Ravenous

by Forrest, V. K.

  Liam tried Anthony’s phone again as he walked. But Anthony didn’t answer. All he got was a recording. He didn’t leave a message. Liam crossed Rose Street and turned onto Geranium. He waved to several residents but didn’t stop to chat with anyone. It just wasn’t his thing, making nice with sept members. Even now, when how they viewed him could make or break him.

  Liam found Gair Kahill at his yellow house, seated on his front porch, in a bright pink Adirondack chair, smoking a pipe and reading the New York Times.

  Gair was the chieftain of the sept. He had led them here to the colonies all those years ago when they’d been forced to flee Ireland, running for their lives from the vampire hunters. Some sept members gave him credit for saving their lives, perhaps their souls. Liam was one of them. It was Gair who had brought them to the conclusion that the only way to regain God’s favor was to protect his humans. Liam adored him. Feared him. Nearly worshipped him.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to come,” Gair said, turning the page of his paper. In his sixties, he wore his gray beard close-clipped, but he needed a haircut. He was wearing a windbreaker that advertised a popular local brewery; Gair was a fan of pop-culture clothing. He had an entire collection of vintage T-shirts.

  Liam walked up the steps. “Good to see you, Gair.” He offered his hand. Gair didn’t get up, but he shook his hand.

  “Sit down.” He pointed to a matching turquoise-colored chair.

  “That’s okay. I’m not staying.” Liam leaned against the porch rail, finishing off his coffee.

  “You come to talk about your hearing or those humans you’ve got at your place?”

  Liam smiled to himself, glancing down at the worn floorboards of the porch. “I came to talk to you about the hearing. Do I have a choice in the matter of the humans?”

  “You do not.” Gair slowly folded his paper, taking care not to wrinkle it. “I don’t have to remind you that keeping humans isn’t permitted during the winter months.”

  The way he said it, it sounded like Liam was keeping pets. “It’s temporary. They’re in a jam. I’m trying to help them out.” He considered how much he should say. “Someone’s after them.”

  “There are police for that sort of thing.”

  Liam lifted his gaze to meet the old man’s. His skin was leathered and wrinkly, but his eyes were the clearest blue. He looked a lot like Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea. “You know that’s not always an option.”

  “She in trouble, or him?”

  “Both, I’m afraid.” He set his coffee cup at his feet.

  Gair thought for a minute. “The dog in trouble, too?”

  Liam grinned. What was with these people and the damn dog? Vampires kept cats and dogs as pets, too. “The dog can hold his own.”

  Gair nodded. “They didn’t rob that minimart in Rehoboth, did they?”

  Liam shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  “Good, because as far as I’m concerned, people like that should go to jail.” He set down his paper, eyeing Liam. “So what kind of trouble they in?”

  “Someone killed the old guy’s brother. Tried to make it look like a robbery but it may have been a hit. Sort of.”

  “So who’s after them?”

  Liam looked away. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  Gair wasn’t buying it. He waited.

  “I think they got caught up in some mafia thing from years back. This old guy called the Weasel got out of jail and is looking for something he misplaced.”

  “So your old guy stole that old guy’s money?”

  “Not really, but that old guy thinks my old guy has his money.” It was the truth. Sort of.

  “And the Asian HF? Where’s she work into the mix?”

  “My old guy’s daughter.”

  Gair sucked on his pipe, then exhaled, and Liam watched the curl of smoke drift heavenward. The smell was pungent and sweet; it smelled of apples. “But they’re not staying long with you?”

  “Not staying long.”

  “Because, you know, it’s going to be added to the Council agenda. An infraction of the rules like this is serious. It has to be added to the agenda.”

  “Right,” Liam agreed. “But that gives me, what, a month by the time it’s actually brought up at Council? They’ll be long gone in a month.” He glanced at the azalea bush that still had a green tint to its leaves. “And my hearing should come before that. Right?” He looked at Gair.

  The older man slid his pipe to the corner of his mouth. It bobbed as he spoke. “Now, that I can’t tell you. Good guess, though.”

  Liam closed his eyes and rubbed them in frustration. “So you don’t know anything? About the investigation? The interview?”

  “No one ever tells me anything. You should talk to Peigi.”

  “I did talk to Peigi. She said I should be patient.”

  “So be patient. Doesn’t look like you’re left with any choice.” He hooked his thumb in the direction of the house. “You got a minute? My garbage disposal is acting up. Could you take a look at it? You know me.” He was already out of the chair. “Never good with mechanical stuff.”

  When the chieftain of your sept asked you to look at his garbage disposal, you looked at his garbage disposal. No matter how good a trained killer you were. “Sure.” Liam pushed off from the porch rail. “I can take a look.”

  When the guy sent to hook up the Internet arrived, it was almost eleven. Mai spotted him out front chatting with her father. Actually, he was talking to Corrato; Corrato was busy watching a squirrel carrying what looked like a piece of a hot dog bun across a branch in the tree nearby.

  Mai stuck her head out of the shop doorway. “You’re here to hook up the Internet, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was a burly guy with a buzz-top haircut, wearing a shirt with the name of the local cable business over the breast pocket. He carried a toolbox in one hand, a new modem in the other. “To tell the truth, I was surprised when I saw the work order.” He followed her inside when she motioned to him.

  “I’m just running upstairs, Babbo,” Mai called from the doorway. “You and Prince sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  “Almost lunch,” Corrato announced. “Could use a pastrami on rye. Antonia’s, one street over from where I grew up in Jersey, always made a good pastrami on rye.”

  “We don’t have pastrami, Babbo,” she said as she followed the workman into the shop. “How about turkey? I can bring you turkey.”

  “I hate turkey.”

  Mai offered the workman a quick smile as she closed the front door. “Sorry. Right up those steps. You were saying you were surprised about the work order?”

  “Yeah, right.” He glanced around. “Wow, this place looks better than it has in years.”

  She smiled, looking at the displays she had arranged: a dining room, a bedroom; she’d even made a work area for Liam with an area rug and an old Victorian desk. “Thanks.”

  “Liam’s not home much. Doesn’t usually have the cable turned on when he does come home.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he went up the steps. “You staying long?”

  “Just a few more days. Top of the stairs, turn right. Living room.”

  “This won’t take me long.”

  Mai waited until he went into the living room and then she entered the kitchen. She was digging in the lunchmeat drawer when the cell phone in her pocket rang. The screen read CALLER UNKNOWN. She debated for a second, then let the phone keep ringing. She set it on the counter, grabbed the turkey and cheese and mayo, and set them beside the phone.

  It stopped ringing. She pulled out a loaf of bread. The phone rang again while she was making two sandwiches. That was one of the weird things about living with a senior citizen; you started wanting lunch before noon.

  The third time it rang, the cable guy stepped into the hall. “Everything okay?” he asked, looking at her.

  She found the question odd for a guy who installed Internet modems. “Yup,” sh
e said. “Fine.” When he went back into the living room, she opened her phone and switched off the ringer.

  As she put away the lunchmeat and mayo, the phone vibrated on the counter. It was still reading CALLER UNKNOWN.

  What if it was Liam? What if he was calling from someone else’s phone?

  But she knew it wasn’t Liam. She knew who it was. Somehow, he’d gotten her cell number.

  The smart thing would have been to let it ring. Better yet, shut it off, but by call five, she was standing there watching the phone vibrate on the counter. She grabbed it and flipped it open.

  She waited. She knew someone was there. “Liam?”

  “No,” said a male voice. It was the same man who had called her at home, then at Suzy’s. It was the Weasel.

  “What the hell do you want?” she demanded softly. She didn’t want the guy in the other room to hear her.

  “You know what I want.”

  “No, no, I don’t,” she said. She wasn’t so much scared as she was angry. And frustrated.

  “The diamonds,” he hissed.

  “I don’t know anything about your damn diamonds! How did you get this number?”

  Getting the awful feeling that someone might be watching her, she drew back the curtain she had hung just the day before. She couldn’t see anyone on the street. Her father was out of view; he was sitting too close to the door for her to see.

  “Your father’s next, you know. Maybe I’ll have better luck getting the information out of him. Maybe not. Good thing is, I know right where to find you, thanks to a little bird.”

  A sound behind Mai made her whip around.

  Chapter 19

  She gave a startled cry as she turned to find not the Weasel standing in the kitchen, as she had feared, but the cable guy. She slapped her chest with her free hand. “Jesus! You scared me.”

  “Sorry.” He eyed the phone. “Everything okay in here?”

  She closed the phone, hanging up on her uncle’s killer, as she tried not to cry. She hadn’t really believed it, not even when she had gone to her house with Liam to look for the diamonds. But Uncle Donato really had stolen diamonds and this guy wasn’t going to go away. And if he could find her unlisted phone number, how long would it be before he found her and her dad?

  “Ma’am?” He was still looking at her. “Should I call Liam?” he asked.

  “No.” She exhaled, trying to slow her pounding heart. “What’s your name?”

  “Shawn. Shawn Hill.”

  “Lots of Hills in this town,” she said. Her thoughts were scattered. She felt like she couldn’t quite catch her breath. It was as if, suddenly, the severity of her situation was just hitting home, after weeks of living it. “A lot of Kahills, too. Weird.” She walked toward him. “I don’t want you to call Liam, Shawn. And I don’t know what you overheard, but you don’t need to tell him any of that, either. You . . . I just need you to install whatever needs to be installed so I can have Internet service and then you need to go.”

  He started back down the hall. “I didn’t hear anything. Swear I didn’t. I only came to the kitchen because I need to follow the original cable wire.” He hooked a thumb behind him. “It goes to another room, probably to the end of the house, and I didn’t want to—you know—walk around the house without your permission.”

  She took another breath and started down the hall. Everything he said sounded perfectly reasonable. Perfectly innocent. So what was it about the guy that made her suspicious? Was he really watching her with too much interest right now, or was it just her imagination? Had the Weasel just spooked her? “Okay. Where do you need to go?”

  “Liam’s bedroom.”

  She glanced back at him, but she didn’t ask him how he knew which room was Liam’s. He said they were friends. Maybe he’d been in the apartment before. She walked past the living room and flipped on the overhead light in the bedroom. It was as austere as it had been when she moved in two weeks ago. The only thing that adorned the walls was a very old, very creepy—in her opinion—crucifix.

  Shawn glanced at the single bed that was neatly made, then at the wall shared with the living room. “Aha.”

  Mai waited at the door, her hand on the doorknob. What was she going to do? She had to get out of Clare Point. She had to run. What other choice did she have? She knew Liam had said he would get to the bottom of this, and she had sort of agreed to let him try. But that was before she found out that her uncle really had stolen diamonds. Or at least the crazy old guy on the phone thought so.

  “See, it goes this way.” Shawn pointed to a thick black cable stapled between the floor and the wall. He followed it from one side of the room to the other. “Shoot.”

  “It goes into the next room, too?” Mai asked, hoping it didn’t.

  “Sorry.” He grimaced and walked out of the bedroom and waited in the hall for her.

  She led him to the end of the hall, pushed open the door to the bedroom she and her dad shared, and let him pass. “How much longer is this going to take?” She had thought about calling Liam, but the thing she needed to do right now was to take a minute and think. If her uncle really had stolen the diamonds, and he hadn’t sold them, then they had to be somewhere. Maybe if she found them, if she gave them back, then the Weasel would just leave her and her dad alone. She knew Liam had said it wouldn’t be all that simple, but he was exaggerating, wasn’t he?

  “You sleep in here?” Shawn asked, walking to the wall this bedroom shared with the other. He had noticed a bra and panties she’d left drying over a chair. She snatched them up and dropped them on the seat so at least they weren’t hanging for the guy to see. It had never occurred to her that the cable guy would need to get into the bedroom.

  Like that mattered right now.

  “Just get the Internet up and running,” she said.

  Shawn followed the cable to the far wall and knelt, examining where it appeared to come into the house. “Here we go. Here’s the problem.”

  She closed her eyes, running her hand over her face. “Look, is this going to take a long time? If it is, I don’t want to hold you up. We can just . . .” She felt so overwhelmed, she wanted to sit on the floor and have a good cry. “I don’t know, reschedule?”

  “Nah.” He got down on his knees. “A simple splice job and that will be it.”

  Mai gazed down the hallway. She’d been making the sandwiches before the Weasel called. She should take a sandwich to her dad.

  What if he called again? Did she answer? Not answer? Did she try to reason with him?

  “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” she said.

  Mai retraced her steps and finished the sandwiches. She took the time to put them on a plate and add some chips.

  When Shawn shouted “almost done” from the living room, she got carrots from the refrigerator, peeled two, and cut them up to add to the plates. Her father liked carrots on his lunch plate. Not in the least bit hungry, though, she left her plate on the counter.

  “All done,” Shawn announced as she headed for the door to go downstairs.

  “Great.” She let him go in front of her. “So . . . you’ll just send a bill?” Liam hadn’t said anything about paying him.

  “Yup.”

  She followed him down the steps and through the shop. “Thanks. Have a good day.”

  “You, too. Tell Liam I said hey.” He held open the front door for her.

  “Thanks.” Mai walked out onto the sidewalk and it took her a second to realize what was wrong. “Babbo?” Holding the plate in both hands, she looked up the street, then down. A block away, she saw the postman pushing his cart, but no sign of her dad.

  “Babbo?” Her heart thudded in her chest. “Prince?” She spun around to Shawn. “My dad. He’s gone.” She didn’t say it, but all she could think of was that while she was on the phone with the Weasel, someone was downstairs, kidnapping her father. Images of her uncle lying in blood on the floor of her shop flashed through her head and a moan escaped her lips
.

  “It’s okay. He’s got to be here somewhere.” Shawn put down his toolbox and took the plate from her hand. “Maybe he just went for a walk.” He set the plate on the little table Liam had put out for her father.

  Her father’s crossword puzzle book and pen were still lying there. “He . . . he didn’t go for a walk.” She shook her head. Her brain was working too slowly. She didn’t know what to do.

  “How about if I take the van and drive around the block? I bet he didn’t get far.”

  “I . . . I have to call Liam.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the crossword puzzle book. How long could he have been gone? She wasn’t upstairs more than half an hour. “I . . . I need my phone.”

  “Okay, you go upstairs and get your phone and call Liam.” He grabbed her arm, forcing her to focus on what he was saying. “I’ll go around the block.”

  “I should look for him,” she said.

  “No. No, you need to stay here. Do you understand?” Shawn had the clearest blue eyes. She hadn’t noticed that before. “You have to stay here,” he insisted, “in case he comes back. You understand?”

  She nodded. “Right.” She turned to run into the shop, then turned back. “His dog. Keep an eye out for his dog. It’s a rat terrier. His name is Prince. My father would never voluntarily leave his dog somewhere, or let him run free.”

  “Prince. Got it.” Shawn picked up his toolbox. “And your dad’s name?”

  “Corrato Ricci.”

  Shawn headed for his van.

  Mai ran into the shop. She considered locking the door behind her. What if the Weasel had taken her dad? What if there was someone lurking around the building, waiting for the cable guy to go so they could snatch her as well? But what if her dad came back? What if he really had just gone for a walk? She wouldn’t want him to return to a locked door.

  She hurried up the steps, through the door, leaving it standing open, and grabbed her phone off the counter. When she opened it to call Liam, she saw that she had missed a call. The caller ID feature listed the number as CALLER UNKNOWN.