Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One) by Elizabeth Donald

asked.
    Elyse shook her head. “No, it’s his night off.”
    The disappointment must have shown in Isabel’s face, because Elyse’s eyes suddenly showed understanding. “You were looking for him?”
    “No, of course not,” Isabel said mechanically.
    “Too bad,” Elyse said, shrugging. She wrote something on the bill slip and handed it to Isabel. “Have a nice evening.”
    So much for ‘on the house’ , Isabel thought, and glanced at the bill.
    It wasn’t a charge. It was an address.
    Isabel looked over at the bar, and saw Elyse returning her tray to the bartender. She tried to say thank you with her eyes, and Elyse only smiled, looking like nothing more than an innocent farm girl in a dress too grown-up for her, until the ivory-white fangs showed.
    Isabel gulped half her drink and got up. She moved in between the dancers, working her way toward the door. Brushing past a pair of laughing girls, she stumbled into a broad chest.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, and looked up into Duane’s face. “Oh.”
    Duane stared down at her. “Shit,” he said. “Didn’t take long, did it?”
    Isabel’s face grew hot. “I’d talk it over with you, but you’re sure not listening,” she snapped. “Let me by.”
    Duane stepped aside with an overdramatized courtly gesture, and Isabel strode past him and out into the street.
    The address on the card was only a few blocks away, but it didn’t take long for the neighborhood to deteriorate. Broken glass and trash in the gutters, a rusty fire escape jutting from the side of old brick buildings. She walked steadily, with a purposeful stride that belied her nervousness.
    Turning down the street, she saw the apartment building up ahead. It was in sad shape, and she suddenly realized how upscale her small Midtown apartment must have seemed to him. A torn window screen was the worst damage her apartment had suffered. This building had windowpanes blocked with plywood, and someone had spray-painted VAMPS SUCK on the front door.
    Two young men were sitting on the front stoop. Glancing at them quickly, she saw they had the telltale fingernails and pallor of vampires.
    “You lost?” one of them asked. Isabel shook her head and stepped past them. She could feel their eyes boring into her as she went into the dark foyer, barely lit by a single bulb that cast strange shadows on industrial-green walls.
    The note said apartment 2B, so she climbed the stairs, tripping a little on broken floor tiles. More graffiti was spray-painted on the walls, which would have been a relief from the peeling green paint if it hadn’t been such charming homilies as DIE VAMPS DIE and GOD KNOWS WHAT YOU ARE. That last one was particularly uplifting, Isabel thought.
    When she reached the second floor, a door opened and a young girl came out. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, but she was dressed in a skimpy black vinyl dress cut far too low for her small breasts and hemmed barely below her underwear line. Her red hair was teased up over a young face covered with too much makeup.
    The girl brushed past Isabel and slipped on the top step, losing her balance in stiletto-heeled knee boots. Instinctively, Isabel reached out and helped her steady herself. The girl reacted as if Isabel had shocked her with a taser gun, jerking away and nearly falling again.
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Isabel said. “Are you all right?”
    The girl nodded, and Isabel saw the young vampire’s teeth when she opened her mouth as if to say something. But she must have thought the better of it, because she quickly moved past Isabel and down the stairs.
    Just down the hall was the door with 2B painted on it. Isabel stood before it for a moment and felt silly. But she knew what she had to do, and it had to be tonight, before she lost her nerve.
    She knocked on the door.
    * * * * *
    “You look deep in thought,” Betschart said, sliding onto the stool next to Freitas.
    “Drowning the job in an