Chapter 2

“What the fuck?”Zee’s wings ticked as he stared down at the body. “What the fucking fuck, Adam?”

“I know!” I moaned, and paced by the end of the bed. I’d sent Reynard back down to the bar, then had the staff shake Zee free from his favorite hiding place in the attic, where he liked to brood.

Zee huffed. “The fucking carpet is ruined.”

The... carpet? “Yes, it is, but also—” I thrust both hands toward the dead guy.

“Oh, the dead human? They die so easily, like rabbits.” Zee poked the dead man’s leg with his pointed boot, as though to test if he might spring back to life. “Did the vampire do this?”

I kept pacing, my shoes thumping the carpet at the same rate as my heart pounded in my chest. “He was with me.”

“Seems suspicious though? He shows up, and ten minutes later there’s a corpse in his room.” He tapped his chin, purple nail polish glinting.

“We don’t know how long the dead guy has been here. The room was cleaned early yesterday. He could have gotten in sometime after then, while we were preparing for the opening.”

“How? He saunters in off the street, passes everyone working here, heads upstairs and inconveniently dies on our new carpet?” He flung both hands out toward the body. “Fucking expensive carpet, I might add. It’s wool, did you know that? Doesn’t burn the knees. This is a disaster!”

He seemed more concerned about the ruined carpet than the body. “I thought, maybe, we should call the police?”

“Fuck no.” And Zee started pacing, heels stabbing the thick carpet.

“But he’s human, so?—”

“A human who died in a Lost Ones hotel. They’ll blame you and me both, throw you behind bars, cut my wings and horns off, and dump my ass in the Mojave Desert. I’ll get eaten there, and not in a good way. I don’t do well in the heat. My skin... that dry air? Ugh. No. Just no. Okay, look... the vampire. What did he say when he saw this? Was he surprised?”

He hadn’t really been surprised, more... interested. “Uh...” I huffed, and planting my ass on the dresser-top, I folded my arms and tried to remember Reynard’s precise reaction. “He asked if it was a gift.”

“Vamps gift each other dead people? Christmas must be a fucking bloodbath.”

“Maybe I heard him wrong. Don’t you know?”

“What am I, the fucking Wilson’s Guide? I don’t know. I mean, they’re hot for blood play and la mort d’amour, but this guy was already dead when you got here. Not much fun to be had in a corpse, unless he’s into that—” He stopped pacing, and seemed to be considering it.

“La mort d’amour?”

“You know, the frilly, romantic term for death sex.” His fingers flicked, tossing the facts out there.

“Death . . . sex?”

“Fuck yeah. One guy paid me to fuck him to death. He had a terminal illness, or something. Wanted to go out on his terms.” Zee’s pupils swelled, and a few little purple sparks lit his wing membranes, making them glow. “That trick fed me for weeks.”

“People want that?”

“Adam, you’re sweet.” He snapped his fingers. “But focus.”

“Right. Focus. Of course. The dead guy. Well, he’s very dead, but that’s not the problem, is it?”

“It’s a problem for him.”

“No, I mean, he’s dead, and whoever did it isn’t lying here beside him. The wards didn’t work.” I whispered that last part. Sometimes walls had ears. Gremlins could be bribed to run notes back and forth between the walls, and we definitely had a gremlin problem.

“Oh fuck,” Zee said, only now understanding the real reason I was pacing a track in the carpet.

“Yes.”

“Oh fuck!”

We needed the wards to work, or else the SOS Hotel would soon turn into a slaughterhouse, not least because, if you put all the different Lost Ones under the same roof, someone was going to try and bite someone they shouldn’t. Without the wards, managing the hotel would be like managing a herd of cats. Vicious, powerful, short-tempered cannibal cats. And there was my own little problem, that Zee didn’t know about. I personally needed those wards to hold.

“Have you asked Madame Matase?” Zee said. “They’re her wards.”

“Not yet. Only you and Reynard know about this. I didn’t want to tell anyone else yet.”

“Alright, so maybe there’s a loophole? Consent is one of them, right? If this guy wanted his throat cut, then the wards wouldn’t stop it happening.”

Technically, true. But who wanted their throat cut? And this didn’t look like a death-sex scenario. He had all his clothes on, for one.

“Well, there’s an easy way to test how deep this fuck-up goes.” He spun on his heel and came at me, wings spread, teeth glinting in a broad smile. His claw-tipped hand swung back, and because it was Zee—because we’d worked together for six months and he’d never once attempted to hurt me—I didn’t see the blow coming until his hand came down. I flinched, reflexes kicking in too late, but the slap never came.

Zee barked a cry—reeled, clutching his head—and stumbled against the dresser.

“Looks like they still work,” I said. “Also, you’re an asshole.”

“You think?” He took a few seconds to blink the pain from his skull and straightened, clutching the dresser for support. “Okay.” He shook his head, ruffling his two-tone hair about his horns. “So... the wards are still locked in. Which means, we either got ourselves a stupid human with a death kink”—he pulled an it’s-possible face—”or he was killed somewhere else and dumped here.”

I glanced at the door. It had been locked. “There’s no blood anywhere else. No trail. Nothing from the door or window.”

“I’m just going to throw this out there... You know who likes to kill humans and can move real fast?”

“Who?”

“Vampires.” He shrugged. “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck?—”

“It’s a vampire duck?”

“Sometimes, the correct answer is the one that’s right in front of you wearing a huge neon sign that says: I KILL PEOPLE FOR KICKS.”

“When? He was with me...” Reynard hadn’t been with me the whole time. There had been a few minutes between him entering the hotel and my finding him in the bar, when he could technically have killed a protestor, traversed the outside of the hotel, climbed in the window, dumped the body, climbed out again, then sat his perfect ass down on a bar stool without a strand of hair out of place. But even a fast-moving vampire would struggle to do all that in those few minutes, especially in broad daylight, in front of a crowd. “Hm, I don’t know, I don’t see it. And the body was all... stiff, when we found it, so I don’t think it was Reynard.”

Zee poked his tongue out, swept it across his lips, and this time when he came at me with his wings out, his intention was very different. He’d gone from cool hard steel, to warm liquid honey, and when he stopped just outside my personal space, his tail ventured around my hand and slipped up my sleeve. “Because you want to ride his cock so hard you can taste it?”

“What? No.” Heat flooded my face. “That’s not?—”

“Kitten.” He leaned in, parted his lips, and touched the tip of his tongue to his sharp teeth. “Lust demon. Don’t try and tell me you’re not hot for Vampire Daddy when you’re oozing pheromones.”

I glared. “Have you ever heard the expression, to the hammer, everything is a nail?”

“I’d nail him.”

“No, I mean... Well, yes, actually that’s my point! Ugh, wait, look, I don’t...” I shook his tail free of my sleeve and stepped back. “It’s not me. He has some kind of power. It’s distracting.” It definitely wasn’t my doing. I didn’t do sex. It was too... dangerous.

“Yeah, it’s called Fucking Hot, and it’s good ol’ fashioned human, gagging-for-cock lust. Look, I’ve known you for six months, and in that time you’ve resisted my every single daily attempt to get between your legs. And I might be a touch offended that the first time your cock twitches, it’s for Victor Fuck-Hard, but since I’d tap that as fast as you can say spank me, I’m not one to judge.” He backed off, examining his nails as though none of this mattered. “Even if he is a monumental prick, and not the fun kind.” But his tail wrung itself, getting all knotted and thrashy, which meant his words weren’t as flippant as he made them sound. “I bet he eats raspberries with a fork,” he grumbled.

Raspberries? What? Trying to follow Zee’s train of thought was sometimes like trying to wrestle an octopus. It was clear, however, Lord Reynard raised Zee’s hackles. “What did he say to you? On the steps?”

“Huh? Meh. Nothing.”

“Never mind.” And it wasn’t that I didn’t want Zee, it was more I couldn’t. “We’re business partners, if we start... you know...” I gestured, trying to push my fingers together suggestively.

“Finger-fucking each other?” He tilted his head. “Is that what that is?”

I dropped my attempt to mime sex. “Look, I... It’s not important right now. I’ll talk to the bartender, okay? See how long Reynard was in the bar for.” And as Reynard had been more than clear he didn’t want to speak with Zee, it was best I went to the bar. Zee could do cleanup. “Can you maybe... get rid of the body?”

He rolled his eyes, and rippled his nails at the body. “Kitten, human disposal is not in my contract.”

We didn’t technically have contracts. “Please?”

“Fine,” he huffed. “But only because you’re my favorite human. Tell anyone I did this, and it opens a whole can of complicated worms regarding my capabilities, when it’s so much simpler being the demon who sucks cock for cash.”

“A valid career, but one you won’t be pursuing in our hotel, remember,” I reminded him, as I headed out the door.

“I’ll suck yours for free, Lover,” he called.

I hit the elevator button and stepped inside. Zee was joking. He didn’t really want to do that. It was just his language, lust demon and all. People used him and tossed him away. Humans and Lost Ones alike, they all paid Zee to get off. I wasn’t like that.

When I’d found him, thrown away like trash in a rough part of San Francisco, I’d offered him a deal. Help fix up this old hotel, and I’d make it so he never had to do anything he didn’t want to while under its roof.

We’d shaken on it right there, snapped nails and all. So the wards, based on consent, were just as important to him as they were to me.

Some habits were hard to break, but we were getting there. If I accepted Zee’s flippant offers of sexual favors, how different was I to everyone else who screwed him? No. It couldn’t happen. We respected each other too much for that, and our focus needed to be on the hotel, not banging each other against a wall. Even if I had wondered what it would feel like to have his wickedly talented, possibly extendable tongue wrapped around very hard and hungry parts of me. I wasn’t completely stone cold and without... urges. My racing pulse around Reynard was proof of that.

“Never going to happen,” I told the empty elevator as it counted down the floors. Zee and I had too much of a good thing going to mess it up with sex, and besides, I couldn’t let anyone get that close. Not even someone I trusted as much as I did Zee. For his own safety.

Tom Collins was behind the bar—in his default pose, drying a glass. Curiously though, Reynard wasn’t here, where I’d told him to be. “Where’s Victor Reynard?”

“What am I, his PA?” Tom replied.

Oh yes, I’d forgotten Tom was difficult. “Do you ever answer a question without a heavy dose of sarcasm?”

“Which one of us read my manual?”

“Ugh.” This was going to be more exhausting than I’d hoped for, and it wasn’t even ten thirty yet. At least Reynard wasn’t here, so I could ask Tom questions without him overhearing. Maybe he’d left. Would he tell everyone about the dead body in his room?

“Whiskey?”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Then why are you at the bar?”

“Okay, fine.”

“There he is, the Adam Vex I know.” He poured a whiskey with a flourish. “You look as though you’ve had a rough day. A problem shared is a problem halved.”

“Except you’re stuck behind that bar and can’t physically help with anything.”

“Try me.” He said it as though he had some kind of ace up his sleeve, but he couldn’t have. Maybe it wasn’t all about the physical. I just needed information, and people told bartenders all sorts of things. Had Reynard said anything when they’d been alone?

“What do you make of Lord Reynard?” I asked.

“He tips well.”

Ugh. Why was I asking an AI? He wasn’t going to be able to tell me anything of use. “How long was he here for earlier, before I arrived?”

Tom blinked, and for a fraction of a second his animated appearance froze, as though hung up on a thought. Then he blinked, unfreezing himself. “Unknown.”

“It’s a simple question. What was the time difference between his arrival and mine?”

“Did you activate recording functions? If you activate recording functions, you must display a sign in a prominent position, explicitly making it clear customers will be recorded on these premises and the data kept for ninety days. You see a fucking sign?”

I waved him off. “You’re as useful as a chocolate teacup, you know that?” Perhaps I was asking too much. He was just designed to mix and pour drinks, after all.

Drinks.

The blood. Was it human blood?

“What drink did Reynard order?”

“A Bloody Bitch.”

“A what? What is a, uh... Bloody Bitch?”

“Would you like me to make one?”

“Sure, I mean, only if it doesn’t have... real blood in it.”

“Real blood?” Tom Collins laughed, then swept along the back wall, gathering various bottles. He tossed a few in the air, doing exactly what he’d been bought to do, which sort of made the theatrics rather dull considering it was all just programming. He probably couldn’t even drop?—

A bottle slipped from his fingers and smashed on the floor behind the bar. “Well, shit.”

And once again I was reminded how I’d bought a cheap AI. I sipped my whiskey and rubbed at the ache appearing between my eyes.

“As I mentioned, that model failed in almost every way.”

Reynard’s voice coiled around me before I turned and laid my eyes on the man in question. I almost didn’t want to look, knowing the pretty picture I’d find walking toward me. If Zee was right, then all these little heart-skipping, breath-catching, cock-tingling reactions were all mine. But it didn’t have to complicate anything. It was just a physical thing, just a biological trigger, probably because I hadn’t technically indulged in anything sexual in... a really long time.

“And here we are, at the bar again.” He leaned against the bar, deciding not to sit, and glanced at my whiskey. “I assume today is not going as you expected?”

“I had hoped there would be fewer murders and more guests, if I’m honest.”

“I understand how that might distress you some.”

What was that accent? Posh American?Was there even such a thing? It couldn’t be his real accent, since he must have originally come from the other side of the veil. He likely donned the accent like a man wore a hat, something to make him seem more human and blend in with the masses. Lost Ones who blended in had an easier time of it.

Tom had finished making the Bloody Bitch and set the glass down in front of me. Thick, syrupy, dark red. Hm... I swirled the glass. “At least the wards are intact.”

“They are?” Reynard asked, voice lifting in surprise.

“Zee attempted to hit me?—”

“That demon did what?” Reynard’s thin smile froze on his face, and all the shadows in the room darkened, making the blood reds in the wallpaper bloom.

He’d just sucked half the artificial light out of the room. A small shiver trickled through me. More lust. I was going to have to do something about these mixed messages. “Oh, not like that—as a test. The wards slapped him back before he could land the blow.”

“Demons,” Reynard snarled, his tone the same as when Zee had accused humans of being animals on the hotel steps. “Are you drinking that?”

I’d forgotten the Bloody Bitch. “I uh... yes?” I raised it to my lips, and Reynard’s gaze tracked the glass all the way, then fixed on my mouth as I opened it and tasted the thick drink. Part of me already believed it was blood—the right color, the right consistency, but it tasted sweet, not metallic. Not that I knew how blood tasted, having never, ever consumed blood of any kind. Ever. Why would I do that? I wouldn’t.

“It’s good.”

Tom Collins caught Reynard’s eye, and fixed him a second Bloody Bitch.

“It’s perhaps a little early to suggest this, but it appears you could use my assistance in certain... matters?”

Did he mean dead bodies? Because I wasn’t sure I needed a vampire’s help with that, especially after everything Zee had told me about their preferences. “I think we have it covered.”

“At some point, there will be other humans asking after their missing clan member, and in my experience, it doesn’t take long for a crowd to ignite a few flaming torches and resort to mob justice.”

He had a point. That protestor was going to be missed. But Zee was dealing with the corpse. We just had to deny everything and hope it didn’t happen again. There was no reason to think there would be any more trouble—one murder was surely enough. And there was still the matter of his coincidental arrival. Zee wouldn’t react well if I accepted Reynard’s help. “Like I said, we’re good. You’re a guest. You mustn’t worry yourself with our little... mishaps. We can handle them.” I hoped. I had a good team. We’d be alright. Which reminded me, I needed to speak with Madame Matase about the wards, to confirm they were all working as they were supposed to.

“I hope so. I wouldn’t want this grand idea of yours to fail at the first hurdle, a little like your AI here, that never did amount to much.”

Tom Collins gave Reynard the classic resting bitch face, but did at least keep his rude mouth closed.

“Everything is fine,” I said, unsure if I was reassuring Reynard or myself. “It’s almost eleven a.m. and the worst has already happened. What else can go wrong?”

“Indeed,” he agreed, with an arched eyebrow and hint of fang showing between his lips.

“If you still want to stay, your room will be ready in a few hours. Or I can move you to another?—”

“Of course I will stay.” His gaze slid sideways to me. “The entertainment is thrilling.”

Was I the entertainment? Was that a good or bad thing? I really needed to study more about vampires.

I gave a soft little laugh, and left the bar. As I’d said, the worst was probably over, which meant we had the whole day to make sure the hotel was working like a well-oiled machine.

I pushed open the bar door.

“Oh, Mr. Vex, there you are,” Noreen Greene said with a tight, polite smile. “Do you have any comment on the missing protestor?”

Oh no.