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“What, now?”
“Yes. Now. I’ll meet you out here in ten. I’m gonna go in and tell Gil, make him wash the gunk out of his beard. Guy eats like a dog.”
“It’s way past midnight, and it’s been such a long day. I’m exhausted.” Too whiny? Perhaps. But I was totally destroyed.
“This is as much about the contact as it is about your death sentence. You can sleep when you’re dead.”
The breath caught in my throat. I gawped, sobered by the reminder. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right. But did you have to schedule something so late?”
Sterling cocked his head. “News flash, Dust. It’s universally safer for the three of us to work under cover of night. It’s what we have in common.” He grinned, his fangs wet, gleaming in the moonlight. “Embrace the darkness. Carpe noctem, motherfucker.”
Chapter 9
The Nicola Arboretum was unreasonably chilly at three in the morning, especially by Valero standards. And damp, too, every leaf and blade of grass studded with dew, with moisture that clung to the bones like ice. But I couldn’t say that it wasn’t worth coming to see it.
I’d been once, a long time ago, back when my mom was still alive. Even then it was impressive, just this lush expanse of green, dotted here and there with the colors of so many flowers in bloom. By the light of the moon, everything was so much darker, but the gleam of nature was so much more pronounced that way. The arboretum was one huge, glinting sculpture, hewn out of the darkest emerald, twinkling in moonbeams and starlight.
“This is insane,” Gil breathed, his voice just above a whisper. “It’s beautiful.”
I nodded. “Took the words right out of my mouth.”
Sterling shrugged. “I mean, it’s okay.” Trust him to be the downer.
We looked around, ever watchful, though what we were looking for exactly was anyone’s guess. The man that Sterling had spoken to on the phone had told us to meet by the statue in the center of the park. It was a nine-foot sculpture of Nicola Boules, the man responsible for establishing the arboretum, providing the people of Valero an inexpensive weekend destination where they could both indulge in nature and be educated, and providing the teenagers of Valero plenty of huge, dark bushes in which to awkwardly experiment.
“Any minute now,” Sterling said, glancing at his watch. It was silver, like basically every piece of jewelry he wore, from the multiple earrings working their way from his lobes to his cartilage, to the occasional rings he wore on slender fingers. I’d learned in my time with the boys that vampires weren’t actually sensitive to silver. Neither were werewolves. But a lot of other things from myth and urban legend were definitely true. The heightened senses, for example, which I realized Gil was employing when he lifted his head and sniffed.
“They’re here.”
They? Well. This was going to be interesting. I wore my backpack over just one shoulder this time, to make it easier to lift the flap, just in case I needed to release the hounds again. Vanitas, it seemed, had no complaints, and frankly I would have been okay with hefting him around – I needed the exercise, let’s be real – but one does not walk around Valero with a broadsword without attr
acting some suspicion, or one or two very distraught police officers.
I saw the man first, tall, blond. It was Arnaud, our contact from the Amphora. He was pushing what I initially thought was a trolley, until I spotted his cargo. It was a woman in a wheelchair, wizened and small, at first glance, but as the two approached, I saw how straight she sat, how her hair was masterfully pinned into a perfect, white bun. I recognized her immediately.
Enrietta Boules was a minor celebrity in Valero, mainly for her family’s business, which was rooted deeply in farming and agriculture. The family had diversified over the years, and Enrietta specialized in essential oils, supplying them to various industries around the world, but also creating her own aromatherapy and home decoration line.
It was a magazine at Mama Rosa’s, okay? She had a bunch of old ones sitting in a corner, and that’s where I read about Enrietta, and the Boules, and the fact that the statue we were standing right under was her ancestor.
I heard more sniffing. This time it was Sterling, his head tilting as he watched the pair approach.
“She’s magical,” he said. “He isn’t.”
I wasn’t entirely sure how that worked, or whether this ability to sniff out magical blood was universal to all vampires, but I had to hand it to Sterling, it was a pretty nifty trick.
Arnaud nodded at us wordlessly. The wheelchair, soundless throughout their entire journey, squeaked to a stop as the pair joined us under Nicola’s statue. Enrietta, looking austere in a tight gray smock, nodded at us primly.
“Gentlemen,” she said.
“Mrs. Boules,” I replied, giving a shallow bow. I kept my smile to myself when I noticed the others casting me surprised looks.
Enrietta cracked a smile. Ah. We had an opening, then. If she liked me, then half the work was done.
“How charming,” she said. “You must be a fan of our products, then.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I used to like the patchouli incense sticks a lot, but now I think I’m more of a eucalyptus candle kind of guy.”
Out of the corner of my eye I watched as Sterling’s eyebrow climbed so far up his forehead it could have flown right off. Enrietta chuckled, the sound of it like scraping wood. A lot about her felt wooden, in fact, the hard lines of her jaw, the deep, rugged complexion of her skin, like a woman carved out of bark. Weathered, but enduring, stalwart.
