But what could she want? I hadn’t left my weapons or anything valuable in the Jeep. My camping and climbing gear were still in the back from my trip to Mt. Rainier, but they were twenty-year-old army surplus items, not hoity-toity REI finds that people might want to steal.
My keys were in my pocket, so there was no way the woman could drive off with the Jeep, but I patted it to double-check. The government had lent me the vehicle. I could not let it be stolen.
“Val?” Nin came over, but before I could point out the suspicious visitor, Tarot Lady opened the car door.
“What the hell. I locked that!”
I tried to open the window, tempted to take a shortcut down to the alley, but it wasn’t designed to open. Another checkmark against brutalism.
Snarling, I sprinted for the door, nearly mowing over Mr. Jeong on the way out. If I lost that Jeep, I was screwed.
2
As I burst out the front door of the apartment building and sprinted up the sidewalk, I sensed Tarot Lady with her magical blood take off up the alley. On foot and not in my Jeep, I hoped. With the traffic zipping past on the busy street, I wouldn’t have been able to pick up the sound of the engine. Either way, she was moving fast. Had she sensed me?
“Not how I imagined my day off,” I grumbled, running faster.
When I raced around the corner, the Jeep came into view, still where I’d parked it behind the trash bin, but with the driver’s side and rear door wide open. The woman was sprinting up the alley, holding her slouch hat to her head as her big purse banged against her hip. I paused long enough to slam the doors shut—my camping gear had been rummaged through but was still there—and tore after her.
Tarot Lady disappeared around a corner and onto the next block, and then I sensed her traveling upward. What was she doing? Climbing a building?
Even though I could sense partial- and full-blooded magical beings, I couldn’t detect normal people, and when I charged around the corner, I almost ran into a woman walking her Doberman. The dog barked at me, and I veered abruptly to go around. My target was halfway up the side of a brick building, her large purse dangling as she climbed. Her hat and her pumps were in danger of falling off.
The dog walker was staring at her, and I almost stopped and did the same. Tarot Lady had to be in her fifties and didn’t look remotely athletic. Was that elven blood flowing through her veins? She reminded me more of Nin, who was a quarter gnome.
I’d climbed numerous buildings in my life, and I started up after her, using window frames and divots and cracks in the old brick facade for handholds. The dog walker pulled her phone out as she alternated gaping at me and at Tarot Lady.
Who was she going to report us to? The police? The owner of the building? Cirque du Soleil?
Tarot Lady reached the top and vaulted acrobatically onto the roof. Her hat tumbled off and fell toward me. I snatched it out of the air as she disappeared from view and stuffed it in my waistband.
My fingers found holds that most people’s wouldn’t, and I reached the top of the three-story building seconds after my prey. She’d taken off toward a fire-escape door that should have been locked, but she waved her hand, and it opened before she reached it.
Growling, I sprinted faster and caught her before she could descend more than a couple of steps into the interior.
“Let go!” she cried, swinging her purse at me.
I caught it before it could batter me—a good thing since it had the heft of a wrecking ball.
“Not until you tell me who you are and explain why you were snooping in my Jeep.”
I glared at her, then glared at the purse, though I was already starting to feel like a bully. Tarot Lady could have joined Mr. Jeong and Nin in the shorties club, and I could have picked her up and tossed her over my shoulder, purse included, without much trouble.
“I’m Janice Lindberg, and because you’re one of his weird gang members.” She wrinkled her snub nose at me and tried to pull away.
“What?” I’d been accused of a lot of things in my life. Running with a gang wasn’t one of them. “I think you’ve got me mistaken for someone else.”
“No way.” She—Janice—tried to pull away again, but I easily restrained her. “You’ve been at that supposed coffee shop all the time, and I’ve seen you carrying in boxes.”
Coffee shop? Was this about Dimitri’s new business? His coffee-stand-slash-yard-art-slash-alchemy-lotion shop?
“At Dimitri’s?” Even if I possibly knew what she was talking about, I was puzzled. “The only boxes I carried in there were loaded with the parts for his new espresso machine.”
Technically, it was a new-used espresso machine refurbished by Gondo, Willard’s new assistant who, like all goblins, fancied himself a tinkerer.
“I’m sure that’s just a front. I work in the building next door, and I’ve seen the night-time deliveries.”
I eyed her tarot-card shirt and returned her hat to her. “Are you the psychic?”
“I run Star and Moon House, yes.”
This time, when she tried to pull out of my grip, I let her.
“I was working late last night, and my daughter came by. She was attacked right out front by a vampire.” Janice pronged two fingers into the side of her neck. “Don’t pretend you don’t know anything about it. You people are getting deliveries from a vampire. I can sense the potions in those boxes. That kid who rented the place is trouble. I could tell the day he walked into the building.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. At six-and-a-half feet tall and with the build of a refrigerator, Dimitri did look like trouble, but he was a lot less likely to beat someone up than I was. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. Zoltan, his vampire alchemist partner, wasn’t exactly menacing either, but he did drink blood, as all vampires did.
Had he been foolish enough to attack someone outside the shop? I’d always assumed Zoltan was subtle with his blood-sucking, slipping into his neighbors’ houses when they were sleeping and leaving them none-the-wiser, but I didn’t truly know him that well.
Janice pointed a finger at my nose. “I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s going on over there, one way or another. I’ll not have a vampire attacking my children or clients or anyone else in the neighborhood, and I don’t want all those dirty goblins and orcs next door to my established, respectable business either.”
I clamped my lips shut on an urge to point out that her bead curtains and window ledges lined with crystals and other woo woo knickknacks didn’t strike me as overly respectable. Dimitri didn’t need his friends picking fights with his neighbors.
Janice waved her finger. “Watch out. If you’re involved, I’ll find out about it, and I’m not afraid to call the police. If I have to, I’ll call that special army facility that assassinates magical criminals in the city.”
I almost laughed, since I worked for that facility and was the assassin, but if the woman’s daughter truly had been attacked, I didn’t want to make light of it. If Zoltan had been responsible, I’d clobber him myself.
“Is your daughter okay?” I asked.
She squinted at me, as if suspicious of the inquiry.
“I took her to the ER. Her neck was cut up, and she broke her wrist when she tried to fight him off. If I hadn’t come out there with Boomer, it could have been a lot worse.”
“Boomer? A gun?”
“My softball bat. I about took that jerk’s head off. Don’t judge me for being small. I had thirty-four home runs last year on our team.”
“Did you get a good look at the guy? Are you sure it was a vampire?”
“I saw his fangs, and I sensed him. I know a vampire when I see one, the filthy scum.”
“What did he look like? Besides the fangs?”
“He had a ski cap on that covered his face. I didn’t see anything except a flash of blood-stained fangs. Fangs stained with my daughter’s blood.”
Did Zoltan own a ski cap? He usually answered his laboratory door in an old-fashioned suit and bow tie, so it was hard to imagine him flirting with active wear. But how did I know he didn’t have a stash of ski masks for going out in search of his meals?
“What time was it last night?” I asked. “Do you remember?”
“Ten. Like I said, I stayed late for a client, and she’d just left.” Her tone turned anguished as she added, “My daughter was bringing me a frittata. She’s a chef at Bella e Buona.”
“I’ll look into it. I’m sure Dimitri had nothing to do with it. He’s a good guy.”
Janice was shaking her head before I finished the sentence. “Tell him to keep his grubby gang members away from my building.” She backed down the stairwell.
I let her go but couldn’t help but call after her, “I’ll tell him that if you stay out of my Jeep. My locked Jeep. I don’t keep vampire paraphernalia in there, I promise.”
She turned and fled.
Sighing, I leaned against the doorjamb. Maybe investing in Dimitri’s new shop hadn’t been a good idea. I’d only opted in because Nin had gotten involved and she had a proven track record for starting businesses. But she also had never hired or partnered with any vampires before.
As I was debating whether to follow Janice down the stairwell or go back the way I’d come, my phone buzzed. Dimitri’s name popped up.
“Are your ears burning?” I answered.
“What?” Clangs and the noise of a dozen conversations made it difficult to understand him.
“Never mind. We need to talk. Are you at the coffee shop?”
“I’m at the yard-art store, yes. But Val, we need to talk.” He either hadn’t heard me, or he agreed emphatically. “I’ve got a problem.”
“According to your neighbor, you are the problem.”
“What?” he asked again, raising his voice.
“I’ll explain later.”
“I need your help. My barista and I may be in danger.” A crash sounded in the background, and Dimitri groaned. “At the least, my art is in danger. You’re my security expert. Are you coming?”