Honey examined the knife in her hands and glared at the door hard enough that, in a more exciting universe, it would have exploded.
“We could just kill him,” she said.
Shaun shot her a look. “We wouldn’t have to do anything if you hadn’t made me bring him back here.”
“He was knocked out. How was I supposed to know he was going to be a pain in the ass?”
Again with the look from Shaun, this time without any words. None were needed.
“Yeah, fine, he’s a hunter, that’s how, shut up.”
“Excuse me! Mr. and Ms. Captor! I’m out of Diet Coke, bring me another with that sandwich!”
She switched the grip of the knife from ‘spreading jelly’ to ‘stabby stabby’ and squeezed her fist around it. After a quick count to ten she let it go, putting it down on the counter.
“One more of day of this,” she told Shaun. “And then either his stupid little friends come get him, or we leave him here.”
Geo had spent the last four days calling Shaun and Honey his ‘captors’ despite the many, many…many…times they had reminded him he could leave whenever he wanted. The door wasn’t locked, he wasn’t shackled to the fucking couch, and they had even given him his cell phone. They weren’t the ones who had twisted his ankle, and they hadn’t given him that concussion, either. Nasty thing. Geo still needed the room dark, sounds quiet (except for his own yelling, apparently) and hadn’t yet remembered the whole ‘reading’ thing. Shaun had had to flip through the short list of contacts to find the one person Geo was willing to call. His brother, Erik.
The one they had seen running away, leaving Geo under the foot of a vampire.
“Liars,” Geo had said when they’d told him, shaking his head hard enough to make himself dizzy. “Erik would never leave me behind. He’s probably dead. You probably killed him.”
Shaun and Honey had barely tried to convince him otherwise. He wasn’t going to believe a word either of them said so why bother. And anyway, once Erik picked up the phone then Geo would know.
In four days, Erik had not picked up his phone.
“Where the hell is this guy?” Shaun asked on the second night while Geo snored heavily on the couch. “He’s the one we saw run off, right?”
Shaun didn’t really have to ask. The background to Geo’s phone was a picture of the two of them together, recently taken. Erik had been the one hightailing it, that part was for sure.
“Maybe he got grabbed after he left,” Honey suggested, shrugging. “He could have been losing a lot of blood. Maybe he passed out, got taken to the hospital…”
“Maybe…”
Neither of them liked the idea. It didn’t feel right. Erik hadn’t weakly limped his way out of the alley, he had sprinted. Like the devil himself was on his heels. Honey thought maybe she had noticed him cradling his left arm as he ran, but that was it. Unless he had panicked his way directly in front of an oncoming truck she didn’t think there had been enough wrong with him to keep him from answering a phone call from his brother.
Honey brought the sandwich and Diet Coke into the other room and dropped them onto the coffee table.
“About time,” was all Geo said as he picked himself up to sitting position. He desperately needed a shower.
“Any word from your brother?”
“He’s dead, so no,” Geo said around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly.
“I told you, he isn’t. Are you sure he even likes you?”
Geo glared at her as he took a sip over his can of Diet. It had taken finding a hand mirror at the minimart down the street and holding it up in front of her before he would believe she wasn’t a ‘dog,’ as the hunters apparently called vampires. Which didn’t make much sense to Honey. Didn’t hunters traditionally hunt with dogs?
They still hadn’t gotten around to telling him Shaun was a ‘dog.’ They kept hoping he’d be out of their lives before it came to that. And yet here he was, ungratefully eating the sandwich Honey had made him to keep him alive while his asshole brother ignored him.
“Of course he likes me. He loves me. I’m his brother.”
The two of them had already had this argument a couple of times, and Honey didn’t feel like diving again. She took a different path.
“Don’t you have anybody else’s phone number?” she asked, sitting down on the loveseat. “Someone else you can call?”
“No.”
The skepticism on her face could have carved wood. Geo lowered his eyes, suddenly very interested in his sandwich.
“The entire hunter organization and you only have the phone number for your brother? There isn’t, like, a main office you can call or something? A supervisor?”
Geo raised an eyebrow. “Supervisor?”
“I don’t know how you people operate. For all I know you’ve got a C-suite and middle management.”
“We don’t,” he said. But then he sighed and nodded toward his phone. “But there’s another number. The emergency line.”
Honey’s jaw hit the floor, and through the door to the kitchen she heard something fall and break.
“You’ve been sitting on an emergency line this entire fucking time?”
“I’m still having trouble reading!” he shouted back at her. “I wasn’t sure-”
“You could have asked us!”
“I’m asking now!”
In lieu of knocking the plate and sandwich out of his hand, Honey shot up and stormed over to where the phone was charging on the other side of the couch.
“What’s the name?” she asked, punching through the menus.
“Don’t break it!”
“What’s…the…name?”
“Ditto Lopez.”
Honey scrolled through, clicked Ditto’s name, and put the phone on speaker before placing it on the coffee table between them. Geo shifted in his seat, a hand on his temple. It looked like nerves. But that didn’t make sense. Probably uncomfortable.
“Dave’s Mortuary,” said a voice in a California stoner drawl. “You stab ‘em, we slab ‘em.”
“Ditto, it’s me.”
“No Ditto. Who’s ‘me,’ dude?”
“It’s Geo, man…Geo White.”
A pause on the other end, following by shocked laughter.
“Oh, no, way, man. Georgie, is that really you?”
Geo looked at Honey nervously. “It’s Geo, Ditto, and yeah, it’s me.”
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit, Georgie, what the fuck. Where have you been, man?”
“I got hurt. On that last job. Four nights ago? I’m holed up with a twisted ankle and a…uh, some other stuff,” Geo said.
Honey raised an eyebrow.
Geo made a zip it motion over his mouth.
Honey sighed. She didn’t care why he didn’t want to tell Ditto. It didn’t matter anymore. He’d finally gotten a hold of the hunters. This terrible long weekend was finally over.
“Oh, this is too crazy. Little Georgie White, back from the dead.”
“I’m not…why did you think I was dead?”
“Because Erik said so.”
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 