I followed Jack back out to the reception area. “So, Everett Boesch?” Jack asked, approaching the desk. “The guy I called about yesterday from my apartment building.”

“Police were called about an attack in front of the building, and found a dead body,” Dave said without looking up from his monitors, continuing to clack away on his keyboard as he talked.

I furrowed my brow. “But the attack happened outside, so why search inside?”

Dave ignored me and kept talking. “Turns out, the girl killed was the roommate of the guy you asked me about. Anyway, what I want to know is, what is your interest? Doesn’t really seem like our gig.”

“Like I said, that was why I was late to work yesterday, and I was curious.” Jack tapped the counter and shot me a glance that I took to mean “be quiet”. “Just curious, that was all.”

“How the heck did this make you late? You don’t even live on the floor where the body was found.” Dave took his hands off the keys and spun away from his monitors to stare up at Jack. “And was this really important enough for you to come in on your day off?”

Jack gave Dave a little half-smile and slung his arm around my shoulder. I couldn’t stop from blushing at the contact. “Naw, came back to pick up this one.” He let go of me, but I wished he hadn’t. “To give a new shapeshifter a little night out on the town. Just thought I’d get the scoop about my apartment building on the way out.”

“You want to spend your free time with the newbies, fine, have fun.” Dave rolled his eyes and went back to his monitors. The exit door behind us buzzed as Dave unlocked it.

“The cute ones, sure.” Jack grinned and winked at me, and my embarrassment deepened. Jack went over and pulled open the door before the buzzer ended. “After you, sir.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, trying to keep the stupid grin that I felt bubbling up off my face. I stepped out the door onto the porch, glad I had an excuse to hide my expression from Jack.

The crack of a gun shattered the silence of the night, and it felt like I had suddenly been punched in the chest. I gasped and fell backwards.

Blood sprayed up from my chest in an arc.

Jack caught me, a line of my blood bisecting his face.

I tried to speak, but blood burbled out of my mouth instead of words. Jack dragged me back inside, slamming the metal security door behind us.

Dave tore off his headset and rushed out from behind the reception desk. “Shit, he’s been shot.”

Jack laid me out on the floor and then put both hands over the wound, putting pressure on it. My chest didn’t hurt, much. I’d have thought a gunshot wound would have hurt more. I felt disconnected from my body, and my limbs didn’t seem to want to obey me.

My fingers twitched, and my heels drummed on the floor as I fought to move. My blood, pooling beneath me, stuck to my clothing, soaking into my shirt and khakis. I felt my fangs descend to prick my lips.

A red-headed woman burst into reception hall. Her face was so pale her red freckles stood out like marks of paint.

“Dave, activate the security perimeter,” the woman snapped. “Put your headset back on and watch the cameras while Ted and Zoe hunt down the shooter.”

Dave scrambled back to his chair while the red-haired woman whirled toward Jack and me. “Jack, how is he still alive? He was shot right through the heart.” She fell to her knees next to Jack. “Wait, those are fangs.”

Jack grimaced, glancing up at the woman. “Stacy, I might have lied about him last night. He’s a vampire, not a shapeshifter. He’ll be fine once he gets blood back in his system.”

Stacy sighed and stood back up. Blood stained her perfect pencil skirt. “I’ll go get the stock then, but you better have a good explanation for this, Jack.” She turned and stormed away.

Something jumped in my pocket against my leg. That was the pocket I’d put the amulet in. Luckily Jack didn’t seem to notice, too focused on keeping pressure on my gunshot wound.

My head pounded and my thoughts grew fuzzy. Still keeping pressure on my chest, Jack leaned toward me. “Just hold on, Everett. Stay with me!”

His warm face was so close, the vein on his neck pulsing with a delicious, pounding beat. I jerked my head up, snapping my teeth at the snack leaning over me. Jack pulled back quickly, as if he’d been expecting my reaction.

Dave was talking quickly to someone on his headset, but I was too out of it to make sense of what he was saying.

A few minutes later Stacy’s heels came clacking back, holding another of the red plastic squeeze bottles. By now I was thrashing against Jack’s weight, and Jack was doing more to try and hold me down than to put pressure on the wound. Jack was my friend, and I didn’t want to eat him, but it was like I had only partial control over myself.

Stacy upended the bottle over my mouth without ceremony, and I greedily gulped it down. Like before, the blood was only lukewarm, but this time it tasted like the best thing in the world. After a moment I stopped fighting against Jack’s hands. Jack let go of me and sat back.

My chest tightened, and I felt a popping sensation. A bullet clattered to the floor and I sat up, gasping for breath. I hadn’t even realized I hadn’t been breathing until now. I was still very thirsty, but I was back to myself enough to be able to retract my fangs.

“Are you okay?” Stacy asked, hands on her hips, her mouth a tight, thin line.

“I think so,” I stammered, putting a hand to my chest to feel where I’d been shot. There was still a hole through my T-shirt and binder, and I was covered in blood, but my skin was unbroken, as if I’d never been shot.

Dave raised his voice. “Zoe and Ted found the shooter’s scent, but lost him at the highway.”

Stacy glanced back at Dave. “Thanks. Tell them to come back. If he got to the highway, he’s gone.” She turned back to me. “Now explain.”

“Someone’s after Everett.” Jack sat back on his heels and groaned. “They don’t know he’s a vampire—” He picked up the smashed bullet and tossed it to Stacy, who caught it with a snap of her hand. “—yet, obviously, and I’m trying to keep it that way.”

Stacy brought the bullet up to her nose and sniffed it. She made a face. “You’re right. Not silver. Why not tell me, at least?”

Jack grimaced, opening and closing his mouth a few times. I glanced at Jack, and then at Stacy. She was so pale, paler even than most red-heads. Right, Jack had said she was a vampire. One of those that he didn’t trust.

Finally, Jack managed to spit some words out. “I’m sorry, Stacy. He’s new in town, and hasn’t told anyone he’s here. I don’t know all the vampire rules. I didn’t want him to get in trouble, but I also didn’t want to give the people hunting him a chance to find out what he really is.”

Stacy put her hands on her hips and glared at Jack, and then me. “Fine, I guess I can see where you were coming from. Still, he can’t stay here, you understand?”

“Yes, got it.” Jack nodded vigorously. “I wasn’t planning for him to. I just couldn’t have him spend the day at my apartment building with it crawling with cops. We were on our way out when he got shot.”

The front door buzzed, and then opened. A big, black wolf came inside, accompanied by a tall, pale man that I assumed was Ted.

“I didn’t smell anyone else around, and the man who shot him is long gone,” the wolf said.

The wolf came up to me where I was still sitting on the floor, trying to catch my breath, and I flinched.

“It’s Zoe,” the wolf said. “I met you earlier.” With me sitting on the floor, she loomed at least a head taller than me.

I froze, unable to react as I stared up into her amber eyes. The doggie smell was stronger than before, nearly overwhelming. I wrinkled my nose and swallowed, heart pounding. My fangs came down unbidden. Zoe leaned down to sniff at my head, and I curled my lip to show her my fangs. I don’t know what had come over me, but I couldn’t help but react to how close the werewolf was to me.

Zoe responded by pulling her lips back and flattening her ears. We stared silently at each other from inches away.

“You smell like blood,” Zoe growled.

“You smell like a wet dog,” I shot back, not breaking eye contact with her. Zoe narrowed her amber wolf eyes and let out a low growl.

“Hey.” Jack grabbed the scruff of Zoe’s neck and pushed her away. “Both of you, calm down. Zoe, you know better than to get close to a vampire in your wolf form.”

Zoe shook her head, snapping at Jack’s hand before backing away with a huff and trotting away.

Stacy shook her head and gestured to the blood-splattered floor. “Well, they think they succeeded. That’ll give you time to get out of here.”

“Thanks, boss.” Jack stood and wiped helplessly at his bloody jeans.

“And for god’s sake, you both change before you leave. Take clothes from the shapeshifter stash.”

“Wow, Stacy, that’s—” Jack began.

“It’s coming out of your pay.”

“—so generous,” he finished with a grimace.

“Of course.” Stacy waved a hand, heels clacking back away. She opened the door to her office and stopped to look back at Jack. “Enjoy your day off.” The door closed firmly behind her.

I took the sweats and went to the bathroom to change.

As I was changing I caught sight of myself in the mirror and noticed something I hadn’t yesterday. My throat had a red scar across it that hadn’t been there before. I traced it with my finger and got a flash of memory. An arm grabbing me from behind, a sharp pain in my neck. I shuddered and turned my back to the mirror.

My pants looked like the sides and back had been dipped in blood, except for a perfectly round clean spot exactly around where the amulet had been in my pocket. That was… odd.

As an experiment, I set the amulet on the still-wet blood coating my binder. The amulet sucked up all the blood it touched, leaving a pristine circle in the middle of the gore.

That would have been a handy way to clean my binder, if it didn’t have a giant hole though the center of the compression layer.

The amulet was magic—it had to be—but I was still reluctant to tell Jack about it. He’d want to know where I’d gotten it, and I wasn’t ready to confess just yet. Jack seemed like a good guy, but I still wasn’t sure how he’d react to finding out I was a thief working for the mob.

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Continue on to Chapter 8

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