He hung up on her because she was a female who required schooling if one was to capture and hold her attention. Too easygoing? Too charming? She would lose interest, and that couldn’t happen until he had acquired what he needed from her.

His next call was to the Brother Vishous. When the male answered, Assail uttered only three words prior to hanging up once again.

“I am in.”

“Suuuuure, I’ll stay late. No problem. Not like I have anything better to do.”

As Jo Early sat behind her reception desk, the rest of the real estate office was empty, nothing but a lingering mishmash of colognes and the strangely depressing Muzak overhead to keep her company. Well, that and the frickin’ ficus bushes on either side of her.

Those things dropped their leaves like they were on a constant molt-down—and her OCD just wouldn’t let her relax unless the floor was clean. Then again, she didn’t have to do stomach crunches at the gym.

Not that she went to a gym.

Checking her phone, she shook her head. Seven o’clock.

The plan, the “favor,” she was doing for her boss was to stay here until he brought three contracts in with signatures so she could scan them and e-mail them over to the various buyers’ brokers. Why he couldn’t feed the things into the machine himself and do a little PDF’ing was a mystery.

And okay, maybe she was part of the problem, too.

Not that she was proud to admit it.

Looking up over the lip of the desk counter, she focused on the smoky glass doors that opened to the outside. The office was located in an up-market strip mall that had a hair salon where the cuts started at a hundred bucks—and that was just for the men, a boutique that displayed two pieces of barely-there clothing in its window, a glass-and-china shop that sparkled even on gray days, and, at the far end, a jewelry store that the trophy wives of Caldwell seemed to approve of.

Going by the place’s pneumatic clientele.

“Come on, Bryant. Come on . . .”

Although really, where did she have to go. Home to Dougie and the crop circle arguments? Now there was a party.

As a telephone rang back where the offices were, she woke up her computer and stared at Bryant’s calendar. She put his appointments into Outlook when he texted or called to tell her to. Scheduled things like valid real estate meetings, but also the service for his BMW and visits by the pool man for his place over in that new development. Reminded him to call his mother on her birthday, and ordered flowers for the women he dated.

All the while wondering what he would think if he knew who her parents were.

That little secret was what she soothed herself with when he’d come in on a Monday morning and whisper that he’d been out with a divorcée on Friday and a personal trainer on Saturday and then had a brunch with someone else on Sunday.

Her true identity was armor she used to fight against him. In a war he was utterly unaware of them being engaged in.

Closing out his busy life, she stared at the logo on the screen. Bryant’s last name, Drumm, was the second in line—because the firm had been started by his father. When the man had died nearly two years ago, Bryant had stepped into his shoes, as well as his prime office space, in the same way he did everything else—smiling and with charm. And hey, it wasn’t a bad strategy. Say what you would about the guy’s playboy lifestyle, he could move a ton of real estate and look good doing it.

Caldwell, NY’s own Million Dollar Listing star.

“Come on, Bryant . . . where are you?”

After a re-visit of her already-twice tidied desk, she checked the floor under the right ficus, picked up a leaf and tossed it, sat back and . . .

What the hell, she went onto YouTube.

Dougie had posted that stupid footage on his channel—a rocking destination with a grand total of twenty-nine subscribers. Of which, like, four were Dougie himself in different sock puppets and two were spammers with low standards. As she hit the arrow to watch the forty-two-second clip all over again, she turned on the speakers. The sound track was right out of amateur-central, a combination of too-loud rustling as her roommate held the iPhone up and a distant, not-so-quiet roaring.

Okay, so yes, it certainly looked like something Jurassic-ish out in the middle of that field. And yeah, there seemed to be a lot of clutter on the ground, but who knew what all that was. It was only a camera phone capturing the footage, and maybe that was just the way the trampled area looked to its lens.

She played things a couple more times. Then sat back.

There were five comments. Three were from Dougie and their roommates. One was a testimonial from someone who was making $1750 a month at home!!!!$$$!!!!!. The last was . . . just four words that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

vamp9120 shit allova again

Left by someone named ghstrydr11.

Frowning, she went on a hunt-and-peck and found vamp9120’s channel. Wow. Okay, three thousand subscribers, and what looked like a hundred videos. Firing one up, she—

Laughed out loud.

The guy talking at the camera was like a LEGO character of Dracula, with a point in the middle of his forehead and even pointier canines, facial hair that looked like it had been painted on rather than shaved around, and a swear-to-God, that must be Elvis collar on his shirt. The guy’s skin was too white, his hair too black, his red lips right out of a MAC tube. And that voice? It was part evangelist, part neo-Victorian, Bram-Stoker-almost.

“—creatures of the night—”

Wait, wasn’t that a line from somewhere?

“—stalking the streets of Caldwell—”

Like the upstate New York version of The Walking Dead? When in doubt, drag a leg.

“—preying on victims—”

Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, moving on. Scrolling down the line-up, she randomly picked another. And yup, Verily, Barely Vlad was once again face-first in the camera—and this time he had a really good smoky eye going on.

“—are real! Vampires are real—”

Wonder if his pulpit was draped in black vel—okay, wow. That was supposed to be a joke, but as the lens pulled back, it did look like he was leaning on something that was, in fact, covered in black velvet.

Cutting that rant off, she went down to the next video, and told herself after this one, enough was enough. “Oh, hey, Vlad, wassup.”

“—testimonial about a vampire encounter.” Vlad turned to a guy sitting next to him in a plastic folding chair. Which was total ambiance right there. “Julio? Tell my fans about what happened to you two nights ago.”

Talk about mixing it up a little: Julio was the anti-vamp, what with a bandanna Tupac’d on his head, and his Jesus piece, and the tattoos up his throat.

His eyes, though . . . they were bugging and frenzied, all Vlad and then some.

“I was downtown, you know, with my boys, and we was . . .”

The story that came out started off as nothing special, just a gangbanger with his people, shooting up rivals in the alleys. But then things took a turn into Drac-landia, with the guy describing how he ran into an abandoned restaurant—and from there on, things got weird.

Assuming you believed him.

“—guy threw me up on the counter and he was all”—Julio did a hiss-and-claw—“and his teeth was all—”

“Like mine,” Vlad cut in.

“’cept his was real shit.” Okay, Vlad clearly did not appreciate that, but Julio was on a roll. “And he had a fucked-up face, his upper lip was all fucked up. And he was gonna kill me. He had a . . .”

Jo hung in for the rest of the interview, even through the part where Vlad all but pushed Julio out of the way, as if Dracu-wannabe’s sharing threshold had been reached.

Sitting back again, she wondered exactly how far she was going to go with this. And answered that one by heading over to the Caldwell Courier Journal site and doing a search on good ol’ Julio’s name. Huh. What do you know. There was an aritcle written the previous December on gang-related activity in the downtown area—and Julio was front and center in it. Even had a picture of him staring out of the back of a CPD patrol car, his eyes sporting that same stretched-wide thing, his mouth likewise cranked open like he was desperately talking to the photographer.