Wanted: Undead or Alive

Book/Season 2 - Six Months Later - Distracted By Fruit

Despite the fact that Mandrake lives in a tiny hipster apartment above his tiny hipster coffee shop, his shower is the stuff of home design magazines. It's all pretty gray tiles in varying shades and the water comes in a gentle spray from three walls and the ceiling. There's a wide bench that looks and feels like stone but is probably something much more ecologically kind. At the moment, we were testing the sturdiness of said bench. It was more than adequate.

I heard my phone ringing, but I wasn't about to answer it. Frankly, if I'd smelled smoke or seen the shadow of a guy with an axe, my priority still would have been to finish what we'd started. It had been a while for me, and we were fast approaching the pivotal moment, if you know what I mean.

Since Drake is descended from the literal god of sex, it stands to reason that he's... like... the prince of sex. Or something like that.

The point is, once he starts, no one in their right mind would stop until everyone involved had crossed the finish line.

And then, after crossing the finish line, it was all I could do to wrap his ratty old terrycloth robe around my quivering body and stagger over to the bed. I flopped down onto the mattress. Drake curled his large, powerful body around my back, and I fell into the deep, restful sleep of the sated.

Needless to say, when my phone's ringtone woke me up, I was confused and groggy. When the caller immediately called again, I was just annoyed. I rolled off the lumpy old mattress and followed the sound. My jeans had ended up on the kitchen floor. I didn't remember ever even being in the kitchen, but there they were. My phone was miraculously still in the back pocket. By the time I fished it out, the caller was ringing through for the third time.

Scowling, I glared down at the screen.

Mx. Landry.

My heart dropped.

Six months had passed since I'd taken the job at The Recovery Agency. In that time, I'd received a gazillion texts from the office manager/general agent wrangler. Texts were routine business. Calls only came when the proverbial shit had really and truly hit the fan. I pictured them on the other end of the line, beehive hairdo sprayed into immobility, on-point eye shadow gleaming over their dark eyes, beard neat and trimmed, sucking on a cigarette in annoyance as they waited for me to answer.

I swiped the green button to answer. "What's up?"

"Nick's been arrested," they croaked in their droning bullfrog voice.

"Arrested?"

"For murder."

"Murder?"

"His mother somehow found out and stepped in, and now we're involved." They drew on their cigarette and exhaled noisily. "You need to come in right away. Everyone else is already on the way."

"Everyone else?"

Instead of acknowledging my stunned parroting, they said, "Be here in fifteen minutes," and hung up.

For thirty seconds or so, I continued kneeling on the kitchen floor, staring at the black screen of my phone.  

I thought of Nick's mother—the tiny woman with the enormous personality I'd once met on the other side of the world. She was obsessed with pomegranates. It was weird. In fact, I still had a couple she'd given me mixed in with some apples and oranges in a glass bowl on my kitchen counter. In six months, they'd shown no outward sign of decay and, quite honestly, I'd never given that much thought until now. I didn't know how long pomegranates normally lasted, but surely half a year was well beyond the normal expiration date. Maybe it was rotten on the inside. I should probably toss it when I got back to my place. It would be super gross to find out it was full of bugs or something.