chapter Fifteen
WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE
LIZETTE wasn’t sure where she was going. To her hotel, she supposed, if she knew which direction that was. She was turned around. Looking right and left, she tried to figure out which way was Bourbon Street. If she found Bourbon, she could make her way back to her hotel, where she could pack and get the hell out of this crazy city. Blind panic was causing her to lose the ability to think or focus, and she realized after changing directions twice that her phone would guide her to the hotel with its navigation app.
Digging into her handbag, she scrambled for it, making a sound of distress the second she realized Johnny had followed her out of the bar. She knew she needed to deal with him, unfortunately. She needed to question him on his knowledge of local conspiracies and dangers, and she needed to lecture him about the inappropriateness of sharing their identity with mortals. She was going to need to report that fact back to the VA.
“Lizette! Wait! Where are you going?”
She thought about unleashing her anger on him in French, the English-speaking cad, but then she realized she wanted him to be able to understand everything she was saying. “I am going to my hotel and then I am leaving. I’ll be back in Paris by tomorrow night if I can arrange it.”
“I thought you were going to stay with me.” Johnny looked confused, which either made him an idiot of epic proportions or deliberately obtuse. She was starting to think it was the former.
“I am afraid that is not possible now that I know the truth!”
“What, that I can’t speak French? I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner, but at first I kind of nodded when you used it and you took it as understanding, and then I felt totally stupid telling you the truth.”
That sounded very much like the thought process he would follow. While she did appreciate his honesty—although it was rather late—that sort of behavior was at the crux of the problem, and the reason why she was feeling like she wanted to run away and hide in the forest for a decade. He spoke before he thought. He acted impulsively.
Now that attitude had the entire race of vampires at risk.
So she told him that. “It’s not about speaking French, though it doesn’t thrill me that you would lie about something so silly and unimportant.” She glanced around, checking to see if anyone was in hearing distance. “This is about the fact that Benny seems to think we’re vampires.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes and he rubbed his jaw, the handcuffs a vivid reminder of the last eight hours and all the ways she had compromised herself. She had allowed him entrance to his apartment. She had slept with a man on the Dead List. She had compromised the investigation. And she had lost her panties. All while being ridiculous enough to think that she could fall in love with such a man, given a little time and a few more orgasms.
Enough. She was putting an end to this madness right here and now.
“Oh. Well, that’s just because of the night of my wake Stella and Wyatt and the rest of the band were drugged, and Stella got stuck in bat form and she needed some blood to morph back and Benny was passed out in the bathtub, so she just took a nip, just enough to change back. I don’t think he really believes we’re vampires though.”
“Of course he does!” she hissed, aware of a mime crossing the street. He may not speak, but he could certainly hear. “He was discussing it as if it were of no consequence. As pure fact. You know as well as I do that live feeding is not permitted.”
“It’s not illegal. We don’t have a government. It’s just not recommended. But in this case it was necessary.” He looked stubborn. Mystified. Maybe even slightly annoyed with her stance. “It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal? It puts every one of us in jeopardy. We could be killed.”
“You keep saying that, yet I don’t see anyone wanting to kill us.” Johnny held his arms up and out. “I’m still alive, despite what the list says, and Benny wouldn’t slap a serial killer. He is not going to hurt us in any way, nor could he hurt us.” Johnny grinned. “Have you noticed we’re stronger than them?”
A profound sense of disappointment fell over Lizette. If he mocked the VA, in essence, he mocked her. “I am sorry, I cannot be so cavalier about it. I have seen what can happen to a vampire, despite his strength.” No one should have to suffer what her lover had suffered before she had finally managed to sneak in and end his life. She would not watch another man she cared about endure such pain.
Johnny cupped her cheeks. “I think you’re overreacting,” he said softly. “Shit happens. Benny and maybe a few others know, but nobody believes fringe-society gossip. Good people though they may be, no one takes a stripper seriously. It’s the way it is. And this is a live-and-let-live kind of town. No one gets in your business. So we’re perfectly safe, I promise.”
“Hey!” The sudden sharp voice startled Lizette and she glanced to the left. A man was running toward them. Not a man. A vampire. She recognized her kind and his lack of a blood scent.
“Raven?” Johnny asked. “What does he want?”
Lizette didn’t stick around to find out. She started walking.
“I’m going to kill you, Malone! I’m going to cut your fucking head off and roll it from Canal to Frenchmen, hitting every rock I can along the way.”
That did not sound promising.
Especially when Johnny suddenly grabbed her hand and told her, “Run!”
As she ran, grateful she’d lost her Louboutins after all, she felt remorse for flipping Johnny off. That had been childish. Now she was going to die, and she would not have even told him how she felt about him. Other than the fact that he annoyed her, that is.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lungs bursting.
“For what?” Johnny took a sharp right and she stumbled, trying to keep up with him.
“For giving you my middle finger. That was rude.”
“No problem. I’m sorry I’m such an idiot and I pissed you off.” Johnny stopped at a wall and cupped his hands. “Jump up and over.”
“What?” Was he serious? She couldn’t scale a wall. “I work in an office. I can’t do that!”
“Yes, you can. Put your foot in my hands and hold on to my shoulders. I’ll boost you over.”
Oh God. She wrung her hands for a second, glancing behind her. The man with the shaved head was barreling full force down the street toward them, looking very angry. “Okay.” Closing her eyes, she gripped his shoulders and stepped into his hands. When she wobbled, she popped her eyes back open and made a sound of distress. “Johnny.”
“Yeah? You can do it.”
“Even though we can never date and I’m very angry with you right now, if I die in the next five minutes, I want you to know that it’s entirely possible I could fall in love with you.”
His eyes widened as he stared up at her. Then he cursed and threw her in the air in the general direction of the wall.
Lizette shrieked and flung her hands out for some kind of purchase. Fortunately, if you chose to look at it as fortunate in any way, Johnny’s substantial strength had sent her over the top of the wall, and she landed half on it, half over it. Her fingernails dug into bricks as she started to slowly slide down, his shorts riding up around her waist. “Damn.” She was going down.
She landed on her rump in a courtyard with a loud, “Oomph.” It was not glamorous. It was not attractive. It was not even comfortable. But she was alive and she had not broken any bones. Though there was a killer still after them. He had clearly reached the wall on the street side, cursing and yelling as Johnny dropped to the ground softly. On his feet, of course, not his rear end.
“I’m coming over,” the man said.
“This is private property,” Johnny told him.
“Like you have any respect for private property. You ran naked through every room in my house.”
Um. Okay. Lizette let Johnny pull her through the door at the back of the house and into a bedroom. It was then that she realized they must be at Wyatt and Stella’s place. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting as what the guy had just said. She resisted being tugged and turned back to see his face popping over the wall, a prominent tattoo on his face.
“Who is that, Johnny?”
“Raven. He’s a douchebag.”
“Why does he want to kill you?” She had a sinking feeling about all of this. The good news was that she didn’t think she was really in any danger after all. The bad news was that Johnny had humiliated her once again.
Maybe she was wrong.
“Because I slept with his girlfriend.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Anger rose in her, like volcanic lava erupting. “Excuse me?”
“I didn’t know it was his girlfriend!” Johnny shut the door and locked it. “She said she was single. It wasn’t until a week later that I figured out what was what. I can handle Raven but I really don’t want to get into a fistfight in front of you.”
“So flinging me over a wall is better?”
He shrugged. “Maybe not. I just reacted. Overreacted, I guess, more accurately.”
Which was all he ever did. Lizette made a sound of disgust. She couldn’t believe she had told him she cared about him. Or that he had let her believe she was in genuine danger. “You need to learn to face your mistakes and responsibilities instead of running away.” Given her own reaction with her middle finger, maybe she had no right to call him out on his behavior, but that only proved they clearly were not a positive influence on each other.
“What, you want me to fight Raven?”
“If that is what is necessary, yes. Or perhaps you should just face him man to man and apologize.”
“Fine. You’re right.” He shot her a look she couldn’t decipher and opened the door.
Of course she didn’t want him to actually physically fight with anyone, but she wanted him to at least face the situation he had created, intentional or otherwise. She already knew that it would be impossible for them to have a relationship even if she did live in New Orleans, but somehow in her heart she needed to see that she wasn’t wrong about him—he was a good man, with a kind heart. She wanted to know that she was right to trust herself, and that sometimes emotions weren’t logical, but they were valid.
She wanted to believe in something as romantic as passion and love at first sight, even if it could not be acted upon.
* * *
JOHNNY KNEW IN his gut that Lizette was right, which was really damn embarrassing. She had a way of making him feel like he was a little kid who had pissed in his pants. But he knew that she had a point, one that Stella had been trying to drive home for years—he needed to grow up. He’d been feeling that very sentiment himself since his wake.
So he told her, “By the way, I feel the same way about you. I could fall in love with you, too, Lizette. Easily.”
He would have expounded on the fact, except that Raven punched him in the face. His head cracked back. Damn it. He’d been sucker-punched.
That was unacceptable.
Ignoring the blood in his mouth from biting his tongue, he raised his fists into position and tried to reason with Raven. He did not want to hit Raven. He really didn’t. He took no satisfaction in knocking someone to the ground, unless it was an arranged fight for sport. “Dude, come on. I’m sorry. I had no idea you were dating her.”
“She has a name.”
Oh, Christ. “Yes, she does. Melissa. Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Could we maybe do this another night, when I’m not hungover?” When Lizette wasn’t standing in the doorway watching. It made him feel like a total douchebag. He was not the type of guy to poach on someone else’s girl, and he didn’t want Lizette to think for a minute that he did.
Okay, so he wasn’t exactly Mr. Commitment. But he had always made sure women knew he was looking for casual. He had never cheated, never deceived, never gone after someone else’s girlfriend or wife. He may be immature, but he had ethics. Standards, for Christsake.
“I’ll buy you a drink, Raven, and we can talk it over, rationally.”
Raven swung at him, but it was wide. Johnny easily dodged it. “Dude, I don’t want to fight with you.”
“That’s because you’re a slimy wimp who sneaks around in the dark seducing women.”
Wow. That made him sound far more ambitious than he really was. “Hardly.”
“Is that how you scored your French whore?”
Hey, now. That was crossing a line, big time. He glanced back at Lizette. Her face was frozen in mortification. “Should I hit him?” he asked her.
She shook her head no.
Damn. “Okay, baby.” If she didn’t want him to punch on her behalf, he wouldn’t. Even if it was hard as hell.
“Raven, you need to apologize to Lizette right now,” he said, trying to stay calm. He didn’t yell. His voice was steely, eerily calm. Forcing his shoulders to relax, he told him, “This is between you and me. Don’t insult her to get to me. That’s not cool.”
How mature was that?
Raven had finally dropped his own hands. “I’m not going to apologize to someone who isn’t here. Not that I was going to anyway.”
“What?” Johnny looked behind him. Lizette was gone. “Fuck! Thanks a lot, dickhead!”
Sprinting through the bedroom, he went through the shotgun cottage and out the front door. Down the street, he saw Lizette stepping into a cab. He ran, but there was no way he was going to catch her. She was around the corner and gone before he could go more than a block. “Shit!”
Pulling out his phone, he tried to call her, but she didn’t pick up. Slowing to a stop, he stood on the corner and called his sister. “Hey.”
“Hey, where are you?”
“I’m at your house.”
“My house? Why are you at my house?”
“It’s a long story. By the way, you and Wyatt should lock your bedroom door. I came right over the courtyard wall and I was in. That’s not very safe.”
“If we locked it, then how would you get in?” she asked wryly.
Good point. He wasn’t always known for using the front door. “Have you heard from Saxon?”
“No.”
“Where is the little freak? Benny said he saw him a couple of hours ago and he was fine, but I don’t think he’s going to be fine when Zelda finds out he’s just been running around without her on his first night as a married man.” The thought made Johnny wince. He pictured a lot of whipping in Saxon’s future.
“Geez. You’re probably right. Where did you see Benny?”
“Fahy’s. He asked about you, of course. Then he went and freaking told Lizette we’re vampires, and she freaked out and left and I don’t even know what hotel she’s staying in.” Johnny started walking back down the street, realizing he probably shouldn’t have left Raven alone in Stella and Wyatt’s place. Given their unexplained long-standing tension with the guitar player who played in a rival band to The Impalers, he wouldn’t put it past Raven to steal something. Like a bass guitar or an amp. Or Stella’s pants. The guy was known for wearing girls’ jeans. Gross. Johnny didn’t hate the guy, but he didn’t love him either. Sort of like his feelings on Benny.
“Oh, crap. Of course he did,” Stella moaned. “I wish I could take back that bite on Benny, but what’s done is done. Lizette will get over it, right? I mean, she’s not going to narc on us or anything.”
“I wouldn’t count on her keeping quiet. She’s a stickler.” Along with a few other sexier things he didn’t want to mention to Stella. “The thing is, she has a point. It’s probably not smart for us to be telling everyone we meet the truth. All it takes is one obsessive person and we have problems.”
“Wow. You don’t usually think about stuff like that.”
Well, maybe he was going to now. There had been a number of things during the course of the night that made him think maybe he needed to reevaluate his priorities. But he didn’t really want to discuss that with Stella over the phone. “Are you coming home?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. I just need to talk.” Now that sounded manly. Not.
“Okay.” Stella sounded mystified. “Be there in a minute.”
Johnny sighed and went back into the house that he had left wide open. “Raven?” he called. But when he got to the courtyard there was no sign of him, or in the house. “Whatever.”
He was sinking on the couch and flicking on the TV when Stella came in the front door. “Hey.”
“Hey. Where’s Wyatt?”
“He’s with Drake. So what’s going on with you? Two nights ago you were acting like Lizette was just some annoying person sent from Paris to mess with you.” Stella dropped her messenger bag on the coffee table, and then sat down next to it. “Then at the wedding you were dancing up a storm with her, and now you’re acting like your life is over because she left. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? To get her out of your hair?”
She made it sound like he was a tool. “It’s not that simple. I mean, of course I wanted her to go away initially. She froze my bank account and wouldn’t let me in my apartment. But then we got drunk and woke up handcuffed together, and I don’t know, we had a good time together.” Both in clothes and out.
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is she left!”
“No, that is the consequence of the problem. Why did she leave?”
Johnny shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “Because she thinks I’m an immature commitment-phobe.”
“She said that?” Stella asked in astonishment. “I mean, it’s true, but it was kind of rude to just throw it out there like that.”
“No, she didn’t put it like that. She said that I don’t know how to follow the rules or take things seriously, that I don’t take responsibility for my actions. She’s pissed about Benny knowing the truth about us.” He put his feet on the coffee table and sulked.
“Well, what is it you want?”
That was easy. “I want to get to know her better, but it scares me. I’ll never be good enough for her and I can’t promise that I can handle eternity without fucking it up.”
His sister stared at him so long he wanted to throw a pillow at her. “What?”
“I’m just trying to reconcile the fact that you clearly dig this woman enough to want to attempt a genuine relationship. After one night. I don’t think that’s ever happened to you before.”
Yeah, well. Maybe because it sucked.
“I guess it had to happen sooner or later.”
“The thing is, Johnny, why do you always look at every woman and think it has to be either a hookup or eternity? Why can’t there be an in-between?”
That was a good question. One he had honestly never asked himself. “I don’t know. I guess because it seems like, being a vampire, a relationship is going to go on for a really long time. That’s intense.”
“There is such a thing as just dating, getting to know each other. Having fun, being monogamous, but not getting married.”
“I suppose some people do that.” But it seemed like for most people it was hard to stay content in that middle ground. “But Lizette was with some guy for a hundred years. That’s only a couple of years less than I’ve been alive. She can commit the shit out of a relationship. How can I compete with that?”
“You’re assuming that she wants another few centuries with someone. Maybe she would like to just ease into it this time around.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” He felt more mature already. Look at how easily he had admitted his sister could be right. “But none of it really matters. She’s going back to Oh La La Land and that will be the end of it.”
“So that’s it? You’re just going to give up?” Her expression was one of clear disapproval.
“What am I supposed to do? Chase her down? Tackle her?” His handcuffs rattled as he asked the question, waving his hand around.
“You could start by getting your name taken off the Dead List. Do everything she wanted you to without prompting from her. Find out what really happened last night. I have a feeling she’s the kind of woman who will appreciate the truth, even if it’s unpleasant.”
“You’re right.” Stella was right. There it was again. He tried to shake the feeling of melancholy. “Man, this is hard work. It was easier to fake my death.”
“Keep that up and I’ll arrange for your real death.”
He didn’t believe her for one second.
He did, however, believe that if he wasn’t careful, Lizette might decide to keep him on the Dead List after all.
In fact, she just might put the whole lot of them on the list.
Then none of them would exist.
Which would be a problem.