Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(51)
“Huh.” I thought that over for a moment. “You said ‘technically,’” I pointed out. “‘Technically’ there are only two classes.”
Quinn hesitated. “I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to tell you,” he admitted. “At any rate, all you need to know is that Kirby outclasses me, but I’m here on Itachi’s orders. And Itachi is Kirby’s sworn dominus.”
I thought about pushing him further, but there really wasn’t much point. Frankly, I was surprised he had come right out and admitted he couldn’t tell me. “So Kirby has to answer your questions, but he doesn’t have to be nice about it,” I summed up.
“Exactly.”
We turned onto College Ave, and I got my first glimpse of the Sigma Pi fraternity house. Kirby, Quinn explained, was an honest-to-goodness frat boy.
The frat house was a monstrous building, with several wings and a long, semi-circular sidewalk that was mostly covered by illegally parked Jeeps, Audi wagons, and fancy SUVs, all of them much nicer than my ten-year-old Outback. Boulder is a town full of rich kids, which I couldn’t get too smarmy about. Technically, I’d been one of them.
Young frat-boy stereotypes were busily unloading crates and plastic shopping bags from the vehicles. It’s Friday night, I remembered. They were throwing a party.
“How is this even possible?” I wondered. “I mean, he can’t go to classes, right? Does he even drink beer?”
“Technically, we can eat or drink anything,” Quinn said wryly, “but we can’t digest anything but blood, so we have to throw it up afterwards.” He shrugged. “Kirby doesn’t live in the house, and the other fraternity brothers think he takes all his classes at night and online because he has a part-time job.”
I was flabbergasted. “That sounds ridiculously complicated. And temporary. I mean, if he’s not aging . . .”
“He’s about five years into his Van Wilder bit now,” Quinn told me, parking his sedan behind the last station wagon in the line. “He can only keep this up for another year or two, but that’s long enough to annoy the hell out of Itachi, which I think is the whole point.”
“Oh. Revenge for breaking up Kirby’s prostitution ring?”
“I would avoid using the word ‘revenge,’” Quinn said carefully. “Feuds can start when you throw around words like that. I would call it ‘acting out a little.’ But yes, Kirby was annoyed that he had to move to Boulder, so he got himself accepted to CU so he could force a time limit on his stay here. He’ll eventually have to ‘graduate,’ and he’s hoping Itachi will feel it necessary to send Kirby somewhere else.”
“Oh.” I thought about all that for a few seconds. “Who’s Van Wilder?”
We walked past the sea of cars to the line of brick archways that formed the entrance to the house. Quinn reached out and snagged the shoulder of the nearest brother, a short, big-eared freshman holding the beer tap he’d obviously been sent to fetch from one of the cars. “I’m looking for Kirby,” he said to the kid. “He around?”
The kid swallowed nervously a few times, looking from Quinn to me and back, and then blurted out, “Kirby not seen, have I,” and darted into the building.
Quinn and I exchanged a glance. “Let me try,” I suggested. Quinn made a little “after you” gesture. I saw another young-looking kid carrying a garbage-bag-sized sack of chips and a trough of dip. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a great bushy beard and dark hair covering his arms and hands. I stepped into his path. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Kirby,” I said, polite but firm.
In a perfect imitation of the first guy, the kid looked nervously back and forth between us, then gave a tiny nod and opened his mouth. Instead of speaking, he just let out a warbling cry, halfway between a roar and a bird call. He, too, ran into the house.
I shrugged at Quinn. “All things considered, that was not a terrible Chewbacca impression,” he said thoughtfully.
“Should we keep trying?” I asked. “Or just go in?”
“I can’t go in without an invitation,” he reminded me. “From someone who lives here.”
“Oh. Right.”
An older kid came hurrying through the same archway that the hairy boy had entered, heading straight toward us. It took me a moment to recognize him as the other guy in Darcy’s picture. I tilted my head toward him so Quinn would look, too. “Yeah, that’s him,” he muttered under his breath.
Kirby was built like a wrestler: short and muscular, with a “don’t start with me or I’ll flatten you” expression that eased up a little when he saw Quinn. He still had that aquiline nose, but he must have done something to disguise the prematurely thinning dark hair I’d seen in Darcy’s photo, because now it looked thick and lustrous.
“Sorry about that, guys,” he said in a relaxed, jovial tone that didn’t match his hard-ass appearance. “The pledges are only allowed to speak in the manner of the movie characters we’ve chosen for them. I see you’ve met Chewbacca.” He shook his head happily. “Kid’s not going to have an easy time picking up girls tonight, let me tell you.” In a quieter voice, he added, “Shake my hand and smile, Quinn, people are watching.” Quinn reached out and shook, plastering on a warm smile to match the one Kirby was displaying. Then the frat-boy vampire looked at me, his eyes running up and down me in an interested manner that made me want to cross my arms over my chest. I resisted the urge. If he’d been an ordinary punk college kid, I would have said something, but the guy could probably bench press my Outback. “Who’re you?” he asked me.