fucking around with.”
Her heart beat five times before she replied.
“For all you know,” she said, “I’ve had vampire lovers before. For all you know, I’m a regular chew toy.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fine,” she sighed. “If you like the cage, if you’re content behind bars, it’s none of my business.” But she didn’t get up. She didn’t leave.
“Quinn?” That was Eve. I blinked, and there she was, tricked out in her expensive, custom-made corset, hobble skirt, stiletto heels, leather collar, and her lipstick the color of a nosebleed. She held a sweaty bottle of Bass in each hand. “Who’s your friend?”
Now, in the land of the whip and the ball gag, there is an age-old etiquette, which I generally tended to ignore. But here was an opportunity to turn it to my advantage.
“Did I say you could speak to me, slave?” I asked her. “Did I give you permission to fucking ask me a question? I sure don’t remember doing it.”
Eve’s face managed somehow to simultaneously express embarrassment and delight. After all, wasn’t this precisely what she’d been after all along, degradation and humiliation, but I’d been too indifferent to give her?
“Shut up and sit down,” I said. She handed me my beer, and when she started to take a place on the sofa next to me, I told her to sit on the floor at my feet. I took her beer and gave it to Selwyn.
“I don’t like Bass,” she said, clearly amused. “I don’t much like beer.”
“Then don’t drink it. Makes no difference to me, as long as she doesn’t get it,” and I nodded to Eve, obediently sitting on the filthy floor. It made me grin, and I found myself savoring the thought of how uncomfortable she must be, all trussed up in that bondage couture and forced to try and find a not entirely excruciating position down there with the spilled drinks, cum stains, and fuck only knows what else. Her head was down; she wouldn’t dare look at me until I told her she could.
“So, occult antiquities,” I said. “Acquisition and appraisal. How’s that work anyway?” I took a drink of my Bass, a long drag off my cigarette, then turned my head, much more interested in the pushy, reckless girl in her Hellboy T-shirt than Barbara O’Bryan’s kinky alter ego. Selwyn sat up and shrugged.
“Depends,” she said. “But, usually, a client comes to me with a request. Maybe they’ve learned the whereabouts of a particular artifact or talisman or grimoire, but they don’t have the skills necessary to procure it. Or just don’t want to get their hands dirty. Better to have a third party to blame if, somewhere down the road, the shit hits the fan.”
“And how often does the shit hit the fan?”
She made a zero with her right thumb and forefinger. “I’ve been fortunate,” she said. “But I’m not so stupid that I don’t know it’s the sort of luck doesn’t last forever. You tell me how I’m living on borrowed time, I’m not going to disagree.”
Was this the other shoe dropping? Was she more interested in a bodyguard than a vampire fuck buddy? Insurance against that inevitable rainy day? I thought of Mean Mr. B, my long months spent as his muscle, convinced I’d never survive on my own, and the thought alone was enough to leave a bitter taste on my tongue. I’d gotten used to freedom.
Eve, probably in the early stages of asphyxiation, made a small grunting noise, and I nudged her roughly with the toe of my boot. In the immortal words of Johnny Rotten, this is what you wanted, this is what you get.
“Dad was an archaeologist,” Selwyn went on. “Specialized in Near Eastern mysticism and religious stuff. When he died a few years back, he left a shitload of unrealized profit just lying around the house. I needed a quick source of income. All I had to do was find the right buyers, match any given piece of ancient junk to an interested customer.”
“Pretty resourceful of you.”
“Better than waiting around for his savings account to dry up and finding myself on the street.”
I took another swallow of beer.
“I’m gonna ask you again,” I said, lowering my voice and leaning closer, “what do you want from me?”
“If that’s what you’re thinking, I can take care of myself,” she said, sounding slightly offended.
“Kid, you go and piss off the wrong beast, the Pope and Baby Jesus won’t be able to protect you.”
I only barely resisted adding, Take it from me. Been