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“Do you think he may be working with humans? Someone who might have decided to draw the cross afterward?” He tapped his notebook with his pen and glanced at me, waiting.
My turn to frown. Would a vampire work with humans? “I suppose it’s possible, though not likely.
But he might have his stable with him, if he has one, or people under his glamour. Regardless of how deadly, or even how grotesque, al vampires have an innate charm. Whatever footprints were here are covered up by now. The snow . . . it’s fal ing hard.”
“The weather’s been getting pretty freaky the past few years. Must be global warming.” Chase pushed back his sleeve to look at his watch. “It’s near to four in the morning. What were you doing out here?”
I shrugged. “Got a lead on our serial kil er.” I laid out what Roman had told me about the area. “I wanted to look around before putting anybody else in danger. It’s not safe in this area of the city for people. Or vampires. Except our murderer, apparently.”
Chase glanced around at the tree-shrouded park. “We do get a lot of reports of injuries from this district, and there have been several unexplained deaths over the years around here. I can believe it’s haunted. There were a lot of fights here in the old days. A lot of skirmishes between different factions—some racial, others political.”
“Any of those unexplained deaths happen to be murders like our girls?”
He shook his head. “No. Unexplained as in the victims shouldn’t be dead and the causes were never explained. I can believe this part of the city teems with ghosts. I never come out here unless I can’t help it.”
A distant expression washed over him, one I’d seen on Camil e’s face when she was listening into the energy, and after a moment, he startled out of it. “There are entities here—ugly, old things.
I don’t know if they’re spirits or what . . . but they aren’t friendly.”
“Chase, how long have you been able to suss energy like that?”
With a shrug, he flipped his notebook shut and stuck it in his pocket. “You know how long—ever since I woke up in the hospital. It’s been two months and I feel like I’m walking in Never-Neverland.
Everything seems so different. I don’t know how you girls do it—walking in two worlds at once. It’s driving me nuts.”
“Talk to Sharah, she’l help you.” I hesitantly reached out, then patted him on the arm. “Dude, you have to learn to live with this because it’s yours. For a long, long, long time to come. I know what it’s like. Look at me, Chase. Look at what happened to me, and I didn’t just get stabbed by a demon. I went through hel . . . I remember what happened to me. Every nuance, every cut of the blade, every touch of him on me and inside me.”
Chase dipped his head, blushing. “Yeah, and I know I sound like a baby next to you. I’m sorry. I forget sometimes, just what happened to you. I shouldn’t complain about my own problems.
They’re a drop in the bucket.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. I’m just saying, I understand what it’s like to have your life suddenly changed on you, to have everything you ever expected stripped away and replaced with something different.”
“Thanks.” Laughing then, he motioned toward the walk. “Let’s go.”
“What about her?” I jerked my head toward the body, not wanting to leave until they got her out of here.
“They’l bring her when they finish with the crime scene.”
I glanced over my shoulder, feeling the urge to cry. “Tel them to be careful. It’s dangerous to leave them here alone. Let me know when you find out who she was. You’re going to have to break the cause of death to the newspapers soon. You can’t wait much longer.”
Chase let out a long, slow breath, and I could feel the pulsing of his heart from where I stood.
This one made him nervous.
“I know. I’l do it tomorrow. But the fal out’s going to be hel .”
Unfortunately, I knew he was right.
I wandered back to my car. The bar was closed, but I needed to check in on Erin. As I unlocked the door, it occurred to me that once Chase leaked the story about the vampire serial kil er to the press, I’d better have safeguards already in place. Like maybe a steel gate in front of the door. It was wel known that a vampire owned the Wayfarer, and frankly, I didn’t want to have to go apeshit on any miscreants. I stopped in my office and dropped an e-mail to Lisel, my bookkeeper and part-time assistant, to cal about starting the process as soon as she got into her office.
As I locked the door behind me, I could hear noise coming from upstairs and headed up to see Erin. She was there, alone. Tavah was in the basement watching the portal.
“Hey, Erin. Everything okay?” I glanced around. Tavah had taken her charge seriously. The guest room was sporting a new TV, a DVD player, an Xbox, and a computer, and I knew that if I checked the mini-fridge I’d find bottles of blood. “Looks like you’ve got quite the setup here.”
Erin paused the DVD she was watching and broke into a beaming smile as she turned. She dropped to submission and I held out my hand for her to kiss.
“Menol y, thank you. And look what else we got.” She motioned to a smal bookshelf in the corner that was now stuffed with books. There must have been a good forty or fifty paperbacks sitting there on the shelves.
