It ended up not being an issue.
When she got downstairs and started mixing the ingredients for cherry pastries, the phone rang. Her heart started beating faster in anticipation of hearing Campbell’s voice. “Hello,” she said as she put the phone to her ear.
“Liv, I need to take the day off, maybe two,” Mindy said without preamble.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just exhausted.”
Olivia knew it was more. Mindy was reliving the horrible deaths of her mother and sister, and it was Olivia’s fault. She closed her eyes, searching for the right thing to say. Maybe it was best not to bring it up, to let Mindy deal with it in her own way.
“You deserve some time off. Get some rest. Do something fun.”
“Hey, maybe I’ll get that massage,” Mindy said a bit halfheartedly.
“Tease.”
Mindy laughed a little, but it was a shadow of her normal laughter. “You going to be okay running things on your own?”
“Yeah. Not expecting a big run on the diner.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
When Mindy hung up, Olivia felt the void where her friend should be. It grew bigger with each moment that passed in condemning silence.
* * *
Campbell stood in front of the Imperium the next night. He’d wanted so much to go back to Olivia’s, to hold her again, but he’d been summoned to the Imperium’s North American headquarters a mere two streets away from the United Nations. At least this time the reason for the meeting was of his own making.
When he climbed the stone steps to the front door, he remembered when this building had used the cover of the private residence of a reclusive billionaire. He remembered driving by when he’d been with the NYPD and wondering about the identity of its owner. He and his partner had gone back and forth guessing how the recluse had made his billions.
He’d had no idea that the owners had amassed their fortune by living for centuries.
When he stepped inside, the unease that he always felt here made a reappearance. He didn’t feel threatened, more like out of place, as he had felt at really fancy restaurants when he’d been alive. He’d been more of a takeout-pizza kind of guy.
“Officer Raines, your timing is perfect,” said the redheaded vampire at the front desk. “Representative Drogan just finished a phone call and can see you now.” The woman stood and led him down a hallway beside the stairs that led to the upper levels of the six-story building. He didn’t know what was on all the floors or in all the rooms, only that the courtroom was on the top floor.
As he entered the office the woman indicated, Charles Drogan stood and rounded his desk with a formal-looking stride. Though he’d lived through centuries, he sometimes still showed the mannerisms of King Henry VIII’s court, which was where he’d been turned.
“Ah, Raines. Good to see you.”
Campbell nodded in acknowledgment. “Representative Drogan.”
“What can I do for you today?”
“I’ve been trying without success to make contact with the NYPD on a matter. I’d like your help in making them listen. Perhaps if a request came from the Imperium—”
“What is this matter?”
Campbell hid his annoyance at being interrupted. People doing that had always irked him, as if they were indicating what they had to say was more important than what he’d been in the middle of saying.
“Protection for a woman.”
“A human woman?”
“Yes. She’s a target of whoever is behind these abductions.”
“All humans could be their targets.”
“Yes, but she’s escaped two attempted abductions already.”
“Sounds to me like she can take care of herself,” Drogan said.
Campbell couldn’t help his hands fisting at his sides. And by the quick glance he saw, it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Drogan. “My team intervened. She wouldn’t stand a chance against vampires on her own, not even the humans they have working for them.”
“Your team happened to be nearby on both occasions?”
If Olivia’s life weren’t so important to him, he’d tell this guy what a jerk he was, Imperium be damned.
“The first time, we detected human distress while we were on patrol. The second, we were alerted by a tip from an informant.”
Drogan returned to the far side of his desk and sat in his large leather chair. “Protection for a single human hardly seems a concern for the Imperium.”
“I thought all humans were important. Isn’t that why we changed the laws about tapping veins, why we established the blood banks?”
The tick in Drogan’s jaw told Campbell he’d probably just crossed a line and shouldn’t expect any help from the Imperium. He forced himself to calm down and remember that Olivia’s safety was the important thing here.
“All I’m saying is that if the Imperium and the NYPD were to work together, perhaps it would be beneficial for everyone. There are others in her neighborhood at risk, too.”
“Noted,” Drogan said, sounding as if he’d already begun the process of filing Campbell’s idea in the “no action” part of his brain’s file system. “Though it’s my opinion that the less we interact, the better.”
Before Campbell could say anything else, Drogan picked up his phone. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an important call to make.”
Campbell could rant and rave all he wanted, but once an Imperium representative made up his mind, there was no changing it. Anger made his bunched muscles throb as he nodded and turned to go. By the time he hit the hallway, he wanted to punch something, and hard. He was taking such long angry strides that he nearly ran over someone as she came out of the door of the next office.
“I’m sorry,” he said a moment before he recognized her. “Baroness. I didn’t realize you were in town.”
She sighed. “It seems I am always in a town not my own.”
“You do have a demanding job.” Catherine Flanders, the Baroness of Edgemont, called London home, but her position as a liaison between the Imperium’s home and all the offices around the world kept her traveling more often than not. She was what you might call Internal Affairs for the Imperium’s leaders in Bucharest.
“Yes, and it only seems to get more so with each passing year.”
“What brings you to New York?”
She slid her arm through the crook of his and walked slowly toward the front door. “I’m not at liberty to say. What brings you to the Imperium? I know you didn’t just drop by to pass the time.”
She knew him pretty well considering they’d only spoken a handful of times, but he’d liked her the moment they’d met when she’d been in town to bear witness at the trial of an Imperium employee who’d drained a teenage girl almost to the point of death. What made it worse was that the vamp had called the girl, posing as a hospital employee, to say her mother had been in an accident to get her to come outside. Because the girl lived, the man hadn’t been put to death. But if Campbell had to guess, he’d bet wherever he was now he was wishing he had been. A life sentence had quite a different meaning for a vampire.
The baroness had told the man to his face that he not only was a disgrace to the Imperium and vampires everywhere but also gave pond scum a bad name.
Baroness Flanders was what one might call filthy stinking rich, and so she said whatever she wanted and no one challenged her.
He debated telling her about his run-in with Drogan.
“Come, now,” she said as they descended the front steps outside and headed slowly up the sidewalk. “I know you were in with Drogan, and I know that the man is a pompous ass.”
He laughed then told her the extent of his conversation.