Midnight's Emissary Read online

  His face turned red as his oversized hands bunched into fists at his side.

  I fought the urge to take a step back. I knew he was sensitive about his height but hadn’t thought it would drive him to violence so quickly.

  I touched the pocket with the silver knife in it for reassurance. If he swung at me, I was using my weapon. It wouldn’t do much good considering he was technically part of the fae. Iron would work better or maybe wood. It’s one of those gray areas that I haven’t been able to get a lot of information on. Yet.

  “Think you’re so smart, don’t you, fanger?” His voice was nasty as he stepped forward until he had to crane his head back to meet my eyes.

  This had gone on long enough. I wasn’t here to start trouble with my fellow couriers, even if they were itching for a fight. Mainly because I was pretty sure Jerry would frown on such a thing.

  Couriers with broken bones couldn’t make deliveries.

  All of a sudden I was done with the petty scrabbling. I didn’t want to spend one of the few nights I had off arguing with the gnome. It was exhausting, not to mention drama I didn’t need or want.

  “What did I ever do to you, Tom? Every time we’re in the same room, you go out of your way to create trouble for me. I don’t recall ever doing something to earn this level of enmity.”

  “Your existence is plenty.”

  What did that even mean?

  “What does that mean?”

  He scoffed. “Like you don’t know.”

  “I don’t. Believe me, if I did I wouldn’t be asking.”

  My puzzlement must have gotten through to him because he stepped back and gave me an assessing gaze, as if he was trying to judge my level of sincerity.

  I tried to show my confusion. It wasn’t hard because I honestly didn’t know what I had ever done to earn this level of hostility.

  I’ve had my share of obnoxious coworkers who didn’t like me, but usually I’ve done something to earn it. Like that time I tied every pair of a fellow soldier’s boot shoelaces to another boot’s shoelaces.

  She had it coming though. She told my battle buddy she was going to Hell because she thought she was the reincarnation of a vampire princess. I might have thought my battle buddy was bat shit crazy but that didn’t mean I’d let some stranger walk up to her and make her feel bad about it. Though, looking back I may have written off my battle buddy’s claims as fantasy a little too quickly. Who knew vampires and all this other shit actually existed.

  “My nephew was supposed to have a job here,” Tom said abruptly.

  I blinked. Tom had family. Who’d have thought?

  “How am I involved in that?” Not like I went around bad mouthing his nephew to get him black listed.

  “Your job. He was supposed to have your job,” Tom said through gritted teeth. “After they hired you, they said there were no more open spots. If you hadn’t had your little buddy pull some strings, he’d be able to work here and earn some money for the family back home.”

  That was the reason for all the grief he’d been giving me over the past few years? Really? Now I wish I hadn’t even asked. The answer just pissed me off.

  I started and stopped speaking a few times before I could compose myself enough to ask, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t your nephew have used the same nepotism you’re accusing me of to get this job?”

  He gave me a nasty glare before shouldering past me, making sure to knock into me before leaving. I turned to watch him go, not wanting to chance him taking the opportunity to stick a knife in my back or at the very least try to put his fist through it.

  He slammed the door; the framed photos on the wall rattled before hanging firm.

  I turned back to Beatrix who had watched it all with that same smug face.

  I took another look around. “For all hands on deck, you seem to be running pretty light. Where is everyone? I thought you were calling everyone in.”

  She didn’t bother answering, just pointed a long, bony finger at the uncomfortable looking chairs in the waiting room. Propping my hands on my waist, I looked from them to her, suspecting that the matter wasn’t as urgent as she’d made it seem on the phone.

  This was my night off. I wasn’t going to spend it in a sitting room with my thumb up my ass because she was on another power trip.

  Screw it. I was out of here.

  I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

  “Unemployment line,” she said with glee in her voice.

  I paused.

  She didn’t have the power to fire people. She was bluffing.

  I took another step.

  “Jerry said to tell you that if you leave before he meets with you, don’t bother coming back.”

  Shit, she was serious. Beatrix, I’d learned in the seven months since I met her, had no problem fucking with me at any and every opportunity, but she wouldn’t bring Jerry’s name into it unless it was something he’d actually said.

  My situation was tenuous. Job prospects were slim for someone with my special needs and as much as I would like to ignore it, this job gave me protection against the vampires or any other spook who’d like to take advantage of a baby vamp.

  Guess that meant I had no choice but to stick around until I found out what he wanted.

  I did an about face and walked over to Beatrix’s desk before hopping up and planting my ass on the edge.

  “What do you think you’re doing, you obnoxious twit?” Beatrix’s voice rose in outrage.

  “I’m guessing nothing in his instructions said where I had to sit while I waited for him, just that I needed to stay put.” I gave her a toothy smile.

  When she looked like she wanted to spit venom, I knew I had won.

  No one said I couldn’t fuck back. You would think after all our interactions she would have learned that by now.

  It might have been smarter to try to win her good will, but there was only so much turning the other cheek I could handle. She’d been after me since she showed up and I had no idea why. I figured it’d become evident eventually, and if it didn’t, we would have our little skirmishes until one of us got tired of it or quit.

  I pulled out my phone and started playing a stupid game where I had to match objects before they hit the bottom of the screen. I wasn’t very good at it. The game was loud, obnoxious and distracting. It’s why I had downloaded it, planning to use it in a situation exactly like this.

  It was satisfying listening to Beatrix grind her back teeth, getting louder every time I died. And I died a lot.

  “Would you please stop that? It’s annoying.”

  “In a moment. There’s a wand on the next level.”

  “You’ve died in the same place, on the same pattern, three times now.”

  I gave her a cheeky smile. “Guess I need to practice more then.”

  She made a noise of frustration and picked up the phone, murmuring into it before setting it down.

  I kept my smile of triumph aimed away from her, not wanting her to know so she could sabotage my victory. Aileen one, Beatrix zero. It took a little of the sting out of all the other times she’d won our little skirmishes.

  The intercom buzzed.

  I was off the desk and opening the door to Jerry’s office before she could even finish saying, “He will see you now.”

  Jerry was seated behind a mammoth desk, twice the size of Beatrix’s. If you put the two desks beside one another, hers would look like something built for a child whereas Jerry’s was built for a man-sized giant.

  When a person saw Jerry for the first time, they were often struck dumb at his size. His muscles had muscles and one oversized hand could engulf my skull and probably crush it with barely a thought. He couldn’t walk more than a few feet down the street without getting asked what NFL team he played for. People gave him crazy eyes when he acted like he’d never heard the acronym before.

  His face and body weren’t the type you’d want to meet in an alley after dark or in the day or pretty muc
h anywhere for that matter. Despite a face that said he could rip out your spleen and feed it to you without ever losing a minute of sleep, he was attractive enough in an intense, could kill you by breathing on you, kind of way. His brown hair never looked brushed and stuck out in weird tufts from his head.

  For all that he could kill with one frown, he was a good boss. Probably the best I’d ever had. I owed him, even if he didn’t give me this job out of the goodness of his heart but as a favor to someone he owed. The result was the same. Protection from what would have been even more monumental changes to an already upended life and a paycheck, that while it wasn’t going to have me rolling in luxury, at least allowed me to be independent and take care of myself. What more could you ask for?

  “Sit,” his deep voice rumbled.

  I sat without saying anything. Jerry was a little intimidating at the best of times and judging from the tense set of his shoulder’s this wasn’t going to be one of them. It would be wise to walk softly until I knew a little more of what was going on.

  He continued reading the papers in front of him, turning the page and carefully reading the next. My lips quirked at the sight of a pair of black framed glasses perching on his nose.

  I practiced the patience I learned standing in countless formations while in the military. I held still, thinking about nothing in particular. That was the trick to waiting. You didn’t focus, not on the time, the frustration or that itch that was nagging at the middle of your back. You just existed. The alternative was to compose mental lists of ways to escape your mom’s attention on your failed career prospects. They both accomplished the task of taking you out of the endless tedium of waiting.

  “I have a job for you,” Jerry said, without looking up from his papers.

  I figured. It’s not like we got together outside of work and went looking for teenagers to mug.

  When he didn’t seem inclined to continue, I prodded. “And that job is?”

  “I took a big risk when I pulled you into my company.”

  I digested that statement. It didn’t tell me what he wanted from me. It also didn’t give me warm fuzzies about this job, with him starting the conversation by mentioning the risks he’d taken to shelter me from the vampires finding out about my existence. That’s the sort of statement you usually made when you were planning to call in a favor. Especially since I was supposed to stay off the radar. That went topsy turvy last fall.

  We’d both been waiting with baited breath to see what the vampires would do once they found out a vampire who hadn’t been through the one hundred years of indentured service to a clan was running around free and unrestrained. It definitely didn’t help that they now knew I’d never received any training in how to curb my appetite for blood or deal with all the other challenges being of the fanged variety presented.

  Liam, the enforcer who’d run across me in an investigation, had nearly blown a gasket when he discovered my existence. Evidently, the bite and run was frowned upon. My sire was in a lot of trouble if Sir Cranky Pants, the name I gave Liam, ever caught up to him. Or so I’m assured. Not sure how much I believe that, but I’m willing to keep an open mind until it happens.

  “I’m aware,” I finally said.

  “Now that the vampires know of your existence, it changes things.”

  Hold up a minute. Was he firing me? That couldn’t happen. That could NOT happen. I’ve never been fired before. Never. Not once. I wasn’t prepared to be fired now. I needed this job to survive.

  “Jerry, you know I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and if it’s the vampires you’re worried about, I’ve got the sorcerer’s mark to protect me.”

  “Only you would think a sorcerer’s mark is there to protect you.” He gave me a put out look from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

  I gave a mental shrug, conceding his point. It might not have been placed there to protect me per se but I’d managed to manipulate events enough that the effect was the same.

  “You may be protected, but everyone who gave shelter to you or hid your existence is not. The vampires could decide to claim recompense from myself and the Captain.”

  Yes, I could see how that would be worrisome to him. At the same time, he’d known the risks. Better than I did even.

  This also still didn’t tell me why he was bringing this all up now. Months after my run in with Liam.

  He took a deep breath and slid a square piece of paper to me. “I have a job for you.”

  Puzzled, I took the post-it size piece of paper and glanced at the name and address on it.

  Sunshine Diner

  9:00 p.m. tomorrow night, third booth from the back.

  Don’t be late.

  I didn’t get it. What was all the seriousness about if this was just another job? There had to be something more.

  “This run will require a little bit more from you. It’s not the average pick up and drop off.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He was silent, his face creased with lines. He seemed almost worried, which was a little scary. Jerry didn’t get worried. For the most part he was as calm and steady as a rock. Nothing fazed him.

  “You’ll see when you get there.”

  His face dropped back into its normal impassive expression. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything else out of him.

  I stood as he turned back to his papers. Hesitating in front of him, I finally left when he didn’t look back up.

  It was almost eleven p.m. so the meeting wasn’t until tomorrow night. At this point, there was no use worrying about this mysterious job and what it would entail until tomorrow.

  Why did I have a sinking feeling this job had something to do with the vampires?

  Chapter Three

  Pressing lightly on the bike’s brake, I turned into the parking lot, barely noticing the sharp jolt as my wheels fought for purchase on the broken pavement. There were so many cracks in the asphalt that it was practically gravel at this point. Weeds, some as high as my knee, had burrowed through those cracks and made the already treacherous ground even harder to navigate. Luckily, my apartment’s parking lot was about the size of a postage stamp.

  I threw one leg over the seat and stepped down while the bike was still moving, bringing the bike and myself to a gradual halt.

  I rented a second story walk up in an old duplex, just outside of campus, that looked like it was built around the turn of the nineteenth century. The cement stoop to the downstairs apartments had settled since its creation and drooped forward and to the side like a drunken sailor on shore leave. The rest of the foundation had settled in the opposite direction at some point because the brick next to the windows looked like they were slightly off kilter.

  Knowing the owners like I did, I doubted they’d mitigated any of the settling and it was likely this place was one crazy party away from folding like a stack of cards.

  The wooden stairs leading up to my place were no less rickety and rundown than the rest of the building. Anytime anything larger than a cat used them, they shook and trembled like they were in the midst of an earthquake.

  It was a slum, made acceptable by the fact that they mostly rented to college students who planned to vacate within a year or two of renting. In the mind of a college student, who cared if the place wasn’t safe and the landlord took three months to get around to fixing the hot water heater. It was cheap and that was all that mattered.

  It was also all I could afford right now. Sometimes you had to just deal with the hand you had been dealt.

  Someone walked out of the downstairs apartment closest to the staircase. I paused, curious. I’d never met one of my neighbors before. They were usually out when I left for the night or fast asleep when I got home in the very early morning.

  The man hesitated when he caught sight of me at the bottom of the stairs, preparing to pick up my bike. He was taller than me, probably over six feet by an inch or two. He had shoulder length copper, brown hair and a face that was all hard plains. His nose was
a little too long and his mouth a little too thin, but those imperfections helped give his face character and break it out of the too pretty mold it would have fallen into otherwise.

  He gave me a nod before continuing to a truck parked in the lot that I just now realized was full of furniture and boxes.

  I watched for a moment. Was I getting new neighbors? How had I missed the last ones moving out?

  It was possible they’d moved out during the day when I slept or while I was away on a run. To tell you the truth, I’d just kind of assumed both apartments on the lower floor were empty since the occupants were so quiet. From my experience, students aren’t normally silent on the weekends. Where were the parties and general shenanigans that typically happened when you’re young and dumb?

  I shouldered my bike and headed upstairs, not wanting to get involved in small talk with my new neighbor. If he was anything like the last ones I’d had, I probably wouldn’t even know he was there.

  Even though my apartment’s exterior was the sort that sent most tenant’s running screaming into the night, I thought I’d done a pretty good job of creating a cozy place to call home. Granted, ninety percent of the furniture was hand me downs or things I could scrounge from garage sales and resale shops, but it had its own style. Where I could, I added knick knacks collected during my childhood or while I was overseas with the military. It’d never be featured in Home and Garden, more like thrifter’s anonymous, but it suited me and my personality, which was as tattered and cobbled together as this place.

  I propped the bike against the entryway wall and set my helmet on top of it. Walking into the kitchen, I pulled off my light jacket and threw it on the table along with my keys. Since I never ate dinner there, it had become a catchall for my random odds and ends.

  I opened my fridge, pulled out a wine bottle and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. The liquid I poured looked like any red wine except a little thicker and not made from grapes. When I’d filled it most of the way up, I capped the bottle and stuck it back in the fridge before grabbing my glass and heading back to the table where I’d set the book earlier.

  Now that the matter with Hermes was taken care of, I had the rest of the night to focus on my original plan. I sifted through the junk that had somehow accumulated on the old, beaten up wood.