“Yeah,” Sara said. “We’ll tell Clyde when we get back. I don’t like repeating myself.”
Trinity didn’t say anything, the plastic covering the steering wheel squeaking under her fingers. Touchy.
I sincerely hoped Clyde would appreciate the work we had done and what we had found out for him. Hopefully he’d consider it enough and wouldn’t expect us to continue digging.
But knowing my luck, and considering the vampire’s behavior thus far, whatever we did for him would never be enough.
Chapter 12
“That’s a good start,” Clyde said to Sara as she finished telling him about what she had learned from the lady at the Laundromat, “but I need you to find him.”
Clyde’s expression had remained stony as we each told him what we had found out. I noted a brief clenching of his jaw as he took in the details about the necromancer when Sara described him, but otherwise, there was no sign that the vampire was in the least affected by what we had to say. Though it was a tell, I wasn’t sure what it meant yet. He either already knew who the mage was, or he had a suspicion confirmed. Regardless, it just meant he hadn’t told us everything, which was something I already knew.
Sara shifted in her seat, a sign she was uncomfortable. It was a small miracle she’d been able to get as much information as she had out of that woman. Clyde probably didn’t realize we’d struck what was the private investigator’s equivalent of a gold vein, or maybe he just didn’t care.
I wasn’t all that surprised. Trinity had led us straight to Clyde as soon as we returned. The room we were in now was one we had passed through the first night on our way to see him. Well-lit and without the strobes, it was almost homey. There were numerous overstuffed chairs and couches, and the artwork on the walls, which hadn’t been there the night of the S&M-themed party, was of fields and horses and English countryside scenes.
He had placed himself in the center of it all, sprawled on a leather couch that matched the red silk-screen wallpaper. Fabian was seated on the other end with one leg thrown casually over the other.
Once again, Clyde wasn’t wearing a shirt, only this time he had on stone-washed jeans that weren’t so tight that nothing was left to the imagination. His followers—minions—whatever they were—had taken seats around him, some of them taking notes, others on the phone or tapping away on laptops, and a couple on the floor in front of Clyde, touching him and probably giving him the occasional compliment to stroke his ego. Or something else. Who knew, right?
I couldn’t help but wonder if every time he arranged to see us, he prepared in advance to pose in such a way that he would look devastating. If I hadn’t seen Royce do much the same every now and then, I might have been more impressed, but his posturing was getting old very fast.
As much as I wanted to call him on it, and ask him why he didn’t just use whatever connections he must have in the LAPD to track the necromancer down, it didn’t seem like a good time to push him. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask, but I already knew how he was going to answer.
“Clyde,” I said, quickly amending my words after seeing his expression, “Mr. Seabreeze, we don’t have access to our resources out here, and we can’t use our PI licenses or announce our presence to local authorities. It would defeat the purpose of our coming here. Is there anyway you can ask the police to look into this with the information we gave you? We’ve got a getaway vehicle description—a rented van. With that kind of information, they’d probably find this guy a lot faster than we can.”
“I don’t want the police involved in my affairs. There’s little they can do against a magical menace like a necromancer. If they were to find him first, they would inevitably die, and thus draw more bad press down on Others. I can’t allow it.”
His answer cemented my earlier theory that he knew who was behind this. From all I knew about him, he loved being in the spotlight, and he would undoubtedly have jumped on the opportunity to come across as the “victim” of some kind of hate crime if the culprit had been human instead of Other. This was something deeply personal, an affront to Clyde’s power structure and tenuous hold on this city.
I needed to get in touch with Royce as soon as possible and see if we could come back to New York or if there was somewhere else we could go. This place was more dangerous than where we’d been, if not in the same way, if Clyde was bringing down this kind of heat on himself.
As much as I wanted to come back with a smart-ass reply, I put on my best professional face and tone, bearing in mind that pissing him off would be unwise. “Okay. I’m not saying this to make you upset, but do you realize we have no way of following the leads we were able to scrounge up? It’s a dead end.”
His blue eyes gleamed, and I detected a hint of fang in his humorless smile as he leaned closer to me. “Really? No, Ms. Waynest, it hadn’t occurred to me.”
His sarcasm was really unnecessary. It took every last shred of willpower I had to keep from saying something snarky in return.
“I chose to use you for your investigative skills. If you are too incompetent to do the job, I’m sure you can find someone else to take you in.”
“No,” Sara said, stepping forward. Some of the other vampires in the room leaned in, their own eyes taking on a touch of red. “No, we’ll figure it out. We’re just going to need more time.”
Fabian rose from his seat beside Clyde, his eyes sliding over us in a way that nearly felt like fingers crawling over my skin. Creepy. I got the idea this was the first time he felt like we might be bringing something useful to the table, and that he also didn’t like it. There was something about the aura he was projecting that made me wonder what his stakes were in this.
“You’ve discovered much in a short period of time. I think perhaps you underestimate what you can do for us. Find the boy, and you will be suitably rewarded. ”
Clyde shot Fabian a look that I interpreted as “shut the hell up.” He then sat up and rested his elbows on his knees, giving Sara and me a smile that might have been endearing if he had kept his fangs to himself. “Continue your search as long as necessary. Use any of my resources you need to—but stay away from the local police. You wouldn’t want to be discovered and extradited back to New York, now, would you?”
Sara and I both shook our heads.
“Good. Give Trinity the details. I will see if I can have one of my people find out who rented that van and what the reported destination was supposed to be, though I am not sure the information will help you much. You two keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on the right track.”
Interesting. Clyde (and maybe Fabian?) had to know more than he was saying, but clearly wasn’t going to tell us what that was. At this point, I suspected he didn’t want to find out who was killing his people—he already had that information and wasn’t of a mind to share—he just wanted to know where they were. Maybe to test how good we were at our jobs, too.
If we found the necromancer, I had little doubt Clyde would try to kill the guy, but I also wondered what had started this mess and why they were both working so hard to fight each other while going unnoticed. The mage was covering his tracks, and Clyde didn’t want the cops involved. For Fabian to be here, I had the feeling something big was going on that meant Clyde had bitten off more than he could chew, and he needed the help of an older, more experienced vampire to make the Big Bad go away.
As for why they were so hell-bent on keeping things secret, it was possible old habits died hard. Others had kept their existence secret for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The decade or so that had passed since Rohrik Donovan and the Moonwalker pack had revealed that werewolves and vampires and magi and who knew what all were living alongside humanity wasn’t nearly long enough for most people to get used to it. The bulk of the supernatural community—the ones who had been around before their big reveal to the bulk of society—might have been experts at hiding their inter-Other wars from people, but somehow that didn’t seem like a good enough reason.