Bloodfever

I’d just completed my first day on the new job.

Up until now, bartending had been my only marketable skill but today I’d broadened my employment horizons and could now add store clerk to my résumé. An opportunity had presented itself to make money, and I wasn’t about to let it pass me by. Barrons had offered me the job last night—unless you want to start running the cash register, Ms. Lane, he’d said.

After only one day, I could see the job was far more complex than merely ringing up the occasional purchase. There was stocking to worry about, special ordering to be done, bookkeeping to stay on top of, and spending time with patrons, helping them find things they didn’t know they wanted. The store carried some cool stuff but there were things that definitely needed changing. Some of the magazines had to go; I wasn’t about to waste my precious time chasing teenage boys away from the Male Interest racks. The Female Interest racks were seriously lacking; I planned to add more high-end fashion magazines along with some eye candy, and the store definitely needed a more festive selection of writing implements. The hot pink Sharpie was mine. BB&B offered only your basic pens plus a few prissy-looking calligraphy sets, the kind that make it take forever to write a single letter. Barrons obviously didn’t understand that shorthand—LMAO, IMHO, GFY—was the new longhand, and in a world where everything was high-speed and wireless, nobody wanted dial-up anymore.

My reasons for accepting the job were twofold: I was eventually going to run out of money, sooner rather than later; and if the Garda pushed their investigation, I could cite my job as the reason for my continued stay in Dublin. I was training to learn to run my own bookstore back in the States, I would tell them.

Fiona’s recently extended hours were absurd; there was no way I was working an eleven-hour day. Since I was in charge now, I’d made my first executive decision and chosen new hours of operation, opening late enough that I could either sleep in in the mornings or use them to take care of personal business. As far as State of the World business was concerned, I’d decided it wasn’t my problem.

Vengeance for my sister—and only blood relative, as far as I knew, but those were murky waters I wouldn’t swim in any more than I’d call home right now—was my first and only priority. Well, that and staying alive.

I’d had twenty-seven customers today, not counting the boys I’d run off, and I’d made good use of my time in between to begin putting the pictures I’d found at the Lord Master’s, the ones of Alina in and around Dublin, into the new diary I’d purloined from the collection of hand-tooled leather journals sold at BB&B.

Alina.

God, why? I wanted to shout at the ceiling. Why her? There were millions of creeps in dozens of countries across the world—why hadn’t he taken one of them? Now that I knew I was adopted, I resented God doubly. Other people had lots of relatives. I’d only had one.

Would I ever stop hurting? Would I ever stop missing her? Would I ever live another day without this gouged-out place in my soul that I was desperate to fill with something, anything? Unfortunately, it was an Alina-shaped hole and nothing else would fit it.

But…maybe vengeance would soften the edges of it. Maybe killing the bastard who had killed her would make them less sharp, less jagged, and I could stop cutting myself on them.

Pasting the pictures of Alina into my journal had made the grief of losing her feel fresh all over again. With everything that had been happening to me lately, I’d actually woken up a time or two in the morning without the instant, crushing thought: Alina’s dead; how am I supposed to get through the day? top on the list in my brain. I’d thought things like I robbed a mobster yesterday and now he’s going to kill me. Or vampires are real, whodathunk? Or I’m afraid Barrons was my sister’s boyfriend. Things like that. A week ago, I’d laid that last one to rest, much to my relief.

Now that weirdness in my life was the norm, grief and rage had resurfaced with a vengeance, on a level I couldn’t deal with.

Inside me was a Mac I’d never met before. I couldn’t dress her up. I couldn’t make her take a bath. She wouldn’t mix in pleasant society. I couldn’t corral a single one of her thoughts. My only hope was she wouldn’t suddenly sprout a mouth.

She was a bloodthirsty, primitive little savage.

And she hated pink.

I dug in my heels. “No way. I’m not going in there. I draw the line at grave-robbing, Barrons.”

“It’s not your pen.”

“Huh? Whose is it?” What pen? I’d thought we were talking about crumbling gravestones, hallowed ground, and theft that was a crime against the tenets of church and man. We’d finished our discussion about pens on the way over, along with my plans for ordering new, cooler ones. He’d listened to me prattle in what I suspect was bemused silence. I get the feeling few women chat Barrons up.