by Barb Hendee
“Okay,” she said, glancing at her bag with her cell phone inside. She wished she knew more about the situation. Her experience with the socially affluent was pretty limited. Before picking up the bag, she turned to Philip. “Do you know…I mean, what exactly are Christian and Ivory doing there? Why would someone like Vera Olivier invite them to come and stay at her mansion and let them use it as a base to hold séances?”
He unbuttoned his long coat, dropped it on a chair, and unstrapped his machete. “As an attraction to others of her class,” he said. “She’s probably a widow, lonely, with few attractions of her own. But now she’s the toast of the town, with other rich friends banging on her door. Christian needs access to the wealthy. She provides it. He provides company and entertainment for her.”
Wade was listening with an intense expression. “So…Christian and Ivory are basically high-paid companions?”
Philip nodded. “In a way. It sounds like they earn much of their own money, but they owe their position to Vera. They’ll need to keep her happy.”
“Huh,” Eleisha said thoughtfully. What an odd arrangement. But at least she had a better idea of the situation now. Reaching down into her bag, she pulled out her cell. “Seamus, what’s the number?”
He wasn’t looking well at all, and as this soon as this phone call was over, she was sending him home.
He gave her the number, and she punched it in.
After three rings, a prim-sounding male voice answered. “Ms. Olivier’s residence. How may I help you?”
Suddenly Eleisha’s mind went blank. He sounded like a butler of some kind…and so superior!
“May I please speak to Mr. Lefevre?” she asked.
The line was quiet for just a second. “Mr. Lefevre does not accept calls.”
Grasping for anything, anything at all, she blurted out, “Tell him I know Julian Ashton. He’ll want to speak to me.”
This was a gamble. Threatening Christian with Julian’s name would hardly earn his trust, but she couldn’t think of anything else to get him to come to the phone.
Another quiet second passed. “Wait one moment.”
Relief flooded her stomach, but it vanished when a voice with a thick French accent came on the line and said, “Who is this?”
Again, she was at a loss. This was just all happening too fast. “I’m a friend,” she said. “I’m like you. I’m here in Seattle with Philip Branté. He’s standing right beside me. We need to speak with you, in person.”
“With Philip…” The shock in his voice was profound, but then he trailed off and his voice dropped low. “Whoever you are, stay away from me. Do not call this number again or I’ll have you traced and arrested. If you come near me or this house, I will have you arrested. Do not call here again.”
Click.
He’d hung up.
She looked at her cell, then at Wade, and shook her head. “He told me not to call again. I don’t know what to try next.”
It wasn’t as if they were a crack investigative team with a plan B ready at hand. They had a tendency to do almost everything by the seat of their pants.
But of them all, Seamus seemed the most frustrated. His eyes narrowed. “I might have an idea,” he said.
They all turned to him.
“While I was there tonight,” he said, “I heard that Vera’s arranged for another séance tomorrow. I need to go to Portland now and be near Rose, but I’ll come back tomorrow night. If Christian wants to call up a ghost, maybe we should give him a ghost. Maybe we should keep on giving him a ghost at his fancy little parties until he agrees to talk to you.”
Eleisha shook her head in confusion, but Seamus just smiled.
Less than an hour later, just before dawn, Philip was covering the windows of the suite’s one bedroom with spare blankets, making sure no light would come in. Out in the main room, he could hear Eleisha speaking softly to Wade.
“Be sure to order yourself something to eat,” she was saying. “You’re so good about feeding the animals, but sometimes you forget to feed yourself.”
“I will.”
“You’ll be all right here on the couch?”
“I’m fine, Eleisha. Go to bed.”
Her light footsteps approached, and she came inside and closed the bedroom door. Philip turned to her. She was still wearing the same long skirt and little red T-shirt, and this struck him as the only proof that just a single night had passed since she’d walked out to find them arguing over the fate of Mr. Boo.
So much had happened.
He dropped into a chair, took off his boots, and pulled his shirt over his head. Then he watched her go to the bed. She seemed so small and fragile. Her mass of dark blond hair fell in a somewhat tangled mess all the way down her back and over her shoulder. She tried pushing some of it out of her face.
No one in his memory had ever loved him, cared for him, looked at him the way she did. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if that ever changed.
“I’m too tired to bother with a nightgown,” she said, but she seemed to just be filling the silence.
Standing up, he moved to join her and sat down on the bed, scooting backward to lean against the pillows at the headboard. All night long, he’d felt ready to explode, and he’d kept it inside. Now he couldn’t wait any longer.
“Look at me,” he said.
She was sitting on the bed, taking off her sandals, and she jerked slightly in surprise, turning her head to look at him.
He’d wanted to catch her in a moment of surprise, off guard, and he locked her eyes with his, seeking, searching for any hint of revulsion over what she’d seen in his mind earlier. He couldn’t stand the sight of himself like that…screaming, mad, covered in blood. How could he expect her to stand it? To see him the same way now?
“What?” she asked instantly, crawling closer. “What’s wrong?” But then she just seemed to know. “Oh, Philip,” she said. “Everything’s all right.”
Leaning in, she pressed her mouth against his, and he was too overwrought, too relieved, to even kiss her back. Instead, he grabbed her, using both his arms to hold her down against his chest.
Maybe it was all right. Maybe she honestly didn’t see him any differently. He found that hard to believe, but it was possible.
“Too tight,” she murmured.
The sun must be rising, as her eyelids were fluttering. He lessened his hold just slightly but kept her pinned against his chest.
“Sleep now,” he said.
chapter five
The following night, Julian landed in Seattle a few hours past dusk. He’d been unable to arrange a flight out of Cardiff the night before, so he’d had no choice to wait. Fortunately, traveling west, he was moving backward in time, and he’d managed to catch an early flight out of Wales, landing with nearly a whole night ahead of him in Seattle.
As a result, he was not too displeased at the one-night delay. Eleisha certainly couldn’t have accomplished much yet either.
After taking a taxi to the Grand Hyatt on Pine Street, he checked into his room quickly and took his own luggage up to the fifth floor. He hadn’t even bothered reserving a suite and just took the first room he was offered. He didn’t care about accommodations on this trip.
Using his key card, he stepped inside and barely glanced around. The room was mundane but serviceable, decorated in cliché shades of tan, brown, and burnt orange. A sliding glass door near a small desk provided a view of the city lights. He paid no attention to the view. Instead, he dropped his suitcase and the long cardboard box containing his sword onto the bed.
“Mary,” he ordered, “come here now.”
Since he had brought her over from the gray plane, he had the power to call her to his side whenever he wanted.
The air shimmered and she appeared abruptly, with an almost surprised expression at having been pulled so suddenly from wherever she’d been. But she recovered quickly and cocked one transparent eyebrow.
“You rang?” she asked dryly.
He’d have given almost anything to strike her right then, but he kept his voice controlled. “Do you have an exact location yet?”
“For who?”
Anger flowed through him, and he clenched his jaw, but she just kept talking.
“You mean Christian?” she asked. “No, you didn’t tell me to locate him. I figured you’d want to me to stay on Philip and Eleisha. They’re over at the Renaissance Hotel on Madison…which is kind of close if Seamus decides to come back and do a search for you.”
That got his attention. “What? Where is Seamus? I thought he’d be exhausted by now.”
“He is. Eleisha sent him home.”
Some of his anger faded. Perhaps she’d been right to stay on top of Eleisha.
“Find Christian,” he said coldly. “Now.”
She shrugged. “That was my plan as soon as you got here and I filled you in.” She started to dematerialize, but he stopped her. “Wait.” He was hungry and couldn’t hold off another night. “I may be going out. If you come back and I’m gone, just wait for me here. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Going out?” she asked. “Where? I thought we were going to get this job done tonight.”
The urge to strike her flooded back. Who did she think she was? She was his servant.
“Find Christian,” he said.
Glaring at him, she blinked out.
He stood there a moment, trying to calm himself. Feeding would help. With that thought, he broke open the long cardboard box, took out his sword, strapped it to his belt, and buttoned his long black coat over the top.
Then he left his room, took the elevator down, and headed back outside. He’d never hunted in Seattle before, but he’d memorized a layout of the city, and he didn’t need a taxi. From Pine Street, it was an easy walk to the Elliott Bay waterfront. Water was always the best place to dump a body.
Earlier, he’d spotted a ferry terminal on his map of the city, so he made his way in that direction, walking down the dark streets ignoring everyone around him. None of the homeless people sitting on corners asked him for spare change.
He kept moving toward the bay, but as he approached the water, he stayed on the outskirts of the ferry terminal. He’d read that several arrivals and departures ran all the way through midnight, and he had no desire to find himself among a line of slowly moving cars. However, all such places were built organically over time, and the outskirts always contained old docks and piers and nooks and crannies and foolish people walking alone in the darkness.
That had not changed in a hundred years.
Once he’d reached a place that seemed isolated enough and yet was still close to a concrete overhang above the bay, he kept to the shadows but glanced to the right upon hearing voices.
“No!” a girl was shouting angrily. “I’m not just going back to your place again. You said we were going to do something tonight.”
Julian focused, and through the darkness, he could just make out two people facing each other in an argument. His sight sharpened. A young man in a jean jacket had hold of a girl’s arm. “Jesus, Brittney, are you going start that again? I told you I don’t have any money. What is it you want to do?”
She jerked her arm away. “Nothing!” she shouted at him, walking away. “Just go home.”
She was walking straight toward Julian.
The young man started after her, and then he stopped. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She didn’t answer and kept walking, pounding the concrete with angry steps. There was no one else in sight, and the young man turned away, going in the other direction.
Julian slipped between two shabby buildings to wait. His routine was nearly always the same. He varied it only slightly based on the situation, but he often hunted near water—a river or the sea. Waiting there in between the buildings, he almost allowed her to walk past, and then he turned on his gift.
Fear.
Waves of fear flowed outward, surrounding her, engulfing her.
He could see her out there, and she stopped, her eyes widening.
“In here,” he said.
The girl turned her head toward him. She looked about sixteen, wearing boots and a short tank-style dress. She was slightly heavy, with dark, curly hair. She wore too much makeup, which he didn’t like. It tasted bad if he got any of it in his mouth, but at the moment, he was too hungry to care.
“Come in here now,” he said, letting more fear seep out, until she was too terrified not to do as he ordered.
Occasionally, strong-willed people fought him at this point, but she already seemed completely lost in his gift. With her round face twisted in fear, she walked straight to him.
The second she was close enough, he grabbed her arm and jerked her farther into the darkness between the buildings. Then he slammed her up against a wall. Her mouth moved as if to scream, but she was too lost in fear to make a sound. Her expression pleased him.
He didn’t hesitate and bit down hard just below her jaw, holding her tightly while she bucked and struggled. She smelled of cheap perfume and drugstore hair spray.
But the blood tasted good in his mouth, and just as he began to swallow mouthfuls of it, he turned off his gift. He always did at this point, reveling in the feel of his victim’s natural terror as reality set in and she knew she was about to die.
She gasped and struggled harder, trying wildly to push him away, but he was drinking hard and fast, and soon she grew weaker and he was forced to hold her up.
It wasn’t difficult.
He knew that other vampires saw the memories of their victims, pieces of the mortal’s entire life, while feeding. He did not. He had no telepathic ability at all.
Her heart stopped beating, and he regretted the experience being over so quickly, but he felt sated and strong again.
Still holding her up with one hand, he pulled back to look at her. Her throat was torn and her head lolled forward. Blood ran freely down onto her dress. The waves of the bay were strong, with an undertow, so he decided he didn’t need to weight the body.
After wiping his mouth to make sure no traces of blood remained, he looked out to check if the way was clear. Picking her up with one hand, he carried her rapidly to the edge of the concrete overhang. Then he dropped her body into the bay.
Without a glance downward, he turned and headed back toward his hotel. By the time he reached Second Avenue, he’d forgotten what she looked like.
Christian Lefevre stood in Vera Olivier’s sitting room with a glass of red wine in his hand. His wavy, steel gray hair was tucked behind his ears, exposing the gold ring in his ear—a touch of the gypsy for effect. But he was dressed in dark slacks and a black sport coat. As always, his expression was carefully constructed to show a mix of compassion and mysterious passivity.
The normal routine was for Vera to serve any guests a lavish dinner in the main dining room and then bring them in here, where they would finally be joined by Christian and Ivory—thus building upon any expectations or anticipation.
Christian had walked into the room only a few moments before, but he’d already managed to do a surface read of the client’s thoughts, and he was bored before the séance even started.
Tonight’s guest was an investment banker named Jonathon Renault, who’d recently taken a business trip to London. His wife had begged him to stay home—saying she had a feeling something bad was going to happen. He’d laughed off her “feeling” and gone off on his trip, and while he was away, she’d been killed in a car accident. Now his guilt was overwhelming him, and he wanted to tell his wife how sorry he was. He wanted to be forgiven.
Just thinking about it, Christian tried to hold back a yawn. It was cliché beyond words. Some mortal charlatan pretending to look into a crystal ball could handle this one.
“Did you enjoy your dinner, Mr. Renault?” Ivory was asking politely. She looked lovely tonight, in a slinky red silk gown that was so long it hid her small feet. No matter what happened, she was always good with the c
lients, her expression carefully maintained. The only time it ever slipped was when she accidently looked at Christian and a hint of poison flowed out.
She hated him.
Since there was nothing to be done about that, he normally didn’t give it much thought, but tonight he was having a hard time keeping his thoughts in check. The phone call from last night was still bothering him—and he knew it would keep bothering him. The shock of a girl’s voice saying she knew Julian Ashton…and that Philip Branté was standing beside her had shaken him to his core. Those nightmares had been over a long time ago.
He wanted them to stay buried.
The more rational part of him knew she had to be lying. Philip could not have survived, and the girl could not be a vampire. To the best of Christian’s knowledge, Julian had killed them all. So who was she? Probably a mortal servant of Julian’s, maybe a housemaid with an eye for an opportunity. She’d learned something, heard something, and she’d probably been planning to blackmail Christian—threaten him with giving his location away to Julian.
But another voice inside him wondered how that was possible. Julian didn’t know his name, didn’t even know he existed, so how could some mortal servant ever have made a connection?
He didn’t know.
“Christian, darling,” Vera said, coming toward him with an empty martini glass in her hand. “Shall we begin?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
Tonight Vera wore an orange caftan with gold inlay and six strings of pearls around her neck. Countless silver bracelets jangled on both her wrists. She was short and stocky, and from his perspective she was overpaying her hairstylist by a wide margin, but she was necessary, and he knew how to keep women like her happy.
Since Mr. Renault had come alone, Vera had engaged her cook and her butler, Simmons—who also functioned as her driver—to fill the necessary spots. The table was so large that at least six people were required to be able to join hands.
“Ivory?” he said.
She tried not to look at him as she turned and glided toward the table, red silk moving about her feet. Perhaps she knew her eyes gave too much away.