Dead Waters - Anton Strout [10]
“Lucky Connor,” I said, “playing liaison to the undead. . .”
Aidan smiled as the two of us walked off to the curb, his fangs showing once again. “I guess having a vamp in the family means he gets the short straw.”
“We’ve got to get to our own meeting,” I said, not wanting to delay any longer. “Hopefully ours doesn’t involve your meetings. They might meet to make little baby meetings.”
“Let’s hope not,” Jane said, hailing a cab that was rounding Columbus Circle. It slowed for her, even as disheveled as she was. “I hope the meeting goes quickly either way. I still need to wash all the glass out of my hair. Ick.”
“Better glass than blood,” I said.
“Agreed,” Aidan added from over by the great glass doors of the Gibson-Case Center, and then gave me a dark smile as his eyes moved to Jane. “Would be a waste of perfectly good blood.”
I ignored his words, but the residual anger I was experiencing rose up inside me and wanted me to go back and see how large a pile of dust I could leave him in. I didn’t need to reawaken the vampire/human war simply because I had an all-too-intense reading with my power.
3
As our cab shot down Broadway to the East Village, the two of us jostled around in the back of the vehicle. Still distracted by the intense jealousy of the tattooist coursing through me, I almost jumped out of my skin when Jane’s hand brushed up against the back of mine.
“Brandon’s going to be pretty cheesed off by the amount of damage we did in there,” Jane added.
“We didn’t do the damage,” I said. “That creepy tattooist lady did it all. Granted, she was tossing stuff at us left and right, but we didn’t do anything except try to stay alive through all that.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
“Let the Big Biter on Campus try to collect damages,” I said. “Ha! Compensation from the Department of Extraordinary Affairs during a budget crisis? Good luck with that. Don’t worry. Aidan’s just worried what his boss will think of all the damage done under his instruction like a good little vampire lapdog.”
“Fangs and all,” Jane said. “You’re right. Connor will probably talk some sense into them.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said. “Hopefully a little brotherly love should calm Captain Emo and his master down.”
I laid my head back against the seat and remained silent for the rest of our cab ride. When it dropped us off at our East Village coffee shop cover operation on Eleventh Street, we hit the sidewalk right outside of the large red doors that led into the Lovecraft. We raced out of the rain and into the café, embracing its warmth and its dark wood floors and exposed brick walls that were adorned with movie posters on both sides of the long, open space. Most of the décor was a clutter of mismatched furniture—comfy chairs, low café tables—and a long, wooden counter ran along the entire right side of room. The coffeehouse wasn’t full, but the faces I did see gathered around in the café area were all people I knew from the Department hidden beyond the cover operation.
“Looks like half the Department is on a coffee break,” I said, acknowledging the throng of coworkers that had assembled in the public café area.
“What’s going on?” Jane asked. “Why is everyone up here in the coffeehouse?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe they’re fumigating the Department again. Don’t tell me. . . they can’t get the smell of rotting zombies out of the curtains in the hidden office area.”
An especially familiar face came into view as my partner, Connor Christos, came walking over to us. “Not quite, kid,” Connor said, his hands jammed down into the pockets of his beaten old trench coat. His clothes underneath it were a bit dressier than my usual jeans and T-shirt but my partner always looked a little wrinkled around the edges. His simple black tie was loose and skewed to one side. As if the thick white streaks in his sandy brown hair weren’t enough, the grim look on his