42nd & Lex (34 page)

“I'm faxing it right now,” she says. “Abri, you’d tell me if
there was something to this, right?”

“Of course,” I lie. This is for her
protection I tell myself. “I know you want to confront him on this but just let
it be for now. I will call his attorney and tell him to get Mark in check or I
will have a restraining order entered and use that letter as proof that he’s
off his rocker.”

“Thanks, Abri. I really appreciate all of
this. I just hope he can find some peace soon. I love him and I really wish
there was an explanation, even a crazy one like this, for his behavior. Maybe
then there would be a chance.”

“A chance?” I ask. “You’d take him back? Even
if he’s crazy!” Totally unprofessional and at the risk of losing my biggest
client, but I need to know—just in case.

“I know this sounds stupid, but yes, that I
could deal with. Like if I found out he had some incurable disease. I did
promise in sickness and in health, didn’t I?”

Sarah’s resolve is wavering. I can tell she
loves Mark as much as he seems to love her. If I can accept Lucan being a
vampire, why can’t Sarah accept Mark? Vampirism is sorta like an incurable disease,
especially being a Halfling. I try not to sound hopeful or encouraging with my
next statement, “Well, for now, just leave him alone and I’ll make sure he does
the same.”

I end the phone call just as Lucan rings my
cell. “Holy shit!” I whisper. “Mark wrote Sarah a letter telling her
everything.”

“Everything. As in
everything
?”

“Everything. And he sums it up with telling
her to ask me because I know. What should I do?”

“Can you send me a copy of the letter?”

“She’s faxing it right now. I'm sure—” Before
I can even finish my sentence Max walks in, letter in hand, with a look of
disbelief on his face. Clearly, he read it before he came in. I’m glad he’s the
one to retrieve it off the fax and not one of the other secretaries.

“I know,” I mouth.

He shakes his head and hands me the paper. “What’d
I tell you about getting involved in all this B.S.?” he hisses back before storming
out.

“I take it Max does not approve?” Lucan says
in my ear. Damn vampire hearing.

“Not at all. I’ll scan and email you a copy
as soon as Max isn’t looking.”

“Thank you, love. I’ll see you tonight.”

***

Lucan and Zaid spend the better part of the
evening finalizing their report on Serge and Mark for the Council. Mark’s
letter is now part of a growing stack of exhibits against them. It has all the
makings of an OJ-worthy murder trial. Personally, I think my broken cell phone
and the gash on my head should be the only proof necessary, even if they are
proposing a death sentence for Serge for his actions. I guess even vampires believe
in due process.

They are going before the Council in the
morning to present the evidence and gain permission to finish Serge off. Lucan
has promised me that he will not be the one to do it, but I suspect he’s just
said that for my peace of mind. Then again, Zaid is a trained professional itching
for a fight.

They are so engrossed that Lucan appears
completely unaware of my mental chatter. I test the connection by letting my
thoughts wonder to last night in the bathtub. I am replaying how our voices
sounded as we found release. Lucan drops the stack of papers he’s been
shuffling through with a curse.

“Sorry,” I call from the couch. “My bad.” I
can hear Zaid laughing softly.

“Well, my brother, I think it’s time I
called it a night. Amelia should be back from her trip to the Hamptons. She
insisted on visiting with a woman we know from Venice. She’s renting a house
here while she’s on some kind of sabbatical. Who goes on sabbatical to New
England in the winter from Venice, I’ll never know?”

Zaid is waiving his goodbyes and flying down
the stairs before either of us can respond to his question.

“Miss Cole,” Lucan chides. “What am I going
to do with you?”

Mark was pacing in his hotel suite thinking
about what to do with Serge. He was not going to step around his nearly
lifeless body for the next few weeks until it healed. It was a two-bedroom
suite but he’d had about enough of Serge and his constant bitching after only a
few days. 

“Don’t you have friends or something?” Mark
said to no one in particular. Serge was asleep on the couch—apparently the bed
was too soft. Mark resolved that he was going to have to pay for another hotel
room for Serge if he wanted to have any peace. He picked up the phone to call
the front desk. 

“You don’t have
any
rooms available?”
Mark said with a little more force than he’d intended. 

“No sir.” The voice on the other end of the
line remained nonplussed at his tone. “But we do have a furnished apartment on
the top floor that has just become available. We normally don’t use residences
as hotel rooms, but I could offer you that at the same rate as one of our
deluxe suites since you are one of our extended stay guests. It’s not a
penthouse but it does have two bedrooms and a full kitchen. How long did you
say you’d need it?”

“A few weeks.”

“Perfect. Unfortunately, it does not come
with maid service as it’s a private residence, but I could arrange for an
outside service.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mark replied. He
didn’t need to worry about plump little maids wondering into Serge’s trap. “Can
you send up the keys now?”

Maybe things were looking up after all. A
top floor apartment with no interference from the outside world was the perfect
place to stash Serge while Mark figured out what to do next. Mark would have to
bring Serge blood to keep him on the path to health and keep him from eating other
the residents—hopefully. But that was a small price to pay for not having Serge
in his personal bubble. 

Mark quickly dismissed the thought of just
letting Serge rot alone in the apartment. He was not in the mood to deal with a
police interrogation when someone eventually found the body. What happened to
vampire bodies when they died anyway? He wished he could ask someone about
that. If they just disintegrated into thin air like in the movies, it made the
whole leaving him to rot scenario a lot more realistic. Maybe he could call
Abri Cole and get her to ask her boyfriend—and apologize for outing her in his
letter, if it had actually reached Sarah.  

***

Mark opened the door to the apartment and
looked around. It was furnished, but just barely. A couch and lamp, a bed, a
breakfast table and two chairs. There was an old tube TV and a queen-sized bed in
one of the bedrooms as well. It looked like whoever had owned the place had
moved out in a hurry and left behind all the things they couldn’t fit in their
trunk. Serge had managed to haul himself into the elevator, refusing Mark’s
attempts at help, and was now feeling his way along the wall outside the
apartment. Mark had some misgivings about letting him make the trip under his
own power but figured the blindness would keep him from wondering off after
some unsuspecting human out for an evening stroll. 

“It’s not much but it’s better than your old
place,” Mark said as Serge rounded the corner into the entry way.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Serge snapped.
“Now help me inside. I’ve made it this far just by smelling your rotten stench.”

Mark led him to the bed and helped with his
shoes. While he would have preferred the cushy hotel suite to a barely
furnished apartment, keeping hidden was about the only vampire rule Serge
followed. He didn’t want to be subject to a well-intentioned hospital trip when
the cleaning staff found him looking mostly dead, eyes gouged out and hand
missing, on the bed. There would be no convincing a human he was on the mend
and didn’t require assistance. He was still too weak to kill or drain anyone,
unfortunately; but he wasn’t going to let Mark know that, he liked keeping that
moron on his toes.   

“I’ll be back later with some blood. It
won’t be human because I don’t know how to get that up here without robbing a
Red Cross or kidnapping someone off the street.”

“Either one of those would work,” Serge garbled.
His throat was still open, making his speech difficult if he didn’t keep his
hand over it. He was too worn out from his trip upstairs to care at this point.
Mark had managed to procure a pint or two from a local blood drive the day
before but it wasn’t enough. Serge needed what only a live human could provide.
Like a junky in a jail cell, Serge had no choice but to lay back and dream of
his next hit.

Mark walked back through the living room and
left the apartment, locking the door behind him. He had no intention of going
out for blood tonight. Serge could wait until tomorrow when he made his daily
butcher shop run. He’d have to make do with the stuff they sold to make blood
sausage, something Mark had never known existed until he became a Halfling. Serge
would be pissed, but he was at Mark’s mercy since he was weaker than he
probably cared to admit. For some reason that made Mark smile.

Mark was still smiling as he rode the
elevator down to his hotel suite. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t see the
elevator open across from him.

“Mark?”

He nearly jumped out of his skin. No one
knew where he was staying besides— “Sarah?”

“Hi,” she replied. “I know I shouldn’t be here,
and Abri will absolutely kill me when she finds out, but I need to talk to you.
I read your letter.”

Oh, fuck
. “My letter?” he said in
disbelief. So the maid had mailed it. He would make sure to leave her a nice
tip this week—assuming this conversation went well. “Yeah, my letter.”

“Can I come in?” Sarah asked, looking down
the hall towards his room. “The front desk told me what room you where in when
I said I was your wife.”

Wife. It was nice to hear that word coming
from her. “Of course. I'm sorry; I'm just shocked to see you here.” He started
walking towards his suite thinking about what perfect timing he had in stashing
Serge fifteen floors away. He just hoped there wasn’t any blood left on the
patio or the couch. Even though she was here to talk after reading the letter,
he was sure she wouldn’t be too keen on seeing a bloody mess in his room. He
held the door open and let her into the suite ahead of him. The smell of her
skin made his fangs run out a little as she walked past.
Shit.
He held
his breath and walked in behind her.

“What did you want to talk about?” Mark
asked trying to sound nonchalant as he talked around his fangs. They
begrudgingly retreated back into his skull.  

Sarah didn’t answer. She just looked around
the room, blinking wildly as if she was trying to hold back a flood of tears. She
sat down on the edge of the couch and placed her purse on the coffee table. “Do
you have any water?” she asked.

Mark raided the mini fridge and found a bottle
for her. He handed it to her and made the bold move of sitting beside her on
the tiny love seat. Mark couldn’t smell any blood, thank God. He was about to
say something to break the ice when it happened.

Sarah let out a little squeak and tears
spilled from her eyes as threw her arms around him. Mark gasped in surprise and
tried gently to push her away, afraid of what he might do. “Sarah,” he cried
out.

She held on tighter. “Mark, I'm so sorry. I
love you. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t care if what you say in the letter
is true. I don’t care if it’s not true and you’ve really gone crazy,” she
blurted out in one long breath. “We’ll figure something out…if you’re crazy.”

“You don’t? We will?” he managed to say without
taking in a breath. Her scent this close was torture. He nearly lost it when she
crawled onto his lap and stared at him with pleading eyes. He tried not to
notice that her movements had made her dress inch too far up her thighs. His
reaction to that had nothing to do with being a Halfling and everything to do
with being a man.  

“No,” she sniffed. “I mean, is it true?
Can
it be true?”

“Did you talk to Abri?” He wasn’t ready to
give a direct answer. Her hair fell over her shoulder and he wanted so badly to
reach out and touch the dark strands.

“No, well, sorta. I told her what the letter
said but she said she doubted if anyone would believe it was true. I don’t know
why, but I felt like she knew something and wouldn’t say. Noncommittal is so
not her thing. So I decided I needed to talk to you.”

While he was glad Abri hadn’t told her the
letter was complete insanity, he was a little sad she hadn’t said more. Mark
thought about how to proceed. He could stall and just tell her that he’d missed
her and wanted to get back together; or he could spill it all and see what
happened. The most likely results involved her either slapping him with a
restraining order or having him committed to a mental institution…or both. That
letter was just the handwritten proof of his demise Abri Cole would need to
assist Sarah in the matter. Hell, the attorney had probably already asked Sarah
for a copy of it. “If it was true, what would you do?” Mark asked, testing the
waters. 

“How would I know it was true?” she replied,
settling herself back on the seat next to Mark. He was grateful for the extra
space if he was actually going to go through with this. “What proof would I
have?”

Mark sighed. He had proof all right, but he
wasn’t sure he was ready to show it to her. The longer he waited though, the
more it looked like he was just crazy and the more likely she was to leave and
never talk to him again.

This was it. His only chance to make it
right.

He took a deep breath, inhaling Sarah’s scent
again, and closed his eyes, savoring it. This was probably the last time he
would be close to her, or anything else outside of a padded cell. He thought
back to their wedding day and how beautiful Sarah had looked as they committed
their lives to one another. Then he thought of how she had just looked
straddling his lap, dress hiked up almost to the point of indecency. The thoughts
made him smile and his fangs ran out to their full length as he exhaled.