Asylum

Chapter 8: A Bloodbath

"I didn't think I was going to see you tonight," I said after Ivan had silenced the purr of the Ducati's motor.

"You didn't get my text, then," Ivan confirmed. He tucked my helmet under one arm and grasped my cold-numbed fingers in his other hand and led me through the small ground-floor parking garage to the loft building's elevator. "I sent it pretty late, so I figured I'd just come get you."

"I'm glad you did," I confessed as the back doors to the elevator slid open.

Part of me knew I should probably be a little more circumspect about my rapidly escalating feelings for Ivan; any single girls' self-help guide would tell me that showing too much interest this early on was a sure-fire way to scare a man off. But given just how much I was concealing from him already, I couldn't bring myself to dissemble about this. At least this part of our relationship could be honest.

"Я тоже (Me, too)." He turned his key in the control panel and, turning to me with the look of an absurdly pleased predator, pressed me into the corner of the elevator.

"Another new look," he commented as he perused my face at a very close range. "It reminds me a bit of a younger version of ... what's her name ... Tilda something."

I froze and felt my heart flutter in the throat that Ivan was now lightly kissing. Please, no. My grandmother was occasionally in the paper; I knew that Ivan read the Times front to back, but surely he was not noticing the Hellström family resemblance ...

"Swinton," he said suddenly, grinning triumphantly into my face.

Of course. I smiled back. "Yes. From Only Lovers Left Alive."

"So it's vampires?"

"Correct."

"I only got that from your earlier bat clue; I don't know how anyone at the club would have put that together."

"Well, the get-up was assembled with you in mind; it didn't really matter that no one else knew what I was," I admitted.

The doors opened, and we headed toward Ivan's apartment, fingers still gloved but nevertheless entwined. "Then how would they know to order the signature drink tonight? What was it? Some Bloody Mary variant?"

I stopped in my tracks, stunned. "You know about those?"

"Of course." He seemed amused at my surprise. "It's my club, after all, and anything Stefano knows, I know."

"Frankly, I'm surprised that you and Stefano ... talk," I admitted.

"It's his job to talk to me about what's going on at Asylum," Ivan reminded me as he unlocked the apartment door. "Besides, apparently a couple of the other bartenders have voiced some complaints."

"Complaints?" I repeated. Now I really was surprised. "About signature drinks?"

"About more customers than usual heading for the far end of the bar before the front end is packed," he explained. "And about being asked for drinks they don't know how to make."

The door closed behind me, and I unthinkingly dropped my coat and backpack to the floor. Ivan scooped up the discarded garment and opened the door to the small coat closet.

"What did Stefano say?"

He closed the closet door and retrieved my backpack from the floor. "He's smart enough to know that anything that generates interest is good for business. He told them that if they were concerned about customer distribution along the bar, that they could come up with some gimmick to attract attention back to the front, or if they preferred, he could move you closer to the door to restore a more traditional traffic flow."

I couldn't imagine Stefano using exactly those words, but I got the basic gist of the conversation. "Ouch," I muttered. "I had though the cold shoulders were because everyone felt loyal to Malcolm, but I guess it was all just me."

His half-smile was gently mocking. "It's lonely being a star, huh?" he teased as he dropped my pack on the kitchen island.

I blushed. "I didn't mean it like that, I just ... I don't like pissing people off – at least, not inadvertently."

"You like pissing them off intentionally?"

I plonked down onto a high stool on the opposite side of the island. "Some people deserve it," I remarked darkly.

I frowned. The other bartenders being angry at me bothered me more than I wanted it to. This wasn't my real job, and these people weren't going to be be real friends, I reminded myself; it was all just a little too ... familiar ... like high school, and college, and even law school and the police academy. Between my looks and my family name and my ease with all things academic, I had always been one of those people that others resented. Or tried to take advantage of. I wasn't really sure which was worse.

Only while I was traveling in Europe after college, after my parents' murder, had I been anonymous, and it had been a revelation. I suspect the experience – being someone else, someone who could be normal and have friends – was what drew me to undercover work. And I had thought that my Lex cover was solid and fitting in with the other inhabitants of her fake life.

Apparently I was mistaken, I reflected ruefully. Now, fun/casual Lex was apparently starting to show some cracks, and annoying-overachiever Lärke was seeping through. That would not do. I was musing on how to best go about plastering over those cracks when I realized Ivan was watching me.

My eyes widened slightly, and he smiled.

"Sorry about that, I was just ..."

"Thinking," he finished. "Yes, I could see that. Don't apologize; I rarely get to watch someone take a little mental trip."

"No?" I asked absently. And just where should I say I'd gone on this mental trip, I wondered nervously.

Ivan shrugged. "Most of my interactions with people have a certain ... immediacy, I suppose; not exactly conducive to minds wandering off."

Good point, I thought ruefully. If anyone's day-to-day relationships were as superficial as mine, that person was probably Ivan – he was unquestionably a man of secrets. Glory was right: We made quite a pair. "Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."

He took my hands between his, cupping them and stroking my palms lightly with his thumbs. "I didn't mind. Though you never did answer my question."

I wracked my brain. Did he ask me something while I'd been moping down Memory Lane and I hadn't even heard him? My face settled into an apologetic query.

Ivan squeezed my hands together between his strong fingers. "What was tonight's signature drink?"

Oh, that. "A Bloodbath."

His eyebrows twitched in amusement. "Make us a couple."