Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

Murder was one thing. Getting away with it was something else entirely.

Daisy lay slumped over the counter, in the middle of the packed hotel bar, and it was around then I realized we hadn’t planned for what came next—disposal.

Zee continued to belt out “Rebel Yell” and hold captive every single person in the audience, except me... and Victor.

“Erm, Victor?” I said through gritted teeth.

Victor blinked at the dead Daisy, his face stuck in rigor.

“Victor?” I dropped off the stool, stepped around Daisy’s hunched figure, and laid a hand on Victor’s arm.

He startled. “Adam! My apologies, I... I’m surprised and somewhat alarmed that we have succeeded.”

I was too. I hadn’t expected Tom’s drink to be so potent, although I should have. He was nothing if not efficient. “What do we do now?” I whispered. Nobody was looking over, but we only had a few minutes before one of Daisy’s entourage noticed she was face down on the bar.

“Right. Yes.” He cleared his throat. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know. I’m asking you .”

“Of course.” He cleared his throat again but his gaze kept skittering back to Daisy. “Uh...”

Zee’s song ended to rapturous applause. Once his show was over we’d be getting scrutinized, which wouldn’t be a great time to be sitting next to a dead vampire queen.

Victor stared at Daisy. “I’ll uh... I’ll move her.” His eyebrows pinched.

“Victor?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got this,” I told him. “We just need to move a body in a room full of people without anyone seeing, that’s all.” And he was the only one who could do that, as he moved crazy fast, but it needed to happen now .

Zee poofed to my left, raining glittery purple sparks that told everyone in the room to LOOK HERE!

He slung an arm around me. “Did you see me fuckin’ slay ‘Rebel Yell?’”

“Oh yes, it was great.” I showed him a wooden grin, then nodded toward the body. “But we have the thing we have to do. You remember the thing we talked about?”

A blank look stalled him.

I blinked deliberately, and side-eyed Daisy again.

“Oh fuck, right. Why’s Fancy Fangs not doing the thing after Tom did the thing ? Wasn’t that the plan?”

Tom watched on, still smirking and in no way helping with our current predicament. At my glance, he winked.

The crowd bustled. The jukebox burbled. And the vampire queen was very dead in the middle of it all.

Zee ducked to get a closer look at Victor’s pale face. “Hello, Your Lordship?”

“Yes, of course, I just...” He stammered. “Goodness, it’s rather warm, isn’t it?”

I knew what was happening. “He’s having a crisis ,” I whispered, glancing around to check we still weren’t being watched. “Like you had a crisis after you—” I drew a line across my throat. “Dispatched the previous queen.”

“What?” Zee flustered. “At least I had the decency to have my crisis later! Not while we were in the middle of doing the dispatching.” He rolled his eyes. “Ugh. Do I have to fuckin’ do everything around here?”

“Oh, there you are Adam.” Noreen Greene gleefully shoved herself from the crowd, into our little circle of trust ... that included a dead vampire queen hunched over the bar. “Oh dear, is she alright?”

“What?” I squeaked. “Uhm... Yes, she is fine,” I said those last words, like it might help convey that nothing was wrong.

Zee scraped Daisy’s limp body off the bar and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in, so Daisy was pliable. Thankfully, her eyes were closed. “She’s just sleepy.” He grabbed her wrist and made her hand flap. “Too much milk does that to a vampire.”

“Milk does this?” Noreen asked.

“Noreen, wow, thank you so much for putting us on the map.” I draped an arm over her shoulders and scooted her in the opposite direction from the murder scene. “Look at what your article did. Everyone here is uh... safe from Gideon Cain.” Just not safe from us, I mentally added.

A quick glance back revealed a gap at the bar where Zee, Victor, and Daisy had been, and Tom grinning like a crazy murderbot. Maybe his homicidal stand-in hadn’t been so far from normal Tom after all. What if I’d created a serial killer? No, Tom was Tom, just like he’d always been—our barman who routinely drugged and verbally abused customers... What was a little murder anyway? We’d all done it.

“Is everything alright?” Noreen asked.

“Oh, yup, just fine.”

“How is the meeting going with Daisy?” Noreen glanced behind us, but I quickly urged her on.

“Oh, uh, you know, not great, actually. I think she had to leave, to get back for some kind of vampire emergency.”

“She did?”

“Anyhoo. Tell me all about this article. What did you say that has people lining up to stay at our amazing hotel.”

“Simply that the prophecy is real and you are the Chosen One who will save all Lost Ones from Gideon Cain’s dark ways.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “You wrote that?”

“Oh yes. I’ve turned over a new leaf.” She preened and poked at her stiff hairdo. “I report only the truth, and as your identity is something of an open secret these days, it added that spicy pizzazz to a story that everyone loves.”

“Oh . . . uh . . . yes. Good, I guess.”

Everyone here knew who I was? They’d all come because they thought I could save them? Me?

Oh dear. “Er, if you’ll excuse me, I just need to check on... the gremlins.”

“Let’s have a drink Mr. Vex, to celebrate the inevitable downfall of that terrible man.”

“Uhm, yes, later...” I hurried off, leaving Noreen staring after me. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Every guest wanted me to be their hero? That wasn’t part of the plan. I had to find Victor and Zee.They needed to know that the whole world knew I was the Chosen One. I had to stay calm. I could do calm.

Where would they have taken Daisy? The kitchens? To make pies? No. We didn’t do that. Maybe the attic? Yes. I’d take the elevator...

I hit the elevator button and the doors immediately rumbled open, revealing Victor and Zee inside and arguing. Zee had his arm looped around Daisy’s waist, and Daisy was slumped over like a pink and white ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Why are you still here?” I hissed, and hopped inside the elevator. I was quickly followed by a glamorous fae guest who had long, straight white hair and was dressed in a pale green pantsuit.

Zee and Victor fell silent.

The doors closed, and we shuddered into motion.

Well . . . this was . . . awkward.

“Is she okay?” the tall, well-dressed fae asked.

“She’s my sister,” I blurted, then laughed. “She’s so silly. We’re just taking her back to her room. A bit too much happy juice and she’s out cold. You know what sisters are like.”

“Are those fangs?” the guest asked.

“What?” I looked at Daisy... and the fangs poking out from between her lips.

Zee flopped Daisy’s head back, then tugged her lips down over her fangs. “Nope,” he said. “Just normal human baby teeth.”

“Human babies have teeth?” the guest asked.

“Yes,” Zee said, with confidence. “Huge teeth. Big chompers. So normal, not a vampire. Like Adam is normal. Aren’t you Adam?”

“Uh—”

“Adam is also not a vampire,” Zee continued. “Unlike that dashing piece of suit-clad ass looming behind you. He looks creepy, but he’s actually a softy and knows a hundred ways to use a tie in the bedroom. Say hello, Daddy Vampire.”

Victor frowned.

“Say it, Fancy Fangs, the lady is waiting,” Zee urged through his thin smile. Beads of perspiration made his face shine under the elevator’s new, intense lighting.

“Good evening,” Victor said through his teeth, as though chewing glass.

“See, he’s a vampire. This girl is just a sleepy human who can’t hold her milk. We’re taking her to her comfy room where everything will be fine?—”

“Zodiac,” Victor said. “I suspect you have said enough.”

The elevator chimed and jolted to a stop, and the guest left, eyeing us suspiciously.

“I think she bought it,” Zee said, once the doors had closed on us and we were underway again.

“Where are we taking Daisy?” I asked.

“Housekeeping’s storage closet,” Victor explained. “Unless you know a better temporary location?”

“Okay, alright... that works.” The closet was pretty large, with a lockable door, and if I had all the keys nobody would stumble on our dead vampire.

“Get her feet,” Zee ordered Victor. “This cutesy girl is heavier than she looks.”

Victor bent and grabbed Daisy’s ankles, then picked her up so they had the vampire queen slung between them.

“This is fine,” I puffed, and willed away a wave of lightheadedness. “We’re doing so fine.”

“Are we?” Zee’s voice pitched higher. “I’m not feeling fine. He doesn’t look fine.”

Victor was even paler than before. Was he about to pass out? Then we’d have two limp vampires to deal with.

“I am fine,” he growled. “I’m internalizing the fact we have killed a second vampire queen and will likely start a war.”

“Nobody needs to panic. We’re all doing great,” I told them, hoping it didn’t sound as panicked as it had in my head. “This is great.” That one I muttered for my benefit.

The elevator pinged and the doors opened. I took a quick look at the corridor, found it clear, and waved them out. Storage was at the end. The little room would be crammed with brooms, mops, buckets, but should be large enough for a corpse.

“We look like three fuckin’ pedos right now,” Zee mumbled, walking backwards, his hands under Daisy’s armpits. “Kidnapping a twelve-year-old. This is a new fuckin’ low, and I fuckin’ know low. You must get this a lot, Fancy Fangs. There’s always an age gap with your ancient ass.”

“She’s a great deal older than twelve, and would most certainly have had us all killed as soon as our meeting ended,” Victor grumbled, holding her ankles.

I unlocked the storage room and flicked on the light. The room had never looked smaller, and wasn’t much larger than a normal closet. Shelves stocked with sheets and towels filled the walls. All the hotel’s cleaning equipment was stacked at the back. “Okay, stuff her in the back with the mops.”

Zee backed in but quickly ran out of room, so he shoved Daisy upright and pushed her floppy body into Victor’s arms. “Demon?” Victor growled.

“It’s fuckin’ tight in here . . . I’m fabulously huge . . . and she’s your problem.”

“I believe she’s rather a problem for all of us.” Victor shimmied deeper into the tight space, dancing with Daisy, and I followed, closing the door behind us. Under the single naked bulb, we all shuffled in.

“Demon, move over,” Victor urged.

“I can’t.” Zee had already squished himself into a gap between two shelves.

“I need to place the body behind you,” Victor explained. “To do that, you have to step aside.”

“I’m fuckin’ trying.” He scooted to his right, shuffling around, and Victor scooted to his right, also shuffling, with Daisy pinned between them in some sort of macabre threesome waltz.

“This is a terrible idea,” I muttered, and spied a cabinet at the back. It wasn’t big, and only came up to Zee’s hip, but it could hold a folded corpse. “Try the cabinet,” I told them.

They shuffled some more, bumping and growling. A wooden broom skidded sideways along the wall. A shelf unit rattled under Zee’s elbow, spilling cleaning bottles. This room had seemed a lot larger without four people in it.

Zee bent, opened the cabinet door, then promptly shut it again. He straightened, eyebrows pinched close. “Uh, okay, but you know there’s a portal in there, right?”

“A what?”

“Big swirly hole?”

I sighed and rubbed my face. Why did all our problems have to happen at once? You try to do one simple little murder... and it always ends up complicated. “Wait. Let me see.” For me to get anywhere near it, we all had to shuffle around in a jerking circle of bodies until I finally reached the cabinet, and opened it.

It’s not that I hadn’t believed Zee—portals weren’t new to us. But now?!

Sure enough, inside was a swirling, heaving, beating mass, just like the one that had hovered over my bed not so long ago. At least this one was much smaller.

I shut the door again.

Zee side-eyed Victor.

“The portal has nothing to do with me,” Victor replied, hiking Daisy higher against his chest.

“Like it wasn’t anything to do with you last time?” Zee huffed.

“The simple solution is to go through it,” Victor said. “You’ll not find Reynard Technologies at the other end because if you recall, we destroyed it.”

“ Go through it?” Zee exclaimed. “Can you not see my fabulous red suit? Naw dawg, I’ve watched this movie and the demon gets lubed. You’re the dominant one, you control the lube, you penetrate first.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. He struggled again to heave Daisy’s awkward body upright. “You entered the last portal without a second thought.”

“Yes I did, and I learned a valuable lesson. You should be proud.”

“I’ll do it.” I opened the cabinet door again.

“No!” they both barked.

Zee’s tail whipped out and swatted the cabinet door shut. “No fuckin’ way. Not gonna happen. Who cares where it goes, right? Shove the preteen in— poof —trash gone, problem solved.”

That would be a convenient solution. But shoving corpses into random holes was almost as bad as entering a portal without knowing what was on the other side. I glanced at Victor.

“Frankly,” he sighed. “I do not have any better ideas, and every second we spend arguing in this closet risks our discovery.”

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t we see where it goes first?” I asked. “What if it comes out right over the police commissioner’s desk—the vice commissioner’s desk? We uh... we had the last one arrested.”

“That is highly unlikely,” Victor said.

“As unlikely as finding another fuckin’ portal in the hotel’s housekeeping closet?” Zee asked. “Ugh. Fuck. Fine. Step aside.” Zee shrugged off his red jacket and handed it to me, leaving him impressively bare-chested. We shuffled against each other, trying to get Zee back in position at the front of the cabinet.

“Hm, hello there, Kitten,” he purred, pressed up close against my chest. “Snug fit.” His eyebrows jumped suggestively.

“Hi.” I smiled up at him.

Victor cleared his throat. “The vampire queen continues to remain deceased in my arms, so if you don’t mind, please postpone the romantics for later?”

“Ugh... You suck all the fun out of everything. If this portal ruins my fuckn’ pants imma make you pay, Fancy Daddy.” Zee opened the cabinet door, took a deep breath, dropped to his knees, and climbed in. The portal gobbled him all up until the last thing to vanish was his tail.

“He will be fine,” Victor said, seeing the concern on my face.

He probably would be okay. He’d said before that portals always popped up in Demontown. Something to do with lots of Lost Ones in one place altering the environment. But just because he’d always been fine, didn’t mean he wasn’t in danger. “How can you be so certain?”

Victor considered it and replied simply, “He is Zodiac.”

Zee splurged from the portal, thankfully not lubed. He tumbled into my legs, knocking me against Daisy, and then Victor, like a short run of dominoes. Victor growled in my ear, his patience with closet living wearing thin.

I grabbed Zee by an arm and helped haul him upright. “You okay?”

He ruffled himself and smoothed his pants. “Uhm, so...” A flurry of hand gestures flicked dust off his chest and then fluffed his purple hair. “Am I okay? Hm... Let’s fuckin’ see. I’m in a closet with my favorite people, which is fine, but then you add another dead vampire queen, and there’s a portal...” A deep breath expanded his chest. Clearly, something bad had been on the other side and he was building up to saying it.

“A portal to . . . ?” I urged.

His gaze skipped behind me to Victor, then down.

He yelped, and leaped back. “Vampire!”

Daisy—close behind me—yelled, “Demon!” in my ear.

Zee screamed.

I might have screamed too—it felt right, at the time. There was a whole lot of screaming for such a tiny closet.

I spun, to try and see how and why Daisy was alive to scream. She kicked out. Her pretty pink shoe struck my chest. I toppled, flailing into Zee. In my arm-waving panic, I dislodged a broom. It skittered sideways down the wall. Zee shrieked, caught me, but as he reeled, he stepped on the broom, snapping the handle in half.

Zee—in full-blown protect-Adam mode—smacked the upright broken bit of broom with his tail, right as Daisy launched herself from Victor’s arms.

The jagged end of the broken broom met the flying vampire, punching into her chest. She jolted, mid-air, hung there a moment, then dropped back into Victor’s grip.

Daisy looked down at the broom sticking out of her.

Oh dear.

Zee pressed his hands to his mouth, with me tucked under his arms, and gasped, “Fuuuuccckk.”

Daisy’s head lifted. Furious vampire eyes swirled with ancient menace. “You are so fuckin’ dead!”

Zee poofed out of the closet.

He’d left us?!

No, he wouldn’t, but he had vanished.

Purple sparks fizzled from his dramatic exit.

“Victor, hold her!”

Victor bared his gritted, fanged teeth. “I am!”

He’d locked his arms around Daisy, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Unhand me! I am your queen!” She bucked, kicked, and thrashed, but Victor held firm. Now we just needed to figure out what to do with this very angry and very alive queen with a broom handle sticking out of her chest.

“Should I pull it out?” I reached out and winced as the broom bobbed in the air with her every buck. It looked painful, although she was thrashing so much, did she even feel it?

“No! Leave it!” Victor strained, having trouble holding her.

“What do we do?!”

Don’t panic, don’t panic. This wasn’t our fault. “Uh, Daisy? About the broom? That was a total accident. You kicked me, and I fell back, and Zee was just protecting me, and the broom well... the broom...” Had very clearly ended up inside her.

Daisy seethed and snapped her teeth like a rabid dog straining at its leash. “I am going to rip off your every appendage, Adam Vex, and then hand you over to that sorcerer in pieces!”

Zee poofed back into the closet in a second dramatic wave of purple sparks. Those same sparks danced along Shareen—his sword. In the confines of the closet, there wasn’t much room to move, or avoid what happened next.

Victor shoved Daisy forward. Zee had the sword held at shoulder height, or if you’re a twelve-year-old vampire... neck height.

Whether Daisy accidentally cut her own head off, or Zee sliced it off... who’s to know? The result was the same.

Daisy’s head plopped to the floor. A comical spray of blood fountained from her neck, painting all of us in a crimson shower, then cut off, as her body hadn’t yet got the message it was missing its head and attempted to heal the devastating and abrupt end to her neck.

Her thrashing ceased.

On the floor, Daisy’s head wobbled, and her mouth guppied like a dead fish, but after a few seconds, even that stopped.

The whole world went quiet.

The wards hadn’t activated so... it really had been an accident?

“Holy shizzle on a fuckstick!” Zee hugged Shareen to his chest. “What the fuck just happened?”

Victor blinked blood-splattered eyes and dropped Daisy’s headless corpse in a heap on the floor, the ineffectual broom handle still sticking out of her chest.

Right.

Okay.

“New plan.” I tasted blood, and grimaced.

We were back to where we’d been a few minutes ago, only now we had two bits of body to dispose of and a whole lot of blood spray to clean up.

“I told you staking doesn’t work,” Victor grumbled, attempting to wipe blood off his shirt but smearing it instead.

“It was my tail !” He lowered the sword, grasped his tail in his free hand and waved it. “My fuckin’ tail. I told you it does things.”

“Your tail murdered the queen?” Victor wiped his face, smearing all the blood splatters in a gory mask. “Is that what you’re suggesting happened, when it is quite clear your sword left an obvious mark!”

“Nobody did it,” I said. “The wards didn’t kick in for anyone. It really was an accident.”

Panting, Zee eyed his sword, then the dead Daisy. “Adam’s right. It really was an accident.” He blinked and looked up. “You missed a bit of blood there, Victor,” Zee said, flashing a grin.

“You are equally blood-soaked, Zodiac,” Victor agreed.

I sighed and blinked at Daisy. “Okay... She’s super dead this time. Let’s shove her in the portal and hope for the best.” It was our only option.

“Right. Fuck. Yes.” Zee grabbed her head, opened the cabinet, and tossed it into the pulsating hole. “Enjoy your trip, Your Highness!”

Victor neatly collected Daisy’s body and shoved that through the hole too.

Zee shut the cabinet door, brushed his hands together, and huffed. “Okay. Let’s recap. We’re still alive, and there’s one less vampire in the world. Yay for us. Now, so I don’t get fuckin’ nightmares for the rest of my life, I need the three Fs —food, then we’re gonna fuck, and some mac and cheese after.”

“That’s two Fs ,” Victor said.

Zee narrowed his eyes. “Fuck, food, and fun . Or fuck you? There, three. Happy?.”

“We need to get cleaned up and get back down to the bar.” I flicked blood from my fingers. I was probably covered in just as much as Victor. “We’ve already been missing too long.”

I’d lock the closet and ask the gremlins to clean up the blood later. Gremlins didn’t ask awkward questions.

Putting a hand on the door knob, I remembered the one question Zee hadn’t answered. “Oh, hey, Zee. Where does the portal go?”

“Fuck, right, yeah. I almost forgot. So... Okay... Right... Erm.” After a deep breath, he held it and said simply, “It goes home.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, weird right?” His little nervous laugh had a few internal alarm bells ringing. Why would he be anxious about a portal leading back here?

“Demon,” Victor stepped in. “Do you mean somewhere other than the hotel?”

“I mean home . You know, the place we’ve all been shut off from for the last four years? The place we come from. Home .”

“There’s a portal through the veil in our hotel closet?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

My face must have mirrored Victor’s shocked expression because all the blood in my veins turned to ice.

The only communication we’d had with home for four years and we’d just sent a headless vampire corpse through it.

Oh dear.