Free Trust Me When the Sun Goes Down by Lisa Olsen

my mind as his face lit up the screen on my cell. 
    “I hate to bother you, boss,” he started to say, and I was quick to set his mind at ease. 
    “No, it’s good.  You saved me the trouble of calling you first.”
    “That don’t sound too good.  What’s up?”
    I tried to ignore the slight that he associated my calls with bad news, particularly since it happened to be true in this instance.  I quickly filled him in on the gist of the news report I’d seen, gratified to see he took it as seriously as I did. 
    “You’re right, that is something to worry about.  You want me to make arrangements to send up another team of cleaners to help keep things under wraps?”
    Our own team of cleaners was nothing if not efficient, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once.  More importantly, they shouldn’t have to in the first place.  “No, that would only address the symptom and not the problem.” 
    “I ain’t too sure of that.  The biggest problem I see is drawing too much public attention.  I can call Cordelia from the council and have her pull some strings to bury those news stories to start with.”
    “No, you’re missing the bigger picture here.  I don’t want to bury this story, I want to address the root of the problem.  The local vamps are getting way too comfortable with killing humans.  I’m thinking maybe I should call everyone together for a local gathering and talk to them about it.”
    There was no mistaking the skepticism in his voice.  “What would you say to them?  There ain’t no law about killing humans.”
    “Well, maybe there should be.”
    “I dunno, boss.  There’s very few laws accepted in vampire society and for the most part, we like it that way.  You start making extra hoops for people to jump through and they’re just gonna move to another place.” 
    “That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me if all the most violent people move away.  Shiny, I’ll help them pack.”  Let Jennike deal with them all.
    Felix let out a long breath.  “What does Jakob think of all of this?  I gotta think he’d be against setting any laws like that.  But hey, if he’s behind you on this, then that’s a horse of another color.  All he has to do is proclaim it publically and you got yourself a new law.”
    “Oh right, about Jakob…” 

Chapter Seven
     
    I realized I hadn’t told Felix about Jakob’s agreement to leave me and the West alone when I’d updated him on Lodinn’s demise.  “Ah, the thing is, we both agreed it’s in both our best interests if he moved on.”
    “Moved on how?” 
    “As in he’s not here any more, I think he’s in New York now.”
    “When’s he coming back?”
    “Never, hopefully.  I’m sure we’ll all hear from him when he’s ready to settle down and you can plan a pilgrimage to go see him if you miss his company.  But as you can see, we don’t need his blessing to make this thing a new law.”
    The line went quiet for a few seconds, and when Felix spoke again, he sounded shell shocked.  “I gotta say, I’m sorry to hear that, boss.  I was looking forward to his ideas on how to make the West great again, and I know the council was too.”
    I hadn’t anticipated that, but I could see I should’ve, given their positive reaction to Jakob’s speech at my inauguration.  “Trust me, any ideas Jakob had about our territory are more about his glory than ours.  He was more likely to take us back to the stone age, not into the future.”
    “Yeah, but most of us were looking forward to working with a real live Ellri ,” he added, a touch of wistfulness creeping into his voice.
    “There is no working with an Ellri , there’s only working for one.  He would’ve made us all slaves in our own lands, mark my words.  The only welfare Jakob is interested in is his own.”
    “Still, the council ain’t gonna like hearing he’s gone, out of the blue like this.”
    His objections started to grate on my nerves, as well as