Something Secret This Way Comes: Secret McQueen, Book 1 (18 page)

Keaty rose and offered a hand to Holden. They shook cordially before Holden and I took our seats in a pair of high-backed leather chairs facing the desk. Keaty didn’t make any passive-aggressive remarks about my absence and lack of check-in calls, but he did say, “I understand you had an interesting night.”

I tensed because feminine decency first led me to believe he was talking about my unexpected intimacies with Desmond. Then it dawned on me that my romantic endeavors wouldn’t interest Keaty in the slightest. “You mean the thing at the Chameleon?”

“It was practically a massacre according to what I’ve heard.”

“I’m sure Genevieve has insurance.”

“Genevieve Renard has a type of insurance cash can’t buy,” Holden interjected. “She is owed favors by just about everyone in this city, both human and otherwise. She is a clever woman.”

I smirked when Holden used Genevieve’s last name.
Renard
was the French word for fox, which I knew thanks to my
grandmere’s
insistence that I learn a second language. An ocelot named after a fox. If Genevieve was as clever as they claimed, maybe our names really do help define us. Mine was a royal pain in the ass.

“What brings you both to my office?” Keaty asked, interrupting my musings.

I wanted to correct him that it was
our
office, but I didn’t think an argument of semantics with a vampire in the room would go over too well. My pride remained wounded for the sake of preserving his.

“Have you heard anything about these prostitutes with missing memories? Or the girl who ended up mauled and drained in the park?”

“Yes.”

“Anything other than the basic details?”

“Yes.” His attention moved to Holden, then back to me. For all his apprehensions about things that went bump in the night, Keaty would have made an incredible vampire. He loved to be vague and lacked the nuances for sarcasm the same way older vamps did. No wonder the Tribunal trusted him so much. “Is the council suddenly interested in dead whores?”

“No. But we are very interested in what is killing them.” Holden looked just as unmoved now as he had sitting in my apartment with the werewolves. I wondered if the only place he felt uneasy was walking with me to the Tribunal.

Keaty leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. He looked contemplatively at the ceiling, which had beautiful, thick crown molding and was a rich burgundy color in the center. I imagined he was thinking about blood when he looked at it.

“I think your best option would be to talk to one of them yourself.”

I glared at him with no attempt whatsoever to mask my unhappiness. It was past ten now and I still hadn’t eaten. I was cranky and more than a little bloodthirsty. My willingness to scour downtown New York for vampire-thralled prostitutes was wearing thin. It would be so much easier if someone would tell me what I needed to know rather than making me feel like Gretel following a trail of crumbs.

Keaty had no patience for the antics of a twenty-two-year-old vampire hunter and fixed me with a hard stare. “When I say that, I don’t mean interviewing them as yourself, either. I mean if you want to find out what is happening to these girls, you’ll need to find out firsthand.”

Holden’s eyebrows raised such a slight amount it would have been an indifferent change to anyone else. But I didn’t miss the tiny curve of a grin on his lips. He knew what Keaty meant by firsthand.

Unfortunately, so did I.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I’d rather not get into the reasons behind why I own a pair of gold lamé hot pants.

I found this whole idea ridiculous, and the outfit, in my opinion, was too clichéd. I’d seen enough prostitutes, probably more than Keaty or Holden had, to know the hot pants and black halter were beyond unnecessary when it came to picking up a john in this day and age. The fact I was slight of build and a natural blonde meant I’d be an obvious target.

Maybe that’s what I wanted.

I walked down 59th Street, past the looks of disdain I got by Bloomingdale’s, and gathered more inquiring glances as I reached the area near the Queensboro Bridge. Across the river the lights of Long Island City glimmered more attractively than I thought the city itself was capable of. The East River swept by, and as I watched the water, I considered how many bodies I’d put there and how many had been dumped there by others. Bodies that didn’t all deserve to be dead.

A short distance from the bridge a group of girls huddled together, most wearing tights and long T-shirts. The evening still had a bite of winter to it, but only one of them was wearing a coat. All five girls were smoking, and a permanent cloud lingered over their heads. Three were Latina with hair styled in dramatic braided rows and perms. One was a black girl with her hair in a misguided weave that appeared unnatural and uncomfortable. The look on her face was somewhere between exhaustion and ennui, and her lip jutted out in a pout. She wasn’t inhaling any of the smoke from her Pal Mal. She just sucked it in and blew it back out, not taking any time to let it linger in her mouth. Her shirt had a silver tiger on it. The remaining prostitute was the skinniest white girl I’d ever seen. She had pale skin wrapped like cellophane around her jumble of elbows, knees and jutting bones. These girls had seen monsters that had nothing to do with my line of work. I felt guilty that some of the creatures of my world had crossed into theirs. They had it bad enough without vampires using them as a source of fast food.

As I approached I was thankful my internal temperature protected me from the bitter spring chill. The possibility of a late-spring snow was an unspoken promise on a night like this. I sidled up to them cautiously, my head bowed like a submissive puppy.

“Whatchuwant, you?” the largest of the girls asked. She was six inches taller than me and had to weigh over two hundred pounds. Her arms were crossed over her substantial chest, and she didn’t look like she wanted any part of whatever I was selling.

It hadn’t occurred to me on the walk here I would need any kind of a backstory. Foolishly, I had hoped the prostitutes would see me as one of their ranks and accept me into their questionable sisterhood. Then they would immediately start talking about the vampires who had taken others of their kind, giving me the answers I needed so I could call it a night. I could be such a dumb blonde sometimes.

“Uhh.”

“Park Avenue is da other way, girly. You a long way from da escort services of da Upper East Side, ya know?” This was from the black girl as she exhaled her ornamental smoke in my face.

The skinny white girl laughed but said nothing. It was clear she was the minority here and she knew it.

The big girl took a hard look at me and snorted. “You think you can come here? You think your pretty blonde hair gonna make us say
oh, Blondie, you can be one of us
? Hmm? You lost on your way to a strip club? Whatdafuckyouwant.”

What I wanted was to give her a good reason to shove her attitude right up her ass before I did it for her. These girls were treating me with the same disdain young vampires did upon hearing my name for the first time. It pissed me off, but in her case she had a reason to look down on me.

A line of tears shone in my eyes, turning them into wide, wet orbs of sorrow. “I was working a few blocks east. Last week this girl on my corner got into a car. She never came back and they found her in the park all ripped up.” My voice trembled convincingly.
The Oscar goes to…

They looked unmoved, but I saw the two leaner Latinas bobbing their heads in enthusiastic agreement.

“Yolanda, like what happened wit Cleo, yeah?” The black girl was silenced with a raised hand from the larger girl. She was clearly the leader.

Yolanda’s eyes narrowed, and she assessed me more seriously now. “Whatchyourname, girl?”

“Brigit.” I used the name at the forefront of my mind after meeting with Mercedes.

“Brigit. Sounds like a fucking cheerleader.”

The other girls laughed for a second before they settled into observant silence. In the darkness near the river, at least one vampire was watching the whole exchange. Holden’s presence covered me like a thin, protective blanket. Thinking of Holden brought another vampire to mind. I wondered what Sig would think of this if he knew it was a result of the assignment he’d given me. I thought he might get more than a little pleasure out of my current situation. Doubtless, Holden would let him know about tonight’s antics.

A car drove by and slowed, and I became the girls’ last concern. I hung back, and the five of them launched into a well-oiled chorus of, “Hey, baby! How you doin’, honey? You need a date? I’ll show you a real good time.” The whole thing made me queasy.

I was expecting him to pick one of the thin, prettier Latina girls, but to my surprise large, bland-faced Yolanda was chosen by the john. I craned my neck to get a better view of him, but the guy looked like any other hard-up, middle-aged schmuck who could only get pussy on a street corner.

The other four returned to huddle near me and gawked at me like I was a zoo display. They said nothing, just blew clouds of smoke in my face. I was willing to bet none of these girls were older than sixteen, yet each one looked about forty.

“Who’s Cleo?” I broke the silence and hoped it didn’t make me sound like a cop. I had crossed my arms over my chest and was pretending to be cold.

The two skinny Latinas looked at each other and said nothing, but each wore a grim expression. The white girl shuffled uneasily. The chatty black girl was my in, that much was clear. I stared at her, and she folded faster than a lawn chair.

“She used to be wit us, ya know?” the black girl said. One of the Latinas snarled when the girl started to speak, but it did nothing to stop the newly opened fount of knowledge. “It was like you said, yeah? She was here, she got picked up, but she
did
come back. Only she wasn’t right.”

“Wasn’t right how?”

“Veda. You shut your fucking mouth.”

Veda ignored her. “What it matter now, Misty, huh? Cleo dead, ain’t she? What da fuck it matter now?”

I needed to be clear on what Veda had said. “She’s dead?”

“Yeah, fuck man. Yeah.”

“But she was alive when she came back to you guys?” I asked.

“She got dropped off in this like, limo. She got out and she was like, staggering, ya know? Like she was drunk?” Veda pantomimed the weaving and bobbing of a woman under the influence, then abruptly stopped and pretended to smoke again. “Cleo ain’t no dummy. She knows you don’t drink when you wit a john. Dat shit get you killed.” Veda shook her head, heaving a solemn sigh as she pointed her cigarette at me for emphasis. This was the knowledge of world-weary teenaged prostitutes.

“But she was alive?”

“Fuck, girl, you deaf?” Misty said, but she didn’t seem hell-bent on putting an end to my questions anymore, so I would take what I could get.

“It was weird, yeah?” Veda continued, looking from me to the other girls, who each nodded seriously. “Like, she was babbling some shit in a weird language. Like you see on dem Jesus shows where the guy touches their heads and shit?” Veda mimicked this by acting out a faith healing on the skinny white girl. The girl giggled when Veda touched her forehead and dramatically announced, “You be healed, bitch!”

“She was speaking in tongues?”

“What da fuck else she gonna speak with?” Veda rolled her eyes. I saw no reason to explain, so I let her go on.

“Anyway.” Veda was enjoying being the center of attention even for such a small group. Her voice had begun to bubble with enthusiasm. I suppose being around Yolanda must have limited her opportunities to be noticed. “She went home after that an da next day Yolanda goes to check on her, right? ’Cause Raymond would be right fucking pissed if Cleo missed a night, ya know?”

I nodded as if I knew the full extent of their pimp’s wrath.

“And?”

“And Cleo was dead.”

“Dead how?”

“Fuuuuuck, Blondie, you ask a lot of questions.”

“I’ve been told that before.”

“Yolanda said it looked like she’d been dead for days,” Misty interjected, looking for her own chance to be the group’s source of knowledge. “Said she was all pale and shit, and looked like she had no blood in her.”

I felt the blood drain from my own face. I knew all too well where this was going. “Did you have her buried?”

“Do we look like we can afford to pay for a funeral?” This obvious point had been brought up by the previously silent white girl, who had recovered from her faith healing enough to resume smoking.

“Did
someone
bury her?” My heart was pounding.

Misty looked guilty, turning away from Veda, who appeared ill at ease upon hearing the question.

“No.”

“No?”

Veda glared at me and I shut my mouth. “We wanted to. We called the cops, right? Anonymous-like so that someone would take care of her?”

Now I could see where this fit in with the information Mercedes had given me. I nodded. They all bobbed along.

“But when the cops came, they didn’t take a body. There was no news about it. It was like she ain’t never even been there.”

But she
had
been there. It was no longer a mystery what had happened to Cleo the prostitute. And I knew, too, what had happened to the girls like the one Mercedes had told me about. I’d thought the body in the park was too sloppy to be Peyton, and now it was clear to me why.

I looked at the girls and could tell they had sensed the change in my attitude. I wasn’t hiding the horror on my face and was thankful they would have no understanding of its deeper meaning.

I had a clear grasp on what the base level of Peyton’s plan was. At first I’d believed he was killing and eating the girls for food alone, because no one would miss a dead prostitute. But if Cleo had just been drained for a meal, her body would have still been there for the cops to find. She wouldn’t have been speaking in tongues.

The signs described by Veda and Misty were those of a baby vamp before the change took effect. Drinking the blood of a vampire often caused hallucinations, violent fits, nausea and a number of other side effects. Then it caused death—one so fast-acting it didn’t resemble a normal human passing. Lastly, it resulted in rebirth.