Vampire State of Mind (19 page)

‘He's been dead, what, a year?'

I nodded. ‘Ten months.'

‘So, where's the harm?'

I took a shaky breath. Ever since that showdown, when Enforcement had turned up mob-handed and Eleanor had ended up ripping Cameron to pieces with silver bullets, I'd sworn that everything Cam had told me would die with him. It had been terrible, tragic, a mistake. ‘He –'

‘Didn't you love him? Is that it, Jessie?'

‘I did, but not like that. Sil, Cameron was gay. I was his cover.'

Sil let go of my shoulders and leaned his head so far back over the edge of the bridge I was afraid he'd fall. He was laughing. ‘A gay
werewolf
? I didn't even know that was possible! Oh, that's terrific!'

‘You don't understand! Werewolves are all about dominance, about power. Imagine what it's like to be so in love with your dominant male that you have trouble staying the same shape when he's about! How long do you think you can last, if you won't fight him, won't mate with the ones he's chosen for you, can't think straight when he's around? So Cameron asked me to pretend. It took some of the pressure off; people stopped asking awkward questions.'

‘And the day he was killed?'

‘Cameron had formed a focus for gay shifters. They were going to come out
en masse
, form their own group. Not a pack, because there were wolves and cats and all sorts, but a group. Word got out, someone overheard and misunderstood the nature of his rally. It got round that he was going to stage a challenge for the leadership of his pack, that he didn't care who got hurt and – '

‘Enforcement, silver bullets, the end.'

I blotted my cheeks with my fingers. ‘It wasn't fair. He would never have hurt anybody. It shouldn't have happened.'

‘I'm sorry.'

This time I shrugged.

‘God, I am
sooooo
pissed.' Sil hiccupped again. ‘Jessie – '

‘What now? More intrusive questions about my love life? You must
swear
, Sil, not to say anything about what I told you. Because Cameron died the other gay shifters never did come out; there's a lot of people could get hurt if it became general knowledge.'

‘You are lovely, you know that?'

‘Sil, don't.'

‘Don't?'

‘Don't come on to me when you've got a stomach full of some girl's blood.'

‘My side of the fence now. Remember? When it comes to it, Jessie, when it comes right down to it, you aren't human any more. You don't have the luxury of being all censorious and upright about it, not when half your genetics is something worse than vampire. You don't know yet, you've not been put in the position, but one day – you'll be faced with some situation and
something
will out. It may be demon.' He shouldered himself away from the stonework and took a staggering few steps forward. ‘And when that happens, we'll go back to the club. See what you think of it then, when you're one of the ones down on the floor with someone's life hanging there, right in front of you, for the taking.' His fangs slid into place, locked down, and for a moment I thought he was going to lunge at me, he looked so tense and excited.

‘You certainly know how to sweet-talk a girl. No wonder you're never short of them.' The bitter edge to my voice seemed to bring him down a bit.

‘Yeah. And doesn't that just screw you up.'

‘What are you insinuating?'

‘You know.'

‘You reckon that I'm desperate for you?'

‘Oh, you're fooling no-one. You're avoiding it.'

I smacked him in the face, said, ‘Avoid that, you bastard,' and stalked off.

Sil followed her home without being spotted, and leaned against a convenient garden wall, waiting until her bedroom light went out. He listened to the distant sounds of taps running and tried to ignore the soft sound of crying that came two minutes after the darkness.
My side of the line now, Jessica.
He rubbed his head. Drawing out his demon had hurt more than he'd expected, and he certainly hadn't expected to be around for the aftermath – his demon writhed at the memory of its near-death experience.
You broke Malfaire's magic. Are you thinking about that, up in your room, with the chocolate wrappers and the old school photographs? Are you wondering how you did it, what it means? What you might become?

The crying broke into hiccups and he felt something drag inside him. His demon, still reeling from the double effect of fresh blood and second-hand alcohol, was reacting sluggishly to her misery. Or rather, to his reaction to her misery.
Never done that before. But maybe I've never felt like this before, have I?

A flashback, and suddenly his demon sobered up.
Watching from a distance, the doctor arriving. His white face, shaking head, at the door, my wife … God, my wife, breaking down, and I couldn't touch her, couldn't reach her to tell her … The funeral, one among many in that vicious influenza-ridden time, two small wreaths and the bunch of hastily picked daisies that I barely had time to lay before the other mourners arrived. The white coffins …

He wiped his hand across his face, amazed to find it wet.
Sadness? Where did that come from?
His teeth gritted, fangs nicking his lip, as he felt his demon squirm for a second under the sensation.
If only Jess knew, just for one second, what it was to be vampire. What it felt like to have to live without emotion, to know it was there and be forced to ride the instinct and the reaction without allowing any of the repercussions to cut through and let you see what you had become.

The hiccups had stopped now; the only sound coming from Jessie's room was a kind of sleep-sob as she settled into troubled dreaming. Sil stared at her window for a moment longer, his demon whirling smugly, then bunched a fist.
I look great. I'm strong. I'll live another two hundred years at least. I can glamour humans into doing anything I want them to. Fuck you, Jessica. Fuck you, fuck the Protection Act, fuck it all.
A stride that broke into a jog and then into a run and he was out into the main street, heading back towards the club by the river.

Liam looked me over as I arrived at the office in my pointedly very different outfit of jeans and T-shirt. ‘Sil not with you?'

I looked around exaggeratedly. ‘Ooh, no. I wonder what could have happened to him? Maybe I sleep-kill. Anyway, thought today was your turn for the annual day off?'

‘Yes, Mister Scrooge, it was. But … I decided to come in.' Liam pushed a still-tepid mug of coffee my way. ‘Sarah's taken Charlotte to visit her mother. That's Sarah's mother, what with her being Charlotte's mother herself and everything. Didn't fancy sitting in the house on my own, might be expected to perform some archaic “man task” like hanging a door or something. Besides, yesterday –'

‘Yesterday was mad, I'm sorry.' I had a sudden, horrible mental jigsaw-image of some of yesterday's events, a bit like a ‘previously, in my life' pre-credits sequence. ‘Wow. Yes. Really mad.'

‘Something to do with the bloods?'

I'd forgotten Liam's ability to put two-and-two together and make … well, yes, in this case four, but sometimes he'd get two-and-two to make bread pudding. ‘It … there are
implications
, Liam. Things might be difficult.'

‘Tell me.'

And I did. So, shoot me, Liam's been my friend a long time, and I know how to do edited highlights. It took me two coffees and a large bar of Galaxy to cover everything I was willing to cover, and I was sniffing again by the time I got to the end.

‘Oh, Jessie.' Liam had tears in his own eyes and I saw his gaze keep turning to the framed photo of his baby daughter which he kept on his desk. ‘Your poor parents.'

‘What about poor me?' I sniffed again and wiped my nose on my sleeve. ‘I don't even know what species I am.'

He shrugged. ‘You cry like a woman. You shovel chocolate down your neck like a woman, you're a miserable cow once a month, you think your bum is fat, you go all gooey over baby pictures and you dribble over Zan and Sil. Tell me how you could be any
more
human and I'll go and buy you a bottle of it.'

‘Well, thank you, Mr Supportive. I take back everything I said about you being gay.'

Liam grinned. ‘Thanks. Now. You need to find out all you can about the ghyst-demons, I suppose. And you need to do it before Malfaire recovers from his ass-whupping and comes after you, yes?'

I froze, hand halfway to a Kit Kat. ‘God, I never thought … he's not going to take it well, is he?'

‘Uh, no, Jessie, probably not. So, what I was thinking – ' He typed rapidly for a moment and a large flashing icon descended on the middle of his screen. ‘I've forwarded it to you, too.'

I groaned. ‘Please tell me that's not what I think it is.'

‘Copies of all the info-mails the council have sent us for the last five years. All the accumulated wisdom of the ages.' He bent down and fetched up from under his desk the papers that I stood on to reach the so-called hidden chocolate, split the pile in two and slammed half down on my desk, with an accompanying puff of dust and smell of old budgie cages. ‘And these are the ones from before we all went digital. There's bound to be something in here somewhere.'

I poked the papers. ‘Is there an index?'

‘No. I started to make one a couple of years ago but,' a shrug, ‘you know, life intervened and everything. So I guess we just have to truck through all of them.' He leaned forward. ‘Are you okay? I mean, wouldn't you be better leaving this to me and taking some time off? You still look pretty shitty.'

‘Pay cut, that man.' But I was flattered that he'd noticed, when all Sil had done was nag me about not being human. There was a tiny prickle down my spine, like a woodlouse had crawled up my shirt.
Not human …

‘What are we doing?' Sil's lanky figure slunk into view. ‘Making up filthy headlines again?'

Now he
was
wearing last night's clothes, unless his wardrobe held more than one pair of leather trousers and lace-effect shirt. He looked slightly spaced-out and he'd tied his hair back to show off his cheekbones. ‘Second-hand alcohol,' he said, throwing himself into the spare chair like he belonged there and drinking the now stone-cold coffee that I'd left in my mug down in one. ‘What a night.'

His demon was almost asleep inside him; I could feel its drowsy relish. ‘Well, as long as one of us had a good time.' I felt shrewish and snappy and not sure why. ‘Try to stay awake long enough to help go through these. We're looking for mentions of ghyst.'

Sil picked up some of the papers and winked at me in an annoying way. ‘Okay, boss.'

‘Liam and I can split the e-versions; I'll do the last three years, Liam you do the two years before, Sil, you can do the old paper copies. Oh, and make more coffee.'

We sat and skimmed through the council hand-outs until our eyes bulged.

‘Otherworld office has all this kind of thing on e-files.' Sil had put his feet up on Liam's desk and was flipping pages at twice the speed that we could have read at, being mere … humans.

‘I know. I hacked in. Couldn't open your file. I think Zan might be reading them your end. Or trying to stop us getting in.' Liam said without looking up.

‘He will have run a word-search function.'

‘All right, don't rub it in, we all know how much better you are than us,' I said irritably. The dust from the paper copies was in my eyes now and they itched, although not as much as my hands from wanting to punch Sil firmly in his self-satisfied face. ‘We don't want to have to rely on Zan beating us to it. Even if he's quite clearly going to.'

‘Just saying,' he turned over a page, infuriatingly calmly, ‘that's all. Gotcha!' Sil laid down his leaflet like a winning poker hand. ‘Here. Ghyst-demon.' He pushed the paper towards me, but the council's relentless money-saving investment in tiny print meant that we all ended up huddled together trying to read.

‘Oh, no.' I might not have a vampire's skills, but I could speed read when I wanted to. ‘No.' Shoved my chair back so hard that it cannoned off the far wall and nearly dropped me on the floor.

The boys exchanged a look. ‘It might not be that bad, Jessie.'

‘Right.' I tapped the offending page and quoted. ‘“Ghyst-demon. Rare and semi-mythical, blah blah … rumoured to be unable to be killed, except by its own flesh and blood.” Look, they've spelled immortal with only one “m”.'

Sil patted my arm. ‘Well, at least we know now why Malfaire wants you. If you're on his side he's invincible. If not – '

‘ – then I'm better off dead,' I finished. ‘Oh, shit.'

‘If you die, do I get your computer?' Liam asked, shakily trying to lighten the mood. ‘And your special mug?'

I sat with my head in my hands. If Malfaire killed me, there would be nothing on earth to stop him from forming an army of ghouls, Shadows, any vampire that felt restricted by the current rules and regulations, any Otherworlder, in fact, that wanted to stage a take-over bid. If he left me alive, then he'd want me to fight alongside him.

‘Jessie.' Sil's patting had turned into more of a rub. ‘You're still under my protection.'

‘Oh yeah, and that worked really well last time, didn't it? I seem to remember that you … It wouldn't have ended well.' I didn't even look up. ‘What do I do? Liam?'

‘He won't kill you.' Liam sounded desperate. ‘He won't. You're his daughter. I couldn't harm Charlotte for all the money in the world, and he must have some kind of feelings for you, otherwise why search you out? Why not let it lie? You'd never have found out that you were anything to do with him otherwise.'

‘Perhaps he wants to be sure of winning.' Sil stood and leaned against the desk, legs crossed and hands in pockets. ‘If he's certain that there's no danger to him, he can attack with impunity.' He seemed to come to a decision. ‘Jessie, I think you ought to move in with Zan and me.'

I blinked. ‘What, the pair of you live in one house? It must be like an episode of
Big Bang Theory
round your place. Anyway, I've got a flat, and I don't anticipate moving out any time soon.'

Now Sil crouched down to look me straight in the eye. ‘Remember danger, Jessie? Remember the big bad demon who wants you dead? If you're in Vampire Central then we can both keep an eye on you, and anywhere has to be more secure than your place.'

‘Vegan Central,' added Liam.

‘You really call your place Vampire Central?' Sil lived in an impressive three-storey Georgian house near York Minster. You could see Betty's Tea Room from one of the upstairs bathrooms, if you stood on the vanity unit; just don't ask me how I know. ‘Rachel needs me to pay the rent.'

‘Yes, but I glamoured Rachel once. That means she's under my … ah, I was going to say power, but suddenly realise that makes me sound like a stage hypnotist. I've formed a mental link with her. I can make her forget that you ever lived there. Just like this.' And Sil clicked his fingers. ‘So we can do this the easy way – the “I'm moving out for a few days” way – or we can do it the hard way.' He clicked his fingers again. ‘Leaving you nowhere to go back to, when all this is over.'

‘Bastard,' I managed, but my heart wasn't really in it.

‘Sensible bastard, though,' Liam said. ‘At least it would mean you had back-up 24/7.'

‘Or two more people to have to worry about.' I sighed. It was a foregone conclusion already, obviously. I couldn't think of a good reason not to do as Sil said, and a hundred reasons to go along with it, number one being ‘I don't want to die alone'. ‘And what about Rach? What if Malfaire decides to … I dunno, find out where I've gone? He might … torture her.'

‘Force her to eat a cream scone?' Liam gave me a direct look. ‘Malfaire hasn't exactly had to struggle to find you so far, has he? You're going to the vamps for protection, not to hide. I think he'll know where you are if he wants you.'

‘Well, that's reassuring,' I said. ‘Remind me to send you on that empathy course next time it comes round.'

‘That would be dangerously close to Professional Development, and you know what you always say about that …' Liam gave me a grin, but it was thin.

We were whistling in the wind, and we all knew it.