“Thanks.”
“Do you want an escort here tomorrow and home?”
I ponder that and then opt for the obvious. “What’s Amber say?”
Without hesitation, I hear him pull the phone from his face and ask. Then he’s back. “She says you’re supposed to ride with Dexter. That it’s safe.”
Terrific. “Then…I guess that’s what I’ll do. Thanks.” Once the call ends, I finish what I was doing and get up to wash my hands.
Then I look in the mirror.
Hell.
My hair, which hangs past my shoulders, is now a solid black so deep and rich it practically shimmers with blue undertones in the bright sunlight streaming through my bathroom window. My hair hasn’t turned this color in a while. My eyebrows match.
You’d think I’d be used to this by now, but no.
I’m sure it’s also one of the reasons Mom homeschooled me, even if I didn’t realize it at the time, and she always downplayed it.
The fact that she told me never to tell anyone it happened only reinforces that belief.
I run my fingers through it, holding locks up in front of my eyes.
Hell, I even give it a tug, just in case.
Ow. Fucker.
Okay, then. Definitelynotimagining it.
If my hair stays this color, I won’t have to wear a wig tomorrow night. For tonight, I’ll be Blue again. What I really should do right now, though, is laundry. I throw on clothes, strip my bed, grab the towels out of the bathroom and everything else from the hamper, and carry the basket downstairs to the laundry room. A benefit of my oddball schedule is that during weekdays, I practically have the laundry room to myself.
I start two loads—towels and sheets in one, and clothes in the other because everything’s dark anyway—and set a timer on my phone before I head upstairs.
Another benefit of having a shifter landlord and having plenty of them in residence in the building is it’s probably the safest building anywhere around. No one would dare steal someone’s clothes from the laundry room. Even the clueless humans who live here who don’t know about shifters know better than to step a toe out of line.
It’s nice.
It’s safe.
Yeah, I know. Don’t get my hopes up, right?
I spend a few minutes tidying my bedroom-slash-living room-slash-dining room, including running my Dustbuster after I sweep the floor to pick up anything I might have missed. Then I grab myself a yogurt for breakfast and walk over to the windows to stand there to eat.
I love the view. The previous tenant apparently used a free-standing room divider screen in front of the windows to shade the bed from morning sun on the weekends. Garrett told me I could hang curtains or shades if I wanted, but no.
Iwantthe morning daylight. The price on the tiny apartment was right, too. No one from the club’s ever been to my apartment, human or vampire. Not that vampires could come over because of the treaty, but I’m not stupid enough to invite any vampires in, not even Lucius and Selene.
Trust…but verify.
Or, in my case, trust but take no chances.
Trust comes hard for me. Damned hard.
I clean my bathroom and then head back to the laundry room to move my clothes into the dryer. In my apartment, while I’m waiting, I decide to do a little snooping of my own and open my laptop.
There’s not a lot of info available about Dexter Van Sussex. He runs a casino in Atlantic City. There are some pictures of him, which confuses me until I look closer and realize he’s using a body double.
Not unheard of for vamps to do that when they have to be in the public eye.
