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i_read_what2019-07-17 02:40 am
kalinara) wrote in i_read_what2019-07-17 02:40 am
Bloodlist - Chapter Nine - So How Do Vampires Have Sex Anyway?
So last chapter of Bloodlist, we had Jack making some mischief in a nightclub and discovering his inner thespian. This chapter has more of the same, as well as a clandestine liaison.
Pardon the experimentation with formatting. For whatever reason, it's gotten hard for me to discern the bold face from the not-bold face on my computer monitor. So I'm seeing if there are other ways to highlight direct quotes.
So the chapter starts with Escott bringing Jack a car. We see Jack's unique facility with words at work again as he notes that the car only has "a few dimples on the metal to show that it was no virgin". Per Escott, it had been a bit difficult without Jack there to sign things, but thanks to Jack's money, the dealer made do.
Jack and Escott discuss the logistics of getting Jack an Illinois driver's license. Escott suggests that he could go in as Jack, since they are of similar build and features, and he could forge Jack's name. Jack notes that Escott seems "wistfully eager to break the law on my behalf". Escott compares it to going to a speakeasy during prohibition: fun but you don't want to get caught.
Escott does up Jack's stage makeup again. He's aiming for more gruesome to allow for decomposition. There's some banter about taking a picture and seeing whether or not Jack's image can be recorded on film. And Jack goes off to terrorize a gangster some more.
This time, Jack decides to go in through Morelli's bathroom. Apparently, he can levitate in mist form, which is very convenient. He starts off with a few summer camp pranks: turning the taps on the tub and flushing the toilet. As Morelli goes in to investigate, Jack slips past him and opens the drawers of his bureau. Obviously, Morelli doesn't see anyone, which doesn't help his nerves.
There's more playing around in the closet, bathroom and bedroom. Jack gets a little more aggressive: turning off the light and tripping Morelli in the dark. Then of course, he does a dramatic appearance: nose-to-nose with the poor violent asshole, who faints "like some fragile heroine from a silent movie".
Jack uses that time to trash the room: pulling out drawers, ripping out bedclothes, knocking over suits. When Morelli's men come in, led by the man mountain Gordy, Morelli doesn't have an answer for them. Morelli is pissed off, and he wants Gordy looking into both Fleming brothers, especially the younger one.
Morelli takes a drive to the waterfront. Jack hitches a ride and sees him row out to his boat, the Elvira. Jack makes sure to stand in his line of sight to fuck with him a little more, before disappearing again. Jack heads back to the Nightcrawler to eavesdrop on Gordy.
There's an interesting bit here that I think I mentioned in a previous review: Jack starts getting a little nervous when Gordy starts asking about Jack Fleming as well as Gerald Fleming. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to turn up any familiar names. But it does make me wonder. We've seen that Jack is perfectly happy to use an alias. He instantly adopted one after coming back as a vampire. So the fact that the Chicago Mob has Jack's real name is probably a hint that whatever happened was sudden.
Fortunately Gordy doesn't get a whole lot, just that Jack's an out-of-work journalist who left to look for greener pastures, a description that Jack finds a little depressing. He admits that for once, it's actually good to be undistinguished.
A new player enters the game though. A "Mr. Lebredo", who speaks to Gordy like a superior to a subordinate. I think the name was mentioned earlier, in conjunction with Morelli's, but there wasn't much said about him. Here, though, he seems a lot more formidable.
Gordy updates Lebredo, who has a healthy amount of skepticism. And the exchange is interesting:
"Anything?"
"No, Mr. Lebredo." Gordy sounded respectful rather than neutral this time Mr. Lebredo lowered himself into a chair with a sigh. "What did Miss Smythe have to say about him?"
"She said he couldn't sleep and that he kept the lights on all night."
"And you?"
"He's been acting pretty strange."
"So we've all noticed," he said dryly.
The phone rang. "Yeah? Go on… all right." He hung up. I'm beginning to think that the kid just dropped outta the sky. No one's heard of him."
"If his name really was Gerald Fleming."
"Slick said he was a younger version of the other guy. There's no doubt it was the brother and he was a green as a stick, he even had his name in his wallet. He was just a stupid kid."
"As you say." There was silence for a while. "Fifty-eight hundred was missing from the safe; fifty-eight hundred was what Morelli took from him. No one else has access to the safe that we know of, therefore Morelli might be trying to pull something. If it was for no other purpose than to buy a bauble to keep Miss Smythe happy, I shall let it go, but you keep your eyes on him as usual."
"Yes, sir."
"And don't forget the errand I want done. You've still got the address?"
"Yes, sir."
I am amused that Jack's inspired choice to write "Gerald Fleming" in his wallet actually turned out useful to keep his cover.
More importantly, we see that Gordy doesn't just work for Morelli. He works for Lebredo too, and it certainly sounds like Lebredo is the more important of the two by far.
Also, what the fuck kind of bauble would cost five thousand dollars in the 1930s?? As a reminder that is almost one hundred thousand dollars today.
As the man leaves, Jack recognizes him as the poker player who'd invited him to join the game a few chapters back. We're informed that Lucky is a very big guy, Jack's height, with Gordy's weight, none of it muscle.
Spywork over, Jack decides to hang around and see if he can meet up with Bobbi. He cleans up the makeup as best as he can, then notes that he can hear Bobbi in the next room. He calls out to her from Morelli's bathroom.
This is a scene that could have gone badly, but fortunately, Bobbi isn't frightened. When Jack identifies himself she "visibly relaxed, then tensed again" to demand to know what he's doing there, and warning him that Slick will kill him.
There's a cute point where she asks him why he doesn't come out of the bathroom, and laughs when he says he's bashful. (It's the truth, but it's more that he's trying to avoid the mirror.)
Morelli hadn't told Bobbi that he'd "killed" Jack, so Jack spins it as though he and Morelli are working things out. He asks her to turn off the light, and he comes out of the room. I like this beat here:
She was halfway across the room and had to stop, uncertain in the dark. Her arms were crossed, hands gripping the elbows hard as she looked in my general direction. If she was afraid, I could easily change her mind, but that would have been a cheat, and I hate cheats, so I held back and let her decide what to do. I already knew what I wanted to do. Dressed in something white with simple clinging lines and silver combs in her hair, she was unsettling and inspiring.
This is the second time that Jack notes that he could use his power on her, but doesn't. On one hand, it's a little creepy that he even thinks about it. But well, he's right. And given the general non-consent overtones in almost every other piece of vampire literature that comes to mind, I think I'd rather have a protagonist that emphasizes that he believes in consent.
Which is even more important in the next part:
"Is a night with me part of the deal?" She had no illusions of her effect on men. She took it for granted in the same way other people breathe. Her question also left me fairly shocked.
"Good God, does he make you—"
Her jaw lifted and set, taking the wind out of me.
"I'm sorry—I—Slick knows nothing about me being here. I think maybe I should go now."
"You really would leave, wouldn't you?"
"Very reluctantly. I'm here because I wanted to see you again. I was going to wait in the downstairs hall after I—"
"And get spotted by half the staff? That makes a lot of sense."
"So who ever said I had brains?"
"But how did you get here? He must know."
I shook my head, forgetting she couldn't see me.
"You're doing this just to see me?"
"Do you want me to stay?"
She considered the question carefully. That was something else I liked about her, the way she listened and weighed facts, an ability no doubt sharpened by living close to people like Morelli. "Only if we lock the door."
Poor Bobbi. She really is in a nightmare situation. We start to see why Jack is so attractive to her. He's a little clumsy about it. He's certainly presumptuous. But it seems like she doesn't know a lot of men who would be willing to go away if she wanted them to. And given that it sounds like Morelli uses her as a commodity, I can understand why the idea of someone impulsively risking his life to see her would be attractive.
Jack suggests they forget Morelli and asks her what she would like? From Bobbi's reaction, that's not a question she gets asked often. She notes that he's different. And he agrees.
So, well...things start heating up. Bobbi doesn't want to do anything in Morelli's room, and leads Jack to hers. Then, well, we get a little bit of an idea of how vampiric sex actually works. Jack notes that his basic method is the same, and that he hadn't ever gotten complaints, but the culmination is a bit different. Basically: sex bite. CHOMP.
We're told that this act isn't remotely like feeding for a vampire, which is good to know. Then there's some cuddling, which is briefly interrupted by a call from the stage manager: Bobbi had missed a performance. Oops. She claims she was sick.
So understandably, Bobbi now has a few questions. Jack asks if it mattered, as long as it felt good. Hm, I think it kind of does, dude. You really should ASK before chomping. Fortunately, Bobbi liked it. It felt good, and she'd like to feel it again. Jack notes that it might not be good for her right now, but he'll come back tomorrow.
How long does it take to regenerate blood? She asks about Morelli, and Jack kinda sorta offers to kill him. But the relationship between Morelli and Bobbi is more complicated than that, as she notes, they use each other to get what they want. She's the top singer in a nightclub, and gets a spot on a radio broadcast once a week. Morelli makes sure she meets the right contacts, and when he gets tired of her, she intends to use them to move up in show business.
Jack asks what she'll do if something happened to Morelli, and she notes there are always men like him. Her first boyfriend was abusive, and while Morelli roughhouses, he doesn't hit her. She's downright terrified of Lucky Lebredo. She compares him to a big spider, watching things. She notes that he hasn't laid a hand on her, but he watches.
Jack asks her about Gordy. She's not supposed to know, but she's heard things: basically Lebredo is blackmailing him, though she doesn't know with what. (There's a reference to a scandal regarding a man named Huberman who was exposed having an affair with a blond who wasn't his wife, and also wasn't a woman. Bobbi rules out the idea that Gordy is gay though.)
Jack suggests that it might be time she left Morelli, but Bobbi says she will when she's ready. She does NOT want an overprotective boyfriend. Jack takes her at her word, acknowledging that it's none of his business.
Bobbi starts to ask Jack about his life story, and it seems like Jack is about to tell her (he starts to compare himself to a one-legged jockey and mentions a "condition"), but they're interrupted by Gordy shooting the lock off Bobbi's door. Unfortunately, they'd been too caught up in their conversation to hear him come in. Oops.
Jack isn't willing to risk Bobbi getting hurt if he tries to fight back, so he's caught. But he's not without options. When he steps into the light, Gordy lowkey freaks out long enough for Jack to vampire-command him to run. Jack kisses a very perplexed Bobbi goodbye and goes after him. Gordy radios the Elvira and fills Morelli in. Morelli, to his credit, is furious that he just left Bobbi there and orders him to go back and get Bobbi out and bring her to the yacht. Hm, maybe not to his credit. Both Jack and I think this sounds bad.
Jack warns Bobbi, but she's not concerned. She can handle Morelli and she's not going to ditch Jack. She does warn him that if Gordy's coming back, he should leave. They won't hurt her, but they WILL kill Jack. She shoves Jack into a closet just as Gordy returns.
So anyway, Jack follows Gordy and Bobbi to the boat. Jack has real issues with running water, if you recall, but he powers through, clinging to Gordy in mist form.
We get to see Bobbi and Morelli's conversation. Bobbi plays him like a fiddle. She acts like Morelli should already know what's going on, and that Jack had said that Morelli sent him. When he asks if she screwed Jack, she plays disappointed and disgusted and blames Gordy for interrupting her. Morelli sends her off to the cabin, and gets an update from Gordy.
Gordy is very confused as he saw Jack/Gerald dead very recently. He notes that when he found them, Jack and Bobbi were in bed together, but Jack still had his pants buttoned. He says that Jack's eyes were solid red. Morelli decides that they'll stay on the boat tonight after they close the club and look into everything tomorrow.
Morelli goes back to Bobbi, acting jealous. She notes that it was his idea that they slept separately, and he's had a dozen other girls and she never said a word. He notes that if he wanted two at once, she would have joined in because she likes her job. She laughs at him.
Things do seem to get a little more serious when he accuses her of necrophilia, and spills that Jack had been shot dead two days ago. He starts to get rough with her, and Jack intercedes...sort of. The cold air freaks Morelli out and he starts ranting at "Fleming" to come out. He rambles, correctly, that the cold air is a sign that Jack is watching and that he doesn't like Morelli touching Bobbi.
They start arguing again, and Jack realizes that this is ritual for them, leading into rough sex. Jack is not exactly happy about the situation, but he accepts that it's not really his business as long as Morelli isn't really hurting Bobbi.
This is an interesting section. Also an uncomfortable one. I'm not really sure what to make of the idea that Jack is leaving Bobbi in this situation in which the consent is...well, very dubious. It's unclear that Bobbi can say no here. Slick Morelli is a very violent man, and she's on a boat, surrounded by his men.
At the same time though, Bobbi's made it clear that she doesn't want to be rescued. And I wouldn't be comfortable with Jack ignoring her wishes and just carting her off either.
I do rather like that we have a love interest who is very clearly NOT a virgin or sexually inexperienced, who in fact has a sexual relationship with another man that she doesn't actually want to stop. She is attracted to Jack, she wants to have sex with him again, but she isn't interested in being his monogamous girlfriend. And if Jack wants a relationship with her, he has to do it on her terms. And I also like that while Jack is clearly uncomfortable with Bobbi's relationship with Morelli, he seems to be motivated less by jealousy than by concern. It's a very dangerous game, after all.
He doesn't judge her though. And I really do like that. Her past, and really her present, is none of his business unless she wants it to be. And he accepts that.
Anyway, Jack tries to leave, but rematerialization is really difficult. Being in the cabin is also difficult, because Jack definitely knows he was there before. ALSO, Jack is starting to feel some residual guilt for drinking Bobbi's blood. He wonders if it makes him a monster.
Jack manages to get the safe open and gets some unlabeled envelopes for Escott. Unfortunately, he gets caught by Gordy and Morelli, who has apparently finished his business with Bobbi. (...that seemed fast. No wonder Bobbi was so interested in Jack.)
Both Gordy and Morelli are pretty freaked out. Moreso, when they empty Jack's pockets and find his REAL wallet. The one that should be on the bottom of the lake. (Jack realizes that he should have left it at home. Oops). Morelli freaks the fuck out, and orders Gordy to shoot. Gordy does. Jack tries to dodge but still gets a bullet through the skull. This actually isn't a problem, what IS a problem is that the force carries Jack forward, head first against the corner of a wooden table.
Jack can't move, and they think he's dead. Worse, Bobbi comes out, just to see Jack, apparently dead, on the floor. Gordy and Morelli order her to leave (Gordy is nicer about it, saying that she should leave so she doesn't have to see), and she does.
Meanwhile Jack is drifting, thinking of Bobbi and then thinking of Maureen. Which implies that next chapter will be flashback city. Yay!
Pardon the experimentation with formatting. For whatever reason, it's gotten hard for me to discern the bold face from the not-bold face on my computer monitor. So I'm seeing if there are other ways to highlight direct quotes.
So the chapter starts with Escott bringing Jack a car. We see Jack's unique facility with words at work again as he notes that the car only has "a few dimples on the metal to show that it was no virgin". Per Escott, it had been a bit difficult without Jack there to sign things, but thanks to Jack's money, the dealer made do.
Jack and Escott discuss the logistics of getting Jack an Illinois driver's license. Escott suggests that he could go in as Jack, since they are of similar build and features, and he could forge Jack's name. Jack notes that Escott seems "wistfully eager to break the law on my behalf". Escott compares it to going to a speakeasy during prohibition: fun but you don't want to get caught.
Escott does up Jack's stage makeup again. He's aiming for more gruesome to allow for decomposition. There's some banter about taking a picture and seeing whether or not Jack's image can be recorded on film. And Jack goes off to terrorize a gangster some more.
This time, Jack decides to go in through Morelli's bathroom. Apparently, he can levitate in mist form, which is very convenient. He starts off with a few summer camp pranks: turning the taps on the tub and flushing the toilet. As Morelli goes in to investigate, Jack slips past him and opens the drawers of his bureau. Obviously, Morelli doesn't see anyone, which doesn't help his nerves.
There's more playing around in the closet, bathroom and bedroom. Jack gets a little more aggressive: turning off the light and tripping Morelli in the dark. Then of course, he does a dramatic appearance: nose-to-nose with the poor violent asshole, who faints "like some fragile heroine from a silent movie".
Jack uses that time to trash the room: pulling out drawers, ripping out bedclothes, knocking over suits. When Morelli's men come in, led by the man mountain Gordy, Morelli doesn't have an answer for them. Morelli is pissed off, and he wants Gordy looking into both Fleming brothers, especially the younger one.
Morelli takes a drive to the waterfront. Jack hitches a ride and sees him row out to his boat, the Elvira. Jack makes sure to stand in his line of sight to fuck with him a little more, before disappearing again. Jack heads back to the Nightcrawler to eavesdrop on Gordy.
There's an interesting bit here that I think I mentioned in a previous review: Jack starts getting a little nervous when Gordy starts asking about Jack Fleming as well as Gerald Fleming. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to turn up any familiar names. But it does make me wonder. We've seen that Jack is perfectly happy to use an alias. He instantly adopted one after coming back as a vampire. So the fact that the Chicago Mob has Jack's real name is probably a hint that whatever happened was sudden.
Fortunately Gordy doesn't get a whole lot, just that Jack's an out-of-work journalist who left to look for greener pastures, a description that Jack finds a little depressing. He admits that for once, it's actually good to be undistinguished.
A new player enters the game though. A "Mr. Lebredo", who speaks to Gordy like a superior to a subordinate. I think the name was mentioned earlier, in conjunction with Morelli's, but there wasn't much said about him. Here, though, he seems a lot more formidable.
Gordy updates Lebredo, who has a healthy amount of skepticism. And the exchange is interesting:
"Anything?"
"No, Mr. Lebredo." Gordy sounded respectful rather than neutral this time Mr. Lebredo lowered himself into a chair with a sigh. "What did Miss Smythe have to say about him?"
"She said he couldn't sleep and that he kept the lights on all night."
"And you?"
"He's been acting pretty strange."
"So we've all noticed," he said dryly.
The phone rang. "Yeah? Go on… all right." He hung up. I'm beginning to think that the kid just dropped outta the sky. No one's heard of him."
"If his name really was Gerald Fleming."
"Slick said he was a younger version of the other guy. There's no doubt it was the brother and he was a green as a stick, he even had his name in his wallet. He was just a stupid kid."
"As you say." There was silence for a while. "Fifty-eight hundred was missing from the safe; fifty-eight hundred was what Morelli took from him. No one else has access to the safe that we know of, therefore Morelli might be trying to pull something. If it was for no other purpose than to buy a bauble to keep Miss Smythe happy, I shall let it go, but you keep your eyes on him as usual."
"Yes, sir."
"And don't forget the errand I want done. You've still got the address?"
"Yes, sir."
I am amused that Jack's inspired choice to write "Gerald Fleming" in his wallet actually turned out useful to keep his cover.
More importantly, we see that Gordy doesn't just work for Morelli. He works for Lebredo too, and it certainly sounds like Lebredo is the more important of the two by far.
Also, what the fuck kind of bauble would cost five thousand dollars in the 1930s?? As a reminder that is almost one hundred thousand dollars today.
As the man leaves, Jack recognizes him as the poker player who'd invited him to join the game a few chapters back. We're informed that Lucky is a very big guy, Jack's height, with Gordy's weight, none of it muscle.
Spywork over, Jack decides to hang around and see if he can meet up with Bobbi. He cleans up the makeup as best as he can, then notes that he can hear Bobbi in the next room. He calls out to her from Morelli's bathroom.
This is a scene that could have gone badly, but fortunately, Bobbi isn't frightened. When Jack identifies himself she "visibly relaxed, then tensed again" to demand to know what he's doing there, and warning him that Slick will kill him.
There's a cute point where she asks him why he doesn't come out of the bathroom, and laughs when he says he's bashful. (It's the truth, but it's more that he's trying to avoid the mirror.)
Morelli hadn't told Bobbi that he'd "killed" Jack, so Jack spins it as though he and Morelli are working things out. He asks her to turn off the light, and he comes out of the room. I like this beat here:
She was halfway across the room and had to stop, uncertain in the dark. Her arms were crossed, hands gripping the elbows hard as she looked in my general direction. If she was afraid, I could easily change her mind, but that would have been a cheat, and I hate cheats, so I held back and let her decide what to do. I already knew what I wanted to do. Dressed in something white with simple clinging lines and silver combs in her hair, she was unsettling and inspiring.
This is the second time that Jack notes that he could use his power on her, but doesn't. On one hand, it's a little creepy that he even thinks about it. But well, he's right. And given the general non-consent overtones in almost every other piece of vampire literature that comes to mind, I think I'd rather have a protagonist that emphasizes that he believes in consent.
Which is even more important in the next part:
"Is a night with me part of the deal?" She had no illusions of her effect on men. She took it for granted in the same way other people breathe. Her question also left me fairly shocked.
"Good God, does he make you—"
Her jaw lifted and set, taking the wind out of me.
"I'm sorry—I—Slick knows nothing about me being here. I think maybe I should go now."
"You really would leave, wouldn't you?"
"Very reluctantly. I'm here because I wanted to see you again. I was going to wait in the downstairs hall after I—"
"And get spotted by half the staff? That makes a lot of sense."
"So who ever said I had brains?"
"But how did you get here? He must know."
I shook my head, forgetting she couldn't see me.
"You're doing this just to see me?"
"Do you want me to stay?"
She considered the question carefully. That was something else I liked about her, the way she listened and weighed facts, an ability no doubt sharpened by living close to people like Morelli. "Only if we lock the door."
Poor Bobbi. She really is in a nightmare situation. We start to see why Jack is so attractive to her. He's a little clumsy about it. He's certainly presumptuous. But it seems like she doesn't know a lot of men who would be willing to go away if she wanted them to. And given that it sounds like Morelli uses her as a commodity, I can understand why the idea of someone impulsively risking his life to see her would be attractive.
Jack suggests they forget Morelli and asks her what she would like? From Bobbi's reaction, that's not a question she gets asked often. She notes that he's different. And he agrees.
So, well...things start heating up. Bobbi doesn't want to do anything in Morelli's room, and leads Jack to hers. Then, well, we get a little bit of an idea of how vampiric sex actually works. Jack notes that his basic method is the same, and that he hadn't ever gotten complaints, but the culmination is a bit different. Basically: sex bite. CHOMP.
We're told that this act isn't remotely like feeding for a vampire, which is good to know. Then there's some cuddling, which is briefly interrupted by a call from the stage manager: Bobbi had missed a performance. Oops. She claims she was sick.
So understandably, Bobbi now has a few questions. Jack asks if it mattered, as long as it felt good. Hm, I think it kind of does, dude. You really should ASK before chomping. Fortunately, Bobbi liked it. It felt good, and she'd like to feel it again. Jack notes that it might not be good for her right now, but he'll come back tomorrow.
How long does it take to regenerate blood? She asks about Morelli, and Jack kinda sorta offers to kill him. But the relationship between Morelli and Bobbi is more complicated than that, as she notes, they use each other to get what they want. She's the top singer in a nightclub, and gets a spot on a radio broadcast once a week. Morelli makes sure she meets the right contacts, and when he gets tired of her, she intends to use them to move up in show business.
Jack asks what she'll do if something happened to Morelli, and she notes there are always men like him. Her first boyfriend was abusive, and while Morelli roughhouses, he doesn't hit her. She's downright terrified of Lucky Lebredo. She compares him to a big spider, watching things. She notes that he hasn't laid a hand on her, but he watches.
Jack asks her about Gordy. She's not supposed to know, but she's heard things: basically Lebredo is blackmailing him, though she doesn't know with what. (There's a reference to a scandal regarding a man named Huberman who was exposed having an affair with a blond who wasn't his wife, and also wasn't a woman. Bobbi rules out the idea that Gordy is gay though.)
Jack suggests that it might be time she left Morelli, but Bobbi says she will when she's ready. She does NOT want an overprotective boyfriend. Jack takes her at her word, acknowledging that it's none of his business.
Bobbi starts to ask Jack about his life story, and it seems like Jack is about to tell her (he starts to compare himself to a one-legged jockey and mentions a "condition"), but they're interrupted by Gordy shooting the lock off Bobbi's door. Unfortunately, they'd been too caught up in their conversation to hear him come in. Oops.
Jack isn't willing to risk Bobbi getting hurt if he tries to fight back, so he's caught. But he's not without options. When he steps into the light, Gordy lowkey freaks out long enough for Jack to vampire-command him to run. Jack kisses a very perplexed Bobbi goodbye and goes after him. Gordy radios the Elvira and fills Morelli in. Morelli, to his credit, is furious that he just left Bobbi there and orders him to go back and get Bobbi out and bring her to the yacht. Hm, maybe not to his credit. Both Jack and I think this sounds bad.
Jack warns Bobbi, but she's not concerned. She can handle Morelli and she's not going to ditch Jack. She does warn him that if Gordy's coming back, he should leave. They won't hurt her, but they WILL kill Jack. She shoves Jack into a closet just as Gordy returns.
So anyway, Jack follows Gordy and Bobbi to the boat. Jack has real issues with running water, if you recall, but he powers through, clinging to Gordy in mist form.
We get to see Bobbi and Morelli's conversation. Bobbi plays him like a fiddle. She acts like Morelli should already know what's going on, and that Jack had said that Morelli sent him. When he asks if she screwed Jack, she plays disappointed and disgusted and blames Gordy for interrupting her. Morelli sends her off to the cabin, and gets an update from Gordy.
Gordy is very confused as he saw Jack/Gerald dead very recently. He notes that when he found them, Jack and Bobbi were in bed together, but Jack still had his pants buttoned. He says that Jack's eyes were solid red. Morelli decides that they'll stay on the boat tonight after they close the club and look into everything tomorrow.
Morelli goes back to Bobbi, acting jealous. She notes that it was his idea that they slept separately, and he's had a dozen other girls and she never said a word. He notes that if he wanted two at once, she would have joined in because she likes her job. She laughs at him.
Things do seem to get a little more serious when he accuses her of necrophilia, and spills that Jack had been shot dead two days ago. He starts to get rough with her, and Jack intercedes...sort of. The cold air freaks Morelli out and he starts ranting at "Fleming" to come out. He rambles, correctly, that the cold air is a sign that Jack is watching and that he doesn't like Morelli touching Bobbi.
They start arguing again, and Jack realizes that this is ritual for them, leading into rough sex. Jack is not exactly happy about the situation, but he accepts that it's not really his business as long as Morelli isn't really hurting Bobbi.
This is an interesting section. Also an uncomfortable one. I'm not really sure what to make of the idea that Jack is leaving Bobbi in this situation in which the consent is...well, very dubious. It's unclear that Bobbi can say no here. Slick Morelli is a very violent man, and she's on a boat, surrounded by his men.
At the same time though, Bobbi's made it clear that she doesn't want to be rescued. And I wouldn't be comfortable with Jack ignoring her wishes and just carting her off either.
I do rather like that we have a love interest who is very clearly NOT a virgin or sexually inexperienced, who in fact has a sexual relationship with another man that she doesn't actually want to stop. She is attracted to Jack, she wants to have sex with him again, but she isn't interested in being his monogamous girlfriend. And if Jack wants a relationship with her, he has to do it on her terms. And I also like that while Jack is clearly uncomfortable with Bobbi's relationship with Morelli, he seems to be motivated less by jealousy than by concern. It's a very dangerous game, after all.
He doesn't judge her though. And I really do like that. Her past, and really her present, is none of his business unless she wants it to be. And he accepts that.
Anyway, Jack tries to leave, but rematerialization is really difficult. Being in the cabin is also difficult, because Jack definitely knows he was there before. ALSO, Jack is starting to feel some residual guilt for drinking Bobbi's blood. He wonders if it makes him a monster.
Jack manages to get the safe open and gets some unlabeled envelopes for Escott. Unfortunately, he gets caught by Gordy and Morelli, who has apparently finished his business with Bobbi. (...that seemed fast. No wonder Bobbi was so interested in Jack.)
Both Gordy and Morelli are pretty freaked out. Moreso, when they empty Jack's pockets and find his REAL wallet. The one that should be on the bottom of the lake. (Jack realizes that he should have left it at home. Oops). Morelli freaks the fuck out, and orders Gordy to shoot. Gordy does. Jack tries to dodge but still gets a bullet through the skull. This actually isn't a problem, what IS a problem is that the force carries Jack forward, head first against the corner of a wooden table.
Jack can't move, and they think he's dead. Worse, Bobbi comes out, just to see Jack, apparently dead, on the floor. Gordy and Morelli order her to leave (Gordy is nicer about it, saying that she should leave so she doesn't have to see), and she does.
Meanwhile Jack is drifting, thinking of Bobbi and then thinking of Maureen. Which implies that next chapter will be flashback city. Yay!