by Kingsolver
Charlie looked thoughtful. “You’ve got a point there.”
I poured him a beer and pushed it across the bar. “On me,” I said.
He gave a short nod and took a sip. “Thanks. None of the people I know are planning anything like that, but I’ll ask around and pass the warning. Wish the damned vamps would get their shit together. This town has been crazy since their old man kicked it.”
The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful until well after midnight when a woman I didn’t know walked in. My first thought was that I had dhampir on the brain, because that’s what she looked like to me. Tall, well-built, and beautiful, with sandy-blonde hair in a high ponytail. The clothes she was wearing weren’t cheap, either.
She stood at the door, looking around, then she headed straight toward me. Flouncing down on the barstool in front of me, she said, “A dirty martini, please. And do you have any appetizers or anything? I’m starving.”
I gave her a menu and moved away to fix her drink. By the time I came back, she had set the menu aside.
“A burger. Rare, no veggies,” she said. “And can I get some fried cheese instead of the fries?”
Deciding that my first impression was correct, I asked, “Do you want the bread?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I turned her order into the kitchen, and then wandered back in her direction.
“I’m Sarah Gallagher,” she abruptly said. “Someone just tried to kill me, and I’m not sure what to do.”
“Call the cops?”
She laughed. “They wouldn’t believe me.”
“And you think I will?”
“Michaela said that I should go to Rosie O’Grady’s and ask for Erin McLane. That’s you, isn’t it?”
No good deed goes unpunished, I thought.
“Yeah. Do I have a sign on my forehead?”
She shook her head. “You just look like the girl she described.”
“Okay, who tried to kill you?”
“Some of Rodrick’s vamps. I called Michaela, and she said I could probably stay here until dawn, but I’m not sure that’s going to be safe. They had some thralls with them. Guys with guns.”
I could imagine Sam’s reaction if he knew I was attracting a vampire war to the bar.
“Is Michaela going to come get you after sunrise?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to call her again.”
It was pretty late, and the crowd had thinned out. Jill came in at two and liked the quiet. She was working on a degree at the university and was able to study most nights.
“Are you driving?” I asked Sarah.
“Yeah. I parked across the street.”
I knew she meant the street, not the alley where Rosie’s entrance was. There was barely room to drive a car in the alley.
“Okay,” I said. “Stick around, and when morning comes, we’ll see if we can get you safely home.”
Her face fell. “We don’t have a home anymore.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Hotels. A different one every night. I’ll have to find out where to go tomorrow.”
She ate her bloody burger and ordered another martini, then played with her phone. One thing I knew for certain was that she wasn’t Michaela’s smartest sister. It was obvious from what I’d seen that Gallagher bred his dhampir for looks, and while I had met some very smart vampires, I had also met a lot of idiots. Just like I’d met idiot mages. The problem, I decided, was the raw material. Humans. I wondered if there were idiot Fae.
Sarah was still there when I came down for breakfast the following morning. I sat down beside her, and Liam walked over.
“Black coffee, Liam, please,” I said. He then did something that was so totally out of character that I stared with my mouth open.
“Would you like more coffee, Miss Sarah?” he asked. Liam was a great bartender, but his customer service—hell, his interpersonal interactions as a whole—left a lot to be desired. I had never seen him ask a customer what they wanted. Never. He just waited for them to order.
She smiled at him. “Yes, please. And could I get a side order of black pudding? Just the pudding, please.”
He smiled back at her. “Yes.”
I knew she hadn’t phrased her question properly. Due to the nature of his autism, Liam hadn’t registered that she was actually ordering.
“Liam,” I said. “Please bring a plate of black pudding for Sarah along with our coffee.”
He moved away, and I said, “You and Liam seem to have struck up a friendship.”
“He’s sweet,” she said. She glanced at him, then leaned closer to me and lowered her voice. “Do you know if he has a girlfriend?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
“I think he’s hot.”
I had never thought of Liam that way. One thing he did have was height. I didn’t think Sarah met many men who were half-a-foot taller than she was. But as I studied him, I realized that he wasn’t hard to look at. Tall and very thin, with black hair and a pale complexion. I had been asked a few times if we were related.
“Have you talked to Michaela?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. She said she was coming to get me, but she has some things to organize first.”
When Liam came back with our coffee, I ordered a mini Irish breakfast. While I ate, Sarah happily munched on her black pudding—a type of Irish sausage made from blood, suet, and oats—that she liberally drowned in maple syrup. I couldn’t tell how old she was, of course, but I was sure she was very young. Her mannerisms and speech struck me as similar to a teenager or a college student.
As I was finishing my meal, Sam came out of the office to check on things. It wasn’t wise to leave Liam alone for too long, and he always worked with another bartender, usually either Sam or me.
Sam came over and said, “When you finish, I’d like a word.”
I nodded. After scanning the bar again, he spoke with Liam, then went back to the office.
I finished eating, picked up my dishes, carried them around the bar, and deposited them in a bus tray. I poured myself some more coffee, then went to the office.
“What’s up?” I asked as I settled into the chair across from him.
“That’s my question. Is she who I think she is?”
“Sarah Gallagher. Yeah, she’s another of Gallagher’s dhampir. She was attacked last night by some of Rodrick Barclay’s thugs, and Michaela told her to come here and find me.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Mother Mary and Jesus. What have I gotten myself into?”
I tried to make light of the situation, giving him a bright smile. “Admit it, Sam, you always wanted a daughter, and now you have me!”
He stared at me in horror for a moment, then burst out laughing. When the laughter wound down to a chuckle, he said, “Can’t you just bring home stray puppies or something? Why dhampir?”
“I guess I empathize with them. It’s not easy to have your whole life turned upside down, with no place to go and everyone you ever knew turned against you.”
He nodded. “Looking at it that way, I guess you would sympathize with them. So, what have we gotten ourselves into?”
“Are you mad at me?”
Sam shook his head. “Irritated about the situation, but I’m not upset with you. At least the strange people you attract aren’t shy about spending money. Flynn is one of only three customers who order that Macallan regularly.”
I told Sam about the hints I was getting about shifters striking back at the vampires, and that I thought Michaela was planning a strike against Rodrick Barclay.
“Those two things would seem to be entirely unrelated,” Sam said when I finished, “but for a little piece of gossip I heard several years ago. At one time, Michaela Gallagher dated Alberto Garcia, son of the alpha in one of the largest werewolf packs here. Whether that has anything to do with anything, I don’t know. There also was a rumor that one of her sisters worked as a dancer at The S
haggy Gentleman when she was in college. That would have been, oh, about twenty years ago. So, it appears those girls don’t have any prejudice against shifters.”
An involuntary shiver ran through me. The Shaggy Gentleman was a shifter strip bar. I had always thought the strippers there would all be shifters themselves. I’d never been there, but the idea of taking my clothes off and dancing around while a bunch of horny werewolves watched was enough to give me nightmares.
Sam chuckled. “As you can imagine, Harold Gallagher wasn’t an overly protective parent. Of course, considering what you’ve told me, only one of those girls is actually his daughter. But he always maintained that fiction for the public here in Westport.”
Having been raised away from modern civilization, some of the things that seemed normal to everyone I knew were mysteries to me.
“Sam, how does someone like Gallagher or Flynn, who have lived in this city for over a hundred years, manage to keep people from noticing that they haven’t aged? And how did Gallagher make people believe he had seventeen daughters who all look about the same age, especially when at least one of them moved here with him in the eighteen hundreds?”
Sam smiled. “And how do I manage to maintain a low profile when I’ve been the proprietor here since 1954? We bribe people to issue birth and death certificates. We plant fake stories and obituaries in the newspaper. When you get to your fifties, you’ll have to think about that. People will notice that you still look like a fresh-faced kid. So, sometime in the next few years, you need to get a birth certificate for your daughter. Then about twenty-five years later, you go on holiday and die. Your daughter, who was raised by her father in another city, inherits everything and takes over your life. The transition is a little rough the first couple of times, but you’ll get the hang of it.”
I stared at him, thinking he was making a joke, but his face was completely serious.
“Inside the shadow society, of course,” Sam said, “everyone is in on the scheme. Everyone knows that I’m still the same Sam O’Grady that’s been standing behind that bar since 1917. Good Lord, Erin, don’t look so shocked. You think Jenny’s good at her job? She should be. She’s worked here for fifty years.”
Realizing my mouth was hanging open, I shut it. Thinking about it, what he said made sense. But…
“I would think it would be easier to just move someplace else.”
“It would be. That’s what a lot of people do. My sister, for example, has been a vagabond all her life. She lives in one place for a few years, then moves somewhere new. She still has to change identities so she can get passports. But some of us like our lives. We’re comfortable and aren’t all that interested in exploring and starting over. I got my fill of travel when I was young.”
“The world’s changed a lot since Queen Victoria died,” I said.
“Yeah, and I’m not sure for the better.”
CHAPTER 21
I was getting ready to go for a run and had just come back downstairs when Michaela blew in around noon, accompanied by four of her sisters. Unfortunately, she was carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster under her coat, which didn’t conceal it very well.
“Michaela,” I said, stepping up beside her where she stood waiting for Sarah to say goodbye to Liam. I pointed to Rosie’s Rules posted over the bar. “You can’t come in here armed. One, it’s against the law, and two, Sam will ban you. It’s for your safety as well.”
She glanced at the sign, then opened her mouth to say something.
“Don’t,” I said, holding up my hand.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, then she said, “Won’t happen again.”
I nodded.
“Are you going out?” she asked.
“Yeah. Going for a run.”
“It’s not safe out there. A lotta shit going down right now.”
“Thanks for the warning. Will it be safer tonight?” I thought the odds of that were close to zero.
She barked a laugh. “Not hardly. Things are just warming up.” She leaned down and dropped her voice. “Tonight will be a bonfire.”
“Are our customers going to be safe? You know, getting here, getting home?” I asked.
“No one in this town is going to be safe.”
She grabbed Sarah’s arm, pulling her away from Liam. “He’ll still be here next week,” Michaela said. “Let’s go.”
I watched Michaela drag her sister out the door with Sarah looking back over her shoulder. I looked over at Liam, and the distress in his face was obvious. I had rarely ever seen Liam show any emotion. For the first time in my life, I wondered if love at first sight might really be a thing.
Spinning on my heel, I marched back to Sam’s office to tell him the latest news.
Sam’s opinion of the situation was succinct. “Shit!” He reached for the phone, but with the receiver halfway to his ear, he paused.
“You going to call Blair?”
For some reason, that hadn’t occurred to me. “You think I should?”
“I think he’d appreciate the warning. His people are going to be in the middle of things, one way or another. If he has a head’s up, it might save lives.”
I pulled out my phone and went out into the hallway, leaving Sam to make his calls. He was already punching buttons.
“Lieutenant?” I said when Blair answered. “I just received a rather pointed warning that someone is going to light the city on fire tonight.”
After a moment, he said, “I don’t suppose the arsonist has a name?”
“Not really. Here’s what I know, and a lot of it is vague rumor or unsubstantiated guessing. Still want to hear?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Someone opposed to Barclay was attacked last night. The group included both vampires and humans with guns. I’ve been hearing rumors of werewolves planning an attack on vampires. That makes sense because some of the young vamps have been harassing the shifters for a couple of months. Then I was warned today that it won’t be safe for our customers to be out and about tonight. And yes, I realize I’m not giving you anything to go on, but Sam thought I should warn you.”
I waited for him to say something. When he finally spoke, he asked, “Exactly what did your source say about the city burning.”
“Well, I sort of exaggerated that, I guess. What I was told was, ‘a lot going on, not safe to be outside.’ I asked if it would be safer tonight, and the answer was that things were just warming up, and tonight would be a bonfire.”
“Thanks. Any idea where the center of the action will be?”
“None. I mean, Flynn is hiding out downtown, Barclay is at Carleton House, there’s Necropolis, and I wouldn’t discount the Westport Waste Disposal offices. That’s where Gallagher had his base of operations, and even though Barclay has taken that over, Gallagher’s people are still there running the business. Rosie’s is a long way from any of those.”
“Hell, that’s all over town. No way I can martial enough cops to cover all those locations.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to be at Rosie’s working tonight.”
After I finished talking to Blair, I called Trevor, Jolene, and Lizzy to give them a head’s up, then got some little nails from Sam, borrowed a hammer, and took off for my run.
Rather than run along the road, where both Harry and Sarah had been ambushed, I cut over to the river. The jogging and bicycle paths there ran behind the old flour mill and beyond to my apartment. It was cold and windy, with the threat of rain, so I didn’t encounter anyone along the way.
But when I got within sight of the apartment complex, I thought I saw movement near the back door of my building. Slowing my pace, I proceeded cautiously. Sure enough, something was there. I left the path and snuck through the trees.
A dark shape, no taller than my waist, was crouched by the back door. I pulled the hammer out of my pocket and tip-toed around a fallen trunk to come up behind the lurker. I emerged from the trees and crept across the path and the lawn.
Whether I made a noise, or whomever I was stalking sensed my presence, the person stood and whirled to face me—taller than I was and heavier, wearing a black cloak with a peaked hood that hid their face. I called energy from the ley line, shielded myself, and prepared for an attack.
We faced each other, neither of us moving. Then, cloak billowing, the person spun around and leaped over a hedge, across the lawn to the jogging path, and took off running at a speed I couldn’t hope to match. Vampire or dhampir—impossible to tell without seeing his or her face.
I watched the dark figure recede into the distance, then turned my attention to my door. I tried the knob and found the door was open. Since it locked automatically when it closed, that was disturbing. Playing with the knob a little, I discovered that it didn’t latch or lock at all. The lock was broken.
Walking around the building, I went to the office.
“Hi Eleanor,” I said to my landlady, who was sitting at her computer behind the front desk. “I just caught someone trying to break into my building. I don’t know what they did, but the outside door in the back doesn’t lock anymore.”
She gave me an unhappy look, then picked up the phone and called the police.
Two hours later, after waiting for the police, then giving them a statement, I climbed the stairs to my apartment while Eleanor oversaw the locksmith.
My wards were intact, and no one had tried to breach them. If the prowler had gotten into the building, assuming they were after me, it wouldn’t have done them any good.
I hung my pictures, two in the living room and two in my bedroom. Like a miracle, the place was transformed, suddenly looking like someone actually lived there. Unreasonably pleased with myself, I made a cup of tea and sat back to think and evaluate the situation.
The burglar was larger than Constance Gardner, both taller and bulkier. He or she also was right-handed, and seemed to use that hand without any clumsiness. I had to consider the possibility that I was dealing with an organized group—The Black Cloak Cult, I named them in my mind—rather than with a single dhampir. And if my burglar was female, she was a lot larger than any of the dhampirs I had encountered so far.
