Page 4 of The Dancer and the Dark
Only Chloe could get away with calling two of the most powerful vampires in the world “problem children.” But she’d known Ben when he was human, and Tenzin? Well, Chloe was the only one who knew the ancient vampire’s internet browsing history, and she’d use it for leverage if she needed.
“Audra, I’ll meet you down in the lobby in about an hour, okay?”
“Sounds good.”
The music clipped on again, and Chloe smoothed face cream over the planes of her cheeks, her chin, and her forehead, gently tapping it on the delicate skin around her eyes.
You’re turning thirty.
And her life was good. Her life worked. She loved her life. She loved her boyfriend, and she loved her friends and her work and the crazy city she lived in.
It was good. It was all good.
The music switched, and “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” started.
Chloe tapped forward on her phone and jumped to the next song.
“Tenzin,where did you put the building plans for the job in Mumbai?”
Chloe was furiously looking through the map drawer in Ben and Tenzin’s two-story loft, but she couldn’t find them. She’d even checked in the file room downstairs she’d manage to wrangle into organizational submission a few months before.
Nothing. The plans were gone.
Tenzin, the ridiculously old wind vampire who paid Chloe’s bills, flew out from the loft where she spent her waking hours during the day. It was fully shaded from any of the sun’s rays and allowed her quiet and space where she meditated if she wasn’t working.
She hovered twelve feet over the ground, just above the french doors that led out to the roof garden. “I put them in the map drawer.”
Chloe looked up. “They’re not here.”
“Then Ben moved them.”
Chloe sighed. If Ben had moved them, that meant she wouldn’t find them until nightfall. Her old friend had to sleep during the day, unlike his mate.
“Are you sure you put them back?”
Tenzin frowned. “No.”
She bit her tongue. “So… you might have put them someplace else?”
“Yes.” Tenzin’s eyes drifted. “I was looking at the elevator shafts…”
Chloe nodded. “I remember you talking about using them for entry.”
“And I…” Tenzin rolled slowly in the air, thinking. “I took them to the roof because the museum was built during the same era as this building, so I was wondering what the access would look like for the elevator shaft, but…” She pointed at Chloe. “Then I remembered that the elevators in Mumbai were later additions to the existing palace structure, so they would be more modern than our building, so I flew down to find out which architects had designed the remodel, but then Ben and I got into an argument about the relative benefits—if you could call them benefits—of French versus British colonial structure in Asia, and I told him—”
“The architectural plans are still on the roof, aren’t they?”
Tenzin pointed at her. “Probably.”
Chloe sighed. Hopefully the plans Ben had managed to buy from a contact in Mumbai hadn’t been blown off the roof and weren’t sitting somewhere on Fifth Avenue or drifting in the Hudson. “Okay, from now on, when you need to check something, maybe just make a copy and don’t take the originals.”
Tenzin frowned. “How do I make a copy of the big plans?”
Dammit, that was a fair question. “Okay, maybe we just keep all the big plans like architectural or building schematicsonthe map table from now on. Or in the map drawer.” She spread her hands. “What do you think?”
“Obviously we should,” Tenzin said. “Some of those plans are very hard to find. And very expensive to acquire illegally.”
Like the Mumbai plans. Chloe clasped her hands together. “Exactly.”
