Not that Evie knows any of this. Not that Evie knows shit about me. Three years running and I’m still keeping secrets. It’s what you’d call a sore point between us, her not knowing enough. Can’t blame her for being curious, girl’s got reasons to be. Like why I rent two apartments: the one-bedroom upstairs and this studio below it. Why I nailed the studio door to the door frame and installed a panel in the lower half that I can kick out in an emergency. Why the little spiral stair that leads from the upstairs living room to the studio is concealed by a secret trapdoor. And why, with all that space up there, I do most of my living down here in the basement where the only window has been drywalled over. She’s willing to accept it when I tell her it’s because of my work, cuz of some of the enemies I’ve made. But she’d sure like to know more about that work. She knows I’m kind of a local tough guy, a guy who collects some debts, does some unlicensed PI work, that kind of thing. But it doesn’t seem to warrant the security in this place, the secret room, the multiple locks, the alarm. What can a guy do? He can’t tell her about the Van Helsings running around with a hard-on for people like me, those self-righteous busybodies looking to sprinkle me with holy water and drive a stake through my heart. Not that the holy water would do anything, but the stake sure as shit would. Hell, a stake through the heart will kill anyone. They don’t really need it; a few bullets will do just as well. But a guy can’t explain something like that. In the end she doesn’t buy it, the whole I got enemies, baby thing. She maybe figures it’s drugs.

Drugs would make sense. It would explain the security. It would explain my total and complete paranoia. It would explain why I don’t have a regular job of any kind. And it would explain the little dorm fridge in my closet with the padlock on it.