Page 4 of Kissed the Mark
“Please let me in. I hate to be wet,” thevampire pleaded.
“What are you doing out here without yourlackeys?” It occurred to me suddenly that she could’ve overheard myinterrogation of Mateo Rivera and come to give me insiderinformation—but Leandra was even higher up on the food chain thanMateo, and she wasn’t likely to want to tell some non-vampire aboutvamp business. “Do you need something?”
“Won’t you let me in and find out?”
It wasn’t impossible to disinvite a vampireto your home, but it would require me going to a witch and havingthe place saged. Of which I would not have time for until after agood day’s rest. I did not fancy the idea of coming home aftergrabbing coffee to find Leandra on my couch going through mythings.
“Come on, fairy girl. I won’t just pop inwithout knocking. Where’s the decorum in that?”
In the end, it was the rain that did it forme. She looked pitiful in it, her skin glowing in the street lightand the drops running down her hair and face, smearing her makeup abit. Leandra never looked this vulnerable. I grumbled somethingalong the lines of “come in,” and she practically knocked me downto get through the door and up the stairs. I barely had my shoesoff and she had already scoured the hallway closet for a towel,with which she patted her hair and face down and mopped at herchest.
“Is this about me coming to the mall today?”I asked, setting the kettle on the stove.
She was standing in front of a mirror in thefoyer, but all I saw reflected in it were coats on the hooks of theopposite wall. I knew logically that vampires couldn’t bereflected, but it still creeped me out. “You were at the malltoday?” she asked.
Leandra was notoriously slippery, and she’dlied right to my face before, but I didn’t have time to figure outif she was telling the truth about not knowing that I’d paid a rarevisit to their HQ. Rivera had probably gone right to her to tattleon me, unless he too was ashamed of meeting with a werewolf and theothers didn’t know? “Never mind. What do you want?”
“I have a hit for you. I want you to hunther down. Kill only, no capture.”
I scooped a spoonful of chamomile into mymug. “You know how that works. You’ll have to write it up, petitionit to the council, and get it posted in the Guild, and then it’sall grabs for whoever nabs it first.”
“It’s a bit…sensitive. Are you getting me acup too?”
“You drink tea?” I asked.
She wrinkled her perfect nose. “I haven’t ina hundred years, probably. I used to like it though. Two sugarcubes and some cream.”
This fakeopening-up-to-get-me-to-do-what-she-wants shtick wasn’t gonna workon me. It was almost laughable how transparent she was being.“Let’s go downstairs. I can probably convince the servers to getyou some raw meat or something.”
Her eyes flashed. She followed me back downthe stairs, not bothering to cover her recently-dried hair even asI lifted my jean jacket above my head to fend off the rain. Iducked into the red-stained light of the sign that read THE JADESPIRIT and through their door. A perfectly normal-looking serverput his phone down from the front desk and rushed to greet us.“Olympia! And…?”
“Leandra. Pleased to make youracquaintance,” the vampire said.
He blinked at her dumbly, possibly becauseof her otherworldly beauty and possibly because of what she was.“Do you have any raw meat, Jian? She’s hungry. The bloodier thebetter. I’ll pay like you cooked it.”
“Uh, sure,” he said.
“Is that a human boy running a spiritrestaurant? I’m surprised,” Leandra said, the second he left.
“He’s their server. The place is run by egui.”
“Never heard of that.”
“Hungry ghosts? They were greedy in life sothey’re eternally hungry in death. I heard these ones werelingering in too many kitchens and got cursed off of so manypremises, they opened their own restaurant here. There’s an Indianrestaurant on the other side of town run by preta and it’s asimilar thing.” Mayfair, being the only supernatural-friendly townin the area, was fairly diverse, with all kinds of creaturesflocking here from anywhere and everywhere. “They’re unappetizingto look at.”
As if on cue, a partially see-through e guipoked his head through the window of the swinging kitchen doors,eyes bulging and jaw severely underbitten. His skin was a sicklygreen, his eyebrows huge and bushy. “Wow, it’s hideous,” Leandrasaid.
Jian returned from the kitchens with apackage wrapped in butcher paper. It was so bloody it hadpractically soaked through. “I found this! We’ll charge you forthree kung pao chickens?”
My wallet balked at the price, but I handedover my debit card. “My, Olympia, is this a date?” Leandra asked,sliding a hand through my arm.
I rolled my eyes and shook my arm out of hergrasp. “Youwishit was a date.” Jian handed the packageover, and I passed it on to Leandra, who was practically drooling.“I don’t think it’d be appreciated if you ate it here.”
And that’s how, ten minutes later, Leandrahad gotten pigs’ blood all over my beat-up brown couch, and alldown her face and hands. If I’d had any appetite, it was gone now,having watched her eat raw meat like a wild animal.
“Well, now that I’ve been an excellenthostess, what’s going on with this hit?” I asked, already Googlinghow to get blood stains out of couches on my phone and probablygetting added to an FBI watchlist.
Licking off her bloody fingers, Leandrasaid, “It’s confidential because it’s between vampires. We have anexception to punish our own for wrongdoing. There may not bepersonal mayoral approval, but there is vampire queen approval, andthat’s all that matters for my purposes. And yours.”
