I shut the door behind Vlad and his bulky body guards and locked it. I even relocked it so I could lock it again and feel safer. I still didn't feel safe.

                  "I seriously hope you mean God is watching us, and not a psychotic serial killer who rhymes with Miley," I said, then peered cautiously through the curtain of a window outside, "because that would definitely not be ok with me..."

                  Vladimir only stared at me.

                  I leaned in closer to him. "You seriously think he's watching us? Smiley?"

                  Still, without saying a word, Vlad motioned for me to follow him with a crook of his finger, and started walking towards the dining room like he owned the place. Well, if he gave my family the house, maybe he did.

                  Before I physically entered the room with him, one of Vlad's bulky body guards with a very square head, a lot like a cereal box, patted me down. His hands were on me to fast for me to react, and when I did, I felt violated and was angry as hell, but was immediately pinned to the wall by many meaty hands and unarmed of my small hunting knife before I could even say, "You've just been Peppered, amigo!"

                  "Armed," Bulky said, displaying the knife for the rest of the guards. "Looks like a tooth pick. Definitely a weapon designed for a woman."

                  The suited men laughed.

                  "It's actually a specialized hunting knife," I said. "It's relation to the typical hunting knife standard is similar to what a regular fork is to a salad fork, except that particular "tooth pick" that you're holding in your hand can slit your neck with one slice, and clean between your teeth after mom's stringy corn beef."

                  Bulky grunted.

                  "Check her sports bra, there's room in there for another Play-doe knife," one of the others replied, still chuckling.

                  "I check," another guard said, sounding like a caveman. His voice was thick with an unknown accent.

                  I ripped my arm from Bulky's grasp. "Touch my breasts or anywhere near my breasts, Bulky or Caveman, and I'll touch your nuts with a curling iron. Comprende? I don't have any other weapons on me. So back off."

                  "Fine. Try anything and I'll put this toothpick through your head," Bulky said, then shoved me into the dining room. Vlad was already situated at the table, his hands folded over a stack of papers. He was definitely easy on the eyes, with sculpted features, fair skin and hair, and defined shoulders that made him fill out his dark red sweater. However, the scar running from his lip to his ear on the one side of his face made him look sadistic, like he was always smiling crookedly.

                  "Your men are perverts," I told him.

                  Vlad bit back a smile. "Not every man knows how to react around a beautiful young voman."

                  I rolled my eyes. "Cut the crap, vamp. What's going on?"

                  "Vell, let's see. Are you avare that your parents are a part of the vorld's most elite group of vampire hunters?"

                  I awkwardly stood on the opposite side of the table. That was a lot of substituted V's for W's in one sentence. "Um, wow. No, not exactly."

                  "Vell, they are, and they currently vork for my family." He motioned for me to sit in front of him. I did. "I vill explain everything you and you vill understand. I'm sure they vere going to tell you sooner or later. First and foremost, iz there anyone else home besides you?"

                  I shook my head. Mom and dad had left a very brief, very straightforward note on the jug of apple juice in the fridge that they had a business emergency and would be back around eight, and that I was still grounded and was limited to everything but the amount of breaths I took. Bernard was out getting groceries for me, after he had kindly come into my room and asked me what I wanted for dinner. Little did Bernard and my parents know that I had already secretly been using my phone and my television to keep up with Smiley's actions. Bernard looked like a tattle-tail, so I kept the volume on extra low. He was also still on my list for being a serial killer. If he found out I had been investigating and creeping behind him around the house, better known as O.P, aka Operation Butler. Between sulking over my failures and being hung like a cattle in my own shed, I had been notes on his ever action and drawing pictures of his mustache, he could get slightly angry and slice my head off.

                  "Vhat I'm about to tell you cannot be repeated. You can chose to deny my proposal and ve vill part ways," Vlad said, then, "If you repeat anything that I'm about to say, I vill have to kill you. I like you, but I have a very short temper and I vill make sure your death is painful if you betray me. Are we clear?"

                  For a moment, I hesitated, wishing that I had my investigation notebook with me. "I won't repeat anything."

                  He motioned to the chair opposite to himself. "Have a seat."

                  I sat down, mimicking his unbelievably straight posture and trying to keep my cool. Vladimir had a way of being extremely intimidating, while being graceful and polite. Scary.

                  Sighing contentedly, Vladimir adjusted his sweater then leaned over the table on his forearms. "I'll cut to the chase, darling. My family is vampire royalty and sells specialized drugs that are illegal virtually all around the vorld. Ve have vatched this private business grow for centuries. Our organization is pricy, therefore ve only sell our product to certain individuals that are reliable and are not seriously addicted to our product. Recently, Smiley has been targeting a great number of my teenage clients. One of our biggest clients vas a teenager by the name of  Shark McGilligan, a resident of  Orange Gate County voo vas murdered at Crave last night. My profits have been calculated to go down drastically in the next few weeks. Your parents have been hired to protect my cartel from greedy vampire clans and rivalry vampire drug cartels, but they do not have as much insight in the subject of Smiley as your peers who have vitnessed the killings and the murder scenes firsthand have. I do not believe their lives have to be put in danger, don't you? You have a nice home, a nice family, and a very courageous heart. You are very smart, I can see it in your eyes. Do you see vhere I am going vith this?"

                  "No," I said, looking down at the table. I completely did. He knew that I knew what he knew even though I knew it before he knew... Knew... And it was definitely about Gary.

                  I forgot to breath.

                  I can't believe this!! Conscious shouted. All of this time, ma and pa were packing the  dope with this albino-ass Dracula dude? The green stuff? The street grass? The goose bump juice? The hippidy hop hop gas? What happened to having a future, Pepper? I thought we were going places! I thought we were going to be stars! I wanted my...your face on posters! In movies! I knew your eyes were too red last week and you weren't just tired, you backstabbing, good-for-nothing, slutty pothead!

                  I squeezed my eyes shut, willing my conscious to shut her mouth. "What...kind of drugs are we talking about here, Vlad?" I slowly asked.

                  Vladimir smiled temporarily. "The supernatural kind, the kind that humans cannot vithstand. It is a very intoxicating drug that maximizes the sexual drive, gives the user a high beyond the barriers and understandings of silly human drugs, and comes in ten natural flavors including coconut, watermelon, and boysenberry. My family's drug is equivalent to a human overdosing on heroine twenty times over, and is highly valuable."

                  I blinked. "A human would die if they tested out this drug?"

                  "Almost instantly."

                  I thought back to the school article I had read and virtually memorized, I had read it over so many times. The part where I was almost postive the interviewer for Mortimire High School had accidently asked Smiley what he thought of the murders at the school.

                  "The heartless tramp deserved exactly what she got. Death. Vampires make me sick, sucking the life out of others until they want to be vampires themselves. But what really bothers me is sl*ts like Ginger that illegally attend blood fest parties and mix human blood straight from the source and alcohol together. One particular party comes to mind when I think of Ginger Sparrow. Innocent people got killed and were left to die because people like her were to drunk and hungry to realize when to stop partying and help a person not moving on the ground. She deserved to die. He didn't. And you know what? I enjoyed every second of executing that bitch, and I'll enjoy killing anyone else who was there... The janitors. They were all drug dealers, they were at the party. They saw what happened and they didn't do anything because they were too damn high. When he died, they didn't help him," an anonymous student said and a hood covering his identity. "I mean... rest in peace, Ginger. Her family will be in my prayers."

                  Drug dealers. Partying. Teenagers. High. Him. Smiley had been attached to someone. Maybe that someone had been a human who had partied a little too hard and tried something he shouldn't have. Vladimir's drug.

                  "Who didn't deserve to die?" I whispered, closing my eyes. "Someone didn't deserve to die..."

                  When I opened my eyes, Vladimir was giving me an odd look. "Do you often talk to yourself?"

                  "Yes. What is the drug called?" I shifted closer to Vlad, eying the stack of papers in front of him. What else did he know about Smiley that I didn't? "The drug that you've distributed to teenagers, is it all the same product that you distribute to adults?"

                  "Yes. It's called VOID."

                  "Void." I tasted the word on my lips. "Have any humans tried the drug and died? Any humans in Orange Gate County?"

                  "Yes. There have been incidents. There aren't any human residents in Orange Gate County. Just the other day some pothead human approached one of my dealers for a taste. It happens all of the time. Why?"

                  Pothead. That's what you're going to be if you keep conversing with this freaky drug dealer!

                  I gripped the sides of my head. "Shut up, Conscious," I growled.

                  Vladimir tilted his head. "Concious?"

                  I bet he's going to give you drugs for helping him out!

                  "I'm not a pothead!" I shouted, slapping the dining room table and startling Vladimir. He quickly recovered his graceful composure, standing up as well. "Sure, I snorted that pixie stick that one time--but it was completely accidental! You see, I was eating a pixie stick, and then I had to sneeze, and instead of exhaling, I inhaled at the wrong moment. and then, well, the pixie dust got in my eyes and up my nose, and then it just all went downhill from there! I blacked out for a really long time. Woke up in a dessert...I think it was the Sahara desert or something. There were mummies trying to eat me...wait, no....that was a movie I watched." I waved my small hunting knife in the air, making Vlad's body guards momentarily pull their guns out. Vlad motioned for them to quickly put them away. I didn't notice."The point is, when I went to the emergency room, Dr. Flamingo said I had really nice tonsils! He was really hot, too! So just shut your trap, or your invisible fat trap--beak....or whatever the hell you have as a mouth! Oh, and I don't smoke the dope, and I never will, which is what my point originally was but I'm kind of freaking out about this whole drug dealing business my parents are involved in and I always rant when I'm upset..."

                  I slowly sat back down in my seat. "My parents lied to me," I said softly, cradling my head in my hands. "My own parents...." Now I was fighting back tears.

                  Vladimir reached over the table and put his hand over mine. His hand was cold and gave me little to no comfort. "Your parents are not involved in my cartel or my vampire club. They have simply been hired to protect us from rival drug cartels, of course they could not tell you." Vladimir's expression remained blank, except for that sadistic smirking scar. I inhaled a long breath of oxygen, falling deeply into an odd trance as I stared at his damaged skin. It was a thin scar. A knife wound? No, it was too curved...

                  "That must have hurt," I said even quieter, trying to hide the tremble in my hands and momentarily shift the conversation.

                  Vladimir smiled with only his lips. "Physical pain is temporary," he said tightly.

                  "How did you...?" I trailed off softly.

                  Vladimir's eyes went darker than normal and his fingers reached up to his face. "Werewolf." It was the first word and only word with a "w" that Vlad had taken extra effort to pronounce. "It was a long time ago, actually. I was in the vrong place at the vrong time, teasing the vrong caged animal. There are special hunters for special creatures. Rare creatures. I happened to be invited to a formal dinner and the host showed me one their most prized possessions. A hybrid. Caged. Skinny. Barely recognizable and barely able to move. Starving. Probably had lice. Filthy things, werewolves. But curiosity got the best of me and, well..." He turned his head to the side, showing me his profile, then laughed a little, his eyes drifting downwards towards the papers in front of him. "An eye for an eye makes the vhole vorld go blind. But ve live in a different vorld in Orange Gate County, don't we, Pepper? Scars can go both ways vhen you live with them forever. I could have killed the beast right then and there. It vas definitely veak enough." Vladimir looked up at me again. "Did you know blind werewolves can see perfectly fine when they shift during a full moon, but vision is the one aspect of those hairy, repulsive hounds that never truly heals? I did."

                  My eyes dropped the table and my pulse quickened. Hunter. Vladimir was the one that took Hunter's vision, not hunters.

                  Oh boy.

                   "Enough with me, let us talk about you." Vladimir then blindly plucked a piece of paper from his pile, eyes still on mine. He laid his hand casually over the image on the paper, shifting his attention around the room. "I admire your self-expression, Pepper Ballard. I'm also very happy to see that your family has made this house look...homey. The last family who lived here were very typical. Boring. The cliché rich daddy, dead mommy, and spoiled vampire brat son and daughter. They moved on to some other part of town, said there weren't enough master bathrooms. You truly do not understand how lucky you are to have such talented, unique parents." His hand shifted a little on the paper, teasingly revealing a corner of the image. It was a mug shot. I couldn't see exactly who it was, but it was definitely a mug shot. He shifted his hand back over the image. "I admire many things about you. I could tell from the moment that I saw you were daring. I like that in a voman. It's very attractive."

                  "You also like subservient woman," I added, smiling in a "I-secretly-fucking-hate-you-nor-trust-you" way that girls love. "Don't hit on me, or I'll hit on you. With a brick."

                  One of the guards shifted outside the room.

                  "You entertain my greatly, but I'm sensing that you do not like me, Pepper Ballard. I vish you vould like me, I mean vell."

                  "I hate everyone about equally."

                  Vladimir rose an eyebrow. "Vhat about your friend Sin Trinidad?"

                  "What about him?"

                  Vlad revealed the paper beneath his hand to me. It was a screenshot of Smiley and I standing behind a Jeep in the middle of Crave's parking lot. Smiley had his hand stretched outwards towards me.

                  I stared at Smiley's mask in the photo.

                  And stared.

                  And stared.

                  Why didn't he kill me? Ran through my head over and over again. I pushed the image back towards Vladimir, suppressing a whirlpool of nausea in my belly.

                  "It has come to my attention, after seeing you in the parking lot outside of my club with this "Smiley" and then Sin Trinidad on surveillance footage, that you or him could have some valuable information for me."

                  "Surveillance footage?" I tapped my fingers on the table. Great, I had a massive drug dealer in my house and my supposedly kick-ass parents and trusty Butler weren't even home. It was just me, the considering-retirement, failure of a hero.

                  "Yes, as in recorded footage of you conversing with Smiley in the parking lot. I just showed it to you."

                  "That wasn't me. That's some chick dressed like a...skank. Is that a corset? Gross, I would never wear that. I don't have the boobs for that."

                  Skanky pothead, Conscious hissed.

                  Vlad reached into his pocket and took out my lost rape whistle, placing it in front of me on the table. "I found this behind that parked jeep, right where the brunette in the picture stands. Let's see. It says, Property of Pepper Ballard." Vlad and I locked eyes. "I know that is you in the photo, Pepper."

                  Damnit. "Oh, right. That is me. Well, you see... weren't exactly conversing. Because technically, conversing implies that I had someone to reply back to me, and Smiley didn't say a word to me. Just...stared at me.... I don't have any connection with him... or any true sense of who he truly is."

                  And that's for damn sure!

                  The image of Smiley's mask overwhelmed my vision, sending my heartbeat pounding like a jackhammer. Had the gaurds searched my room and found his mask?

                  "You see, Pepper, what I mostly saw vhile vatching this surveillance footage was a serial killer caressing you in the parking lot instead of slicing your head off. A killer voo has not been seen outside of a murder scene yet, voo has not conversed with anyone or anything. A killer voo had somewhat of a pattern, but suddenly has taken on a different path. Killed more people. Has gotten sloppier. Nobody even knows if Smiley is truly a man or a woman, or where he or she has come from or where they live. These are a lot of questions, Pepper Ballard, questions that can only be asked by certain people and that I have to know immediately because my business is in jeopardy. If the police saw this footage of you standing in front of Smiley and him caressing you, vhat do you think their initial conclusion would be? Vhat would your parents think of this? Crave is strictly illegal for minors, might I add."

                  We stared at each other. I was sweating freaking bullets.

                  "Now do you see vhere I am going with this?"

                  "Maybe," I whispered.

                  "Smiley could be after my cartel and I could very well be the next target. I'm about to blackmail you into helping me have a meeting with him. My first threat is my best threat. Mark my vords, I vill burn this house to the ground with your mother and father inside if you do not help me."

                  Vlad sat back in his seat as if dealt a good hand of cards. Sighing deeply, he gestured outwardly with his hands. "Vhat vill it be, Pepper?"

                  Fudging-fudge with fudge on a freaking fudge stick with fudge.

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