Midnight's Emissary Read online

  Where was it?

  I know I left it here. This was where I put everything. Especially when I was in a hurry.

  I stepped back and lifted a jacket off the pile. No book was hiding under it.

  Damn it.

  I glanced around. Where would I have put it if not here?

  Maybe the living room? I headed in that direction, stopping by the couch and lifting the blanket off it.

  No. I didn’t remember being in my living room before heading to Hermes.

  I turned to leave, banging my shin on my coffee table.

  “Son of a bumble bee.” I grabbed the offending appendage.

  I blinked at the coffee table in front of me. In the middle of it, like an offering, sat the book.

  How did it get there? And why did I not see it when I was tearing the rest of the living room apart?

  My hands were hesitant as they reached for it. Since becoming a vampire, I was much more attuned when unexplained or suspicious things happened, like a book appearing somewhere I did not leave it. Especially when that book had come to me under odd circumstances.

  Nothing happened as my fingers brushed the cover. No tingle in my fingers. Nothing bad jumped out to eat me, and I wasn’t magically transported somewhere new.

  It was almost a letdown to have it act like a normal book.

  I fell onto the couch and propped my feet on the coffee table.

  The Uninitiated’s Guide to the Supernatural.

  Long title. Sounded more like a field manual than a book.

  I thumbed through the pages quickly as I tried to determine what about this thing had caused the book keeper to give it to me for free.

  It didn’t seem like anything special. It was just a normal book. One that had slightly disturbing hand drawn pictures. I hesitated on one of a monstrous creature surrounded by a mountain of skulls and wearing a necklace of ears. That was disturbing.

  I flipped past it and read the description for another creature, something called a yamabusa. Hm, I hoped I never had occasion to meet one of those.

  Enough of this. Time to get to what I really wanted to know.

  I flipped to the glossary section and turned to the v’s and looked up the section I wanted, which was appropriately named blood drinkers, before flipping to it.

  My heart sank as I realized that only a page was devoted to vampires.

  I skimmed the section before tossing the book back on the coffee table in frustration, running my fingers through my hair. All that trouble and for what? Information I already knew. The book only recounted things I had already figured out myself.

  Vampires drank blood. Check. Knew that. The sun was mildly irritating to most unless they had been starved or gravely injured or were newly turned. Knew that because of the draugr incident. Usually forced their newly turned, otherwise known as yearlings, into what amounted to an indentured servitude for the first one hundred years of their life.

  Seeing the glass of blood next to the book, I grabbed it and chugged, not stopping to breathe until every drop was gone. I sighed as the parched feeling in my throat disappeared, and I got a nice boost of warmth as the blood started working its magic.

  I carried the glass to the sink and washed it out, having learned the hard way that old blood stunk. It took forever to get the stink of it out too. Being a vampire also came with a slightly heightened sense of smell. Not as good as a werewolf’s but good enough that the smell of old food drove me crazy after a while. That was something that they hadn’t included in their little book.

  Frustrated at the totally pointless risk I took in procuring a book with no new information, I spent the rest of the night watching Netflix until shortly before dawn. I shut things down and headed to my bedroom where I prepared for the forced rest I’d experience as the sun began its ascent across the sky.

  As I had many times before, I held up a timer. Two minutes before sunrise was scheduled, I hit the start button and then stared at the alarm clock. I knew the moment the sun cleared the horizon as I could literally feel sleep sucking away my consciousness. As I had every morning since learning that vampires could be awake during the day, I fought against closing my eyes with everything I had, trying to delay my eventual loss by even a second longer than the day before.

  Every sunrise felt like I’d spent an entire week awake. Like my eyelids had lead weights attached to them. I went crossed eyed as I fought to stay awake, my vision wavering.

  Then it was lights out.

  * * *

  I woke to a trio of alarms blaring, going from dead to the world to awake and aware in less than a second. One of my favorite things about being a vampire was how clear headed I was when I woke. Well, as long as the sun had set.

  I may have been able to stay awake for a few minutes in the morning, but I still couldn’t repeat my success during the draugr incident of waking earlier than sunset. I wanted to replicate that trick when my life wasn’t on the line, or when I got a big power boost from a clan elder. It’d be a nice thing to have in my back pocket if my life ever counted on it again.

  Blindly, I groped for the alarm, my hand hitting nothing by air. With a growl, I lifted my head off the pillow and looked around. The alarm clocks were all on the dresser on the other side of the room.

  How did they get over there? I usually had them on the nightstand next to my bed. Grumbling to myself, I lumbered out of bed and shuffled over to turn them off.

  There was nothing in this world more annoying than the sound of an alarm clock. I’d picked the most annoying ones I could find in the hopes it would inspire me to wake before the sunset.

  So far I’d been unsuccessful and it looked like today was a repeat of more of the same. The sun set three minutes ago.

  I picked up the timer sitting by the alarm clocks, puzzled at how it’d made its way over here. Unless I somehow managed to sleep walk and didn’t remember it. Possible, but I’d never done so in my previous experiments.

  The timer said five minutes and thirty seconds. That was almost a minute better than my previous best time.

  Nice.

  I had plenty of time before I needed to be at the Sunshine Diner for my meeting to learn about the job that had a little ‘more’ to it.

  My breakfast of champions, well vampire ones anyway, consisted of another glass of O negative and a Reece’s peanut butter cup. I’d found, much to my relief, that the myths surrounding vampires were only half right. We needed to drink blood, but we could also consume real food in moderation. Most of our nutrients still came from the blood, but my stomach could still handle solid food in small portions. The best part was that I never gained an ounce. I chose to eat a lot of things I never did as a human for fear of blowing up like a balloon.

  I set the glass down and turned away from the counter before tripping and falling into the wall. I turned and glared at the object that had nearly caused me to break my neck.

  The book sat innocently on the old, cracked linoleum.

  I sank back into the wall and gave serious thought to leaping over the island to get out of the kitchen. That thing moved, and not like I put it somewhere and forgot. I knew I left it on the coffee table last night. No, it somehow moved itself to its present spot in the kitchen. Worse, it did it after I was in here.

  There was something magical to the thing. Whether it had benign or malevolent intentions was the question. From the way the shop keeper had reacted when I picked it up, I was willing to bet he knew exactly what this thing could do.

  Now, I wasn’t against magic per se. Just extremely cautious of it. I’d already been forced into a situation I didn’t care for once by it. I’d rather avoid something like that happening again.

  Until I knew more about the repercussions of using this thing, I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t even want to touch it.

  I gave the book another suspicious look before edging around it. The thing could stay where it was for now. When I had a moment, I’d talk to the shop keeper to see what I could find out
about the book. I wouldn’t accept any of his half-truths this time.

  More and more I regretted the ill-conceived notion that had led me to the Book Haven. Too late now. Chalk it up to a lesson learned. For now I needed to get ready for my meeting with my new client.

  * * *

  The Sunshine Diner was a throwback to the diners popular in the fifties. It was nearly thirty years old and a staple in the neighborhood. It had much of the same décor as when it was built, but instead of seeming ancient and run down, it managed to seem charming, like it was something out of my grandparents’ courting days.

  During breakfast they were always packed. Arrive any time after seven and you were looking at an hour wait. Lunch and dinner were only slightly less busy. Their peanut butter s’more milkshake was impossible to pass up.

  That held true this time as I sat in a cracked, red vinyl booth and gave my waitress my typical order of milkshake and fries.

  I people watched out the window as I waited for my meal. I was a little early but figured I’d top up on my sugar habit if I had to deal with a problem client. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. Eat and make sure I was here in plenty of time to scope out the area.

  A milkshake and plate of fries was set in front of me. I eyed it with the sort of lust a parched man eyes a glass of water after being in the desert for a few days. Sugar and artery clogging grease, two of the tastiest food groups.

  I took the spoon and dipped it in the shake. It was so thick that a straw wouldn’t cut it. You needed the spoon until the milkshake melted a little.

  I closed my eyes in bliss at the first taste. Thank God being a vampire hadn’t robbed me of this. I don’t know what I would have done if I never tasted peanut butter and chocolate and fries again. Life would have been a lot bleaker.

  A figure stood beside me when I opened my eyes. I started and nearly upended a spoonful of shake into my lap.

  I looked up. Liam. Speak of the lying devil.

  I should have let Jerry fire me.

  He watched me with an inscrutable expression.

  I frowned, unwilling to offer him a seat. There was a chance he wasn’t here to meet with me. Maybe he’d been passing by for some other reason, saw me and stopped in to apologize for stringing me along and promising to teach me a little more about what it means to be vampire. Stranger things have happened.

  He sat across from me.

  Damn. I’d really hoped this had just been a crazy coincidence.

  Liam always reminded me a little of a dragon, one that hadn’t been fully tamed. Fierce, proud and more than a little dangerous. He looked perfectly capable of having a civil conversation with someone, right before incinerating them where they stood so he could enjoy their perfectly cooked remains as a tasty snack.

  He appeared to be in his early thirties, though I suspected he was hundreds of years older than that. He was attractive if you could get past the crappy personality that made you just want to punch him in the face while screaming ‘you’re not the boss of me.’

  With dark brown hair cut short above his ears, cheek bones that could cut glass and lips that practically begged to be kissed, he’d probably starred in many a woman’s fantasies. He was a chick magnet, no doubt, but I preferred my men to be a little less capable of world annihilation.

  I took a fry and dipped it in my milkshake, waiting for him to speak. In the slight chance that he wasn’t my client and had only sat down to nag me about joining a clan, I wasn’t going to give him any clues. Jerry took confidentiality very seriously, and I didn’t want Liam to stick around to get a glimpse of the person I was supposed to meet.

  I ate several more fries in the same way. The silence stretched between us as he watched behind a bland mask.

  The minutes dragged on.

  Maybe I should say something, if only to speed this along.

  No. I didn’t care, remember? Not about anything he had to say. Unless he was here as a client, in which case I did care, but only from the standpoint of my job.

  He’d had his chance to press the vampire agenda. He went MIA instead. In the end that told me all I needed to know.

  “I should apologize,” he finally said.

  I arched an eyebrow. “Oh? For what?”

  He gave me a look that said that I knew perfectly well for what.

  I gave him a sickly sweet smile that said I had no idea what he was talking about.

  I’d learned during our previous meeting that Liam was very good at managing his facial expressions. You had to pay very close attention to the micro expressions to have even a small clue as to what was going on behind his electric blue eyes.

  There was a slight tightening at the corner of his mouth that I read as annoyance or maybe regret. Naw, had to be annoyance.

  “I meant what I put in that note. I have every intention of furthering our acquaintance and teaching you the basics of what you need to know.”

  “How indulgent of you.”

  “Business elsewhere required my attention.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Ok. No big deal.”

  It wasn’t either. Yes, he’d said he’d help me. Yes, I was kind of counting on that help, but in the end it didn’t matter. He had other things to do; I’d moved on. Yes, possibly not in the best direction since I had a book capable of moving itself from one room to another, but I’d take that over a possible indentured service to the vampires any day of the week.

  “We can pick up now that I’m back.”

  Again I shrugged. “No need. I’m good.”

  “You’re good?”

  “Yup.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “Bullshit.”

  I dunked another fry in my milkshake and then swirled it around for good measure before taking a sharp bite out of it.

  “Strong words for someone who hasn’t been here for the past few months,” I observed mildly.

  He let out a sound that I would have called a growl a few months ago before meeting a werewolf, who actually could growl.

  “Is that why you’re eating fries and drinking a milkshake?” he asked.

  What was wrong with my food? It was tasty. It was in no way healthy, but I was a vampire. Healthy food had no meaning to me anymore.

  “What do you have against my food?”

  “The fact that you have to ask that question tells me everything I need to know.”

  Since I had no clue what he meant by that, I decided to move on.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?” His lips twisted in a half smirk.

  I sighed, already knowing where he was going with this.

  “I’m your new client.”

  Great.

  Jerry’s speech suddenly made more sense. In the entire time that I’d worked for him, we’d never accepted a job from the vampires. Partly because of my special circumstance, but mostly because of something that happened way before I was ever hired. I didn’t know the details. Just that it was bad and resulted in the vampires being blacklisted.

  Now it looked like that had changed.

  “Oh goody,” I said in a deadpan voice.

  I slurped at the milkshake, making sure to make extra noise when I saw the way Liam eyed my sugary awesomeness with disdain.

  “There’s no need to prolong this then,” I said, pushing myself up and throwing enough money on the table to cover my meal. “I have no intention of working with you. You’ll need to find another courier for whatever job you have going.”

  “I don’t think so,” Liam said without moving a muscle.

  I snorted. I didn’t care what he thought.

  Before I could get more than a few steps away, he added, “There would be consequences if you walk away now. For yourself. And Jerry.”

  I stilled, keeping my back towards him. Something inside told me to keep walking, that I would regret letting him draw me in, but a bigger part wanted to know what those consequences would be. Were they the sort that were annoying but didn’t r
eally affect your life, like not being able to enter any vampire owned territory? Or were they the life altering, world changing sort, like we’ll kill your family if you don’t do what we tell you to? They’d made that threat before.

  I rolled my shoulders and adjusted my messenger bag. This was going to suck so bad. I just knew it.

  “Let’s get this over with then, shall we?” I slid back into my booth, not bothering to take the messenger bag off. I planned to jet out of here at the soonest opportunity. “Tell me about the job.”

  “Glad you saw it my way.”

  Yeah, yeah. He got me to do things his way again. His day was coming. I just had to figure out his weakness. We’d see whose way we followed then.

  “Just get on with it. This isn’t my only stop tonight.”

  “I assumed from my conversation with Jerry that this matter would have your full attention until its completion.”

  I bit down on the response about assumptions and concentrated on keeping all snarky comments locked inside. He was a client now, even if I’d rather stab him in the eye than work for him. Didn’t matter anymore. I wouldn’t act unprofessional just because I’d rather endure another bout of sun therapy than deal with vampire stuff.

  “You’ll have to take that up with him. I don’t decide the assignments.”

  He frowned at me. I gave him the expression I used to give my commanding officer when they were being ridiculous. It was a combination of ‘I’m too dumb to understand what you’re saying’ and ‘I can’t even fathom why you’re asking this of me.’ In my experience, people either got really pissed or they left me alone because they figured it’d be a waste of time dealing with my level of obstinateness. Sometimes it was a little of both.

  He didn’t have either of those reactions, just settled back in his seat and watched me with an unamused expression.

  I slurped at my milkshake and was gratified when the skin around his eyes tightened.