Chapter 4 – Nothing to Grip

Laz

The guy in the Patagonia vest has been pitching me his app for six minutes. It’s Uber, but for blood donors. He’s said “disrupt” four times.

“Go back to your friends,” I tell him, and I lean on it a little. “Tell them it went great.”

His face goes soft and happy. He thanks me like I just bought his company, and he wanders back across The Vein to tell a table of other tie-wearing dicks how great it went.

I may be partial to wearing suits myself, but mine are hand-tailored works of art, not a banal attempt to fit in with my buddies.

The thing that has him looking so satisfied is the Pull. I want something, I lean into it with purpose, and a human is powerless to resist. He’s the third one tonight, and every time I do it, I feel a little worse about myself, then I do it again when someone starts annoying me.

“You can’t keep doing that,” Rory says, with his mouth full of fries.

“He had a PowerPoint presentation on his phone.”

“He’s a person, Laz.”

“He’s a person with a pitch I’m not interested in.”

Rory’s back on two legs, which took most of the day, and he’s wearing a sweater with a cartoon frog on it, like he’s about to teach kindergartners about recycling. I’ve done my best to be a positive fashion influence on my best friend, but he’s a hopeless case.

He gave security his statement at four. He’s barely said ten words all evening. Sirens wreck him for days, so I’m letting him eat in peace.

This booth’s been ours since the Reveal. Top of the stairs, red velvet, the family crest stitched into the back where nobody’s supposed to lean. The chair at the end stays empty, because it’s Per’s, and the staff know better.

I check my phone. where are you is still sitting there from last night. Delivered. Not read.

“He’s on Sugar,” I say.

It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. It sounds worse than it does in my head.

Rory puts his fry down. “Yeah. I know.”

“Since spring at least. And that kid behind our house reeked of it, which means somebody’s dealing right here, on our campus, maybe to people who live with us. I’m going to find whoever’s supplying my brother. After that, they’ll never sell to anybody again.”

Rory’s knee starts bouncing under the table. “Okay but hear me out. What if you let the police-”

“The police take my father’s calls. It would simply be a roundabout way to obtain the same end result.”

He doesn’t argue. He’s been to Thanksgiving at our house.

This morning the dean emailed to welcome me to the conduct board. I never applied. That’s what Handle it meant. Their first order of business is reviewing that party, so my father put a Kron at the table, and he expects me to keep the family name out of the minutes.

I’m going to use every question they let me ask.

Down at the bar, the vampires all lift their heads at once, like somebody rang a dinner bell. A warlock just walked into The Vein.

He tends bar at Fang & Sons, on the worst block of the Strip. I know that because I keep tabs on anyone who could hurt this house. That’s the only reason.

Hallowell comes up the stairs in yesterday’s jacket. He smells like panther and burnt coffee, which means he slept at Kat Moreno’s, and I hate that I care where he spent the night.

He stops at our table and flicks Fisk’s card at me. It misses and lands in Rory’s fries.

“Sorry,” he tells Rory, and he really means it. He looks at me. “You heard what I told your lawyer.”

I did. Every word, from the porch, including what Fisk said about his mother. I stayed away.

A Kron walking over to a Hallowell in public, when a whole lot of phones are already pointed in that direction, is exactly the kind of clip my father’s legal team exists to kill.

“He’s not my lawyer.”

“I don’t care whose he is. You want me quiet?” He spreads his arms. “So here I am. Ask me yourself.”

Fine. If he wants to be asked, I’ll ask him, before anybody up here starts taking an interest.

“Sit down,” I tell him, and I lean on it hard. “And lower your voice.”

The waitress coming up the stairs behind him sits down. Right there on the top step, with her tray in her lap. The guy in the next booth was already sitting, so he just sort of slides down the velvet.

Hallowell doesn’t move.

He rubs his ear, like a bug flew into it. His eyes go wide, and he laughs, one ugly bark. “Did you just Pull me? Seriously?”

I push harder, giving it everything I’ve got. Warlocks feel it as a tug. They fight it, they break a sweat, and sometimes they win. Hallowell isn’t even trying. He’s just standing there, getting angrier, like I tried to pay him in Monopoly money.

That has never happened. Not to me, and not to anybody I’ve ever heard of. I’ve been doing this since I was nine, when I Pulled my nanny into letting me stay up for Buffy reruns. It’s never once just... not worked.

“Fuck,” I say.

Behind him, the waitress gets up off the step, looks at her tray like it betrayed her, and goes back down.

“My turn,” Hallowell says.

He lifts his left hand and hooks his fingers at me, like he’s grabbing my collar from three feet away. I know what that’s supposed to do. I’ve seen a warlock drag a grown man across a parking lot like that.

I wait to get dragged.

The hair on the back of my neck lifts, like somebody opened a door at the far end of the room. Behind me, the velvet curtain puffs out. That’s all. My collar stays exactly where it is.

He tries again, so hard his knuckles go white. This time the whole thing flaps like there’s a hurricane in the wall. I don’t feel anything at all.

He stares at his own hand. “That works on your kind. I knocked one of you on his ass at the bar last month for grabbing a girl. It works.”

“The Pull works on warlocks,” I tell him. “I broke up a fight at Homecoming with it. Two of yours.”

Neither of us says what that means, because we don’t have a fucking clue.

“Oh no,” Rory says, very quietly.

Hallowell’s rolling one of his lip rings with his tongue, the way people chew a pen when the test’s harder than they thought. I watch him do it until Rory kicks me under the table.

My Pull slides right off him. His magic goes straight through me. If I ever need to stop him, I’ll have to do it with my hands, and I think about that for way longer than anybody should.

Down at the bar, a guy wearing a Kappa Rho Nu ring is looking at Hallowell’s neck like it’s on the specials board. So is his friend. If Hallowell walks down those stairs alone, one of them is going to follow him out, and I’m not finding another body this week.

I get up. “I’ll walk you out.”

“I know the way.”

“I’m a gracious host, humor me.”

He angrily turns his back on me, and I stay one step behind him the whole way down. Every head at the bar turns back to its drink.

Outside, the Strip’s cold and loud, and somebody’s blasting Chappell Roan from a car with the windows down. He spins around on the sidewalk.

“You’re sitting next to me for a year,” I tell him. “On the board.”

“Yeah, I can read.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets.

“I’m glad you got the vampire seat. Every meeting, every vote, every time you open your mouth, I’ll be right there watching you lie. And I’m going to find out what you did to Marcus Bell.”

He walks off toward the cheap end of the Strip. He doesn’t look back.

He’ll dig because he’s a pain in the ass. If he keeps going long enough, he hits my brother, and I can’t Pull him off it.

This changes nothing.