Be counted, p.10
Be Counted, page 10
part #1 of Supernatural Vigilante Society Series
“Well, that tanks my idea. I thought maybe the hitwoman was supposed to kill Maury’s partner without specifying who that was exactly.” Scott chews on his lower lip. “Maybe Larry was a vampire’s associate, pulling strings at the department. It could be either of those that made him a target. Or both. If the Caprices know about vamps, you could still be in danger. If they don’t, they could be cat's paws and Maury might be the next target.”
“You sound like you know more about assassins than I’d have guessed.” I side-eye Scott because he deserves it for being so precocious. “You may be right. But you may be crazy.”
“Back at you, buddy.” Scott cracks a smile and winks.
“Look, if we’re going to work together sleuthing out the bad guys, we shouldn’t have to second-guess each other all the time.” I cross my arms over my chest. “How do you know anything about this at the tender age of sixteen?”
“Gramps. Werewolves find out loads of stuff just because we see and hear more than the average person thinks we do. But I gotta run almost everything I find out by my grandpa first. He won’t let me keep working with you if an outsider knows more about threats to our community than he does.”
I blink. This is not the reaction I’m expecting from the kid who used to hero-worship me. “Outsider? Scott, I was there the day you were born.”
“Yeah but not the night of my first change. And Gramps runs all of the wolf stuff. They’ve got rules. I’m just a kid and answer to the adults, whether they’re going on two legs or four at any given time.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” I open my mouth, about to tell him about how I’m not a free and clear agent myself. It occurs to me that I’m not sure if that’ll get me murdered by King Decapitate. “We both got things to learn. I can live with that.”
“Hey! Look at all the chairs!”
Scott stomps on the breaks and throws the old truck’s transmission into park. The beastly vehicle jerks to a stop that would have given me whiplash if I’d still been technically alive. I get out to help with the chairs and whatever other things we’ll find along that street. I forget all about the reason I was in CVS earlier until some random person makes sure I remember.
“Halloween’s next year!”
The chick shouting out from the third-floor window at number fifteen can’t count. It’s May, not November. I ignore her and try going about the business of shouldering the mismatched but solid chairs into the back of the beastly truck.
“Hey buddy! I’m talking to you!”
I turn to the window, see the young woman leaning out her open window, red plastic Solo cup in her hand. A sourly hoppy scented liquid sloshes out and down. I was never that obnoxious in college. I roll my eyes and keep on keeping on. Scott’s found a computer cart and a shelf.
“Can’t you freaking count?”
She’s drunk enough to think seeing a vampire outside her building was either a bad dream or a drug trip. And I’m made up like a Haunted House vampire so why the Hell shouldn’t I have a bit of fun with it?
“I am the freaking Count! One! One drunk chick! Ah ha ha!”
She laughs so hard at that, she drops her cup and falls. Inside the house, thankfully. Of course if she’d fallen out the window, I would have caught her. I’m supposed to be a hero even though I can’t keep small priorities like removing makeup from my mug straight, you know?
“This is the last time I go stuff-collecting without washing my face.”
“Never say never, buddy.” Scott snorts. "And you know, The Count has a nice ring to it."
It ends up being a short hunt, thank God. The pickup’s full enough to make me reconsider my original opinion of the truck’s suspension. Although I think we might want to take another spin around the off-campus neighborhood, we did pretty well.
Unloading the truck in the dark isn’t so bad. Finally, a literal bright side to being a vampire turns up. I can see like it’s twilight instead of half-past ten. Scott also doesn’t seem to mind hustling furniture out of a truck and up three flights but whether that’s because he’s compensating with his sniffer or for some other reason, I don’t know.
We leave it all in a cluster a few feet from the door and head back downstairs. Scott parks his truck in the lot and I stay in the vestibule to open the door for him when he gets back. I’m not about to break the rule about propping the door after suspecting Cigarettes the building manager of murder. I don’t have an undeath wish.
“You got a motherfucking death wish or what?” The voice behind me sounds familiar but not enough for me to place it immediately. “Move your damn carcass out of my way before you ride this wood like a hooker on a carousel.”
I might not have immediately known the voice but the creative cuss-out is unmistakable. My downstairs neighbor is here, and I forgot about bringing over cupcakes and beer. Or whatever. Dammit.
“Esther, hi!” I step aside.
“I fucking wish I was high.” Her glance lingers on my face and she snorts. “What in Balthazar’s bastardly ballsack are you supposed to be again?”
“Um, my band is Emo.”
“I’m sorry.” Esther rolls her eyes at the door. “Clear it, asshole.”
I get the message and go to open it but stop. She’s carrying one of those Shoji screens, which could come in handy.
“What the fuck, man?”
“Are you moving that screen or throwing it out?”
“Are you sure your band’s not Junkyard or some shit? Throwing it out. Why? Do you want it?”
I nod.
“It’ll cost you one Yuppie Food Stamp.” Esther balances the screen on one hip somehow and holds out her now free hand. It’s got pink marks on it where she’s been holding on to the wooden edges. My hands don’t do that anymore. Sad vampire is sad.
“Fine.” I cross her palm with a twenty-dollar bill.
“Peachy as Valkyrie tits.” She stuffs the bill into her right front pocket and tosses the screen in my general direction. I manage to catch it. After that, Esther turns on her heel and stomps back through the door into the stairwell.
“You’re welcome,” I say even though she probably can’t hear my by then.
“I fucking heard that. Asshole.”
Scott’s knocking on the door so I forget about getting into a shouting match or cuss contest with my surly downstairs neighbor. I'd lose anyway. I let the werewolf in and head back into the hall with him, taking my sweet time. Scott elbows me and points at the door leading into the stairwell. I don’t see it until I blink. Green glowing glitter hovers in the air.
“We’ve gotta find out what’s up with that Esther lady.” Scott wrinkles his nose.
“But we have more important things to do first.” I jerk a thumb over my shoulder at the office door. “Remember?”
“Yeah.” Scott pulls open the door to the stairwell and heads up. He’s still talking so I follow fast enough to hear him say, “maybe we should talk to Maury.”
“But I don’t want to involve him in this.” I turn the corner at the landing carefully and manage not to drop the Shoji screen. Go me.
“He already is though.”
As we walk down the third-floor hall to 319, I think about that. Scott has a point. It’s hard to believe he’s only seventeen sometimes. Maury might be a target of whoever offed Edwin Tierney, killed his partner, and shot at my dad. Once we’re in the studio space it occurs to me that I might be going at this all wrong.
“I think we have to start with the weakest link.” I set the screen down in the far corner and start unstacking our other furniture.
“Huh?” Scott puts me at ease by acting and sounding his age for once.
“I’m talking about tracking down our hitwoman.”
“Thought you said you didn’t see her face. Also that she wore one of those common and heavy perfumes.”
“I did. But I know somewhere else she’s been. In the office downstairs. How long does it take for you to catch a scent, Scott?”
“Maybe a minute.” He cracks his fingers.
“Takes me about the same." Not really but I'm competative, okay? "So if we go and talk to our landlord maybe we’ve got a shot at it.”
“Didn’t you say he was a Caprice and you think he killed his underling?”
“I did. But I have the perfect excuse to go down and see him. You.”
“Uh, what?” Scott scratches behind one ear.
“I’m going to ask him for a spare key. He’ll ask why. I’ll introduce you. Chat with him about our fake Emo band or something. I’ll sniff around literally. After that, I deal with any deposit or information he needs while you have a go.”
“Tino, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. And I get werewolfery lessons on the regular.” Heh. He said werewolfery.
“Hey, what could possibly go wrong?” I smile, fangs and all. It’s kind of a relief to be able to let it all vamp out.
“At least let’s finish setting this place up.” We both glance at the clock and see that it’s still pretty early.
“That’s cool by me.”
We’re not masters of Feng Shui by any stretch of the imagination but we manage. There are two small desks, several extremely mismatched chairs, a rug, two clamp lamps, and a busted click-clack futon.
We tuck the futon in one corner and set the screen up to block that off from the rest of the room. I tell Scott I plan on foiling over the back of that screen to make it into as sunproof a shield as possible. After that we set up the desks in a clear line of sight to the door. One lamp clips on to the side of each. Scott’s drum set and guitar are in the corner by the window, opposite the screen and futon. Since the drums have a stool that came with them, we put the two dented folding chairs near the guitar.
I grudgingly give Scott the bigger of the two office chairs we scored. He’s taller and stockier than I am already and he’s only going to get bigger. For the prospective client's seating, we’re left with a barstool and a hot pink saucer chair.
“Dibs!” I reach for the stool, reacting fast enough to snatch the more dignified seat before Scott gets his hairy mitts on it. Almost as fast, the stool goes in front of my desk, perfect for anyone who seeks my PI services. “Ha!”
“Whatever.” Scott shrugs and sets the ridiculous novelty seat in front of his desk. “Hey Tino?”
“Hmm?” I’m looking around the room, realizing that while it needs detail work and a measure of refinement, the place is fully functional. No, it’s not anatomically correct. It’s a freaking studio space, not an android from Star Trek. Get your mind out of the gutter, okay?
“What do you plan on doing about that?” Scott’s pointing at the one feature all remodeled old mills share.
He means an abundant natural light source, also known as a giant window, of course. Here Comes the Sun is every vampire’s least favorite song. I sigh, feeling my shoulders droop lower than an old man’s jock strap. Don’t ask me where that thought came from. Maybe it’s your fault, what with conjuring anatomically correct androids to my imagination and all that.
“Curtains, Scott.” I gaze up at the property-value increasing view and give it a glare worthy of Superman’s heat vision with zero results. I’m a vampire not Kryptonian. What do you want from me?
“Yeah, curtains to prevent it being curtains for you.” The teenage werewolf paces the area of wall under the window. “I’ll find you something and rig it up tomorrow during the day. If we get that extra key from the landlord that is.”
“Sounds like a plan. And speaking of the key, let’s go downstairs and get it already. I’m about done here for the evening if it’s all the same to you.”
If that comment seems a little bitter and laced with disappointment, it is. Maya never showed. I rethink our last conversation and the bitterness changes over to curiosity. If she isn’t hanging out with vamps her own age, what does she do on a typical evening? That’s a story for another time, probably.
“What do you want to do if we manage to pick up the assassin’s scent, Tino?”
“If that happens, we talk about it in the truck on the way back to the Belfry.”
“Cool beans.” Scott grins. He’s almost too laid back. But maybe that’s part of how he hides the existence of werewolves. By acting opposite of what people expect from a wolf-man. Or maybe he's a Hufflepuff, I don't know.
We step into the hall and I lock up 319’s bare door. I’ll get a sign if and when we slog through the current danger. With the office-studio set and mostly secure, we head downstairs to begin our killer-catching adventure.
I’m the one who knocks on the door because I’m not sure whether Cigarettes has silver ammo in whatever heat he’s packing. I’m certain he’s got a gun because I can smell gunpowder, metal, and oil like I did on the rooftop across the street from Dad’s house. That smell sucks almost as much as being a vampire. Also on the schnoz menu for scents I don’t like is cigarette smoke. So our crime lord landlord is definitely in.
My knuckles hit the door four times. We don’t wait long and when it opens, I remember to grin instead of full out smile. Last thing I want to do is fang out in front of a mobster. Who in the world would want monsters in the Mafia, anyway? Hairbrained idea, if you ask me.
“Whaddaya want?”
“A second set of keys for my bandmate here.” Something useful has changed since I got vamped. I’m a halfway decent liar because I only blush when I’m thinking about it now.
“Huh.” His mouth grimaces but his eyes twinkle and crinkle. “Good on you for coming here instead of wasting time at the hardware store. They know better than to copy the keys to my building.”
Cigarettes steps inside, somehow managing not to fully turn his back on us. Scott and I walk in. This room’s the same size as ours but it has more windows. They’re covered and at first I wonder why. But if Cigarettes is used to doing things like killing dudes in here with his bare hands no wonder he’s got curtains to draw.
Scott sits on a loveseat. Smart idea since just about any scent sticks to those. I follow our unlovely host toward an open cabinet where a pegboard hangs on the wall above the counter. His hand hovers over pegs labeled with room numbers. I notice most are empty but a few have one or two sets of keys hanging from them. He takes the only remaining set from the 319 peg. Under it, I see that the 219 peg still has one set. Esther’s working in there alone, then.
“Thanks.” I hold out my hand but it stays empty.
He shakes his head. “I want to hand them over to the guy who’s gonna use them.”
“Makes sense.” I back off and let Scott take my place.
The kid’s not saying much but Cigarettes is taking more at him than to him. If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll say too much. As they chat I heat toward the counter. It’s got some papers scattered across it but the one that catches my eye has been discarded and crumpled on the floor halfway under a trash can.
I boost my speed to pick it up, briefly see a list of familiar names including Tierney and Solomon. And Crispo of course. Tierney’s the only one with a line through it. Good thing I didn’t put my actual name on the rental form after all. That list gets stuffed in my pocket faster than Esther pocketed my money. Now why’s her last name on there? Coincidence? I don’t believe in that when it comes to crime investigation.
I glance back at the sofa and see the monster’s still talking to the mobster. Lame idea in real life but come to think of it, a book or movie about that subject might be intense. Anyway, I try not to listen to Cigarettes ask Scott about running errands for him and focus on my nose. It’s not the easiest thing.
For vampires, living smells are stronger than dead ones. I don’t know exactly how it works but when a person’s alive their scent lingers longer than someone’s who died. This happens even when said dead human didn’t get killed where I’m catching the scent, like the way it must have gone this time.
Stephanie says it’s because we’re magical creatures so we just know if someone we’re on the trail of has died. Blood from a dead person doesn’t do as much for us as stuff from someone who’s still alive, even if it’s stored in a bag. Hunting down an already dead person isn't productive for a vamp. But it works in a weird way, like most supernatural stuff.
Smoke, alcohol, and old blood are all easy to filter out. But Cigarettes himself is alive and has so little blood in his nicotine stream I can’t help but pick that up. There’s also the guy he bumped off my first night here. And yeah, Butter has been killed all right. His scent is on stuff though that’s more faded, exactly right for a dead person.
There are two other living people’s scents in here, more feminine. One of those puts me in mind of glowing green stuff and drunken sailor swears. Esther Solomon, who is on the kill list but Cigarettes lets her suck wind and pay rent. Maybe he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty killing a paying tenant. Or maybe she's so cranky because one of her relatives got murdered recently. And then, there's the other woman's scent. It would be intimately familiar to me even if it wasn’t all mingled with Anais Anais and rifle oil.
Bingo. That’s my sniper. Also known as Kayleigh Killarney, my old High School girlfriend who’d been responsible for most of my adolescent firsts. Her dad didn’t want us dating anymore on account of me being in the Drama Club. He thought I was gay and using her to cover for it. Which I guess seemed like the case at the time even though that's not exactly true. So she broke up with me. We stayed the sort of friends who drift apart the second they walk away from school with diplomas. I don’t know where she lives because the Killarneys moved a few years ago. But with both a vampire and a werewolf on the trail, we're going to find her.
“You got your keys, now scram already.” Cigarettes is shooing us out of the room.
Scott’s got a wild and ferocious gleam in his eye. He shoots me a look like he’s asking my permission to attack the murderous mafioso instead of following his instructions. But when I comply with Cigarettes, so does the teen wolf. In the hall, I put one finger over my mouth. Scott gets it and follows me down the hall and out of the building. When we’re in his truck with the door closed, I speak.
