Four rules undying book.., p.36
Four (Rules Undying Book 1), page 36
She moseyed out to the hall once she was dressed and yawned heartily. As expected, Ren was in the kitchen, preparing plates for both of them. Once properly bribed with toast and coffee, she settled at the kitchen table and gave him an incredibly bright smile. “Hey, you,” she said.
“Hey, you,” he said.
“Oh, hi,” Alice said as she too wandered in for the siren’s song of freshly brewed French roast. Even though Ren was horribly mismatched in a Sisters of Mercy T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, he still tried to stand perfectly straight and dignified and even gave a little bow as he handed Alice a plate and cup.
“Great contacts, dude,” she muttered as she wandered by him and plopped at the table. “You look a little better, kiddo,” she said as she saw her friend finally smiling.
“Just needed a good night’s sleep, I guess.”
“Damn, this is good coffee,” Alice said before tipping her cup to Ren. She smiled as she saw the matching red marks on his and
Georgia’s necks. “Looks like someone had a run-in with a vampire,”
she said in a delightfully singsong voice.
Both Ren and Georgia fumbled their cups and looked over in utter shock. Alice snickered.
“What—what do you mean?” Georgia finally choked out.
“I mean you’d better get some concealer if either of you have work today. Friends don’t let friends go out with hickies. You crazy kids, you.”
Ren reached for his neck in alarm. Alice didn’t miss a beat.
“Hey, I get it. What happens here stays here, lovebirds. I’ve got to get to work, but I’ve got a spare key in case you need to crash for a few. Don’t have too much fun without me, and we are totally drinking and catching up tonight.”
“You have to go back to work tonight, don’t you?” Georgia asked Ren. “You look like you’re beaten-up pretty bad. I hope you can hide that,” she said as she pointed to his neck.
He nodded. “The bigger worry is when I’m going to see you again,” he said softly.
“We’re smart people, right? We just have to be careful . . .”
“Famous last words, right?” Georgia snorted. “See, that’s the problem when you’re in love with someone, I don’t think you ever realize just how obvious you are until it’s too late. Have you ever had that problem, dearie?”
Gail shook her head. “But did Steve? Did he?”
“Steve wrote me an apology. He sent flowers too, and this time I’m pretty damn sure they didn’t come from Ren. I told him that I wouldn’t see him for a while and certainly not alone. I told him that if he had any messages for me that he should send Ren, which served my purposes just fine. The two of us had this code. He’d text me every morning before he went to bed with the words mada ikite iru.”
“Is that ‘I love you’ in Japanese?” Gail asked.
“No, it means ‘I’m still alive’ actually. We always knew we were on borrowed time. That was part of the excitement of it all . . .”
“So, if you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?” Ren asked as he toyed with the chopped-off ends of Georgia’s hair. The two of them lounged in Georgia’s old bedroom, surrounded by empty take-out containers. Ren would occasionally poke at a laptop for a few minutes but quickly get distracted by the woman curled up beside him, who was halfheartedly doodling and taking notes on the highest protein contents in various foods while trying not to get caught watching funny pictures of cats on her own screen.
“That question is a wee bit heavy for a Sunday afternoon,” she said. “I’m pretty happy with being Georgia Sutherland right now.”
She punctuated her statement by tipping her head up and kissing him on the jaw. She scrunched up her nose. “You need to shave, boy.”
He kissed her back before pulling up some sort of spreadsheet.
“I’m looking for ideas. I was working on some new identities,” he said.
Georgia read off the physical details column. “Blue eyes, blonde hair, five foot ten? Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?” she said. “Has Minerva looked eighteen for a little too long to even pass in Hollywood? Hey, what’s that look for?”
“Come on, answer the question,” he said, now totally lost in thought.
“I dunno, maybe I’d be like a personal assistant to a rap singer instead of a vampire. I hear they are lower-maintenance. Hey, what is really going on here?”
“Indulge me,” he said. “You’d really want to be that if you could be anyone?”
Georgia put her distractions on the nightstand and turned her full attention to the new woman taking shape in digital form. “Maybe I’d be a botanist,” she said.
“A botanist?”
“You know, a person who makes new kinds of flowers. My grandparents bred champion roses, and I always thought they were beautiful,” she said softly. “Plus flowers don’t complain if you take care of them wrong, and it sounds like the kind of job that people
would just go ‘oh, that’s nice’ and not ask any more questions about.
Wouldn’t that be great for a vampire?”
“Hmm, a job with lots of vegetable matter and artificial sunlamps? I’m sure that would go over well,” Ren said with a little laugh.
“No plan is without its flaws. Now, are you going to tell me what is really going on in that pretty little head of yours, or am I going to have to tickle you until you are plaid?” Georgia asked, readying her fingers to strike at a moment’s notice.
“I look terrible in plaid,” Ren deadpanned as he clicked open another window to show a scanned image of a US passport with Georgia’s face on it.
She squinted to read the slightly blurry text. “Jennifer . . . Lee?”
she read. “I never knew my birthday was in August. Here I was thinking I was an Aries all this time,” she said. “Ren, why is there a passport with my face and a different name on it?”
He snapped the laptop closed. “I was just being stupid—” he started to say.
“Ren, you are many things, but you are never stupid. Just spit it out!”
He scooted up against the headboard and kept fidgeting with the edge of the comforter. Georgia pushed up on her hands and knees to meet him face-to-face. His furrowed brow and tight-set jaw made Georgia pause.
“It’s my birthday in a little more than a month,” Ren said.
“Well, if you are worried about your age, try to remember that my last boyfriend was nearly a hundred,” she teased. Ren’s face fell farther. “OK, now I’m getting really worried.”
“On my birthday Minerva will give me the gift of her blood. She also likes to have a special meal beforehand,” he said.
“Let me guess, Japanese takeout,” Georgia growled. Her face softened as she watched Ren bury his face in his hands. “Come on, I know it sucks, and while I don’t really like the thought of a pretty blonde doing god knows what with you, I know that you need it to survive. I signed on for this after you saved me from Steve.”
“You don’t know what it’s like, to have one of them inside you,”
Ren said. He shook his head as Georgia started to protest. “I mean really inside you—in your system, in your blood. I will do anything, say anything while under her control. I also know that once I’m with her again—”
“What are you saying, Ren?”
“For nine years she has been the sick, twisted love of my life.
You asked me what happened to my snowboarder? I couldn’t stand to be around her after Minerva. I didn’t even think it was possible to care about anyone else.”
“I see,” Georgia said, turning away from him. She jerked away as he tried to grab her shoulder. “Is he putting you up to this? Did he find out why you’ve been sneaking away during the day?”
“What? No!” Ren said, crawling around to look her in the eyes.
“I’m sure he knows I’m seeing you, but not that—”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“He’ll know for sure as soon as Minerva makes me tell him everything. She does it every year. She tells me that confession is good for the soul, and I will give her every secret in a heartbeat. She already asked me about you once, but I was still able to control myself back then.”
“Jesus, Ren!” Georgia said. “So are you just trying to let me down easy? Why would you even—?”
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close. “I am an idiot sometimes, but when you’re faced with an unstoppable force like you, what was I supposed to do?”
“Then this is my fault?” she snapped.
“It’s both our faults. Maybe it’s because we’re human. What do humans love more than a good tale of star-crossed lovers?” he asked. “For the first time in years, I found something that I want, to hell with what the Jaeger family thinks. I just thought . . . I just hoped
—”
“Hoped you’d finish a train of thought?” she asked.
He got up and rooted through his coat until he found a little green booklet. He tossed it in Georgia’s lap. She opened it slowly and saw his face staring back at her.
“What would you do if you knew your boss was taken care of and there was a place where my masters couldn’t find us?” he started as Georgia’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “What I’m about to say is so crazy that I know you are going to say no—”
“Yes,” Georgia said softy.
“It’s ridiculous, I know. There is only one place on earth where—
wait a second, did you just say yes?”
“Yes,” she said again, this time a little louder.
“Just listen to me. We would have to disappear entirely and go halfway around the world—”
“I said . . .yes.”
“I don’t think you realize just what I’m asking. The only place the Jaegers can’t go is Hong Kong—”
“Ren, in all those months you watched me, did you ever see me change my mind once it was made up?” she asked. She looked back at the passport. “Lee, huh?”
“It’s the kind of name that could be Asian, could be not,” he said weakly. “It was easier to forge an identity if it was already connected to one that I’d faked, but I realize now that it was terribly presumptuous of me—”
She silenced him with a kiss and kept kissing him until his protests stopped. “Ren,” she said, brushing the hair out of his eyes,
“I don’t make the best decisions. I make them fast, but I never, ever regret them. I said, yes . . .”
Gail broke into a huge smile as the pieces fell into place at last. She pounced on Georgia and gave her a huge hug. “I understand now,”
she said while squeezing tight. “I finally understand what you’ve been doing this whole time. It was a test, right? You needed a replacement so that you and Ren could run off together!”
Georgia patted the young girl on the back and eased out of the hug. Gail cocked her head as her once-bubbly interviewer was suddenly stone-faced. The blonde was staring angrily toward the door. Gail looked back, but no one was there.
“Georgia?” Gail asked. “That is what’s happening, right? You need someone to take care of Mr. Lambley—oh no, is Minerva—?”
Georgia stood up and stretched before moving over to their original seats. She dug into her purse and pulled out a pair of plane tickets. Gail clutched her skirt and squealed in delight as she saw the letters HKG in the corner.
“You’re right,” Georgia said. “It’s always been a test.”
“When are you leaving?” Gail asked. She quickly lowered her voice. “Can you tell me? Should I shut up in case she comes back?”
“Oh, I have one more story I need to tell you, you know,”
Georgia said. “Earlier tonight, I told you about the second-worst Saturday of my life, didn’t I?”
Gail nodded.
“It’s time I told you about the worst. It’s important that you know before any decisions are made,” Georgia sighed.
Both women froze as the other blonde drifted in. Georgia put her mask back on and waved to Gail. “So, you were telling me that you were a nurse, right? Did you just work at home, or did you ever fill in at clinics or hospitals?”
Gail nodded and all but gave a wink to Georgia. “Um, I mostly worked at home. I did do Fridays and Saturdays at Mass General, usually the outpatient clinics, sometimes for the geriatrics department. A girl’s gotta eat, you know,” she said as she eyed the vampire.
“True words,” Minerva said as she drifted by. Her cheeks were pinker than before, and she picked her teeth a few times as she slid into a seat next to them. “So, have I missed anything interesting?”
“No,” Gail said quickly. “I was just telling her about my work experience. I, um, am familiar with chronic care. I usually work with the elderly, but I’m familiar with blood, you could say. I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of it—transfusions, blood work . . .”
The vampire rolled her eyes. “Are we still at zee boring part? I want to know something juicy, something truly, terribly interesting,”
she said.
“I still have to tell her about Mr. Lambley’s schedule and about the final plans for transition,” Georgia started.
“Don’t you have a few months more on your contract? You have loads of time for a human!” Minerva whined. “Mein bruder has been
calling too. He wants to know when you’ll see him again.”
“I want to make sure this transition goes smoothly, Minnie. Now we have at least a half hour more of boring details.”
“I need dessert then. Maybe I’ll get a jelly doughnut,” she said with a pointed look at Georgia. She waved and said, “I’ll be back.”
Gail darted over to Georgia as soon as the vampire was gone.
“So?” she asked.
“So?”
“When are you leaving with Ren?” Gail hissed.
“These things take time to plan. I needed to make sure that someone would be able to take my place before I could leave, and we had so many details to take care of. You’re a nurse, so you know what it’s like to account for a medical condition. As good as Ren can be, it takes time to fake a medical record,” Georgia said.
“But couldn’t you just take care of that in you know where?” Gail asked. “It’s not like it’s a third-world country.”
“Don’t you remember what Dr. Pang said? There’s a chance that trying the old treatment could kill him. It’s the problem all bondsmen face, that the antibodies of one strain of vampire could react badly with the one in their system. The last thing Ren wanted was for me to be stuck, alone, in a foreign country. I’d never be able to come back because of them.”
“Don’t you see? I can help you,” Gail offered. “I’ve worked the hospitals around here. I could help slip in his chart.”
“You would really do that for me?” Georgia asked.
“It’s not every day you find true love, right?” Gail gushed. She looked down. “You know, there is something I should tell you since you’ve been so honest with me.”
Georgia led her new confidant back to the sofa. Both of them did one more sweep for prying eyes before daring to speak.
Georgia started, “You don’t have to say anything . . .”
Gail let out a deep breath. “You’ve looked up so much about me. I’m sure you know that I’m from a family that can be a little organized. Sometimes they have me spy for them at the hospital.
You never know when it’s useful to know when someone has a drug
allergy or a habit, and of course, they want me to tell them if anyone they know is seriously ill.”
She sank back into her seat. “I’ve never told anyone what I’ve had to do,” Gail said. “But I guess you know what it’s like to have to keep secrets.”
Georgia smiled and snuck out the tickets again. “That I do,” she muttered. “You really want to help now, don’t you?”
“Vampires can’t be worse than the people I’ve dealt with,” Gail offered.
Georgia set the tickets on her lap. Gail looked on quizzically.
“He already went in to get his treatment. Everything was already set in motion long before tonight,” Georgia said.
“But that would mean . . .” Gail said, shaking her head. “Wait, what does it mean?”
“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith, Miss Filipovic,”
Georgia said. “If you love someone, you’d do anything, wouldn’t you?”
Gail looked down at the tickets. “Wait a second, these are from November.”
“Like I said, he already got his treatment. We had everything so perfectly planned. Ren was always great at making plans. My bags were packed, and I wrote this great letter to Mr. Lambley explaining to him how lucky I was to have met him, but that I was going to have to end our contract a little early. Ren gave me cash to get the tickets.
That was my job while he got worked into a clinic. Do you know how many days it took for him to build that whole damn health record?”
“I don’t understand,” Gail said.
“He had gone in on a Friday to get his infusion. I got his text.
Everything was fine until I got a call at eight in the morning on a Saturday. Now, even before I started working nights, I never got up that early on a weekend. But he told me that we had to meet before our flight. I could hear something different in his voice, so I got my keys and I rushed over to our special meeting spot. Lucky for us, Alice and Paul were heading to his hometown for Thanksgiving already . . .”
Georgia fumbled with her key as she tried to balance a travel mug of Joe, her purse, and her phone in the crook of her arm. The wind ruffled her Muppet fur collar around her neck, and the rare-in-New-England late-autumn sun made her squint. She finally got in both sets of doors and dumped her stuff on the counter. “Hey, you here?”
she called as she saw the water still running in the sink and an open bottle of ibuprofen on the counter. “Ren?” she called again.
