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If someone had asked Henry Foss a year ago where he would be living now, the answer would have seemed obvious. The Old City Sanctuary was where he’d lived for years; even if it made it a bit harder to bring dates back to his place, it was his home, where he worked and where his friends were. If they had told him that he would be sharing a safe house with the ghost of his friend and, occasionally, with Nikola Tesla, while hiding from a crazed organization of evil scientists determined to control every Abnormal they could get their hands on, he would have thought they were crazy.
He knew better now.
First it had been the Lazarus virus, driving Abnormals insane and causing the deaths of dozens, and then the Sanctuary Network had been decimated by attacks from the Cabal. After the Old City Sanctuary had fallen and Ashley had died, the network had split. Those that were left went into hiding, taking fake names and working on plans to restore the Sanctuaries while trying to avoid capture by the Cabal.
Ashley had appeared a few weeks after he’d moved into the house, an unexplainable anomaly; ghosts had never been classified as Abnormals, or considered to be real. Tesla had arrived a few weeks later, unannounced but expected; Henry had been stocking up on wine for awhile.
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Henry watched as Tesla opened the pantry and took out a bottle of burgundy.
“You know we’re going to go bankrupt if I have to keep buying a dozen bottles of wine every week, right?”
“The price of genius, I’m afraid. You’ll live.” The vampire retorted, heading back upstairs to the lab.
Henry rolled his eyes and finished putting the last dish in the dishwasher.
Ashley smirked at him, perched on the arm of the couch as she held a cup of coffee in her hand, her gun on the coffee table.
“I don’t see why he doesn’t stay at the safe house the doc set up for him.” He muttered.
“It got destroyed.” She set the cup on the coffee table and picked up the stack of DVDs; they’d settled into a routine since she had appeared and hadn’t left, every Wednesday was movie night.
“By one of his own experiments,” Henry sat down on the couch. “I’m sure there must be a second place set up for him to stay at. Preferably on the other side of the planet.”
“So you’re saying you’d enjoy living in this fair city more without the sunny disposition of a certain one hundred and fifty-three year old vampire?” Ashley teased, nudging his shoulder with her knee.
“I think everyone would. With all the electricity he uses, we might as well put up a billboard with blinking lights for the Cabal to read – ‘Here we are, feel free to drop by anytime and check us out.’” He answered, half joking.
“I thought you were trying to cover that up.” She asked, eyes serious.
“I am, and it’s working . . . so far.” Henry sighed. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last though.”
“We could move, but I don’t know how well that would work. The contact Declan set up said that she hasn’t heard anything about the Cabal being active around here for the past month, but they still have eyes and ears everywhere. At this point, it would probably be better to stay here and protect the archives, rather than risking moving –“
“And the Cabal noticing. Yeah.”
Ashley cleared her throat. “How’s the work on the copy coming?”
“It’ll be finished in time for it to be moved. Tesla has actually been helpful. Most of the time. How’s the Easter Egg planning going? Anyone notice you bopping around the world planting clues like a blonde Johnny Appleseed . . . without apples?”
“The Force has been with me.” She joked.
He groaned, “Really Ash, of all the jokes, you have to pick that one?”
Ashley slid down to sit next to him. “I’m practically invisible; nobody’s spotted me. I have the element of surprise,” she whispered dramatically, the goofy expression on her face taking away any seriousness from her tone; “especially since I’m the last person anyone would expect to see.”
“Good point.”
She frowned. “No one has heard anything from Mom for a week – no sightings, no unexplainable incidents showing up in the weird news columns, no messages. It’s like she dropped off the face of the Earth, which doesn’t exactly mean the Cabal haven’t found her.”
“I’m sure she’s fine; Doc can take care of herself.” Henry offered in reassurance. “And she has Jack the Ripper watching out for her, though to be honest I’m pretty sure that’s not all that reassuring.”
Ashley shot him a skeptical look. “More than you think it would be, but still not very impressive.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure why I thought that would help.”
She set the DVDs down on the coffee table, picking up the now cold cup of coffee and dumping the coffee in the kitchen sink.
He watched as she set the cup on the counter, moved the gun to the side and started flipping through the stack of DVDs again.
“Why do you do this anyway?”
“Do what?”
“This –“ Henry gestured at the gun. “Keeping a gun, carrying around food you can’t eat. You’re . . . “
“Dead,” Ashley offered up the word, bringing up a subject he wasn’t sure how to touch.
“Yeah.”
She shrugged and didn’t look up from the DVDs she was examining. “It’s a reminder, of back when things weren’t so crazy. And when the Cabal find this place, someone’s going to have to save your ass; I’m pretty sure werewolves don’t come with a ghost guarantee.”
When the Cabal find this place, not if – Henry pushed the thought to the back of his mind, where it had lurked consistently ever since he’d started living here; there wasn’t anything he could do about it besides be prepared and stick to the plan. “And the food?”
“Force of habit, boredom, forgetting that I can’t eat,” Ashley tapped the cover of a DVD box and handed it to him, “this one.”
“Makes sense.” He got up and put the movie in, turning on the television as he headed towards the kitchen. “Want popcorn?”
“Ha ha,” Ashley stuck her tongue out at him and grinned.