Isla, Breaking & Entering

I stood on the pavement and watched a cloud of my breath float up the face of the brick apartments. "And why do you need me, exactly?"

Of course the vamp had explained his grand scheme in the taxi ride over, but I may have been a bit distracted. I mean, he wore skinny jeans. And just a t-shirt (with a mysterious dark stain on the collar) under his open jacket. I swear if that boy twisted too quickly his nips would slice the fabric right open.

"You have a pulse," Greg grumbled.

"And you want to use my pulse for B and Es?"

"When you say it so eloquently." He pinched the bridge of nose. "I can't enter without permission."

"Yeah, no, I get that," I said. "Girl not answering when you knock and you can't snoop around the place if you can't get in, fine, straightforward, yeah. But why me? Don't you have, like, connections or something that could do this for you?"

The vamp stared at me, in a, he'd forgotten how to blink kind of way. Or, rather, maybe in a surprised that I was both paying attention and possessed a rather casual relationship with the idea of breaking and entering kind of way. Surely this wasn't, like, a normal thing; PI's bringing their clients on a ride along?

Though, honestly, what I was more nervous about was whose apartment Greggy had in mind. I mean, come on, what if Lily was home? Last time I saw her she was freshly back from the dead and smashed my head against a crystal ball.

That's not saying I don't want her to be home. It'd certainly put a lid on all this crap real quick if she was.

"I'd like you to use your gift. You know, read the room. Psychically vibe with its aura for clues, or whatever bologna you want to call it."

I laughed, choking on the cold air. "Reading objects is, uh," not something I can do, "an art form, and admittedly not my specialty."

"Sure." He smirked. "Well if that doesn't pan out, you can ID her."

"Say what?"

"I don't know what Lily looks like," he admitted, kicking a can on the ground. "You do."

"Somebody hired you to find her and they didn't even give you a pic?" I pulled my coat tighter around me.

He rolled his eyes. "It's complicated. You cold? You look cold."

"It's like, twenty degrees and I'm in stockings, of course I'm fucking cold."

Greg made a move for the intercom and stopped short as a gaggle of co-eds came galivanting down the pavement. The vamp backed off, leaned against the wall and pretended not to notice the kids as they waited for the traffic light. Two looked me up and down and on their way up again whistled.

"Nice tights honey!" one called out.

Greg stiffened beside me. I threw a hand out to keep the vamp from lunging at what, in my opinion, wouldn't be his best choice in available prey. Just sayin'. Besides, I could handle myself.

"Huh?" I called back.

"I said nice tights!"

"What?"

"Nice tights!"

"Yeah, sorry, can't hear you!"

"Nice tights!" he screamed, loud enough to turn heads in the crosswalk. His friends clapped him on the back and sniggered. Guy ducked his head and kept on moving.

Thought I heard Greg chuckle over my shoulder.

I turned back around.

He cleared his throat.

"It's, ah, early still," he said, noting the usual throngs of people milling about. "Last time I said I was delivering pizza to get in. It was later. Nobody was watching."

"Did you actually have a pizza?"

"No, it was a—"

Over Greg's shoulder, by the ashtray on the other side of the double doors, a guy lit up a smoke. I scrambled to dig my pack a cigs from my purse. "Hold this," I said, shoving a compact, a lighter, lipstick, a switchblade, and my phone in Greg's chest (he fumbled with them like a juggler but didn't drop a thing with those smooth vampy reflexes of his). I snatched two cigarettes from the pack, threw my shit back into my clutch, and popped a cig between Greg's lips.

"Yo!" I called, sauntering over to the guy. "Got a light?"

Wordlessly, he complied. I ushered for Greg to join, though by the way he crinkled his nose I could sense he may not be a smoker, but the boy at least recognized a scheme when he saw one.

The stranger lit both our cigarettes, and I nodded my thank you as I took a long drag.

"You, um," I glanced up at the structure looming over me. "You on the fourth floor? I—we! Just moved in. First place together. Exciting, right babe?"

Greg raised a brow and halfheartedly draped an arm over my shoulders. Strangely, the gesture did manage to put some warmth back into my veins.

"Anywho, just trying to get to know the building, and I swear I've seen you on fourth."

"I'm on the second."

"Ah, well, then you have a doppelganger!"

He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and inserted his key into the door. "Have a nice night," he mumbled.

"Same to you!" I said, snatching Greg's cigarette from out his mouth and smushing them both into the ashtray. "Thanks again for the light. Now I know if I need another I can you find you on second."

I laughed. Nobody else did. Waving Greg along, I made for the door as the guy was already through. He opted to be only just neighborly enough to hold it for a fraction of second longer for us before letting it go. The vamp was both smart and faster than me, catching the glass in a blink and holding it as I entered.

"Clever," he said, softly, as I breezed past.

I went for the elevators—our smoke buddy had gone for the stairs—but Greg grabbed my wrist and marched us down the hall. His hands were cool, but not frigid, through my glove. Surprisingly gentle.

"She live in the basement?"

"Just checking something," he said as we rounded the corner into a mailroom.

He zeroed in on a mailbox at once, tapping the front and clicking his tongue.

"I left her a note," he explained, flicking the bit of paper hanging just far enough out of the box to be visible. "Had my number. Seems she hasn't checked her mail today."

"Huh," I said. "Neat trick."

The elevator smelled like sweat and old take out.

"She's a Tourist," I once again tried to reason—mostly with myself, aloud—how Lily somehow managed to get me here. "So your client, who is?"

"Confidential."

"Sure."

We arrived on seventh and Greg led me out the narrow box first. Such a gentleman.

"So your client, who is both confidential and obviously in the monster club," I said, gesturing between Greg and I as we walked, "doesn't have her photo or phone number or any other information besides that she's a barista. A human one."

He gave me a sideways look. "What makes you think I don't have any—"

"Darling, I would not be here if you literally had anything else to work with."

Greg stopped us at door. I could tell he was thinking by the way he rolled his tongue around in his mouth, poking the insides of his cheeks. After a moment he nodded and said. "I'll give you that."

He knocked. How polite. No one answered.

I leaned against the wall and watched him fiddle with the lock picking set on his key ring and cast snarly glances over his shoulder in case any passersby happened to pass on by.

"She's an under the table blood donor, isn't she?"

The vamp dropped his keys.

He scrambled to pick them up, like a nerdy kid crossing the playground with his science fair diorama in hand and the neighborhood bully watching. I wonder how Greg would look in glasses. Good, would be my guess. His ass looked so good as he bent over retrieve the keys, I was tempted to scare him again.

He resumed picking the lock and pretending like this was a totally normal regular set of keys taking six and half years to open one door.

"I'm not disclosing any information about my other clients."

"Sure, professionalism and all that, but come on, tell me I didn't just stake that? Who else would hire a vampire—"

"Shhhh."

"To find a missing human than another vampire? Come on, it's not like a werewolf would hire you."

"Eh, you'd be surprised."

"But I thought you guys had like a thing," he raised a brow, "you know, like a, bond or some shit. Can't you vamps track down those whose blood you've drank, like a fetishy shark?"

Greg opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it. Closed it—oo, hey bit of fang poking out over that lip. "That's not accurate."

A beat of silence stretched for miles between us. Didn't like it.

I tapped the doorframe. "Why do you even have lock picking tools if you can't enter?"

"Not all locked doors are people's homes." His tongue poked out over his lip as he toyed with a fang in concentration and oh sweet Jesus is that cute, or what? "Sometimes it's a storage unit with a surprising cache of pornographic black mail inside."

Well that sounded fun!

"Really?"

Greg smirked.

Click.

The door was open.

And the vamp's smirk was replaced with a crinkled nose. "Do you smell that?"

"Um," I inhaled hard enough to snort. "Musty hallway?"

"It's foul. Faint, but foul," Greg wedged his nose against the crack in the door. I bit the inside of my thumb to keep from laughing at him. "Like rot and iron."

My teeth scraped against the knuckle hard enough to break the skin under my glove. The miniscule bubble of blood that popped up drew Greg's attention. His eyes dilated.

Clearing his throat, Greg stepped back and gestured like a Victorian butler at the door. "Your turn."

Right. My turn. The whole point of my tagging along. I should take a step forward. I will take a step forward. Soon. Shortly. Right now. No biggie if there happens to be a resurrected woman on the toilet or microwaving a pizza or just, you know, hiding from vampires beyond that door. That wound in her side rotten and oozing... it was teeth marks, wasn't it? Sure looked like teeth. Like vampire teeth. What would she do when that door swings open and in pop a vampire and the last dipshit you saw before you died who is also the first dipshit you saw when you came back to life? What would she do? What would I do?

I didn't know what to do.

Greg placed a hand on the small of back, making me shiver for the slightest moment before he straight up shoved me through the open door.