He forced a sigh—very theatrical in someone who never breathes. “You are truly a demanding taskmistress, Harper.” He drawled my name with a purring sound that stroked down my spine with an insidious, lulling warmth and distracted me a moment from his moving closer.
“You don’t seem to suffer much on account of it,” I said, noticing his sudden proximity and giving him a warning glance. There was no place to recoil to without standing up, but I couldn’t do that; the interview would end one way or another the moment I let him get the better of me. I didn’t have much tolerance for any male playing games with me at that moment, but I’d have to go along at least for a while in spite of my distaste. I thought a defensive chill of disapproval was a little risky, but safer than any false friendliness. I set my teeth and kept to my seat.
Edward picked up my hand and held it in both of his, studying it as if he’d find some secret in the shape and arrangement of the bones beneath the skin. “My dear, I suffer the lack of your skills and guidance.”
I pulled my hand back from his with some difficulty, feeling a sickening, artificially induced reluctance to remove myself from his ramped-up heat. “If you lay that on any thicker you’ll need a trowel,” I said. I wouldn’t have been so bold if we’d never met before—even playing the noble suitor, he still had an edge of malice and considerable power to exercise it—but I thought the score between us wasn’t so uneven as he did. Yes, I had convinced him to do things he didn’t care for and he’d suffered physical harm for it, but the end results had been much better for him than for me.
“I’ve been very patient,” he started, letting his projection grow colder. The rolling unpleasantness of his annoyance made me queasy, but the chill was a relief. Still, I could sense him readying another tactic. “How long do you intend to pretend that your tiny existence, your tiny home, your tiny job, and your mayfly friends satisfy your talents? You could do so much more. And I grow extremely tired of waiting for you to earn out your debt.”
I laughed. I hadn’t expected him to be so clumsy about it. “What debt? As I recall we’re pretty even on the who-owes-who score. I brought some problems to your attention which, if left alone, would have destroyed you, and in exchange I asked for no favors for myself, only for payment to those you already owed. You got to keep your fiefdom, you got to be a hero, you got to play magnanimous lord of the manor and clean house of your enemies in one swoop. And—let me see—you saved Seattle and got Carlos back into your camp, which were certainly unexpected assets for you. How is that a debt on my part?”
“You got your payment for it,” he replied, his voice chilling further, even while I saw a gleam in his eye at the anticipated snap of his trap. I thought I’d play along just a little further before I disarmed him.
“I got nothing but survival, a new set of scars, and an association with you and your kind I could happily do without. Yes, my cases closed, but the consequences of them aren’t anyone’s idea of a reward.”
He leaned in a little, trying to catch my eye. If I let him capture my gaze he’d set his hook, whether he had a real claim or not, so I turned my head, glaring at him from the corners of my narrowed eyes.
Frustrated, his voice dropped to a hiss. “There is the small matter of a check, which you accepted and which therefore binds you to me in debt, since, as you point out, I owed you nothing.”
“Oh, yeah. Even ‘gifts’ come with a price.” I brought the heavy cream envelope out of my purse, meeting his eyes now, and snapped it onto the table between us.
The sound reverberated like a broken guitar string. “You mean this check?”
I’d kept the check in its envelope in the bottom drawer of my office desk since the night it dropped through my mail slot. There were a lot of zeros in the amount line, but the temptation they represented hadn’t outweighed the servitude I’d been quite sure would come with it. I’d twigged to the real cost of unearned rewards at an early age when I’d been offered an advance out of the chorus line—if I’d submit to the unpleasant kinks of the musical director. I hadn’t learned the lesson well enough, though, and had been caught few times before I’d had it hammered into my knowledge of the world like a spike—the final time with the back of someone’s hand.
I approach all offers of free lunches with suspicion, and the more lavish they are, the greater my skepticism. After my initiation into the Grey and with the effects of magical bindings lingering still, I had imagined the price would be even worse where magic and vampires were involved. Judging from Edward’s reaction and the feel of shattered magic lying between us, cynicism had been the right choice.
I watched Edward pick up the envelope and draw the check and its note—“for services to the community”—out. The temperature dropped until my breath left ice crystals dancing in the air between us. Fury isn’t always hot—if it had been, the paper would have been rendered into ash too fast to watch.
Edward placed the papers on the table with a delicate touch, as though something might break if he exerted even a gram more force. “Ah.”
“You should check your own bank statements,” I suggested. “Your accountants fell down on the job. I’ve had that since last May, but you didn’t notice it hadn’t been deposited.”
He raised his gaze to my face, neutral on the surface, but the aura around his head was shot with bolts of furious red lightning in a boiling black storm. Then he sat back, the squall of anger blowing out as fast as it had blown in. He shook his head.
“I should have known it wouldn’t work with you.”
“We’re not all that venal,” I said.
“Oh, it wasn’t venality I thought might catch you.” He didn’t say what he had thought would ensnare me, though. “But I’ve wasted enough time with this. What do you want from me—and this time you may very well incur a debt.”
“Don’t try and rope me, Edward. I just need information; I’m not asking for a favor.”
“Very well,” he snapped. “What do you want to know?”
“Who is killing the homeless in Pioneer Square?”
He seemed surprised. “However should I know? And why did you think I would?”
“The deaths have been very odd—not much blood in the bodies, hands and legs apparently chewed off in some cases.”
Edward scowled, sending a ripple of cold over me. “I suppose the seed of suspicion was planted by your unfortunately clever friend Quinton. I can’t say I care for the company you keep.”
“I’m not so fond of some of it, either,” I replied pointedly. “You worked together just fine before. Why the animosity?”
He almost smiled. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Edward joked—not that it was a joke. “Why would you, cynical one, believe such a tale, even from a friend?” He put an unpleasant spin on the last word.
“I’ve seen some of the bodies myself. But I don’t know if these are vampire victims—I haven’t seen many, but none of them looked like this. So I don’t know what’s wrong with these—except that something magical killed them and took their blood and limbs along when it left. That sounds like your kind, but there are other factors. Besides the sleeping dead, there have been zombies seen in the area—one I think might be an earlier victim of whatever did this—and there’s a pattern that goes back sixty years or more. It’s not a human killing these people. But since vampires also walk after death, you can understand how I thought there might be a connection.”
Edward’s lip curled in disgust. “I assure you none of my people are responsible. We don’t… rend, and we don’t raise zombies. The occasional mistakes are dealt with, not allowed to roam the night.”
“If I accept that no vampire did this—”
“None did!” His voice carried force that battered against my mind and body. I didn’t quite stop myself from flinching. Edward seemed a little mollified by my discomfort. The rest of the vampires in the room glanced at us and then away with a ripple of surprise across the red-fired surface of the Grey.