“Black in Back” (Part III)

She must have slept because the next thing she knew, she was shaken awake by a hand on her shoulder. Black growled above her.

“Come on, sugar, plans have changed. It’s time to go.”

Her eyes opened sluggishly, she thought, until she realized they were in fact swollen from crying. They felt grainy and icky, and her heart plummeted on discovering this was not a bad dream but what her life had become.

And it was about to get worse.

Black didn’t wait for her to get upright before he rattled a paper in her face. Tess batted it away, but he was persistent as a gnat. The paper cracked inches from her nose. In a flare of temper, she grabbed it from his hand. It crunched in her grip as she finished sitting up and scowled at him.

“It’s still dark. We can’t leave until the sun comes up.”

“We’re leaving. Now.” He roamed the room as he talked, stuffing everything including the Jockeys back into the shopping bags.

“Why?”

“Look at the paper, then you tell me.”

She looked at the paper, blinked twice, then looked back at Black. “Where did you find this?”

“It was taped to a lamppost.”

“Aurora’s?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Tess. Who else is looking for you?”

Her gaze dropped once more to the paper in her hand. It might as well have been a mirror. She met her own eyes in the printed image placed beneath a header asking: “Have You Seen This Woman?” Her physical description was listed below the picture, followed by a phone number. Tess stared at the numerical sequence, numb and sick and aghast.

“Cough it up, sweetheart.”

She barely managed a horrified whisper. “It’s my sister.”

“Your sister? You told me there was no dossier!”

“There wasn’t! Isn’t! That doesn’t mean no one will notice I’m missing!”

Black cursed with preternatural vigour. Then he threw her purse at her. “We’re going.”

“We can’t; not until I talk to Grace.”

“You’re not talking to anyone. Get your ass off the bed and out the door, or I’ll help it along with my boot.”

“Black, I can’t. She’s my sister. I have to call her before Raymond’s goons see this and go after her.”

“Sugar, if I’ve seen it, they’ve seen it.”

“Then I really have to call her. Don’t worry, I’ll use the house phone.”

He grabbed her arm as she tried to pass him. He wasn’t that tall, but he was taller than she was and he used the difference to his advantage. She froze in his shadow, disliking the proximity that allowed her to feel his breath on her face. He didn’t smell like a man. He didn’t smell at all, though his clothes smelled of booze and secondhand smoke … and his breath, it did smell, vaguely but definitely, of raw red meat. Tess turned her head away as he snarled. “Why didn’t you tell me you have a sister?”

“You didn’t ask.”

She winced as he shook her. “I’m asking now.”

Actually, he was being a jerk, but she supposed he was entitled. Surprises had no place in their current scenario and discovering her face plastered to a lamppost ranked pretty high on the list of nasty ones. At least he was willing to listen before he hustled her out of town.

“I don’t see her that often,” she said. “We’re not that close.”

“Then why has she put out an APB on you now?”

Tess wrenched free to put some distance between herself and the blood on his breath. “She’s a few years older than me, and when Travis died, she got all big sisterly and concerned about my state of mind.”

If sarcasm had a posture, Black nailed it by folding his arms. “Any particular reason? Like you talking about a vampire murder, for instance?”

“I told her I was fine.”

“That’s all?”

“Pretty much.”

“What else, Tess? What else did you tell her to make her go all big sisterly on you?”

She tried not to be affected by him using her name. “I might have mentioned that I was investigating on my own.”

Black muttered something intensely rude. “I’m guessing that was the last time you spoke to her.”

“We texted back and forth, but you dropped my cell phone into the sewer so I haven’t been replying lately.”

His stare tripled its weight. Tess stared back. It was stupid to lock horns when they needed each other to get out of this mess. Maybe she had screwed up, but he wasn’t perfect either and she wanted him to know it.

But the longer they stood glaring at each other, the more time her mind had to ponder the niggling knot that had formed in her gut. Among the many things Grace was, panicky was not one of them. An unanswered text message might rouse mild curiosity, but she wouldn’t go public before she conducted her own search, and Tess had only been without her cell phone for a couple of days.

“You can call her when we get where we’re going. Let’s move.”

“Black, wait. There’s something weird about this poster showing up now.”

“ ‘Now’?” he echoed, warily.

“So soon after the Four Seasons. You said that Raymond knew more about me than you did. If that’s true, then he could also know about Grace. I have to be sure that she’s okay. Let me call her.”

“What if she’s not okay?” Black demanded. “I can’t save the world, sweetheart. Your mechanic is in trouble too, once he sees this, and he knows you’ve dyed your hair.”

Tess heard the mounting stress in his tone. He was scared, all right. Maybe more than she was. She tried a dose of reverse psychology to steady him and he didn’t fall for it.

“If you can’t wait, then don’t. Go without me.”

His jaw tensed in the now-familiar sign of internal struggle. Tess allowed herself a moment to notice his handsome features, the broad planes of his brow and cheekbone, his sharp straight nose, and lips that were full when he relaxed but were more often thinned with temper, displeasure, or generally bad attitude. She watched his face soften beneath her gaze and thought she had won—

—then he spun on his heel and strode out the door.

………

She waited, but he didn’t come back. She jumped at every creak and squeak, hope and fear running neck and neck in the adrenaline rush, but he didn’t come back. Only when the tattered window shade gradually changed from opaque to translucent did she admit defeat.

For an empowering instant, she told herself she was safer without him. Since they had yet to be legally integrated into society, vampires policed themselves and, because of that, Black had more to fear than Tess did. He, not she, had pulled the trigger on Raymond’s protégé. No one would question if he disappeared. No one would put up posters of his face or file a missing persons report. He probably wouldn’t be treated as a homicide, either, assuming that he left a corpse. Tess knew that vampires died when they were shot with a flare gun, but she hadn’t stuck around to see what had happened to the one after the fire went out. Had the body turned to ash on the hotel room carpet? Had it steamed into thin air? All she recalled was the keening, curdling scream, and the form of a beautiful woman writhing in agony as her skin burned from the inside out.

She didn’t want Black to die like that. She didn’t want him to die at all.

The thought bugged her enough to get her moving. Black’s paranoia had made an impression; she used the front desk phone rather than risk being seen outdoors for no good reason.

Grace’s phone almost went to voice mail. Tess was about to disconnect when a click preceded a murky, “Hello?” and she knew she’d disrupted her sister’s sleep.

“Hey, sis, it’s me.”

“Tess?” The fog vanished from Grace’s voice. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know so you can quit posting my face all over town.”

“Say what?”

A trickling chill pooled in Tess’s stomach. “Are you okay?” she asked, trying to keep her tone casual.

“I’m kinda confused, but that might be sleep deprivation. What are you talking about? Who’s posting your face all over town?”

I thought you were. Aloud, she lost some of her nonchalance. “Are you at home?”

“Yeah …”

“Stay there. I’ll be right over.”

“Tess, are you in trouble?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there. Stay put and don’t be home to anyone but me. See you in a bit.” She hung up before Grace could ask anything more and was suddenly grateful that Black had dumped her cell phone. The darned devices were privacy time bombs, waiting for some lunatic to press the button and release personal information all over cyberspace. A sewer worker was less likely to hack a pink-skinned iPhone than a vampire maven was to milk the chrome-clad one stolen from his lover’s plaything—as Tess threw her thrift store bags in the back of a dirty cab, she remembered that Travis had housed all sorts of goodies on his phone, including photos and phone numbers. And she hadn’t missed it when he died. She hadn’t thought of it at all, mostly because she hadn’t packed up his belongings. She’d been unable to face erasing his presence to make it seem like he’d never been there. Grace had offered to help and been rebuffed. After that, things had changed between the sisters.

Tess kept an eye out the back window as the cab headed toward the upscale mall where she’d left her vehicle. The morning commute had yet to begin and traffic was light both on the street and on the sidewalk. She spotted Aurora hanging with a couple of trashier-dressed peers; had Black gone to her after leaving the hotel? Was her come-hither sass at passing cars meant to throw his own off his trail? Tess was tempted to roll down the window and ask, but Aurora had made her allegiance plain. She would hide Black from Tess as well as from the vampires. Despite the snub, Tess hoped the hooker wouldn’t suffer for her part in Black’s escape—assuming that he did escape. He had nowhere to go and no means to get there. Somehow Tess doubted that Raymond would quit searching for him. The lord of the locals hadn’t struck her as the forgiving type and forever was only a long time to hold a grudge if you didn’t have it. Raymond could afford to keep the hunt alive indefinitely.

But Black was no longer her problem. He had walked out; she hadn’t tossed him. She sat back in the cab and left the south side behind, grateful to be getting out of the stews even if it put her out in the open. Video surveillance was everywhere in the downtown core. If she was caught on film, so was anyone who accosted her, and she did have people who cared. Human people, mortals like her, the species in charge. If she disappeared for real, complete strangers would muster the resources to find her. Tess was no snob, but her place in the social order had never been so reassuring.

Some rube, she thought, darkly. Black had probably meant it ironically, but it still stung.

To be continued …