Dates from Hell(15)

Ivy’s lips pressed together and she sighed. So much for getting any sleep this morning. “Get the plastic wrap from the piano out of the recycling bin,” she said in decision, and Kisten rose, tugging the tails of his silk shirt down over the tops of his jeans. “We open in eight hours for the early Inderland crowd, and I don’t want the place smelling like dead girl.”

Kisten rocked into motion, headed for the stairs. “Move faster, unless you want to have the carpet steam cleaned!” Ivy called, and she heard him jump to the floor from midway down.

Tired, Ivy looked at the woman’s abandoned purse on the couch, too emotionally exhausted to figure out how she should feel. Kisten was Piscary’s scion, but it was Ivy who did most of the thinking in a pinch. It wasn’t that Kisten was stupid—far from it—but he was used to having her take over. Expected it. Liked it.

Wondering if Piscary had killed the girl on purpose to force Kisten to take responsibility, Ivy stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes going to the filthy windows and the river hazy in the morning sun. It sounded just like the manipulative bastard. If Ivy had succumbed to Art, she would have spent the morning at his place—not only obediently taking the next step to the management position Piscary wanted for her, but forcing Kisten to handle this alone. That things hadn’t gone the way he planned probably delighted Piscary; he took pride in her defiance, anticipating a more delicious fall when she could fight no longer.

Warped, ruined, ugly, she thought, watching the tourist paddleboats steam as they stoked their boilers. Was there any time she hadn’t been?

The sliding sound of plastic brought her around, and with no wasted motion or eye contact, she and Kisten rolled the woman onto it before her bowels released. Crossing her arms over her like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped her tightly. Ivy watched her hands, not the plastic-blurred face of the woman, trying to divorce herself from what they were doing as they passed the duct tape Kisten had brought around her like lights on a Christmas tree.

Only when she had been transformed from a person to an object did Kisten exhale, slow and long. Ivy would cry for her later. Then cry for herself. But only when no one could hear.

“Refrigerator,” Ivy said, and Kisten balked. Ivy looked at him as she stood bent over the corpse with her hands already under the woman’s shoulders. “Just until we decide what to do. Danny will be here in four hours to start the dough and press the pasta. We don’t have time to ditch the body and clean up.”

Kisten’s eyes went to the blood-smeared rug. He lifted a foot and winced at the tacky brown smear on it, tracked downstairs and back again. “Yeah,” he said, his fake British accent gone, then took the long bundle entirely from Ivy and hoisted it over his shoulder.

Ivy couldn’t help but feel proud of him for catching his breath so quickly. He was only twenty-three, having taken on Piscary’s scion position at the age of seventeen when Ivy’s mother had accidentally died five years ago and abdicated the position. Piscary was active in his control of Cincinnati, and Kisten had little more to do than tidy up after the master vamp and keep him happy. Stifling her tinge of jealousy that Kisten had the coveted position was easy.

Piscary’s savage tutorial had made her old before she had begun to live. She wouldn’t think about what she was doing until it was over. Kisten hadn’t yet learned the trick and lived every moment as it happened, instead of over and over in his mind as she did. It made him slower to react, more…human. And she loved him for it.

“Is there a car to get rid of?” she asked, already on damage control. She hadn’t noticed one in the parking lot, but she hadn’t been looking.

“No.” Kisten headed downstairs with her following, his vampire strength handling the weight without stress. “She came in with Piscary right around midnight.”

“Off the street?” she asked in disbelief, glad the restaurant had been closed.

“No. The bus station. Apparently she’s an old friend.”

Ivy glanced at the woman over his shoulder. She was only twenty at the most. How old a friend could she be? Piscary didn’t like children, despite her size. It was looking more and more likely Piscary had orchestrated this to help Kisten stand on his own. Not only planned it, but built in the net of the woman’s cryptic origins in case Kisten should fall. The master vamp hadn’t counted on Ivy catching him first, and she felt a pang of what she would call love for Kisten—if she knew she could feel the emotion without tainting it with the desire for blood.

Ivy caught sight of Kisten’s grimace when she moved to open the door to the kitchen. “Piscary killed her on purpose,” he said, adjusting the woman’s weight on his shoulder, and Ivy nodded, not wanting to tell him about her own part in the lesson.