She shook her head. “Then the waiter tells you that’s it. Pay up and get out. If you want more food, you’ll have to find another restaurant.”
Oh. Now I saw what she was getting at. Vampires were legally allowed to take one pint of blood per human per night. Getting greedy and sucking down more than a pint could lead to expulsion from Massachusetts and taking your chances in a state that was less enlightened about PA rights, a state like New Hampshire or Rhode Island, where unprovoked staking was legal. For Juliet—or any vampire—getting a full meal meant negotiating with several humans each and every night.
“It’s not that bad, is it? I mean, to use your own analogy, you’ve got the best restaurants in town begging you to stop in for a bite. On the house. You could have any human in this place.”
“I know.” Juliet turned on her bar stool, surveying the room. She turned back to the bar and sighed. “But when the hunger is deep, it’s hard to get a satisfying meal from a bite here and a bite there.”
I pondered that. Before I could reply, the vampire junkie was back, his eyes bloodshot and a little wild. “You’re interested. I know you are,” he said to Juliet, slurring his words. “I saw you looking at me.”
Wow. How could she resist a smooth line like that?
Juliet didn’t reply. I glanced around for T.J., but he wasn’t in sight. Instead, Axel appeared. “Looks like you’ve donated enough blood for one night. Go home and sleep it off.”
The norm didn’t even flick Axel a glance. “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the lady.”
Axel leaned across the bar, grabbed the norm’s tie, and stood, pulling the tie upward as he went. This forced the guy onto his toes and made him look up—way up—at Axel’s face.
“I’m talking to you. Out of my bar. Now.” Axel let go of the tie, shoving the norm backward. The guy stumbled, gaped up at the bartender again, then turned and fled through the front door.
“Junkie.” Axel’s voice held oceans of disgust.
Axel had reason to be concerned. The law saw the junkies as victims. It wasn’t illegal for a junkie to give more than a pint; instead, there was big trouble for any vampire who fed from a norm who’d already passed the limit. Vampires had to screen their donors carefully. And Axel could get closed down if illegal blood-taking happened in his bar.
I wondered how much blood a norm could lose before he was drained dry, as Juliet had put it. “What if there were no limits? Would you have killed that norm?”
“Probably not. Too anemic-looking. He’d be half a meal at most, so he wouldn’t satisfy that deep hunger.” Another sigh. “Mostly, I’m glad to be out of hiding. It’s a lot more fun to hunt by sitting here chatting up hot guys than it is to knock out some bum and drag him into an alley. But not everyone feels that way. The Old Ones—the really ancient ones, I mean—prefer to keep the old ways.”
Juliet was six hundred and fifty years old, give or take a couple of decades, so the vampires she was talking about must be close to prehistoric. I was about to ask her who these Old Ones were, when the front door opened.
“Over there! That’s her!” In the doorway stood the vampire junkie, looking even more wild-eyed and disheveled than before. With him were two plainclothes cops.
“That’s the vampire who took me over the limit!” he shouted, pointing at Juliet.
4
THE BUZZ OF CONVERSATION DIED AS THE TWO COPS—A human and a zombie—moved into the room. One of each meant the Goon Squad, officially known as the Joint Human-Paranormal Task Force, whose task was patrolling the monster-infested parts of Boston where regular cops didn’t want to go. I recognized these two: Norden and Sykes, the Goon Squad’s finest. A couple of months ago, they’d dragged me out of my nice, warm bed to arrest me. It wasn’t much more pleasant seeing them now.
Norden, the human, swaggered over. He hadn’t gotten any prettier since the last time I’d seen him. He was short, maybe five-eight. His skin was greasy and pitted, his eyes mean, his mouth curled in a permanent sneer. His partner, Sykes, towered over him by nearly a foot. The big zombie, with his broad shoulders and bull neck, rivaled Axel in size. Sykes hung back from his partner to wave surreptitiously at a table of zombies.
“Hey, Carlos,” he said.
Carlos grinned. He was good-looking for a zombie; his smile was nice, not nightmarish. He raised his mug in salute. Sykes nodded, then shifted his focus to the bar.
Juliet stirred her Bloody Mary and watched the Goons’ approach from under her lashes.
“Name?” Norden demanded.
Juliet said something in rapid Italian. She looked at the cop expectantly, then threw up her hands. “Non capisco.”
“Huh?” Norden turned to me like he expected me to translate. His face screwed up into a scowl. “Oh, God. It’s the shapeshifter. What, does this place attract every freak in Boston?”
“Well, you’re here, so …”
Behind Norden, Sykes stifled a laugh, and I liked him a little better. He wasn’t bad for a Goon. When these two had dragged me out of bed, Sykes had been almost polite about it. Norden was the finalist in the Mr. Jerk America contest.
“We’ll need your temperature reading and a saliva sample,” Norden said, turning back to Juliet.
Except Juliet wasn’t there.
In fact, the bar had only half as many patrons as there’d been two seconds ago. All the vampires had disappeared. If I could have just one vampire trait, it’d be that superfast movement ability.
Juliet was probably home by now, calling Councilor Hadrian to complain. Whenever she was mad about something, she called Hadrian—she had that vampire’s number on her speed dial. He couldn’t do much, but he did have a talent for calming her down.
“Damn it, Sykes, where were you?” Norden growled. “You were supposed to put that silver bracelet thing on her so she couldn’t do that.”
“Wasn’t any reason to think she’d run.”
“They always run, Sykes. You’re supposed to grab them before they can.”
“No one to grab now. Let’s go.”
But Norden wasn’t finished. He looked around the bar, his gaze washing over everyone like a beacon of hatred. It landed on Axel. “We’re gonna search the premises.”
Axel stepped out from behind the bar. “What for?”
“This citizen complained of illegal blood-taking in this establishment. We got a right to search it.”
“What citizen?”
All heads swiveled toward the door. The junkie was nowhere to be seen. Either his conscience had gotten the better of him for lying about Juliet or he’d decided to try his luck at a bar that had some vampires. I could guess which.
“We’re still gonna look around. You got a problem with that?”
Axel walked up to Norden. The two of them stood toe to toe. Except it was more like toe-to-tiptoe, the way Norden had to crane back his head to try to stare Axel down. But it was Axel who blinked first. He shrugged and went behind the bar, where he picked up a towel and started wiping beer mugs.
Norden smirked at Axel’s back, then looked around for his partner. Sykes sat at the table with his zombie pals, who’d poured him a beer from their pitcher. He grabbed a fistful of pretzels and started to chow down, then laughed at something Carlos said. “Sykes!” Norden yelled. “Quit screwing around and do your job.” Sykes shot his partner a murderous look as he slowly stood up. He leaned over and said something to the zombies, who roared with laughter. Then he lumbered across the room to join Norden.
“We’ll start with the bathrooms,” Norden said. “You take the ladies’.” Sykes growled, but he went with Norden toward the RESTROOMS sign at the back of the bar.