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swallowed a grape in one guilty gulp. "Can we have this conversation never?"
"What. Happened."
So I told him everything start to finish. And damned if it didn't come out sounding like
an episode of Nancy Drew.
"So, do you make a habit of kissing strange men in bathrooms?" Vayl's eyes had darkened
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to jade with swirling gold flecks that made me slightly dizzy. When I didn't immediately
reply he added, "Because it certainly was not mentioned in your file."
What is it about the people who know you best? You never reveal to them the secret
location of your make-me-crazy buttons and yet, like toddlers at preschool, they root them
out and push them again and again and again. Mine are directly connected to hand
grenades. So as soon as Vayl finished speaking I heard the tell-tale clatter of a pin rattling
on the floor. My file? I wish it was in my hands right now. I'd smack you over the head
with it so hard your bell would still be ringing for church next Saturday night!
Then I'd clonk myself, hard, on the frontal lobe. Maybe that would cure me, and I would
never again have to be embarrassed by what we in the C.I.A. like to call my PDD
(Previous Dumbass Decisions). However I was not done digging my grave.
"I don't make a habit of kissing anybody thanks to you!" Realizing Freud would have a
field day with that statement, I rushed on. "It was a spontaneous action, something I'm
sure you have no experience with, and though as my boss I can see how you might be
upset that I helped him considering what we're here for, you might also congratulate me
for defusing a situation that might've interfered with our plan."
"Do you think these two men will remember you?"
"I sure as hell hope so!"
"So when the police investigate Assan's passing tomorrow morning, and they question
everyone whose invitation lies in that lacy little basket and cannot find Lucille Robinson,
these men will be able to describe you quite easily?"
My stomach clenched and all the food I'd just wolfed down spontaneously combusted.
"Hey, when you're done lecturing me, could you speak to my ulcers? They seem to be
misbehaving as well."
Vayl took my plate in one hand and my arm in the other, marched us both to the garbage
can where he chose to dump the plate (though I'm sure he considered leaving me there
instead). Then he escorted me out of the parlor, into the dining room and out an ornate
metal-framed screen door to the pool area.
"Uh, Vayl, I know you haven't lived in America long by your count, so I'd just like to
point out that bosses don't generally drown their subordinates when they've screwed up
royally."
He grabbed my right hand and brushed his thumb across my empty ring finger. The
corners of his mouth dropped, what in anyone else would be described as a grimace. "You
have jeopardized our mission and my high opinion of you." he frowned harder, "What
possessed you?"
More like who, I thought. Lucille Robinson. A girl who looks just like me, but who has
never, not once, blacked out or spent entire afternoons trying to get the song B-I-N-G-O
out of her head. In those moments with Cole, she'd felt& real. And that was wrong in
about fifty different ways.
"I'm sorry, Vayl." I hung my head. I'd been so careful, but he was finally figuring what a
spaz I truly was. I should've known my run with the Agency couldn't last. But the hope of
sticking the broken pieces of my career back together had been the only thing that kept me
from jumping in front of a train after my, uh, incident. Guess I should've used brand-name
glue.
Vayl pulled me into the shadows between the house and a wrought iron dining set. For a
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minute I thought he'd snapped and I was going to find out first-hand how much it really
hurt to be vampire-bitten. "I can smell your desperation too," he whispered. "It is like
burnt metal on my tongue. But above all I sense determination. Courage. The instincts of a
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