Page 10 of Just Dare Me
I join her in the moonlight with a shrug. “Uh. Well. I’m Shayne Davies, owner of a 2006 Pontiac Crap-pile, and completely naked.”
For a long moment she studies every inch of my face with intense interest. I don’t feel self-conscious, but I do start understanding how it must feel to be food on a platter.
“Is there some protocol for meeting with a queen? Something I’m supposed to say?”
“You might ask who I’m wearing.”
“Except that means nothing to me, so you might as well just ask me how long it’s been since I shaved my legs.”
“Several months, obviously.”
“Oh yeah, I just remembered what I wanted to ask. What the hell do you want?”
“We desire a meeting.”
“Perfect. Now that we’ve had one, will you stop interfering with my raids?”
“This is not a meeting, it’s an introduction. The meeting will be set for a time and place of your choosing. My people want to meet your people. Together, we can discuss the next move against our mutual adversary.”
“First of all, I don’t haveadversaries. I have punk-ass bitches whose faces I want to murder.”
“Word choice is irrelevant. We will help you murder their faces.”
“And second of all, what if my people don’t want to meet with your people?”
“Irrelevant. Wewillmeet. You will choose the time and location. It should be within the next week at a public place with many people, preferably at night, or at least the sunset hour, as to accommodate my presence.”
“That’s a long list of demands for something you wantmeto pick. Are you sure you don’t already have something specific in mind?”
“I do, in fact. Comerica Park in two days. 8:00 p.m. in the Columbia parking lot. There will be many people gathered due to—”
I cut her off. “Because it’s baseball’s opening day, I know.” My heart plummets. It’s also the day Jay wanted us to get married. At Comerica Park. Maybe I shouldn’t resent her for stealing our exact plans. Maybe there’s something fitting about using that same time and place to plan an attack on Jay’s captors.
“Are you unwell? I can hear your blood pulsing.”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “And I accept. We’ll be there. But only if you agree to one condition. I hate East Side as much as you, but all I really care about is freeing their hostage. He’s human.”
“Your fiancé. We’re aware.”
“Good. Are you also aware that he hates vampires with the burning passion of a thousand suns?”
For the first time, her flat expression is interrupted by emotion, a flash of anger that clenches her jaw. “What a poetic yet deadly description. I’m sorry he feels that way. I’m sure such potent revulsion is completely justified.”
“Like you care. What’s another human with a pitchfork when half the underworld wants to kill you ourselves?”
She raises her chin to glare down at me with contempt. “Unlike the rest of you, we are human before we are underworld, which means our fates are intertwined with theirs. Our future depends on the turn of men’s hearts, the ease with which we may seduce them into our fold. One man with a pitchfork is one less man who would love me.”
“Oh, Jay is definitely one less man for you. Trust me, he ain’t going anywhere near your folds, except with an Ash wood stake. So I’m willing to work with you against the East Side horde. You can have that fight, tear ’em to pieces, get your revenge, with or without my help. But my one condition is that when it comes to Jay—when we find him—you leave him to me. You and yours stay the hell away. You don’t touch him, you don’t talk to him, you don’t so much as look at him, or it’s your funeral, and it’ll be closed casket.”
Scorn kindles in her eyes as she narrows them at me. “Do you know why I didn’t send a messenger to meet with you tonight? I wanted to come myself, to put my own eyes on you and see if I could understand what it is about Shayne Davies that inspires such deep emotion, such loyalty in her friends, and such fear in her enemies. Well, I’m looking at you now, and I just don’t see it.”
Backing into the shadows, she disappears. I trade puzzled looks with Muppet. “Was it something I said?” His only response is to whine and lay his head on his paws. “Oh, would you cut that out! Why don’t you ever do shit whenItell you to?”
Question: How do you gethalf-a-dozen naked, sleeping men out of their lover’s bed at four in the morning?
Answer: You chuck an entire farm’s worth of protein on the grill.
You never heard so much sizzling in your life—from bacon, from two-inch thick rib eyes, from slabs of carne asada the size of a frisbee, from spicy chorizo, from two dozen eggs frying at once. Terrance and Enzo work the grill with spatulas and tongs in each hand, flipping cooked stuff onto piles on the counter, then tossing more raw stuff onto the massive grill.
