Jo was somewhere between asleep and awake, pressing Henri’s arms against her chest as he held her, spooning, from behind. Henri was sleeping a deep, restorative sleep, his body more relaxed than it had been in ages, but Jo was restless as ever, turning one way and then another, dreaming crazy dreams (blood! witches! trophies!), waking for an instant and then smiling contentedly at Henri’s touch, but the closeness of him, and the smell of him, were too stimulating for her to sleep well.
Finally, she woke all the way up, and feeling exhausted, decided to go back to her room for the rest of the night. She kissed Henri on the forehead, brushing some curls back from his face, and seeing that he was out cold, made her way upstairs.
She found a blank scrap of paper in the maelstrom that was his desk, and scribbled a note, just a heart with the words “see you at breakfast”. I’m not really a note-with-hearts kind of woman. Or at least, I didn’t used to be, she thought, smiling to herself.
It was dark outside. The door slid closed behind her and she went down the steps and onto the gravel path, on the way back to the Château and her own bed. The night sky was dark, with clouds covering both the moon and stars, but the path was very light and she could just make it out well enough to see where she was going.
Only the smallest little bit of her attention was directed to where she was going–the rest was wrapped up in Henri, in remembering his forceful and thrilling attention, the beautiful expression in his eyes as he made love to her, and the state of extreme excitement and pleasure he had brought her to.
But this thing with Henri is so far beyond just good sex. I finally get it, she thought, the feel of his arms wrapping her up tight so vivid it felt as though he were right there with her as she walked down the path.
Jo heard a scurrying sound off to the left. She tried to follow what it was but could see nothing except possibly a sort of blur. Which made no sense. So hard to see in this cloudy darkness, she thought. The scurrying sound was diminishing now. It must have been some kind of animal–a marmot, a polecat, a hedgehog–something she’d heard of but never actually seen in real life.
Her thoughts returned immediately to Henri, and as she walked to her room and folded back the crisp covers and slid into bed, he was with her, his ridiculously strong arms holding her, his ridiculously strong legs wrapped around her, and most of all, the thing she’d never experienced until this night–the look on his face that told her how much he loved her and understood her and needed her.
42
Tristan and Roland showed up at the Château in mid-afternoon on the following day. They wanted to start their poking around when the staff was already involved in their morning work and they could slip in with the least amount of hubbub. Tristan had called Angélique to let her know they were coming; she had not sounded exactly welcoming. He pulled up to the impressive gate and pushed the button, waiting for her to buzz them in.
“The day-to-day of police work, it is very dull, isn’t it?” said Tristan, because he did not really expect to succeed at finding Callie Armstrong, and the prospect of searching the entire Château and its grounds was daunting.
“I don’t find it so,” said Roland. “To me, it is like doing a vast jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes you get frustrated trying to find the one piece, that one with a black corner and a sharp point on one side, and you look and look and look, and you’re starting to think it’s lost and you’re never going to find it, or maybe it doesn’t even exist, when all of a sudden one day, the clouds part and you see it gleaming, right in front of you, and from that, the other pieces seem to jump into your hands and the thing is finished and done, with no dangling threads.”
Tristan chuckled. “I think you have a more optimistic view of things than I do. Or perhaps I should say, a neater view.”
He did not park in front of the main entrance but swung the car around to the back, where delivery vans for the kitchen were just pulling out after stocking Marcel’s pantries for the day. They got out, Tristan already stiff and needing to stretch his back, and conferred for a moment.
“All right, as we discussed–let’s split up, and cover as much ground as we can, as quickly as we can. Of course, we don’t know what condition Callie might be in, so keep your mind open and aware. I will take the inside of the Château, and you take the grounds. Be discreet, but don’t feel you have to sneak around and hide if someone approaches. If anyone makes even the slightest attempt to engage you in conversation, draw them out. It may very well be that someone saw something, or knows something, and is looking to get that off his chest. Or her chest.”
Roland smirked. “Yes, chief,” he said.
“You have your stakes, just in case?”
“Yes,” said Roland. “In my backpack, easy to get out in a hurry.”
“I do too,” said Tristan, patting his briefcase. But I don’t expect…it’s 11:30 am, David is more than likely sleeping now."
Roland nodded. Tristan reached out and squeezed Roland’s shoulder briefly, and then Roland took off and disappeared immediately behind some shrubbery.
I am really not going to enjoy this day, Tristan thought to himself, dreading the moment that Roland talked about, when all the threads are tied up. He feared, he very much feared, that when the narrative of Callie Armstrong was clear in all its details, it was not going to be any cause for celebration.
He ducked into the kitchen, giving a short wave to Marcel, whom he had met at a wine tasting in the village several years earlier. Marcel’s face blanched when he saw Tristan, which made Tristan stop short.
“Good morning,” he said. “How are you, how is everything?”
Marcel smiled, but it looked to Tristan as though it cost him quite a lot of effort to manage it. He was devoted to the la Mottes, his family had worked for them for generations and both Henri and David were more than pleasant to work for–generous, open-minded, and appreciative. But even though Marcel was brainwiped by one of them every night before going home to his family in the village, Marcel had not lived among vampires for his whole life without realizing that something was a little off. He was a glorious cook, and no dummy. And he had seen over Henri’s shoulder that the locked refrigerator, the one that necessitated the generator, was full of what looked like bags of blood, with strange labels.
In short, Marcel felt uneasy at seeing Tristan at the Château. Marcel wasn’t sure what it was, but he was fairly certain the la Mottes had something to hide.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, trying to sound offhand.
“One thing about being a gendarme,” said Tristan. “People are either really glad to see you, or you make them nervous.” He chuckled. “Marcel, you look so guilty I half expect to find the family silver stashed in the trunk of your car!”
Marcel laughed, because he was expected to.
Tristan lowered his voice. “I am here,” he said, sounding confidential, “to see what I can find out about one of the Château’s guests. A Miss Callie Armstrong. She was here about ten days ago. Did you happen to meet her?”
“No, Tristan,” said Marcel, relieved to know nothing about the matter. "I do not mingle with guests–I have too much work to do in the kitchen. Every once in a while someone wants to come back to have a word with me, to thank me for something they especially liked, or occasionally a person with aspirations to be a chef wants to check out how I run my kitchen.
“I hate that,” he continued with a scowl. “How am I supposed to get anything done with a bunch of gawkers getting in the way, asking an endless list of idiotic questions? And not only that, they put their fingers into things! I had one woman, either she could not speak a word of French or else she was pretending she couldn’t, who swooped through my kitchen tasting everything she could lay her hands on–with the same spoon! Dipping it here and there! A nightmare, Tristan. Very often, my work…a nightmare.” Marcel passed his hand over his face, his shoulders slumped.
Tristan watched. He listened. He decided that although Marcel appeared nervous, he
didn’t have any useful information. He didn’t seem to know who Callie even was.
He asked for directions to a back stairway, and headed up, as quiet as he could manage on the stone stairs. He was in a sort of zone, putting himself in a state that allowed all impressions to reach him–listening, sensing, and not allowing the fear of what he might discover get in the way of the discovering.
He decided to go all the way up to the top floor and work his way down. Very quickly he realized that the Château was so vast that there was no way he could do a thorough search by himself. He could work his way down one side, and Callie’s body could be moved back up by another set of stairs to where he had just been, and he would be none the wiser. If he needed to come back, he would have to bring dogs.
But as long as he was here, he figured he’d go ahead and do the best he could.
On the top floor was a long corridor, with windows on one side with a spectacular view of the grounds, and rooms all along the interior side that appeared to be used as storage. The doors were unlocked. Tristan went in one room after another, listening, sniffing, looking for anything amiss. He wandered through rooms filled with antiques covered in sheets. One room had racks holding paintings, and a jumble of sculptures. One room was crammed to the ceiling with broken furniture–chairs with smashed legs, a gouged table, a Chinese screen with a gaping hole. Tristan wanted to know the stories behind all these wounded pieces of furniture. Did they simply wear out? Or had someone lost his temper and thrown that chair, or punched that screen?
All through his search, Tristan kept in mind the picture of Callie that her parents had emailed him. She was so young. And in the photograph, beaming, a gorgeous smile, radiating health and vitality, standing on a rocky mountaintop with a green valley down below. It was hard for him to imagine anyone hurting her, whether intentionally or not.
He came down a narrow spiral staircase, always trying to make the least amount of noise, but confident that if Callie was alive and being held somewhere nearby, she would be able to hear him. Quiet, but not silent.
More rooms on the next floor. Some of them were bedrooms, perhaps for family guests, as it did not look as though they were much in use. The bed linens looked fresh, but there was dust on the bureaux and the rooms needed an airing. Tristan stopped, closed his eyes, and listened. He heard a lark singing outside, and a banging radiator in the distance. Then, a thump, followed by another thump.
He wasn’t sure what was doing the thumping. It sounded like it was a floor below, so he went back to the spiral stair and descended, his ear cocked all the way. This floor had rugs scattered about the corridor, and he crept very quietly now in the direction of the noise, until he was standing outside a door.
Someone was pacing inside. And the thumping–was something being dropped on the floor? Tristan could not tell. Carefully he stepped close to the door, and then put his ear against it.
“Fucking shit,” said David de la Motte.
Tristan guessed it was David, although they had not spoken in years and he did not really remember the sound of his voice. The voice sounded aristocratic, and angry, and…self-pitying. He kept his ear pressed to the door, holding his breath.
Meanwhile, Roland had been scouring the grounds, roaming among the outbuildings, also, like Tristan, listening and sniffing and looking for anything out of order. In the barn he had a stabbing moment of anxiety when he smelled death, but that turned out to be a dead cat, wedged so far up under the floorboards that Thierry had not yet figured out how to remove it.
After making a swing down behind all the cottages, checking all clumps of shrubbery and all sheds and garages, including the long building where le Seigneur used to make wine, Roland was feeling pretty sure that he was not going to find any evidence that day. His senses went from high alert to a stage lower, then another stage lower after that, barely above everyday paying attention. It takes a lot of energy and concentration to search for somebody, and his was flagging. He wanted some coffee.
He stopped in the sunshine, grateful for the warmth in the chilly November air, pulled out his cell and texted Tristan, asking if he’d found anything and could they have a quick coffee.
Tristan texted back immediately to meet him by the kitchen entrance where they had separated earlier, and Roland began to stroll in that direction. He was going quickly around the gravel path one more time, making sure he had checked all the buildings, when he realized he had neglected one stone building that was set a little apart from the others. He hesitated, then decided to get it over with before meeting up with Tristan.
He noticed an unusual device at the doorway, some kind of security system he figured, wondering what was inside to necessitate something so fancy. He was just about to walk around the side of the building when Henri stepped outside, dressed in his anti-sun suit, complete with wide-brimmed hat and netting in front of his face. Roland moved back in surprise.
“Marquis,” he said, nodding his head deferentially.
“Hello,” said Henri, easily. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Perhaps,” said Roland. He usually left the talking to Tristan, who was better at it, and he felt a little nervous. “I am Roland Morel, gendarme of Mourency.”
“Oh, very good, I’m glad you are here,” said Henri. “If you just step this way, I can show you…” and Henri walked around the side of the building and waded into the waist-high brown stems of hydrangeas.
Roland was baffled but followed him.
“See there?” said Henri, pointing at where Maloney had pulled the chunk of stone out of his wall. “If you could catch whoever did this, I would be most grateful. It’s not the only break-in I’ve had, but it was the most disturbing because of its force. Took that big chunk right out of my wall! Looks like the next thing they’ll have in mind is a bulldozer, doesn’t it?”
“When did this happen?” asked Roland.
“Close to two weeks ago,” said Henri. “When did you hear from Angélique, it was a week ago last Tuesday, wasn’t it?”
“We can find that out from Monsieur Durant,” said Roland. “But actually, I am not here to investigate your break-in. I am here about the disappearance of one of your guests.”
Henri had emerged from the hydrangeas and he turned sharply to face Roland.
“What did you say?”
“We have been asked by the girl’s parents, who live in the States, to do what we can to find her. She has been missing since last week.”
“Who? Who has been missing?” Henri’s mind was jumping ahead, and he did not like where it was going.
“The girl’s name is Callie Armstrong. She is from New Hampshire, not long out of college. Traveling by herself. She was staying here, in one of your cottages–Number 4, I believe–and now no one can find her.” Roland watched Henri’s face carefully. He considered himself a good judge of whether a person was hiding something. Not that he thought he was infallible, but the person would have to be a very good liar to get something past him.
Roland did not think Henri knew anything about Callie, but still, there was something…
“I’m afraid I don’t have much to do with the guests,” said Henri. “I spend most of my time at work here,” he said, gesturing at the stone building.
“Perhaps you could direct me to someone who might know more? We have spoken to Angélique already, and the housemaid, Marie-Louise I believe is her name.”
“I really couldn’t say,” said Henri, abruptly, no longer making eye contact.
Interesting, thought Roland.
“You could try Albert, the butler,” sad Henri. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to work. When you can find the time,” he added, a bit drily, “perhaps you could send someone about the break-in.”
And with that, he turned around and went inside the lab. Roland heard the lock make its expensive-sounding click, and took off to find Tristan.
He thought about the man he had just met. Henri was magnificently built, Roland c
ould tell, even under all those clothes. Very strong. Huge shoulders. Certainly a man who could easily overpower a young woman. Very self-assured, although polite. And a man who clearly wants things his own way. Though who of us doesn’t, Roland thought with a sigh.
And what were those clothes, anyway? Paris fashions could really go right off the edge sometimes, he thought, they’ll have us in skirts next. He waved to Tristan who was leaning against a van, waiting for him.
43
Pierre woke first, and relished that instant just after waking when reality came into focus and he saw that his reality now included the magnificent Roxanne, curled in his arms like a kitten, her mouth open in deep sleep, her spikes flopped to one side. He leaned down and gently kissed the tip of her nose.
They had left the hayloft in the middle of the night, when Pierre had been worried that Dominic and Maloney were on their way. Pierre and Roxanne knew they would be looking for her, and none too pleased, and Mourency being as small as it was, sooner or later they would end up at Pierre’s hayloft. Most likely, much sooner.
Drinking from Pierre had restored Roxanne’s strength to such a degree that the miles-long walk to the Château had been a snap. He had shown her around the outside buildings, talking about his childhood there, and his relationship with Le Seigneur, until Jo had stumbled out onto the path and they had quickly gone for cover.
Then Pierre had made them a place to hide temporarily, both from Dominic and Maloney and the sun, until he could make contact with Henri and figure out their next step. Pierre’s first desire now was to keep Roxanne safe, and out of the hands of that brutish American vampire and his giant friend.
They were cuddled up on the edge of the forest right behind the stables, in a cozy bed of leaves with pine branches tightly woven into a roof overhead, burrowed in a fragrant bower that was warm and allowed them a view of the goings-on at the Château while they remained totally hidden from view. Pierre was not only hoping that Henri would get Dominic and Maloney off their backs, but imagining that Henri would give them a little cottage of their own, a safe place for him to live with Roxanne, a place where they could make a home. Then Pierre could go into business with Henri, working with him on inventions. It was just getting dark again, time to go to the lab and talk to Henri, but Pierre could not tear himself away from Roxanne.
Unbitten Page 26