“Here are the rules: I will let you see the back of my name tag. My real name is on it. If you can pronounce it correctly, on thefirsttry, I’ll go downstairs with you. If you can’t, I get the hundred. You never get another chance to play the game—just this once. You also canneverreveal to anyone what it said. Deal?”
“Deal!”
“Now, when you try to pronounce it, keep your voice down.” I wish I could say I know exactly what I do to them, but I don’t. Except I know it’s working, because his pupils have fully dilated, making his green eyes look nearly black in this light. It’s a pretty neat party trick.
You know, among the fang-endowed crowd.
“Okay.”
I cup my left hand over the front of my name tag. Holding my tray up so it hides both our faces and my name tag from those gathered around us, I tip my name tag forward enough that the writing on the back is visible.
But I’m still looking him in the eyes, and he’s not looking away.
“Go ahead and try,” I say, while I’m thinking to him that he has no clue how to say it.
Not that most people have a clue to start with. I have yet to meet anyone who does.
He glances at it, then immediately back to my eyes. “I…um…” I release my name tag and lower the tray as he stares into my eyes. “Uh… I… It’s…” He swallows, and I pluck the hundred from his fingers.
“Thank you so much for playing,” I sweetly say. I offer him a smile as cheers and laughter go up among the onlookers.
The guy looks dazed as I tuck my winnings into my sports bra. Augustus slaps the guy on the back, whacking him between the shoulder blades. Darren still looks stunned and probably will for a couple of minutes, if the past is any indicator.
“Come on, buddy,” Augustus says. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I… Uh…”
When I head back toward the bar, I’m not surprised that Maximus sidles up alongside me. “One of these days, my dear, you will tell me how you do that trick of yours.”
“That would spoil it, though,” I remind him.
What I don’t want to admit—and what only Selene and Lucius know—is that I have nocluehow I do it.
Absolutelynone.
As a human, when I look a vampire in the eyes, I should be completely in their thrall, and…I’m not. Quite the opposite.
I can’t completely compel a vampire or a human the way a vampire can, but anyone who stares into my eyes like that, they usually end up…
Like Darren. Their wits get sort of knocked off-kilter for a moment, at the very least. I don’t know if it’s because I have powers, or I scramble their power and bounce it back to them, or what.
Oh, he’ll be okay in a few minutes, but he’ll have no fucking clue what my name tag said, and he’ll be unable to remember it.
Like I said, I don’t know how I do it. I just…doit. Lucius learned about my immunity to the thrall almost immediately when we first met and started talking. He didn’t believe me when I told him about it, I guess. I discovered my secret talent by accident the first time I worked for a vampire, at a bar in Toronto. I was nineteen. By then, while I knew vampires and shifters supposedly existed, because of the fringe circles Mom and I lived and worked in while she was alive, I didn’t realize they were…real.
The bar’s owner, a vampire named Neimus, liked me because he didn’t have to worry about the vampires trying to hit on me or get free drinks from me. From the second I met him, I knew exactly what he was when he tried to charm me and failed.
Fortunately, my stupidity—“Oh, mygod! Youarea vampire!”—didn’t get me killed when I looked at him and accidentally did the scrambling thing on him. Neimus helped me realize exactly how different I was from other humans in terms of my abilities, and he helped me learn how to safely navigate a shadowy world that few humans are privileged enough to walk through, much less survive and thrive in.
I loved that job and my boss. I lasted there nearly two years before I had to go on the run again.
That’s also where the name tag game first developed. Although, back then, I just went by Blondie, regardless of which wig I wore at the time. Then, I only had three from which to choose, two of them blonde and one black. And I took a twenty from my marks instead of a hundred.
I’ve gone up in the world.
And no, I don’t use my power on Lucius and Selene beyond my initial demonstration of it. I’m not stupid. That’d be disrespectful. I try not to use it on any of his men because, again, respect. They won’t harm a hair on my head with Lucius and Selene protecting me. They also won’t allow any harm to come to me. That would sign anyone’s death warrant, and they know it.
But humans and other vamps?
