Chris Marie Green by Vampire Babylon 05

Author:Vampire Babylon 05 [05, Vampire Babylon]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-28T19:03:07.663000+00:00

FIFTEEN

DRINK TIME WITH EVA, II

EVA folded shut the mobile she’d used to call Dawn and handed it back to the barman who was wiping glasses behind the mahogany counter.

“Thank you,” she said.

As he accepted the phone, he smiled, teeth white and a little crooked, but still, a charming gesture. “How’re you getting on then?”

“I told my daughter to pick me up when she could.”

“So she’s on her way?”

Eva nodded, settling into the corner of the bar among a pile of daily newspapers and tabloids, where people couldn’t easily see that she was barefoot, having lost her pumps back at the Limpet team’s headquarters. She wouldn’t have been able to run in them, anyway, but the dirt and a few small cuts on her feet didn’t sell that point very well. She also didn’t care to show off her wounded hand, which was covered with the bandages the barman had given her after he’d seen the blood on her palm.

He worked a cork out of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and splashed some of the wine into a glass he’d been shining. Then he slid it over to her.

“Don’t you worry yourself about anything, not even this,” he said.

She could see it on his face: he knew she’d had a wildly rough night and was only being kind to her.

Maybe his first clue had been when she’d opened the wine bar’s door, trying to look as dignified as possible, even in bare feet and hiding her hand behind her, as she’d entered. She’d only come inside because she’d realized that there wasn’t a Friend with her, and her survival instincts had told her to be around people, where danger was less likely.

The barman had greeted her, probably judging her well-tailored clothing against the rest of her. And after she’d bandaged up, then asked to use his phone for an urgent call—she’d lost her cell, she’d explained—he’d handed his very own mobile right over.

He’d probably thought she’d been attacked, and he wanted to play the good guy. When he’d seen that she didn’t require a call to any officials, Eva could also tell that he thought she was attractive, even with all the signs of age on her skin. Thanks to the reconstructive surgery she’d had after being turned back into a human, the barman wouldn’t be able to see that she was the Eva Claremont, or even Jacqueline Ashley—the name Eva had used during her cosmetically and vampirically altered comeback.

Yet that didn’t seem to matter, because he had still smiled at her, seemed ... interested ... in her.

But Eva had pushed all of that aside in favor of calling Dawn, and she’d felt bad for making her daughter run around outside of headquarters and for even causing a second of worry. Though at least someone had missed her, Eva had thought. Someone had cared enough to look for her.

Now she picked up the wine and wryly toasted the barman, who winked back.

To Dawn, she thought.

Then she paused and added, To what I did to Frank.

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