He clasped his hands together, left elbow propped on the back of the seat. "Okay, when you're not raising the dead, what do you do?"
"Work on preternatural crimes with the police, mostly murders."
"And?" he said.
"And I execute rogue vampires."
"And?"
"And nothing," I said. I glanced at him again. In the dark I couldn't see his eyes, their color was too dark for that, but I could feel his gaze. Probably imagination. Yeah. I'd been hanging around Jean-Claude too long. The smell of Richard's leather coat mingled with a faint whiff of his cologne. Something expensive and sweet. It went very nicely with the smell of leather.
"I work. I exercise. I go out with friends." I shrugged. "What do you do when you're not teaching?"
"Scuba diving, caving, bird watching, gardening, astronomy." His smile was a dim whiteness in the near dark.
"You must have a lot more free time than I do."
"Actually, the teacher always has more homework than the students," he said.
"Sorry to hear that."
He shrugged, the leather creaked and slithered over his skin. Good leather always moved like it was still alive.
"Do you watch TV?" he asked.
"My television broke two years ago, and I never replaced it."
"You must do something for fun."
I thought about it. "I collect toy penguins." The minute I said it, I wished I hadn't.
He grinned at me. "Now we're getting somewhere. The Executioner collects stuffed toys. I like it."
"Glad to hear it." My voice sounded grumpy even to me.
"What's wrong?" he said.
"I'm not very good at small talk," I said.
"You were doing fine."
No, I wasn't, but I wasn't sure how to explain it to him. I didn't like talking about myself to strangers. Especially strangers with ties to Jean-Claude.
"What do you want from me?" I said.
"I'm just passing the time."
"No, you weren't." His shoulder-length hair had fallen around his face. He was taller, thicker, but the outline was familiar. He looked like Phillip in the shadowed dark. Phillip was the only other human being I'd ever seen with the monsters.
Phillip sagged in the chains. Blood poured in a bright red flood down his chest. It splattered onto the floor, like rain. Torchlight glittered on the wet bone of his spine. Someone had ripped his throat out.
I staggered against the wall as if someone had hit me. I couldn't get enough air. Someone kept whispering, "Oh, God, oh, God," over and over, and it was me. I walked down the steps with my back pressed against the wall. I couldn't take my eyes from him. Couldn't look away. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't cry.
The torchlight reflected in his eyes, giving the illusion of movement. A scream built in my gut and spilled out my throat. "Phillip!"
Something cold slithered up my spine. I was sitting in my car with the ghost of guilty conscience. It hadn't been my fault that Phillip died. I certainly didn't kill him, but. . but I still felt guilty. Someone should have saved him, and since I was the last one with a chance to do it, it should have been me. Guilt is a many splendored thing.
"What do you want from me, Richard?" I asked.
"I don't want anything," he said.
"Lies are ugly things, Richard."
"What makes you think I'm lying?"
"Finely honed instinct," I said.
"Has it really been that long since a man tried to make polite small talk with you?"
I started to look at him, and decided not to. It had been that long. "The last person who flirted with me was murdered. It makes a girl a little cautious."
He was quiet for a minute. "Fair enough, but I still want to know more about you."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
He had me there. "How do I know Jean-Claude didn't tell you to make friends?"
"Why would he do that?"
I shrugged.
"Okay, let's start over. Pretend we met at the health club."
"Health club?" I said.
He smiled. "Health club. I thought you looked great in your swimsuit."
"Sweats," I said.
He nodded. "You looked cute in your sweats."
"I liked looking great better."
"If I get to imagine you in a swimsuit, you can look great; sweats only get cute."
"Fair enough."
"We made pleasant small talk and I asked you out."
I had to look at him. "Are you asking me out?"
"Yes, I am."
I shook my head and turned back to the road. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?" he asked.
"I told you."
"Just because one person got killed on you doesn't mean everyone will."
I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make my hands hurt. "I was eight when my mother died. My father remarried when I was ten." I shook my head. "People go away and they don't come back."
"Sounds scary." His voice was soft and low.
I didn't know what had made me say that. I didn't usually talk about my mother to strangers, or anybody else for that matter. "Scary," I said softly. "You could say that."
"If you never let anyone get close to you, you don't get hurt, is that it?"
"There are also a lot of very jerky men in the twenty-one-to-thirty age group," I said.
He grinned. "I'll give you that. Nice-looking, intelligent, independent women are not exactly plentiful either."
"Stop with the compliments, or you'll have me blushing."
"You don't strike me as someone who blushes easily."
A picture flashed in my mind. Richard Zeeman naked beside the bed, struggling into his sweat pants. It hadn't embarrassed me at the time. It was only now, with him so warm and close in the car, that I thought about it. A warm flush crept up my face. I blushed in the dark, glad he couldn't see. I didn't want him to know I was thinking about what he looked like without his clothes on. I don't usually do that. Of course, I don't usually see a man buck naked before I've even gone out on a date. Come to think of it, I didn't see men naked on dates either.
"We're in the health club, sipping fruit juice, and I ask you out."
I stared very hard at the road. I kept flashing on the smooth line of his thigh and lower things. It was embarrassing, but the harder I tried not to think about it, the clearer the picture seemed to get.
"Movies and dinner?" I said.
"No," he said. "Something unique. Caving."
"You mean crawling around in a cave on a first date?"
"Have you ever been caving?"
"Once."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"We were sneaking up on bad guys at the time. I didn't think much about enjoying it."
"Then you have to give it another chance. I go caving at least twice a month. You get to wear your oldest clothes and get really dirty, and no one tells you not to play in the mud."
"Mud?" I said.
"Too messy for you?"
"I was a bio-lab assistant in college; nothing's too messy for me."
"At least you can say you get to use your degree in your work."
I laughed. "True."
"I use my degree, too, but I went in for educating the munchkins."