In the Dark (13 page)

I thought about
refusing. I didn’t want to sit around and jaw about Kent’s
murder.

“Yeah. I’m
coming.”

I hauled myself
up, wiping my eyes, and offered Emily a hand up. She took it –
and was it my imagination, or did she hold my hand longer than she
really needed to? Was that a soft squeeze? My stomach fluttered and
turned over, in a nice way. I squeezed back in case she had. If she
hadn’t, well, then I just made the first move. Either way, she
gave me another lovely smile before heading back down the hallway.

Josephine had
curled into a corner of the couch, like she didn’t want to take
up too much space. Sebastian waited until we came in before he sat
back down, eyes dark. Thinking dark, not angry or concerned. A random
wall seemed to have his attention, but I could see him watching
Josephine. Something about her had his mind clicking.

Emily found a
spot next to Josephine. I took one of the other red-velvet-and-oak
chairs. I tried to watch Sebastian, wondering why Josephine had him
so twitchy, but he saw me and the look vanished.

“Sebastian’s
said everything he knows,” Josephine started, quietly. I jumped
anyway. She made an apologetic face. “I think it’s pretty
complete. I just wanted to know what you saw, if you might know
something he’d miss.”

“I guess,”
I said, feeling small. Waited for someone to ask me a question. They
sat, looking at me expectantly. I cleared my throat and sat on my
hands.

“We went
to the Half-Moon for a gig. He left me on the dance floor to go
backstage. I danced for a while, until they announced his name over
the loudspeaker, asking him to come backstage. I went to the stage –”

“What were
you doing at the time?” Josephine interrupted. “Just
dancing? Nothing else?”

“No, not
really. Why?” I frowned.

She shook her
head. “Nothing. Go on.”

I cleared my
suddenly dry throat again.

“So I went
to the stage, to ask if anyone in the band had seen him, and they all
said no, and then I turned around and saw this woman –” I
choked on more tears, the hard ball in my belly working its way up my
throat.

“What made
you turn around?” Josephine said into my tear-filled silence.

I blinked at
her, my eyelashes wet. “What?”

“What made
you turn around?” she repeated. “Was it a sound, a
movement, a . . . feeling?” The way she said that last made my
nose wrinkle.

“Why?”
I asked.

She shook her
head delicately. “Nothing,” she said, like giving up.
“Nothing. If you don’t know what I mean, it’s not
important.”

I pressed my
lips together, but didn’t ask. If she didn’t want to say,
pushing her wouldn’t help.

“Anyway,
there was this woman, and she had Kent leaned up against her shoulder
–” I choked again. That would always be my last memory of
him. The sickening way his head flopped forward. He’d probably
already been dead.

Red dropped onto
my jeans: tap, tap, tap.

Sebastian leaned
across the space between us and very carefully set one hand on my
knee. It was a rough gesture, uncertain. But it softened the rock in
my belly. I relaxed and he sat back, taking his cold, hard hand with
him.

“I think
it’s safe to assume that whoever took Evan took Kent,”
Josephine said, her voice low. “Though I’m inclined to
believe for different reasons.”

Sebastian
nodded. “I agree. Kent and Ian seem to be the objective here.
Whoever took Evan has not made the same vigorous effort to come after
either you or Emily. I believe it might have been to throw pursuers
off, or simply entertainment.”

Emily let out a
small cry. I turned to look at her, but she had gotten up to leave
the room, hands over her face. Josephine watched her go with a
worried pucker on her forehead. She turned to Sebastian, making
helpless gestures.

“No
apology necessary,” he said. “It is never easy for one so
young to hear such things.”

“No,”
she agreed. “I don’t believe it get easier with time,
just . . .”

Sebastian
inclined his head.

“So what
information do we have so far?” Josephine said with a heavy
sigh. She snuggled smaller into her corner of the couch.

“We know
what these women look like, and what they want,” Sebastian
said.

“You said
you saw the one drive away from Ian’s house. Did you see the
license plate on her car?”

“043-CHI,”
Sebastian recited. I looked at him from the side, eyebrows raised. He
ignored me.

Josephine
narrowed her eyes. “Ian, how are you with computers?”

That didn’t
take any thought. “Lousy.”

Her mouth
tightened in disappointment. “That license number would be
handy if we knew a hacker.”

Sebastian’s
eyes went dark and thoughtful.

“It’s
getting late,” Josephine said before he could say what he had
on his mind.

The darkness
left his eyes as he looked up. I checked my wrist. It was close to
six. Getting late.

“What if
Emily and I came back tomorrow night?” Josephine said,
stretching, though still cautious of taking up space.

“Midnight,”
Sebastian said at once. “I have some things to do tomorrow
evening.”

“Midnight,”
Josephine agreed, and stood. She started towards the door Emily had
vanished through, then paused and turned to me. “Ian, do you
know if Kent had other children? Any other family he might have
spoken of?”

I stared at her,
feeling dumb.

Other vampires,
she meant. Other family like me. I shook my head no, but I wasn’t
sure all of a sudden. It stood to reason Kent had a maker – he
never told me who. I never asked. He might have had other children.
Not that I knew about them.

I thought him
telling me he was a vampire was honesty, that the mortal mask he’d
worn with me was the falsehood. I didn’t like being wrong about
that.

“If he had
any, they are in danger,” Josephine went on. “I wish we
had a way to find out.”

It almost
relieved me that I didn’t know how to contact any children Kent
might have. I didn’t know if I wanted to know about them. “What
are we going to do about this?” I asked in a rough voice.

“That is
what we will meet tomorrow to decide,” Sebastian said.
Josephine nodded, as if they had it all planned. I felt a little left
out, but really, what good could I do? They were both older than me.
They had a better grip on this.

That said,
Josephine followed the way Emily had gone out of the room, worried
frown back in place.

I still didn’t
know what Emily and Evan meant to each other, but she obviously cared
about him. It seemed to me that Sebastian and Josephine were
presuming him dead. That had to be hard. Especially not knowing why.

Entertainment,
Sebastian said in my mind. I shivered. That had to be harder.

But Ian
appears to be the objective.

That wasn’t
real easy for me.

Josephine came
out with Emily in tow, both women’s eyes wet, arms around each
other. I gave Emily what I hoped passed for a sympathetic nod. She
gave me a shaky smile back, so I couldn’t have done too bad.
The elevator came and took them away.

“You
should not have let her in.”

I raised an
eyebrow at Sebastian. He had his eyes on the elevator, chin rested on
one hand. “Neither you nor the lobby attendant knew whether she
was really Josephine. Kent’s killer could have used Josephine’s
name to reach you.”

My eyebrows shot
up. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Sebastian
inclined his head. “You cannot change it now. Be sure you think
of it next time.” He stood up without looking at me and left
the room.

Left in silence,
I stayed in the chair, thinking over the night. Emily; Evan and Kent;
listening to them try to work this out. One thing Sebastian had
right: I couldn’t change any of it now. I sighed.

Well, now
what?

I needed to do
something else. I shoved myself out of my chair and padded back to my
room to work on my drawing.

S
ebastian
opened his eyes on his room and remained still, listening. He could
hear the sounds of traffic outside, the tapping of rain on the window
panes. Ian’s cat padded by outside his room. Nothing that
didn’t belong. He allowed himself to stretch before getting up.
A comfortable habit he had permitted himself to get into. Awakening
in the midst of the pack had not allowed for such leisurely moments.
When they did not immediately begin training or missions, they fought
amongst themselves, and a vampire lying still when the fists started
to fly was counted as fair prey. Sebastian had found, on leaving
them, that he’d missed not worrying about losing his head as
soon as his eyes opened.

Ian would not
have awakened yet. The younger ones needed so much more sleep.
Convenient, tonight. He had some things he wanted to look into, and
she would be awake by the time he returned.

He dressed and
left the penthouse. The apartment, while not impenetrable, would take
knowledge and patience to break into – something he did not
suspect either of these women had in abundance. Even if the apartment
security guard were killed, the elevator could not be sent to the
penthouse without either the key or permission from the penthouse.
Sebastian felt secure leaving Ian while he went out.

Josephine had
surprised him with her perceptiveness. A pleasant surprise. She had
suggested exactly what Sebastian already planned – use the
license number from the car to track his prey. Josephine had
suggested using a computer expert.

Sebastian did
not have access to a computer expert – a hacker. He supposed
they could be found, if the correct contacts were made, the right
arrangements agreed upon. He did not have time for that. He did,
however, have something else. It took him perhaps a total of fifteen
minutes to reach the local police precinct house.

He entered a
plain, functional lobby, inhabited by two people in hard plastic
chairs and a rack of informational pamphlets. Across the lobby sat a
woman at a desk, behind a shield of some sort of shatterproof
material. This was meant to prevent anyone from reaching her.
Physically.

Behind the desk
he could see another room that did not connect to the lobby.
Uniformed officers wandered in that room, more people at desks. This
would require caution. Sebastian walked up to the front desk and
cleared his throat quietly. The woman behind it looked up and met his
eyes.

“I need
some information from you,” he told her, holding her gaze.

Her face jerked,
then tensed, as if in pain. She didn’t answer. They usually
didn’t when they attempted to fight the compulsion.

“I want
you to look up the owner of a car,” he went on, more firmly. “A
black BMW with the license 043-CHI.”

Her hands
clicked over the keyboard of her computer without her eyes following
them. Her face stayed tight. Sebastian waited patiently, ignoring the
querying expression of those passing by.

“Sally
Resnan,” the woman said at last, her eyes dashing across the
screen. She said no more.

“Where
does she live?” he coaxed, fighting the urge to punch the
plastic between them. Frightening her would make controlling her much
easier. It would also, however, earn him more attention than he
wanted.

“1012 Old
Creek Road. Seattle.”

He sighed. In
times past, he could have forced the information from her in so many
different ways – but those times were past.

“Do you
know anything else about her?” Using only his voice against her
will. She would not win. She just needed some time to realize that.

She read the
list monotonously, her voice acting against her mind. “Husband,
two children, full coverage insurance, one moving violation. Reported
missing last week. No leads yet.”

He should have
guessed. Sally Resnan was dead. The car was stolen.

“Do you
know where she is?” the woman asked, narrowing her eyes at
Sebastian.

“No,”
he said. “You need not recall this conversation.”

He turned on his
heel and left, letting the woman return to herself. She paused, then
called after him. He let her. He had what he needed. Once, he would
have forced the information from her and left her dead, feasting on
her blood. Here, now, leaving her alive would cause less trouble. He
did not follow Ian’s edict of hiding, but murdering a
policewoman in full sight of her peers would only bring problems.
Sebastian had survived much, but he did not know if he could survive
the wrath of many armed and angered police officers.

So much has
changed, and so quickly.
He held in a soft sigh.

So much. How to
track a vampire in this urban mess? They no longer left trails that
were easily followed. No strings of corpses, no hidden lairs deep in
secret forests. Only stolen cars and missing people who would never
turn up. The time when humans lived or died by the whims of vampires
had ended. They had found ways to protect themselves with their
technology and their society. And if a vampire could hide
successfully from human hunters, he stood a better chance of eluding
other vampires.

Sebastian’s
fists clenched tight while his lips twisted into a small smile. This
could prove quite interesting. Quite interesting indeed.

He got into the
Vector, started it, and left for Sally Resnan’s home.

W
hen
I woke up, I was alone.

I got up, fussed
with my outfit for the night – trying to put on something nice,
eye-catching, but that wouldn’t look like I was trying too
hard. I settled on a tight-but-not-too-tight pair of jeans and a
midriff-baring sweater, then put my hair up.