I sometimes felt like I’d had it rough, but truth be told, I had no idea how she managed it all, supporting two people on a lowly retail salary. Vonnie was strong as steel. With only occasional babysitting help from her parents, she took care of business. Outside of MMHA, she worked two jobs and had recently started going to night school to be a paralegal.
In my eyes, she was a freaking rock star.
“So...?” Vonnie stared at me, drawing the word out and batting her long lashes as she waited for me to indulge her with some dirty details of last night.
If only I had dirty details... or anything I could share. Somehow, I doubted she wanted to hear about my quality time in the shower.
“C’mon,” she wheedled, pushing long, red hair off her shoulders. “Spill.”
She picked up papers from a chair beside my desk and sat, laid the rest of the papers in front of me then stared at me, unblinking. I gazed back blankly, still fresh out of words. It’s not like I could say much about the frankly bizarre meeting.
I’d been silent too long.
“Oh, come on.” She narrowed her gaze. “Something happened last night.” She pointed at me, eyes insinuating I was holding back. “You only texted me once. Was it horrible? Did he have radioactive bad breath? Give me a little something to work with, here!”
I rolled my eyes. “No, he didn’t have radioactive bad breath.”
“Okay, but he was hot, right?” Vonnie nudged me.
I sighed, reminded unwillingly of just how hot he was. But, beautiful face or not, he was still a vampire.
A freaking vampire.
“Yes, he was hot.” And a vampire. “Mysterious.” Like... really mysterious. “Nice body.” Too bad about the drinking blood thing.
“What did he look like?” Vonnie asked, her chin resting on her pale hands. “Details, girl. You’re letting the side down.”
I sighed. “About five-foot-ten or eleven, dark, floppy hair, English accent. Face that should be on a piece of Roman statuary somewhere.”
She blinked at me. “And your date was only ten minutes long, because...?”
“He’s trouble,” I said softly.
Vonnie regarded me with a serious expression for a moment. “The best ones are always trouble, Zorah.”
I shook my head, though. “No. He’s the kind of trouble that... I don’t know if I could get out of afterward.” At least, not alive, I finished silently.
But goddamn it, fool that I was—part of me still wanted to try. Just... not for the reason Vonnie probably assumed.
SIX
“YOU’RE REALLY HARSHING my vibe here, Zorah,” Vonnie observed.
I snorted, dragging myself away from my grim musings. “Sorry, Von,” I told her. “I can make up some story for you about a quickie in the Studio 88 restroom if you’d like, but the truth is, I don’t have his number, he doesn’t have mine, and I don’t even know what his last name is. I’m pretty sure that means it’s not going anywhere.”
“He at least knows where you work,” Vonnie said optimistically. “That’s something, right?”
Yeah, it was something. I really wished I knew what.
“Maybe,” I said.
You’re stalking me, I’d accused, and he’d said, a bit, yes. He’d called me an enigma, because of my blood, then seemed to lose all interest when he’d realized I was telling the truth about not knowing what the hell he was talking about. How much could a vampire tell about you from drinking your blood?
After the meeting, I had even more questions, with no good answers and no way to track down the man who had them. I frowned. Wait, I did have one thing. I had the name Guthrie Leonides. I resolved to Google the hell out of that name as soon as I got off work this afternoon. Now, though, I’d just had a fresh crock of shit tipped into my lap in the form of this state auditor’s bizarre accusations, and I had less than two hours to try and sort it out before I needed to leave for AJ’s.
“Look, I need to try to figure out what’s going on with these filings,” I told Vonnie, who nodded her understanding and let me be.
I sat down at my desk and rifled through the papers, reorganizing them into some semblance of order. Some would be of use for the meeting tomorrow and some wouldn’t. I pulled out manila folders for those I thought would help and filed away the rest.
After spending well over an hour recalculating and double-checking the paperwork, I still couldn’t see any mistakes. I read through the message Daisy forwarded to me, went through every filing discrepancy the auditor named in the email, but not one of them looked out of place on my end. Beyond that, there wasn’t much else I could do, so I organized the files in a box and brought them to Daisy.
“Here’s all the supporting documentation. I honestly can’t find anything I did wrong,” I said, handing her the files. “I have no idea what your auditor guy is looking at on his end, but I’ll be happy to come in tomorrow and talk to him face to face about it.”
Daisy sighed and nodded. “Okay. Listen, I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just, we can’t afford to have the Department of Revenue crawling all over us. That’s the kind of thing that destroys not-for-profits.”
I smiled, reassuring her that I wasn’t upset at all. “I know. It’s okay. Really. I’m confident the mistake is on their end. It’s probably something super simple.”
“I hope so. Thanks for your help today,” Daisy said, sounding tired. “See you tomorrow?”
I nodded, dreading the idea of another early morning—one where I would have to put on a cheerful face in front of powerful strangers. “Yep. Bright and early.”
I left her office and grabbed my things, walking the few blocks to AJ’s. The rain had stopped, though the wind was wicked crazy today. It would probably storm later in the afternoon. St. Louis at this time of year
