But I needed to talk to Lucado about Difethwr. I didn’t think he was in danger, but on the off chance Kane might be right, I didn’t want to leave him unprepared. “Mr. Lucado, about your bodyguard—”
“Frank.”
“I thought you said his name was Wendy—Wendell.”
“No, me. Call me Frank. Mr. Lucado’s my old man. Everybody calls me Frank or Frankie.”
“Frank. Okay. Well, Frank, I want to talk to you about what happened last night, while you were asleep. I know why Wendell quit.”
“Good man, Wendy. He’ll come back. He’s been with me for fifteen years. Doesn’t scare easy, but those damn demons must’ve scared the hell out of him. I don’t blame—” He stopped, then frowned. “I thought you said nobody else could see ’em.”
“That’s right. But those Harpies weren’t the only demons at your place last night.” I told him about Difethwr’s visit. I told him that I’d encountered the Hellion before. The only part I held back was about Dad. Some things are too painful to turn into stories.
As he listened, Lucado’s face moved from attentiveness to a scowl, the scar puckering his eyebrow, his dead eye looking at nothing.
“I don’t think it was coming for you,” I said, finishing up. “As I said, I’ve got a history with this thing. But I thought I should warn you, anyway. What you need to do is find a competent witch and buy a good, strong demon-repelling charm. Tell the witch you need protection against Hellions.”
I’d hired a witch to create a Hellion-repelling charm for Gwen’s house, right after the plague, because Needham is outside Boston’s shield. It was expensive, but the witch renewed it monthly, and it worked like, well, a charm.
“I can recommend a witch, if you’d like,” I told Frank.
“Not good enough.” He turned his head so that it looked like he was staring at me with his blind eye. The only part of his face I could see was violently slashed by his scar. It was unnerving. I don’t think anyone who saw the scar ever asked Frank what had happened to the other guy. You just didn’t want to know.
But if I could look a Gorgon-headed Harpy in the eye, I could do the same with Frank Lucado. I stared at him straight on. “What do you mean, not good enough? There’s a Hellion loose in Boston. A charm can keep it away from you.”
“That’s not how I figure it.” He rolled his eyes, but since I couldn’t see his good eye, the blind one just seemed to ricochet around its socket. I shifted in my seat and leaned over so I could see both eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Here’s how it looks to me. I hire you to do a job—”
“Which I did.”
“True. I’ll give you that. But you did a hell of a lot more.”
Uh-oh. Suddenly I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
Frank held up his hand and, as he spoke, ticked items off on his fingers. “You killed those Harpies, but from what you’re telling me, you lured something worse into my home. What did you call it?”
“A Hellion,” I muttered, slumping in the leather seat.
“Right. A Hellion. So this Hellion, a thing I never even heard of before, may or may not be out to get me. Now I’ve got to go out and buy an expensive charm just in case. Besides that, you scared off the best bodyguard I ever had, leaving me with no protection. That sound about right to you?”
I wasn’t the one who had scared off Wendy, but it seemed like a moot point. I shrugged. Frank was going to stop payment on his check, I could just feel it. If I had to take him to court to make him pay up, even with the signed affidavit, it’d cost me more in time and court fees than the check was worth.
“So,” Frank continued, “the way I figure it, you owe me some protection.”
I glared at him. “I don’t work for free.”
He smiled. “I like you, Vaughn. You say what’s on your mind.” He looked out the window. We were only a block from Lucado’s construction site on Milk Street. I was just beginning to think that maybe he’d let me off the hook after all when he turned to me again. “What’s your beef with this Hellion?”
His question took me by surprise, but I still wasn’t going to say what it had done to my father. “My family has been at war with demons for centuries.”
“So that’s it, huh? Some ancient blood feud?” He nodded. “I can understand that.”
The limo glided to a halt. The driver started to get out, but Frank punched the intercom button. “Take it once around the block,” he said.“I’ve got things to do,” I protested.
“Hear me out first.”
I looked at him, then nodded. Frank rapped on the glass divider, and the limo pulled back into traffic as smoothly as a sailboat on a glassy lake.
“So talk,” I said.
Frank looked me up and down, not like he was leering, but like he was sizing me up. The look held both assessment and respect. “We need to come to a new arrangement,” he said. “I’m gonna put you on the payroll.”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Sorry, Frank. I’m a free agent. I work for myself.”
“I need protection. Thanks to you, I ain’t got any right now, and I got some kinda demon from Hell on my tail. You wanna kill the demon. It’s a match made in heaven.”
Somehow, I couldn’t think of Frank and myself in those terms. I started to say so, but he interrupted. We were coming up on the drop-off point again.
“Look at it this way: who’s going to pay you to kill that Hellion if I don’t? You can settle your blood feud—and get paid for it. I can go back to sleeping at night. It’s what I call a mutually beneficial situation.”
“Mutually beneficial, huh?” He had a point, now that I thought about it. But then I thought of an entirely different point. Kane would notbe happy if I agreed to protect Lucado. Not one bit. I remembered how he’d looked in front of his building, pulling away from me and trying to order me to stay away from Lucado. The annoyance I’d felt then flared up again now. So he wouldn’t like it. So what? Nobody, not even Kane in alpha mode, could tell me what to do.
“All right, Frank. I’ll sign on as your protection until the Hellion is killed. You pay me five hundred a day, plus expenses.”
“Three hundred flat.”
“Three-fifty. And you provide meals on the job.”
He stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the team.”
I explained that Difethwr would attack only at night, and I needed to get some supplies before I started my first shift. We agreed that I’d meet him at his condo at seven and stand guard overnight. In the meantime, I’d grab some much-needed sleep. I climbed out of the limo, trying to look like I rode in a car like that every day, surreptitiously glancing around to see if anyone I knew was watching. No such luck.
Of course, now that I was on the team, I might catch a ride home this way every day. Me, on Frank Lucado’s team. God, what would Kane say?
15
WHEN I GOT OFF THE ELEVATOR, I COULD ALREADY HEAR Juliet’s TV blaring through the closed door of our apartment. I unlocked the door and walked inside—to see myself, in all my life-sized, blood-spattered glory, in a still photo behind an overdressed anchorwoman. The caption read “Boston shapeshifter saves human.” Lovely.
Juliet hadn’t gone to bed yet. She sat on the sofa, a bowl of popcorn in her lap.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
She glanced at me and smiled, showing her fangs. “We’re famous,” she said. “Top story on CNN; they’re showing the tape almost continuously. I look good, but you’re definitely the star. Look, it’s coming on again.” She nodded at the screen and tossed some popcorn in her mouth.
My God. The segment started with the humans stampeding out of Creature Comforts, then cut to me, blood all over my face, hands, and clothes, yelling “There’s no food here” at the vampires. Then the picture jumped inside the bar, showing the director screaming while the out-of-town vampire and the female zombie gnawed on various body parts. Kane was shouting and trying to drag the zombie away. There was a close-up of Juliet, watching with an amused half-smile and stirring her Bloody Mary, then I charged in like the cavalry to grab the vampire and detach him from the director’s neck. And that was it. That was America’s view of what had happened in Creature Comforts last night.
From there, the network cut to a talking head in a studio: a female professor of paranormal zoology at Boston University. Her commentary didn’t help much. She didn’t support outlawing PAs, but even as she spoke in favor of keeping PAs legal, she managed to convey the impression that we monsters were a bunch of wild animals. She was more interested in studying PAs than in learning to live with us—like Sheila Gravett and her biotech lab.
While the so-called expert was prattling away, CNN replayed the part of the tape that showed Kane pulling on the zombie’s ankles and me pinching the nape of the vampire’s neck. The director’s face contorted and his eyes squinched shut as he screamed. The images definitely didn’t convey an impression of “let’s all get along and live happily ever after.” The BU professor never even bothered to point out that the guy’s saviors—Kane and me—were every bit as paranormal as the creatures attacking him.
Watching the CNN coverage was like witnessing a car wreck. You didn’t want to see it, but you couldn’t look away. Kane was going to be livid.
The network cut to a story about some pop singer who’d been arrested for drunk driving, and Juliet hit the Mute button. “Has Kane called?” I asked.
Juliet selected a piece of popcorn from the bowl as she shook her head. “That cop did, though. The good-looking human one from the bar.”
“Daniel?” I felt a flutter in my stomach, then remembered the only thing I’d put in it since last night had been three shots of tequila. That would explain the fluttery feeling. Sure it would. “What did he say?”