"Cool, cool. Well, if he's not at work or home..." Brent trailed off. "This isn't like him. Even with the whole vampire thing, he's been really reliable about work."
"If he shows up?—"
"I'll call you back at this number?"
"Yes."
"Got it. Hey, uh, find him, okay? He seemed really off yesterday. Like, more than his usual vampire thing."
Simon ended the call.
So Charlie wasn't at Brent's. Wasn't at work. Wasn't at his apartment. And his only friend thought his vampirism was elaborate roleplay.
11:56 PM.
Where the hell was Charlie?
Chapter
Seventeen
The eastern horizon had gone from black to bruised purple, and Charlie pressed himself back against an air conditioning unit that barely covered half his body.
He'd been up here for—what, seven hours?
Hard to tell when his phone refused to turn on.
The rooftop stretched thirty feet in every direction from his pathetic shelter. Gravel and tar paper that would start heating the moment the sun touched it.
Once more he wondered if he could survive the fall.
Maybe.
He peered over the edge again. His stomach lurched.
Vampires had enhanced healing. But enhanced healing wouldn't help if his head separated from his shoulders on impact. Or if he landed wrong and ended up a vampire pancake, slowly reconstituting on Madison Avenue while commuters stepped over him.
Pancakes usually came with syrup, didn't they?
What a fitting end that would be, considering Charlie was basically 60% syrup already.
The purple sky shifted toward pink.
Charlie's skin prickled with warning. He felt as if he were standing too close to an oven with the door cracked open.
"Jump," he whispered to himself. "Just jump. You got up here somehow."
His legs refused to cooperate.
He'd tried four times already. Each time, his body locked up the moment his feet left the ground, dropping him back onto the gravel roof with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. Whatever vampire instinct had carried him up here in blind terror had apparently clocked out for the night.
Which was just perfect.
Here he was, Charlie the vampire, turned as a joke, surviving on red sugar, and now about to become the world's most pathetic supernatural barbecue. They'd find his crispy remains up here eventually.
Charlie huddled against the AC unit again. He tried to fold himself smaller, knees to chest, but his feet stuck out into the growing light. The sensation shifted from oven warmth to standing under a heat lamp. Not burning yet, but the promise of pain building in his skin.
He thought about Simon's apartment. That sparse, empty space that had somehow felt safer than anywhere Charlie had beensince turning. Which was insane, considering Simon was a vampire hunter who'd been sent to kill him.
