"A safehouse, then," Mallow said with a frown. Something about Kai feeding on the girl had caused Cherry to clam up, a very unexpected result. The vampire was usually so vocal with her frustrations with her old fling. Did that mean she was jealous of the girl, or that she was surprised Kai would offer to do something so selfless? The thief guessed it was the latter.<br/>"We'll take you to the one we just left. It isn't far from C.C's apartment, and she can stay with you if you want. She knows how it works. Otherwise, I'll leave you some instructions on how often you can leave, where to get groceries and things, yada yada." Mallow waved a hand dismissively, as though the finer details weren't important.<br/>He stood from his spot on the couch, approaching Cherry where she stood near the door. "That is a pretty half-assed plan. I've never known Kai to half-ass that hard, though. Or let anyone feed on him other than you. What the fuck is he thinking? Plus, if he's been keeping her at her apartment for days now, either he's left PM or decided to run solo for a while. Neither possibility is super appealing, because it means he's acting with a lot more freedom that we're used to.<br/>"We need to get Mira to the safehouse," He said with a sigh. "Then start looking for your boyfriend. I don't know where Blu lives, but it shouldn't be too hard to find out. We can check with him next. Only problem is, if he doesn't know anything either, I have no clue where to go from there. Judging by the look in your eye, you must not have many ideas either."<br/>Mallow sighed. This was quickly devolving into what those in the scientific community would call "a great big clusterfuck." He'd dealt with stuff like this before, only this time the whole damn thing was Kai's fault. Whatever had happened with him and Mira had been enough to cause Kai to leave the safety of PM. He risked being kidnapped or killed, or having her taken hostage, by even leaving the PM compound for anything but a job. So what was special about this girl?<br/>At a glance, nothing. She was just a human who had worked at a video store and had a kind of shitty boyfriend. Nothing different about that, Cocoa had had a couple shitty boyfriends too. She didn't look combat-ready, and she didn't have the broken look in her eyes that Kai or any of the other killers had. She was still whole mentally, just shaken and scared. She was, other than the "becoming a vampire" bit, a normal human.<br/>But she wasn't, though. She couldn't be. Not to have somehow stopped Kai from just killing her after he'd used her for whatever crime he'd been committing. Not to have survived encountering Ghost, Plum, and who knows how many other Nons at PMHQ. All the signs pointed to normalcy, but as Mallow glanced at the girl looking frightened in her chair, Mallow knew there was no way she was normal.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">How</span>she wasn't normal was something he would just have to figure out.