“Well . . .” Joseph paused. He gazed meaningfully at our group. “There’s more to it.”
We looked at him in ago onfashion.
Joseph folded his arms across his chest. “Okay, what I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential. This is never to be repeated, understand?”
We nodded.
“When you mention the VGO to most vampires, they typically think of the few who, like me, officially represent our organization during ceremonies and trials. However, there are hundreds of us the world over—factions of our organization that operate underground, as many of our undertakings are . . .”
“Illegal as hell,” I finished for him since nobody else would.
“I suppose that’s one way to state it,” Joseph said. “The VGO’s most vital divisions are ones that focus on information technology. As we all know, vampires value their anonymity. The VGO work hard to ensure our vampire secret remains as such. We allocate a great deal of our resources to monitoring what happens online—the emails, websites, and social media accounts of humans, mainly. We keep an eye out for the repeated use of key word searches such as drinking blood, immortals, and VGO.”
“The vampire version of the NSA,” Sebastian said.
“Right,” Joseph agreed. “For the most part, humans who reference us online are discussing films or books. Then there are those who are trying to capitalize on our recent trendiness by selling vampire-themed trinkets, clothing, and art. The last group, the crackpots, are most problematic. They’re typically conspiracy theorists who believe vampires are out to get them or individuals who fancy themselves immortal. They discuss things like human celebrities who are secretly vampires or how they, personally, escaped an attack. We see a surge in such activity whenever a new vampire film comes out, and it’s almost always in the United States, where society is most susceptible to Hollywood fads. Americans can be so capricious.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “That’s so crazy,” she said, placing a hand on Joseph’s bicep.
“Here’s the thing, Elizabeth,” Joseph began, placing his hand over hers. It lingered longer than a moment. Robert and I exchanged a sly glance. Hm, interesting.
“What’s the thing, Joseph?” Liz purred, her eyes twinkling. I’d known her long enough to tell when she liked something, and she certainly liked Joseph touching her. She flipped her ridiculously shiny, bouncy hair off her shoulder.
Joseph said, “The crackpots we uncover online aren’t all crazy, and they can be dangerous. I’m not referring to those who drink animal blood because they wish to be immortal. I quite like those humans. It’s their fanaticism that makes vampirism seem preposterous to the rest of the world. It’s easy for humans in power to dismiss the notion of vampires existing when purple-haired teenaged girls are wearing t-shirts with vampire film heartthrobs on them. The day the president starts sporting prosthetic fangs at press conferences, we’ll know we’ve got a problem.”
“Don’t make fun,” Liz pouted. “Iused to wear vampire t-shirts.”
“I’m sure they looked exquisite on you, Elizabeth,” Joseph pouted right back.
“I’ll have to show them to you sometime,” Liz flirted.
Joseph raised an eyebrow and winked. “I shall look forward to it.”
Oh brother.
Joseph, remembering the rest of us were still in the room, continued, “The issue is that a crackpot human will occasionally post information that contains a degree of validity. We especially monitor posts from humans who claim they’ve been attacked by a vampire. If there’s even a hint of legitimacy to their claim, we’ll send an investigator to that human’s territory to see if there are any vampires misbehaving.”
I said, “You guys really do have eyes everywhere.”
“You have no idea, Olivia,” Joseph said, like I’d paid him a compliment.
“How do the crackpots relate to you finding Robert?” Sebastian asked.
“A blog written by a man residing on the California-Arizona border was discovered by our IT team. Martin Pike claimed a French vampire had attacked him down in a cave. He described her as beautiful, ethereal, and bloodthirsty.”
“Sounds about right, Serena being bloodthirsty,” I said. The beautiful and ethereal parts were accurate, too, not that I was going to admit it. Screw her.
Joseph nodded in agreement. “The area where Martin lives, Quartzite, is popular for quartz mining. He’d frequently hunt for gems underground, and he gave cave tours as part of his business. Martin was alone on the day he was attacked, or else we would have had a real problem to deal with.”
“And what about the problem youdidtake care of?” I made aswiping motion across my throat, then raised my eyebrows questioningly. Poor Martin.
Joseph shook his head. “We don’t resort to murder by default, Olivia.”
Could have fooled me, I thought.
“Thankfully, Martin was no problem at all because he seems so insane. He lives in a trailer right off the highway, which he often features on his blog. In some of the videos he’s posted, he demonstrates how he’s government-proofed his home by taping tinfoil over the windows. The tinfoil blocks out the radio waves, you see.”
“Of course it does,” Liz said, rolling her eyes.
