“I’m just saying, whoever did this knew what they were doing. The first time, coincidence, maybe, but now with Mahon—”
“I can see what’s happening,” she cut in. “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Arlan.”
They watched a bat flutter past the porch. The streetlamp was attracting insects and the bats came to feed on them.
“I wasn’t telling you how to do your job,” he said. “I was just thinking out loud. This makes two of us. We haven’t lost two so close together in a very long time.”
Fia had been thinking the same thing tonight as she watched family members move around her in the pub. It was a strange relationship she had with the Kahills. She despised the sept for what they were, for what they had made her with their warring, and yet she loved them fiercely. Like it or not, she was one of them. Would be, perhaps, for all of eternity and she had no doubt in her mind she was willing to give her life for any one of them, even Victor, even Shannon…even her brother, Regan.
“I’m going to figure this out, Arlan.” She watched as a second bat was drawn toward the swarm of flying insects around the lamp pole. “I’m going to find out who did this to Bobby and Mahon.”
“I know you are.” He drew his finger along the ridge of her collar bone. “So, you want to come back to my place?” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against her neck. “Just for a taste….”
She felt a shiver of pleasure, but she resisted it. With vampires, sex always involved bloodletting, but it didn’t have to be that way. Did it? “I can’t.” She looked back at him, studying his gaze. “I need to keep my eyes on my partner. Shannon was circling him again tonight. I don’t put it past her to climb through his third-story window to get to him.”
Arlan sighed and moved back. Not away, just back a few inches so that while their clothing still touched, skin did not. “He’s not Ian, Fee. He just looks like him. Distant relative or something, maybe, but it’s not him. Ian was mortal and is long in his grave.”
“I know that.” She prodded him with her finger. “What makes you say that? What makes you think I think it’s him?”
He looked down at her, his gaze unwavering. “Because I know you.” He sighed. “Look, good or bad, it’s not him and that human can’t alter the past. You can’t change it. Nothing will bring Ian back and nothing will change what happened that night in that village.”
His words brought an ache to her chest and a lump to her throat. She wished that she could love Arlan. Wished that she could let him be to her what he wanted to be. He was such a good man. He would be good for her.
But she wouldn’t be good for him because she would never love him the way he deserved to be loved.
“Come home with me,” he urged her.
She rested the flat of her hand on his chest. “Not tonight, Arlan.”
“You sure? Just a little release?” He lifted her hand to his mouth. “I’m not asking for anything more.”
“Good night, Arlan and thanks.” She stepped toward the door.
“Change your mind, stop by.”
She chuckled as she watched him morph into a sleek gray cat and slink down the porch steps. “Good night, Arlan.”
Upstairs, on the third floor, Fia lay down but she didn’t sleep. She listened to the rumble of Glen’s voice for a long time as he talked on the phone. She didn’t hear him speak Stacy’s name, but she knew he was talking to his fiancée. Eventually he hung up.
She imagined him on the other side of the wall, stretching out on the bed, reading for a while. And after he shut out the light, she imagined him lying in the bed with the blue ruffles, nude. She imagined herself lying beside him. She remembered Ian and the taste of his skin, the feel of his body against hers. She wondered if Glen would feel different.
Okay, so obviously she was attracted to him. There was no sense denying it any longer.
Fia thought about what Arlan said. Obviously the initial attraction, subconscious or otherwise, had to be about Ian, but was this just about her past lover? Did she just want to have sex with Glen, to taste his blood, so that she could feel her Ian inside her again? So that she could pretend for a short time that the only man she had ever loved had not betrayed her, causing her to betray her family? Or was there something else going on here?
Fia didn’t care what Dr. Kettleman said, anonymous sex was beginning to seem appealing again….
They had agreed to meet at 2 A.M. Fia had wanted to wait until three, but Little Johnny, Fia’s seventy-seven-year-old great-uncle, had insisted that some people were too old to be staying up half the night. Some people needed their sleep.
Walking to the museum, she took shortcuts through yards and back alleys. It was still hot during the day, but nights were beginning to cool and there was the faintest hint of the coming fall in the air. A tiny sliver of a moon cast dim, white light. As Fia made her way across town, dogs and cats that prowled the neatly cut backyards ignored her. At this time of night, only humans would have disturbed them; they were used to sept members moving after midnight, especially in the summer when they were forced to be more careful. Everyone kept supplies of blood in their freezers, but occasionally even the most disciplined felt the need to hunt.
As she walked alone in the dark, she wondered if she should be afraid. What if someone was hunting them? Could she be a target? Were they all?
At the museum’s rear door, Fia punched a series of numbers into the security keypad and let herself into the rear hallway. As a teenager she had dreamed of being one of the honored eleven members of the high council, which also made her a member of the larger, general council which was meeting tonight. The high council’s sole responsibility was to make decisions concerning the humans they watched, hunted, and sometimes executed. The general council was responsible for the more mundane, but no less important, day-to-day running of the town and governing the sept.
Fia entered the main room of the museum. The room-darkening shades had been drawn, unlike the last time she had been here for high council, when ceremony had to be adhered to, and tonight the room was blazing with fluorescent light. Someone had made coffee. There were donuts and other snacks set out on a tray and instead of sept members being dressed in hooded robes, they sported shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops. The chieftain wore plaid pajama bottoms and a Captain Morgan Rum T-shirt with a bikini-clad girl and a pirate on it.
“Gair.” Fia acknowledged her grandfather as the sept’s leader as she entered the room, as was proper.
He nodded, shuffling toward the snack table. “There’s banana-nut bread. You should try it.”
In a rare impulse of affection, she kissed his weathered cheek.
“Been a hard day,” he acknowledged, piling slices of sweet bread on a napkin.
She could tell he was pleased by the kiss, even if he didn’t say so.
“You see cream for the coffee? I hope the hell it’s decaf or I never will get any sleep tonight.”
Fia gazed around the room. Council members were filing in, breaking into groups, chatting quietly. “Doc coming tonight?” she asked, her glaze flicking from one face to the next. The people in the room were nervous, scared. It didn’t take ESP to figure that one out. She could see it in the tight lines around their mouths, hear it in the laughter that wasn’t quite genuine.
Gair shook his head, carrying his coffee and napkin of sweets to one of the folding chairs set in a circle. “No, but he says he’ll have the autopsy report by morning for you, all official, i’s dotted. t’s crossed. Toxicology reports and such will take longer.”
She sat down beside him, taking a deep breath. “I’m not expecting any surprises.”
Gair blew on his coffee. Slurped it. “Me either.”
She sat back in her chair and gazed around the room. The museum had been built in the late sixties to encourage the town’s burgeoning tourist trade. Portraying Clare Point as a pirate’s den in early colonial days, the museum mixed fact with fiction, displaying many objects that had actually been on th
e ship the sept had traveled aboard from Ireland. When the vessel had wrecked on a reef in a storm and they were all washed ashore, they had collected these objects as well as the scrap wood from the splintered hull. They had built their first homes with those warped planks; portholes had become windows and the simple white bone china now displayed had been used on dining tables.
There had been a small colony of wreckers living in lean-tos on the beach when the Kahills washed ashore, but once Gair declared that they had reached their final destination, the Kahill women had bared their fangs, the men had raised their swords, and the pirates who made a living luring ships onto the rocks had moved south to Virginia, to safer ground.
The glass cases in the rinky-dink museum, identified by printed signs, sometimes with humorous sketches, were filled with pieces of china, brass candlesticks, and other assorted junk, mostly brought from the ship, although some of it was bounty the wreckers had left behind in their eagerness to escape a colony of vampires. There was also a small exhibit of arrowheads and spear points from the area’s earlier history, when Native Americans had hunted and fished the area. Some items were displayed on the round table that had come from the ship’s captain’s cabin; the same table that was used when high council took an aonta.
During the museum’s operating hours, a five-minute movie was shown in one corner of the room and there was a small gift shop off the hall, near the bathrooms. There, plastic swords, eye patches, fake coins, tomahawks, and other assorted souvenirs were sold. On rainy days, in the summer months, the museum made a surprisingly tidy profit.
“Fee…”
She felt a small hand on her shoulder and she turned to see a tall, slender, redhead with a short, spiky, hip haircut and heavy black eyeliner. She had to consciously block her thoughts and stifle a groan. “Eva.”
The woman, in her late twenties, kept her hand on Fia, giving her a little massage. “It’s good to see you,” she purred. “I got word of what was going on when I was in Istanbul. I came straight back. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”
Fia leaned forward, trying to escape Eva’s grip. The woman, a professed lesbian, had had the hots for Fia for at least a hundred years, maybe longer. It wasn’t that she had anything against lesbians. She even felt sorry for Eva, she being one of only two in the Kahill sept, but it just wasn’t Fia’s thing and Eva wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“It’s been hard for all of us.” She started to turn back to her grandfather, but Eva slipped into the chair beside her.
“But especially for you,” she emphasized. “You know, I’ve always admired you, Fia. You’ve always been one of the strong women.”
Fia groaned inwardly, glancing at her grandfather, hoping he might bail her out, but he was ignoring them, intent on his banana bread and coffee. She turned back to Eva. “So…you were in Istanbul. How was your trip?”
“It was fine. But I missed home, you know, especially after I heard.” She scooted up on the chair until her knee was touching Fia’s. “You know, I was thinking, with Mahon…gone…there’ll be an opening on the police force. I was considering applying. What do you think? Do you think I’d make a good cop? I mean…I know I could never be as good as you, but—”
“I think we’re starting,” Fia said with relief as Peigi Ross tapped the side of her chair with a Bic pen to get everyone’s attention. Gair was the chieftain and would be the leader of the high council until the end of time, or a time at which God forgave the Kahills and called them home. Whichever came first. In the meantime, sept members took turns serving as the governor of the general council. Peigi had held that position for the last fifteen years or so.
“I know we all want to get home so the sooner we get started, the sooner we can get out of here,” Peigi called to the last stragglers, still loading up at the refreshment table.
“Sorry,” Fia said under her breath.
“Maybe we can talk later.” Eva reluctantly swung her legs around in the chair to face the center of the circle. “Maybe I could buy you a pint at the Hill tomorrow night.”
Fia gave a quick smile and turned her attention to Peigi. Peigi wore her gray hair short and cut close to her head. In baggy stretch shorts and a flowered top, she looked like any fifty-something, lumpy, bumpy human female. Running into her in the grocery store, or on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, no one would have guessed she had the ability to set a box of cereal or a moving car on fire, or that she made the best chicken enchiladas Fia had ever eaten in all her lifetimes.
“I know we had several issues on the agenda for tonight, but in light of Mahon’s death, I think we can table most of that stuff for two weeks. Soon as Dr. Caldwell releases the body, we’ll know when the wake is, but I talked to Sarah tonight and she thinks it’ll be Saturday night, her place. Everyone’s welcome, of course.”
“And that’s it?” Mary Hall rose from her folding chair, her eyes red and puffy. “We just bury ’m like we buried poor Bobby?”
“What about Victor?” Rob Hall asked her. “Not a month ago, he got rip roarin’ pissed and threatened to take my head off with an axe. You know, that old one he uses to chop wood at his place.”
There were murmurs of agreement.
“What about Victor?” a voice echoed.
“He’s not one of us. We all know that,” Rob went on. “Maybe we need to look in that direction.”
“Look in the direction of that little tart is what I say,” Rob’s mother put in. “That Shannon. I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t trust her. She’s not one of us, either.”
“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Peigi balanced a clipboard on her knees and raised both hands. “Victor and Shannon may not have been one of us once upon a time, but they are now and it’s unfair to accuse them like this, not without any evidence.”
“But there is no evidence. At least that’s what we’re being told,” someone called out.
“Nuthin’ we can do,” someone else murmured.
“Sure there is. We can stop it from happening again,” Mary Hall argued. Her gaze honed in on Fia. “So how are we going to do that, Special Agent Kahill? That’s what I want to know. How are we going to protect our loved ones?”
All of a sudden more than twenty pairs of eyes were staring at Fia. Thoughts bounced all over the room. Harsh, accusing, angry. They hit her so hard that they could have been fists.
Gair slurped his coffee beside her as if the recipe for the banana bread he was making short work of was being discussed.
It’s okay, baby, Eva telepathed. I’m here for you.
Fia didn’t know which was worse, being attacked by the council or comforted by Eva.
Fia stood, though why, she wasn’t sure. Easier to defend herself maybe, if the blows became physical? She looked to Peigi for permission to speak, as was proper protocol, although everyone seemed to be ignoring it tonight.
Peigi nodded, sitting back in her chair, pulling her clipboard to her sagging breasts.
Fia cleared her throat. “I know everyone is upset—”
There was mumbling. Some spoke aloud, others didn’t, but no one made any bones about the fact that they were not pleased with her investigation.
“But I want you to know,” Fia went on, “that the FBI…I’m doing everything possible to find out who did this, and quickly.”
“So you admit it. You don’t know anything?” Mary Hall demanded.
“We found some evidence this week that could be very helpful,” Fia said to Mary. “It’s being sent off to a crime lab.” As she spoke, she tried to direct her answers to each and every person on the council, meeting their gazes. But with each passing second, she felt less capable. “In the meantime, there are things all of you can do. I need you to go over in your minds the contact you had with Bobby and Mahon in the days before they died—”
Were murdered, you mean to say, someone telepathed.
“Go back weeks, months if you have to,” Fia continued, trying to block everyone’s
thoughts. “Was there anything out of the ordinary you heard or saw? Something Bobby or Mahon said. Something an outsider might have said or done. And you need to call me. I’ll leave cards for everyone. Don’t hesitate to contact me. No matter how insignificant it might be.”
“And that’s it?” Tavia asked. “That’s all we can do?”
Doesn’t seem like much to me.
Seems like nothing.
Seems like no one’s doing anything.
“What about putting a group together like we used to in the old days?” Tavia suggested. “To hunt the slayers.”
“Don’t know why we need the FBI at all,” someone else said. “That’s not how we used to do things.”
“No, it’s not.” Fia turned to her great-uncle, who had spoken. “It’s not the way we used to do things. But the way we used to do things didn’t work either, did it? Vigilantism is how we ended up in a sinking ship in the Atlantic Ocean, fleeing for our lives. That’s how we ended up here.”
“And following this country’s justice system has worked,” said a deep-timbered voice from beyond the circle. “It’s worked for three hundred years.”
Everyone on the council, including Fia, turned toward the hallway. It was Fin. Fin to the rescue.
You’re a little late, Fia threw in his direction.
But not too late. Fin grinned as he entered the circle and stopped in front of an empty chair. He had a way about him that she had always admired. He was dressed casually in jeans and a black T-shirt with a bad-boy five o’clock shadow on his chin. But the facial hair only seemed to make him more attractive. Fin had that charismatic presence that could be felt but not explained. When Fin Kahill spoke, people listened. People, humans and sept members, believed.
“Fia’s right. We need to let the authorities deal with this, at least for now. We need to stay calm and not panic.”
“Easy for you to say, young man,” Mary Hall snapped. “It’s not your lover rotting in a grave without his head!”
“I’m sorry, Mary.” Fin turned to her, meeting the older woman’s gaze. “I can’t imagine how you feel except to compare it to the loss of my Lizzy and my sweet Fiona.”
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