‘I won’t have to worry about you seeing me do weird shite while we’re looking.’
‘Oh? Such as?’
James tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’ve an excellent sense of smell, and you’ll have to admit that, whatever else Hannah may be, she doesn’t get many opportunities to be fussy with her hygiene.’
‘There is that.’
In the late afternoon, James phoned Gabriel with a rain check.
‘We’ll look for Hannah later, I promise, but I completely forgot I was supposed to take Carrie Anne out last night.’
‘Carrie Anne.’
‘From the pharmacy.’
‘You’re going on a date.’
‘Coffee,’ amended James, half sheepish, half… Gabriel didn’t know what. ‘I need to make it up to her a bit.’
‘I see.’
‘No you don’t. You’re pissed off. So’s she. It’ll only be coffee. When I get back, we’ll head out.’
‘Sure. Fine. Whatever you want.’
Gabriel hung up before James could make any further justifications, then sat around swinging between feeling offended that James could abandon the search for Hannah on such feeble grounds, and feeling like a jealous, shitty friend.
Late in the afternoon, Gabriel heard the downstairs door open and shut. He heard the soft footsteps measuring the stairs to the flat. James had a light tread, and could be almost soundless when he so wished, but now his footfalls were heavy and slow.
The door opened and James entered. He hung his plaid blazer while Gabriel watched.
‘Have a lovely time with Carrie Anne?’ he asked, and winced at his own bitchiness.
‘Not that you’d notice,’ said James, not rising to the bait.
Gabriel levelled an angry glare at James’s back. ‘I don’t understand why you persist.’
‘No. You wouldn’t.’ James pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘You insist on dating women every week or so, never the same woman twice, and whether you return at nine or at midnight, you come back miserable. Why do you expect each time to be different?’ Gabriel shoved the papers he’d been working on to one side.
‘Christ, you’re a real pep-talker.’
‘Jesus, James. You’re unhappy and you keep doing something that makes you more unhappy. I don’t understand,’ His curtness softened into concern. ‘Is it for the sex?’
‘It’s not about the sex,’ said James.
‘So you are having sex.’ Concern became curtness again.
‘No.’
‘Sorry. None of my business, I know. God. I just… why do you keep doing this to yourself, if not for the sex?’
James wiped a hand over his face and collapsed into his chair. ‘Fine. You want to know why? When I was first trying to understand what I was, masturbation was among the first experiments I tried. I believed I was a danger to any potential partner, but I wanted to see if it would distract me from the blood cravings.’ He looked away, not wanting to meet Gabriel’s curiosity, then looked back, because fuck it, he was a doctor and he could discuss this as an adult, ‘So, aye. I can achieve an erection, more or less. I can’t orgasm, though. There’s no ejaculate – my body doesn’t produce fluids like sperm or tears or snot any more. Genital manipulation isn’t unpleasant, but it’s not particularly stimulating. Basically, I no longer experience sexual desire.’
He wished Gabriel wouldn’t look at him like that. Like he was sorry.
‘You still look at women,’ said Gabriel, in an even tone, ‘and men.’
And at you, James thought. ‘I remember desire, but I don’t feel it. I crave blood, sometimes, but that’s not the same thing.’
‘Then why…?’
‘Even when I was human, it was never just about the sex, Gabriel. It’s about companionship. Connection.’
‘But why date women?’
Because they don’t make me think of you.
‘I find that, more often, women are less bothered if the first date doesnae end in sex.’ James studied his hands. ‘I only want some company. Closeness. Touch. I miss being touched, Gabriel.’ He looked up again. ‘And I don’t mean sexually. My penis doesn’t have to be involved.’
‘Is that why you’re always home early from your dates? They don’t touch you?’
James sighed. ‘Sometimes they do. That’s usually when it falls apart. Holding and touching hands, that’s not so bad for them. They think it’s funny, that my hands are cold. They make jokes about warming me up. If the date’s going well – if we’ve got through dinner without them noticing I’m not actually eating anything – there might be more. There might be kissing, they might want to undo a few buttons. Every now and then it gets further, but mostly... mostly it doesn’t.’
‘Your lower body temperature puts them off?’
He shouldn’t have been surprised that Gabriel had noticed that aspect. Gabriel noticed a lot; usually too much. ‘For starters. The signals they get from me are all wrong. My skin is too cool. My mouth is too cold for kissing to be pleasant. My low heart and respiration rates are noticeable and weird. The whole package is off-putting.’
He sighed. ‘The worst part is I think the human instinct knows what I am even if the conscious mind doesn’t. They all find a reason to go home in a hurry soon enough.’
‘And so you come home, too. Miserable and alone.’
‘Aye.’ James slumped back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘So cheers,’ he said, tone flinty, ‘getting that out helped a lot.’
He heard Gabriel move, but wasn’t expecting it when Gabriel kneeled by his chair and took his hand. Gabriel pressed the fingers of his right hand to James’s cheek, less a caress than a way to frame James’s mouth, at present unremarkable.
‘Show me?’
James rolled his eyes to conceal his discomfort, but Gabriel didn’t back down, so he allowed his fangs to descend. The tips of them pressed lightly into his lower lip.
‘You grew calcium deposits over your canine teeth. They formed into hollow points that descend and retract in response to stimuli as well as your own will,’ said Gabriel. ‘That’s what makes sense, anyway.’
‘You work that out with your chemistry degree? And your point?’
‘I’m biologically fully human and fully aware of your condition, and I’m not repelled.’
James tilted his head to one side, as though that would help.
‘Michael and I were raised,’ continued Gabriel, going even further off topic, ‘by a man who believed in education and discipline and not much else. Not, for example, the value of touch.’
‘So you’re saying I should get over it.’
‘No, you idiot,’ said Gabriel affectionately, ‘I mean that I understand. I know what skin hunger is.’
‘Oh.’
‘Stand up.’
James stood.
‘We’re friends,’ said Gabriel. ‘We can do this and still be just friends. Can’t we?’
‘Aye,’ said James softly, filled with sudden yearning and hope. ‘I think we can.’
‘All right, then.’
Gabriel wrapped his long arms around James’s broad shoulders; pressed his tall, slender body against James’s shorter, stockier build. He pulled James close and laid a pale cheek against a paler brow.
James swallowed, and if his body had still been capable of producing tears, his eyes would have been wet. He leaned into Gabriel’s embrace and wrapped his arms around his waist.
James’s face was of a height with Gabriel’s warm throat. With all his senses he could feel Gabriel’s blood pulsing under the surface. He sensed his teeth descending in response to the stimulus and made the effort to retract them. ‘Sorry, I’ll–’
‘You don’t need to do that,’ murmured Gabriel. He hugged James more firmly, to emphasise the point. ‘I trust you.’
Rather than fight about it, James let it go, keeping tabs on his responses. His teeth descended, but he f
elt no need to bite. He nestled into the hold, enjoying the warmth. ‘I’m not too cold, am I?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have to–’
‘James. It’s fine.’
James subsided and rested his head on Gabriel’s shoulder. The artist’s height, his lean strength, felt… sheltering. Even predators need a place to be safe.
Gabriel hugged him harder. ‘I know this can’t be the life you wanted, James, but you don’t have to be unhappy.’
‘I’m not,’ said James, because somehow, suddenly, that had become true. It wasn’t the life he’d planned, but it was turning out… okay. If he only had one friend, one person who knew almost everything about him, he was glad it was Gabriel.
Slowly, they drew apart. More slowly still, their hands dropped from each other’s shoulders. Their matching grins were slightly embarrassed but mostly content.
‘Does this mean you’re giving up on dating?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Oh god, yes, please,’ said James.
The search for Hannah didn’t go well. They inspected Chelsea Bridge again, keeping well away from any police units moving up and down the river. James could smell the ash and grease of the gruesome fire under the bridge, overlain with brackish river water and oily flotsam deposited on the bank during high tide. He detected nothing that could be ascribed to Hannah. He heard nothing that could help, either: seagulls and mournful boat horns and the lap lap lap of the Thames against the embankments. A squeaking river rat was found to be fleeing from a battle-scarred tomcat. Carrion crows squabbled over the corpse of a pigeon but nothing worse.
After the riverside, they checked her known haunts. No sign. She had vanished.
On the prowl, James also kept his senses alert for any trace of a vampire on their tracks. That, too, was futile, though James was somewhat relieved.
At home, exhausted and dispirited, they conducted more tests with household chemicals, singly and combined, and various metals. Gabriel wrote up the results in his notebook.
James made tea for them both, and shared gingernuts from a fresh packet. It transpired that he bought them for the familiar, favourite scent of them; and that he didn’t mind at all that Gabriel was also partial to dunking them into strong tea.
Today, Gabriel was forgoing the pleasures of dunking in favour of worrying his lip, mouth pulled tight in a moue as he gnawed at the skin and jotted results in the book.
‘You know,’ said James lightly, ‘you have very artistic handwriting.’
Gabriel shot James a mildly offended glare. He dropped his gaze to the page, with its neatly partitioned tables filled with his free- flowing script. ‘Are you saying my handwriting’s illegible?’
‘No. I’m saying that it’s very artistic. Is legibility meant to be a feature?’
‘As long as people can tell who did the paintings, does it matter?’ In demonstration, Gabriel signed the bottom of a page with the signature he used on his art. A huge G that fell to a legible lower case a, which turned rapidly into a squiggle, an oval that was meant to be a D and final squiggle. ‘See? Took me years to perfect that. Looks better in paint, mind.’
‘It looks like a small snail and a baby snail being stalked by a turtle walking on its hind legs.’
‘You can talk. Have you actually seen your own writing? You’re an unspeakable cliché about the unreadable scrawl of the medical man.’
‘I’ll have you know that Medical Scribble 101 was a compulsory course for all medical students, and I was the first to achieve Honours. They ought to put up a plaque, but they couldn’t read my work well enough to spell my name.’
‘That’s criminal neglect.’ Gabriel immediately flipped to a blank page and sketched out a shield, in which he printed James’s name clearly. He added a line that might have read “For services to medical penmanship” in a fair approximation of the doctor’s crabbed handwriting. It made them both laugh.
Gabriel scrubbed at his eyes. ‘I don’t think we can do any more tonight. It’s–’ he peered at the clock. ‘Shit. Almost 3am. I have a half day at Wilcott’s tomorrow. Better grab a few hours or all the paints I mix will turn out sludge brown.’
The two men hugged goodnight, holding on a shade longer than “just good friends” would – but, Gabriel thought later, perhaps long enough for two people who had at last found a friend.
Chapter Eight
James returned to the clinic the next morning, taking on a short extra shift to make up for having missed so many hours the previous day.
Gabriel managed to get to Wilcott’s, off Ilford’s High Road mall, in time for the 8am start. He spent four hours mixing paints, advising a regular client on the use of resins, and wishing he was still in bed. It was nice having a bed, even if he spent all his time in it alone. At least he also had a kitchen now, and someone to share it with.
When he got home, Gabriel cleared the previous night’s experiments from the table. He gathered up most of the silverware in the house and put it in a plastic container, though he left one experiment – a silver letter opener steeping in silver-nitrate-infused garlic – on the sink. They’d determine that silver made James’s skin itch, and that longer exposure inflamed the epidermal layers, before Gabriel refused to let James use himself as such a direct test subject any more. Gabriel also located a more airtight container for the garlic, which he had split into cloves and a teaspoonful of mash while wearing latex gloves, ready for further tests.
A quick cheese and chutney sandwich later, Gabriel was at his easel by his bedroom window. Annoyingly, he found that the image he was trying to capture kept turning into James. The calming, broad- shouldered solidity of him. The severe cut of his brown hair contrasting with the compassionate but wary look in his blue eyes. A hint of sharpness around his mouth, which could soften so handsomely with his rare open smiles, but his hands were offered, palm up, as though in supplication.
When Helene phoned and wanted to come by, Gabriel thought it wise to stop working. He put the canvas on the floor, draped a paint cloth over it, and propped one of his other works-in-progress on the easel.
The tea was brewed and ready to pour when Helene arrived. She presented a box of tiny macarons, looking like a set of highly coloured buttons for a giant toy bear, with a flourish.
‘You should have called,’ she said.
‘About what?’
‘Gabriel.’
Gabriel began rearranging the macarons on the plate in order of the colour spectrum, eating the creamy-beige one absent-mindedly when it didn’t fit the pattern.
‘How can I help you when you don’t let me know what’s happening? I can get you a lawyer.’
Gabriel coughed on the beige macaron, eyes watering. He swigged his tea before glaring at her. ‘I don’t need a lawyer.’
‘You do,’ Helene said. ‘Because you are innocent.’
‘How do you know what’s going on anyway?’
‘That Detective Inspector Bakare.’ She smiled slyly. ‘He’s bought two of your pieces, did you know? Small ones. He would like to buy larger ones, but he can’t afford them. He told me not to tell you, but honestly, the man is a fool sometimes and doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He’s on your side, Gabriel, or he wants to be, but he is a policeman. There are limits to what he can do. Rather, there are things that he must be seen to do.’
Gabriel scowled and rearranged the remaining macarons in a pattern that reflected his fractious thoughts. He stopped when Helene laid a hand on his wrist.
‘Gabriel, darling. What can I do?’
‘Do you remember those ghosts I used to see when I was a kid?’
Helene patted his hand. ‘Of course.’
‘What would you say if I told you they were real? What if I said they weren’t the only real things? What if I told you there really are monsters?’
‘I’ve met your father, my darling boy. I know monsters are real.’
Gabriel’s sigh was aggrieved. ‘That’
s not what I mean.’
Helene rubbed a thumb across the back of his hand. ‘You were a very intense little boy,’ she said, ‘always thinking so much. Always seeing so much. I worried about you. It seemed that if you thought you saw such terrible ghosts, you must have been frightened of the world, but that’s not how you were. You were curious. You felt sorry for them, I believe.’
‘I did. They were so sad. And trapped. Just like me.’
‘But you stopped seeing them,’ said Helene, with a hint of hopefulness in her voice.
No. I pretended I didn’t until I believed it. And now I know they were true but I can’t see them anymore.
‘Did you ever see any ghosts in that house?’ he asked instead of replying.
Helene’s delicate pout suggested… he didn’t know what.
‘It was a strange house,’ she said at last, ‘and I do not miss it. Now, tell me what you think of the macarons. They are Pierre Hermé.’
With the subject definitively dropped, at least for the time being, Gabriel selected a macaron whose colour most jarred in tone and intensity with the others. He dunked it into his tea.
Helene pretended to be scandalised. ‘Have you any idea how much those cost, Gabriel?’
‘I like ’em dunked,’ he said through half a mouthful, and grinned at her, the twinkle back in his eye.
‘I know you do,’ she replied, with a theatrical long-suffering sigh. ‘And how is it working out with James as a landlord? Mr Bakare says he’s taking care of you.’ The double entendre was unmistakable.
‘Not like that,’ Gabriel protested. ‘We’re just friends.’
‘You’d like it to be more, though.’
And damn her for knowing him so well. ‘There are some obstacles to that.’
‘Well, be careful. I like him, but I think there’s something damaged about him. A man like that can hurt you without meaning to.’ Before he could show his irritation at that, she added, ‘And you can hurt him too.’
‘Well, we’re both damaged goods then,’ Gabriel said, irritation vying with resignation. ‘Doesn’t that cancel it out or something?’
Ravenfall Page 9
