"No!"
"Why not?"
Selene weighed how much to tell Carson. "You know about that fire up at my place two weeks ago? There's a pretty good chance that the man who set it was the same man who killed Don."
"What the fuck is going on here, Selene? What have you got that girl mixed up in?"
"Long story. I'll tell you all about it when I get there. In the meantime, whatever you do, don't call the cops, don't call in any missing persons. And if anybody, anybody at all who you don't know, calls asking any questions about Don or Martha or me or"—she started to say Whistler—"or anybody, you don't know a thing."
"Look, Selene, nobody has to tell me twice not to call the cops. It ain't exactly my natural inclination. But I promised Don when this whole tumor thing started that I'd help take care of Martha, and I ain't gonna let him down any worse'n I already did."
"I appreciate that, Carson. I made him the same promise, and I take it as seriously as you do. But you have to believe me when I tell you that right now I'm the best chance Martha has for getting out of this alive. Just sit tight, give me a few days—"
Carson interrupted her again. "Hold on, I just thought of something. If we have Don cremated, and Martha didn't do it, then whoever did will end up getting away with it."
Another expensive silence preceded her reply; even bounced off the satellite it had a weighty quality. "Not a chance he gets away with it," said Selene eventually. Then she remembered Jonas. Or him. Then, aloud: "W-word of honor."
She'd almost said something else. Caught herself just in time. Waited until Carson was off the line. Said it out loud—to Daddy Don, to Martha, Jamey, Lourdes, baby Cora:
"Witch's Word. You've got my Witch's Word on that—all of you."
* * *
Ancient Checker to and from the rain forest Sunday morning. Blue Goose to St. Thomas Sunday afternoon. St. Thomas to Miami Monday morning. Make the connecting flight to San Francisco with minutes to spare. Gain three hours, arrive SFO late afternoon. Shuttle to the long-term parking garage. Find the Jaguar intact—minor miracle. Jaguar starts right up after lying fallow two weeks—major miracle.
Traffic was a bear from Candlestick to the Golden Gate. Selene crossed the bridge in the warm burnished glow of a Pacific sunset, but there was nothing left of the light save a greenish gold band on the far ocean horizon by the time she reached the Coast Highway and joined the conga line of northbound traffic; at each of the switchbacks she could see ahead to the long red line of taillights snaking along the side of Mt. Tam like the fairy-light procession at the end of Fantasia.
Selene extinguished her headlights just before turning into the driveway that led past Don's up to her own A-frame, then parked the Jag just past the turn-off so as to block the road up to her place. She left her suitcases in the trunk, and hiked up the rest of the way carrying only her purse and overnight bag. Her house appeared to be empty. She started up the flagstone walk, then circled around the side of the house to peek through the sliding glass door on the patio. Even in the dark she could see that the 'frame, cleaned up by the coven after the fire, had since been ransacked. Her heart in her throat, she walked around to the back door; it swung open at a touch, and as she felt around for the light switch she noticed the red light from her faithful old answering machine on the kitchen counter blinking insistently. Odd, how strongly the sight affected her: it was like being welcomed home by an old friend.
But the rest of the place was an unholy mess. She'd seen ransacked houses before; happened every so often on the outskirts of Bolinas—kids mostly—but the only place she'd ever seen that even came close to this level of thorough destruction had been tossed by cops looking for drugs. Every shelf had been swept clean, every sugar and flour and herb and spice container dumped out on the kitchen floor; books lay in piles in the living room, and the couch cushions had been slit open and were spilling their stuffing guts all over the place. Grimly she grabbed the magnetic flashlight off the refrigerator door and picked her way through the mess, heading straight for the paint-spattered wooden ladder that leaned against the front of the loft next to the charred remains of the old ladder.
A quick probe of the loft with the flashlight revealed another shocker. Her altar stood open and her tools were scattered around. She swept the beam this way and that and located her white-hilted athame and stag's horn chalice lying on the floor to the left of the altar, her thurible and cingulum on the floor to the right. The velvet garter took longer to spot; it had been tossed like a quoit over one of her black candlesticks. But no matter how hard she searched, no matter how desperately she prayed, her Book of Shadows was nowhere to be seen.
Numb with shock, unwilling to take in this new catastrophe, to deal with the possibility that Aldo had been through the book, and now knew the secret of Martha's paternity, Selene retreated down the unanchored ladder and made her way back to the kitchen, where the blinking light of the answering machine on the kitchen counter caught her attention again. She took a closer look. It was one of those clumsy old Code-a-Phones, the kind that gave you a readout of the number of messages since the last erasure (there were currently twelve), but you had to count the light blinks to see how many of the messages had arrived since the last time the machine had been cleared. She counted twice to make sure of the number—blinkblink pause blinkblink pause. Only two.
This was odd, because they should all have been new: she'd cleared the machine before daubing herself with the Fair Lady's ointment, but not since. Unless of course Martha had checked her messages for her. But she'd spoken to Martha half a dozen times and the girl had never mentioned it. Which pretty much left Aldo. She grabbed a pencil and pad from a drawer and pushed the "All" button: this would play both old and new messages in the order received.
She was chewing on the stub end of her pencil by the time the old motor finished rewinding. The first nine messages were from noncoven friends who were wondering where she'd disappeared to; she had just finished jotting down the last of these names when a familiar voice came on the machine, causing her to jam the pencil down so hard the point embedded itself in the pad before breaking off.
"Selene? Are you there? It's Jamey. If you're there, pick up. I haven't much time. It's Tuesday, the… what, the second? I'll try to call again."
That was all—but it was enough. Proof positive that Jamey had survived the fire at the Greathouse. Her heart soared, then sank again as she remembered that Aldo had probably heard the message as well. She hit the pause button while she tried to reason this through. Aldo had been trying to kill Whistler, but had failed so far—at least up to the point of the phone call. Then he'd learned that Martha was Jamey's daughter, killed Don, and abducted her. It was good news, in a twisted way. If Aldo had taken Martha hostage, she might still be alive.
Selene unpaused the machine to listen to the two messages Aldo hadn't heard. The first was from Carson—"Call me as soon as you get in: if I'm not home I'll be down the hill"—and predated her contact with him on Saturday night, but the second made her grab for her pencil again and hastily gnaw the broken tip to a point.
"Selene? This is Nick Santos. I have some information about a mutual friend. I don't want to leave you my number—our friend doesn't trust the phones, and we can't either. For the next few nights I'll make it a point to be at the Prince Albert Club at four-oh-four-B Harrison Street between ten and midnight. It's a private club—I'll leave your name at the door."
The events of the past few weeks had evidently rung some profound changes in Selene's psyche; she found herself appreciating the efficiency with which her left and right brains immediately and simultaneously launched themselves upon their contrasting and complementary tasks. (Although which part of her mind was actually doing the appreciating was something of a conundrum—or a koan.)
Ten o'clock, reasoned left brain. It's seven-thirty now. Take an hour and a half to get to the city, park, find the place… suitcases still in the car… Don't come back here. Sleep over in the cit
y? Where?
And while left brain was trying to come up with the name of the quasilegal bed-and-breakfast on Russian Hill owned by Balkis Rosenblatt, high priestess of a San Francisco coven, right brain was trying to make sense of it all. Nick Santos. Of all people, Nick Santos. Nick and Jamey had a relationship so complicated that it made Selene and Moll look like Ward and June Cleaver in comparison.
Impeding the efforts of both brain halves was the increasingly more obvious fact that jet lag and exhaustion had Selene's sidereal rhythms totally fubared—fucked up beyond all recognition. It was a term she had learned from Nick, a graduate of the Air Force Academy who'd served as an air force intelligence officer during the Vietnam War. Which, come to think of it, might well have been why Nick was the man Whistler had chosen to contact.
She pictured her body clock having gone sproing, springs and hands flying apart like a cartoon alarm clock. But whatever time it was in there, it was late, and she was exhausted. And careless: she jotted down the address of the club, then hurried out the back door without remembering to clear the Code-a-Phone. When she got to the Jaguar she took a suitcase out of the trunk, and there in the driveway she changed into jeans, a dark long-sleeved jersey with a silk-screened picture of Hildegarde of Bingen on the front, and a midweight Italian wool blazer she'd purchased during her second layover on St. Thomas. After putting the suitcase back into the trunk, Selene transferred her packet of pins and her pack of Doublemint to the inside pocket of the blazer, and by eight the Jaguar was back on the road.
Selene gassed up in Stinson and cruised back over the mountain on Highway 1. No traffic now; she gunned it for all she was worth, conscious as always of the fact that over the years the twisty cliffside drive had claimed several of her friends and acquaintances, including Connie, and might well claim her too some foggy evening.
But not tonight. Tonight for the first time in days she had real hope; tonight she was a drivin' fool. At least with her left brain; right brain was thinking about Nick Santos. After leaving the service, Nick, a devastatingly handsome gay man, had written a successful vampire trilogy before he even knew he was one (a blood drinker, that is: he claimed he'd always known he was gay, even during a short-lived marriage to a woman), and had moved to the Castro in the early seventies, just as the decadelong party there was gaining steam.
The three of them, Nick, Jamey and Selene, had remained the closest friends and lovers (or at least orgy partners) for another dozen years or so, a period that represented a golden age for the blood drinkers and witches of the Bay area. Selene's coven had formed an alliance with Whistler's Penang (from the Malaysian word for vampire): eight times a year, on lesser and greater Sabbat holidays, her coven and his Penang gathered in orgy.
The golden age had ended abruptly, however, on Yule night in 1987, when Nick overdosed on baby blood and "went werewolf," as the vampires called it. He'd very nearly murdered a witch from the Marin Coven, then tore a hole in Selene's throat with his teeth before drowning the Viscount, one of Whistler's dearest friends, in the icy waters of Lake Tahoe.
All of which might have been forgiven—some vampires just weren't meant to drink baby blood—if Nick, in the throes of remorse, hadn't founded V.A.—Vampires Anonymous—and misused the twelve-step principles in order to destroy the Penang. Nick and his V.A. mates had even gone so far as to kidnap Whistler himself and tie him to his bed for a night and a day to wean him from blood.
In the end, of course, Jamey and Selene had their revenge. Within three years Vampires Anonymous was only a bad memory, and every recovering blood addict who'd survived was now using again. In fact, by the time Whistler married Lourdes and moved to Santa Luz, even Nick had fallen off the wagon.
True, he was only drinking blood on weekends the last time Selene had seen him, but according to the rumor mill (aka Catherine Bailey), Nick had fallen on hard times of late: The Reverend Betty Shoemaker of the Church of the Higher Power in El Cerrito, another vampire, who'd conceived a baby with Nick through artificial insemination, had gone back into recovery, then eighty-sixed Nick from her and their child's lives when Nick refused to do the same.
The last Catherine had heard, Nick had given up his career as a systems analyst specializing in network security, moved back into the city, and begun hanging out with the "body art" crowd, a pierced, scarified, tattooed bunch who dwelled in San Francisco's SoMa—South of Market—partying and poking holes in themselves as the millennium came crashing to a close.
* * *
The Prince Albert Club was located above a leather bar across the street from the famous End Up bar. Apparently Catherine was right about Nick's current companions, for the doorman at the top of the stairs to whom she shouted Nick's name was pierced several times through both ears, both nostrils, and his tongue, and his nipples were bared to show their rings—and yet when he leaned over to unhook the velvet rope that barred the entrance, he had the nerve to give Selene a weird look. She winked and pointed to her crotch. "Both labes," she whispered; he nodded approvingly as she passed by him into a dark room—the only lights were the deep blue neon tubes framing the mirror behind the bar, and tiny hooded lamps at each of the Lucite cafe tables circling the dance floor.
Selene sat down at an empty table over by the far wall, trying not to wince at the sight of so much cruelly pierced flesh.
"Hi."
She looked up: Nick was sitting across from her. Dark brown hair cropped close; silver nose stud; from his left ear a Greek cross hung nearly to his shoulder; his earlobe had stretched like Silly Putty. And yet if she'd had to describe him to a friend, the words divinely handsome would still have to be in there somewhere.
"Hi Nick." She cocked her head. "Something's different—"
He started to laugh.
"No, not just—I've got it! You shaved off your mustache."
To her surprise his otter brown eyes misted up. "Who else would see past all this"—he gestured to his hardware—"to remember my Magnum P.I. mustache?" She could barely hear him. "You are an old friend, aren't you? There aren't many left, except the vampires."
Because only the vampires were immune to AIDS. She filled in the subtext, then took his hand across the table. "How's it going, Nick?"
"I've still got my money and my blood, and I'm making new friends as fast as the old ones are dying, so it could be worse."
Selene winced. "Don't say that. Things always get worse when you say that."
Nick leaned forward abruptly. "You know why we're here?" She started to say Jamey, but he stopped her with an upward flicker of his forefinger. "I saw him yesterday. He's either unbelievably paranoid, or else someone's trying to kill him."
"Oh, somebody's trying to kill him all right." Selene filled Nick in as best she could without mentioning Martha, interrupting herself once while the waiter took their drink orders, and once again when he returned, clanking, with Selene's Anchor Steam and Nick's Absolut.
Nick sighed more than once during the telling of her tale; he sighed again when she had finished. "In a way, that's almost better than what I was thinking, which was that he'd gone completely bonkers. It also explains the rest of his instructions. I have a number to call if you and I made contact; he'll call me back, and I'm to call you with instructions for meeting him."
But the deejay had just switched the dance music from Gothic death rock to ear-splitting Industrial. Nick had to beckon Selene forward and shout the rest directly into her ear. "After I speak to him, I'll get back in touch with you about the next step."
"I have to know, Nick," she called into his ear. "Is he still nearby?"
"I don't know. It's a local number, but that doesn't mean anything nowadays. Why, what's up?"
"There's a complication even Jamey knows nothing about."
"What?"
"I can't tell you until I've told him. Just let him know that we don't have any time to waste—there's a third life in danger."
"I'll call the number as soon as I can, and relay the message. When he get
s back to me I'll call you. Where are you going to be?"
Selene thought about it. "Maybe I'd better not tell you, just in case."
He nodded. "Your tradecraft's better than mine. How about if you call me first thing tomorrow morning?"
"Sounds like a plan."
He jotted his number on a napkin and slipped it into her hand under the table.
"What's the earliest I can call you?" she asked.
"Depends on whether I get lucky tonight. Say noon, just to be safe. Can I get you another drink?"
"No thanks, dearie." She rose. "I'm totally wiped—I'd better get this body to bed."
"Mother knows best," he said. "You take care of yourself, Selene."
"You do the same, Nick."
"Don't I always?" he said.
CHAPTER 7
« ^ »
By the time Sunday evening arrived, Aldo was distinctly homy. Part of it was due, no doubt, to the period of time that had elapsed since his last sexual encounter, but the rest was the result of having Martha so completely under his control without trusting himself to have sex with her. It was important to know one's own weaknesses, Aldo thought. That first touch, for instance, when he had dropped her by shutting off blood flow to her brain for a few seconds, had been so delicious that he knew if he ever got his hands around her throat a second time he wouldn't be able to let go.
But he needed her alive, at least until he had snagged Whistler and the witch. After that she would be delightfully expendable—and he would be even hornier. But until then he would treat her not as an attractive young female, but as an object of potential value, he decided, and so kept her bound and gagged all Saturday night, allowing her only a little water and a visit to the toilet before he retrussed her and swallowed his customary handful of sleeping pills Sunday morning.
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