Authors: Hannah Jayne

Under Attack (22 page)

BOOK: Under Attack

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I tossed and turned most of the night, staring at the red numbers on my digital clock and finally putting on my iPod to try and drown out the chatter that was going on in my brain. The next morning I awoke with the cord from my headphones wrapped around my neck and my sheets bunched on the floor. I was still achy and tired but did my best to keep the events of the last nightâfrom jail to Vessel to suicideâout of my head. When I padded into the kitchen Nina was still there, sipping from a coffee mug and leaning against the cabinets, ChaCha asleep at her feet.

“You look good today,” she said with a cheerful smile.

“I love that I can always count on you to lie to me.”

Nina handed me a Starbucks from the fridge and slung her arm across my shoulders. “That's what best friends are for.”

I unscrewed my drink and slumped at the kitchen table. Nina sat across from me. “So, speaking of fabulous best friends, I couldn't sleep last night.”

“Because you're a vampire?”

“Yeah, and because my best friend feels like her life has been turned upside down.” Nina reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze.

I felt another lump forming in my throat, but I smiled. Nina's skin may be cold, but her touch warmed me nonetheless.

“You need answers, so I'm going to help you get them.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

Nina offered me a wide grin that showed off her white teethâpointed incisors and all. “Close your eyes.”

I laid my head against the table and moaned. “No, no more surprises. From now on, I'm never losing consciousness, never closing my eyes, never opening doors. And I'm only eating clear broths.”

I could practically hear Nina's eyes rolling.

“I was in jail!” I wailed.

I looked up as I heard the paper fall onto the table. A piece of folded yellow notepaper lay in front of me. I grabbed it.

“What's this?”

“Open it.”

I raised a suspicious eyebrow and Nina snatched the paper out of my hand and unfolded it, smoothing it on the table. At the top of the paper was written Lucas Szabo, and underneath it, his full address. I felt my jaw drop.

“You found my father.” My voice was a near whisper. “What? How?”

Growing up without a father, I went through the typical stages of child-abandonment feelings: making believe my father was looking for me, never wanting to see my bastard-making father, assuming he had a good reason for leaving, dating guys who wore blazers and used fatherly expressions like “cotton-pickin'” and “malarkey.” At times I pored through old records or did halfhearted Internet searches. As angry as I wanted to be, I couldn't help but feel a meaningful tug around Father's Day or The Men's Wearhouse, but not knowing where my father wasâonly that he existed somewhere out in the worldâgave me a weird sense of comfort. Not anymore.

“Lorraine owed me a favor,” Nina said, her voice smug.

I felt a little stab of warmth. “And you used it on me? How? When?”

Nina shrugged. “Turns out Lorraine's as much of an insomniac as I am.”

I looked at the paper, pinching it hard between my thumb and forefinger. “Thank you.”

Nina threw her arms around me, engulfing me in one of her cold vampire hugs. “I'm really sorry about everything, Soph.”

I barely heard her as I stared at my father's address. He lived in Marin County, less than forty-five minutes from my home in San Francisco. I wondered how long he had lived there. I wondered how long he had lived just across the Golden Gate Bridge and had never bothered to see me.

“I want to see him,” I finally said.

“What? Now?”

“No, not now. I want to see him, at least see his house. I want to see where he lives, but I don't want him to see me.”

“Because he might be Satan?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don't want him to see me because I'm not ready for that. I just want to see where he lives. I want to see what I can find out about him before I actually”âI swallowed hardâ“meet him.”

Nina and I shared a glance.

“And also, I guess I wouldn't mind finding out if he is actually the devil.”

“We can go there. He lives close,” Nina said softly.

Too close. My father lived less than an hour away from me, yet made no attempt to find me. Satan or not, shouldn't every father want to check on his little girl? I steeled myself, reminded myself that my so-called father just might be the cornerstone of evil, the King of Darkness, Hell personified. Not the kind of guy you want driving your car pool.

Nina put her hands on her hips. “What are we supposed to find at his house, though? Pictures of his Hell-adjacent condo? Pitchfork in the coat closet?”

I grinned in spite of myself. “Whatever works.”

Nina shrugged. “Either way, I guess a little sleuthing couldn't hurt.”

“Unless we're found and flayed alive,” I said helpfully.

Nina slung an arm over my shoulder. “Sophie, do you really think your dad would flay you alive? And he should be happy to see me. Technically, I'm one of his people.” She bared her fangs. “He probably even has my soul somewhere in one of his file cabinets. Alex's, too.”

I stood up, my heart hammering in my chest. “Then this isn't a crazy idea?”

“Of course it is. It's downright suicidal.” She licked her lips as my stomach sank. “But I love a challenge. It'll be a midnight mission.” Nina held out her tanned arms. “And now I won't stand out in the dark. We'll go tonight.”

My heart stopped. I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly bone dry.

I had spent the last thirty-three years pretending that I didn't care about my father's whereabouts and inwardly hoping that somehow, he was searching for me. Now, in less than twenty-four hours I could be face-to-face with the man who abandoned me, who walked out, leaving behind my mother and a four-day-old infant. I could ask him why and he could tell me. He could tell me that he missed me and that he looked everywhere for me, that he dreamed of me, too. Or he could tell me that he just didn't want me.

“Okay, then,” I said, my voice wavering. “Tonight.”

Nina put out her pinkie, hooked it with mine. “To your family tree. May it not be growing in Hell.”

Chapter Seventeen

At just after four o'clockâmy second break, and forty-five minutes after hefting an armload of “slightly irregular” skinny jeans to the front of the storeâI slumped into a plastic break-room chair and called Nina.

“So, I got the text! How did I know you'd get hired in a heartbeat? So, what are you doing? Where are you working?”

With the excitement of last nightâfelonious misunderstandings, a rather invasive strip search, and a vampire with a spray tanâI had forgotten to mention my new career in the retail sector to Nina. I tried to call and tell her over the phone, but for some reason I couldn't make the statement “I work at People's Pants” come out of my mouth. Besides, didn't rayon look better in print? Instead, I had shot her a vague text while holding my cell phone under a round rack of extended-size cargo pants.

I held the phone to my ear and looked around at the bank of metal lockers, most etched with cheerful sayings like
Mike was here
and
Hell=People's Pants
. I glanced at the big row of time cards stuck to one wall.

“Well,” I started, “I guess you could say I'm in the fashion industry.”

“Oh my God, I am so dying with envy right now! I would give my soulâif I had oneâto work around clothes. You are so lucky!”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I think I'm going to keep looking. Oh, and I'm apparently closed to the occult, says my seventeen-year-old supervisor.”

“Seriously and seriously? You, closed to the occult, and you, with a seventeen-year-old supervisor?”

“I am the lucky one. Look, I'll meet you at home as soon as I leave here.”

I heard Nina stammering on her end of the phone. “Um, actually ... would you mind meeting me here?”

My stomach clenched. “At UDA?”

“It's just that I have a project that I need to finish up and I brought the stuff with me and it would just be way easier to hop on the freeway from here. Besides, Dixon'll probably be gone by the time you get over here. He's getting a haircut at five-thirty.”

“I don't know, Neens.” My eyes shifted across the break room to Avery, who stood in the doorway pointing at the tattooed spot on her wrist where a watch would be. “Fine. Whatever. I've got to go. I'll see you tonight.”

“Can't wait,” Nina said.

The sun was setting outside People's Pants when Avery officially dismissed me. I locked my terrible blue smock with the trainee name tag in my newly assigned lockerânumber forty-three, the one etched with
Hell=People's Pants
âsnatched out my purse, and headed for the door. After yesterday's strip search, having Avery paw through my shoulder bag didn't bother me quite so much.

I was sitting in Nina's visitor's chair at the UDA when Dixon poked his head in, his wide, slick-as-leather smile going solid and forced when he saw me. “Ms. Lawson.” I'm not sure if it was meant to be a greeting or a question, but the tone of his voice made my hair stand on end.

Nina jumped up, panic crossing her dark eyes. “Sophie is just here to see me. To ride home with me.”

Dixon's forced smile faltered minimally. “That's nice.” He gave an odd, stiff nod in my direction. “Nice to see you.”

I gritted my teeth and returned his approximation of a smile.

“Is there anything you need, Dixon?” Nina shimmied impossibly close to him.

“I'm leaving for the day, actually, but thank you,” Dixon said. And then, with a polite glance toward me, “Good night, ladies.”

I waited until Dixon was out of earshot before starting. “He isâ”

“I know, fantastic, right? I really think he might be the one.”

I stood up and shut the door softly. “The one? I'm not even sure he's the one to run the UDA. I mean, what's his background even?”

Nina shrugged. “I don't know. French?”

“I mean his business background. What do you even know about him?”

Nina thought for a second. “I know he's a Leo. You know how well I do with Leos.”

“You also know that he fired me. Your best friend.”

“Relinquishing you to find an amazing job in the fashion industry.”

Amazing. Fashion. People's Pants. Nope.

I shook my head. “So, back to the plan.”

Nina rubbed her hands together. “I've been looking forward to it all day.”

I stood up, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. “Then this is something we should do? It's not crazy?”

“Of course it is. But it's par for the course with the whole demon-slash-angelic world looking at you as some sort of cosmic prize.” Nina clapped her hand on my arm. “Maybe I should take you for myself.”

I gave her a look and she licked her lips, grinned. “Kidding. But as I said before, I love a challenge.”

“Okay, then,” I said, hands on hips. “I guess we go.”

“Wait.” Nina stood up and upturned her shoulder bag on her desk, the contents spilling out onto the floor. “You can't just break and enter looking like that.” She gestured to my standard sheath dress distastefully.

“Are you kidding me?” I slumped back into my chair. “There's a dress code for breaking and entering?”

“Hello? Watched any
CSI
lately? Black, black, and more black.”

“And let me guess? Ski masks?”

Nina's hand went to her silky dark hair and stroked a lock. “No. That would mess up my hair. Anyway, I, obviously, am already dressed.” Nina twirled in her black velour Juicy Couture sweat suit, the word
Juicy
bedazzled in rhinestones across her butt.

“The Juicy is a nice touch.”

Nina wiggled her butt at me and grinned. “I got to dress down because I was helping Dixon redecorate his office. We had to move some furniture.” Nina waggled her eyebrows.

“I'll bet.”

“Yeah,” Nina said, her eyes trailing over me. “The only problem is that I don't have a whole lot of black in my wardrobe.”

I gaped and Nina crossed her arms, one hip jutting out indignantly. “I hate it how you all think that just because I'm a vampire that I have an entire wardrobe of black leather dusters and Elvira dresses.”

“I don't think that. I've seen your closet.”

She rolled her eyes. “Black is so stereotypical. I don't like it. It's for amateurs. And besides”âshe tossed her hair over her shouldersâ“it washes me out.”

I raised one eyebrow, focusing hard on Nina's back to lily-white, bloodless complexion. “You're right. It's definitely the black clothing that makes you look so
deathly
pale.”

Nina rolled her eyes and handed me a heap of black fabric from her desktop. “Just put this on.”

I shimmied out of my dress and stood there in my slip. “You're kidding me,” I said, when I shook out the dress.

She shrugged. “I told you, it was all I had. And we're running out of time. It's either that, your slip, or lurk in the shadows in your Jackson Pollack-on-speed sheath dress.”

I eyed my multicolored sheath and then slipped into Nina's black dress. “Oh yeah,” I said, ekeing the sequined fabric over my hips, “this is definitely made for B and E.”

The dress was a one-shoulder, bugle-beaded Romona Keveza cocktail gown with a blush-worthy side slit and a foot of fabric that trailed on the ground behind me.

“Wow,” Nina said, examining me, “that dress really is amazing. With the right shoes ...”

“No. An evening gown for breaking and entering is as far as I go. I am not wearing heels, too.”

“Suit yourself.” Nina shrugged. “It would really extend the line though.”

I blew out a sigh and yanked the extra fabric up, tossing it over my shoulder. Then I hiked the skin-tight skirt to mid-thigh. “I said bring a flashlight, too.”

Nina rummaged through her bag again and produced two mini Maglites. “Done.”

“And latex gloves?”

Nina bit her lip.

“You forgot the gloves? Well, that's okay. We'll just have to be very careful. If Lucas Szabo reports a break-in, I don't want anyone to find our prints.”

“
Your
prints.” Nina waggled her fingers. “I don't have any. And I said I couldn't find
latex
gloves. Besides, they would do nothing for that dress. But I do have gloves. Voila!”

Nina produced two pairs of elbow-length cashmere gloves. She handed me the black pair that had rhinestone-studded ruching up the sides. “Aren't those to die for?” she asked. “I want them back.” She slid her own delicate hands into a charcoal-grey pair with a tuft of faux fur around the tops, then stretched her arms elegantly. “Lohman's. After-Christmas sale. Seventy percent off.”

“What every good criminal is after,” I muttered as I gathered my purse. “A sale. Well, are you ready?”

Nina smiled and nodded, then followed me out the office door.

“You know, a French twist would really offset the one-shoulder neckline of that dress... .”

“Nina!” I moaned.

“Sorry!”

She shut the door with a click behind her.

We crossed the bridge in near silence, but once our tires hit the Marin side, I was fairly sure the thunderous beat of my heart was filling the car.

“There's nothing to be nervous about,” Nina said, not taking her eyes off the road. “Everything is going to be fine.”

“Thanks,” I said, grateful, but unconvinced. “If I had known he lived just a few miles away ...”

“You don't know how long he's lived here. He could have just moved into the area.”

“Or he could have been here all along.”

“Then he's a huge deadbeat bastard. It's not nice, but it's not rare.”

I blew out a sigh, stroked the smooth fabric of my rhinestone-studded breaking-and-entering gloves. “Turn here,” I said.

Nina glided her car down a tree-lined street. The moonless darkness was punctuated by the occasional weak streetlight. We rolled slowly down the street until we found number seventy-one, a well kept but otherwise nondescript house set way off from the street at the arc of a cul-de-sac.

“Here it is.” Nina said.

“Yeah, here it is.”

We parked across the street, then ducked our way to the front of my father's house, positioning ourselves in a thick bank of rosebushes. We hunched low against the moist dirt, our elegant gloves protecting us from the rosebushes' thorns.

“See?” Nina said happily. “Better than latex.”

I squinted, frowned in the darkness. “Binoculars. I should have brought binoculars.”

“One step ahead of you,” Nina said as she leaned forward, her face pressed up against a pair of bejeweled opera glasses.

“See anything?”

“Not really.” She glared down at the long-stemmed binoculars. “These aren't the best for this kind of thing.”

“Imagine that,” I said, my legs aching from my fifteen-minute squat. “This was a bad idea. I don't think we're going to find anything.”

“Shh!” Nina's held out her hand, gloved fingers splayed. “What was that?”

“What was what?” I asked, relenting and flopping down on my butt in the flower garden. “I've got human hearing, remember?”

But then I heard it, too. A gentle rustling in the bushes to the left of us.

Nina sniffed at the air, her eyebrows raised. She furrowed her brow, then frowned, sniffing again. “Alex? Is that you?”

“It's cool and disconcerting that you can do that.”

The bushes rustled again and Alex poked his head out, his skin translucent in the pale moonlight.

“Alex?” I asked.

He had a pair of binocularsâreal binocularsâin one hand and was tastefully dressed in black cargo pants, black combat-style boots, and a yummy, formfitting long-sleeved henley shirt. He grinned when he saw me. “I guess we both had the same idea here. Of course, my tux was at the cleaners.”

“Very funny,” I scoffed. “You should be glad I don't have a closet full of breaking-and-entering attire.”

“You really shouldn't be here,” Nina said, pointing at Alex. “I could smell you from a mile away.”

“You shouldn't be here, either.” Alex was looking at Nina but talking to me.

“Vampires don't have a smell.
You
have a smell.”

BOOK: Under Attack

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