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I couldn’t disagree with that. “My boss would call you a goddamn hippie.”

“And she’d make my point. Speaking of which … is your boss on board?”

“That was her I left a message for earlier. I’m not sure I have a job anymore,” I lied. I couldn’t quit, of course, and I don’t think Ada would fire me, even for this. But my employment was almost certainly going to be terminated after a vampire murdered me.

Olivia winced. “Sorry to hear that.”

“As you said: oh well.” I toyed with my options, half hoping that Maggie would pop into my head with some brilliant idea that could help me solve all of this. Instead, I got the very existential impression that she was packing her things and trying to figure out what to do once I’d been eaten by a brood of vampires. Not that she could do anything. She was at the mercy of whoever took the ring off my dead body.

“I have a weird request,” I suddenly said.

“Yeah?”

I waved my hand at Olivia. “If you survive this whole thing and I don’t? Take my ring.”

What the fuck are you doing? Maggie suddenly demanded.

Making contingency plans.

Don’t you dare. I’m not going to move in with a witch.

She’s better than a Vampire Lord, isn’t she?

Maggie didn’t seem equipped to argue the point, falling into a sullen silence. Olivia gazed at the ring for a few minutes. I could have sworn she muttered something under her breath and made a few discrete gestures, but Maggie didn’t warn me about any magic taking place, so I didn’t make a point of it. Finally, Olivia gave a nod. “I don’t think it’ll fit me, but sure. What do you want me to do with it?”

“Just … keep it safe. Thanks.” An idea was finally coming together in the back of my head. It wasn’t a very good one, but it was the best I had, so at the next stop sign I picked up my phone and dialed a number, praying that the call would be answered.

“Hey, bud,” Justin answered, “you know, my boss is pretty pissed about the Nick the Necromancer stuff. You might not want to call the office for a few weeks.”

“This is more important,” I said.

Justin must have heard something in my voice, because his tone immediately became concerned. “What’s going on?”

“Lord Ruthven might try to kill you.”

“Excuse me?”

I launched into an explanation, giving Justin a much longer and more thorough briefing than I’d given to Olivia. She was still sitting beside me, listening intently, but I didn’t see any reason to hold back. Unfortunately, the longer I talked the more insane I sounded – at least to myself. I began to wonder if maybe I was overreacting. If maybe there wasn’t nearly as much danger in this whole thing as I’d thought. I got to the end and realized I’d been repeating myself, and finally fell silent. I was answered with silence on the other end of the line. “You still there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Justin said. He did not sound happy.

“Look, I didn’t mean to put you in danger. I …”

He cut me off, “Alek, I know you’re a reaper agent. I know you’re a professional and you get into dangerous situations a lot more often than I do. But Lord Ruthven certainly isn’t going to get involved in this whole thing himself, and I’ve had more dangerous things try to kill me than a dhampir. So don’t worry about me. Look, I’ll have to call you back. Keep your phone on you.” And he hung up.

Getting that warning off to Justin took a little of the burden off of my shoulders, and I went through a list in my head wondering if there was anyone else whose safety I was worried about. I had lied to Jacques, of course. I didn’t have family, but I did have friends, and I didn’t want anything to happen to any of them. Besides, Justin was OtherOps. If there was any organization who could put a stop to this insanity, it was going to be them. But that required Justin’s boss to believe that the threat I was screeching about was real.

We soon arrived at the little servant’s house in Gates Mills that I called home. I was half expecting Jacques himself to be waiting for us, but Maggie gave me the go-ahead and I parked in the driveway and headed inside. I’d done my best to take care of my friends and coworkers. Now it was time for me to stay alive and come up with a real plan. I ran inside, grabbed a duffel bag from beneath my bed, and began to pack.

I’d left the door open behind me and heard Olivia wander in. “Hey,” she said, “we have the same duffel. And you have a cat! Hey, sweetie, what’s your name?”

“Can it, lady. Alek, did you bring me tuna?”

“I … uh, Alek! Your cat is talking to me.”

“Not now, Eddie,” I shouted over my shoulder at him as I rummaged through my drawers, wishing I’d done laundry in the last week. “We have to go. Get in the truck.”

“I am not a cat,” the conversation went on. “I am the last Prince of the Nile, the Herald of Sekhmet! This is my temple. You may make offerings of tuna or scritches. If you touch my belly, I will kill you.”

I finished grabbing clothes and began to gather weaponry; brass knuckles, ammunition of a dozen different varieties, a nightstick with a silver bulb at one end, a couple extra stepping mirrors. I found Olivia in my living room, scratching Eddie behind the ears. She shot me a curious look.

“He’s a sphinx,” I explained. “His name is Eddie, and he seems to have adopted me recently. Eddie, we have to go.”

“I don’t want to leave my temple,” Eddie purred at me.

“Your temple is no longer safe, buddy.” I tossed my bag of weapons into the bed of my truck and came back in through the open door and scooped up Eddie with two hands. He gave an indignant little meow and shifted in my arms, revealing his wings. Olivia gasped.

Eddie said, “If my temple is no longer safe, I must be here to guard it.”

“Have you ever stood toe-to-toe with the servants of a Vampire Lord?”

“My ancestors fought vampires and worse to protect our goddess.”

“Sekhmet is dead,” I said, plopping him onto the passenger seat. “I don’t think she’s going to be lending you much power. I promise I’ll get you some albacore tonight.” I ran back into the house, past Olivia, and gave the whole place a once over. I was in a hurry, but that didn’t stop me from feeling a pang of sadness. I’d lived in this place since I moved out of Ada’s house in my late teens. It wasn’t much, but it was home. I had no idea if I’d ever see it again. I wondered if Olivia had felt the same thing as she rushed around her own house less than an hour ago.

We were back on the road quickly, driving in silence. I went over checklists in my head, wondering just how paranoid I should be about Jacques finding me. According to the movies, I should discard my phone and ditch my truck and do go completely off the grid. That didn’t seem realistic, not when I didn’t really believe that I was just going to hide for an indefinite amount of time.

I was still going to ruin Jacques’s week. I just didn’t know how yet.

Olivia found us an AirBnB in Glenwillow. It was a quick drive to the highway and less than an hour from anywhere I’d want to be in the Cleveland area. But it was also a relatively small town – a good place to lie low in the downstairs in-law apartment of an old couple who owned a house way too big for their age. The old couple was on vacation in Europe, so I parked around back and typed in the code they gave me for the AirBnB, and we let ourselves in.

I carried in our bags and left Olivia to wash the vampire blood out of her hair while me and Eddie ran to the closest supermarket to grab some food and a litter box. We were soon back, Eddie happily munching on a smelly can of tuna in the corner while I collapsed on the couch. I was more exhausted than I expected and, as there was just one bed, I expected this was where I was going to sleep. And boy, did I want to sleep.