The Games of Enemies and Allies （Magic on Main Street, #2; Magiford Supernatural City #14）
K. M. Shea
CHAPTER
ONE
Jade
“By the scenery in this café, am I to assume you have aspirations to become what the humans refer to as a cat lady in your dotage?” Connor’s rich voice floated over the top of a bookcase.
I looked up from the cat I was petting—a beautiful, pristine white feline who was stretched out on a plush bed arranged in a nook of the second to lowest shelf on the bookcase—and stood up. “I like the cats, but don’t forget we’re here for you. You said you had to have a blood pack, and this was the nearest location that sold them. You got one?”
Connor was so tall even his shoulders were visible over the bookshelves, so he kept eye contact with me—his vampire-red eyes were hypnotic in the low light of the café/bookstore that was Cat Tails—as he strolled around it. When he was on my side of the case, he held up the snack-sized pouch of blood he’d purchased. “Consider me satiated.”
Instead of using the straw that was stuck to the blood pouch, Connor pierced the package with a fang tooth. Then he folded the pouch over to the spot he’d pierced and sucked it out with more finesse than was fair considering that I would have spilled my drink everywhere if I’d tried something similar.
“Did you want anything?” Connor looked back at the small counter.
“Nah, I still have my smoothie.” I held up the travel mug that contained today’s green sludge-like smoothie. The flavor was peach-carrot. （I was not the best cook. Or any kind of cook. But I had mastered the art of making smoothies for survival.）
Connor made a gagging noise. “That dreck hardly counts as edible.”
I took another swig—it was a little gritty since my blender had failed to pulverize all the shredded carrots. “It doesn’t taste so bad. I added honey today, so I can’t even taste the spinach.”
“Oh yeah, that’s really selling it.” Connor managed to look ridiculously handsome even while scoffing—a vampire trait. Being good looking, I mean, not scoffing. “Do you want anything that is actually pleasant to consume?”
I glanced at the chalkboard menu, considering the offer.
Cat Tails only sold the basics—coffee, lots of tea for fae, and water, with a few bakery items, salads, and sandwiches. The food was good, and it was the closest supernatural-focused eating place to the Curia Cloisters, so it was popular with wizards—and more recently, fae.
It was more bookstore than café, but I still loved it for the papery smell of new books, the maze-like arrangement of stuffed bookshelves and cat towers/beds, the dramatic gold and green striped wallpaper, and—admittedly—the cats.
“I’m good,” I said. “I’m going to wait here. I got a text while you were ordering. Sunshine—a friend from work—is going to stop by and walk with me to the Cloisters for work.”
Connor placed a hand over his heart and staggered backwards in dramatized shock. “You actually have work friends?”
I nodded. “Miracles do happen. Sunshine has the patience of a saint. She was willing to listen as I stammered my way through our first few conversations together until I got to know her. It’s tough work for both parties, but I can make friends.”
“I was aware of that.” Connor sucked down the last of the blood in his snack pack, then crumpled the packaging in one hand. “You have me after all. In all possible ways.”
I cocked my head and squinted, trying to make sense of him. “I assume that’s your vampire need for mystery that’s making you talk oddly?”
“It’s true,” Connor said. “As time passes, we vampires don’t age. Instead, we grow insipid or raving mad.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his navy-blue trench coat.
With his black dress pants and white undershirt, his perpetual five-o-clock shadow, and his olive-toned skin, he looked more like somebody who would get scouted by a street photographer than a vampire.
Vampires usually favored fashion from past eras, spanning everything from petticoat breeches a la Europe in the 1600s to the wide-legged pants and the red colored handkerchief of historic gauchos in Argentina. （You could tell a lot about a vamp based on the kind of clothes they favored, which was why I’d spent multiple years learning historical fashion from my family as part of my slayer training.）
It was Connor’s clothing choices and his relatively modern way of speaking that marked him as a newer vampire—which was surprising, considering he lived in my human-owned apartment building, and young vampires were rarely allowed outside their Families since it was so hard to turn humans and create new vampires these days.