Jesse stared longingly. “Your clothes,” she admitted. “They look halfway decent.”
Maddox glanced down. Though he’d gotten them in a used-clothing shop, the items were as clean as living with limited facilities would allow. They were a far cry from the ratty things she’d probably scavenged from flood-ravaged houses. Other people, equally as desperate to recover their belongings after the storm, had combed through the remnants first. Anything that was left was hardly worth salvaging, but when you had nothing, anything would do.
Realization finally sank in. It dimly occurred to him the girl had little beyond the clothes on her back. In short, she had nothing. She probably didn’t have two pennies to rub together in her pocket.
Retrieving a pair of socks and work boots, Maddox sat down at the kitchen table. “I suppose you could use a few things,” he allowed, slipping on a sock and stomping his foot into the ankle-hugging lace ups. “But for now you’ll have to make do with what you can find here. I have to get to work.”
Her brows rose. “Work?”
He shot her a look. “Yeah, you know. I sell eight hours of my labor in return for”—he rubbed his thumb against his fingers—“that green stuff that keeps a roof over my head.”
She rolled her eyes. “You live in a ruined hotel,” she reminded him. “The place is rent-free, right? And you’ve already told me you’re stealing water from the city. If you have money, why don’t you live in a proper place?”
Maddox raked his hands through his damp hair. “Supporting my after-hours pursuits takes cash. The less I spend on the finer comforts in life means I can buy the weapons we need off the black market now that the laws are so restricted. Money is also freedom because it keeps the cops’ eyes off you. Getting busted for burglary wouldn’t help our cause.”
His explanation seemed to make sense to her. “Except for the job I had before we were attacked, I haven’t been employed since.”
Maddox grunted and put on his other boot. He suspected she existed on the fringes of society. He wouldn’t be surprised if her meals were cadged from the Dumpsters behind fast-food joints. The key to getting something to eat was getting there before other homeless vultures descended.
“I guess that makes sense,” he allowed. He was amazed she’d managed as one of the infected to keep functioning in a halfway-normal manner. Putting her around people all day would be like locking a fat kid in a candy store.
“What do you do?”
Maddox laced up his work boots. “Construction. Laying brick, drywall, roofing—a little bit of everything.”
“Plenty of work with the reconstruction, I suppose.”
He nodded. “During the day it’s best to go about your business, and that means not attracting any notice. We live our lives and do our jobs and go home like the rest of the people lucky enough to be holding on to what they’ve got. At night . . .” He let his words trail off.
He didn’t have to say more. After sundown, the weapons would come out, and he’d hit the streets in pursuit of darker, scarier beasts.
She mirrored his movement. “I understand.”
He glanced toward a small windup alarm clock perched on the nearby counter. The luminous hands read six thirty. “If you want breakfast, you’d better get moving. Clean up and wear what you can find that might fit. After we get something to eat, you can get yourself some decent clothes.”
The eagerness of a child lit her gaze. “You mean it?” she asked, sliding off the bed. Like every woman, she responded to the enticement of food and shopping. It seemed to be something hardwired into every female on the face of the planet.
Her enthusiasm lent him a spurt of newfound energy. “Yes,” he answered through an unintentional smile. “I think I can manage to put something new on your back.”
For some reason the idea pleased him immensely.
Chapter 5
J
esse slid into a booth at the diner. Maddox took the side that put his back toward the wall and his eyes on the door. Though she doubted he was on the lookout for the undead in broad daylight, she imagined the habit was deeply ingrained. The man obviously didn’t like the idea of people, or vampires, sneaking up on him.
Maddox immediately flipped over one of the coffee cups set on the table. A little brown roach scurried away from its ceramic prison. His hand shot out, smashing the insect. He wiped its remains across the legs of his jeans.
Wincing, Jesse gingerly turned her own coffee cup over. Much to her relief, nothing skittered out. Dubious about its cleanliness, she checked the depths of the cup. It looked clean enough.
She glanced around. The place obviously hadn’t been spared flood damage, nor had it had a lot of repairs since the water had retreated. Peeling wallpaper, torn linoleum, and ripped pleather abounded. Rusting metal blinds hung on the windows, cutting out the glare of the morning sun. Despite its looks, the diner actually had customers.
“Not exactly the cleanest place I’ve ever been in,” she commented. Nonetheless, the aromas drifting from the kitchen were absolutely heavenly. She inhaled the scent of sizzling meat. Oh, was that really bacon?
Maddox shrugged and reached for the breast pocket of his military-style flak jacket. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter appeared. Flicking one out, he lit it. “It’s not the prettiest place in the neighborhood,” he agreed, exhaling a stream of white smoke. “But the food is cheap and plentiful, and it fills your stomach.”
Jesse wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
He shrugged. “What you see is what you get. I make no excuses and give no apologies.” Based on his curt answer, he didn’t seem to want to elaborate.
She waved a hand. “Just don’t blow that shit my way.”
“Might not hurt you to take a few puffs.” He flicked the ashes toward a cracked plastic ashtray. “Might help kill the little fucker inside you.”
She stabbed him with a glare. “That’s nothing to joke about.”
“Just trying to lighten the mood.”
Jesse blew out a breath. Right now she’d feel better if she had a decent meal. Her stomach was an empty mess, the rumble constant and insistent.
But she didn’t complain. Right now she was simply grateful to be with someone who treated her like a human being. For the first time in ages she felt halfway normal. She thought she looked okay, too.
She glanced down at the long sleeves covering her arms. Digging through Maddox’s trunks after a much-needed shower, she’d managed to find a few things to wear. One was a work shirt with a black, blue, and white checkered pattern. She’d paired it with a simple white men’s T-shirt. His jeans were far too big to attempt to wear, so she’d settled on a pair of black track pants with a drawstring waist. The sweats were a little baggy and long, so she’d rolled them up at the cuff.
The ensemble was hardly fashionable, but it was better than what she had. There wasn’t much she could do with her mop of stringy hair except scrape it back in a ponytail. Maddox didn’t have a rubber band, so she’d used a piece of string.
Maddox signaled to catch the eye of the woman waiting tables. Coffeepot in hand, a heavyset black woman with a frizzy Afro lumbered over. “Mornin’, you handsome French thang,” she greeted, filling the cups with a tarry black brew.
Maddox inhaled a lungful of smoke. “Good morning, Sassy,” he greeted, giving the waitress a smile. “You look busy.”
“Folks got a long day ahead, and wanna eat good before they head out.” She wrinkled her nose at Jesse. “Where’d you pick up this skinny little gal? She ain’t got an ounce of meat on them bones.”
Maddox exhaled. “Just one of the many who pass through.” Past that he gave no explanation.
Sassy arched one well-plucked brow. “There ain’t enough of her there to satisfy a man like you.” She cocked an ample hip and gave it a pat. “Now here’s a fine piece a man can grab on to an’ ride.”
Maddox gave the large woman another indulgent smile. “I’ll think about it,” he said with a laugh. “But you’re just too much damn woman for me to handle.”
The black woman rolled her eyes. “And here I’ve heard Frenchmen are the world’s greatest lovers.” She released a mock sigh. “Guess I’ll never know.”
“Ah, but we are.” He cocked his head toward the fry cook working in the nearby kitchen. “But I don’t need your husband coming over here and kicking my ass for messing with his woman.”
Sassy laughed and winked. “Oh, I’d never tell him, honey,” she said, and cackled.
Tired of the banter, Jesse cleared her throat for attention. “Would it be okay to get something to eat?”
“Anything you want, skinny Minnie.”
“Could I see a menu?”
Sassy shook her head. “Haven’t had menus here since Katrina. The water ruined ’em all, and we haven’t replaced ’em yet.” Her eyes traveled toward the patchwork ceiling. “Right now we’re working on keeping a roof over our heads.”
Maddox broke in. “Just bring us a little bit of everything.”
Sassy winked again. “Sure thang, honey. I’ll get Louis to pile on the works.” Sauntering toward the counter, she yelled the order through the opening to the kitchen.
Jesse winced as an order for “the works” filled the diner. “Subtle, isn’t she?” she remarked drily.
Snuffing out his cigarette, Maddox reached for the sugar. “Louis is almost deaf,” he explained, tearing open two packets to sweeten the brew.
Coffee wasn’t her favorite beverage, but since a cup had been poured for her, she couldn’t see wasting it. The smell was strong enough to curl nose hair. Like Maddox, she added plenty of sugar, along with a few packets of artificial creamer.
When it looked less like tar and more like something she could actually lift to her lips, Jesse took a sip. The hot, sweet brew slid over her tongue, a little bitter but not too terribly bad. She surprised herself by downing the entire cup in a single gulp.
Maddox smirked over the rim of his own cup. “Were you thirsty?”
“Yeah. I guess so. And starving, really starving.”
He inclined his head. “When’s the last time you had a decent meal?”
Jesse pressed her lips together. Now who the hell wanted to admit the last solid eats she’d enjoyed had been behind bars?
Her initial instinct was to lie. But the one thing Maddox had insisted on between them was the truth. And, really, she had no reason to lie. After all, it was her pursuit of vampires that had landed her in hot water.
She toyed with the empty cup. “About a month ago,” she admitted. “I was in jail.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “Now that’s something I wouldn’t have guessed. What were you busted for? Shoplifting?”
Jesse shuddered, took a deep breath, and clasped her arms across her chest. “Maybe you don’t know it, but two months ago in Gretna a man was found wandering and incoherent on the side of the highway,” she explained. “He died a day later, I think; another so-called victim of the plague. I read about him in the paper and got to thinking what if the things that took me and Amanda had taken him.”
“So you went to check things out?”
“Right. He wasn’t buried, so I thought it would be pretty easy to break into the mausoleum.”
Thinking about the chilling horror of the entire endeavor made her shiver again, but she couldn’t put it out of her mind, no matter how hard she tried.
She recounted that night to him. On the surface, the cemetery had looked peaceful; a benevolent resting place snuggled within verdant overgrowth. At the entrance, she’d paused beside a looming statue of an angel holding aloft a sword, his stone eyes looking balefully at the sky.
The cold, chiseled features had unnerved her. In the moonlight, she could almost swear she could see a pulse throbbing at the temples. She had expected the great stone head to turn and look down at her, glowing wrathful red eyes challenging her right to trespass beyond the iron gates.
A young man’s body had lain within the icy, dark bosom of the mausoleum’s walls. She couldn’t help but wonder if he had at long last come to know peace, or if he had been silently lamenting having lived such a short time before dying a gruesome death.
Maddox’s dark penetrating gaze focused on her like a laser. “Would that have been your first attempt at slaying?”
Jesse bit her bottom lip and glanced around the busy diner. No one was paying attention to them. Everything around her looked normal and felt normal. But nothing was normal—not by a long shot. Most of the people sitting around her had no idea demons walked among them, or that the beast inside her prodded constantly to be fed the warm rich blood pulsing beneath their veins.
It would be so easy to take any one of them
, came a darker thought not entirely her own.
She immediately clamped her jaw, stamping out the wicked notion. No, always no. She’d keep beating the beast back into its cage. She was the one in control. The body it inhabited was hers, damn it. She intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I got caught trying to get into the crypt.”
“Ah. Can’t say I heard about it. Gretna isn’t my territory.”
She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Yeah, well, anyway, a sheriff’s deputy saw me climbing over the gate and followed me.” She shook her head. The story wasn’t a pleasant one, and she cut it as short and sweet as possible. “I lied like a dog and said I was stealing stuff off the dead. You know, to pawn for cash. The judge sentenced me to thirty days for grave robbing.”
Maddox exhaled slowly. “So how’d you explain that stake you were packing?”
“I said it was for protection. They believed me.”
He drew in another deep breath and let it out slowly. “Did anyone notice you were, ah, a little bit different?”
Jesse lifted an arm and tugged up her sleeve. The milky white tendrils circled around the veins beneath her skin. Her flesh was already pale, almost unnaturally so. No one would notice unless they examined her closely and knew what to look for.