“You own this place?” Aedan asked. He hadn’t been expecting that, which made him feel like a sexist jerk. Why couldn’t the pretty blonde own her own bar? He really wasn’t sexist; he was just fifteen hundred years old. Women had only begun to readily hold their own properties and businesses in the last two hundred.
She gave him an exaggerated smile. “I get that a lot. Guess I don’t look like a business owner. So you a cop or not?”
“I said I wasn’t. Private investigator.”
“Guinness stout.” The bartender reached around Dallas and set the frothy beer on the napkin in front of Aedan. “Happy hour ended fifteen minutes ago, but I’ll give you this one at the reduced price.”
“Thanks.” Aedan waited until the guy walked away before he looked at her again. “I should have introduced myself last night.” You just didn’t give me the opportunity. “I wanted to. Aedan Brigid.” He offered his hand.
She glanced at his hand with a strange look on her face and sort of tucked her hands behind her. “Dallas York. What can I do for you Aedan Brigid, private investigator? Tat, the bartender, said you wanted to ask me about that girl who was attacked last night. I thought that was kind of weird, since I was here last night with you when it happened.”
He reached for his beer, mostly so he would have something to do with his hands. Here was where his good idea kind of fell apart. And now he was beginning to feel like a complete jerk. He’d used some bad pick-up lines over the years, but using a woman’s brutal attack to meet someone, even someone as intriguing as Dallas, was just plain wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing his mouthful of beer. “I am a PI, and I am investigating that attack, but I didn’t walk in here intending to ask you about Teesha Jones.” He looked up at her sheepishly. “I was just trying to come up with a way to get you to talk to me.”
Dallas rolled her eyes and picked up a bar mop off the lower bar. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re an asshole. If you think—” She started to turn away, then suddenly turned back. “Wait—what did you say her name was?”
“Teesha Jones.”
Her name probably hadn’t been published in the paper for privacy reasons. He knew enough not to go blabbing a victim’s name around; he also knew it was sometimes necessary in an investigation, particularly one like this that was definitely time-sensitive. Besides, he had the feeling Dallas York was a woman he could trust.
“Teesha Jones?” she asked, looking startled.
“You know her?”
Dallas folded her arms over her chest, looking straight into his eyes. Obviously, she knew something. “I’m not talking to you unless I see a badge or something.”
“Is she a friend? She worked nearby on the avenue at a gift shop.”
“She isn’t a friend,” Dallas said softly. She looked up at him. “Have you got some kind of identification? Otherwise, I’m going to call the police.”
“I’ve got identification that says who I am.” He stood and pulled his wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “If you don’t want to talk to me, I understand. I was a jerk.” He pushed his Delaware driver’s license across the bar. “But there’s a state police detective you definitely need to talk to.” He dug around in his wallet, pretty certain he had one of Mark’s cards in there somewhere.
Dallas picked up his license and studied it carefully. “You’re from Clare Point?”
“It’s north of here. Just off Route 1.”
“I know. I checked out the town this winter when I was looking for property. Nice little town. Nothing for sale in the whole place, though. Struck me as odd.”
He gave her a quick smile. Nothing ever went up for sale in Clare Point. The owners lived forever; that, and the Kahills liked their privacy in the off-season months. They didn’t really want humans owning property in their town. “I’ve got extended family there. We’ve been there a long time. Properties usually get handed down generation to generation,” he responded casually.
She was watching him, his license still in her hand.
“Here it is,” he said, finding a dog-eared business card. “Detective Lieutenant Mark Karr with the Delaware State Police.” He offered it to her.
“Put it on the bar,” she said.
It wasn’t until she carefully laid his driver’s license on the bar and picked up the business card that he realized she was purposely not taking the chance of touching him. She’d felt it, too. Last night. She knew something had happened between them.
“You don’t have to give me any particulars.” He retrieved his license. “But you know her? Teesha?”
Dallas fingered the business card, looking genuinely upset. “Not really. I just met her last night. She came in for an interview. I liked her. I was thinking today that I should give her a call and offer her a job.” She looked at him. “Maybe it was a different Teesha?” she asked hopefully.
He sat down on the barstool again. “Young black woman. Pretty. Hair down to here.” He motioned to his shoulder.
She hung her head. “Same girl. It’s an unusual name, Teesha. I have a daughter named Kenzie so I tend to remember—” She met his gaze and halted midsentence. “I gotta get back to work,” she said suddenly. She shook the business card at him. “I’m calling the state police tomorrow. If they don’t have a Detective Mark Karr on staff, you’re in trouble, buddy. I’ve got your name, your address, and your license number. I can have you arrested for impersonating a police officer.”
“You’ve got a pretty wild imagination, Dallas. I never told you I was a police officer.”
“So?”
He lifted a brow, impressed. This was a pretty tough woman, this Dallas. He sensed she had needed to be in the past.
She hooked her thumb and motioned toward the door. “Finish your beer and get out of here.”
He watched her walk away. She tossed the bar mop in a sink, tucked the business card into the back pocket of her faded blue jeans, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Aedan drank his beer, left enough money for a generous tip, and walked out of the bar. He knew he’d be back. He had a feeling he might even get Dallas to speak with him again, once Mark verified he wasn’t a crazy.
He gazed up one side of the street and then down the other. Now it was time to tuck away thoughts of pretty, strange Dallas and get to work.
As Aedan walked west on Rehoboth Avenue, his back to the cool breeze coming off the ocean, he tried to wrap his head around the logic of the case, rather than the emotional side. This couldn’t be about him. He took this case personally, even though he’d been trained not to. It wasn’t about Madeleine. It wasn’t even about poor Teesha Jones, lying in a hospital bed, facing months, perhaps years, of surgeries and recuperation. It wasn’t about the scars Jay left behind, physical or emotional. It was about protecting the next would-be victim.
As he walked, his gaze traveled over the faces of the women he passed: the cute brunette with the sultry laugh, hanging on her boyfriend’s arm; the blonde dressed in black, wearing an apron, hurrying, probably so she wouldn’t be late getting back from her fifteen-minute break at the caramel popcorn place; the forty-something-year-old woman carrying a pizza box. She had probably stopped at Grottos to pick up a large extra cheese for a late evening dinner. Jay tended to choose younger women, pretty women, but no one was immune when he went on one of his sprees. Fifty years ago, he had raped a grandmother.
The thought made Aedan sick to his stomach. He stepped out of the light cast from the lampposts, into the shadows of a store that was closed. As he began to morph his eye caught one of the banners trembling in the wind. They lined the east end of the avenue, a tribute to the state’s fallen soldiers. He stared at the picture of the young army specialist who had given his life in Iraq, and for a moment Aedan felt as if they made a connection. He sometimes wondered why God could ever have allowed evils like war or creatures like Jay to exist. But then he got into the whole religious thing of God and Satan. Aedan had accepted a long time ago that the w
orld was too complicated for his vampire brain.
He touched the crucifix around his neck, said a silent prayer for the young man, and for his family . . . and morphed.
Aedan had entered the shadows of the beachwear store as a six-foot-five, red-haired, thirty-something male wearing a leather jacket. He left a five-foot-five, twenty-one-year-old woman with short, sandy brown hair, a hoodie sweatshirt, and peace signs dangling from her earlobes. He had to admit as he fell into the walking rhythm of the temporary form that the earrings had been a nice touch. Very authentic.
His intention this evening was to get the lay of the land and to see what Teesha might have seen on the street the previous night. Mark had promised Aedan that he would get a chance to talk to her, and details she could relate might be helpful, but his years of training had taught him to make observations other people didn’t make. Maybe one of those details might lead him to Jay.
As Aedan walked, he took notice of what places were open at ten o’clock. The attack had taken place sometime between ten and eleven-thirty. According to Mark, after the attack, Teesha had crawled to a parking lot and laid there for a short time before being discovered.
Of course Aedan didn’t know what she had been doing or where she had been going when she was attacked, but this stroll tonight was just about seeing the place after dark. He knew from Jay’s past that his attacks were rarely random or impulsive. He chose a victim and sometimes stalked her for days before attacking her. Jay would have walked these streets the way Aedan was walking them now . . . probably without the peace sign earrings.
Aedan spotted the souvenir shop where Teesha worked. The OPEN sign had been turned off, but the lights were still on inside; he could see two young women unpacking boxes. He stopped in front of the door, thought for a moment, then knocked.
“We’re closed!” one of the young women shouted. “Open at ten tomorrow.”
“I was looking for Teesha. Wasn’t she working tonight?” He flashed a smile as close to Kaleigh’s as he could muster. She had a pretty smile, one that made a person immediately comfortable.
“You a friend of Teesha’s?” a girl wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt asked, approaching the door cautiously.
“Is she here?” Aedan called through the glass door. His voice wasn’t his own, of course. He sounded like a twenty-one-year-old with a slightly squeaky voice.
The girl in the tie-dye hesitated and then turned the deadbolt.
“Friend of a friend,” Aedan said, casually sticking his foot in the doorway when she opened the door. He wore pink flip-flops.
“Didn’t you hear?”
He pulled a ChapStick from his jeans pocket and applied it the way he saw young women do. Another nice detail. He hoped it covered for the way he didn’t feel quite right inside this body, making him seem awkward. “Hear what?”
“She was attacked last night. It was bad,” the young woman related, resting her hand on the doorjamb. The other girl continued to unpack tacky plastic statues of seagulls on a piling. A little sign under each one read REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE.
“Oh my God!” Aedan exclaimed. He could feel his earrings swinging in his ears. It was weird morphing into a female. He felt like he never quite pulled it off, but it was a good disguise in this situation. A young, slight woman wasn’t a threat to others; at least humans never perceived her as one. He had killed in this morph. “Is she going to be all right?” he asked.
“It’s really bad,” the girl repeated, fretting now.
“Where was she? When did it happen?”
“Marylou, we’re not supposed to open the door after closing,” the girl with a plastic seagull in each hand said. “You’re going to get written up again.”
Marylou glanced over her shoulder, then back at Aedan. “Last night. She left here early because she had an interview somewhere. About another job. I covered for her.” She lowered her voice, so her coworker couldn’t hear. “This job is for shit. I’m only keeping it until I find another one.”
“So she left early last night? Before you closed?” Aedan said.
The girl nodded. “She went to her interview, and then we met at the pub. Across the street.” She pointed to a bar with green neon shamrocks in the windows. “We were supposed to separate, you know, check out the guys and then meet up later at Dogfish Head. Only Teesha never showed. She was talking to this cute guy at the pub.” She shrugged. “We thought maybe she, you know, hooked up with him or whatever.”
Would Jay have been so bold as to have chatted with Teesha in a bar? It wasn’t his typical MO, but he’d done it before. “What happened? After she didn’t show up?”
Another shrug, this time with hand gestures. “We don’t know. It was on the radio this morning. Teesha’s almost being killed and all. My mom always listens to it when she gets ready for work.”
“They gave her name on the radio?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Only that a young woman had been attacked and, you know, raped and cut up. We found out it was Teesha when we came to work. Our boss has a sister who works in the ER or something.” She wrapped her arms around her slender waist. “I feel so bad for her. We were thinking about going to see her, you know, at the hospital. Putting some money together on payday and buying her a fruit basket or some flowers. All of us here. But we thought we better wait a few days. I don’t even know if I want to go.” She hesitated. “You know, what do you say?”
“You need to lock the door, Marylou,” called the sea-gull girl. “Your friend can’t come in here.”
“I should go.” Aedan took a step back. He’d gotten the information he needed, and probably as much as the girl knew, anyway. “Thanks for letting me know about Teesha.” He started to turn away, then looked back. “You just say you’re sorry.”
“What?” the young clerk asked through the narrow crack in the door.
“When you see Teesha,” he said softly. How many victims had he spoken to over the years, not just on Jay’s case, but others? Far more than he cared to count. He made eye contact with the young woman. “There isn’t any right or wrong thing to say. You just tell her you’re sorry it happened to her.”
Peigi stood in the doorway of the den, listening to the sound of rapid machine gun fire. She didn’t like video games. She particularly didn’t like violent ones, and she sure as heck didn’t like Brian playing them. But it was what all the teen boys did; it was part of American culture, and the Kahills tried hard to allow their teens to assimilate with typical human culture.
Dinner had been nice. It was good to have Aedan home. She had missed him. He reminded her in so many ways of her sister, Brigid. In the life cycle after her death, Aedan had taken her first name as his last to honor her. The small gesture had made her proud of him. Not that he could replace his mother, or Peigi’s son and daughter, long gone and dead, but he was like a son to her. To Brian, too, when he was himself.
She scowled. This shooting, cursing, sour young man was not her Brian. He wasn’t the man she had loved for fifteen centuries. He would become that man. She knew he would, because it happened every life cycle. But she felt so far apart from him now that she wasn’t absolutely sure it would work this time. And how many years would it take? By the time he reached his mid-twenties, she’d be an old, wrinkled lady, more wrinkled than she was now. Would he desire her, then? Even if he did, how much time would they have together? She’d be old; she would die and be reborn, and he’d have a teenager on his hands. From her experience, the only thing worse than a teenage male vampire was a teenage female one.
This was the way it worked. It was God’s way for His Kahill family. That didn’t make it seem fair . . . or any easier.
“Hey, Brian?”
He didn’t answer. A window broke on the TV screen as the avatar soldier “Brian” opened fire on someone crossing the street. He had the TV turned up so loud that it felt as if the gunfire was exploding in her head.
“Brian!”
Just when
she was certain he still hadn’t heard her—possibly because he’d gone completely deaf—he twitched. He didn’t look at her, but he responded. “Yeah?”
“Could we talk?”
“I’m in the middle of a game here.”
She stepped into the den. She’d changed into a pair of flowered flannel pajamas and her slippers. She had some more work to do for the sept’s General Council meeting, but she was headed to bed soon. Alone. There were no conjugal rights at this point in their relationship. Sept members, even spouses, were forbidden to have physical relations with teenagers. Not that either of them found the idea, at the moment, even slightly appealing.
“Could you pause it?” she asked.
“I told you.” Brian stared at the screen. Nothing moved but his thumbs. “It’s ‘Black Ops’; I’m online. I can’t just tell the other team to wait a minute.”
She frowned, leaning against the doorjamb, crossing her arms over her chest. She was planning on having a cup of tea before she turned in; she might have to throw in a shot of whiskey. “I’d really like to talk with you.”
He exhaled. He still didn’t look at her, but his body language made it pretty plain he’d rather turn his virtual M16 on himself than have a conversation with her.
“We need to talk, Brian.” She tried to keep the impatience out of her tone, knowing it wouldn’t serve either of them well.
“About what?” He yanked the cordless game controller, dropped an F bomb under his breath, and waited for the game to drop him back in. Peigi had seen enough of “Black Ops” in the last few months that she knew that much. She liked the mode with the zombies. She sure didn’t like zombies, but at least she understood them. She knew what made them tick, which was blood and gore. This teenage vampire boy who had been her beloved Brian six months ago, she didn’t understand him at all.
Peigi shifted her gaze from the TV to the young man who had just started sprouting facial hair in the last two months. Tonight his razor stubble didn’t make him look older. It made Peigi feel older.
Voracious - (Claire Point Vampire 5) Page 4