everyone as if for a birthday and get her out of there before she sets them off. Cut off the bane. Complimentary desert for any who want it.'
Blond stubble catching the light, he glanced up as if able to see through the ceiling to the noise upstairs. The music was high again, and Jeff Beck filtered down. 'Loser.' Somehow, it seemed to fit as they all slurred the lyrics together. The wealthier patrons in the lower floor didn't seem to mind.
'Piscary will have my hide if we lose our A rating over a Were bite,' Kist said. 'And as exciting as that might be, I want to be able to walk tomorrow.'
Kist's easy admission of his relationship with Piscary took me aback, but it shouldn't have. Though I always equated the giving and taking of blood with sex, it wasn't, especially if the exchange was between a living and an undead vampire. The two held vastly different views, probably because one had a soul and the other didn't.
The 'bottle the blood came in' mattered to most living vamps. They picked their partners with care, usually —but not always—following their sexual gender preferences on the happy chance that sex might be included in the mix. Even when driven by hunger, the giving and taking of blood often fulfilled an emotional need, a physical affirmation of an emotional bond in much the same way that sex could—but didn't always have to.
Undead vampires were even more meticulous, choosing their companions with the care of a serial killer. Seeking domination and emotional manipulation rather than commitment, gender didn't enter into the equation— though the undead wouldn't turn down the addition of sex, since it imparted an even more intense feeling of domination, akin to rape even with a willing partner. Any relationship that grew from such an arrangement was utterly one-sided, though the bitee usually didn't accept it, thinking their master was the exception to the rule. It gave me pause that Kist seemed eager for another encounter with Piscary, and I wondered, as I glanced at the young vampire beside me, if it was because Kist received a large measure of strength and status by being his scion.
Unaware of my thoughts, Kist furrowed his brow in anger. 'Where's Sam?' he asked.
'The kitchen, sir.'
His eye twitched. Kist looked at the waiter as if to say, 'What are you waiting for?' and the man hurried away.
Bottled water in hand, Ivy snuck up behind Kist, pulling him farther from me. 'And you thought I was stupid for majoring in security instead of business management?' she said. 'You sound almost responsible, Kisten. Be careful, or you'll ruin your reputation.'
Kist smiled to show his sharp canines, the air of harried restaurant manager falling from him. 'The perks are great, Ivy, love,' he said, curving a hand around her backside with a familiarity she tolerated for an instant before hitting him. 'You ever need a job, come see me.'
'Shove it up your ass, Kist.'
He laughed, dropping his head for an instant before bringing his sly gaze back to mine. A group of waiters and waitresses were headed up the wide stairway, clapping in time and singing some asinine song. It looked annoying and innocuous, nothing like the rescue mission it really was. My eyebrows rose. Kist was good at this.
Almost as if reading my mind, he leaned close. 'I'm even better in bed, love,' he whispered, his breath sending a delicious dart of sensation down to the pit of my being.
He shifted out of my reach before I could push him away, and still smiling, walked off. Halfway to the kitchen he turned to see if I was watching. Which I was. Hell, everything female in the place—alive, dead, or in between— was watching.
I pulled my attention from him to find a curiously closed look on Ivy. 'You aren't afraid of him anymore,' she said flatly.
'No,' I said, surprised to find I wasn't. 'I think it's because he can do something other than flirt.'
She looked away. 'Kist can do a lot of things. He gets off on being dominated, but when it comes to business, he'll slam you to the ground soon as look at you. Piscary wouldn't have a fool for a scion, no matter how good he is to bleed.' Her lips pressed together until they went white. 'Table's ready.'
I followed her gaze to the single empty table against the far wall away from the windows. Glenn and Jenks had joined us when Kist left, and as a group we wove through the tables, settling on the half-circle bench with all our backs to the wall—Inderlander, human, Inderlander—and waited for the waiter to find us.
Jenks had perched himself on the low chandelier, and the light coming through his wings made green and gold spots on the table. Glenn silently took everything in, clearly trying not to look nonplussed at the sight of the scarred, well-put-together waiters and waitresses. Whether male or female, they were all young with smiling, eager faces that had me on edge.
Ivy didn't say anything more about Kist, for which I was grateful. It was embarrassing how quickly vamp pheromones acted on me, turning 'get lost' to 'get over here.' Thanks to the excessive amount of vamp saliva the demon pumped into me while trying to kill me, my resistance to vamp pheromones was almost nil.
Glenn carefully put his elbows on the table. 'You haven't told me how class went.'
Jenks laughed. 'It was hell on earth. Two hours of non-stop nitpicking and putdowns.'
My mouth dropped open. 'How do you know that?'
'I snuck back in. What did you do to that woman, Rachel? Kill her cat?'
My face burned. Knowing Jenks had witnessed it made it worse. 'The woman is a hag,' I said. 'Glenn, if you want to string her up for killing those people, you go right ahead. She already knows she's a suspect. The I.S. was there stirring her into a tizzy. I didn't find anything that remotely resembled possible motive or guilt.'
Glenn pulled his arms from the table and sat back. 'Nothing?'
I shook my head. 'Just that Dan had an interview after Friday's class. I'm thinking that was the big news he was going to spring on Sara Jane.'
'He dropped all his classes Friday night,' Jenks said. 'Just made the add/drop with a full refund. Must have done it by e-mail.'
I squinted up at the pixy sitting by the lightbulbs to stay warm. 'How do you know?'
His wings blurred to nothing and he grinned. 'I checked out the registrar's office during class break. You think the only reason I went was to look pretty on your shoulder?'
Ivy drummed her fingernails. 'You three aren't going to talk shop all night, are you?'
'Ivy girl!' came a strong voice, and we all looked up. A short, spare man in a cook's apron was making a beeline for us from across the restaurant, weaving gracefully through the tables. 'My Ivy girl!' he called over the noise. 'Back already. And with friends!'
I glanced at Ivy, surprised to see a faint blush coloring her pale cheeks.
'Ivy girl?' Jenks said from on high. 'What the hell is that?'
Ivy rose to give him an embarrassed-looking hug as he halted before us, making an odd picture since he was nearly six inches smaller than she was. He returned it with a fatherly pat on the back. My eyebrows rose. She
The cook's black eyes glittered in what looked like pleasure. The scent of tomato paste and blood drifted to me. He was clearly a practicing vamp. I couldn't tell yet if he was dead.
'Hi, Piscary,' Ivy said as she sat, and Jenks and I exchanged looks. This was Piscary? One of Cincinnati's most powerful vamps? I'd never seen such an innocuous looking vampire.
Piscary was actually an inch or two shorter than I was, and he carried his slight, well-proportioned build with a comfortable ease. His nose was narrow, and his wide-spaced, almond-shaped eyes and thin lips added to his exotic appearance. His eyes were very dark, and they shone as he took his chef's hat off and tucked it behind his apron ties. He kept his skull clean-shaven, and his honey-amber skin glinted in the light from over our table. The lightweight, pale shirt and pants he wore might have been off-the-rack, but I doubted it. They gave him the air of comfortable middle class, his eager smile enforcing the picture in my mind. Piscary ran much of the darker side of Cincinnati, but looking at him, I wondered how.
My usual healthy distrust of undead vamps sank to a wary caution. 'Piscary?' I asked. 'As in Pizza Piscary's?'
The vampire smiled, showing his teeth. They were longer than Ivy's—he was a true undead—and looked very white next to his dusky completion. 'Yes, Pizza Piscary's is mine.' His voice was deep for such a small frame, and it seemed to carry the strength of sand and wind. The faint remnants of an accent made me wonder how long he had been speaking English.
