“Try to escape,” I say. “And fail. Snoop? Whatever you want. This is where you’ll be living for the foreseeable future.”
“That,” she says, “is a long time.”
I don’t answer, just slide my phone into my pocket.
“And if I don’t want to be here?”
I call the elevator, punching in the code. “That’s too bad. You’re still too young to be autonomous.”
“You’re trying to protect me?” she asks.
The elevator dings, and I step inside. “No. The world.”
The doors shut, and I head down to my office. Give her enough time and she’ll escape. It’d be stupid to think she wouldn’t.
In my office, it feels untouched, like I haven’t been here in centuries. I was in here yesterday. It’s just that with each passingminute I can feel the gap between lifetimes widen. Life with Elliot the human. And now Elliot the vampire.
With a shake of my head, I dislodge the ridiculous thought, and I go to my computer. Once there, I log into the private records, the ones with employees, the farmed, and the blood givers who trade their ruby blood for euphoric sex. Slaves, I guess, but willing ones.
As I go through it all, I don’t find this Kayla Evans.
It could be as easy as she lied to her friend and she never worked here at all, but Elliot is sure she did. If she was an employee, the files should be here, even if she was fired, relocated, mind-wiped, or…erased.
It could be that the files got wiped from the computer to exist only in paper form, down in the bowels of VMR. Except that’s not how things are run. We’re efficient. I doubt it was just a glitch or clerical error.
Everyone who works here is recorded until they leave.
This time, I click around until I reach the application take-ins. I find hers immediately. Rather, one of many.
Then I read the name at the top, the person who hires in that department.
“Fuck.”
I call Vittoria.
“Get your ass in my office now,” I tell her.
She, of course, takes her sweet time, and when she opens my door, she looks perfect as usual. A femme fatale with red hair that cascades over one shoulder and a dress in black that’s cut in a deep V at her chest. The cold hunter in her eyes, the vicious turn to her mouth, the fact she’s a predator and a walking weapon and perhaps cares only for me and a few others.
I lean back in my desk chair.
“Sit, Vittoria.”
She doesn’t.
I don’t move. “I said sit.”
With a slight, fleeting frown she finally does. “Is this about your rumble with Santiago at the engagement party? Or maybe your tumble with Ms. Montague after? I’ll take the details of the former rather than the latter.”
“No,” I say, aware she’s trying to deflect what I want to talk to her about. “This isn’t about last night.”
“Then what is it, Lucian?” She studies her pointed red-painted nails. “I’m busy.”
I look at her closely. “I want to know why Adriadne is on the list of interviewing and hiring some employees. It isn’t her job.”
She pauses briefly, so briefly that another person may have missed it. But to me, it speaks volumes.
“Maybe I promoted her,” she says.
