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"That sounds like Raphael," Andrea said.
And she nailed it. "Yep."
She clamped her mouth shut. I started the engine and maneuvered Hector out of the parking lot.
One ... two ... three ...
"So who is he hooked up with now?"
Three seconds. That was all she lasted. "Nobody that I know of." She stared straight through the windshield. "I find that hard to believe."
Given that Raphael was a bouda and they viewed sex as a fun recreational activity that should be practiced vigorously and often, normally I would've agreed with her. But Raphael was a special case. He hounded Andrea for months until she finally gave him a chance. For a few blissful weeks they were in love and happy, but then Andrea had to pick between the Order and the Pack and it all fell apart.
"He hasn't been with anybody since you had that fight," I told her.
She snorted. "I'm sure some cute piece of ass will catch his attention sooner or later."
"He's too busy moping."
Andrea glanced at me. "Moping?"
"Pining." I made a wide curve around a large pothole filled with odd-looking blue goo. "If he starts singing sad Irish ballads, we'll have to stage an intervention."
"Oh please." Andrea turned to her passenger window.
"He withdrew from the bouda clan."
"What?"
"Not officially, of course." I shrugged. "But he stopped doing whatever it is that the bouda alpha male does." In the bouda clan, as in nature, females were dominant. Aunt B ran that clan with steel claws, and Raphael, being her son, served as the head of the males. "He killed Tara."
Andrea's blue eyes went big. "The third female?"
"Yeah. Aunt B mentioned it in passing the last time we spoke. He was in the bouda clan house for some sort of business-related thing and Tara came up and grabbed his balls. Apparently she wanted to check if they were still there. He punched her in the face. She shifted into a warrior form and went for his throat. From what Aunt B said, he didn't just kill her, he ripped her to pieces. He hasn't been to the clan house since."
"Holy shit."
"Yeah, that's pretty much what I said." It was one of those idiotic things that could've been resolved in a split second. Tara had no right to touch Raphael, and once she did, he had every right to punch her. She should've left it at that, and now she was dead because she didn't. Bouda males voluntarily took the beta role, but in a fight they were vicious, and Raphael was the best of their lot. I wouldn't fight him unless he left me no choice. I could take him, but he'd tear me up before I finished him.
"I keep thinking about the People thing," Andrea said. "I think something went very wrong in the Casino." And we'd changed the subject. Andrea one, Kate the matchmaker zero. "How do you figure?"
"Two navigators fainted, both while piloting the same vampire."
And one of these navigators was Ghastek, who could pilot a vampire through an obstacle course studded with rotating saw blades and pits of molten lava while carrying a full glass of water and not spilling a drop. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say the People had stumbled onto something, some sort of magic that was too much for them, and it had somehow tainted the vampire. But getting to the bottom of this mystery would be impossible. And besides, nobody had hired us to resolve the People's navigation issues.
"Of course, it could be a coincidence." Andrea shrugged. "We don't know anything about the woman who fainted, except that she was supposedly pregnant. We don't know what relationship she and Ghastek had prior to this mess. Maybe they went to breakfast together and ordered a bad omelet."
"That would be a hell of an omelet."
"I don't know, have you eaten at the Grease Trap lately? Their omelets are gray."
Technically the place was called the Greek Wrap, but nobody called it by its real name. The Grease Trap served breakfast 24/7, offered token wraps that had nothing to do with Greek cuisine, and openly admitted to having rat meat on the menu. It was the kind of place you went when your earthly troubles became too much for you and you were looking for a creative way to commit suicide.
"Why the hell would anyone be eating at the Grease Trap? I've seen flies die from buzzing by that place."
Andrea crossed her arms. "Oh, I don't know, probably because your career just ended and you are depressed and don't feel like breathing, let alone going out, but your body still needs food and that's the closest place to your apartment and they don't mind if you bring a giant dog with you."
"What, you couldn't find a Dumpster that was closer?"
Andrea glared at me. "What are you implying?"
"The Dumpster would have better food in it."
"Well, excuse me, Miss Fine Dining."
"Ghastek wouldn't be caught dead at the Grease Trap."
Andrea waved her arms. "It was just an example."
I glanced into the rearview mirror at Grendel. "What kind of brave canine companion lets his human eat at the Grease Trap? You are so fired." Grendel waved his tail. Whatever horrors happened in his canine life, Grendel always bounced back with easy enthusiasm whenever some food made an appearance. A treat, a blanket in a nice warm house, an occasional pat on the head, and Grendel would be as happy as he could be.
If only people were so easy.
"Could you take a vampire away from its navigator?" Andrea asked.
I paused, thinking about it. "I could."
I could do a hell of a lot more than that. In the raw-power department, I blew even Ghastek off the scale. I could walk into the Casino right now and empty their stables, and all of the Masters of the Dead combined wouldn't be able to wrest control of their undead away from me. I wouldn't be able to do anything with my vampire horde except make it run around in 48 ILONA ANDREWS a herd, but it would be a very impressive herd. Nobody except Andrea and Julie knew I could even pilot the undead, and if I had any hope of hiding, I had to keep it that way.
Of course, after the death of my aunt, hiding was a moot point.
"If I did that, the vamp would be under my control. It wouldn't be loose. I'd asked the journeymen and both of them said they couldn't get a lock on the vamp's mind. As if they had lost their ability to navigate. I have no idea how to make a vampire's mind disappear."
Andrea frowned. "Can Roland do it?"
"I don't know." Considering that my biological father had brought the vampires into being, nothing was out of the realm of possibility.
