Page 96 of Road Trip with a Vampire

In the flesh, the man didn’tlookterrifying. He appeared to be about sixty, though with vampires that didn’t mean much. The clothes he wore—a garish red plaid suit, which perfectly matchedthe pocket square we’d just found; a black top hat; and shiny black patent leather shoes—were straight out ofAnachronistic Vampires: Twenty-First-Century Edition. A book that didn’t technically exist but might as well have.

He smiled at Peter the way a parent might smile indulgently at a favorite child.

I inclined my head to whisper in Peter’s ear. “Do you know who this is?” Although, from the look of revulsion on Peter’s face and the familiar way the other man was regarding him, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Peter knew exactly who he was.

“I know him,” Peter confirmed, his jaw tightly clenched.

The man’s eyes were on me now, hungry and assessing. “Mr.Elliott, this is exactly why I insisted from the beginning that we hire you, you, andonlyyou for this job. Your reputation for thoroughness, for leaving no stone unturned until the job is complete, is obviously well earned.”

“Mr.Richardson,” Peter warned. “Don’t.”

The vampire called Mr.Richardson laughed. “I’ve told you. Call me John.”

My stomach plunged.

This guy wasJohn Richardson?

As in John Richardson, the ringleader of those douchebag vampires in The Collective?

I’d been so worried that Peter might have done something to land him on The Collective’s shitlist. Had he beenworkingwith them all this time?

John Richardson laughed again, the sound like nails on a chalkboard. “I take it from her stunned expression that you didn’t tell her why you brought her!” He clapped in delight, even as my heart was breaking into a thousand brittle pieces. “Bravo! Inspired work, even for you.”

“I didn’ttellher,” Peter said through gritted teeth, his dark eyes full of fury, “because I’d forgotten all about this arrangement until moments ago.”

“Oh, come now, my boy.” John waved a dismissive hand. “You can drop the poor little amnesiac vampire routine now. Your ruse worked.”

“It wasn’t a ruse,” Peter insisted.

I wantedso badlyto believe him, but if this was in fact John Richardson from The Collective…and with the proprietary way Richardson was looking at Peter right now…

The older vampire’s eyes flicked to mine again. Seething hatred burned within them. The feeling was entirely mutual. “Amnesia or no, Grizelda the Terrible is here. Now we don’t need to worry about cracking her safe! We can simplyaskher how to unward it. Won’t that be nice?”

“You’ve been trying to crack mysafe?” I spluttered, outraged.

Actually…

Wait a minute.

Did I evenhavea safe?

I scoured my memories for some hint as to what he was talking about. If Ididhave a safe somewhere, I’d gotten it so long ago that its existence, and whatever was in it, had totally slipped my mind. Things like that happened sometimes when you were over four hundred years old.

“Yes, your safe,” John Richardson confirmed, oblivious to my confusion. Then he nodded at Peter, who flinched visibly. “We’d been trying to crack it for six months with no luck. So we hired Peter, the best in the business, to help.”

I stumbled back a step as the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Richardson said the words as matter-of-factly as if we’d been discussing the weather, but a punch in the face would have hurt far less.

Betrayal, hot and painful, sliced through me.

Peter had lied to me. From the beginning. He wasn’t some poor amnesiac sob story who’d needed someone to help him regain his memories.

He was a fang for hire. And he’d been hired by some of the worst vampires I’d ever known to fuck withme.

I looked to Peter for some kind of confirmation. Either that what Richardson was saying was true, or that it was all a lie. My eyes began stinging, and I scrubbed the unshed tears away with the back of my hand.

Agony flickered in his eyes. “Zelda.” His voice was broken. Beseeching.

It wasn’t a denial. Just the opposite.