Reluctant Partnerships

by Ariel Tachna

  “Stay here,” Jean ordered, his voice sharp. “I’ll check.”

  Raymond almost asked what he thought could hurt them now that Pierre was gone, but if Pierre had indeed attacked Aimée’s mother or sister, she did not need to see the body. Jean’s passage would not disturb any magical signatures left behind, if there were any, so Raymond could check the spells later to see if they had been disturbed.

  Jean returned a few minutes later. “I didn’t find your mother or sister in his room, so I’m sure they’re elsewhere on the grounds. I sent Thierry to look for them so you can see for yourself that they’re unharmed. Raymond, it looks like he—or someone—tore the door off its hinges.”

  “You keep telling me vampires are incredibly strong,” Raymond said. “He couldn’t have made the handle turn or the latch release from the jamb with my magic locking it, but if he managed to break the metal on the hinges, I suppose he could have forced it enough to get out. Still, the amount of power that would take, you’d think we would have heard the noise.”

  “You would think,” Jean agreed. “You can go look if you want. Maybe you’ll see something I missed, but it looked to me like pure brute force.”

  “I will in a minute,” Raymond said, crossing the courtyard and kneeling next to the pile of ashes. He began to chant softly, air stirring around his shoulders, summoned by his words. Normally he would have a body as he began this rite, the air taking his breath in offering, but he directed the gentle breeze now across the pile of ash. Water came next, cleansing the vampire’s remains for his return to the elements. He called fire, though the body was already consumed, to dry the ashes and ready the earth. Before he could cast the last part of the spell, Thierry knelt beside him, his voice joining the chant. Raymond turned control of the spell over to the other wizard, Thierry’s affinity with earth allowing him to mingle the ashes into the ground below effortlessly, the soil responding to his call and enfolding the remains in its embrace: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  “Thank you,” Raymond said to Thierry after they had released the magic. “I’ll put a marker there later so everyone knows it’s hallowed ground.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Thierry insisted. “You need to find out what happened that he ended up a pile of dust in the first place.”

  Raymond nodded.

  “Thank you,” Jean said as Raymond stepped back. “You didn’t have to do that for him.”

  “He wasn’t evil,” Raymond said. “You said yourself he should never have been turned. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did, and he certainly didn’t deserve to have his ashes scattered on the wind with no acknowledgment of his life or death.”

  “We’ll need to call Adèle,” Jean said. “Her case of involuntary turnings just took a more sinister turn.”

  “I’m not sure we can charge the vampire with his death,” Raymond said. “He essentially committed suicide.”

  “He was responsible for creating the situation that led to Pierre’s death,” Jean insisted.

  “I’m not sure that’s the legal standard,” Raymond warned, “but we’ll notify Adèle and let her make that call. If nothing else, she needs to know she’s minus a witness now.”

  “I’ll call her if you’ll let Martin know,” Jean offered. “I’m not sure where he is at the moment.”

  “I’ll find him,” Raymond said. “I’m also going to check Pierre’s room. I won’t go in so Adèle can treat it as a crime scene if she wants, but I want to see how he got out.”

  Jean nodded in acknowledgment as he went back toward their office to call Adèle.

  Raymond retraced the route Pierre had taken to his doom, up the stairs to the second story rooms and then down the hall to the one Pierre had occupied. A quick check of his spell showed the magic still intact, if precariously, given that the door now hung by the incantation alone. The wood around the hinges had shattered, the screws hanging drunkenly in their holes. Whatever force had torn the door open, it had been superhuman. Then again, Raymond had watched Jean throw a grown man across the street like he weighed nothing more than a golf ball. He had trusted the solidity of the stone and the thickness of the door to keep Pierre confined. If he ever had to confine another vampire, he would remember to use magic.

  “So instead of a witness, I now have a dead body.”

  “Not even a body,” Raymond said, acknowledging Adèle’s arrival with a kiss on her cheek. “A pile of ashes. I know that’s what happens when a vampire is exposed to sunlight. I saw it when we executed the extorris at the end of the war, but that doesn’t make it any easier to look at the pile of ashes and know it was once a man.”

  “You saw your share of bodies during the war,” Adèle said.

  “I know, but this is different. Pierre didn’t choose to be turned or to be in this situation,” Raymond said.

  “As if any of us really chose our paths in the war either,” Adèle said. “We reacted to what was going on around us.”

  Raymond shrugged, uncomfortably aware of the scar on his back, covered now with a different, cherished mark. “Not all of us.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Adèle snapped. “If any of us chose our paths, it was you when you left Serrier and switched sides. Now, enough self-pity. Tell me what you did so I can figure out what Pierre did.”

  “You can see my spell there,” Raymond said, pointing to the door knob. “I locked the door magically so he couldn’t turn the handle from the inside. The spell held. The door apparently didn’t.”

  “So there’s nothing to suggest that anyone broke in or was trying to harm him in any way,” Adèle concluded.

  “Not given the damage to the door. Someone outside wouldn’t have needed to force it,” Raymond explained. “You’d need magic to get out, not to get in.”

  “So anyone walking by could, in theory, have opened the door and let him out without a problem, but he could only get out himself by breaking down the door,” Adèle confirmed.

  “Right. Aimée Naizot, the woman he was chasing when he ran outside, said she saw him in the hallway and fled immediately. She didn’t see anyone who might have let him out, and if someone had, the door would be open rather than hanging by my spell.”

  “From what you’ve seen and heard, is there any reason to suspect any kind of foul play?” Adèle asked.

  “No,” Raymond replied. “As much as Jean would like to lay this at the feet of Pierre’s maker, it seems to me a case of Pierre not having the self-preservation instincts to keep out of the sunlight. From what Jean has told me the few times we’ve discussed it, a vampire in full thrall of his bloodlust has about as much common sense as a lemming.”

  “And Pierre didn’t have that much common sense when he was fully human and on all his medications,” Adèle said. “I see Jean’s point, but I don’t think we could get murder or even involuntary homicide given the time between Pierre’s turning and today. We could probably add a reckless endangerment charge, but I don’t know if it’s worth it given how much time he’s already facing for turning Pascale and Pierre in the first place.”

  “It would make Jean feel better about the situation,” Raymond said, “which I realize is no one’s primary concern but mine.”

  “In terms of actually making him feel better, you’re right,” Adèle agreed, “but if there’s some logic behind his feelings, something about that additional charge that would keep something like this from happening again, it could be a reason to consider it.”

  “He hasn’t discussed it in those terms,” Raymond said, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. He’s been more focused on Pierre and the wrong done to him than on keeping it from happening again. He would like to think this is the isolated instance of one deranged vampire rather than something we really have to protect against in the longer term.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the reality is somewhere in between. Most of the vampires I know wouldn’t do something like this, just like most of the people I know wou
ldn’t commit murder,” Raymond said, “but I’m enough a student of history to know there’s nothing new under the sun. If one vampire can be twisted enough to turn people against their will, another one will be at some future point. But if the person is twisted enough to do something that vampires as a group agree is bad, I don’t know if jail time will really deter them. That would be a question for the sociologists, not for me.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You keep trying to catch the bastard and I keep trying to keep Jean sane,” Raymond said with a shrug. “What else can we do?”

  “Adèle, Raymond, I heard Pierre got loose,” Martin said, bounding up the stairs to join him.

  “He’s gone,” Raymond said. “I buried his ashes where he fell.”

  “Merde,” Martin swore. “And we finally felt like we were making progress with him. You should maybe talk to Denis, Adèle. He kept calling it a crazy theory, but I think he has an idea who might be behind the turnings.”

  “Why didn’t he call me?”

  “He was trying to get something, anything, out of Pierre that might corroborate his idea before he shared it with you,” Martin explained. “Unfortunately, nothing Pierre said was conclusive, and Pascale didn’t see the one detail that would prove his theory correct.”

  “Share it with me anyway,” Adèle said. “Even if it’s far-fetched, it’s better than nothing, which is all I’ve got now.”

  “He thinks the former chef de la Cour in Autun, euh, Renard, I think his name was, is trying to build enough support to take back the Cour.”

  “Renaud,” Raymond corrected.

  “By turning vampires against their will?” Adèle said. “I don’t see that building a lot of support.”

  “It’s not a foolproof theory, but it would be a reason for their maker to come back for them,” Martin replied, feeling the sudden urge to defend Denis despite his own earlier skepticism. “And it would tie in with what he apparently said to Pierre about Pierre thanking him. The issue isn’t whether Pascale and Pierre feel grateful, but whether their maker thinks they’ll feel grateful enough to help him. Denis said Renaud was from the appropriate time period for his accent to be right. It’s not a perfect theory, but nothing we know for a fact disproves it, and furthermore, no one has seen Renaud at all since the attacks began.”

  “Which could mean he’s all the way to Russia by now,” Adèle reminded him. “It’s been six months. Even on foot and only traveling at night, he could be anywhere in Europe.”

  “He could be,” Raymond said slowly, “but I’d be surprised if he is. I met him before Denis replaced him. Just once, to be sure, but he left quite an impression. You can talk to Denis and confirm this, but the Cour was his life from what I could tell. The way he chose to run it made life complicated when we first started l’Institut, but there’s no doubt he would do anything to protect his Cour and his position.”

  “Even turn people against their will?”

  Raymond shrugged. “I was a first-hand witness to the atrocities committed in the name of something I believed in before the atrocities started. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has used the ends to justify means the rest of us would consider reprehensible.”

  “Then maybe we need to talk to this Renaud.”

  “Denis has been looking for him for the past three days,” Martin said. “As far as I know, he hasn’t had any luck.”

  “It’s too late to try it with Pascale, but if he turns another victim and we get there first, we can try a tracing spell,” Raymond said. “We used those sometimes during the war to track down Serrier’s operatives. There’s no guarantee it will work, since it’s intrinsic rather than extrinsic magic, but it’s worth a try. And if that doesn’t work, we may be able to come up with some other way to trace him magically.”

  “I hate to wait for another victim. See if Jean has a better idea,” Adèle said. “I need to talk to Denis and then I need to talk to Pascale.”

  Chapter 16

  “Adèle.”

  Adèle tensed at hearing her name. “Bonsoir, Pascale.”

  “Jean said you were here. He told me what happened to Pierre. As awful as it is, maybe it’s better this way. He wouldn’t have had any kind of life out of control the way he was.”

  “I’d feel better about it if I thought it had been his choice,” Adèle said. “As it is, I don’t know if he ever realized it was dangerous to go outside.”

  Pascale nodded. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  “A few,” Adèle replied. “I’m waiting for Denis Langlois to get here. He has a theory.”

  “He said that. I’m sorry I couldn’t help him, but I didn’t see the vampire’s hands when he turned me, or if I did, it was too dark to see if he had scars, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been thinking about our partnership, if we decide to go forward with it.”

  Adèle’s tension mounted even more. “And what were you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking it bears an unfortunate resemblance to an arranged marriage,” Pascale replied. “In an age before divorce.”

  “Yes,” Adèle said with a sharp laugh, amazed that finally someone understood her concerns without her having to voice them, “and the fact that some people make them work doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

  “So here’s my suggestion,” Pascale said. “There are benefits to a partnership for both of us. I get a freedom of movement I wouldn’t otherwise have, and you get an increase in magical strength. I need to feed every two to three days, but it wouldn’t have to always be from you. We have a weekly meeting at work, usually on Fridays, so if I could feed from you Thursday night, that would let me attend. Then the rest of the week, I’d be on my own.”

  “That would only give you Friday and Saturday to be out in daylight,” Adèle cautioned. “Is that enough?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to seeing you more often,” Pascale admitted, “but I don’t want this to be too much of an imposition on you either.”

  “It’s not the feeding that’s the imposition,” Adèle said. “Fifteen minutes a few times a week is nothing. It’s everything else.”

  “Yes, but we wouldn’t do ‘everything else’,” Pascale said. “You’d come over and I’d feed or I’d come to your house and feed, and then I’d go home. A business arrangement, nothing else. I know it won’t be easy, but if that’s all the interaction we have, there’s nothing to push us for more. During the war, from what I understand, the pairs were together hour after hour, day after day. They fought together. That’s already personal. We won’t have to do that. We’d agree on a schedule, work around each other’s commitments, meet a few times a week, and that’s it.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “I’m not in love with you, Adèle. I don’t know you that well, and I’m not your former partner with his Neolithic attitudes. I’m not going into this expecting it to be something it isn’t, and I’m not going to change my mind because I see relationships around me growing deeper. I’m not Jude, and this isn’t the same situation.”

  “All right,” Adèle said, extending her arm.

  “I thought you said you were expecting Denis shortly,” Pascale said, her fangs dropping and her mouth watering despite her words. She pushed down the instinct to seize. She was in control, not her instincts. She would show Adèle she was strong enough to uphold her end of their bargain.

  “I am, but he can wait,” Adèle said. “This is more important.”

  Pascale swallowed hard. “If you’re sure.”

  Adèle locked the door with a quick spell and a flick of her wand. “That way we won’t be disturbed.”

  “They’ll think we’re….”

  “They’ll think it anyway the first time anyone sees bite marks on me,” Adèle said with a shrug. “I can’t do anything about their assumptions. Now are you going to feed or not? You’re giving me a complex.”

  The locked door gave the moment a nearly unbearable sense of intimacy when Pascale
knew it meant far less than it appeared. If things had been different… but they were not, and Pascale refused to cry over spilt milk. Instead, she took Adèle’s hand and lifted it to her lips, determined to be as matter-of-fact as possible about what they were about to do. That lasted until she caught the hint of perfume on Adèle’s skin. She stifled a groan and made herself prepare Adèle’s wrist, pushing aside her sudden desire to nuzzle Adèle’s neck or the neckline of her blouse to see if she had dabbed perfume there as well.

  The scent of Shalimar grew stronger as Adèle’s skin heated, her pulse picking up at the touch of Pascale’s tongue. Pascale’s body reacted, her own skin flushing with hunger and desire, but she pushed those thoughts aside. No matter how much she might want to interpret Adèle’s physical reactions as an invitation to greater intimacy, Pascale would not make the same mistake Adèle’s former partner had made.