Page 12 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 12

THE MACHINE

“I thought you had a new job.” Lara looked up from where she perched on a high stool. She mechanically stirred a glass mug of hot tea with a silver wand. “I was told you were taken straight from the fight pit to a job on the Upper West Side. Is that not true?”

She barely masked her annoyance to find Nick in her kitchen.

She barely masked her annoyance to find Nick inside her apartment at all.

Nick didn’t really give a shit.

He’d already checked downstairs, and, as expected, since it was nearly seven in the morning before he found a vampire-safe taxi that would bring him here, he’d found the place empty. Wynter had already left for work.

Tai must have gone with her.

Hell, they’d likely left over an hour ago.

Nick looked around the top-of-the-line, yet uniformly sterile and bizarrely uninviting kitchen, and tried to decide how much he wanted to get into things the Archangel C.E.O. right then. Especially given, one, how unlikely she was to tell him anything, two, his newfound dependence on her, and three, having already had his patience tried to the limit by Brick.

He wasn’t exactly in the mood to get in another sparring match with a manipulative sociopath, not so soon after his back and forth with his sire.

Also, he wondered how much the two of them were working together, even now.

Clearly, Brick had wanted Nick to know he was still in St. Maarten’s confidence, given his dropped remarks about Nick’s attempt to retrieve his lost memories.

Yet he’d also told Nick not to trust St. Maarten, that she might be behind some anti-vampire bullshit going on behind the scenes.

Knowing Brick and St. Maarten, both statements could be part of another long-con, bullshit gaslight being conducted by both of them. That, or Brick just wanted to get his claws in before Lara could, and pull Nick’s confidence closer to him and the White Death.

Whatever the precise truth, Nick couldn’t help feeling like he was being tag-teamed.

He also couldn’t help feeling like their coordinated campaign was already having at least one of its desired effects: namely, exhausting him to the point where he didn’t particularly feel like arguing with either of them anymore. He certainly wasn’t up to spending a ton of his brainpower trying to decide which of the two of them might be lying more.

Not today, anyway.

He knew there was an element of resignation involved in that, and it bugged him.

Fuck. He needed to snap out of this.

Whatever this was, whatever messed-up headspace he’d let himself fall into after that portal closed, he needed to find some way past it. He needed to move on.

He couldn’t afford to just sink into anger and depression.

Moreover, he knew some of his unease around that thought was what Brick told him about the war. His own apathy and indifference bothered him.

Had he really just gotten drunk while the whole planet burned?

Was this dystopian hellscape at least partly his fault?

He tried to shake it off, but the thought persisted.

When he finally left his place by the kitchen doorway, it was to walk completely past Lara St. Maarten, and towards a long, chrome and copper machine that stood on her freakishly clean counter. The machine was large, monstrous even, for a kitchen appliance, and took up a full section of the red and gold tile. The backsplash to either side glowed and hummed, obviously containing virtual components. Those components likely turned every surface into a screen, or possibly switched the entire kitchen into a full-blown, augmented-reality mode.

The machine in front, however, was clearly some kind of antique.

It was the only thing with any character in the whole fucking room.

Nick’s vision winked out, blurred, slanted, and reformed as he approached.

Briefly, it transported him someplace else.

He saw himself in a different room, on a different world.

The view of St. Maarten’s obscenely expensive and predictably unwelcoming kitchen vanished, replaced by an equally monstrous, though likely significantly less expensive espresso machine, in a much warmer and more friendly common space, in a very different city.

Long windows glowed with real sunlight behind the chrome and red monstrosity sat on the counter of Nick’s vision. A tall, potted, ficus tree stood in the corner just past the window. The view showed the sides of sun-kissed skyscrapers with suit-wearing people moving inside. Past the buildings, Nick saw the sparkling blue bay, and the long bridge that went all the way to Oakland, broken roughly in the middle by Yerba Buena Island.

Nick knew if he walked up to that window and looked down, he’d see a traffic-filled street, the Ferry Building, and people moving like ants on the sidewalks below.

The memory hit into him with shocking clarity.

Black’s offices.

California Street.

San Francisco.

He blinked and the view of that other world vanished.

Nick stumbled only a little.

He walked the rest of the way up to Lara’s machine, then reached for the doors of the nearest cabinet and began looking around inside of it.

He found a mug and pulled it out, plunked it on the ceramic counter.

“Can I help you?” Lara St. Maarten asked coldly.

Nick didn’t answer.

He checked the water reservoir on the back of the machine, noted it was connected to a small hose of its own, and yanked off the metal arm that held the compressed, dark, fine, espresso grounds. It was totally empty, cleaned.

He grunted. Of course it was.

St. Maarten probably had a maid who made her espressos with real espresso beans, complete with dainty leaf patterns on the real-milk foam and sprinkles of real chocolate on top. Lara probably brought the barista-maid in specifically for those mornings she deigned to use the fucking thing.

Nick couldn’t remember the last time he’d had real coffee, but he decided today would be the day. Shitty vampire taste buds or no.

He went through a row of silver, capped canisters inside the next cabinet he opened, until he found the espresso grounds. Using the special metal scooper, he filled up the portafilter and then mashed it all down with a stopper he found, until the compressed beans filled the thing up to the very brim. He notched it into the machine, and turned the thing on, weirdly pleased with himself that he remembered how to do it all.

He arranged the mug he’d pulled down so that both spigots would empty into it, then flicked the second switch, and the machine groaned and whirred into life.

Without waiting, Nick walked over to a flat, lit surface in the wall.

He was pretty sure it was the refrigerator.

It was.

He yanked open the door, found the container of milk (and yes, it was real, his nose told him), retrieved it, and brought it with him back to the monstrous coffee machine. He found a chrome container for steaming in a third cabinet, and half-filled it from the bottle of real cow’s milk that probably cost a month of his salary, if not more.

“Make yourself at home,” St. Maarten muttered, not hiding her irritation.

And okay, maybe she had a point.

This one, highly-decadent, real espresso latte would likely cost an ordinary, non-royal resident of New York roughly three thousand credits, give or take, considering how difficult it was to lay hands on real foodstuffs these days.

Maybe more than that, given these were actual espresso beans.

Nick, knowing that a few thousand credits didn’t even qualify as couch-cushion money for St. Maarten, didn’t really give a fuck.

He stuck the metal container up into the milk steamer, and twisted the dial.

It’s amazing what a person… or a vampire… remembered.

He dumped out the metal espresso arm in the sink once it had finished making him the two shots of dark, creamy liquid, washed it out, washed all of those glorious espresso beans down the disposal, then brought it back and filled it up again.

Four fucking shots.

Fuck. Yeah.

By the time the second full portafilter of hot espresso had joined the first in his mug, the milk was hot and frothy as hell, so he pulled it out from under the steamer.

Seconds later, he had the first, real, semi-cappuccino, semi-latte he’d had in as long as he could remember. No leaf patterns or chocolate sprinkles, but he didn’t care.

He walked his now-full mug over to the high table where St. Maarten still perched, and leaned a hip against the stone countertop. He took a luxurious sip, and his eyes practically rolled up into the back of his head.

Even as a vampire, with vampire tastebuds, it was… something.

“I should force-feed this to James,” Nick said, conversationally. “Fucker has absolutely no clue what coffee is supposed to taste like.” He gave St. Maarten a cold look. “Of course, I could have just bought him the real thing, back on my home world.”

Lara St. Maarten looked singularly unimpressed.

“Are you ever going to stop whining about that?” she asked.

Nick thought about the question.

“Probably not,” he answered, a touch colder.

Her voice contained more than a hint of viciousness when she spoke next.

“You know my questions to you aren’t optional anymore, Detective,” she sneered. “You work for me now, far more than you do Farlucci or the N.Y.P.D.” She sat on those words for a beat, then added, “Speaking of work, why are you back here so soon? You can’t possibly have caught the killers already. I thought it was some kind of roaming band of vampire vigilantes you and Morley got tasked with. Isn’t that something that concerns you? Vampire murderers, giving all of your kind a bad name? Particularly with the heightened anti-vampire sentiment of late? They might as well be recruiting for Eifah.”

Nick stared at her.

Lara wasn’t exactly being subtle.

Not about her level of access, nor about her open disdain for the safety of New York’s vampire community. She was practically confirming what Brick had hinted at earlier.

Clearly, the masks were now meant to be off.

Nick took his second luxurious swallow of the mind-blowingly good espresso drink. Realistically, it was probably closer to mediocre espresso drink––at best––when compared to what Nick used to drink in San Francisco before he left.

Given the difficulty of growing a crop like coffee under a dome and with an artificial sun, not to mention contaminants that could never be fully eradicated from the soil and water and air here, no matter how disgustingly rich a person was, there was no possible way it could be as good as the espresso Nick grew up drinking.

He didn’t know how he knew that so confidently, but he felt certain he was right.

“We solved the case,” Nick said, lowering the mug to the counter.

“Oh?” Lara continued to sound bored, and now openly disbelieving. “And how did that happen, exactly?”

“Confession. The killer felt the need to come and tell me personally he’d done it.” Nick grunted, remembering Brick’s very unconvincing denials. “Well. Sort of.”

Lara stared at him.

Nick glimpsed the faint blue flash in her irises as she did, the one that indicated she’d had her eyes enhanced artificially, and could probably see almost as well as he could, even in the dark. Given who she was, she might even see better than he did, since she’d have access to every flavor of cutting-edge tech, and would definitely take advantage of that, assuming it was safe.

“What?” she asked coldly. “Who confessed?”

Nick ignored that, too.

“Wynter left for work?” he asked, taking another sip of the espresso drink.

Lara went back to looking annoyed once she’d focused on his mug.

“Yes,” she said shortly. “Have you seen your downstairs apartments yet?” The question was more than a little pointed, and not exactly subtle, either. “I would have thought you’d want to be down there. Resting. Sleeping. Not up here. Not with me.”

“I don’t sleep,” Nick reminded her. “And yes, I did look at the apartments. Very nice.” He shrugged, eyes and voice flat. “But Wynter, obviously, was not in either of them. I didn’t see the kid around, either, and I just remembered it’s a staff day at Kellerman. No classes. So Tai wouldn’t have taken the train up with Wynter today. Would she?”

He gave the Archangel C.E.O. another flat-eyed stare.

“Presumably, you’ve got her and Mal around here somewhere,” he went on conversationally. “And I’d like to start the job we agreed on yesterday, as a condition of my continued cooperation and sunny disposition.”

St. Maarten snorted a faint scoff under her breath.

Nick knew the scoff wasn’t humor at his remark. Rather, it was scorn at what he was implying. From her perspective, Nick didn’t have the leverage to press for “conditions.”

He worked for her, or he went to an H.R.A. prison.

He worked for her, or he lost access to Wynter.

And the kid. And Malek.

Nick knew that, of course.

He also knew it wasn’t a bluff.

Still, there was something there, something Nick’s vampire senses picked up, despite her predictable response. That thing, whatever it was, told him he’d managed to throw Lara St. Maarten off-balance. He wasn’t acting the way she expected him to act. He wasn’t doing what she expected him to do, given his newfound dependence on her.

His lack of predictability unnerved her.

In the end, she lowered her cup of tea to its saucer.

“Today?” she asked, as if to clarify.

“Yes,” he said flatly.

She tapped a manicured fingernail against the hand-painted, porcelain cup.

He wondered if she was debating whether to fight with him, or to play nice.

After a few more seconds, she seemed to make up her mind.

“All right,” she said, her voice as calm and unemotional as his. “I don’t have Tai or Malek on anything particularly urgent right now, so perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we should do this now, before I have to pull one or both of them for something more time-sensitive.”

Her eyes swiveled to look at his, measuring him.

“You’re sure you’re up to this?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re acting fucking bizarre,” she answered at once.

It was so strange to hear the Archangel leader swear, he let out a snorting laugh.

Shaking his head, he gave her what might have been a real smile.

“Yeah, well… you’ve already said you don’t want to hear about it,” Nick reminded her. “So just assume it’s all the whining I’m doing in my head.”

There was a silence where she seemed to absorb his meaning.

Her perfectly lipsticked mouth ticked a little to one side.

“And you think getting your memories back will help with that?” she asked.

Nick shrugged. “It can’t make it any worse.”

The look on her face remained skeptical.

“Perhaps,” she conceded.

Her eyes said something different.

That time, however, she must have decided to keep her misgivings to herself.