"We need to know where our brother is," he said, after a pause.
I tried not to look as astonished as I felt.
As I've said, some vampires, like Bill, live by themselves. Others feel more secure in a cluster, called a nest. They call each other brother and sister when they've been in the same nest for a while, and some nests lasted decades. (One in New Orleans has lasted two centuries.) I knew from Bill's briefing before we left Louisiana that the Dallas vampires lived in an especially large nest.
I'm no brain surgeon, but even I realized that for a vampire as powerful as Stan to be missing one of his nest brothers was not only very unusual, it was humiliating.
Vampires like to be humiliated about as much as people do.
"Explain the circumstances, please," I said in my most neutral voice.
"My brother Farrell has not returned to his nest for five nights," Stan Davis said.
I knew they would have checked Farrell's favorite hunting grounds, have asked every other vampire in the Dallas nest to find out if Farrell had been seen. Nevertheless, I opened my mouth to ask, as humans are compelled to do. But Bill touched my shoulder, and I glanced behind me to see a tiny headshake. My questions would be taken as a serious insult.
"This girl?" I asked instead. She was still quiet, but she was shivering and shaking. The Hispanic vampire seemed to be the only thing holding her up.
"Works in the club where he was last seen. It's one we own, The Bat's Wing." Bars were favorite enterprises for vampires, naturally, because their heaviest traffic came at night. Somehow, fanged all-night dry cleaners didn't have the same allure that a vampire-studded bar did.
In the past two years, vampire bars had become the hottest form of nightlife a city could boast. The pathetic humans who became obsessed with vampires—fang-bangers—hung out in vampire bars, often in costumes, in the hopes of attracting the attention of the real thing. Tourists came in to gape at the undead and the fang-bangers. These bars weren't the safest place to work.
I caught the eyes of the Hispanic vampire, and indicated a chair on my side of the long table. He eased the girl into it. I looked down at her, preparing to slide into her thoughts. Her mind had no protection whatsoever. I closed my eyes.
Her name was Bethany. She was twenty-one, and she had thought of herself as a wild child, a real bad girl. She had had no idea what trouble that could get her into, until now. Getting a job at the Bat's Wing had been the rebellious gesture of her life, and it might just turn out to be fatal.
I turned my eyes back to Stan Davis. "You understand," I said, taking a great risk, "that if she yields the information you want, she goes free, unharmed." He'd said he understood the terms, but I had to be sure.
Bill heaved a sigh behind me. Not a happy camper. Stan Davis's eyes actually glowed for a second, so angry was he. "Yes," he said, biting out the words, his fangs half out, "I agreed." We met each other's eyes for a second. We both knew that even two years ago, the vampires of Dallas would have kidnapped Bethany and tortured her until they had every scrap of information she had stored in her brain, and some she'd made up.
Mainstreaming, going public with the fact of their existence, had many benefits—but it also had its price. In this instance, the price was my service.
"What does Farrell look like?"
"Like a cowboy." Stan said this without a trace of humor. "He wears one of those string ties, jeans, and shirts with fake pearl snaps."
The Dallas vampires didn't seem to be into haute couture. Maybe I could have worn my barmaid outfit after all. "What color hair and eyes?"
"Brown hair going gray. Brown eyes. A big jaw. About . . . five feet, eleven inches." Stan was translating from some other method of measurement. "He would look about thirty-eight, to you," Stan said. "He's clean-shaven, and thin."
"Would you like me to take Bethany somewhere else? You got a smaller room, less crowded?" I tried to look agreeable, because it seemed like such a good idea.
Stan made a movement with his hand, almost too fast for me to detect, and in a second—literally—every vampire, except Stan himself and Bill, had left the kitchen. Without looking, I knew that Bill was standing against the wall, ready for anything. I took a deep breath. Time to start this venture.
"Bethany, how are you?" I said, making my voice gentle.
"How'd you know my name?" she asked, slumping down in her seat. It was a breakfast nook chair on wheels, and I rolled it out from the table and turned it to face the one I now settled in. Stan was still sitting at the head of the table, behind me, slightly to my left.
"I can tell lots of things about you," I said, trying to look warm and omniscient. I began picking thoughts out of the air, like apples from a laden tree. "You had a dog named Woof when you were little, and your mother makes the best coconut cake in the world. Your dad lost too much money at a card game one time, and you had to hock your VCR to help him pay up, so your mom wouldn't find out."
Her mouth was hanging open. As much as it was possible, she had forgotten the fact that she was in terrible danger. "That's amazing, you're as good as the psychic on TV, the one in the ads!"
"Well, Bethany, I'm not a psychic," I said, a little too sharply. "I'm a telepath, and what I do is read your thoughts, even some you maybe didn't know you had. I'm going to relax you, first, and then we're going to remember the evening you worked at the bar—not tonight, but five nights ago." I glanced back at Stan, who nodded.
"But I wasn't thinking about my mother's cake!" Bethany said, stuck on what had struck her.
I tried to suppress my sigh.
"You weren't aware of it, but you did. It slid across your mind when you looked at the palest vampire—Isabel—because her face was as white as the icing for the cake. And you thought of how much you missed your dog when you were thinking of how your parents would miss you."
I knew that was a mistake as soon as the words went out of my mouth, and sure enough, she began crying again, recalled to her present circumstances.
"So what are you here for?" she asked between sobs.
"I'm here to help you remember."
"But you said you're not psychic."
"And I'm not." Or was I? Sometimes I thought I had a streak mixed in with my other "gift," which was what the vampires thought it was. I had always thought of it as more of a curse, myself, until I'd met Bill. "Psychics can touch objects and get information about the wearers. Some psychics see visions of past or future events. Some psychics can communicate with the dead. I'm a telepath. I can read some peoples' thoughts. Supposedly, I can send thoughts, too, but I've never tried that." Now that I'd met another telepath, the attempt was an exciting possibility, but I stowed that idea away to explore at my leisure. I had to concentrate on the business at hand.
As I sat knee to knee with Bethany, I was making a series of decisions. I was new to the idea of using my "listening in" to some purpose. Most of my life had been spent struggling not to hear. Now, hearing was my job, and Bethany's life probably depended on it. Mine almost certainly did.
"Listen, Bethany, here's what we're going to do. You're going to remember that evening, and I'm going to go through it with you. In your mind."
"Will it hurt?"
"No, not a bit."
"And after that?"
"Why, you'll go."
"Go home?"
"Sure." With an amended memory that wouldn't include me, or this evening, courtesy of a vampire.
"They won't kill me?"
"No way."
"You promise?"
"I do." I managed to smile at her.
"Okay," she said, hesitantly. I moved her a little, so she couldn't see Stan over my shoulder. I had no idea what he was doing. But she didn't need to see that white face while I was trying to get her to relax.