Ethan had gotten used to the needles.
In theory he could have handed this off to someone else, many tier fours did. He could have--and probably should have--handed Gene off to someone else, perhaps Diana (he would like her) or Jon (less so, although he might appreciate Jon’s efficiency).
But it felt like something he had to do himself. Gene was this rogue element. He didn't move the way normal people moved. He didn't think the way anyone Ethan had ever encountered before thought. Ethan didn't want to hand him off to an underling until he had learned to anticipate his manners and quirks. He wanted to understand what drove him, to know the motivations and machinations that made doing things like tracking down and confronting his blackmailer or making deals with vampires to undermine his sister’s agency.
“You guys don’t waste any time, do you?” Gene said. He was holding out his arm, watching Ethan hunt for a vein with a kind of detached curiosity that made him seem much older than he was.
He had made the decision to invite Gene to his home rather than coming over to Gene's tiny apartment. It was a calculated risk—requiring both a bet against Gene stealing things from him and a bet on his ability to withstand Gene's sarcastic commentary about Georgetown:
"Oh wow, you sure you've got enough space here? I mean, I don't know how you're coping with only five bedrooms and an indoor pool."
Or
"You have a separate room just for your wine? Do you tuck them in at night and read them stories?"
Or
"It's great you didn't cut corners like they did at Versailles."
Even issuing a correction—he did not have an indoor pool or a wine cellar—meant he had already lost.
“Ordinarily it takes a couple of weeks to process your paperwork,” Ethan began. “But Guy did some part of it himself … so … yes, we don’t waste any time.”
“Why am I so important?”
“You’re not. He just wanted to be sure—God, you have the tiniest little veins I’ve ever seen. Squeeze your fist more.”
“Plenty of men find my delicateness very attractive, Mr. Gatwick. I have a thigh gap too but that’s mainly to accommodate my massive co—”
“Gene.”
He glanced up just in time to see how the kid was grinning at him. Ethan could not decide whether Gene’s obnoxiousness was a form of affection or not. Sometimes it was like this, playful and provocative. Other times it was dripping with contempt, calling out all the ways in which Ethan was part of the problem with the world.
“If I’m not important why is Guy handling things himself?” Gene asked.
Ethan found himself stroking slowly over the pit of Gene’s elbow with his thumb as he stared into the kid’s eyes. He shouldn’t tell him. One answer would just lead to more questions and those answers would open up a whole world that Gene didn’t realize was there, didn’t involve him and that he should definitely stay away from. He shouldn’t answer that question.
On the other hand, he had already squandered his opportunity to play it cool and blow Gene off. He’d basically answered the question just by thinking about it. He couldn’t pretend there was no reason, he could only say he didn’t know it. Gene probably wouldn’t believe that, and so he would likely rephrase the question again and again and again at every opportunity until he had enough fragments of the answer to graduate to the next round of questions.
Ethan sighed. “It’s your surname, he wanted to make sure himself.”
“What about my surname?”
“You remember when Guy said vampires have families? One of the first things we have to do when processing a new co-op member is trace their lineage to make sure they are not part of an existing vampire family. That’s what takes the longest. As I understand it they were half way done with your sister and Guy made it go faster by finishing the rest himself.”
The surprise moved across Gene’s face slowly. It opened his eyes wider and made his lips part so that the pink tip of his tongue was just barely visible.
“Are you saying that some people have vampire relatives they don’t even know about?”
“Yes, although it’s unlikely. The vampire population in the United States is tiny. But like I said, vampires are hierarchical. Drinking from someone else’s family without permission is one of the worst things you can do. So we check first.”
“Jesus, what the fuck…”
“But if you were in a family I wouldn’t be here now.”
“But there are Regans? There’s a vampire with the last name Regan?”
Ethan shook his head. “Not exactly.”
Gene moved his arm back. It made Ethan’s latex gloves pull against his fingers.
“Then what exactly? Why was the name Regan so important to Guy but not to the people in Philly who were recruiting my sister?”
Ethan pushed his breath out of his nose with a snort. He followed that up with another, sharper sigh that made his shoulders twitch. “If you were a descendant from a person named Regan who lived maybe two hundred, two hundred and fifty years ago—and I repeat: you are not in any way, shape or form, related to that person—but if you were, Guy knows the vampire who would have claim.”
“Claim,” Gene repeated.
Oh boy, here we go, Ethan thought. “They’re not my rules, Gene. They don’t change anything about my life or your life. The vampires follow them, that’s all.”
“Claim,” Gene said again, this time sharper. “Like I’m property.”
“Like your family.”
“Bullshit. It’s not family if you show up for Thanksgiving and you’re on the menu.”
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