Now it was Cal’s turn to be on the receiving end of my best persuasive voice. “Buddy, I know this is weird and uncomfortable, but if you like working for this guy”—I jerked a thumb at Ian—“it might be in everyone’s best interest if you just pretend for an evening that you wouldn’t crawl backward away from me screaming, given half a chance.”
“I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t crawl,” he vowed weakly.
“Hyperbole, man. Hyperbole. But you don’t want to hang out with me and I don’t have any burning desire to hang out with you—not that there’s anything wrong with you or anything, just that you’re kind of an unknown quantity to me in this arrangement, and I’m not in a super-comfortable position here myself.”
“How’s that?” he asked, trying to copy Ian’s wry face.
“You think I always get this up close and personal with clients? I didn’t know how thoroughly your case would tie up my life in such an elaborate, choking fashion.” I wrapped up by asking, “But it did, and here we are. So Ian, Cal, what do you say?”
I honestly didn’t know what they’d say. Didn’t have a clue if they’d be down with my plan or if they’d tell me to go jump in a lake and blow bubbles. They glanced back and forth; or Cal glanced, and Ian went through the motions. Nobody said anything, so I picked up my flag again and waved it.
“It won’t be such a big deal, and it’ll be over in one night. At six thirty PM me and Cal will mosey into the parkour class, and when it’s over we’ll part company. Then Adrian and I will throw on some black clothes, don a little warpaint, and storm the major’s office, sabotaging everything we can get our hands on in our wake.”
“This is a terrible idea,” Cal said with sincerity, but no conviction.
“You may be right,” I conceded, putting on my best grave-and-sincere face. “But right now it’s the only plan we have, unless you’re offering something bigger, better, smarter, or safer. And don’t get me wrong—I’m willing to listen. But I’m not willing to wait a few days and see how this pans out. For just this moment, we have the closest thing to an advantage we’re likely to get. And if we don’t use it, we’re gonna lose it.” Look at me, busting out all the tired old metaphors. Like I’d been saving them all winter just waiting for an opportunity to trot them out.
After a pause, Ian said slowly, “How do we know they aren’t on to us? Raylene, you’ve been in contact with this man. You said he invited you to come to D.C. and told you where his office was.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t know he was talking to me.”
“So far as you know. They must know we’re coming, that’s all. They probably already know we’re here.”
“No way,” I said.
“How can you be so sure?” Cal asked.
“Because if they knew where we were, they would’ve come down on us by now. Like the fist of God, unless I’m mistaken.”
“No,” Ian argued, but the resistance was leaving him. I was winning him over or wearing him down. “They want us to come to them.”
It was then that Cal surprised me, in the wake of a long, drawn-out pause that hung over the table like a funnel cloud. He said to his boss, “I think you’re right. They want us to come to them.” Then he said to me, “So I’ll do it. I’ll come with you.”
“Cal, you don’t have to—” Ian started to say.
“Yes, I do. I’ll go to them, if it keeps them from coming to you.”
12
Cal sat nervously on the couch while I got ready for our evening out. Either by way of making conversation or just being fretful, he asked, “Does it always take you this long to leave the house?”
I said, “No,” as I examined the contents of my go-bag. Lock picks, glass cutters, one small firearm (the .22, more for show than for firepower) and extra ammo, an envelope full of cash, my most recent disposable cell phone, handcuff keys, and some duct tape because hey, you never know. I’ve used that stuff as getaway rope, as restraints, and much more. Once I used it to strap a diamond necklace to my thigh like a garter, because I didn’t have a better way of carrying it. As an old acquaintance of mine used to say, “If you can’t duck it, fuck it.” I’m pretty sure he knew it was duct and not duck, but I’ll forgive him for the sake of the rhyme.
I also begged a baggie of A-negative off Ian, who traveled with a supply kept on ice in an Igloo chest. Usually, tracking down a butcher or blood bank is a vampire’s first priority when relocating, but neither Ian nor I had gotten a spare moment to scope for an in-town supplier, so the old stuff would have to suffice.
“Is this a special occasion, or what?” Cal asked, still looking nervous, and a little bit prim.
“Special only in the sense that it’s going to be dangerous—though more for me than for you,” I added, because why give him something else to fret about? I already had the feeling I was going to have to watch him like a hawk and maybe save his ass later on. But I wasn’t sure I’d mind saving his ass, if it came to that. He’d gone all Prince Valiant on me there, back at the Revolutionary—stepping forward in order to save his patron’s hide. Truly selfless, or so it appeared on the surface.
Still, my innate mistrust of ghouls did not let me give him any more credit than a baseline assumption that he would play along and not go out of his way to fuck it up for us both. And I didn’t like extending myself so far as to make that assumption. For all I knew, I could be wrong.
Except … if Cal wanted to bring Ian to real harm, there were easier ways to go about it. And he’d had ample opportunity over the … years? I had to assume they’d been a pair at least that long. More assumptions. I hate those things.
I added a cigarette lighter and a bottle of lighter fluid to my arsenal, then a small thin saw with a pointed tip, some waterproof matches, a second cell phone for good measure, and went ahead and zipped up the canvas bag. I said to Cal, “You ready?”
He said, “Yeah.” Then he watered it down by adding, “I guess.”
Apart from a ludicrous level of personal loyalty, I couldn’t figure out what Ian saw in him.
He continued, “You’re not going to need half of that. Probably not any of it.”
“I hope you’re right.” In fact, I knew he was right, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I never needed even a fraction of what I packed, but this was just one more parachute designed to cushion my neurotic topple into madness. And sometimes my obsessive emergency preparedness actually worked, so I didn’t feel compelled to stand around and defend myself.
I bet I wouldn’t need to defend myself to Pepper or Domino. Especially not after I’d already expressed them another phone, which ought to be waiting in the post office box within another night or two. Overprepared my ass.
No such thing.
Cal was driving because we were moving around in his rental car, the one he’d picked up at the airport as soon as they’d arrived. I’d been taxiing about and hadn’t had a chance to do my usual buy-something-secondhand-off-a-lot thing yet, so I let him fiddle with the keys to the white 2008 Malibu (which would not have been a first choice of mine, but whatever).
Once inside, he checked all his mirrors and the dashboard as if he hadn’t been the only person driving it for the last day or two. It wasn’t like Ian was tootling around town in it. “Um,” he said. “Put your seat belt on.”
“Way ahead of you,” I said, snapping at the belt with my fingertips.
“Oh. Okay. You’re going to have to tell me how to get there,” he added.
“No problem.” I’d printed out map directions to and from the parkour meeting joint, as well as a larger map of the neighborhood in case we had to improvise an escape. Or in case we felt like going for gelato afterward.
You never know.
The field club meeting went down in a building that hosted a dive bar, a Christian Scientist bookstore, and empty restoration lofts. Upon parking a block or two away, paying for a sticker (you never know when those bastards are watching the lots), and poking around the building a bit, we realized that
the empty and restored segment of the old building was populated after all. On the second floor a light was on and I could hear voices, and down by the stairwell was a handwritten sign that said, FIELD CLUB USE CODE #3314, COME TO ROOM 212.
Cal went to input the digits but I put out a hand and caught him by the arm.
I said, “Remember. You and me, we just showed up for this shindig around the same time. We don’t know each other.”
“I remember,” he said.
“And you should probably be aware, I’m going to let myself be a little … uh … conspicuous. I want to see if these guys would know a vampire if she—I mean, you know. If she walked up and bit them.”
His eyes widened. “You’re not going to—”
“No, I’m not planning to bite anybody.” It’d only been a week or two since I’d nibbled on the unfortunate Trevor, and I’d be set for another week or two, no problem. The extra blood I had in the bag was a backup just in case. Or to be more precise, just in case I got hurt and needed a quick hit to heal myself up enough to run. The blood would taste like ass and lose efficiency after a few hours, but I was crossing my fingers that “a few hours” would be plenty of time to get in and out of this joint.
I said, “I’m not going to sashay up there in a cape and you’re not going to behave like Renfield. I only want to see if they’re looking for some of the telltale signs that mark me as something else. I want to know if they’re trained to spot us, or if they have experience dealing with us. Do you understand?”
He scratched nervously at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess.” Oh, we were back on that again. “Just … I’m. I don’t know. Be careful, is all. Ian wouldn’t like it if you got yourself captured, or anything.”
“That’d make a pair of us,” I said curtly, but I was somewhat warmed.
“I mean, he’d want to come after you, you know? He’d want to try and rescue you, but with his eyes … like they are … I don’t know. I don’t know what he’d do. He’s a capable man, but … I don’t know what he’d do.”
I didn’t know either, so I said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” as if that wasn’t something I did all the damn time. “This could turn out to be the most boring night out any two people ever had.”
“I’ll hold my breath,” he muttered.
I pressed the suggested digits into the keypad and a buzzing noise announced that the “security door” was more than willing to buzz itself aside and let us through. Cal let himself inside, and I stayed outside to wait for a slow, steady count of one hundred—then I buzzed myself up and stepped inside a narrow corridor that smelled like newly cut wood and drying cement.
Even before I opened the door to suite 212 I heard a man’s voice and the echo of people sitting unquietly in chairs and milling about on a hardwood floor. There’s a timbre to it, the sound of people not doing much in a big empty space.
From my vantage point at the bottom of the stairs a couple of floors down, I heard Cal say, “Hello?” in a voice that was firmer than I expected. “Is this the parkour field club?”
“Yes!” said a man inside. He sounded young but authoritative, which is rarely a good combination, in my experience. “Come on in, have a seat. We’re just giving an overview to the newbies. Do you count as a newbie?”
“Probably.” I could almost hear him shrug.
I took my time, walking up slowly to the correct suite. The door was propped open just a sliver with a plastic wedge. I pushed it, and poked my head around it.
“Hey there!” said someone less authoritative and decidedly younger than the original speaker. The kid was a teenager, maybe a couple of years older than Domino. In the back of my head I had an idea that this was an activity for the eighteen-and-older crowd, but I wasn’t about to start quoting chapter and verse from fictional guide manuals within five seconds of entering the room.
So instead I just said “Hey there” back.
The room had quieted considerably, merely by virtue of—I realized almost immediately—the presence of a woman. I was the center of attention, and conspicuous without even trying any fangy little tricks. Almost parroting Cal, I said, “This where the parkour people meet up?”
A large grunt of a man stood arms folded, dressed and posed like a GI Joe action figure. He said, “This is it.”
He was maybe in his early thirties. Hard to say. Narrow face with few lines, but deep ones. Crew cut that had his sandy brown hair as tidy as a low-shag velour. He looked to be in charge and I assumed he was the lieutenant, but I didn’t accuse him of it.
I let myself shrink, doing that shy thing where you make yourself look smaller and talk somewhat softer, as if gosh darn it, you’re only a girl, and lookit all these big strong men. Because I have no shame, that’s why.
“Wow, okay. Cool,” I said, hoping I was approximating the speech of kids these days, in case I might pass for a teenager myself. I probably didn’t, but I knew I looked young and I made myself sound young. “I’m here to learn about it. Is that what this is for?”
“That’s what this is for,” he said. “Come on in, find yourself a seat. We’re just getting started.”
“Great,” I said, picking a spot toward the back and on the end. There were only four rows of metal folding chairs, each row about six chairs long. Most of the chairs were empty, but half a dozen were occupied—and three or four other guys, the veterans of the group, I guessed, were lurking in the background. They sat up against a folding table like the kind you see at church potlucks, and they fiddled with a coffeemaker or with cigarettes they weren’t supposed to be smoking indoors.
Or were they?
In Seattle, there are all these laws about where you can and can’t smoke, and mostly the laws amount to “you can’t smoke anywhere indoors, and only a few places outdoors.” So I might’ve only been surprised to see it because I’d been in the Northwest so long. Or there was always the chance that D.C. was every bit as strict, and the young bucks over there were demonstrating their powers of rebellion.
I settled into the chair, which creaked under my weight and stank faintly of rust, and I checked out my surroundings in the usual way—scanning for exits (two: the way I’d come in, and a second door on the far side of the room), counting my fellow occupants (ten, including GI Bolton up there), and calculating whether or not I could fight my way out if push came to shove (totally).
No one was sitting on either side of me; my nearest seatmate was three chairs down. He too looked young, and he was looking at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Apparently a girl in the midst is a real treat at a sausage-fest like this.
Even if I hadn’t appeared supernaturally young, and if I’d only been the early-twenty-something I’d been at death—I still would’ve been the oldest person present except for Cal and the cross-armed boy-doll up front.
He glanced at his watch, decided that we were it for the night, and started talking.
“All right, guys … and, uh, lady. Welcome to the District’s first and premiere parkour field group and urban exploration society. I’m Tyler Bolton and this is my clubhouse, and you can take it or leave it if you like—but I’m here to make sure that everyone knows the rules, knows what to expect, and stays out of trouble. So if you don’t want to listen to me, then fuck off and get yourself arrested on somebody else’s time.”
Nods of agreement went bobbing around the largely unfinished space, echoing off the drywall, the ceiling timbers, and the incongruously shiny wood floors.
I did not nod. I did not move.
Like any other vampire, I can do the spooky no-motion thing, the one Adrian had already called me out over. If I’m paying attention, I can hide it fairly well, though not perfectly. If I’m not paying attention, or if I’m perfectly happy to have it noticed, I stick out like a dead squirrel in a pile of puppies.
So I did my best to stick out. And although I got the intermittent side-eye glance or outright leer, at no point did I feel that I was making anyone nervous, or interested
in any fashion beyond the prurient.
GI Bolton continued. “After this general introduction, we’ll be adjourning to Rock Creek Park for some low-level introductory parkour—by which I mean, the kind that isn’t likely to get you killed, but ought to be fun.”
More nods. More murmurs. Not from me.
But I caught the lieutenant’s eye. Or he caught mine, as the case may be. Regardless, I saw him looking just a smidge too long, and something about the gaze felt intensely curious beyond the expected. I wanted to close my eyes—they were getting dry, pried open corpse-like as I sat there—but I didn’t. I held my unblinking ground and tried to use my psychic feelers, even though they were kind of shit in this sort of situation.
Too many people. Hard to single out just one. Too many shit-head boys thinking inappropriate (yet immensely flattering) thoughts about me.
Mostly I made them uncertain, it seemed. They didn’t know girls were invited into this clubhouse, and at least one asshole in the front row was hoping that I wasn’t any good at this parkour thing. I swear, some men just can’t stand the thought of being beaten by a woman. At anything. Funny. In my experience, and as a matter of irony, they’re the men who most desperately need a good ass-kicking.
I was aware of Cal’s … well, not his thoughts exactly. More like the presence of thoughts, or the presence of him—sitting ramrod-straight in his chair, displaying better posture than I’d seen him use yet. He was antsy, and fighting the impulse to look over his shoulder at me. For reassurance? For confirmation that I was present? I couldn’t tell. His motives were too tangled for me to do more than scan him. I wished for a second that I had Ian’s link with him, and I could pass along a tiny nudge of encouragement. But I didn’t have that link, so when I concentrated hard and thought, right at the back of his head, You’re doing a good job. Keep your eyes on the beefy grunt up front. I had no way of knowing whether or not he’d heard me.