Ready Or Not

Teo Iliescu & Lydia Barrach Are Dead

**Theo**

I hadn’t anticipated spending the latter half of the afternoon and well into the evening sitting around Vampire Vice in my fiance’s pajamas. But what I really should have expected was being separated from Lydia as quickly as possible, and then sitting through a rather in depth interrogation regarding one Olivia West.

Twenty-four years old. Just finished putting herself through school. Good kid, even if she hung around bars too much. Hard-core vamp camp. Dead.

Seen with my best friend and I the night she died. Found drained in the alley behind Be+ just after said best friend went home to check on our nestmate. That Olivia West. To be honest, I’d heard her name the night it happened, and then just sort of forgotten it. I didn’t feel bad about it; what use was knowing who she was? She wasn’t likely to affect the affairs of me and mine- I’d thought.

Daniel representing both Lydia and myself, and us being kept apart from one another meant a lot of waiting. A lot of time to get bored, and frustrated, and angry. Were they going to arrest me? Because if they were, I wanted them to get it over with. I started contemplating just walking out. Who was going to stop me?

Well- probably that vampire cop. Maybe I should try it, just to see what he would do. He was interesting. From the look of him, he’d been turned when he was in his forties or so. Hispanic descent, I’d guess, with a wicked scar along his jaw. And no scent. God dammit, how did that work? If I could figure that out, actually...teach my family...we could just walk away from all this and not even their vampire bloodhounds could find us.

But of course, we couldn’t, could we? Not if Lydia wanted to fix things with Hannah. Not if Anna was ever going to go back to being her old serial-dater self. Not if I wanted to marry Daniel. And I really wanted to marry Daniel.

I kicked the table I sat at in frustration. It skidded across the floor and slammed into a wall. They hadn't bothered bolting it down. What would have been the point? The two officers they’d left in the room with me looked unimpressed. Dammit. If I wasn’t gonna get locked up, and I wasn’t even going to get a rise out of my babysitters, I wanted out.

“How much longer do you think they’re gonna grill my girl, fellas?”

No answer. I pushed on.

“See, the thing is, that tall, handsome lawyer in there with her? I’ve got plans for him tonight, and I’m not a patient man. They need to hurry it up so he can get me out of his pants.” I pulled at the fabric of the red flannel covering my legs. And most of my feet.

One cop rolled his eyes.

I sighed. These guys were no fun. I passed the rest of what felt like an eternity in sulky silence, and finally, the door opened. Scar nodded at me.

“You’re free to go.”

“And Lydia?” I asked, trying to see past him into the hall.

“Her too. For now. Much as I don’t like it.”

We had a good lawyer. I chuckled a little to myself as I started out of the room. Scar moved aside to let me past, and I glanced at his name tag out of curiosity (Delgado, if you're wondering) and made a show of sniffing the air in front of him. At that moment, Daniel arrived from some room down the hall.

He smirked. I was starting to rub off on him. Just a little. Ordinarily he’d be all kinds of stuffy and uptight in a situation like this, but he smirked. “I gotta ask, Officer,” he said curiously. “How do you mask your scent like that? We came across another who could do it, and we never got to ask.”