was, I hadn’t gotten it. And now I felt horribly rejected in some abstract way. For the remainder of the ride, I leaned on Tammy and closed my eyes, trying not to think. 

When we finally got home, the house was quiet, and we both retreated to our rooms. No sooner had I laid down did Gypsy walk in through the cat door and settle herself onto the pillow beside me. 

For a moment I allowed myself to relax while petting her, but then a huge sneeze came out, scaring her off the bed. Several more sneezes followed, and I finally got up to take a night-time allergy pill and change the pillowcase before going back to bed. 

Not that I was able to actually fall asleep that easy. I couldn’t stop myself from dissecting my conversation with Alex, and eventually I passed into a fitful slumber without completely deciding how I felt about the whole situation. 

The next morning, I was woken by the sounds of my roommates talking in the hallway outside my bedroom. I remembered then that I had always been a light sleeper.

Opening the door, I said, “Hey, I can hear you guys now.”

“Oh, sorry,” Tammy said. “We’re used to you sleeping like the dead. You know, literally. I was just telling Amy about meeting the coven last night.”

“Did you show her the symbol?” I asked.

“Yeah, she did,” Amy said. “It doesn’t ring a bell. Anyway, I have to get to school.” She slung a bag over her shoulder and ran down the stairs.

Tammy shrugged. “I have to get to work soon, too.”

I followed Tammy downstairs, where she started making a cup of tea.

“Can you put some water on for me, too?” I asked.

“Sure,” Tammy said, getting out the box of tea.

I opened the cabinet and automatically got out my mug.

“Are you sure that you want to use that one?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it has previously held human bodily fluids,” Tammy said.

“Well, since you put it that way….” I replaced the cup into the cabinet and got out another one instead.

Tammy put tea bags in each of our cups. “So what are you going to do today?”

“I was thinking about getting a job,” I said, getting milk out of the fridge.

“Oh, really?” She poured boiling water into our cups. “So soon? You don’t want to wait and see if you become a vampire again?”

“I don’t think it’s going to happen until I get deliberately turned again, and Alex was pretty against that happening.” I looked down and stirred sugar and milk in with the tea.

“That’s odd,” Tammy said. “I wonder why.”

“He said something about how I should appreciate being human.”

“I guess he’s right, even though I could see why you would be pissed at hearing him say it.”

“I don’t know if pissed is quite the right word, but yeah.”

“So you’re just going to try to forget about him, or what?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s possible, but I guess I could try.”

“And what about Ethan?”

“What about him?”

“You’re both humans now, so maybe you could have a shot at a real relationship.”

“No,” I said, taking a gulp of tea. “Because he’s still a blood doll for another vampire, remember?”

“Oh, right.” She took her cup to the sink and rinsed it out. “Well, I’ve got to get going to work, but I guess I’ll see you later.”

I nodded to her and sat with my tea at the kitchen table, but she poked her head back in a few minutes later as she was putting her jacket on. “Oh, did you want me to send that symbol to Nina? She might be able to help us do research.”

“Sure, I guess.”

After she left, I sat with my tea for a while longer, and noticed one of the copies of the symbol I had drawn was on the table. I picked it up and starred at it for a good, long, few moments, before admitting that my own brain was very unlikely to provide any further insights.

Finally, I brought my tea into the room I used as a home office and checked my email. There was a message from Harry, my old night-shift supervisor at OmniPlus, the ad agency where I did freelance work. It said they were in the middle of some product launch, and needed extra people to work all shifts. The email also gave contact information for a Marianne, who was the day-shift supervisor in the art department, and the plea to call her immediately if I had any availability.

I sat at the desk re-reading the email several times before picking up the phone and calling Marianne. Having worked in the advertising field for more than three years, I wasn’t surprised at her abrupt phone manner, or her request that I come into the office as soon as possible.

After a quick shower, I began sorting through my closet for anything that could possibly fit the description of business casual. Since I had only ever held a full-time job as a night-shift artist before, there were slim pickings. Finally, I was dressed in a pair of black slacks, flats, and a pretty green silk blouse I had stolen off a woman when I was a vampire. I also heeded Tammy’s advice and put on some make-up.

The office was in midtown Manhattan, on 42
nd
Street. Despite it being after 10 am, there were still a lot of commuters entering the building. Most of them stood in line to swipe their ID cards, but as I currently only did freelance work from home, I had to go over to the security booth and get a visitor badge to be allowed in.

After I made my way up the elevators, I was surprised to see a bustling office. The night shift was about one-fifth the size of the day shift. Although I had already known that, it took me by surprise. I began to walk up to the receptionist’s desk when I saw something that made my mouth drop open.

“Welcome to OmniPlus,” a bubbly voice said. “How may I help you?”

I started to stammer an answer, but all I could do was stare at the monitor above her desk that proclaimed “Welcome to our new CEO, Alex Thompson.” In case there was any doubt as to who was being referred to, there was also a large image of Alex, dressed in a black suit and smiling at the camera.

The previous OmniPlus CEO had been second in command of the Brooklyn vampires, so it somewhat made sense. But I hadn’t quite realized that in taking over their territory, the Queens vampires would also be taking over their advertising agency, or at least this branch of it.

“Welcome to OmniPlus. How may I help you?” The voice was not quite as bubbly this time.

“I’m here to see Marianne Howard,” I managed to get out, still looking at the screen.

“And you are?”

“Emma Hammond.”

The receptionist pressed a few buttons on the phone. “There’s an Emma Hammond for you.”

When I heard her replace the phone onto the cradle, I looked back at her.

“One minute. You can have a seat.” She smiled at me. “He’s hot, isn’t he? The new boss?”

I sat down on the sofa across from her, under a poster for a brand of cookie I had never tried, due to them coming out while I was a vampire. “Oh, um, yeah.”

“He’s never in the office, but he comes to our parties sometimes.”

“Does he?” I tried to imagine Alex at a corporate event and failed.

“Yeah, and he’s not married either. He even got me a drink at the last party.” She smiled, perhaps at the memory.

I couldn’t help wondering if he had also gotten a drink from her, without her remembering it. In fact, I wondered just how many people who worked in the office were blood dolls.

A few seconds later, a tall, thin African American woman wearing bright red high heels came into the reception area. She made a beeline over to me, and held her hand out. “Emma? I’m Marianne. Come with me.”

I barely had time to shake and let go of her hand before she turned around and walked back in the direction she had come from. The long hallway occasionally opened up onto the sea of cubicles that I was familiar with, and was wallpapered with posters from high-profile clients. The area Marianne finally stopped in was the exact area I had previously sat in when I had been a full-time employee about six months ago.

“This is where you will be sitting,” she said, gesturing to a non-descript and empty cube. The furniture was so bland that I couldn’t say for sure if it was the desk I used to sit at.

Marianne handed me a scrap of paper. “This is your log-in information. I’ll let you get set up and come back in a minute with your project for today and a non-disclosure agreement.” Then she abruptly turned and walked away.

Sighing, I sat down and turned on the computer. My assigned user name, I noted, was Freelance42, and my password was Welcome. I was watching the computer turn on, when I heard a voice say, “Hi, first day?”

Jumping, I looked up to see a dark, attractive male face peeking over the cube wall. “Sort of,” I said. “I used to be on night shift full-time. But now I’m just a freelancer, here for the day.”

The man laughed. “Of course you’re a freelancer. More than half of us are. They just don’t want to pay health insurance for full time.”

I held up the scrap of paper. “As far as I know, there are only forty-one other freelancers here.”

“They recycle the numbers when they get to three digits,” he said. “My name’s Ashwathama, but you can call me Ash.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That I can probably handle. I’m Emma.”

Ash suddenly had a look of mild panic. “Boss’s here.” Then he ducked back behind the cube wall.

“Non-disclosure agreement,” I heard Marianne say behind me as she dropped a thin, manila folder on the desk. “And your first project.” A folder about three inches thick landed as I swiveled around in my chair to look at her. “This is due at three, and just get the NDA back to me before you leave today.”

She was gone just as quickly as she appeared, and I opened the folder to take a look at my assignment. It was nothing overly complicated, but about two hours later, I felt like I could use a coffee, so I made my way to one of the many kitchens.

Since I had never been on the day staff, I had never before noticed how much free food was left about. There were large trays of sandwiches from a nearby artisanal shop, as well as fresh fruit in baskets, and, most exciting of all, a beverage fridge filled with sodas. The latter had most certainly not been present when I had been full time. An endless supply of free Diet Coke was not something that I’d easily forget.

As I stood there, trying to pick a sandwich without touching them all, I heard a voice behind me say, “Sandwiches again? I thought today was supposed to be mac and cheese.”

I turned around and saw Ash. “Is this for some occasion? Or just for the launch in general?”

He shrugged, picking a sandwich off the pile. “Who knows? Ever since the new boss took over a month or so ago, the perks have been much better. I’ve only had to pay for lunch twice since then.”

Opening the beverage fridge, I was happy to see a stock of Diet Coke. “How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Almost a year now,” Ash said. “Could you grab me one?”

“And you’re a freelancer too?” I passed him a can.

“Yeah, but I don’t mind. I never have to work more than forty hours a week, and I can take off whenever I want.”

“True,” I said, remembering how annoying it was to get a day off or even leave an hour early when I was full-time staff.

We walked back to our respective cubes, and even with taking bites of the sandwich while working, I was able to get through the job by 2:30. I knocked on Marianne’s open doorframe.

“Are you done? Good. Leave it here and bring me your forms. I think we’re finished for the day, but can you come back tomorrow?”

“Um, sure. What time?”

“The same time is fine. I’ll have a new ID card for you then.” She began looking down at the folder then, and I took it as a sign to leave.

A few minutes later and I was back out on the street. For some reason, I remembered that the shifts at the hospital changed at 3 pm. Without quite making a conscious decision, I started walking downtown to the NYU medical center, instead of to the subway home. Even though I was no longer a vampire, my curiosity forced me to find out what had happened to Ethan.