Fortunately, that crap didn’t last long—and as Butch came over to V and started coordinating where they were all going to meet up, that homicide detective de la Cruz got in his unmarked and drove the fuck away.
“I’ll ride with you,” V said. “As backup. Let’s go.”
“Good deal,” his roommate agreed.
And justlikethat, everything was back as it should be.
Almost.
As V got into the Escalade’s passenger side, even though the SUV was technically his ride, he glanced across the console and couldn’t help himself.
“You gotta quit it with the interactions. Going in and out of his memories like that, scrubbing him so many times, it’s no good.”
Butch stared through the front windshield for a moment. Then he started the engine. “Yeah, I know. But he’s retiring. So no more running into him around town anymore.”
Wow, this was not another sort of relief, V told himself.
But damn, his roommate looked so fucking sad.
“You had to pick,” V said. “One side or the other—and you did.”
“I don’t want to go back to my old life.” Butch shook his head. “I had nothing then. I have everything now. When I see José? It reminds me of the way I was and I hate how I left him, just disappearing. That poor bastard saw me at my worst, and stuck by me, and what did I do? Not even a goodbye, an explanation . . . a reassurance. Makes me feel like a shitty friend.”
“You’re not that.”
Butch shrugged and put them in gear. “I was to José. I was the worst friend to him, and all he ever did was take care of my sorry ass and treat me with respect. Makes a male feel pretty goddamn small.”
V frowned and stared out the window as they proceeded down the street. “You could never be small. You have the biggest heart I know, and you’re a male of worth. Always have been.”
“You’re biased.”
“I cannot be biased. I am too logical for that.”
Just like he was waaaaaaaay too logical to be jealous of a human. Who wasn’t even in his roommate’s life anymore.
“I wish I could make it up to José somehow. I hate to leave him hanging, and yet he can’t have any memory of me in the present.”
“You gotta leave it, cop. There are some things that just have to be left, true?”
Next to him, Butch nodded.
And then neither of them said anything else.
When Lucan left the accident（s） in the intersection, he didn’t immediately know where to go. But while he was in a state of molecular scatter, his mind connected two dots, and he rerouted to a block of mostly abandoned walk-ups. As he re-formed across the street from the one he intended to go into, it was a case of surprise!
Like a couple of bad pennies stuck to his shoe, he found the blond-and the black-haired vampires in their matching leather zoot suits, hanging out in front of the battered entry of the five-story fall-down Lucan intended to enter.
Looked like it was a goddamn vampire convention—and he had a thought that if the goateed one was trying to find Rio, too, then this was a good place to be. Lucan had been here one time before, when he’d dropped off the samples of product for Mozart’s people to try as well as the baggies to send out into the streets. It seemed a good bet that Rio could be here, also—or, if he could find a human with knowledge of her, he could break into their brain and get some clues.
Except there was trouble in his not-really-paradise. Those fellow members of Caldwell’s paranormal underbelly didn’t seem in a big hurry to get a move on. There was even a third member of the species in the center of the road, talking to a human.
Great.
While Lucan impatiently waited for whatever business was going on to conclude, he checked out the abandoned apartments. All of the levels were dark—no, that wasn’t right. In addition to what appeared to be a light in the lobby, there was a subtle glow in the windows on the fourth floor on the left, like a heavy sheet or maybe even a proper drape had been pulled into place over all the dirty glass.
“Jesus, will you get on with it,” he muttered as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned up against a spray-painted set of stairs.
After about twelve hundred years, the vampire and human combo in the street hugged each other; then an unremarkable car took off, a hulking black SUV drove away, and the blond vampire walked into the shadows and dematerialized.
Lucan gave things another minute or so, in case anybody forgot their wallet or their proverbial house keys, and then he limped forward and crossed the road. As he went along, his boot was even soggier, but he was operating under the truism that that which was not acknowledged did not exist. So no, he was not bleeding down his pant leg and into his fucking footwear. He’d stepped in a puddle, on this dry night, with his waterproof boot.