“So, it should be easy to find that person and ask him what we need to know.”
“Yes. It should be easy for you to find him.”
He looked at me meaningfully. I narrowed my eyes at him. Parts of his story didn’t add up. If this was as important to him as he said, shouldn’t he want to keep a much closer eye on things? I know I would be supervising closely a job of this magnitude. Especially if I thought my employee had already screwed up a critical piece of the job. For that matter, why was he asking me, the person who’d already failed once, to do this? He had to have others waiting in the wings. Why a baby vamp?
“And where will you be while I’m questioning this guy?” I asked.
He lifted one shoulder. “Around. It’s not really any of your business, is it? That’s why you’re my employee for the moment. I tell you what to do, not the other way around.”
Hm. I’d already been burned by this guy once. Twice, if you counted the cluster that was the delivery time and place.
It was clear he wasn’t to be trusted. My gut told me he was hiding a lot. For the moment, I didn’t have a lot of choices so I’d go along with his plans until I could figure out a way to get out of this fool agreement.
“Here.” He tossed me a small metal charm.
I caught it and turned it over in my hands. “What’s this? A necklace? Not sure it’ll do me a lot of good with the killer.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, you twit. It’s an amulet. Break it and it’ll call me to your side.”
Hm. That could come in handy.
The teenage-looking sorcerer gave me the name and address of where I could meet his guy and took off to wherever sorcerers went in their spare time.
*
Picking up Cherry was easy compared to last night. If there were any werewolves around, they were well hidden when I strolled up to the bright red mustang. Even better, there wasn’t a single scratch on her. Jerry would leave my head in place for another day.
The address the sorcerer gave me was on the edge of the Arena District, close to the heart of downtown. Prior to my change, I had spent many a night on the town down here with my friends. It was the entertainment center of the city and some of the hottest clubs and restaurants made their stand along Park Street, which ran down the middle of the district. A lot of the bigger companies kept apartments and condos in the area as temporary housing for employees looking to relocate to the area.
I had avoided it since moving back to the city. I’d heard vampires had their fingers in every club down there. It made for the perfect spot to do some hunting—plenty of young, healthy and inebriated people looking for a good time and not particularly on their guard.
It seemed the sorcerer’s contact lived and worked in one of the condos, so despite my misgivings, I found myself parking in one of the garages and walking the three blocks there.
The complex was one of the new builds. The brick was beautiful, and the land around the four-story building was charmingly landscaped. Nestled down a brick walkway, it was off the main thoroughfare and had its own underground parking garage. I couldn’t help being impressed and slightly disgusted at the same time. The place was nice and in the heart of everything. You could step out your door and find yourself at any point downtown in just a few minutes.
It was also obscenely expensive. My parents had looked at a couple of these when they were first built, thinking that with two kids in college it might be nice to move closer to everything. They quickly changed their mind after taking a look at the price tag.
My guy was on the third floor, condo 315. Getting in had been as simple as waiting for a resident to happen along and then asking them to hold the door. I had several shopping bags filled with tissue paper and rocks to help sell the image.
The lady hadn’t even questioned me. All this fancy security and it didn’t’ mean squat unless the residents were willing to follow the rules. I could have been a serial killer for all she knew.
I knocked on the door and waited, looking up and down the hall. When no one answered, I knocked again. I already knew it was useless. If anybody had been home, I would have heard them moving around.
I didn’t really want to wait around all night in vamp territory. I couldn’t lurk outside in the hall all night either. Even if this place had lax security, they were bound to get suspicious of someone lingering in the hall for hours. I couldn’t even wait outside for him to come home because I had no idea what he looked like.
That left breaking and entering.
I reached into my back pocket and grabbed my library card. It didn’t get as much use these days and if it broke I could easily get a new one. It turns out, TV had it semi right when they showed people breaking into houses with the use of a credit card. I discovered the trick after locking myself out of my apartment for the third time in less than a week. It didn’t work on every lock, but the generic, cheap ones were too easy to get through. If his deadbolt was engaged, I was screwed. This trick wouldn’t get me through a deadbolt.
Turned out my mad breaking and entering skills were unnecessary; the door knob turned easily in my hand before I could use the card.
The door swung open. I lingered outside, not liking this one bit. There were only a few reasons for someone’s door to be unlocked. The first—they were one of those idiotic people who left their doors unlocked against all common sense. Or they just left for a moment and thought it would be safe as long as they came right back.
Given my luck recently, I had a feeling it was closer to someone had already beaten me to breaking in.
The smell of old decay reached me.
It could also be that my contact was already dead.
