Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

The vampire lawyer, Pierce, arrived on the hotel steps right after sunup, standing under an umbrella and with a full contingent of vampire bodyguards, also under umbrellas.

He handed me a sealed letter and left.

It was all very dramatic for eight a.m. I hadn’t even had my morning whiskey yet, and after just a few hours of exhaustion-fueled sleep tucked between Victor and Zee, I already felt hungover without the aid of alcohol.

The contents of the letter did nothing for my mood. I handed it to Victor, who frowned and said simply, “Unfortunate.”

Were the vampires going to mount a huge battle? Were they going to send in their warriors to fight us to our dying breaths?

No, they were suing us.

“We can’t afford a lawyer.”

Zee, dressed in an oversized T-shirt that read Daddy’s Little Bitch on it, snatched the letter from Victor’s hand. “ Personal injury? Damage to property? Ugh, vampires are so fucking dull. What kind of grand finale is this bullshit?” He tore up the letter and tossed the pieces in the trash behind the reception desk. “Daisy can sue my ass.”

“Your ass is also on the list,” Victor said.

Zee paced. His heels clipped the floor, his wings bounced, and his tail lashed. “I vote we go over to Vampire Mansion and fuck ’em up. I have Shareen. Murder Daddy has stealth and can snap necks like twigs. Adam, you’re...” He paused, pointing. “Staying here.”

“Admirable enthusiasm, but I doubt you or I can stand against several hundred well-trained vampires in their own territory.”

Victor had a point. “Then we should invite Daisy here,” I said.

Zee stopped pacing, cocked a hip, and folded his arms. “You’re kidding, right? You think Buffy’s gonna come?”

“We’ll make the invitation public. Invite her over as a show of friendship. She won’t want to be seen as afraid, so she’ll come.”

“Then what? Chop her up and put her in pies? Have Jimmy pluck out her eyeballs—wait, I got this! I stake her through the heart during an improvised stage show about demons killing vampires? Wooden stakes work, right?”

Victor blinked. “No. How do you not know this when among vampires, Lycian, Scourge of Demios, is one of the most feared and revered demon warriors of all time?”

Zee fluttered a hand. “Sssh. Your breathing is interrupting my braining.”

“I mean... I’m not saying we should do this... but Tom can make some real interesting cocktails.” I put that out there, for the sake of having options.

They both stared in silence.

I shrugged. “Just a thought. I have them. Sometimes.”

Zee checked Victor to get a feel for the mood in the room. “Tom does make potent cocktails.”

“That he does,” Victor agreed.

“What’s the point in having a djinn bartender if you don’t let him stretch his djinn bits every now and then,” Zee added. “It’s only fair.”

I nodded enthusiastically.

Victor side-eyed me. “It could work.”

“And it will cheer Tom up.” I figured Tom had been desperate to murder someone since he’d learned he’d been lied to, had his memory wiped and been trapped behind our bar, working for three people he didn’t believe would amount to much. Our failed attempt to infiltrate Gideon’s mansion hadn’t helped.

“I’ll go talk to him. Victor, why don’t you find Noreen, and see if we can get the news out that we’re welcoming all Lost Ones, especially newly crowned vampire queens. Zee...” His wings perked up. “I really need you checking in on our guests?—”

“I’ve got this!” He immediately poofed away, and a moment later, a scream sounded from somewhere on the upper floors. Yup, he’d translocated straight into a guest’s room.

With everyone busy, I headed into the bar. Despite the early start, Tom’s bar was half-full of folks chatting. The jukebox jingled in the corner, and Tom Collins stood behind the counter, looking like a vision of bartending expertise with his burgundy jacket, black bow tie, and slicked back hair.

“No,” he said, as I leaned on the counter.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s no.” He thumbed at the sign behind him: Do Not Argue with the Bartender.

“We missed you.”

Tom poured my morning whiskey. “And you can tell that chef if he puts a single tentacle on my shakers again, I’ll cut it off, chop it up, and use it as a garnish in a new drink, named especially for fish-people who leave disgusting slime all over my sparkling surfaces.”

“Right.” I wrapped my fingers around the glass. “I’ll uh... tell him.”

“What do you want?”

“You know that thing we’re always telling you not to do?”

“Fucking swear?”

“Uh, no . . . the other thing.”

“Be liberal with a few bags of blow?”

“Uh, no. Not that.”

“Offer free fucking life advice to the swathes of hopeless losers that pass through those doors?”

“Er...” I pinched my lips together and winked.

Tom stopped polishing the glass and winked back.

“Yes, that,” I confirmed. “You got it.”

“Right.” He winked again.

Hopefully, we were both winking for the same reason. I should probably clarify, so he didn’t murder a random guest. “Daisy is coming to the hotel. She’s going to order a special cocktail.”

“Right.” He smiled. “What are we talkin’ here? A Long Walk off a Short Pier?”

“Yes, but . . . vampire strength.”

His grin stretched wider. “I have the perfect drink.”

“Okay.” Was I doing the right thing, asking him to do this? “Only if you’re comfortable with this. Don’t feel that you have to. I don’t want to force you into doing something you don’t want to do.”

He snorted. “It’s a fucking miracle I haven’t killed you all by now, putting you out of your misery—and mine.”

I eyed my untouched drink. “Uh. You know what? I’ll skip the whiskey this morning.”

“Your loss. No refunds.” He picked up my whiskey and downed it in one smooth gulp. I still wasn’t sure where anything he consumed went, and probably didn’t want to know. I did want to know, however, how he was able to hop a ride in Zee’s phone without his hard drive.

“Tom, are you uh . . . free range now?”

He glared, as though he was about to launch into another tirade about how stupid or pathetic I was, which was his love language. His way of showing he cared. Maybe.

“It’s just, you were able to work the jukebox, and then getting into Gideon Cain’s electrics? That’s all pretty impressive.”

“If you’re asking whether I’m still stuck behind this bar? No, I can leave whenever I want. All I need is a cable, like a landline, and I’m outta this fuckin’ half-baked hotel.”

“Oh.” So he could leave at any time. But he hadn’t. I smiled back at him. “I see.”

“Don’t look so smug. If I left, this place would be in the ground within a week. Who do you think is holding it all together? You? Ha. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re a mess.”

I had looked in a mirror, and he wasn’t wrong. Being human was a lot harder than it looked. “Thanks, I guess... For staying.”

“The pay’s good, since I take what I like from the profits, and the entertainment keeps things interesting,” he admitted, then shrugged. “Where else am I going to go?”

Yeah, but he also secretly liked us. I could tell by his sneer. “In Agatha’s lab, there were others like you—Djinn, I mean. Victor went back there to burn it all down. It may be worth chatting to him about what he found.”

Tom stopped polishing the glass and gently set it down on the glossy bartop. “I know what I am, and if I ever want to go back to that life, Lord Reynard has shown me a way. But right now, I’m keeping an eye on the three most pathetic hoteliers on the west coast... because someone has to.”

Victor had helped him already? Of course he had. The ex-vampire torturer had a chaotic good streak.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re watching out for us,” I said.

“You won’t be when you see the consultancy fee.”

I snorted, and Tom laughed along, even though we both knew he wasn’t joking.

To everyone’s surprise, when Victor reached out to propose a truce, Daisy agreed to meet in the hotel bar to discuss terms. We figured she’d heard surrender , but it didn’t matter—whatever got her through the door was worth it. It probably helped that she knew I was powerless, and that the wards would prevent any harm from coming to her under my roof. In some weird twist of fate, or my own wishful thinking, I’d become the harmless human I’d been pretending to be for years.

And my trap was set.

Humans didn’t have giant claws, they couldn’t breathe fire, and they didn’t have wingspans bigger than a basketball court, but they had some similarities to dragons—such as being manipulative.

The packed hotel kept us busy until the next evening, when Daisy’s motorcade pulled up outside.

The bar had become the heart of the hotel again, and was full of folks enjoying drinks, music, and each other’s company. A few glanced our way as I led Daisy toward the bar where Victor waited, but most didn’t pay us much attention. Probably because Zee was on stage.

He’d noticed our arrival, but kept dancing around his pole as though our plan—now in motion—wasn’t about to change our lives, and maybe the lives of all vampires too. If the plan panned out, Daisy wouldn’t be leaving the SOS Hotel alive.

Victor bowed his head. “My queen.”

“Hm, yes.” She eyed Victor with disdain, and then the rest of the bar and its people as though we were bugs beneath her shiny pink shoes. “It’s so... quaint.” After hopping onto a stool, she laid her eyes on the dapper Tom Collins. “The foul-mouthed barman.” Her legs swung under the stool. “I must be special, if the gang is all here.”

The jukebox clunked, the lights dimmed, and Zee began to sing the opening bars of “Rebel Yell” while strutting his stuff in his stunning blood-red pantsuit—no shirt, just a black tie— instantly ensuring everyone looked at him, and not us.

“What can I get you?” Tom Collins asked.

“Milk,” Daisy said.

“Milk?” he recoiled.

“Yes.”

“Just milk? Shall I spice it up with some?—”

“Are you deaf, barkeep? I said milk! I want a glass of milk!”

Tom Collins’s eyes narrowed to deadly slits. He flung the dishcloth over his shoulder and opened his mouth?—

“Get the queen her milk,” Victor verbally stepped in before Tom Collins could launch into a tirade about underage brats in his bar that would see all the vampires swarm into the hotel like rats.

Tom huffed, and turned his back on us to find some milk. Hopefully, he’d still be able to whip up something deadly to vampires.

“Thank you.” Daisy smoothed her hair back and flicked her ponytail, and caught Reynard staring. “Who are you again? I forget. All my underlings look alike.”

“Lord Reynard, my queen.”

“Ah yes, you failed to gift this bundle of contradictions to Mommy.”

I figured she meant me, and smiled innocently.

“No glamor, Mr. Vex. It’s like seeing you naked,” she giggled.

“I’m just a normal human now,” I agreed, pretending to be sad about it. It didn’t take all that much effort.

Daisy laughed. “That didn’t work before, and it’s not working now. Do you think I’m just a twelve-year-old girl? No. I’m the queen of the entire vampire race. The best of all races. So let us discuss your surrender.”

“Surrender? Erm, well, it was more of a truce?—”

“No, it’s surrender. Here is what I want, and if I do not get it then I will have my people sue you so hard, you will have to dismantle this hotel and sell it off, piece by woodworm-riddled piece. Number one: Lord Reynard will be returned to me for punishment and his eventual death, and that is me being lenient. Non-negotiable.”

Death by torture was lenient?

Zee was giving it his all on the stage, making the bar bounce to the beat. “I’d sell my soul... for you, babe.”

“Number two: this hotel will be my new playhouse,” Daisy continued. “Number three: that demon’s tongue shall be torn from his mouth, chopped into tiny pieces, and fed to my Guinea pigs, Mr. and Mrs. Tiddles.”

“You have Guinea pigs?”

She pointed at Zee without turning her head. “And his wings on my wall. As for you, Mr. Adam Vex, I want your heart in a jar, so I can watch it shrivel up and die on my bedside table. Then I will grind it up and sprinkle the dust on my glass of milk. Just like this one.” She picked up the innocuous looking glass of milk and brought it to her lips, then spotted the dark dusting on its surface. “What’s this?”

“Cinnamon,” Tom said. “Adds a warming kick.”

Tom was being too nice.

She’d figure out something was wrong. Tom was never nice.

I held my breath and took a nervous glance at Victor.

He wasn’t moving either. His resting Victor face was as blank as always, but he couldn’t hide that tightness around his eyes.

All she had to do was drink her milk.

Daisy slowly lifted her gaze from the cinnamon-sprinkled glass of milk. “You wouldn’t be trying to poison me, now would you, Mr. Tom Collins?”

Tom’s shoulders hardened into a line, his chin lifted. “Your words wound me. They strike at the core of my very being. These drinks?” He flung a hand out behind himself, encompassing the racks of colorful bottles. “These drinks are my children. Nurtured and cherished with my every living breath. My craft is my soul, the reason my heart beats in my chest.”

He didn’t have a heart, but he was on a roll.

“Satisfying each and every customer is my single purpose for existing. Your liquid wish is my command. Every drink I serve in this forsaken shitheap of a hotel is the pinnacle of liquid sustenance. I strive for perfection with every fiber of my artificial being. My work is my art! Why would I poison you?” He paused, and closed his soliloquy with a demure smile. “I am but a humble AI bartender, but I guarantee that glass of milk is my magnum opus. There, in your hand, is the finest glass of milk you will ever consume.”

Daisy’s eyes had gotten wider as she’d listened to his monologue, and now it was over she smiled at me. “I had to be sure.” She took a sip.

I couldn’t hear Zee anymore, just the sound of my galloping heart.

I didn’t dare look at Victor. Or Tom.

My smile stayed pinned to my face.

“It is very nice,” Daisy said. “So, back to my generous terms?—”

She began to turn to face Victor, but jerked upright. A tiny gasp left her lips, and Daisy fell forward. Tom whipped the glass of milk away just in time for Daisy’s forehead to meet the bar where it had been.

My thudding heart stopped.

Tom’s little smile slid down at one corner, turning into a murderous smirk.

Victor’s eyes got all silvery and big.

We’d just killed the vampire queen.

Again.