Summoning Sebastian (2 page)

“You know I'm doing everything I can. I mean, I love him too.”

He gave a curt nod then, to my surprise, bent to kiss me softly on the forehead. I closed my eyes, absorbing the moment.

“I'll see you at the office.” His voice remained quiet, as did his expression. “About an hour? Two, you think?”

I nodded. “Something like that. I'll make it quick so I can get back into the translations.”

His smile was wry. “Or so you can get away from your sister.”

I would have protested that, but it was true. Instead I just shook my head in mock disapproval as he tossed back the rest of his mug and headed for the door.

Chapter Two

“Tru
e scientific investigation into the origin of the vampire species is constantly undermined by efforts of the Church of the Eternal. We need a policy change. This information should not be kept under the control of a single organization.”
—Jacqueline Blachek, University of Chicago

My
sister Gwen and I have never gotten along all that well. She has a glamorous-ish job working as a flight attendant on private flights, usually jetting off to exotic locales with exotic people. I hang around Lower-Lower Downtown Denver and work for vampires. I can't say that our parents really favored her, but I'd always felt like I was lurking in her shadow to some extent.

She and I had shared a house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood until recently, when I'd moved in with Colin. Gwen and I actually seemed to be getting along better now that we weren't living together. Which was strange to me, because even when we'd shared the house, we hadn't seen much of each other. Maybe I just liked not having to navigate through all her hair products in my bathroom.

She was waiting for me at Night Owls, a restaurant on Sixteenth Street near my workplace. It catered to people who held strange hours, and so served all varieties of foods at all times of day. If you worked for any of the vampire-owned establishments in downtown Denver, it was a hot spot.

Gwen looked stressed. She barely spoke to me as the waiter took us to a table near a darkening window, and I noticed her hand was clutching her purse strap in a grip that looked almost painful. As usual, though, her hair was perfect.

When the waiter had taken our drink order and departed to fetch it, I said, “What's up? You seem a little high-strung. Well, more than usual, I mean.”

She really must have been tense, because she didn't even offer me a bitch face for that comment. “Have you been on your super-secret vampire boards lately?”

“Not since yesterday.” Gwen seemed overly serious—not a demeanor I was used to from her. “Why? What's going on?”

She leaned closer over the table, lowering her voice. The addition of drama relieved me—overreaction was par for the course for Gwen. Maybe I should have given her the benefit of the doubt in this case. “There've been some vampire murders. Weird ones. They can't figure out who's doing it or why.”

Well, she had something to say that I needed to know about, after all. “How long has this been going on?”

“About two weeks. There've been several deaths.”

I leaned back, mulling. I check the vampire boards on a regular basis to keep up with the news and various items relevant to my job. How had I missed this? It was natural for the vamps to keep serious news under wraps, not wanting the human news outlets to run with stories they knew nothing about, but usually I saw even the ones they were holding on the back burner.

“Where did you hear this?”

She was quiet a moment, staring at her silverware. Finally she picked up a fork and set it back down a bit closer to the spoon. “I have some new clients. I've been flying with them on the regular. Nighttime flights to the Caribbean, short jumps for business meetings. That kind of thing.”

“Vampires?” This revelation surprised me. Gwen wasn't nuts about vampires, though I'd managed to convince her to take Colin, Sebastian and me to Illinois during our recent shenanigans. Maybe she'd had a change of heart regarding the bloodsucking race. Or maybe she just liked their money.

“Don't be all judgy,” she said, following the train of my thoughts. “It's steady work, and they pay really well.”

“Do they bite?” I had to ask, if for no other reason than to see the look of horror on my sister's face.

“No. They do not.” Her hand moved to her neck in what looked like an unconscious gesture, and I felt guilty for making the joke. She'd actually been bitten once, so it was mean of me to poke fun. Not that that consideration was likely to stop me in the future. “They're high-class—pretty well-known businessmen from Wyoming. Anyway, I overheard them talking about it on the way back from Salt Lake City yesterday.”

“It seems weird I haven't heard anything about it. Usually I'm right on top of that kind of stuff. I mean, I make it my business to be right on top of that kind of stuff.” Also, why the hell were vampires going to Salt Lake City? But I left that question for later. Or never. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

Gwen was silent a moment, looking at her fork. Then she looked up at me, studying my expression. The directness and the earnestness of her gaze took me aback. It was like she was really trying to accomplish sisterly bonding. “Nim… I know you do. And doesn't it seem weird to you that you haven't heard about it?”

“It does. But it's not all that unusual for the vamps to keep things under wraps. If it doesn't affect humans, they'd just as soon deal with it themselves. Internal affairs kind of thing, you know?” Which was true, but Colin had told me things in the past that weren't cleared for human consumption. I wondered why he'd kept this particular tidbit away from me. Maybe to keep me from worrying. Or maybe he hadn't heard about it either. The latter seemed unlikely.

Gwen leaned forward again. I could tell she didn't want any of our fellow diners to overhear our conversation. “Anyway, since you're dating a vampire now, I thought you'd want to know. You know, tell him to be careful or whatever.”

I blinked. Being concerned about Colin was out of character for Gwen. She didn't like him and didn't approve of our relationship. Or maybe didn't approve was too strong a term. I think she just didn't get it.

“Well,” I said, “we're not so much dating as living in the same house and having ridiculous amounts of sex, but thanks for your concern.”

Gwen looked hurt. “I'm trying to be
nice
about your
boyfriend
,” she hissed at me.

“I know.” I reached across the table and patted her hand affectionately, which was out of character for me. “And it's really sweet, and I appreciate it. I'll ask him about it when I get back to the office.”

Gwen appeared to have been placated. “Good. I mean, you already lost one of your boyfriends. Losing another one would kind of suck.”

Succinct, but true. “Yes,” I said, too sobered by the thought to prickle at her wording. “It really, really would.”

I went back to the office with my stomach doing gymnastics under my diaphragm. The activity didn't mix well with the food I'd just eaten. I wasn't sure why I was so upset. I'd just seen Colin a few minutes ago. I knew he was all right. Whatever was going on in the news that I hadn't heard about, he was safe from it, at least for the moment. But I'd seen Sebastian disintegrate right in front of my eyes. Sure, I'd talked to him earlier in the evening, but he wasn't himself. Shit, he wasn't even solid. I couldn't bear the thought of something similar—or worse—happening to Colin.

Of course, when I got back and slid into his office, he was sitting on his desk watching the TV that hung on the wall. He looked away from the screen briefly as I came in.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I just…” I swallowed. He was fine. He was big and wide, and his shoulders took up half the room. “Gwen said there's shit going down. Vampires being killed. Do you know anything about this?”

He held my gaze a moment, and I thought he was going to dodge the question. I opened my mouth to give him clear insight into my opinion, but then he looked back at the TV and waved his hand loosely toward it.

There was a reporter on the screen—unsurprising since it was a news channel—doing a reporter-on-the-scene type thing, microphone in hand, a serious expression on his face. Behind him was a dark alley where police tape had been strung, marking off a crime scene. I tuned in to what he was saying.

“…body was found early this morning. The injuries seem to be similar to those found on four other bodies over the past four weeks. The details of these cases have been kept closely guarded. In fact, the first information we've seen was released to this station within the last thirty minutes.”

I glanced at Colin again. He didn't look back. His jaw was clenched, and I got the impression he was trying to burn a hole in the television screen with his eyes. The set of his shoulders, of his whole body even, told me he didn't want me to ask questions just yet. I'd indulge him for the moment. Later, though, he'd be answering some questions in a big way.

“Although the murders have now been labeled as the work of a serial killer, the vampire community has kept local law enforcement out of the loop until this last murder, which appears to have happened last night.”

“With good reason,” Colin muttered. He waved his hand again, this time at me, making it clear it still wasn't time for me to ask my questions. I made a face at him, which I was pretty sure he didn't see, and focused again on the reporter.

He had shifted his attention to the dark alley and was describing what had supposedly happened there. I could tell right away he was making a lot of it up, or at the very least riffing based on sketchy information. Pretty much like every other news reporter. They all felt like they had to get as much information out as they could before things started showing up on Twitter. If that meant making stuff up, then so be it. Such was the news in the modern age.

“The major difference with this case,” the reporter went on, “is that a human was injured this time. As additional information comes in regarding this development, the vampire community is no longer being allowed to hide the truth behind these killings. With the new involvement of the human law enforcement organizations, we will finally be able to track down the motives and the perpetrators in these cases.”

The screen shifted back to the studio, and the announcer there launched into a transition to discuss anti-vampire legislation gaining traction in the US congress.

“Fucking idiots,” Colin muttered as he shut off the TV. I quirked an eyebrow at him, waiting to see if he had something else to say. When he didn't elaborate, I decided I had the all clear to rip him a new one.

“So when exactly were you going to tell me about this?” I smacked him on the shoulder for additional emphasis.

The corner of his mouth pulled up a bit when I hit him. As usual, he found my aggravation amusing. “When I felt like you needed to know.”

“And what criteria were you planning to use to decide if I needed to know?”

He shrugged. “Maybe if I was dead. Or if somebody came after you.”

I hit him again. “You need to rethink your priorities. Also, you're an asshole.”

“So you keep telling me.” He looked back at the TV, staring at the blank screen. “I was told not to say anything. I actually wanted to talk to you about it. Wanted to get your input.”

I blinked at him. “Really?”

“Of course.” He said it mildly, as if I really should have figured that out. On my own. If he thought anybody was capable of figuring him out without a
Frommer's Guide to Colin
, he was sadly mistaken. Only Sebastian had ever seemed to be able to fathom Colin's impenetrable depths. Turning to me, he added, “Believe it or not, I value your opinion.” Then, before I could get too excited, he added, “Occasionally.”

“Well, thank God for small miracles.” I sank onto the desk next to him—or, more accurately, hopped up—and waited for my stomach to stop flip-flopping. “So what can you tell me?”

He was silent for a few seconds, long enough that I thought he might decide not to answer. Then he leaned back a little, still not quite looking at me. Maybe if he didn't look at me while he talked, he could tell his vampire bosses or whatever that he hadn't told me things he wasn't supposed to.

“There have been seven murders, not four. Human law enforcement doesn't know all the details. They think they know more than they do.”

“What are the details?”

“It looks like vamp-on-vamp. That's why they were keeping it under wraps. This new thing, with the human involved…” He shook his head. “Not good.”

“Vampires killing vampires isn't a bad thing?”

“Not what I meant. We can take care of these things on our own. Involving humans just gums up the works.” He sighed. It seemed to me he was doing that more lately, whether because I was a trial to him or because hanging around with breathing people was rubbing off on him. “Now the damn cops will be crawling all over and making it too damn hard for us to find out what's really going on.”

“And what do you think is going on?”

“I'm not sure. There's evidence but not a lot of it. There are symptoms for cause of death but no actual visible cause. The vamps who have been killed seemed to have nothing in common.”

“What's the cause of death?” I still didn't know what he wanted from me. I'd heard nothing yet that I could supply any kind of opinion on.

“The bodies are desiccated. It's almost like they've been staked, but not quite. There are no injuries on the bodies. There's a medical examiner looking over the bodies to see what else she can find. The local vamp community is trying to gather more information. It's not going well, and it will go even less well now that the police are involved.”

I nodded. I didn't necessarily agree—there was more than a little vampire arrogance tempering that statement—but this wasn't the time to argue with him. He was working through something. “What did you want my input on?”

In spite of the lead-in, he took his time answering my question. Finally he flipped off the television and said, “One of the vampires was alive when he was found. Not for long, but long enough to describe his attacker.”

“Yeah?” I still couldn't tell where Colin was going with this, but at least it was interesting. “What did he look like?”

“She said he looked like a ghost.”