Cherry Stem (16 page)

With her eyes squeezed shut, she screeched like a banshee. I lifted her off the ground to try and subdue her, and she did her best to lodge her pointed shoes inside my shins. Why on earth would a woman try to escape while wearing high heels? Vanity before safety, I decided.

Then she kneed me on the hip.

I adjusted my grip and moved behind her. That way she couldn’t get me with her hands and knees. Still, she wouldn’t stop trying to claw at me over her shoulder or get me with her heels.

Alex approached, gun in hand. I shook my head, and he halted but kept his weapon pointed at her.

Sheena still shrieked and bucked. Her long nails found my face, and one of them gouged my cheek. It stung enough to make my eyes tear up, but I held on even as her fuchsia jacket ripped.

“Ms. Herring, I have a gun pointed at you. We just want to ask you some questions.” Alex’s voice of reason wasn’t working; Sheena never ceased her thrashing.

“Sheena, cut that out! You’re not going anywhere until you talk to us.” My fangs had come out, and my
s
’s were kind of whistly, but I sounded menacing, nonetheless. The scent of my own blood made me moodier than before.

“Let me go!” She stomped on my foot with her heel.

The jolt of pain was sharp but not debilitating. I held her at arm’s length. “Why did you hand me to Willoughby?” I shook her before spinning her to face me. “Why?” I was certain I was yelling, but the last reached my ears as a whine. “I thought you were my friend.”

She instantly stopped fighting, and her body sagged. Easing one eye open, she said, “Cherry?”

“Yeah.” I could have said something wittier, but for the second time that day, my expectations had little to do with reality.

Like I said, I’d been expecting shock and fear when Sheena laid eyes on me. Now I saw there was shock there, all right, but no fear.

Her hands reached for me again, yet not to hurt me. They touched my face, my shoulders, my hair. I didn’t know how to react; she wasn’t trying to wound me or defend herself.

Finally she squeezed me to her as hard as she could. “Oh thank God, you’re okay!”

* * * *

Her living room hadn’t changed at all since I’d last been there. Every piece of furniture, as well as the walls and carpeting, still made a statement: the owner had a loud personality.

Then again, the owner herself was a testament to that.

Sheena had on a pair of fuchsia pants, the jacket of which now lacked two buttons, with a fuchsia and lime green silk top. The set might have looked appropriate for Halloween on me, but it complemented her mocha-colored skin perfectly. Her matching makeup was messed up, mascara-tinged tears making tracks on her blush.

She’d asked if we wanted coffee or something stronger but we’d both refused anything, so she was the only person in the room with a drink in hand. Scotch. Straight up.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said for the millionth time, reaching across the couch to pat my knee.

I used my fingers to trace the scratch already healing on my cheek but didn’t respond; I was still too gobsmacked to do anything but stare. If Alex hadn’t pulled me inside the house by the hand, I’d have probably still been out in the garden, trying to figure out why Sheena was acting happy to see me.

Alex, my knight in shining armor, took it upon himself to point out the mistake in her statement. “She’s far from okay, Ms. Herring. She’s dead.” His glare was anything but professional.

Sheena sniffed. “She’s walking and talking. It’s more than I thought she was. Ergo, she’s okay.”

Ergo
. Leave it to her to find the oddest time to use a pretentious word. I shook my head. Alex was right. I wasn’t okay. I’d spent years alone. Even when I’d been with Constantine, I’d had no friends, nobody to be silly with, nobody whose shoulder I could cry on. I couldn’t go see my family, couldn’t let them know I was still around, still the same person they’d brought up except for the undead thing. I’d never wanted kids before I’d been turned, but knowing the choice had been taken away from me made me long at times for the possibility of one.

I could have been worse off, I guess, could have been gone forever, but so much had happened to me because of her.

I looked at Alex and felt a smile tug at the corners of my lips. Some of those happenings hadn’t been bad at all.

Suddenly I didn’t feel like killing Sheena any longer. “Why did you do it?” That was the thing I needed to find out first.

“I didn’t know I was doing something.” The words came out soft as a breath. “That guy asked to meet you. Nothing bad was supposed to happen to you.” That she hadn’t knowingly led me to my death loosened the knot in my stomach the tiniest bit.

“Something did happen, though.” I thought Alex meant to urge her to say more, but a look at his face showed me he was still beyond pissed off. “Of course, you thought you were just whoring her out.” He spared her none of the formal courtesy he’d offered her assistant. This wasn’t a formal investigation any longer; it was as personal to him as it was to me.

Sheena hung her head. “Willoughby was good-looking, well mannered,
rich
. I thought he’d be good for her.”

How could she have thought a guy named Willoughby could be good for
anyone
?

Alex sat on the armrest next to me, gun lying on his thigh. He hadn’t even let go of it to hand Sheena her bag and laptop before we’d come inside. I squeezed his free hand.

“Why didn’t you do something when you heard I disappeared?” I asked Sheena. I wanted to believe she’d initially acted with my best interest in mind, but there was no excuse for the rest. “Why did you give him more girls?”

“I didn’t
hear
you’d disappeared.” Her voice was louder, exasperated, even though she was still not looking at me. “He came here and…he said what had happened to you would happen to me if I didn’t help them, or if I went to the cops. He—he
bit
me.” Her free hand twitched on her lap.

I didn’t want to feel sorry for her, but until recently I’d thought of her as a friend. I couldn’t just delete that. Instead of trying to figure out my feelings, I focused on how her words answered one of my upcoming questions. She knew about vampires. “And you just let him do it to others?”

“He promised me they’d be kept happy, that he’d offer them things.” I could tell she was trying to convince herself more than us. “There were some who didn’t have much of a future on the runway, or at all.” I remembered the entry with just a picture and number that her assistant had given us. “Others that he’d specifically suggested I approach. He’d call and tell me what he had in mind. I didn’t do anything. I just arranged the meetings.”

“Knowing they’d die?” It was entirely possible I could still find it in me to snap her neck. Deep down I wanted not to have found out about her involvement, even if that shot down our chances of finding the young women.

“Knowing they’d live forever,” she yelled, raising her gaze to me. “They’d stay pretty forever. They wouldn’t get a single wrinkle, and they’d be rich. Nobody would miss them. I was helping them.”

“What about Dorothea Williams?” Alex’s question fell heavily in the quiet that had followed Sheena’s outburst. “She has a son.” I was grateful the wrath etched on his face wasn’t aimed at me. I knew he was mortal and therefore physically weaker than me, but seeing him like that, I could tell he’d be lethal if he chose to.

Sheena paled, her complexion turning ashen, and her lower lip trembled. “I didn’t want to give him Dotty. I wouldn’t have signed her if he hadn’t made me. He told me where I could…bump into her. I had to make it all seem my idea. He couldn’t approach her on his own, because she was cautious of going out with strangers, being a mom and all. After I met her—she was so nice. He said she’d be the last one. That it had to be her. I introduced them about a month ago, and they went out a few times. When nothing happened at their first date, I hoped he wouldn’t…you know.”

I motioned for her to continue, but my mind reeled. If Willoughby was the guy Dotty had been seeing for a month, then he’d selected her before finding out about me and Alex. Before there
was
a me and Alex. Willoughby had been keeping tabs on me. That had to be it. But why? The question was drowned out by a flood of guilt; whatever the reason, it was
my
fault Dotty was gone.

“When he called and demanded a new girl for next week, I told him I wouldn’t do it anymore, that he’d promised I wouldn’t have to. I asked him about Dotty. He wouldn’t talk about her, but I knew if he wanted a new girl, it meant Dotty—” Her voice, high-pitched by that point, broke, and her next words were muttered under her breath. “She was so nice.”

Hearing Sheena say
was
twice drove a sharp spear of cold fear through my heart. “She’s dead?”

“I tried to call her, to get her to break things off with him, but she didn’t answer. I thought I was too late. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

I didn’t realize I was almost crushing Alex’s hand until he cleared his throat, and I felt him try to pry it away. I let go. “We just know she’s missing. Do you know anything about where he might be taking the girls?”

“No. I swear. I was too afraid to ask for details, and he never told me anything.” She downed the rest of her drink, and her hand trembled when she leaned forward to leave the glass on the coffee table.

“Have you ever seen anybody else with him?”

“No, never.” She chewed on her lip, and I could see flakes of the supposed lipstick peeling off on her teeth.

“Do you have his number? Any way to contact him?” Alex had produced his notepad, but Sheena shook her head.

“He always called me, and from a private number. Set the time and place, and asked for what he had in mind. He’d always meet them at clubs or parties. The names the girls were to ask for were always different.”

Made-up names. I wondered if they were worse than “Willoughby,” although that had to be his real name. Or at least the name he went by in the vampire circles; it had been what they’d called him during my trial.

Alex asked for her phone. “Maybe he’ll call again,” he said. She gave it to him immediately.

Alex didn’t ask Sheena to specify the names Willoughby had given her on occasion. It made sense; we had no use for them. We were back to square one.

I rose, and Alex followed my lead. There was nothing more to do there.

Sheena pushed herself off the couch with both hands, wavered, and finally managed to stand. “What about me? What are you going to do with me?”

Alex looked at me, and in that moment, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if I suggested he shoot her and bury her in the backyard, he’d be fine with it.

A small part of me would be fine with it too. Sheena had pulled the world out from under my feet, and I couldn’t forgive her for that. Before that, however, she’d made my world a better place for a while. “Get out of town,” I said flatly. “For real this time. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.” I wouldn’t; I’m not a killer. But I’d do my best to make her miserable.

She nodded. “For what little it’s worth, I am really sorry. I didn’t want any of this.”

I believed her but didn’t really care.

* * * *

My phone buzzed again on the drive back, and once more I let it go to voice mail. I curled up in my seat and let the rocking motion of the car lull me to sleep.

I only awoke briefly when Alex was getting me out of the car, and I thought I heard him say something about taking care of me. He was human and fragile despite his size, and I was a vampire and basically immortal. Still, his words made me feel safe. Alex’s strength came from within, and it could move mountains.

Nothing bad could happen to me again as long as he held me.

Chapter Ten

Lying naked in bed, pressed against a hard male body, provides the best distraction from depressing thoughts. The body being Alex’s, chiseled to perfection, warm to the touch, and snuggled close to mine, added an extra reason for me not to want to get out from under the covers to retrieve my buzzing phone.

It was still in my jeans pocket, where Alex had left it when he’d undressed me to put me in bed, and the jeans were folded on a chair just a few feet from where we were. The distance seemed vast when I knew crossing it entailed disentangling myself from Alex’s embrace.

“You’re not gonna get that?” His breath caressing the back of my neck made me itch to leave the blasted call alone.

I let out a puff of air and brought his palm to my lips so I could place a kiss on it. “You heard it?”

“You don’t need enhanced hearing for that. I think I put your keys in the same pocket. They’re jingling.” He caressed my cheek with his thumb.

“I don’t want to get up.” The words were drawn out and nasal.

Alex ignored my whining. “I heard it earlier too. May be an emergency.”

I doubted that; the caller hadn’t been persistent enough, letting hours go by between tries. I realized I should have checked my missed calls but had honestly forgotten about them until then. “The only people who have that number are Sheena, Constantine, Dotty, and the council.” Ignoring his grumbling that he ought to have it too, I went on. “It’s too early for any of the vampires to be calling me, and Sheena wouldn’t dare to.”

I was out of bed as soon as the last word had left my mouth.

Dotty
! Dotty or her kidnapper—I refused to think of him as her killer—could be trying to contact me. I grabbed my jeans. My fingers might as well have been sausages, the way they refused to be agile and just pluck the stupid phone out of the stupid denim. The buzzing stopped.

I finally found the phone and was about to check my missed calls when it started vibrating again. I let out a surprised squeal and looked at the name blipping on the lighted screen.

My mood plummeted. Constantine.

There went the possibility of crawling back next to Alex and having me some early-day sex. Unless, of course, I ignored the phone. If it was urgent after all, he’d text me when he saw he couldn’t reach me. I pressed the little red button and sent him a ready-made excuse message that said
Can’t talk. Text in case of emergency
. Then I turned and smiled at Alex, who was sitting up and looking at me intently. “Nobody important.” A glance at the unanswered calls list showed it had been him earlier too, but I had no voice mail alert.