Ten, p.30
Ten, page 30
“Yes?” Georgia said as she peeked inside the undead lounge. Mr.
Lambley hopped to his feet and clapped with glee.
“You simply must see this!” he exclaimed. “I finally got a long-haired tabby cat to appear in my garden.”
He turned his phone around to show that a little animated feline was indeed rolling around in his virtual yard. He beamed so brightly that Georgia couldn’t help but smile back.
“That’s wonderful, but I thought you were going to search for a tuxedo for the ball tonight,” she said.
“Well, I was just logging in to check on a few things,” he said while switching to his most adorable and apologetic little frown. “And you know how that goes—”
“Oh, I pay the phone bill, so I know exactly how that goes. If we didn’t have unlimited data, we’d have to sell this building by now,”
she said. “Look, we just got a list of not one, not two, but three distinctive outfits that we need to have ready before the end of June, and your mother tasked me personally with making sure that you didn’t embarrass the family name.”
“I know, I know!” the vampire said. “Can’t we just get Gordon and Nicolette’s help?”
“Oh, they are already on call, but we are not experts in Edwardian fashion, so we need your help with ball outfit number one, Mr. Lambley.”
“Well, can’t Stefano’s new boy help?” the vampire whined.
“I’m pretty sure that I’m babysitting him, while Steve has once again decided to play the mysterious vanishing act. Seriously, do you know what is going on? He’s always been flaky, but he’s positively a pie crust right now.”
Mr. Lambley flopped on the sofa and started scratching his slightly more defined chin. Georgia only had to stare long enough for him to finally break.
“Mother was telling me that he’s had a great deal of money troubles lately. He’s also been travelling across the country to meet some young lady—”
“Young lady?” Georgia asked a little too quickly.
“He apparently flew a beautiful woman out to his father’s estate in Italy—”
“Oh, um, good for him,” Georgia said. “So, he’s blowing money on other women? Doesn’t surprise me one bit.”
“I’m sorry if this surprises or hurts you considering recent events
—”
“No, it’s nothing like that, really. Despite all his flaws, I don’t want to see Steve suffer. Also, if vampires are seemingly being targeted
financially, then maybe we should be worried too.”
“Well so far my mother assures me that our finances are perfectly all right. However, it seems that anyone who depended on, um—”
“Go on, you can say his name.”
“Anyone who depended on Mr. Ren Matsuoka for their finances is certainly feeling his loss. He was truly a genius of his time and is sorely missed. As for Stefano, apparently, he just had to sell his private airplane to mother for operating cash but asked if he could take it out this week before delivering it to her in Detroit next Wednesday.”
“Any idea where he is flying to?” Georgia asked.
“Why yes, he said he wanted to check in on his operations in California, personally,” Mr. Lambley said. “Oh, I meant to mention this before, but mother said she had something for your opening night gown.”
“Well considering her obsession with the eighties, I am pretty sure she has plenty of options for me,” Georgia said. “Did she come up with the idea that we all have to dress up in formal wear from the decade of our birth, or is that a normal vampire thing?”
“It’s an Azarola tradition, actually. The under the sea theme for night two was mother’s idea, and the masquerade, well, vampires . .
. masquerades. . .”
“Yeah, that does seem to go together,” Georgia said as she retreated for the kitchen. “I can’t wait to show you my costume.”
“Costume?” Colin asked as she finally returned to her rapidly cooling coffee. “Why are you planning a costume? It’s a vampire ball.”
“Because I’m a guest,” she said slowly.
“But you’re just a servant like me.”
“Really? Like, did you not bother doing any research on me?” she asked.
“Your file with the Matsuoka was extremely sparse,” Colin said. “I assumed it was because you were decidedly average—”
“Wow, your people skills actually put the rest of your family to shame,” she said flatly. “So, nothing in your file mentions that I was a guest to the last Pendragon hosted Solstice ball?”
Colin shook his head.
“Nothing about how I worked with Dr. Pang to save Mr. Lambley’s life from the slow death?”
He shook his head again.
“How about how I went to Japan and even met members of the Matsuoka family?”
“All it mentioned was that you were irritable and made decent coffee.”
“Really, what asshole created my profile?”
Colin started typing furiously. He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Um, the only entries made on you were by an R. Nakano,” he said. “You would have known him probably as Ren Matsuoka, I think.
He used to serve my master before—”
“Yeah, I know Ren. . . knew him. Glad to know that’s what he put on record about me.”
“Well if you knew Ren, he was terribly arrogant and dismissive of others. I’m pretty certain that’s why he was disowned before he died.”
“Oh, you really knew him?” Georgia asked. Her companion kept staring at his screen. Her hands shook as she tried to take a few sips of her coffee.
“Well, I know about him. He was Lady Minerva’s favorite toy, so he always got preferential treatment. I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but it’s pretty obvious that his cousin just happened to die to a drunk driver, right after Minerva—”
Georgia slammed her cup on the table, shattering it in her hands.
As the mix of pottery and beverage flowed right under her guest’s expensive laptop, she smiled. Her smile didn’t even fade as she saw the blood welling on her fingers.
“You were saying?” she asked.
“I’m never, ever going on a road trip with you ever again,” Paige growled as she slipped out of the car. The vampire in the backseat
moaned in agreement.
“I’ve never had motion sickness before,” Lorcan said as he started gathering up the bags in the back.
“How do you think I feel? I’m six-foot four, and the bastard wouldn’t let me put the seat back,” Kyle muttered as he too peeled out of their sensible compact import.
“Thirty-two hours of show tunes, really? Really?” Paige snapped.
“It was all I had on the iPod, and the radio in Nebraska was shit!”
Kyle barked back.
“I really wish you just left me to die at that truck stop outside Salt Lake City,” Lorcan muttered as he finally crawled out the back.
“Frying in the sun would have been preferable to your bickering.”
“Well, my, my, look what the cat dragged in,” Toy called from the balcony of the kitschy little motel in Long Beach. She sipped on a sweaty, fruity soft drink while fanning herself with a beach hat. “Did it really suck not getting to fly?”
“Please say you’ve found something of interest,” Lorcan said as he straightened himself up. “Otherwise, I may have to kill you.”
“Wow, you look paler than normal, boss man,” Toy said. “I’m guessing that you all need—”
“Showers,” Paige, Kyle, and Lorcan said at once.
Toy fanned in front of her face again. “Damn, I can smell you guys up here,” she said.
Paige walked around back and dragged both her and Lorcan’s duffle bags out of the fragrant vehicle. Kyle moaned as he saw a thick, oily stain on the side of his.
“I told you to put your shampoo and conditioner in plastic bags,”
Paige muttered.
“And I heard you the first six times you said it, so just get the ‘I told you so’ out of your system,” he said as the moderately more pleasant aroma of jojoba filled their nostrils.
Paige snatched up her stuff and made a beeline for the concrete steps. It was only once she was safely in the air conditioning and comfort of the doorway that she leaned back and said ever so sweetly, “I told you so.”
Toy shook her head as she saw Lorcan limping and sweating, while Kyle remained aloof and swearing up a storm by the hatchback. Paige raised a brow at the confused girl.
“You haven’t really lived until you’ve been drenched with vampire vomit while listening to Les Miserables,” Paige said flatly.
Toy tried to stifle a giggle, but it quickly deteriorated. Both girls were soon laughing as Toy gave Paige a hearty hug. “Oh, Shorty Spice, we have got to find a way to explain that tail to the TSA,” she said.
“I don’t think I’d be up for air travel either, I’m afraid,” Lorcan muttered before falling face first onto one of the beds. “This weakness is intolerable.”
“Next time you get to be the designated driver,” Kyle growled as he finally stumbled in as well. “Please say that you guys had to crawl through a sewer to find Morgan.”
“Actually, Freckles, and Nads are off at the pool,” Toy said. “This freaky April heat wave has been great for our tans. Well, their tans anyway.”
Paige ignored the further whining coming out of Lorcan and Kyle’s mouths and made a beeline for the bathroom. Once she’d treated herself to a hot shower and clean clothes, she could finally stare in the mirror and not feel sick. “Come on, Paige, stay calm, and keep yourself together,” she told her damp reflection.
Kyle merely grunted as he rushed in to get the next shower.
Paige sighed as she saw the vampire had passed out. Toy tossed Paige one of the fruity drinks.
“It was really that bad, Shorty?” she asked.
“Really that bad. You guys did do some work though, right? I mean other than working on your tans?” Paige asked.
“Of course! As always, we handled ourselves in a dignified and professional manner,” Toy said proudly.
“Really?” Paige asked.
“Freckles hacked a bunch of shit, while Nads and I cracked a few skulls,” Toy confessed. “You probably would have had fun on the Santa Monica Pier. As it turns out though, there really are a lot of
vampires in LA. I would have thought it was all Hollywood bullshit, but no, it’s real.”
“You didn’t—?” Paige started.
“We stayed away from them. Around here, they just blast out miasma like nobody’s business. It’s really easy to track them. There was one, though, he scared the crap out of all of us,” Toy muttered.
“What did he look like?” Lorcan asked.
“We didn’t get close, but he smelled like death. Nadia saw some short, dark hair and a nice suit, but that does fit more than one vampire’s description.”
“Did he smell like death mixed with expensive cologne, perhaps?”
Lorcan asked. “If so, I have a terrible suspicion that I have family in town.”
“You’re not the only one with family in town, Lorcan,” Paige said as she looked at her phone. “Somehow my great-grandfather knows we are here.”
“Well, I suppose it’s time to get the gang back together again,”
Lorcan muttered.
Once Kyle emerged and was placated with soda and bacon flavored chips, Paige helped the feeble vampire towards the steamy bathroom. As she saw the slick tile, she let out a deep sigh and helped the creature all the way to a perch on the toilet. She did pause midway to watch the bizarre distortion on her shoulders as she dragged Lorcan in front of the mirror.
“How does that even work?” she asked.
“Vampire magic,” Lorcan said weakly. He started tugging pathetically at his sleeves. Paige took pity and peeled off his damp shirt.
“You aren’t going to pass out and hit your head, are you?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine. Vomiting is quite taxing for my kind. It jostles the inner workings for lack of better words and is rather like you are after a full change,” he explained. “I feel like my skin is crawling, and I just want to get clean.”
“Stay here, and I’ll get your clothes.”
She ended up staying with him once she grabbed his new pants and T-shirt. As she started pulling at his belt buckle, the vampire looked up in alarm. “Miss Paige?” he asked.
“Oh, please,” she sighed. “I’ve seen you naked far too many times for this to be exciting.”
Once she had gotten him successfully in the shower, she sat down on the John and proceeded to check her phone while she waited for the vampire. Sadly, the steam soon made her touch screen impossible, so she shoved it in her bra and waited.
“Are you still out there?” the vampire asked.
“Yup,” she replied.
“This day is finally improving.”
Her nightmare continued as she surveyed the towel rack and only saw teeny little rags. She growled as she realized the redhead had grabbed everything, including the damp towels she had left on the floor. She did, however, manage to place the rag at perfect height as the shower stopped, and Lorcan proudly swung open the curtain.
“I thought I wasn’t enough to get you excited anymore,” he teased as she blocked the view.
“Just get dried off and dressed, so we can get out of here,” she muttered.
“Do we need to give you two the room?” Toy asked as they emerged together. “I mean, old habits die hard, or not at all if you like vampires—”
“Toy!” Kyle barked before storming outside. The walls vibrated from the door slamming.
“Wow, and I thought my time of the month was bad,” Toy muttered. “Did I miss something, or did he like drink some caffeine on the road trip?”
Paige took off after Kyle and didn’t have to go far to find a seething man kicking a can in the parking lot. She waited for him to punt it behind a Chevy before she dared approach.
“Kyle?” she asked.
He started kicking at a tire. Paige finally had to grab his arm.
“Kyle, snap out of it!”
“How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you handle it when you just get so. . . damn. . . angry?”
She rubbed his knuckles until his claws slid back into their sheaths. His eyes remained wild, and, every once in a while, his irises stretched to fill his corneas.
“Just remember your focus. Try to find your focus, Kyle. You’re not the wolf. The wolf is just a part of you,” she said.
“I used to tell you the same thing, didn’t I?” he asked. “Every time I even think about you and. . . ugh—”
“Kyle, are you jealous?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped even as he nodded his head.
“We are going to kill each other on the way back, aren’t we?”
“Hey, sorry to interrupt you two, but you left the cooler in the car for Grandpa, and we have some waterfront shenanigans to plan,”
Toy called from the balcony.
“It seems a werewolf’s work is never done,” Paige sighed.
21
“ARE you absolutely sure that she was asking about Lambley, DeMarco, and Young LLC?” Georgia asked.
The receptionist glared over his glasses and folded his hands primly in front of him. Rather than respond verbally, he turned his monitor towards his visitor and showed a woman knocking over and over again on a door labelled simply “Lambley, DeMarco & Young, LLC.”
“I’m just an assistant—” Georgia started to say.
“You were listed as the primary point of contact, Miss Sutherland.
As such, Echelon Employment would like you to handle this matter. If we have to employ and then silence law enforcement, it will be a substantial penalty to your employer,” the man behind the desk said.
“Look, I’ll be happy to pay the fine rather than deal with a crazy woman,” Georgia said affably.
“Well that would be seven-hundred-and-sixty-two thousand, if you pay cash to get the discount,” the receptionist said without batting an eye.
“Yeah, I’ll go deal with the crazy woman,” Georgia said with a little wave. “When you say deal with, though, you mean like get her to leave the property and not something straight out of a mafia movie, right?”
“Just get her to stop asking about our business, or you’ll start racking up fines. That is all.”
With that, Georgia sauntered her way back to the lobby and flagged down a cab. She wrung her hands as they slogged through the wonders of downtown traffic. Her thumbs flew across the keypad as she warned Mr. Lambley that she would be out for a while and that his breakfast was already made and in the fridge.
“Why did you play those stupid reindeer games, Georgia?” she asked her reflection. “No, it can’t be. It’s got to be just some awful coincidence.”
Deep in the heart of the financial district, she got out of the cab.
Her heart sunk as she saw the familiar facade and the ridiculous fare for a ten-minute ride. She hadn’t made it five steps into the lobby when a frazzled looking woman approached her.
“Excuse me, do you work for Lambley, DeMarco, and Young?”
the woman asked. “I’m sorry to be a bother, but it’s very important.”
“Why yes, I’m an assistant to Mr. Lambley, one of the owners,”
Georgia answered as pleasantly as she could. “Were you looking to ship something? I can get you our customer service number.”
“I’m looking for my daughter actually,” the woman said. “My name is Gretchen, Gretchen Filipovic.”
“Filipovic?” Georgia asked.
The woman pulled out a picture of a slightly eastern European-looking young woman with dark, wavy hair and dark eyes. Georgia furrowed her brows. “I’m sorry, but—”
“She went missing last year. I know that she was looking for a job, and this was the only place she wrote down—”
“We interview people from time to time. Um, I’m sorry, but I’m just an assistant and you said this was over a year ago,” Georgia said as she continued to stare at the picture.
“Do you think that you could check your records? Her name is Gail. See if you have anything, anything at all?” Mrs. Filipovic asked.
