"What if he's not waiting for us?" she asked. "What if he doesn't attack yet?"
"I don't know. But I do know we can't lead him to your church, and I can't do this by myself."
She ran his scenario over and over in her mind, seeing various outcomes, and she was frightened. What if she failed? What if she couldn't make Julian freeze again? She didn't want to get Robert killed, and what would Philip do if she didn't come home?
But in the end, what choice did they have?
"We'll get off in Salem," she said. "But if he's there waiting, you better make sure he misses."
"Good." He leaned back against the couch, and he seemed to relax now that they'd come to a decision. His shoulder had stopped bleeding, but his coat was torn and stained.
"Let me try to wash that out," she said, climbing to her feet, "or people will look at you when we get off."
He nodded, slipped out of his coat, and handed it to her. Beneath, his shirt looked worse, but they could cover it once the coat was clean.
"We'll get you some new clothes in Portland," she said, determined to speak of the future as if it would happen.
He opened his mouth and closed it again. She wondered what he was worried about now.
"What?" she asked, turning on the faucet.
"You've said a few times that you're going to buy this church. How are you going to pay for it?"
"With money."
He frowned at her. "You know what I mean. Where are you getting the money? You and Philip both seem to have an endless supply. That coat he's wearing must have cost two thousand dollars."
"At least." Embarrassed, she focused on washing out the blood-stains. "I don't know where Philip gets his money."
Come to think of it, that was a good question. He must have inherited his family's wealth, but he had always made fun of her stockbroker, and she'd never seen him contact a bank.
The irony of her own wealth brought more discomfort, considering what she and Robert were about to do. "Julian always… He sent money so I could take care of William… a lot of money. We lived with Edward Claymore in New York for years, and back then he handled everything for me. But I wanted control of my own affairs, so I took William, and we moved to Portland. I started investing around 1954, and later, I just learned what to look for, and I made some lucky choices at a ground floor buy-in… Coca-Cola, Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, Exxon."
She paused her scrubbing and glanced at him. He still looked troubled, but he also seemed interested in what she was saying.
"I don't have any money," he said. "I've been living night to night for a long time, just taking a few dollars from people I fed on, and I used almost everything I had left to buy my plane ticket from Russia."
"Why were you living in Russia?"
He shrugged. "It was just a place. I didn't care where I lived… but Jessenia and I never traveled there, and I couldn't stay anyplace where we'd been." He paused. "But I always pay my own way, so I'll start contributing as soon as I can pick up a few jobs. I just haven't cared enough to work for a while."
"Jobs?"
He'd been working? Doing what?
"I ran a small business in Moscow for a while where I found lost objects, stolen objects, for people," he explained. "More than half the time, one of their friends or relatives took it, and I just had to read the right mind."
He'd used his telepathy to earn a living? That was clever. She'd never thought of doing anything like that-but then she'd never had to.
His coat looked better. She wrung it out and laid it over a chair. "I've never used my telepathy for much of anything besides feeding or defending myself or reading memories."
At her last two words, he tensed up and then pointed at the floor right in front of where he was sitting.
She joined him, cross-legged, puzzled again. He was changing topics too fast tonight.
"How did you do that?" he asked. "Make me see and feel everything like it was happening?"
"I don't know. Wade taught me to guide the stream, but I can't control where someone chooses to start-like with you. I didn't mean to make you go through all that. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. That isn't what I meant."
He stopped talking, and she had no idea what he wanted, but she could see by the desperate look on his face that he wanted something, and he wanted it so badly he feared asking her.
"What is it?" she asked.
"We still have enough time before Salem," he said quietly. "Can you do it again?"
He wanted to be with Jessenia. He was addicted to someone long gone. If Eleisha did this for him once, would he ask her again… and again?
And could she ever say no?
She reached out and grasped his pointer finger to help make the connection stronger.
"Close your eyes and go back. Start wherever you want."
He turned his hand over and gripped down hard on her fingers. It hurt a little, but not much.
"Just think back," she whispered.
Chapter 15
As Philip bolted across the empty car after the strange vampire, Wade was once again hit by a sudden telepathic shout. Stay with Rose!
Philip's voice inside his head felt sharper than Eleisha's, but he was standing in the doorway, so he didn't buckle or stumble.
"Don't kill him!" Rose called after Philip. She looked outside as the train picked up more speed. "Those cars behind us are filled with people," she said more quietly.
Wade stood frozen, trying to take everything in. Philip's brilliant plan to jump off the train-which Wade had never been too sure about in the first place-was rapidly becoming impossible, and just like Philip, he was frightened at the thought of Eleisha getting between Robert and Julian.
Now Philip had gone running off after a vampire in a trench coat, and he was left here with no idea what to do. "Maybe we should go back to our cabin. At least we'll be hidden there."
Rose looked around the empty car with the short stairwell and the door leading outside. Her voice was calm. "No, Philip will come back here no matter what happens. You open the outer door, and we'll wait."
"You're not still planning on jumping?" he asked incredulously. "I think that ship has sailed, Rose. We're going too fast."
"Not quite yet."
For somebody pathologically afraid of sitting in an airplane with a hundred people around, she showed no fear of hitting the ground at forty miles an hour. But her words about Philip coming back to this car made sense. Just what did he plan to do anyway? Pull a machete and take that vampire's head off right in front of the passengers? Why did Philip always have to act first and think later?
"He had to go," Rose said, as if reading his mind-but he didn't feel her. Maybe she was reading his face. "He'd never jump with that vampire right behind us, so he had to least at chase him off. I'm just afraid Philip will catch him… and I hope he tries talking first."
"Talking?" Wade asked. "That thing tried to cut your head off, and now he's hunting us on a train!"
"We don't know what he's after."
Wade sighed and looked around. Pulling his gun, he motioned to the back of the empty car. "Okay, I'll get the door open, and you wait over there. But if Philip's not back in the next thirty seconds, we're going to need a new plan."
Although he didn't want to shatter Rose's hopes, he somehow doubted Philip would try talking first-and for once, he completely agreed with Philip.
But whatever Philip was going to do… he'd better do it fast.
Nothing that had occurred in the last few moments changed the fact that Robert and Eleisha were still alone with Julian coming after them.