Kale handled over her precious stack and nudged against Vlad.
“That’s kind of scary,” I heard her whisper to Vlad. “I don’t know anyone—like us—who has ever died.”
Vlad just shrugged, his brooding countenance unchanged. “Things die,” he finally muttered, before huddling over his paper place mat with a black pen and doodling dark and broody things on it.
Kale alternately looked frightened and lovestruck, one hand kneading the palm of the other.
“Okay, Mrs. Henderson.” Will read from the manila folder he was holding. “Filed under ‘other.’”
“Yeah,” I clarified, “we don’t have a lot of dragon clients.”
Will raised his eyebrows. “A dragon? You don’t say.” He studied the stack of pages that flopped out of her folder. “According to this, the bird was punctual. Never missed an appointment.”
“Until last week.” I nodded solemnly. “And now we know why.”
Kale inched closer to Vlad. Her hands circled his bicep in a move that was part predatory, part fearful.
“Kale, you hadn’t heard anything from her?” I asked. “Before this? Or maybe from the kids or husband?”
Kale’s oblivious expression remained unchanged at my question.
“Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” Vlad asked, looking up from the doodle on his place mat.
Will snorted and turned over his coffee mug as the waitress flitted by. “You are being watched, gov.”
Crimson washed over Kale’s cheeks and she lowered her eyes, focusing intently on peeling a stripe of silver nail polish from her thumb.
“I don’t mean from in here,” Vlad said. “From out there.” He inclined his dark head toward the big picture window as the fog thickened outside. “I’ve felt it since we went outside. Don’t you feel it?”
“Don’t you have super vampire sense or something?” Will asked.
“Don’t you have a fire to put out?”
“Touché.”
Vlad looked out the window again, and my eyes went to where he was looking. I watched cars speed through the intersection and the same group of businesspeople on their lunch break that I usually did, but gooseflesh now pricked out over my arms. I glanced over my shoulder. Though it was noon, the sky was streaked an ominous gray; the sun was choked out by ribbons of fog. People bustled by outside, looking straightforward, avoiding each other’s gazes; the stores went about their business, with neon signs flashing, doors opening and closing.
Vlad gestured with his chin at my bare arms. “You feel it, too, huh?”
“I do now,” I said, with a shudder.
Will picked up the next file and caught my eye. “Shall we?”
Vlad cleared his throat and sat bolt upright; his fingers were laced and sitting in front of him. He looked startlingly Dixonesque.
“So,” Vlad said, “the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement is concerned that whatever is happening to these demons could soon be happening to our brethren. If it hasn’t already happened.”
“Me too,” Kale piped in. “Except about witches, too.”
“Ten minutes ago you didn’t believe anything was wrong with anyone.”
Kale swallowed hard. “That’s before we knew that anyone was dead.”
Kale’s plain statement struck ice at the base of my spine. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with.”
Vlad looked hard at me. “If we’re dealing with anything at all.” He shrugged while I gaped. “If Dixon had the Investigations team out, and didn’t say anything to the staff, then maybe they didn’t find anything.”
I opened my mouth to interject, but Vlad held up a silencing hand. “We live in a big city, in a weak economic climate. Mrs. Henderson could have walked in on a burglary.”
Will looked impressed. “She’s a dragon, right? That’s one ballsy burglar.”
“Weren’t you just very concerned about how this might affect your ascot-wearing buddies?”
Vlad shrugged, picked up the next file and flipped through the pages casually. “From her description, it looks like Bettina was mugged.”
“Would a mugger say he was out to eradicate her kind?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of my chest.
“People do all sorts of crazy things for all sorts of crazy reasons, Sophie.” Vlad grinned, fangs glowing white. “This is San Francisco. Last week Santa Claus was being walked by a dominatrix through the Mission. It wasn’t even Christmas.”
Will blanched and I knocked on the table. “Can we focus, please? We have a series of strange happenings that may or may not be combined. Demons who never miss appointments are missing appointments. Mrs. Henderson”—I shuddered—“murdered, and Bettina reporting an attack.”
Will looked at me.
“I think all of these things seem a little too coincidental to be, you know, coincidence, don’t you think?”
Kale nodded. Her large eyes let me know that she agreed with me.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
“I didn’t jump. I answered the phone. I got out of my car at the Henderson house. Lo and behold, there conclusions were. There is a full-blown Underworld attacker loose in San Francisco,” I said definitively.
“As long as you’re not going overboard.” Vlad sighed.
“Four events. Four!” I held up my hand, wiggling four fingers. “All within a few days of each other? This is bad.”
Shirley came back with our food and we stopped talking, suddenly trying to look casual in that completely suspicious way. She angled an eyebrow at us. “Can I get y’all anything else?”
I pressed my lips together and forced a smile, though my stomach quivered nervously. “No, no, I think we’re okay.”
The second she left, Vlad swung toward me and Will. “So there is no evidence that any vampires are in danger?”
I shook my head. “Nothing that we’ve seen so far, especially if these are all the files.”
Will’s eyes flashed and I sucked in a hard breath. “Well,” I started, “someone did try to stake me.”
“Stake you?” Vald’s eyebrows went up.
I made the universal stabbing/staking motion and Vlad grinned. “Then it’s official,” he said, “this guy has no idea what a vampire looks like.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Well,” Vlad said, puffing out his damask vest,
“please keep me abreast of the situation, particularly should something change.”
He gave each of us small, curt nods and slipped out of the booth.
“You know, I should probably get back to work, too,” Kale said, trying to scurry out behind him.
“Aren’t these files your responsibility?” I asked.
Kale waved me off with a flick of her hand. “I trust you to get them back.” She popped up onto her tiptoes to look over my head and I craned my neck to follow her gaze. Through the plate glass window I could see Vlad was already on the sidewalk, pulling up the collar of his trench coat against the light drizzle that had started. I looked at Kale’s flimsy, short-sleeved T-shirt.
“You’re going to get soaked to the bone. Take this.” I handed her my white puffy jacket and she slipped it on, the collar swallowing her mass of dark hair.
“Looks cute on you,” I said, smiling. “But you can’t keep it.”
Kale grinned and turned on her heel. “Thanks!”
“Such a nice work ethic with kids nowadays,” Will said ruefully. “Send them out to protect something with their lives and ...” He shrugged, cocking a boyish looking half smile.
“I think the only thing she was protecting was—”
The screeching of tires just outside the glass cut off my sentence. Will mumbled something to me, but his words were lost in the booming crush of metal and shrieks of people on the sidewalk.
“A girl’s been hit,” someone yelled from a booth behind us. “Somebody call 911!”
The few bites of lunch I had eaten sat in my stomach like stones. I wanted to get up and look, wanted to turn my head to glance out the plate glass window, but my whole body had gone statue-stiff. My every bone was feeling leaden. When I tried to speak, I realized my mouth was papery and dry. “Do you think ... ?” was all I managed to get out before I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. “Do you think-think ... ?” I tried to start again, but another
