Page 62 of Dead Beat

Inside, Len was watching the footage on TV. “The congregation’s moving up the hill,” he said sagely.

Conflagration. She’d felt the pull of the coast. She could go north, drive into the mists of the redwoods, the shelter of low clouds and salt air. Instead, she sat down on the couch, and they smoked and she felt the wild part of her carried up like a spark, an ember that might land anywhere and spread disaster.

Now she stood in the JE courtyard, looking at Nell in her expensive coat, cradling her bouquet of flowers like a beauty queen, and she thought of Mercy walking to class, to the dorm, home from church. Congregation. Conflagration. Alex felt herself losing the leash of her sanity, felt it become the fuse on a stick of dynamite, already burning.

But she couldn’t let herself go off yet. She needed to think, be smart. This enemy was too wily and too strong to just come at straight on.

Her phone buzzed and she startled.

“You should answer that,” said Nell.

Alex was going to knock that amused look off her face. “It’s good you already smile with your mouth closed.”

The number on her screen was a Connecticut area code. Did Linus Reiter have a cell?

“Where is she?” Alex asked.

“Galaxy Stern.”

The sound of that cool voice saying her name set the fuse burning faster. But she couldn’t afford the fire. Not yet.

“Where is she?”

“Your friend is safe, though I cannot speak to sound. Nell will bring you to Sweetwell so we can talk, and then both of you can go back to dear old Yale.”

Alex felt very certain that if she walked through the doors of Reiter’s home, she would not leave it again, not until he’d drained her dry. In movies, women gasped and swooned when the vampire bit. Reiter hadn’t bothered with seduction. His attack had been pure violence. He’d had the precision of a surgeon, entering her with his scalpels to pull out every bit of life he could. But the wound he left had been ugly, jagged, an animal bite.

“I’m not going to your murder house.”

Reiter made a soft sound of disagreement. “To negotiate you need leverage and you have none.”

Alex glanced at Nell. “I have your familiar.”

“She’s a darling girl, but Yale manufactures darling girls to order.”

Again Alex looked at this young woman with her long red hair and carefully tended bangs. “Should I put you on speaker, Reiter?” she asked, touching a few buttons on her screen.

“That would be unwise.”

“You realize he doesn’t care if you live or die, right, Nell?”

“He has promised me life eternal.”

“Did you get that in writing?”

Nell was short. Alex thought about grabbing her by the collar, but she didn’t want to try to manage a writhing undergrad with one hand. Instead, she punched Nell in the stomach, a single sharp jab to the solar plexus.

The girl gasped and bent double, dropping her clutch of flowers, trying to find her breath.

“You may not care if she dies, but you’re going to care plenty when I string her guts up across the Sweetwell gates. Think that will be enough probable cause to search your property? To get a look beneath those gardens?”

“I have many powerful friends.”

“And I’m a first-class shit-stirrer. I might not bring you down, but I can get a swarm of cops crawling over your house, rifling through your treasures.”

The pause that followed soothed the terror in Alex as much as Nell wheezing for breath. Vampires loved to nest and Linus Reiter had spent a century getting his home just so.

“You’re not going to kill me,” Nell managed, her hands still on her knees.