Arthur drew in a ragged breath and fixed her with a fierce stare.
“Explain that, Priscilla Pratt. Just try and explain that.”
Thumbprint Cookies Recipe
The traditional name for this dish is Hallongrotta. It hails from Sweden and is most traditionally filled with raspberry jam. In fact, the name literally translates to “raspberry cave” in Swedish. I was taught how to make this recipe in the late nineteenth century by a Swedish chef. It’s an easy recipe, and one I encourage you to try. Feel free to fill the “cave” with whatever you like!
—Priscilla Pratt
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
11/4 cups flour
Toppings of your choice (i.e., jam, pudding, caramel)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare your baking sheets.
In a large bowl, combine the butter and sugar until the mixture is smooth. Next, add the egg yolk and vanilla. Mix until well combined. Slowly add in the flour until a dough forms.
Roll into small balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, then remove the cookies from the oven.
With your thumb or a small round tool, gently press in the center. Fill the “cave” with your topping of choice and bake again for about 4 minutes. Cool on a rack for 2 minutes. Enjoy!
Chapter Ten
“Damn it, Dean!” she shouted. “You have to talk to me!”
Dean flinched at the noise and cringed further into the wall. He hadn’t even glanced in Priscilla’s direction since she’d entered the cell. He’d tucked himself into one corner of the flat bed, curled into a ball, and hugged his knees tightly to his chest. It was hard to read his expression merely from the profile.
At a loss for what else she could possibly do, Priscilla leaned against the bars heavily and hung her head.
“Please,” she whispered. “I need you to talk to me. I can’t defend you if I don’t know your side of the story.”
He finally peeked up from his knees. His eyes were showing too much white, like a spooked horse. “I didn’t do it,” he said softly. “I told him that. But I don’t think he believes me.”
“You have to admit the evidence is pretty damning,” Priscilla said. “There was blood in our fridge that matches the victim. I can’t account for your whereabouts during the time of the murder, and you have a reason to hate the Sons.”
She bit off the words she wanted to say—that this could have been avoided if he’d actually talked to her for once.
“You don’t believe me,” he muttered bitterly. “That’s okay. No one does.”
Priscilla glared at Dean and the words finally slipped out. The words she’d been holding back for close to five months.
“What is your problem?”
Dean’s head snapped up and his spine stiffened. His lips pulled away from his fangs, the first outright hostile reaction he’d had to her.
“My problem? Which one?”
“With me, specifically. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve your contempt, Dean. I’m doing my best, but you aren’t making it easy to love you.”
Dean’s eyes were too wide and the subtle tremor in his bottom lip meant he wasn’t far from tears. Or he wouldn’t have been, if he’d had human blood from the vein. That was a mark in his favor then. Vampires couldn’t generally produce tears without a fresh and recent feeding.
“It’s not easy for anyone to love me, apparently,” he said, and his voice broke on the last word. “Do you know how I ended up like this?”
Priscilla shook her head. “Unless told otherwise, the state treats most vampire cases like closed adoptions. I don’t know anything about you other than when you turned. I don’t know who did it, why, or what led you to this point.”
Dean blinked in surprise. “You ... you have no idea, do you?”
“I think I just said that.”
Dean straightened out of his defensive posture. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and clutched the edges of the bunk in both hands.
“I was turned by a teacher when I was sixteen,” he whispered. “She took an ... interest in me that wasn’t strictly appropriate. When my grades started to go downhill, my mom threatened to kick me out. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked my teacher what she wanted. I just wanted my grades to stop tanking. I had dreams, you know? I wanted to go to college.”
Priscilla’s stomach twisted itself into anxious knots. She knew where this tale ended. The proof was right here, sitting in a jail cell in front of her.
“She turned me. She said it would make our love official.” Dean whipped his head back and forth like he was trying to shoo an irksome fly. The denial was all the more heartbreaking for its futility. “And then she had to run, because I was reported missing and she was implicated.”
“Oh Dean, I’m so sorry,” Priscilla murmured. She’d thought living with her sire had been bad. At least he’d stayed for a few years. At least she’d made a voluntary choice, even if it was in the misguided name of love.
“I wish that was the end of it.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I went home and told my mother what had happened. She threw me out and called social services.”
Priscilla’s throat constricted around the lump in her throat. “Did she ever tell you why?”
Dean shrugged. “She was a single mom. I try to understand that. There were times that all we had in the house to eat was popcorn or ramen. It was all she could afford. She couldn’t feed me then. How was she going to feed me now? Blood is expensive.”
Didn’t she know it. It was a well-kept secret in the health industry that blood could be traded and sold. Most Americans gave away their blood for free with the expectation that it was going to help people. Not the case. One pint of human blood was worth one hundred and fifty dollars at the low end, and three hundred at the highest—easily equal the cost of a car payment or utility bill. Expired blood—which could be used to feed thousands of vampires when not useful for the human body—was often sold to laboratories, rather than made available for public consumption.
“Couldn’t she have done something?” Priscilla asked weakly.
Dean shook his head again. “Nope. I asked her if she could at least help me emancipate myself. I didn’t want her to go to jail because she couldn’t take care of me. Did you know there’s no set system for it in Massachusetts?”
“I didn’t,” Priscilla admitted.
She was fairly knowledgeable about basic law, libel and slander especially. She’d once had a job cleaning a lawyer’s home. Before vampires were out, she’d had few marketable skills she could actually use. Puritan women were good at keeping house, tending animals, and caring for children. She’d always been abysmal with a needle and thread, which meant that one of the few acceptable careers she could have held was closed off to her. Her job prospects had been limited. She’d barely had an education. She ought to have considered herself fortunate she could read.
“Well, it’s at the discretion of a judge, and the one in our district didn’t think it was in my best interest. So he put me in foster care.”
He blew out a breath and buried his face in his hands. “And that’s how I ended up here. I thought that you knew. I thought you were being patronizing on purpose. That’s why I was so angry the other day.”
“Is that also why you’ve invested all your time with Logan Hobbes? I’ve barely seen you or said two words to you since you arrived you know.”
Dean shifted uncomfortably and finally stopped contemplating his fingers. “That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because ... he understands better than you do.”
“Understands what? He’s not that much younger than me, you know,” she said.
He gestured to her helplessly. “You look … grown up. I know you’re still young, as far as physical age goes, but no one is going to mi
stake you for a kid, Priscilla.”
Dean pinched his cheek. “I’m never getting rid of this baby fat. I’m never going to get taller, or know what I would have looked like as a man. The only good thing about the transition is the lack of acne. It’s better than any of those expensive face washes. Good thing, too. If I had to live a hundred years with pimples, that would just be too much.”
Priscilla thought she could understand, at least a little. Logan Hobbes had been eighteen when he turned, and just over what was considered an adult in the US. But that didn’t mean he looked like an adult. Like Dean had said, there was an unfinished look to Logan. He’d been turned just on the cusp of manhood. That had to affect them both on a deeply personal level that she wouldn’t understand. Maddison could, probably, but then again, she wasn’t a young man.
“That’s why I didn’t want to talk to you,” he said. “I thought you knew and were ignoring me. I’ve had foster families do that. Some people are only in it for the paycheck.”
“I adopted you, Dean. I didn’t sign up to get money from the state. I paid money, actually.”
“I know, I know.”
She was silent for a long time, absorbing what he’d said. Finally, she spoke. “You don’t have to call me your mother. I can understand why that would be painful. You already have one. Perhaps someday you can reach out and mend fences with her.”
Dean glanced up at her uncertainly. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not,” Priscilla said softly, reaching through the bars. Dean considered her hand for a moment before he got up, crossed the cell, and took it.
“I adopted you because I wanted to have a family again. But I don’t need to be your mother.” She chuckled. “I could be your sister, if you like.”
Dean made a face, but there was no bitterness tainting the expression. It made Priscilla’s dead heart lift a little. Maybe there was hope of salvaging this after all.
“How about my aunt?” he said slowly. “Aunt Priscilla. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”
Priscilla beamed. “That sounds perfect.”
She’d been hoping that Gabriel would stick around so she could share her suspicions with him. He’d taken off to parts unknown while she’d spoken with Dean. He hadn’t even left a note. It was rude, really. And just when they’d started to get along, too.
“It wasn’t him,” she said, striding into the department’s breakroom. She sat in the chair across from the two officers, turning it to face Arthur and his second in command, Jack Riggs.
Jack had recently taken over the dayshift from Arthur, so that he could work more closely with her at night. He must have been pulling a double-shift to be in at this hour. She couldn’t imagine that his wife Caroline was very happy about that.
“There was blood in your fridge,” Arthur said sternly. “Human blood. The victim’s blood specifically. How else could it have gotten there?”
Priscilla fixed him with a cool stare. “You don’t find it the least bit suspicious that someone put a Tupperware container full of blood in my fridge?”
“No,” Arthur said, crossing his arms stubbornly. “I don’t. How else was he going to store it?”
“I’ve had this conversation with you before, Arthur. It was only five months ago. Have you forgotten what I told you then?”
Arthur had implicated Maddison in the murder of Aaron Burke only five months ago, when she’d been found trying to give life-saving aid. Arthur considered any hungry vampire a threat. It wasn’t necessarily a wrong assumption, depending on a vampire’s age and level of self-control. But the suspicion wore on Priscilla. She’d begun to consider Arthur something of a friend in the last year, and the constant reminders that he’d never fully trust her stung.
Arthur screwed up his face in thought. “You said if she wanted blood, she’d have gone for the throat and there wouldn’t have been any waste.”
“The same principle applies here, Arthur. Dean wouldn’t need to store the blood. He’d drink it.”
Arthur scowled. “I’m sure you’re not going to allow us to test the contents of his stomach, just to be sure.”
“No, I’m not. I know he hasn’t had blood from the vein. There are signs.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“He can’t cry,” she said.
Arthur snorted. “He’s a boy, Priscilla. He’s not going to cry.”
Priscilla smiled. “That’s charmingly sexist of you, Arthur, but that’s not what I mean. When a vampire is feeding off of expired or chemical-laced blood, it’s not as effective at keeping up the body’s functions. Certain things fall by the wayside.”
“Like?” Jack asked, leaning forward. Priscilla tended to like the big man, and her smile became something closer to the real thing as she turned her attention to him.
“The lubrication of the eyes, for one. We tend to lack the proper amount. It means that our eyes are often dry and itchy. You wouldn’t believe the amount of artificial tears I’ve gone through over the years. I think it’s where the misconception we have red eyes came from.”
Jack frowned. “If it isn’t his, how did it get into your fridge, Priscilla?”
“I closed up shop to help Maddison look for Tim that night. I made sure to lock my door, but it isn’t the only way into my kitchen anymore,” she said. “Olivia’s back rooms adjoin with mine. If she wasn’t watching, I think someone could have slipped past her and into the bakery.”
“You need to get a CCTV installed,” Arthur said. “I’ve been telling you that for almost a year now.”
She sighed. “I know. I will when I can afford it.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “Where is all your money going, Pratt? You seem to end up broke more often than not. I know you turn a tidy profit at the bakery.”
She snorted. “Where isn’t it going? My mortgage, the power bill, supplies, blood for Dean. So on and so forth. Right after the Historical Society boycott was lifted, the Sons of Adonai arrived. I can’t blame people for avoiding my shop if they’re going to be shouted at while they try to enter.”
“You haven’t had any picketers recently,” Arthur said. “I’ve been by your place a few times since Absalom’s death.”
“Only because Amos Buckley is busy securing his power base. I’ve been meaning to tell you that. Gabriel thinks he might have had a hand in the death.”
Arthur’s eyebrows shot up. “Gabriel, is it? Since when have you two been on first-name terms? Last I knew you hated each other.”
Priscilla fidgeted. She didn’t want to admit to Arthur just how little she’d eaten in the last several months, or how grateful she’d been to Olivia and Gabriel for providing her what she’d needed at personal or monetary cost to themselves.
“He’s not as awful as I thought,” she said after a moment of consideration. “He’s just ... focused.”
“Like a laser,” Jack grumbled. “He’s got a score to settle. I’ve seen beat cops like that with certain perps. It’s not good for him. It’ll make him lose focus or objectivity.”
“Any idea what might have gotten under his skin?” Arthur asked, glancing at her.
She shrugged. “What? Do you expect me to know because I’m a vampire? I’m sorry; I’m a baker not a psychiatrist. I can’t tell you what trauma is rattling around in his skull. Now did you want to hear his theory or not?”
“All right. Give it to me, Pratt, and don’t leave out details. “
So she told him about the early morning visit to the compound, and Gabriel’s revelation.
“You’re sure?” Arthur said, jotting down what she’d said.
“Not at all. I’m not familiar with these people, Arthur. I’ve been fortunate enough to remain in a small, insular community for over three hundred years. I’ve never encountered a radical group like this. I’m confident that Gabriel has his facts right, if that’s what you’re asking. Several government agencies have had an eye on the Sons. He says the seven-day waiting period was a foundational principle.”
Arthur tapped his pen against his chin. “It does give him a motive. But don’t think that gives Dean a pass. We haven’t disproved anything.”
Priscilla gave him an arch stare. “You have nothing to charge him with at this point, Arthur. Either find something that sticks, or I’m taking him home.”
“But—”
“He’s family, Arthur. I’m not leaving him to rot in a jail cell.” It felt right to call him that. Priscilla was secretly pleased that they’d made progress. “Why don’t you spend your time and resources on something important, like getting a warrant to search the compound?”
Arthur grimaced. “It’s not as simple as that, Priscilla. The Sons’ legal team is iron-clad. Do you know how many people have tried to bring them down? A lot. They’ve been operating since the eighties, and no one has been able to prove anything.”
“How about kidnapping?” Priscilla said sharply. “Tilly Hall is missing, Arthur. And I’d bet good money that they’re the ones responsible for it. You need to get a man on the inside as soon as humanly possible. She’s in danger, I can feel it.”
“We’re doing everything we can for Tilly,” Jack said gently. “But if we go in, guns blazing, people are going to get hurt.”
“And what about Tilly? Her baby? I can’t imagine what they’re doing to her is pleasant. We don’t even know if she’s alive. Amos could have killed them both.”
“We have no proof,” Arthur said, leaning forward to give his words more weight. “And I’m sorry, Priscilla, but if you charge in there on impulse, as you’re wont to do, I’ll have to arrest you for trespassing.”
She ground her teeth, seething. Arthur had correctly assumed she’d been ready to charge back into the compound to save Tilly. Worse, she knew that the Sons could and would use the loopholes in the law to literally get away with murder. So she’d have to play it smarter, not stronger.
“Don’t push this,” Arthur said firmly.
Holy Crepes Page 11