Well, yeah. No kidding. However, I didn’t think that would be a wise response. Nothing appropriate was coming to mind—so Sara stepped in, her voice tremulous and wavering.
“It’s not that we don’t appreciate your hospitality, but we miss our own homes and families. Our friends. All the things we left behind.”
That reminded me of my idea, and I was quick to jump in, forcing a measure of enthusiasm into my voice. “As long as we’re here, we’re still on the case for you.”
Sara and Clyde both shot me a look. It was uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of those mixed signals, but I pressed on.
“It would help if you were a little more open with us about what’s going on—” Fabian’s black stare felt like a physical blow. I took a hasty step back, bumping into Sara in the process as I rushed out the rest. “If you can be, that is. We’ve got some friends who might be able to tell us more about where this guy is. Anything else you can tell us would help, of course, but we’ve triangulated the area where he is most likely staying and can probably find him with more time. As long as we’re left on our own to search, of course, since it seems like he’ll kill any of your people who are with us.”
Please, God, don’t let him realize why I don’t want him to send any other vampires out on the road with us.
Clyde studied me for a time. Though I was expecting him to be the one to answer me, it was Fabian who spoke up, his voice rich with condescension. “You ladies may think you’re fooling him, but you do not fool me. If you believe you can hide from Gideon, you are quite mistaken.”
Sara cleared her throat, her voice coming out more steady this time. “Would you mind telling us what else you know about him aside from his name? We might have been able to move this investigation along faster if you’d come clean from the start.”
Fabian’s eyes flickered, but he favored her with a lazy grin. No fangs. No threat. Not yet.
“He was my lover.”
Oh, that was not a happy thought.
“We wish to keep this amongst ourselves, you understand. It is a private affair, not a matter for the authorities. If we can find him, then I may be able to speak with him privately. If not, then he will continue this ridiculous assault—”
“Ridiculous? He’s killed some of my oldest and most skilled progeny!” Clyde sputtered, his voice taking on a slight lisp around the extended fangs. “You can’t possibly think that this matter—”
“May I finish?”
Clyde glowered at Fabian, but quieted. By this point, it was becoming quite clear to me who was wearing the pants in this relationship.
“As I was saying,” Fabian continued, turning his attention back to Sara, “he most likely believes that Clyde worked some form of magic to make me tire of him. Though it is far from the case, Gideon won’t understand unless he hears it directly from me. And as I don’t fancy him using his magics to overpower me in the process, I want to know where he is hiding during the day so that I might seek him out and prevent him from casting anything truly nasty before I can get in my say.
“Are you satisfied with this, or would you prefer”—he ran his tongue over a fang in an all too suggestive motion—“more details?”
“No,” I said faintly, “that’s quite enough for us.”
Now that I had a better understanding of what we were after and why, I wished they had said something about this mess from the start. I might have changed the way I went at this case. Not by much, but maybe Sara and I would have looked at the behavior of the necromancer in a different light.
Then again, maybe not. The vampire murders were still pretty insane, even if it was the act of a jealous lover instead of a power grab.
Love was a potent motivating force, and people did all kinds of crazy things in its name. Look at what had happened with Helen of Troy. An entire city under siege, gone to waste, and a war remembered thousands of years later, all because of the abduction of a single woman.
Max Carlyle had done something similar, planning for who knew how many centuries to displace Royce as the master of New York and utterly destroy his empire. All because Royce had killed the woman Max loved.
One had to hand it to the Greeks. They thought big when it came to the destruction of their enemies.
“I’ll assign you a new bodyguard tomorrow,” Clyde declared, stalking over to the couch to kneel next to it, his hand drifting over Fabian’s arm, which had resumed stirring the bowl once more. “Perhaps a human one. I don’t care for the idea of you two running around town with no protection. Even if Gideon would not hurt you, there are others who would.”
Though I was thankful for his offer, I couldn’t help but wonder what he had to gain by keeping us alive. Maybe Royce had threatened him with some form of dire consequence if he continued to use us to deal with the necromancer on his behalf, or if something terrible happened to us.
Clyde glanced at us over his shoulder, his eyes once again an icy blue. He had gained some control over himself, finally, though he was still clearly upset. “If you are going to continue your search, then we need to rethink how you will be going about it. I am not certain yet if I want to continue to use your services. We’ll discuss this again tomorrow.”
We were obviously dismissed. Sara shook her head and tugged on my arm, pulling me away, but Fabian held up a staying hand.
“Ladies, do not fret. You are still human yet, and Gideon does not trouble himself in the affairs of those who are not of Other blood, aside from doing his best to maintain a measure of secrecy about his presence and his actions. If you do continue your search, then knowing that may be of some use to you.”
I offered him a wan, humorless smile. “Thank you, Mr. d’Argento. We’ll keep that in mind.”
He nodded, his own smile sly and secretive. I had a bad feeling that Fabian had his own agenda and was planning something unpleasant for Clyde, who was currently quite interested in exploring Fabian’s bare chest.
I didn’t envy the vampire. Either one of them.
Chapter 19
When Sara and I got back to the guest house, the first thing we did was shower. Well, second thing for me. First I stored Jo-Jo’s and Gavin’s letters in my bag so I wouldn’t forget them whenever it was time to leave. I didn’t want to cause the family of werewolves any more grief than they’d already suffered.
That task out of the way, I spent a lot of time scrubbing and scraping and dancing around the little globs of ick that came out of my hair. Some of it was probably from Sara’s clinging to me, and the rest of it was most likely something I’d picked up during my time passed out on the alley floor.
Discovering just how many tidbits of grossness were clinging to me wasn’t pleasant, but the relief I felt after I was clean was immeasurable.
Throwing on some sweats, I poked around in the drawers in the various rooms in the house until I found a pad of paper and some extra pens. Next, I went back into my room and made notes of what I already knew about this case, and the ties we’d established the necromancer had. Usually I liked to do this sort of thing on my computer—it made it easier to cross-reference—but that wasn’t an option here. Spreading the papers out on my bed along with the map with the notations of where all of the attacks had taken place, I tried to see how everything fit together.
Fabian was now dating Clyde. He had previously dated Gideon.
Gideon was after Clyde’s people, punishing the new beau instead of Fabian, who was supposedly the unfaithful one.
Why?
Most people, when cheated on, tried to retaliate by making their significant others jealous. Thus, Gideon’s response made me believe that he was acting irrationally, but for a far different reason than a need to get back at Fabian. Retaliatory affairs were the most common reaction of someone who discovered he or she was being cheated on.