Page 10 of No Rest for the Wicked

I thrust my hands into my pockets and hung back in the Cain Technologies foyer, blending in, being normal and not in any way suspicious.

Zee cleared his throat, and announced, “I don’t think you know who I am. My name is Lycian. L-y-c-i . . . maybe e or a? Definitely an n at the end. Look it up. Whatever.” He hair-flicked. “Why would I be here, glorifying your swanky foyer with my beautiful self, if I do not have an appointment?”

I heard the receptionist say something about his name clearly not being on the schedule.

“Check again. L-y-c . . . or maybe s? Try an s. Yes I know how to spell my own name, thank you. I like to switch it up.” He bent over the desk, then half mounted it, one knee on the desktop, angled to get a look at the receptionist’s screen. The poor woman clearly hadn’t met anyone like Zee before. “Let me see.”

“Oh, you have pretty eyes,” he said. “And that lipstick is to die for. What shade is it?”

“Cranberry Crush?”

“You have to tell me where you got it, queen.”

“Alright, but your name isn’t on the visitors schedule, Mr. uh . . . Lycian.”

“Wait . . . Isn’t this Cora’s Modelling Agency?”

“Didn’t you want Mr. Reynard?”

“That was earlier. Can’t you see how gorgeous I am? So this isn’t the modeling agency, and Cora doesn’t work here? Oh, my mistake. Anyway. Bye. Text me the link for that lipstick, honey.” He dropped off the desk, turned on his heel, and strode across the foyer and out the door. I waited a few beats, making sure anyone who stared after him had gone back to whatever they’d been doing before Zee interrupted them, and then casually ambled out after him.

A whistle drew my eye and there was Zee, a little ways down the street, leaning against a storefront wall. I hurried over to meet him. “What just happened?”

With a flick of his fingers, he produced a keycard. “It’s all in the wrist.”

“You’re brilliant.”

His eyebrows bounced. “I know, right. I am the best. I also saw on Cranberry Crush’s screen that Fancy Pants is definitely in the building. So unless he has his head stuck up his ass, he knows Gideon Cain’s name is all over his business and he neglected to mention it to us, his besties. Maybe because this was all part of his evil vampire plan?”

I plucked the card from his waving fingers. “I don’t believe that. I won’t believe it until I see him and talk to him myself. You said yourself, there’s something going on back there. Something wrong.”

Zee screwed up his nose. “Yeah, for real. So, all we gotta do now is get by Cranberry Crush and into the elevator without her calling security.”

I eyed his tall, stunning, dramatic self. “I don’t think you’re slipping by her anytime soon.” There had to be a way to get him inside. “Can’t you just poof into the elevator? Or down to Reynard’s office? It’s in the basement.”

Zee blinked. “One, there is no fucking way I can poof into a moving elevator without getting cheesewired in half by the cables. And two, if I don’t know where I’m going, there’s a high fucking chance I’ll poof into a wall . . . or a person, resulting in instant death for them, and some very uncomfortable surgery for me. Why do you think I stole the fucking key?”

“Oh right, okay. Yeah, but how do we get past the receptionist, even with the elevator key?”

Zee poked my forehead. “You’re so cute, and sometimes dim. There’s this little thing called glamor. I know you’ve heard of it, since you’re wearing it.”

“What? I’m . . . what?” I trailed off, to make sure nobody had heard, as his eyebrows climbed higher. “Okay, fine. I may be wearing a tiny amount of glamor.”

“Uh-huh, so we’re gonna glamor up to the tits and walk right in. That’ll get us as far as the elevator, and the key will get us to the basement, right? Also, his office is in the fucking basement? What a loser.”

“It surprised me too. I was expecting a grand office suite, but it wasn’t that at all. He seemed to like it though, which is the important part I guess.”

“No, if you have billions, you make sure everyone knows it, else what’s the fucking point? Ugh, he can’t even humble brag right.” He pulled the glasses off and vanished them with a flick of his wrist. “Okay, so just a little glamor,” he said, rubbing his hands together and glancing both ways. A few people trod the sidewalk, but whipping up some glamor in public wasn’t unusual, like adjusting makeup. “You ready?”

I frowned, then kicked at a loose bit of stone. “Uhm.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You can change your appearance?”

I winced. “I dunno, maybe?”

“Wait.” He caught my shoulder and drew me to the side. “You do know how to glamor?”

Sort of. I’d rarely done it. “Yeah, but . . . I don’t like to mess with it. It’s . . . volatile.”