Chapter 7 – Your Kron

Sol

The girl at the end of my bar is dressed like Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows, and she’s been holding her donor card up next to her face for twenty minutes, like a raffle ticket she’s sure is about to win.

“It’s laminated,” she tells me. “I paid extra.”

“Get it framed if you want. The vodka cran’s still nine bucks.”

She pays in quarters, and every vampire who passes her keeps on walking.

That’s Fang & Sons at two a.m. The humans want to get bitten, the vampires want to skip the paperwork, and I’m stuck between them, pouring the shittiest vodka on the Strip into plastic cups while the floor tries to eat my shoes.

It’s been two nights since that corridor, and I’ve replayed it so many times I could record the director’s commentary.

Dot’s down at the far end with her crossword, in pen. She owns the place. She stopped getting older somewhere in her mid-twenties, the way born vampires do, so she’s got the face of a sorority girl and a cardigan off somebody’s nana. Nobody knows how long she’s had either one.

She pays cash and never asks any personal questions, which honestly makes her the best boss I’ve ever had. She’s only got one rule. Nobody bleeds in here unless somebody signed for it.

The Nadja girl gives up and leaves. A vampire takes her stool before it’s even cold, a guy with a popped collar and a Rolex so fake the second hand ticks.

“Top shelf,” he says. “On the house.”

He looks me right in the eye when he says it, and something grabs the back of my brain.

That’s the Pull, and it’s working just fine. My hand goes for the good tequila all on its own, the bottle Dot saves for the handful of people she actually likes.

I lock my jaw and fight it until I’m sweating through my shirt, and my hand finally closes on the cheapest bottle we’ve got.

“Eighteen,” I tell him. “On the house costs double.”

He stares at me with his mouth hanging open. He pays anyway, because his buddies are watching, and he’d rather lose eighteen bucks than have them laugh at him.

So it’s not me. Any random asshole at my bar can still get a hand in my head. Laz Kron can’t, and not knowing why is driving me fucking insane. I’d love to think he’s just bad at it, but I know better.

Around two-thirty, everybody by the front window goes quiet.

A long black car pulls up outside. It looks like the Batmobile and a hearse had a baby and sent it to boarding school in Switzerland.

Bugatti made exactly one of those, ever. Kat texted me the article the week the Krons bought it, with the caption the Count got himself a coffin with a stereo.

It’s parked between a dumpster and a guy who sells vapes out of his trunk, and he’s already leaning on the hood for selfies.

Laz doesn’t get out.

At first, I figure he’s here to meet somebody. It’s the Strip at two-thirty in the morning, and I already know what I think he sells.

But nobody walks up to the car. He’s just sitting behind the wheel with one hand hanging off the top of it, looking through the window at the bar.

At me.

Right on schedule, the jukebox starts “Bat Out of Hell.”

Not even two weeks ago, this guy had blood on his chin and Marcus Bell at his feet. Now he’s parked outside my job like a cop on a stakeout, and what the hell am I doing about it? Staring at his hand on that steering wheel and remembering exactly how it felt wrapped around my wrist.

I want to walk out there, yank that stupid door open and find out what else that hand can do, which is a seriously messed-up thing to want from the guy I swore I’d take down for Marcus.

Somebody should hit me in the face with the soda gun.

I’m not watching him. I’m watching the car. It’s a really fucking nice car.

That song runs nine minutes and forty-eight seconds. Dot puts it on every night at two-thirty because she thinks it’s hilarious in a vampire bar, and she’s the only one who does.

My magic’s prickling up both arms like I slept on them. I sit on it as hard as I can, because Dot takes blown bulbs out of my pay, and I can’t afford to lose a single cent.

“Hon,” Dot says, without looking up from her crossword. “You’re pouring that beer on your shoes.”

The song finally ends, and he’s still out there. I turn away from the window, pour the next guy’s beer into an actual cup, and don’t look again.

At last call, Dot sends me to the office for more cups. I take the opportunity to check my phone.

There’s an email from Professor Whitaker. It came in at dinnertime, when I was too slammed to look.

Solomon, I’ve cleared tomorrow at two, in my office. It takes ten minutes, and I promise I’m much gentler with a needle than I am with a red pen. M.W.

Right under it there’s a new one from my landlord. This one’s subject line is in all caps.

I hit reply on Whitaker’s, type Yes. Thank you, and send it. It takes about four seconds, because I’ve been saying yes in my head ever since she asked.

I know what warlock blood’s worth on this block. I hear somebody call it Sugar every single shift, and whatever Marcus Bell was selling, it got him killed.

Whitaker’s my wardcraft professor, and she’s going to fill those vials in her office with the kettle on and a hundred plants watching, for a grant with her name on it. She’s a warlock too. If all she wanted was blood to sell, she’s got a whole body full of her own.

She’s probably researching why warlock blood acts like a drug to vampires. Possibly looking for a cure. It would help vampires and warlocks if the effects could be neutralized.

I’m happy to help if it prevents more murders and pays my rent. I carry the cups out feeling better than I have all week.

The spot by the dumpster’s empty.

Dot waits until the last customer’s out the door. She pulls a folded sheet out of her cardigan pocket and slides it down the bar to me.

“Your Kron came in while you were in the back,” she says. “Left this.”

“Call him my Kron one more time, and I swear to God I’ll walk down the block and get a job at The Vein.”

“They’d make you smile, hon,” she says. “You wouldn’t last a single night. I didn’t read it, by the way. It’s folded in thirds, so it’s either a lawsuit or a love letter.”

I unfold it. KRN across the top, the same letters they stencil on their trash cans. DONOR CONSENT. A girl’s name I’ve never heard of, signed in purple glitter pen, with her initials in two more places.

It’s dated the night of the party, with a time scribbled next to it. At the bottom, it says Lazarus Kron in real ink, like he was signing the Declaration of Independence.

It’s a consent form. According to this, the blood on his face was hers.

For about two seconds, I’m ready to take the word of a glitter pen.

Then I think about Fisk, the smiling prick who was threatening me the same night Marcus died. A guy like that could print one of these in the back of his Mercedes and get some fang-chaser to sign it for a selfie.

And the time’s right before I went down those porch steps, which is pretty much exactly what you’d want it to say if you were Fisk.

If it’s even real, Laz has had it since that night. He could’ve shoved it in my face by the bins and won the whole argument right there. Now he parks outside Fang & Sons for ten minutes of Meat Loaf and waits until I’m in the back.

He came into my bar to show me how this goes. He’s got a signed piece of paper for the blood on his mouth, and all I’ve got is my prints on a dead kid.