The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(39)

Her brothers’ secrets were going to be her own.



* * *



—

’Lo, the best-laid plans of mice and vampires.

Vishous was distracted and buzzing out of his skin as he walked into the Pit. Somewhere between him resolving not to end up here and the meeting at Wrath’s Audience House breaking up, he’d been tasked with doing a search on social media for any mentions of shadows jumping out of alleys and attacking people.

Not the kind of thing he could do easily on his phone.

As he shut the door behind himself, he listened to all the quiet and thought…God, the place was so empty. And as he went forward into the living area, everything was so neat, no duffel bags crowding the base of the foosball table, no medical journals facedown in mid-article on the couch, no open boxes of cereal on the counter of the galley kitchen.

Fritz had obviously been by. But more than that, no one had really been living in the living room. With Jane and him both avoiding the place, and Butch and Marissa happiest when they were in their bedroom together, there wasn’t much going on to mess shit up.

Shrugging out of his leather jacket, he grimaced and ignored his aching arm as he went to his liquor cabinet by the kitchen sink and pulled out a nice big Goose. Popping the top off the vodka, he drank from the open bottle—

The coughing fit left him with drool down the front of his muscle shirt.

Nicorette didn’t mix with liquor. Go figure.

As he spit the fist-sized wad of gum out of his mouth, however, he decided that that was more a space issue.

Yup, this time, as he took a pull, everything went as planned, the vodka heading down into his gut smoothly, his other addiction taking the wheel.

Going over to his computers, he took off his weapons and his damp shirt. Then he sat down and signed in to three of his Four Toys. Security-cam feeds popped up on one monitor, the Internet on another, and a blog he had been following on the third.

Damn Stoker hadn’t been posting much on her site—which was the outcome V had engineered, to quote Rhage.

After Vishous had wiped Miss Jo Early’s feeds of all the vampire links she had been putting up and commenting on, and then scrubbed her short-term memory, that little threat had been neutralized. Sort of. He and that woman were probably going to have to cross paths again. She was about to have a big problem in her life, and he hadn’t decided how to handle it yet. He’d wanted to bring the trouble up to Wrath, but then this shit with Jane had hit and…

Whatever. Jo Early was about to learn firsthand why she was so fucking interested in vampires, and he supposed he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody because he was still debating whether or not to get involved.

Miss Early was a half-breed, the product of a human and a vampire, and she was about to go through the change. She didn’t know it yet, however. Or he was assuming she didn’t because there was no sign she had reached out to the species—and by law, if a half-breed surfaced, the King had to be told.

So what to do. She was going to die without help.

Hell, she was going to die anyway in all likelihood—and V was hardly the Good Samaritan type. The problem? She would probably seek medical help when she collapsed—or end up in the back of an ambulance on a siren-run to St. Francis’s ER because someone else called 911 on her behalf.

Which would lead to medical tests that would show all kinds of anomalies, fuck them very much.

God, humans were such a fucking pain in the ass, and the only reason coexistence with them was possible was because they thought vampires were a myth. Hard evidence to the contrary was not a good thing. If the war with the Lessening Society had been a bitch? Going rounds in the ring with Homo sapiens was going to make that shit look like a cakewalk—

Down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, the door up from the underground tunnel swung open.

“—goddamn know-it-all—”

Jane entered like she was in a bare-knuckle argument with someone—except she was alone and talking to herself as she disappeared into their room.

Her room. His room. Whatever.

Vishous slowly stood up from behind his computers.

Sounds that suggested she was pulling things from out of drawers with the delicate touch of a professional wrestler were the background to more of that muttering. And then a couple minutes later, she came out with a duffel bag on her shoulder. She had changed from her scrubs into a pair of blue jeans and a Patagonia jacket, and she marched forward as if she had no idea he was there.

That changed quick. As she came up to the archway into the living room, she stopped dead and looked at him with a startle that had her jumping back.

He put his palms up. “Sorry. I’m here.”

Her eyes shot to the front door. Then she took a deep breath. “That’s fine. This is your house. It’s not a big deal.”

There was a long pause, and as he stared at her, he decided he’d never seen her so exhausted. Her blond hair was a mess, there were dark circles under her forest green eyes, and her shoulders were sloped. Given all of that, he was surprised she was wasting energy on being fully corporeal. Then again, she was clearly pissed off at something and probably wanted the satisfaction of stomping around.

Ghosts just hovered.

“How are you,” he said cautiously.

“Okay, and I’m going.”

Closing his eyes, he cursed. “Can we please talk?”