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Samuel nodded. “Very well. I assume you want to know why I brought you here.”
“I do.”
“I want to be allies,” he said. “Perhaps, eventually, we could be friends.”
Nick glanced at Faye and the others. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
Samuel caught the look. “Do I? Faye, my dear, I hope you didn’t offend our new friend.”
Faye shrugged. “There were... witnesses.”
“Did anyone die? I would hate to break the truce over something so insignificant.”
“No deaths,” she said quickly. “Some of the patrons of the bar might be missing some blood, but they’ll live. We erased their memories, of course. They won’t remember a thing.”
“Good,” Samuel said. “You see, Nick? We can be reasonable.”
Nick decided that they had a different understanding of the word ‘reasonable,’ but he didn’t comment on it.
“How did you find out where I was?” Nick said.
“It was a guess, really,” Samuel said. “My people went to your home and the university. The campus might have been fruitful, but it was taking too long, and in a stroke of luck, your neighbours were home.”
“Did you hurt them?”
“They’re alive,” Samuel said. “They were very helpful, and although they couldn’t tell us where exactly you might be, they mentioned your brother’s place of work.”
“I doubt that my neighbours just offered up that information.”
“Humans can be very cooperative with the right touch. A talented vampire can be quite persuasive. It’s one of our better attributes.”
“So you came to the bar to find me. Lucky guess.”
“Not entirely,” Samuel said. “I also sent people to the university. If you weren’t found in either place, we would have expanded our search throughout the city. Apparently, your father is out of town for work, so we would have sent people to track him down, in case you went to meet him. It would have taken time, but our meeting was inevitable. It was just a matter of time.”
“What do you want?”
“As I said, I want to be allies.”
“You got off to a great start, attacking my brother and wrecking the bar he works at.”
Samuel’s smile faded. “I must apologise for that. My people can be callous, but I never imagined they would be foolish enough to harm the brother of a void.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Nick muttered.
Samuel turned to the other vampires, and something in the room changed. The others went tense, and Nick suddenly wished he had a weapon.
Samuel’s voice was calm. “Who hurt the boy?”
It was Blair, but she didn’t say anything.
After a slight pause, Faye stepped forward. “I gave the order.”
Samuel’s voice remained calm. “And yet, your companions looked at her, not you.”
Faye hesitated, glancing at Blair. “But-”
“Your attempt to protect her is noble, but each of us makes our own choices in life.”
