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He frowned at me, as if I was touching a tender subject. “It’s not an instant-gratification sort of talent. It’s more of an instinct that leads me in the right direction. This time, the problem has a few more twists and turns than I’m used to,” he said, his voice worn and as thin as paper as I helped him downstairs and into the tent. He barely glanced at his “room.” If he was less than thrilled with my less-than-four-star accommodations, he didn’t say anything. I suspected that he found conversation with me to be circuitous and pointless.
Mainly because he told me that he found conversation with me to be circuitous and pointless. To my face.
3
Your family will not understand your decision to take in a vampire. To avoid awkward conversations, think of excuses to avoid their visiting beforehand. Solid suggestions include: Your house is being fumigated. You have a contagious rash. You are trying to read the North and South trilogy from beginning to end.
—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
I stayed up a good portion of the night, sitting on the couch, clutching my mother’s heirloom silver pie server. Much like with sunlight, vampires are allergic to silver. For them, it’s like touching every caustic, irritating substance in the world all at once, combined with the annoyance of listening to actress-slash-models talk about their “craft.” It can actually burn the flesh from their bones if they’re exposed to enough of it, which is why the vampire pepper spray I carried was mostly very pure colloidal silver.
For all I knew, Cal’s impotent-kitten routine could have been an act. And I wasn’t exactly pinning my hopes for personal safety on my houseguest’s inability to climb the cellar stairs unassisted.
I used my insomnia time wisely. I finished a historical romance I’d started-and-stopped so many times I’d forgotten the names of the main characters. I reported the loss of my darling BlackBerry to my cell provider’s online insurance site and was slightly mollified by the promise that a replacement phone would be shipped to my house overnight. My business landline rang several times. There were calls from clients asking for various deliveries, pickups, and errands … And asking why I wasn’t picking up my cell phone, which had me grumbling and cursing Cal’s very existence. Ophelia called at around two A.M. and was surprised that I’d answered the phone instead of letting it go to voicemail. It was interesting to hear any emotion in her voice beyond smug boredom.
“Aren’t you normally asleep at this hour, Iris?”
Pressing the phone to my ear, I blew a cooling breath over a cup of valerian root tea. I needed my special “It’s two A.M., and the infomercials are starting to make sense” blend to counteract the bag of espresso jelly beans I’d found in my desk drawer.
I am a constant contradiction.
I yawned for effect. “Yes, Gigi has a school project due. Nothing like last-minute extra credit in hopes of saving a biology grade.”
“What an exciting life you lead,” she said dryly.
“What can I do for you, Ophelia?”
“I was curious. The Council arranged for a new contract with a Mr. Calix, one of our freelance employees. Did you happen to drop by his house today?”
This was it. This was my opening to alert Ophelia to Cal’s problems and wash my hands of the situation. It would be so easy to let someone else handle this situation. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t have enough on my plate. I had a complicated, high-maintenance business to run. I had Gigi to lead on the precarious path to functional adulthood.
But …
I breathed steadily through my nose. I could deny being there, but I’d left Cal’s contracts on the counter. Besides, I was pretty sure that I’d left trace evidence all over that house. I didn’t know if the Council had fingerprint analysts, but they did have psychic interrogators, and I wouldn’t put using a few forensics geeks past them. Lying would only make Ophelia suspicious.
“Um, yeah, I got there just before sunset,” I said. “I was running late. Mr. Rychek had some special issues for me to attend to, and it took me longer than expected.”
“Diandra is making her triumphant return?” Ophelia asked. Through the phone, I could practically hear her eyes rolling.
“Yes. It took forever to work out her ‘special dietary requests.’ I had just enough time to drop the contracts off at Mr. Calix’s and get out of there before the sun went down. You know I don’t like getting caught in clients’ homes after dark.”
“And you didn’t see anything unusual, out of place?” she asked.
Say, a six-foot-two Greek god of a vampire with a pouty mouth and an acid tongue? He looked pretty out of place, sprawled unconscious on the kitchen tile.
“A couple of packing boxes. The house was pretty empty.”
Notice that I hadn’t actually lied. I just wasn’t answering questions directly. I was raising a teenager and therefore familiar with the distinct difference.
“Is there a problem, Ophelia?”
“No, no,” she assured me. “But I’m afraid Mr. Calix is going to have to cancel his contract. You will, of course, keep your retainer deposit, out of respect for your continued services to our local vampires. You should know that the access codes to Mr. Calix’s house have been changed. You should not enter the house again. He is no longer your client.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. My tone was a careful balance of detached, but sincere, regret. I would regret losing any client, but Ophelia knew that I wouldn’t get hysterical over it.
“I’m sure you’ll have another client to fill up his spot on your roster soon,” she said in a tone that might have been considered reassuring from anyone else. “Speaking of which, have you managed to find the item I requested?”
“Yes, I found the doll,” I said. “A pristine turn-of-the-last-century Clarenbault, with the original dress and bonnet. I only had to shamelessly flatter-slash-threaten the administrators of several obscure antique auction Web sites to obtain it. You owe my PayPal account a considerable sum.”
