I didn’t go directly to the car, but instead wound a circuitous route around the streets and down alleys, circling back around towards the garage where we’d parked. I hoped that Jack would be there waiting for me, but no such luck. The garage was empty of movement, and there were no signs of Jack near his car.

Figuring I’d be safe enough in the parking structure, I decided to wait here rather than running off to look for him. We’d parked on the second floor, out of sight of anyone passing by on the sidewalk below. I unlocked Jack’s door and climbed into the passenger seat to wait for him.

By now my phone said it was 2:45 am, and I alternated between checking for messages from Jack and scanning the parking lot for signs of his return. Why wasn’t he back yet?

Should I go look for him? Though I wasn’t sure how I could help if he was in trouble. I didn’t know what I could or couldn’t do as a vampire. Hell, so far I’d been wrong about nearly everything. And the powers I did have, like my vampire speed, came and went beyond my control. It was just too risky.

An hour later, I was far past worried and verging on frantic, and reconsidering my stance that it was too risky to go look for him. But at this point it had been over an hour. He could be anywhere by now.

A quick search on my phone that used up a huge amount of my limited pre-paid data told me sunrise was in less than an hour.

Shit, shit, shit.

I tried calling Jack’s number, but the calls went straight to voicemail, like his phone was dead or turned off. It was getting too close to sunrise, and I didn’t know what would happen if I was caught out during the day, but from the way Jack spoke, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Thinking, I drummed my fingers on my leg. I couldn’t stay in the parking garage all day; I’d get fried. As worried as I was, I’d have to trust Jack could look after himself. I needed to get to safety while I still had time.

I slid over the center console into the driver’s seat, started the car and put it into drive, and then paused with my foot on the brake.

Where was I going? Jack’s work? But then I’d have to explain why I was alone with Jack’s car, and hope they let me in. Stacy, Jack’s boss, hadn’t seemed too happy with us before. My own apartment was out of the question; per the file, it was still sealed off as a crime scene.

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, and noted the rest of the keys on Jack’s key ring. Well, I already knew where his apartment was, and I had the keys… Short on options and time, I figured Jack wouldn’t mind. I just hoped the cops wouldn’t spot me. Although, since Jack lived on a different floor, I was probably safe, even if they had left someone to guard the crime scene.

Sunrise was getting close. No choice. Jack’s apartment it was. I took my foot off the brake and pulled out.

***

By the time I got to our shared apartment building in southeast Portland, the sun was cresting the horizon, lighting up the sky in brilliant yellows and pinks. I could feel pin-pricks of pain starting along the backs of my hands and face. I parked the car a few blocks away—no time to circle looking for a closer spot—then used Jack’s keys to get inside.

I ran around and closed all the blinds and curtains, then rifled through Jack’s apartment, looking for a phone number for his work or boss, Stacy, but came up empty. I wasn’t too surprised. He’d mentioned that the supernatural community tried to remain hidden, so it made sense that they’d keep information hard to find.

I used my phone to look up the phone number for the towing place we’d cut through to get to Jack’s office, then called it. The phone rang several times before a business voicemail picked up.

“This is SuperTow. If this is an emergency call,” and they listed a number. I hurriedly scribbled it down to try next, but in the meantime, I went ahead and waited for the beep to leave a message.

“Hi, this is Everett, the guy with Jack yesterday. Jack’s missing. If you get this, please call me back.” I gave the machine the number to my burner cell. It was a risk to give out the number, but it was one I was willing to take. Like most people, Jack didn’t have a landline that I could find. Not that I would have used it. That would have given out my location, and I wasn’t quite that trusting.

Next, I tried the emergency number listed in the voicemail of the towing place. The phone rang once, twice, three times. I was about to give up when a bored-sounding man answered. “This is Dave, what is your emergency?”

I recognized that bored tone. “Dave! Thank god. This is Everett.” I paused, expecting some kind of response.

Nothing but silence came from the other end. Undeterred, I forged ahead. “I was there with Jack.”

“Right. The cute one.” I could practically hear the air quotes. “This line is for emergencies only, not for setting up dates. If Jack declined to give you his number, I can’t allow—”

Shit, I had better explain fast, before Dave hung up on me. “It is an emergency,” I exclaimed, cutting Dave off mid-word. Dave huffed at the interruption, but I kept talking. “Jack’s missing. He disappeared. I couldn’t go look for him because it was almost sunrise. I have his phone number, but he’s not picking up, and I’m worried about him.” I clutched the phone to my ear, nervous energy making me pace the living room as I spoke.

Dave was silent for so long that I pulled the phone away from my ear to check that the call hadn’t dropped. It hadn’t. Finally, Dave said, “Try his apartment, if you know where he lives.”

“I’m here right now, he’s not here.”

There was a sigh. “Hold please.” The line clicked and hold music began playing. I growled, but I couldn’t do anything about it. So I paced, trying not to chew my fingernails as I waited for Dave to come back on the line. The hold music clicked off and Dave said, “I let Stacy know. We’ll send out some feelers. Is there anything else?”

“Well…” I hesitated but decided to tell them, although I needed to bend the truth a little. “We were in the downtown police station right before he disappeared.”

“I see.” Dave sounded disapproving, but it was hard to tell without seeing his face, since I didn’t know the man well. “We’ll look into it.”

I opened my mouth, intending to ask to be called with any updates, when the line disconnected with a click. I pulled the phone away and glared at it before turning it off and putting it away.

Sunlight was beginning to peak through the closed curtains, and I wished now that I’d paid more attention to Jack’s impromptue lecture on sun-proofing when I’d first met him. Short on time, I cleared out the hall closet, wheeling the vacuum into the hall and tossing the shoes and coats onto the floor of Jack’s spotless bedroom. Then I shut myself in the closet. I used a sheet from the linen closet to plug up the gap under the door. Dim light seeped in through the sides and top of the door, but I hoped my precautions would be enough.

The flaw in my plan became apparent when I tried to lie down and discovered the closet was too small. I sat up in disgust, planning to read the police file until I was more tired, before realizing that the light switch was outside in the hall.

Finally I settled with lying on my back, putting my arm behind my head as a pillow, and setting my feet against the door with my legs bent. Luckily, I was short. Any taller and I would have had to just sleep sitting against the wall.

***

When I did fall asleep, I again had very vivid dreams. This time I recognized Officer Hubbs’s face in the mirror as I relived his memory of a very unforgettable birthday night.

I could get used to dreams like this. Better than porn. In the dream I was Hubbs.

When I woke up in the morning, I was still basking in the afterglow. Although after the memory of living for a night as a cis-man, it made me even more keenly dysphoric than usual during my shower and when I put my binder back on. I sighed—nothing I could do about that at the moment—and began going about my day. Or night, as it were.

The last few streaks of the sunset pinks showed out the window when I peeked through the blinds. I had tried to check the time on my phone, but it was dead since in my panic, I’d forgotten to charge it. I cursed and plugged it in, waiting impatiently until the screen lit up and I could turn it back on.

My cell phone didn’t have any missed calls or text messages. I tried to call Jack again, but like last night, the call went straight to voicemail. I sent Jack a text telling him to call when he got it. I didn’t say where I was, suddenly suspicious. If the people after me had Jack, I didn’t want to lead them right to me.

I called Dave back, who told me Jack hadn’t shown up for work. My heart dropped into my stomach. I asked him to call me back if he had got word from Jack. He said he would, but I didn’t quite believe him.

Hanging up on Dave, I sighed deeply. I wanted to rush out and search for Jack, but I didn’t even know where to start looking.

At a loss for what to do next, I left my phone to charge and flopped down on Jack’s couch, pulling out my case file paperwork. There was so much, and I didn’t know the lingo, so I was having a hard time figuring out what some of it meant. Jack could have helped, but now figuring this out was doubly important. If Jack had been taken by the same people gunning for me, I might be able to find him with the information here.

I spread the paperwork out on the coffee table and took a closer look than I had last night.

As far as I could make out, it didn’t seem my disappearing act had helped my cause; they considered me the prime suspect in Lindsay’s murder, and weren’t looking into other leads at the moment. Which left me high and dry, and meant that we’d basically wasted our time breaking into the police station to steal this.

Groaning, I flopped back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling.

I needed clues if I was going to get a lead on the person who probably had taken Jack—the same person who’d turned me into a vampire, and was now trying to kill me.

At that thought, I sat bolt upright. Wait. I’d been assuming those last two things were related, but what if they weren’t?

If the original person who’d attacked me had turned me into a vampire, which had been my original assumption, why had they subsequently tried to kill me again, but not in a way that would kill a vampire?

They’d shot me in the heart, yes, but with a regular bullet, and after a helping of blood, I’d been fine. If they’d wanted to kill a vampire they would have…what? How could a vampire be killed? Stacy had said something about silver?

I wished again that Jack was here. He’d know. All I had to go on was vampire fiction, and that had already failed me badly already with werewolves. Plus, why turn me into a vampire if they were then just going to try to kill me again the next night?

This wasn’t working. Now I had even more questions than I’d started with. Frustrated, I began pacing around Jack’s apartment, trying to distract myself by looking at Jack’s posters. The movie posters continued into the bedroom, although the ones in here trended to the shirtless man variety, as opposed to the action movie theme from the living room.

I snooped through Jack’s bedroom closet, admiring how stylish his whole wardrobe was, yet he hadn’t complained about having to shop at Walmart for clothes last night. I didn’t know much about fashion, but I used his Wi-Fi to look up some of the labels from the closet. Nothing fancy. Hot and frugal. Damn.

I opened up the door to the second bedroom and discovered Jack had turned it into a home office. Only one movie poster in here. Double the size of any of the others in the apartment, it hung directly opposite the desk. I don’t know what I had been expecting to see, but a giant Detective Pikachu poster certainly would have not been on the list.

Snickering at the unexpected sight, I sat at the desk and stared at the poster for the movie that apparently Jack liked so much.

I wished I had a detective to help me now. I wouldn’t have even complained if that detective had been a talking mouse, either. Sadly, I needed to be my own detective.

Wait, to be a good detective, I needed a journal. I rummaged through Jack’s desk drawers for a notebook—all the movie detectives had one— and a pen. I opened the blank notebook and titled the top of one blank page “Assumptions”. Then I wrote down everything I knew so far, and the reasoning behind it. That took up several pages and didn’t really lead anywhere, but I felt better getting my thoughts down. However, it did make me more sure than ever that I was looking for two people: the person trying to kill me, and the person who’d made me a vampire.

After some thought, I added to assumptions that I thought that Lindsay’s killer and my assassin were the same person.

The timeline, as far as I could make out, was that I’d been ambushed between leaving work and the bicycle cage. The assassin had cut my throat, stolen my work badge, wallet, and keys, and then dumped me. After that, a vampire had come by and brought me back a vampire. But why? I didn’t know. I circled “Why” twice.

When I was done, I labeled the next page “Clues”, and then stared at the blank page. I tapped it with my pen. What did I know, really? Facts, not many. I went back to the living room and brought the case file back to the office and spread the pages out across the desk.

A pop of color caught my eye in all the black-and-white: the sticky note with the officer’s addresses. The ones that had lied in the police report. That was a fact. I wrote that down. Why lie unless you had a reason to? And maybe that reason was that someone told them to. A cover-up.

I also wrote my conclusion that the police were working for the people trying to kill me. Not only had the second hit on my life come after Jack asked about my case, but Jack had also disappeared at the station.

I’d let Jack’s office track Polly down. In the meantime, I’d question the officers.

I stood up, new determination filling me now that I had somewhere to go. I was still worried about Jack, but I felt better now that I had a lead to follow.

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Continue on to Chapter 11

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