I spent all morning rolling that thought around in my head. I thought about it all the way through class, all the way back to my apartment.
Clearly, I was crazy—any sane person would have spent the day worrying about the vampire infestation paperwork we’d discovered last night. But not me. Nope. I was more concerned about why Malcolm had stressed that he didn’t want to sleep on my couch.
I wondered if he would have stayed if I had invited him to sleep in my bed. That thought worried me.
Not that I wasn’t interested, at least hypothetically. Any woman in her right mind would be interested. He was attractive, kind, smart, funny, willing to sneak into law offices under false pretenses and steal files. What more could a woman ask for? But the problems with Malcolm wanting to sleep with me were legion—and I mean that in the Biblical “demonic” sense. There were monsters out to get me. For that matter, there was one monster out to get me back, as in “back into his undead life as his girlfriend.”
I hadn’t realized quite how dangerous this whole thing might be for Malcolm. I’d really only thought about my own need for help. But now I knew that keeping Malcolm involved in this could be just as dangerous for him as it was for me—especially if he had developed a romantic interest in me. I suspected that last bit would piss Greg off. And I didn’t want Greg to focus his attention on Malcolm.
I had let Malcolm take one of the file printouts home last night.
Curses. Blast. Damn. Hell. And those were the mild ones.
I had to get that list of numbers back and I had to get Malcolm off the case. He didn’t know enough about what was really going on. I could get him killed.
And I didn’t want that. I liked him. Which meant that I had to get rid of him.
Have I mentioned how much it sucks (no pun intended) to be hunted by a vampire? Ruins your whole day.
And your whole life, if you’re not careful.
I’d already lost one boyfriend to the vampires. I wasn’t going to lose another, even if he wasn’t actually my boyfriend.
So only one question remained: how do you break up with an un-boyfriend?
I decided to put off answering that question in favor of sorting through the garbage bag. It seemed like the more entertaining option of the two.
Most of the trash was pretty standard working-late-at-the-office stuff: old Starbucks cups, stale doughnut pieces, take-out boxes. I moved those into another bag for disposal. There were a lot of yellow post-it notes, and I saved all of those. In fact, I saved all the paper I found. Some of it had been through a shredder. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to piece those pages back together, but I saved it anyway.
And somewhere along about the middle of the bag, I found a plain white t-shirt. Men’s size XL. The front of it was covered in blood from the neckband to the bottom hem.
At least, I assumed it was blood. It was a dark brown crunchy substance that had, when wet, soaked through to the other side of the shirt. And if it was blood, I didn’t see how anyone could have survived losing that much of it.
Of course, I don’t know that much about blood loss. I tend to get dizzy when I donate blood, so clearly, I believed that even a pint was too much to lose. And I don’t know how much blood it would take to soak through a t-shirt.
Okay. First things first. I needed to find out if it was even blood.
The internet is an amazing invention. It allows you to find just about any information you may need with a few clicks of a mouse.
If, that is, you know how to correctly word your query.
I knew for a fact that just a few simple chemicals could be combined to show whether or not a substance was blood. I knew this because I’d watched all those crime shows on television.
I just didn’t know what those chemicals were.
An hour of web searches later I found it. Hemastix. The website used terms like “blood reagent material that will turn shades of green if blood is present.”
Okay. Scientific Geek-Speak translation: this stuff tests for blood.
I discovered something even better than that, though. Hemastix are available in pharmacies. They’re used to test for blood in urine samples. I could pop out to my local CVS and pick some up.
So I did. The t-shirt I shoved into a plastic Ziploc baggie and took with me in my purse. God only knows what someone finding it would make of the fact that I had a bloody t-shirt in my purse, but I didn’t care. I just knew that I didn’t want to leave it behind.
It probably would have been safer in my apartment.
I was halfway to the nearest pharmacy when my phone rang.
“Hey! I think I’ve figured out what those numbers mean. Can I come over?” Malcolm sounded excited. I hated the idea of telling him that I no longer needed his help, but I didn’t know what else to do.
No time like the present. But I wanted to do this face-to-face. Breaking up with a partner-in-crime might not be exactly like breaking up with a boyfriend, but I felt that it deserved at least the same directness.
“I’m on my way to pick something up at the pharmacy. Give me an hour or so?”
“Sure. I’ll see you then.”
It actually took me about an hour and a half. I had to go to three different pharmacies to find the Hemastix. I probably should have called first, but I was too excited about the possibility of figuring out if this stuff really was blood. Don’t ask me why. I knew that it was blood. I wasn’t going to have to prove it in any court. The Hemastix weren’t necessary. I suspect I wanted the Hemastix to prove I was right just because that would make me feel like I was doing something significant, like I was adding to what I knew.
Malcolm was waiting outside my door when I got home. I reached into my purse to pull out my key and—of course—it caught on the baggie full of bloody shirt, ripping the Ziploc bag and spilling it onto the floor.
Malcolm bent to pick it up. “What’s this?”
“Something I found in the trash bag.”
“That looks like blood.”
“I think it is. I got some stuff to test it. What did you figure out about the numbers on that page?” We moved into the apartment and I locked the door behind us.
“They’re stock exchange numbers. I thought they looked familiar. I think this is information about what the guys on this list have been investing in. And if I’m reading it right, they’re making big piles of money.”
“Big enough to kill for?” I asked.
“More than big enough. Think that’s what happened to the guy who was wearing that shirt?”
“Let’s find out.” I pulled the Hemastix out of the plastic store sack I had been carrying. I also pulled out a bottle of water. The instructions on the internet said to use sterile water. I don’t know if reverse osmosis counts as sterilization, but I figured it was close enough. I wasn’t going to send it off for DNA testing; I just wanted to verify that the shirt was blood-soaked.
It was. Malcolm didn’t say anything until after I had finished my test—dipping a Q-tip (also presumably not sterile, but so what?) into the bottle of water, rubbing it across the bloodstain, then rubbing it across the small strip from the Hemastix bottle.
I peered at the strip. It was a sickly shade of green. Yep. Blood.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Malcolm asked.
“Television. And the internet.”
“So you’re sure it’s blood?”
“I was sure before I did the test.” I sat down on the couch, holding the Hemastix test and staring at it despondently.
“You know,” Malcolm said, “this is beginning to feel a lot more serious than it did a few days ago.”
“No kidding.”
“I mean, it was one thing when we were sneaking around offices because your ex-boyfriend was a stalker or something. But I didn’t ever really expect to find anything.”
“Really? Because I did.” Okay, then. This was my opening. If Malcolm was going to live, I needed either to tell him everything or to find a way to make him go away.
I didn’t really want to do either of those things.
But I knew I had to. So I took a deep breath. “You’re right, Malcolm. This is a lot more serious than even I expected. I’m going to call the police.”
“What are you going to tell them? That we broke into your ex’s law office? They’ll arrest us.”
“Nope. They’re not going to do anything to us. They’re not going to know that an ‘us’ even exists. I’m going to tell them that I was unpacking a box from my old apartment and found a bunch of old papers that belonged to my ex-boyfriend, along with a bloody t-shirt. I’m not going to bring you into it at all.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you could say that I was with you when you found the stuff—” his voice trailed off. “No. I guess not. Okay.”
“So I think maybe you’d better go so I can do that. Okay?” I didn’t look up at him.
“Okay.” He whispered, and I realized he was standing just above me.
Then he leaned over and kissed me.
You know those kisses that send electricity through you—that shoot right through your mouth and end up in your stomach somewhere? This one went straight down to my toes. I got goose bumps. I forgot where I was for a moment. I think I forgot who I was for a moment. We were both breathing hard when Malcolm finally pulled away from me.
“Call me when you’re done talking to the police, okay?” he whispered.
“I think… I think that maybe I’d better not. I don’t want them to track you down through me.” Oh, God. Surely those words weren’t really coming out of my mouth, were they?
But they were.
“I see.” Malcolm said quietly. He looked hurt and puzzled.
I had to fight myself not to kiss him again, to ask him to stay on my couch, in my bed, on the floor—to do anything other than leave.
But I really did know that this was for the best. I liked him too much to see him get hurt. And as nice as the kiss had been, I wasn’t ready to start seeing someone again. It had only been three weeks since Greg had un-died. So I just let Malcolm leave my apartment.
It was dark outside. I watched him shut the door behind himself, wanting to stop him but knowing I couldn’t. I knew he was hurt. I suspected he’d get angry after the immediate hurt wore off. I guess that’s why I didn’t suspect anything when I didn’t hear from him for six days.
In my own defense, I was distracted—both by Malcolm’s kiss and by what happened after he left.
But I still feel responsible. I should have known that something was terribly, terribly wrong.