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What that direction might be—and whether I actually wanted it—I couldn’t say. Not only was there my vow of no more entanglements to consider, there was also the fact he was still very much a stranger. He could be married with a dozen kids for all I knew.
I finished my brownie and licked the chocolate from my fingers, well aware that he was watching me even though I wasn’t looking at him.
“When I was talking to the Redferns,” he said, his tone slightly deeper and edged with a tension that had my pulse rate rising. “I asked if I could borrow something of his.”
He reached into his pocket and then placed a watch on the counter between us. The face was shattered and part of the band was missing. “Would it be possible to track Mason’s current location through it?”
“Possibly.” I reached out, but didn’t touch the watch. I didn’t need to. The waves of wrongness rolling off it were evident enough from a couple of inches away, and it made me want to knock it far away. “What reason did you give his parents for needing it?”
“Mason’s death is still an open case because of the shot-out tires, so I simply told them we were following a new lead and that we needed the watch he’d been wearing at the time of the accident. They gave it to me without question.”
“Do you think it’s possible our vampire killed Mason?”
“Don’t you? Both our vampire’s note and his actions make it clear he’s intent on making his victims suffer before he kills them. It’s not much of a leap to presume he was behind Mason’s so-called accident. Especially given tonight’s events.”
“True.”
I studied the watch for a moment, my arms crossed on the bench and fingers clenched. I really didn’t want to touch the thing. Fear and desperation might have filled Karen’s last remaining moments on this earth, but her passing hadn’t stained the locket with evil or wrongness. The vibes coming off the watch felt like what I imagined hell would feel like, only without the heat.
Presuming the myths of hell being hot were, in fact, true, that is. The darker spirits could probably have told us, but no witch I knew would ever risk summoning or conversing with them—especially for a question as inane as that.
“Can you use the watch?” Aiden asked.
My gaze rose to his. “Yes, but it won’t be pleasant. The desecration we witnessed at the gravesite vibrates through his remains and, subsequently, this watch.”
“If you’d prefer not to touch it, then don’t. We’ll find him the old-fashioned way.”
“The old-fashioned way might just take too much time. I’ll try tomorrow.” I stopped and then swore. “I’m such an idiot.”
Amusement touched his lips again. “You’re many things, but I wouldn’t have said an idiot is one of them.”
“Thanks. I think.”
His smile grew. Brownie goodness really was the way to this man’s heart—or, at least, into his good books.
How long it would last was another matter entirely.
“What did you remember to cause that outburst?”
“That I can track vampire Karen the same way I tracked human Karen—via her necklace.”
He frowned. “Didn’t you say you were going to do that tomorrow night, when the moon was full?”
“Different necklace. That one has our vampire’s stain on it. I can’t risk using it without being in a full protection circle.”
“Ah.” His expression suggested he really didn’t understand why, but was going along with it anyway.
“That stain could be a spell of some kind,” I said. “Given he’s a blood witch, and much more powerful than me, I can’t risk an attempt to explore it without being fully protected.”
“Or you might end up in another situation like last night?”
“Exactly.”
“Not something we need.”
“Agreed.” I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was nearly ten. “Do you think it’s too late to give Marjorie a call?”
“That depends on whether or not she knows Karen has become a vampire. We’ve not mentioned it.”
