He leaned toward me, frowning. “You get fired?”
“What? No!” I shook my head. “This is mostly a tour, that’s all.” I jumped at a sudden knock on the door. Crap. Brian was here. And my dad…
I groaned under my breath. “Could you maybe put on some pants?”
“Oh, for the love of…It’s my goddamn house.” He scowled as he stalked to the window and tweaked the curtain back. I heard him breathe a low curse, and I looked over his shoulder to see a very official-looking black Escalade with heavily tinted windows in the driveway, and on the porch the equally official-looking Brian, dressed in a dark suit, and wearing sunglasses and a Bluetooth headset.
“Who the fuck is that, Angel?” He let the curtain drop and rounded on me.
I hissed a whisper, “Jesus, Dad, he can hear you!” I swallowed down the last bite of burrito and grabbed my purse. “Hang on!” I called toward the door, then looked back to my dad. “He, um, works at the lab. He’s giving me a ride, that’s all.”
My dad glowered at me as he crossed his spindly arms over his thin, bare chest. “You’ve sure taken up with some folks that aren’t our kind, Angel.” Something flickered in his eyes, but I couldn’t tell if it was anger or worry. “You better watch yourself.”
“I’m fine,” I muttered, then waved a hand at him to at least get behind the counter so that his underwear wasn’t visible. He rolled his eyes and grudgingly complied, but continued to cast dark looks my way as I yanked the door open.
I gave Brian a bright smile. “Hi!”
With the sunglasses over his eyes I couldn’t tell if Brian was looking past me and taking in the general state of my house—and my dad—but I had no doubt he was doing exactly that. Though if he found any aspect of it disgusting or amusing, it didn’t show at all in his face. Instead he simply gave me a slight nod.
“Good morning, Ms. Crawford,” he said, voice as calm and smooth as ever. “Are you ready?”
“Sure am!” I replied, giving him an overly bright smile. I glanced back. “Bye, Dad!”
“Whatever,” my dad grumbled.
I kept the smile plastered onto my face as I exited and closed the door. Brian opened the umbrella he carried and held it over me through the light drizzle as we headed for the Escalade, then surprised the hell out of me by opening the passenger door. I climbed in, barely managing to hold back a sigh of pleasure at the buttery-soft feel of the leather seats.
He closed the door and came around to get into the driver’s seat. “It’s about a half hour drive, ma’am,” he told me as he started the engine and began to pull out of the driveway. “Feel free to put on some music you like.”
I didn’t have the faintest clue how to work the radio or satellite thing or whatever the hell it was. Fortunately it was already playing what appeared to be classic rock at a volume that still allowed conversation. “This is fine,” I said. If it had been opera or jazz or anything weird, I’d have had to figure the damn thing out for my own sanity.
Brian turned onto the highway, then opened the console and pulled out a packet like the ones he’d given me at the Gourmet Gala. “Can always use a bit more, ma’am,” he said with a slight smile, holding it out for me.
“Oh, sure. Thanks,” I said, taking it from him. “I tend to hoard and ration out my own stash as much as possible.” I tore the top off and did my best to suck the contents down as genteelly as possible. What was the proper etiquette for brain-eating? Pinky up? No slurping sounds? A dainty belch at the end?
“Understandable,” he replied. “And you have an adequate stash?”
“As long as nothing goes wrong, I have enough to last me about three months if I lost my job tomorrow,” I told him with more than a little pride. It hadn’t been easy to build my supply up to that level.
He flicked a glance toward me. “That’s impressive planning.”
“I’ve been hungry before,” I said softly, looking out at the window. Pine trees and horse farms flicked by as we drove. We seemed to be taking mostly back highways, which made for nicer scenery. “It scared the hell out of me,” I continued. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” I pushed away the image of the baseball bat splitting open the Saberton man’s head.
Brian took a deep breath and released it slowly. “An ever present danger for us.” He paused. “Mr. Ivanov told me you had an unpleasant encounter last night.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, fun times with Philip and a couple of his pals.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said with a shake of his head. “It must have been quite traumatic.”
I glanced his way. “Look, I really appreciate all the courtesy stuff, but is there any way you could just call me Angel?” I gave him an apologetic smile. “The ma’am thing sorta feels, well, weird. Sorry.”
“No problem with that at all, Angel,” Brian replied, slight smile touching his mouth.
I let out a small sigh of relief. “Thanks. And yeah, it was traumatic, but at the same time it was hardly anything compared to some of the other crap I’ve been through. Pissed me off more than anything.” I made a sour face. “Now isn’t that some shit? That getting tackled and held down while someone steals my blood isn’t the worst thing to happen to me by far.”
“More than your share in a very short time,” he replied.
“Not quite sure what that says about me,” I replied with a low snort. Shit magnet. That’s what it says.
“Well, you’ve handled yourself well every time,” he said. “I’ll give you credit for that. The incident on Highway 1790 was damned impressive.”
A warm flush of pride went through me. “Thanks. But speaking of that, is Heather doing all right?”
He seemed to consider the question carefully before answering. “Yes.”
That wasn’t exactly a super-reassuring response. “She’s really all right?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at him. “I mean, I know she was working for the other side.”
“Dr. Nikas has treated her arm and head,” Brian stated, features composed in the professional mask. “She’s healing fine.”
“And then what? What’s gonna happen to her?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied.
There was a hitch in his voice that unsettled me. “What would she have to do, or prove to you, to get y’all to—” I paused, not quite sure how to say it. “To keep y’all from doing bad stuff to her.”
He didn’t flinch at the accusation that Heather faced a very real threat of “enhanced interrogation.” Yet worry flashed across his face, briefly cracking the professional façade. “I don’t know,” he said, and to my surprise he seemed to wilt a smidge. “She’s a difficult case.”
“She was unhappy enough with Saberton to risk everything to leave them,” I reminded him. My own worry grew. “Is she at the lab? Will I be able to see her?”
He hesitated. I braced myself to be told it wasn’t possible, and so it was with real surprise that I heard him say, “I’ll see if I can arrange it.”
“Thanks,” I said, relieved that it wasn’t a flat out No. I glanced over at him. “How long have you been a zombie?”
“A little over fifteen years,” he replied, quickly enough that it sounded like he was glad for the change in subject.
I controlled the desire to ask him how old he was. He looked like he was late thirties or maybe early forties, so did that mean he was that old when he was turned? Did a zombie stay the same physical age they were at when turned, or did the body “stabilize” at some optimum age? Was Pietro actually in his sixties when he became a zombie? And if that was the case, what would happen with a little kid who was turned?
One of these days I would run out of questions about zombies. Sure. “I guess you kinda have the hang of all this then, huh?”
Brian’s shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “For the most part. Fortunately, I’m in a situation where the people I work with know what I am.” He paused as he made a turn onto a narrow highway. “Having people around who understand makes it easier.”
“I bet it does,” I said, then winced as I thought of the scene with my dad this morning. “God, my dad would freak if he found out. I can’t even imagine.” It would be ugly. And messy. And I didn’t want to think about that too much. We had enough issues between us without bringing up my weird “medical condition.”
“It’s hard to get past the ingrained prejudice,” Brian said, eyes firmly on the road ahead of us. “A lot of people can only see the monster, and those situations seldom end well.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Always have to be careful about revealing your nature. It can backfire even when you think they’re sure to accept it.”
“Well, we are monsters,” I said with a small sigh. “Hard to sugarcoat that.”
Brian gave a sober nod and didn’t argue the point.
There wasn’t much more conversation after that. I sat back, listened to classic rock, and watched the scenery go by.
Chapter 14
Our route to the lab had been almost entirely back roads and seldom-used highways, though I wasn’t sure if that was the only way to get there or if it was on purpose to keep me from finding the place again. If so it worked, since I had no idea where the hell we were, other than in front of an incredibly uninteresting building. It looked nothing like a lab or secret outpost, or even a secret outpost cleverly disguised as a farm house, or anything far less boring than what it was—a cinderblock lump of a structure painted an institutional blue with a small gravel parking lot and only one door that I could see. Scraggly grass scorched brown from summer heat surrounded it, giving way to pine forest after a few hundred yards. Dust hung in the air from the Escalade’s passage, and I held back a sneeze, and a little disappointment, with effort.