“Because we are to have company. A scion of the Naples nest has requested visitation into my territory. Here is your opportunity, darling, to have that question that you have always asked yourself answered.”
“What question?”
Madeline leaned forward and her ever-present smile became unfriendly. “Whether other vampires are like us. Whether I am better or worse than the others of our kind. Whether your destiny is truly tied in blood, or whether others walk different paths.”
A long moment passed, and I knew that I was caught. Madeline knew me too well, and knew all the things that haunted me at night.
“Naples in Florida?” I asked, goading her a little.
“Italy,” she said blandly, not rising to the bait. “He is a descendent of a nest mate of one of my blood siblings. The vampires of the Old World are forced to cast their eyes to the New, and they have dispatched an emissary that hospitality dictates I must welcome.”
“Why are they interested in you?”
“Because, darling, their numbers have dwindled. Few of our young are born, and fewer still survive infancy. Some old ones die with no heir to claim their territories, leaving them in dispute between their neighbors. More perish in those conflicts who cannot be replaced. And yet I sit in a young land with many healthy offspring.” Her smile widened. “Their emissary wishes to learn my secret.”
“Do you have a secret?”
“Of course, my darling.”
“Will you tell it to him?”
“Perhaps.” She laughed. “Though it is unlikely to do him any good. So tomorrow you will return and meet someone who is so distantly related to you that he cannot in any honesty claim a kin tie. I hope that this will be an illuminating experience for you and that”—here she swept a sharp eye over my clothing—“you will endeavor to launder your clothing before you come. There is a stain on your trousers.”
My cheeks heated even as I automatically stepped in to help her get out of her chair. I’m never sure how many of these moments of fragility are acts and how many are the actual weaknesses of her age. I once tried to test that theory and she fell over, leading to a horrible lecture from Chivalry, and the headache of wondering whether she fell over to trick me or fell over because she fell over.
“Now help me downstairs,” she said as I handed her her cane, which was silver with a top knob inlaid with mother-of-pearl. “The cook has made beef bourguignonne.”
My vegetarianism has been a hard sell in this house.
Chapter 3
Madeline’s blood left a certain spring in my step on the drive home, despite my best efforts to ignore it. The enhanced sense of hearing and the rush of predatory instincts had faded almost as soon as I stopped drinking, thankfully, but I was still nervous that it might return. I wouldn’t need to drink human blood until I fully transitioned into a vampire, an event that no one seemed interested in giving me a general estimate on. Prudence rarely deigned to talk to me at all, and Chivalry would only admit that he’d been a lot younger than me when it happened for him. Madeline would just give a very unhelpful cackle. But if I could put it off forever, I would.
Back at home, I staked out space on the sofa and waited for Larry to get home. This wasn’t an aftereffect of the blood—this was an aftereffect of my last credit card bill’s minimum payment nearly clearing out my checking account. I needed this month’s rent payment, and preferably all the money he owed me on top of it. Unlike with a lot of down-and-out postgraduate film students, the option of selling plasma and semen was cruelly withheld from me. The latter was sterile and useless, and the former was not exactly a substance that I could offer the Red Cross with any ethical comfort. After all, a pint of Fort-positive would probably kill anyone who needed a transfusion. I have enough self-loathing in my headspace without asking for extra helpings.
I did manage to confront Larry, but I didn’t even get a satisfactory fight out of it. He was accompanied by an extremely drunk college undergrad, which gave Larry the frustrating high ground of accusing me of being a poor host to our visitor. I didn’t get a dime out of him, and even his empty promises were beginning to sound halfhearted. All I did get was the opportunity to prove my exemplary hosting abilities by cleaning his date’s vomit off the sofa before I went to bed. By that time it was clear that she was feeling well enough to engage in amorous activities with Larry, and I took the precaution of hiding my toothbrush and locking the door to my bedroom. The last time Larry had romanced a drunken eighteen-year-old, she had gone to the bathroom, gotten confused, and tucked herself into my bed. Having just pulled a double shift, I was dead to the world and didn’t wake up, leading the extremely awkward morning-after discussion where I explained to the confused maiden that while she and I had technically just slept together, I wasn’t the person she had had sex with. I did my best to turn it into a teachable moment.
At work the next day, I wasn’t even able to muster the illusion of being a productive employee, much to Jeanine’s frustration. But even when she was yelling directly in my ear, all I could think about was that tonight I was going to meet a new vampire, and maybe even get the opportunity to get real answers to my most pressing questions. I went onto autopilot, pouring coffee and taking money while my brain was miles away.
It wasn’t until I heard a familiar voice that had been sanded down by cheap booze and two decades of unfiltered cigarettes that I blinked and came out of my fog. The grinning man in his midforties with salt-and-pepper hair who I’d just made change for was Matt McMahon. I apologized, and he laughed, but I felt like absolute shit. Not that that is an unusual state of existence for me.
Matt was my foster father’s old partner. When Brian and Jill were murdered, Matt devoted himself to finding the killer. Given Madeline’s influence in Providence politics, Matt almost immediately found himself stonewalled in the investigation. The police did eventually pin the crime on a homeless man, but Matt never believed it. He was a good enough cop to see all the holes in the story, and be suspicious when the homeless man died of a massive heart attack the same night he delivered his confession. For everyone else the case was closed, but Matt refused to let it rest. He was finally told that he had to either abandon the case or find a new line of work. He turned in his badge and became a private detective.
The one thing Matt had never questioned was my story. Under strict orders from Madeline, I told everyone that I’d been in my room when Jill was attacked, and had hidden under my bed while everything happened. I had only come out when all the noises stopped, and that’s when I found them. I hated lying to Matt, but I did it because now I knew the consequences for telling the truth. Seeing him run down every false lead that he rustled up was better than going to his funeral.
“Late night, buddy?” Matt asked. “You’re working a thousand-yard stare.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m just zoning out here. What’s up?”
“I’ve been staking out a real estate developer, ended up in the neighborhood, wondered if you were free for lunch.”
“Sure, that’s great.” My stomach gave me a fast reminder that I was overdue for a break. “Just give me a second.”
One of Jeanine’s less delightful managerial quirks was her apparent feeling that the federal regulation that employees on an eight-hour shift are required to be given a food break is designed solely to ruin her business. She had an annoying habit of never reminding us to take our breaks, hoping that we’d get so busy that we’d forget entirely. By the time I’d reminded her about how I was owed one and got out the door, Matt was waiting by his car and, from the expression on his face, had just taken a big swig of his coffee.
“I won’t feel bad if you dump it,” I said, shoving papers and files over so that I could get into the passenger seat. Matt drove an old Buick that was about the size of a boat, with beat-up leather seats and probably twelve different types of fungus brewing in the fast food graveyard that built up in the floor space of the backseat. Matt had an actual office
that he shared with two Realtors and a home decorator, but no one would ever guess it from his car, which was loaded down with almost all his files and paperwork, making it basically his office on wheels.
“I miss your job at the bakery,” Matt said. “The scones were fantastic.”
“All the leftover Danishes weren’t enough of a trade-off for getting up at three a.m.” Two months on that schedule had left me feeling more like a vampire than usual, and despite the perks, I’d quit. Regular exposure to sunshine was now one of my few job requirements.
“God, and the cannoli,” Matt reminisced as he pulled into traffic. “I gained like ten pounds from that alone.”
“Dude, where? Your arms?” Matt’s suits might look like he pulled them from Goodwill boxes, but he does serious lifting and cardio. I asked him about that once, and he said that sneaking around trailing people resulted in a lot of backyard encounters with dogs and irate boyfriends. “Anyway, what’s up with the developer? Cheating?”
“The wife thinks so, and I’ve got about six more days on payroll just to be sure, but check this out.” Matt rooted around in a stack of file folders balanced precariously on his dash, and handed me one. Years of being handed innocuous folders just like this, however, had left me cautious.
“What’s in here? I’m about to eat, you know.”
“Nothing bad, just open it.”
“There’s no sex-swing bullshit, is there? Because that’s what it was the last time you said ‘not bad.’”
“No, no.”
“No furries either. I had nightmares for a week.”
“Jeez, you have no trust, Fort. Just open it.”
I eased it open, ready to slam the folder shut again if it was something awful, then just stared.
“That’s…um…”
“Live-action role play, yeah. I got those photos two nights ago in the park.”
“And your guy is…”
“The one dressed up like the wizard.”
I peered closer. Not really what middle-aged accountant-looking guys usually were up to in one of Matt’s folders. “What’s up with the tennis balls?”
“He was yelling ‘lightning bolt, lightning bolt’ every time he threw one. It was frickin’ awesome.”
“The wife has no idea he does this?”
“Apparently not. She was sure he was doing his secretary. Guess cheating comes in many forms, and not just drunk sorority girls or people dressed up like teddy bears.”
I gagged a little. “Please don’t mention the furries.”
Matt just chuckled, then flipped on his turn signal. We pulled into the lot of one of those great corner greasy spoon diners where the parking spots are still sized for finned Chevys from the ’sixties and the waitresses all look like they miss the days where they could work with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouths. I raised my eyebrows when Matt snagged another file from the dash pile.
“Is this a working lunch, Matt?” I asked. I’ve posed as Matt’s son, nephew, employee, coworker, and, on one never-to-be-discussed-again occasion, boyfriend. I guess that one of the drawbacks of knowing a private detective is that he’s almost never fully off the clock, and a lot of what he does involves subterfuge. Matt’s dating life was pretty much a wasteland, so whenever he needed a second person on a job, I tended to be tapped.
“No, the owner is a client. I just have to drop off some updates. Grab a booth. This won’t take long.”
The whole place had that kind of look that could’ve passed for deliberately retro, but it hadn’t been cleaned in so long that it was obviously original. I’m not sure why, but these kinds of health-code-flaunting places always seem to make the best burgers. I had to engage in a brief tussle with my principles when the kitchen door flipped open and I got a full whiff of the sizzling, grease-soaked meat. My stomach gave a very audible rumble.
While Matt went straight into a back room that said EMPLOYEES ONLY, I sat down in a booth that was probably bright aqua once but that a thousand shifting butts had worn down to a mix of dull aqua and powder blue. It was one of those squeaky vinyl ones, repaired in a few points with duct tape.
I flipped through the menu, looking for something vegetarian that could be a worthy trade-off for the burger that my saliva glands were craving. Since this place probably hadn’t changed its menu since Eisenhower was president, that was a tough task.
Matt’s definition of “won’t take long” is pretty elastic, so I was surprised when he dropped into the booth before I’d even gotten through the list of hot dog combinations.
“That really was quick,” I said.
Matt grunted and pulled out a menu. “Not much to say.”
I glanced over at him again. His mood looked a lot gloomier than it had in the car, and he was tapping one hand against the table as he paged through the menu.
“What’s this case about?” I asked.
Matt’s mouth thinned, and for a minute I thought he wouldn’t tell me, but then he shrugged and pushed the folder across the table.
“Owner’s daughter. Senior in high school. Told her parents she was going out to a party one night. Never arrived there, never came home. Cops thought it looked like she ran off with her boyfriend, but the family always maintained that she must’ve been kidnapped.” Matt’s voice was clipped and professional, very Joe Friday. Just the facts, ma’am.
“How long ago?” I flipped open the file and my jaw dropped when I saw the photo, which featured some extreme Farrah Fawcett hair.
“’Seventy-seven,” Matt said blandly.
The waitress chose that moment to come over, plopping glasses down and filling them with water. With her frizzy, overdyed hair, wide hips, and tendency to call both of us “honey,” she matched the diner. I liked having waitresses like her—her smile was forced, and she was probably as tired as she looked, but she had the menu completely memorized, and she didn’t even have to bother to write our orders down.
Matt ordered a bacon burger with all the fixings, while I settled on a grilled cheese sandwich with extra fries on the side.
“You’re still sticking with the no-meat thing, huh?” Matt shook his head. “Once a girl cheats on you, I’d say you should feel free to get some sausage of your own. No pun intended on that one.” Matt wasn’t a fan of Beth. He thought about it for a second, then amended, “No implications either. What’s the female equivalent of sausage? Skirt steak? Hamburger patty?”
“It’s not for her anymore,” I said, brushing the topic off. “But this missing girl. Nineteen seventy-seven? So she’d be…?”
“Fifty-three this year, yeah.” Matt took a swig of his water.
I blinked, feeling blank and uncertain. “They’ve been looking for her the whole time?”
“Since the day she didn’t come home. Police poked around for about two months because the parents kept calling, but that was it.”
“How long have you been on it?”
“The parents hired me on about ten years ago.”
I stared at Matt for a long second, surprised. I’d thought I knew what his job was like, with a lot of time spent in public offices tracking down people’s paper histories, and even more time spent sitting in his car trying to see if someone was cheating, but he’d never told me about this or anything like it. The only lost thing he’d ever mentioned was pets or the occasional piece of artwork that he’d been hired to hunt down.
“Have you found anything?” I asked cautiously.
Matt shook his head. “I told the parents when they hired me that we’d probably never know anything. The trail has been cold too long, and if she was still out there she would’ve found a way to contact them by now, if that’s what she wanted. In all likelihood, she died years ago.”
“So why are you looking?” I asked. “Is it the money?” I knew that there’d been a few times when Matt had ended up living out of his office because he couldn’t afford an apartment.
“Nah, I stopped charging them years ago. Told them they were
wasting their money. We ended up agreeing that they’d comp me meals in exchange for me keeping up with it. It’s not that much, really. I keep an eye on morgues, halfway houses. Sometimes if I’m talking with working girls or druggies, I’ll flash her photo, see if anyone recognizes it. Run Web searches for her name every now and then. Whenever I’m out of town I’ll stop by the local police station, ask around.”
That didn’t sound like not much to me, but the waitress came by and set a huge plate of food in front of each of us. Matt took a big bite out of his burger, and I gnawed away at some fries for a second, thinking about everything.
We ate in silence for a few minutes before I finally asked my question. “So, why keep looking?”
Matt lifted his eyebrows. “She’s their kid, Fort. They’re never going to stop until they have an answer.”
“Not them, you. She’s not your kid, and you don’t know her. You’re not getting paid for this.” Matt looked annoyed, and I rushed to explain. “I’m not trying to be a jerk and say you shouldn’t. I just really want to understand.”
Matt chewed for a long second, considering. “It’s like this,” he said finally, speaking in a low, tight voice. “When I was a cop, I saw a lot of really bad stuff. People whose kids or parents just disappeared one day, never to be seen again. Or someone was murdered, and we never really found out why.” We very carefully didn’t look at each other for that, because I knew he was talking about Jill and Brian. “And you could see how it just tore people’s lives apart. We’d look for a while, but eventually the brass would sit you down and say that it wasn’t going anywhere, and that you had to move on to something else. Now, though, I don’t have anyone saying that I can’t keep looking, and I always think to myself, what if I stopped and I could’ve actually found something if I just kept on it? Give someone answers, give some closure, or maybe even bring someone home who might not get there if I wasn’t there to help. And once I think that, I feel responsible, like I have to keep going.” Matt gave a small shrug, then an uncomfortable smile. We usually didn’t get this deep. “I’m starting to feel like I’m in a chick flick, all this feelings shit, Fort. We’re going to have to start talking about baseball.”
Generation V Page 5