Free In the Blood by Abigail Barnette

again. Any other normal person would have been glad to be as far away from a vampire as possible. Nope, not her. She wanted to get closer. A lot closer.
    She groaned at her own stupidity and pulled one of the throw pillows over her face. She mumbled into it, “I would kill somebody for a magazine right now.”
    “Excuse me?”
    Fumbling to get the pillow off her face, she looked up at Anthony, who peered down at her with concern. “I said I would kill somebody for a magazine right now.”
    “Did Viktor leave you here without anything to do?” Anthony chuckled. “Forgive him, he doesn’t realize that his eternal martyrdom isn’t as fascinating to everyone as it is to him.”
    She sat up and smoothed her hair. “I assume he works a lot?”
    “Twenty-six hours a day, if I let him. Something to drink?” He already made his way to the bar, and Cassandra got up to follow him.
    “Any soda in there?” She nodded toward the minifridge below the bar.
    Anthony shook his head. “Orange juice, though.”
    “I’ll take it.” She slid onto a bar stool while Anthony poured her a glass of juice. “So, I bet you work twice as hard as he does.”
    “Three times.” He passed the glass to her. “But I still find time to read.”
    “I don’t think I’ve seen a book in this house,” she said with a smile, then added, “Thank you,” as she lifted the glass for a drink.
    “Yeah, Viktor doesn’t read much. Now me, on the other hand, I read a lot of stuff.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a manila envelope, dropping it onto the bar with more force than necessary.
    Cassandra swallowed. Was this a blackmail attempt? She’d seen more than one girl at the club go out with the wrong client and end up signing off on “confidentiality agreements” that amounted to little more than veiled legal threats should they ever tell what they knew. “What do you, uh, what do you read?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “All sorts of things. True crime, lately. You should take a look.”
    With shaking hands, Cassie set aside her juice glass and reached for the envelope. Almost before she opened it she knew what would be inside, but she still gasped when the photocopied newspaper stories slid into her hand. The grainy, black-and-white matrix of the photos took her back with sharp clarity to that night. From an entirely different angle, lying on the broken glass strewn on the pavement, she saw the car on its side in the median. Saw them pull Emily’s ragdoll body from the hole they’d cut in the roof, saw them lay her on the grass and cover her with a sheet so the passing cars wouldn’t gawk at her.
    “I was wondering how long you were going to wait until you told Viktor. How many times you were going to let him feed off you again.” Anthony smiled an unfriendly smile. “You know, he’s hanging on by a thread. He might lose his humanity in days. He might go a couple years. I don’t know. But I think that whoever hired you isn’t planning on me killing him when the time comes. Why don’t you get out and go tell your boss that he’s not going to take down Viktor Novotny on my watch.”
    Cassie shook her head, her heart still pounding wildly from the shock in the envelope. “I don’t understand a word you just said.”
    “You expect me to believe that you just showing up with your poisoned blood is a coincidence? When Viktor’s condition has taken a turn for the worse and Minions are swarming the city?” Anthony laughed. “You must think I was born yesterday.”
    “I think you’re really overestimating what I know about your situation here.” Trying to regain her calm, Cassandra pushed the photocopied pages back into the envelope. “Yes, I had an accident in college. But that has nothing to do with Viktor.”
    Anthony said nothing, but regarded her skeptically.
    “Besides, I don’t know what you mean about his condition. He’s a vampire. How does that get worse? He said he could lose his humanity, that he might be