He’d opened it dozens of times by now, but his vision still tunneled with each new attempt, and he turned it back tounreadso fast that he hadn’t gotten through the first paragraph yet. It had been so much easier interacting with them in person, where the constant action and reaction of an adrenaline-inducing conversation had blocked out the rest of his emotions and let his natural charisma shine. But while charisma alone might have gotten him the initial offer, there was still one more thing they wanted from him.
“I do have one job I’m looking at.” Wes mentioned it as casually as he could manage.
He couldn’t tell Kendall that he was only trying to get the position in order to rip the company up from its foundations and hurl it into the sun. Kendall might have been his best friend, but it still felt too ridiculous to say,“Hey, I’m convinced the largest pharmaceutical company in the country killed my mom but they won’t let me into their top-secret research center unless I work for them.”Especially when the only proof he had was a flyer for their research he’d found tucked into her bedside book, her complaints of falling ill two months before, and the fact that a bus ticket had been purchased with her card on the assumed day of her disappearance. His mother hated buses so much that she’d thrown a party when the train system that passed through the city had added a new line. Someone had bought the bus ticket as a cover up. Someone with funds and slightly dangerous research opportunities that his mom had taken an interest in when the symptoms of her illness lingered.
Someone Wes was going to ruin, if only he could get that far.
“I already had an interview, actually. They seemed to like me.” He also didn’t add that he’d applied with his father’s last name to minimize his connection to his mom, or thatliked himhad been an understatement when he’d nailed all three of their grueling interviews.
“Dude, that’s awesome.” Kendall beamed at him. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“Eh, it probably won’t work out. It’s for a sales kind of deal with that big research company that’s always trying to recruit new volunteers, Vitalis-Barron. Except I’d be the one recruiting, and the volunteers they want most right now are vampires.”
“Shit, so you’d have to what? Single out vampires and convince them to do medical research?”
“Something like that.”
The shine of the interviewer’s teeth was engraved in his mind as she had leaned toward him, smiling in a way that sent chills down his spine.“Our research participants are all volunteers, but we know that research of this kind can be… intimidating. Sometimes participants need a little pressure to get through the doors. Once they’re inside and touring our facilities though, it’s rare they leave.”
Well, Wes sure knew a little something about people going into Vitalis-Barron Pharmaceuticals and not leaving. Right now they seemed to be focusing their attention on vamps and not humans. But how long would it be before their focus swept back toward single mothers with absent children?
“Like I said, I probably won’t get it. Their job offer has a clause where they’ll only accept me if I can prove I’ve got what it takes by signing up a vamp for them first.” Wes flipped on the light in the bathroom and propped his phone against the mirror, shoving his toothbrush into his mouth dry.
“You know it’s shit that they’re asking you to do unpaid labor, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” Wes popped out his toothbrush, leaning both elbows down to the counter to flick the tip in Kendall’s direction. “It’s probably why their entry-level salaries are so high.” That and their plethora of highly illegal and totally despicable research practices. Wes’s gut boiled. He just had to get in there. Had to prove it. “Where the hell do Ifinda vampire on my own, though?”
Knowing Vitalis-Barron’s dirty secrets, he wanted it to be a vamp who deserved that fate. Not some poor fool who just happened to get a bad bite and was doing his best not to hurt anyone, but the violent sort of vampires that always made the news. That seemed to be most of them, if the media could be believed. Though Wes had seen enough of his country’s finest journalism about humans of his own Hispanic heritage to know the media was as reliable as a gossiping aunt when it came to accurate portrayals of anyone they didn’t want as their neighbors.
That would all be beside the point if he couldn’t find any vampires in the first place. “I looked up stats, and the predicted number of vampires in San Salud was ‘between 2000 and 7500.’ Like fuck, man, if the experts don’t even know how to find the vampires to count them, what am I supposed to do?” He shoved his toothbrush back in his mouth at the end of the question, brushing so hard his dentist was probably getting goose bumps. The massive collection of beads wrapping up his wrist jangled.
“Hang out in the inner city?” Kendall suggested. “That’s where most of them live, right?”
“And poke my head into every alley hoping that I happen to spot one with their fangs out?”
“Or you could go to a bar wearing a revealing shirt and touch your neck a lot. Janice claimed she picked up three different vampires that way. Maybe you’ll find a jobanda date.”
“Janice claimed she was a secret descendant of Marie Antoinette,” Wes retorted, trying not to think about the time he’d stumbled into their complex’s back entrance at four am, somehow already hungover while still half-drunk, and seen a pretty pale boy with blood on his lips and his mouth against Janice’s neck. She’d looked so enraptured, relaxed and blissful and serene. The vision still haunted Wes sometimes, late at night when it seemed the only thing that could let him finally fall asleep would be an orgasm. He rinsed his toothbrush and dropped it back into the cup, trying not to look like he was hastily burying a multi-year sex fantasy.
Kendall, at least, seemed preoccupied with something that wasn’t his expression. “What’s that on your neck?”
Wes scowled at his reflection. He examined his tanned skin, his curls bobbing as he turned his face back and forth. Sure enough, a tiny mark marred the side of his neck. And was that another just above it? Wesley’s blood went cold and hot all at once. But they couldn’t be. He was overthinking this. “They’re just little bruises.” Now that hewasthinking, he was pretty sure some slight discoloration had been there on and off the last couple weeks. “I probably did something stupid in my sleep.”
“Knowing you? Definitely.” Beneath the forced humor, she sounded almost worried. “You sure they’re not fang marks or something?”
“You’re only saying that because we’re talking about vampires.” But they were the right distance apart. And the right general area. Wes laughed. “That would mean a vamp is sneaking into my bed at night, which is ridiculous. You’d think I’dknowif someone was in my bed.”
“I’d know. You’d be wildly oblivious until ten minutes after you’d already come.”
“That’s unfair!” Wes protested, a little over-dramatically, maybe, but the situation seemed to call for it.
“Not if it’s true! In sophomore year, you didn’t think to ask if Mel was into you until you’d already spent a full week sticking things up each other’s—”
“I regret ever telling you about that!” Though he didn’t regret the experimenting, or the orgasms that came with it, even if its subsequent dating attempt had failed miserably. “Or anything from my sex-life, for that matter. I’m abandoning our friendship in favor of the shower, thank you very much.” He picked up the phone, but his eyes flicked back to the mirror. To the marks on his neck. He had to stop thinking about them. “We still on for tomorrow?”
“I was going to take Leoni to see this new romance adventure movie that came out last weekend.”
“Abandoning me for your girlfriend.”
