Asher laughed from the backseat. “Your girlfriend? That Olivia chick?”
“Yes, her.” I smoothed back my hair, already preparing. I pinched my shirt, lifting it to my nose and sniffing. Yes. Clean, and slightly perfumed. Perfect. “She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m in love. With her blood. And her melons.”
Gil snorted, half laughing, half disgusted. “You’re a pig, Sterling. Oh. How was the electrician?”
“Hot,” I said. “Very hot. And efficient. Didn’t even mention anything about a bill.”
He shrugged. “He’ll probably send over an invoice at some point. He knows we’re good for it, he only knows where we live, after all.”
Asher cleared his throat. “Something that Sterling is probably quite excited about.”
I glared at him from the passenger seat. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Just saying,” Asher said, grinning. “You looked so dazed when I came into the house. You can admit it, Sterling. You got a crush. Two crushes.”
I placed one hand flat on the dashboard, my fingers digging. “What I have are two potential thralls, okay? People who may or may not happily donate their blood. Speaking of which, we should really check out a butcher.”
Gil shook his head, taking a quick glance at his wrist. “No such luck, buddy. Bound to be closed, never heard of a butcher that stays open late. Besides, we’ve checked. They don’t keep any animal blood up here.”
“Yeah,” Asher said. “We got funny looks when we tried asking. I said I was gonna make some dinuguan, which got some even funnier looks. I don’t think they even have Filipino restaurants here. Or Filipinos, for that matter.”
I sank into my seat, throwing my neck against the headrest and
groaning in frustration. No pig’s blood? That was a good cover story, too. It’s a Filipino delicacy, made with pork, blood, vinegar, and yes, frequently, a fair bit of garlic. For humans, delicious to eat, especially over rice. It’s doubly delightful for vampires, for obvious reasons.
“At this rate I really am going to have to hunt in the forest. I hate animal blood. Hate it.”
Asher poked a finger in my shoulder. “Is this just you being dramatic, or is animal blood not good for you?”
“It’s just not the same when it comes to keeping your strength up. Blood isn’t just blood, you know? It’s laced with someone’s personality, their memories, their hopes and dreams and nightmares. Everyone is different. You don’t get that from animal blood.” I let my head loll off to the side, shifting my gaze between Gil and Asher, giving them pleading looks with wet, expectant eyes. “If only my friends weren’t so committed to letting me starve to death.”
The two of them said nothing, clearing their throats and gazing nonchalantly through the windshield.
I planted one booted foot against the dashboard, kicking it halfheartedly for good measure. “You guys suck,” I grunted.
“Technically, it’s you who sucks,” Asher said. “And you need to figure that out before you turn on one of us in our sleep.”
“No nibbling,” Gil growled. “I swear, Sterling, we established that rule years ago, and it stands. No nibbling.”
“No nibbling,” I echoed, pressing myself against the car door, sulking.
We arrived a few minutes later, pulling into an immense parking lot, about half of it occupied by a huge variety of stalls. I lit up a cigarette as we strolled over for a closer look. The night market wasn’t just farmers, which made it all the more interesting to peruse. The evening was cool, the air filled with neighborly conversation and the faint strains of competing genres of music, depending on the stall. Plenty of country, a little bit of jazz, and the occasional local indie rock band.
You had local artisans selling their handiwork, which meant anything from fine leather belts to intricately carved smoking pipes. Sweet old ladies sat at tables laden with baked goods, little signs advertising which cause they were raising money for. One stall dedicated itself exclusively to rows and rows of essential oils in little phials, another to tacky costume jewelry. Yet another, for whatever reason, sold leggings. Leggings for days, in all the garish, eye-scratching colors of the rainbow.
I took a last drag of my cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke up into the starry Silveropolis sky as I slowly quietened my senses. The thrum of activity – light, sound, laughter, chatter – was plenty enough to handle for your average human, but it could be nigh on sensory overload for someone like me. Or for someone like Gil, for that matter. He was standing still, out of the way of foot traffic, eyes shut and ears pricked as he focused. Asher lingered nearby keeping guard, in a sense, making sure we didn’t bump into anybody or stood in someone’s path.
This was what Gil had meant by listening in on the locals. Finely honed senses are among the few things that vampires and werewolves have in common. Both Gil and I had made interesting use of our gifts, sometimes quite literally playing with them. A stupid little contest, to see who could figure out the secret ingredient in another one of Asher’s culinary creations.
But there were much more practical, and much more useful applications, too. It wasn’t the easiest thing to pull off, but sniffing out magical artifacts was certainly a nifty trick. The circumstances differ, of course. Sometimes it’s a tang in the air that I can almost taste, an indistinct hum, a delicate vibration along the fine hairs on my forearms. It was how we knew that the Filigreed Masque wasn’t hidden somewhere in the Everett House. A thing imbued with so much alleged arcane power would have had our senses pinging left and right.
For this to work, though, I would have to tune everything out. Eyes shut, which was why Asher stood guard. You never know, really. I breathed with my mouth, a makeshift way to disengage both taste and smell. My hands stayed in my pockets, held stiff and away from the cold. The point was to redirect all power on the Starship Sterling towards sound, and sound only.
“Two for the price of one, gotta get rid of these fast.”
Someone peddling vegetables. Or was it old magazines?
“I hear it’s all the rage in Santa Monica.”