Hannah Jayne - Under Attack

“Ring a bell?”

I frowned. “No. Should it?”

“How about ‘Three Headed Dog Ravages Noe Valley Neighborhood’?”

I felt myself pale. “Mr. Rayburn did that?”

“No,” Lorraine said flatly. “You did.”

I raised my eyebrows and Lorraine let out another annoyed sigh. “Nicholias Rayburn was here last week. Old guy, blue robe, pointy hat?”

I cocked my head. “Oh yeah. Now I remember him.”

“You should, because you allowed him to renew his magiks license.”

My stomach started to sink.

“Yeah. With his three-inch-thick cataracts and mild senility. You were supposed to withdraw his license and strip him of his magiks, but you didn’t, and he walked home, thought a fire hydrant was following him, and unleashed the hound of Hell on the land of the soccer mom. Not exactly great for our reputation.”

I felt my usually pale skin flush. “Whoops.”

Lorraine stopped walking and faced me, the hard line of her lips softening. “Look, Sophie, I know you’ve had a hard time. I understand that with all you’ve been through you’re going to make some mistakes, but you’ve got to be more aware.”

The events of the last year of my life flooded over me, and I blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the imminent rush of tears.

It had been rough.

While I had gone for more than thirty-three years with nothing so much as an overdue library book to raise any eyebrows, in the last twelve months I had become involved in a gory murder investigation, been kidnapped, attacked, hung by my ankles as someone attempted to bleed me dry—

“And I know it’s got to be hard, what with Alex out of the picture and all.”

And I had fallen in love with a fallen angel who had the annoying habit of dropping into my life with a pizza and a six-pack when things were supernaturally awful, and dropping out when things shifted into relatively normal gear.

I sniffed, hugging Mr. Rayburn’s file to my chest. “Thanks. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

“Let’s hope not. But why don’t you head out a little early today?” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “Get some rest and regroup.” Lorraine bit her lip and danced from foot to foot, then leaned in close to me. “Okay. I’m really not supposed to say anything but I’m about to burst, so this is just between you and me, okay?” Lorraine sucked in an excited breath. “The main offices have found Sampson’s replacement. We’re supposed to have the new management in place by the end of the week. But it’s super hush-hush so don’t tell a soul, okay?”

I nodded, feeling a fresh pang of emotion washing over me. In the half-second it took to close my eyes I saw Pete Sampson’s cocoa-brown office walls, his worn leather chair, the orderly stack of files he always had on his desk. I felt the familiar lump in the back of my throat and swallowed furiously. Pete Sampson wasn’t coming back to the Underworld Detection Agency. Pete Sampson was dead. The realization was hard enough to face; knowing someone else would be sitting at Pete’s desk was almost too much to bear.

I cleared my throat and winced when my voice came out quiet and choked. “Your secret is safe with me. I’m going to go check in with Nina.”

I walked slowly down the hall, taking great gulps of airs and using my index fingers to dab at my moist eyes.

Nina was perched on the end of her desk when I found her, legs crossed seductively, her shoe dangling from one toe. She was winding her long black hair around and around her index finger and interviewing a werevamp who was sitting in her visitor’s chair. Nina was the only person I’d ever met who could make the sentence “please tell me about your previous employment history” sound sordid. She was nearly purring as the werevamp—who looked dashing in a steel-grey suit and had the chiseled profile of James Bond—ticked off a forty-seven-decade-long employment history that included working as a tax collector for King Henry the VIII and ended with software programmer.

I tried to catch Nina’s eye but she glared at me—nothing is icier than a vampire glare—and I rolled my eyes, heading down the hall toward the elevator. I was skirting the hole in the linoleum where a High witch blew herself up when I ran chest to chest into Vlad and his Fang Gang—the nine vampire staff members of UDA who were currently enraptured by the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement. Loosely put, VERM members were dead-set on bringing vamps back to their glory days (think Dracula, graveyard dirt, and ascots). Though UDA code was adamant about vampire/human relationships (the former was not allowed to eat the latter), I generally tried to steer clear of VERMers—Vlad, being Nina’s nephew (and a longtime resident of our couch), was the exception. Vlad and Nina shared the same fine-boned structure and elegant limbs that seemed to be signature of the LaShay family; both had pronounced, inky-black widow’s peaks under their sheaths of glossy hair. But fashion-wise, the relatives couldn’t have been farther apart.

Vlad fell in step with me, his ankle-length black duster coat floating behind him. I looked at it skeptically.

“Isn’t it a little warm for the coat?”

Vlad just shrugged his thin shoulders and straightened his paisley ascot. “Vampire mystique.”

“Of course.”

“Have you seen Aunt Nina? I’ve been looking all over for her. She was going to bring the snacks for the meeting.”

“I thought she was anti-VERM?”

I watched Vlad’s nostrils flare; the members of the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement loathed being belittled by their lame acronym. “She is, but you know Auntie.”

I nodded. “Right. Pro-snacks.” I gestured toward Nina’s office door that had mysteriously closed. “She’s interviewing a werevamp.”

Vlad smoothed his perfect hair. “I didn’t think we had any open positions.”

I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure we don’t. So, how are things with the movement?”

Vlad grinned, his fangs pressing over his lower lip. “Nice of you to ask. They’re going well. We’ve been able to reach out to more key figures in the Underworld lately, but our next hurdle is our biggest.”

I looked at Vlad who raised his eyebrows. “Hollywood,” he supplied.

“VERM is going after Hollywood?” I asked, skeptical.

Vlad stiffened. “It’s the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement. As for Hollywood, we are against the way vampires are being portrayed in modern media.” He shook his head. “It’s awful.”

I raised my eyebrows and met Vlad’s dark eyes. He blew out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, come on; according to Hollywood—and now according to every woman south of forty-five—vampires are misunderstood nightwalkers who are really just looking for someone to love.”

I glanced again toward Nina’s office door.

“Trust me; she’s not interested in loving him,” Vlad said with a disgusted shudder. “I mean, have you seen television lately? They’ve got us going to high school, using jewelry to go out into sunlight. If a new vamp tries to mimic what he sees on television, he’s going to get burned to a crisp. And don’t even get me started on how they’re screwing with our legendry!”

I nodded. “Yep. Best to go back to the good old days of Bela Lugosi, Nosferatu, and the Count from Sesame Street .”

Vlad rolled his eyes but continued to stroll beside me. “So, did you hear about that three-headed dog in Noe last week?”

“No,” I said quickly, stepping into the elevator.

My apartment is a little more than six blocks away from the San Francisco Police Department/Underworld Detection Agency offices, but this being the Bay Area, six blocks on foot equaled twenty-five minutes in the car. By the time I pulled into my apartment building’s underground parking garage the vein over my left eye was throbbing—whether it was from the midafternoon stop-and-go or from very nearly running down a clutch of tourists wearing I ESCAPED ALCATRAZ sweatshirts, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I knew psychologically that there were only two things that could help the kind of day I was having, so a good forty-five seconds after pushing the key into the lock at my second-story walk-up, I had a bottle of chardonnay in one hand and a package of marshmallow Pinwheels in the other. The surge of chocolate and alcohol helped but not enough, so I beelined for the bathroom, filling my mouth with cookies and peeling my clothes off as I went.