by Lund, S. E.
“Really?”
“When we moved to Prague, I hated it because there was so much light pollution, I could hardly see anything.”
“Wales, Prague. Sounds like an interesting life. How did you end up in Davis Cove, of all places?”
I hate to lie to him, especially since he and his sister are being so nice to me, but what else can I do?
I repeat the lie. “My dad stayed here as a kid and so I thought it would be a good place to come, get away from it all.”
“It certainly is away from it all.”
I look up at his face. He's smiling.
“Some weekend when I’m back, I’ll bring my telescope and we can do some star gazing,” he says, his voice light. “I have a great Takahashi and a pretty good camera for astrophotography. The Draconids are coming up next week – it's supposed to be a great show this year. A thousand meteors a second.”
I smile. “I have a boyfriend.”
"I have a girlfriend," he says and smiles. "Just being friendly."
I feel heat rise in my cheeks. "Sorry. I just didn’t want…"
"No offense taken." We dance in silence for a few moments, and it's then I feel it – just a tiny sense that he's trying to get into my mind.
I immediately put up my mental blocks.
I don't know what to do. Do I act as if nothing happened? Do I confront him? I feel conflicted. I decide to pretend nothing happened.
Then I see Julien walking across the dance floor to us.
"I guess I overstayed my welcome," Dylan says, smiling. The song ends and now it's a fast one. Dylan bows to me and gestures to Julien. "She's all yours."
Julien tilts his head in acknowledgement. "She always was."
Dylan smiles and catches my eye before he leaves.
Julien and I dance, but we stay our proper distance away, and I try to tell him what Nate said.
"Nate told me that so long as you and I investigate these cases, our problem will remain."
"Fucking bastard," he says. "He knows we're here because of the murders."
Then I tell him about Dylan.
He frowns. "This is why you shouldn't be dancing, Eve. If he's an Adept working for Blackstone, they'll know I'm here."
"I thought you wanted to infiltrate them?"
"Yeah, but on my terms. Now, we'll have to see how they respond, if this Dylan guy is with them and if he knows who I am."
"How could I know? I'd written the Rhys family off because I never go anything from Sarah or her parents."
He shakes his head and inhales deeply.
"I guess we'll find out now."
Finally, we sit back down at the table.
“Eve," Sarah says to me. "Why don’t you come by to my place some afternoon? We have a concert grand piano that my mother bought when she was in New York one year. I’d love to hear you play. I used to play before…”
I look at her and then to Dylan, who's smiling. His smile looks pleasant enough, but his eyes are hooded.
“You should come by,” he says. “Supposedly, Glenn Gould played on it when he was still a student in Toronto.”
“Glenn Gould?" I can't help but sound impressed. Gould is one of my favorite musicians. "I’ll do that,” I say, trying to find a reason to say no. I just will never go. I glance at Julien, who's frowning.
“Come by after school some day when you’re not working.” Sarah smiles so brightly. Perhaps she's unaware of her brother's gifts.
“I’ll try.”
We stay there for another half-hour and Julien and I listen to their talk about the community and then it's on to the next pub. I glance back to watch Dylan pushing his sister’s wheelchair. Ahead of us, Nate and his friends leave the building, laughing amongst themselves, on their way to the next pub on the list. They all look so normal. But they're really just like me.
We're all performing, evaluating each other.
Once we're in the car, I turn to Julien.
"Let's go home," I say. "I've had enough."
"It's only 11:30."
"I'm tired and being around them is stressful."
He nods.
I slept poorly last night and we do have some work to do tomorrow. Our test results from the three deaths that drew our interest are due in and they'll determine just what our next steps will be. If they come back positive, with abnormal levels of oxytocin and dopamine, signs of being a blood slave, we’d start examining all their contacts to try to narrow down who our suspect – or suspects – are.
But I already think it's either Soren or one of his minions. Or Blackstone.
Why has Soren called us here if he knows we'll investigate these murders?
I stare out the window as we drive back to our cottage overlooking the ocean, wondering how Dylan Rhys fits into all this.
Chapter 68
"In every living thing there is a desire for love."
D. H. Lawrence
* * *
On Saturday, we have lunch and then Julien and I sit at the computer and read over the email Sheriff Conyers sent containing the results of the blood and tissue tests we’d asked for. Every one of our suspected cases reveals the telltale evidence of being a blood slave. There is enough other evidence to confirm that someone in Davis Cove is using Adepts as blood slaves. Of course, I think it's Soren.
"Soren said these murders were just housekeeping. My thought would be that he's weeding out the ones he thinks aren't loyal enough, or are tempted to join the Council."
Julien says nothing and I wonder if Soren's new compulsion overrides the last one. He totally ignores me.
"Did you hear me?" I say. "Soren said these murders are housekeeping."
He frowns at me. "Eve, I can't touch you. Stop."
Well, he's left them both in place. So I can't talk to him about Soren's guilt and I can't touch him.
He's trying to drive me crazy.
I think immediately about Dylan – he comes back each weekend. If he's an Adept working for Blackstone, he might be involved in some way. He wasn't at Soren's party but he was supposed to be in Cambridge at school on Thursday.
"Do you suppose Dylan's being prepared to be one of Soren's Adepts? Like I'm supposed to be? Or is he with Blackstone?"
Now, Julien looks up. "Soren's creating some kind of army of Adepts to take power once Blackstone strikes. Davis Cove may just be a retreat for him and his coven. A place to train Adepts while he waits for Blackstone to make their move. Or he located here because there's a Blackstone cell here and he wants to keep an eye on them. Dylan could be part of either."
So he can talk to me about Soren but not his guilt in the River Man case or this case. Did Soren or one of his servants kill them all? A sense of horror spreads through me at the thought Dylan is involved with either Blackstone or Soren. He's attractive, pleasant, and non-threatening – except for the last moment when we were dancing and I felt him reaching out to my mind.
Why hasn’t he challenged me if he knows who and what I am? It doesn't make sense to me. This makes me think he's with Blackstone, which makes him even more dangerous.
“Julien,” I say as we sit in silence, reading over the files. “All those first murders that were part of The River Man case – they were all like you, weren't they? Vampire warriors created by Blackstone? That's why they were beheaded. They were all vampires, not Adepts.”
He glances up from his file, his brow furrowed. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t Michel and Ed tell me that right away?"
He says nothing for a long moment as if deciding whether to tell the truth.
"Blackstone's killing off members of my unit. I don't know why. If we can track down the killer, we may find out why but it has to be linked to Dominion."
Of course, I know it's Soren killing off members of his unit. Why? As a threat to Julien? Warning?
He comes over to me and sits beside me on the couch, careful to keep a distance between us. I cross my arms, trying to keep my hands away from him, because my first insti
nct is to reach out and touch him.
"Why did Soren stake you?"
"To get to Michel. To get him to comply."
"He never really meant to kill you."
"No, but he could have. He used me as his trump card if Michel didn't comply."
"Michel refused him?"
Julien nods. "Yes. Michel didn’t want to cooperate with Soren. But then, he found you and was unable to keep you hidden…"
"So Soren found out about me and tried to push you and I together by making Michel stay with him in Pittsburgh."
"That was his plan from the start."
"That you and I would be lovers?"
"That you'd be both our lovers. He'd use you to get to us both."
"So, he wanted me to be with both of you. He'd use you both to get to me and use me to get to both of you."
"That's about it."
"He's a bastard."
"The supreme manipulator," Julien says and shakes his head.
Now, I'm even more confused. I wish there was someone else to talk to about this. Someone who is compulsion free. Someone else like me.
* * *
Julien and I pore over the cases that we now know are the result of blood sharing and draw up a list of contacts each one had, to see if there were any people in common who might be linked to either Soren's coven or some Blackstone cell. With the help of Sheriff Conyers, we build a tree of contacts. Being a relatively small town, there are many shared connections between the four victims. All of them go to the local Catholic Church. They all went to the family medical clinic to visit their doctors at some point in the year or had one of the doctors attend to them. They all received mail, had the same telephone and internet service. As we build up our list, one thing kept cropping up.
The Rhys family.
“But none of them are vampires,” Julien says as he looks at surveillance photos he’s taken of them. “I don’t understand. They’re linked – tenuously – to every one of the dead, but then, so are a dozen other people on the list.” He turns to face me and looks at me from under a furrowed brow. “Maybe you should go to the Rhys family for a visit after all.”
I shrug and try to act as if it's just work, but I'm a little scared and curious. “Maybe I was mistaken about him trying to enter my mind.”
“I doubt it. It wouldn’t hurt for you to go there, check them out. You might turn up something.”
“I’m surprised you’ll let me go alone.”
"I'll wait on the street somewhere close, just in case you run into any trouble. You can text me if you feel under threat since we can't connect."
Julien closes the file on the Rhys family, moving on to a fisherman named Colville Black who moved to town the previous year from Maine. He's single and lives alone. The story is he’d passed through once on a road trip and liked the town so much, he came back when he’d lost his job in a downturn – which, of course, sounded suspiciously like our cover story. He’ll be first on the list for surveillance.
* * *
The weekend passes without incident and classes are pretty much ordinary all week. I work on Tuesday night, and again on Thursday night, but I have Friday night off because another busgirl wanted to switch shifts.
After history on Friday, Sarah calls me over in the hallway.
“Can you come over today, see our piano? We’re ordering in Chinese and you’re welcome to stay for supper. I’d love to hear you play.”
I nod. “Sure, I haven’t really played for several weeks and would love to.”
“Why haven't you played?” Sarah asks, her eyebrows raised.
“Don't have a piano at the cottage.”
“I’m sure my mom would be happy for you to come by any time and play.” Sarah smiles brightly, her green eyes crinkling at the corner. She doesn't look at all like Dylan, but then again, the Rhys parents have very different coloring. I decide to investigate their family a bit more closely and will ask the Council for any records they might have in their files. If there are none, I'll ask them to use Homeland Security and CIA to create a file to see where they’ve lived and what they’ve done for the past couple of decades.
I call Julien at the end of the day and let him know I’ll be going over to the Rhys house after school to play the piano and stay for supper. He’ll find a safe place to park like we discussed. If I feel at all threatened, I'll text him and he'll come right away.
I'm certain I have nothing to fear from them.
* * *
Professor Rhys drives us to their house after loading Sarah’s wheelchair in their van. The house is a large bungalow on the side of a hill overlooking the ocean. They have a huge bank of solar cells on the roof.
“You have solar power?”
Professor Rhys nods. “We're completely off the grid just in case it goes down.” He pushes Sarah’s wheelchair up the ramp to the front door. “That’s Dylan’s thing – solar power. Sarah needs a source of power 24/7 and if the grid went down for any length of time, she’d be in danger.”
“He means I’d die,” Sarah says. “Dylan insisted. He’s afraid there might be another Carrington Event during solar maximum and the grid might fail so we installed the panels. Now we feed the grid, instead of taking from it.”
“Carrington Event?”
“A huge solar storm that would disrupt power transmissions – maybe for months.”
I make a face. "That's a scary thought. How likely is it?"
Professor Rhys laughs. "Not likely, but Dylan is all about preparation for the worst."
I frown. He is, is he? I wonder why… This just adds another tick mark beside the potential Blackstone cell member possibility.
The house has a beautiful view but the inside of the house is most interesting. Art covers every wall, modern art, posters from films and plays on Broadway, concerts at Carnegie Hall. This is the kind of house I would like to have lived in growing up. My foster parents are wonderful, but I didn't feel at home with them and all my memories of them were lost. This house is big, warm, full of art and culture. The Rhys parents are smart and seem kind.
“Here it is,” Sarah says, wheeling into the conservatory. The piano stands in front of a wall-to-wall picture window overlooking the bay. Across from it is a huge bookcase with hundreds of books. A fireplace is off to the side and beside it two loveseats face each other.
Sarah's mother goes to the piano and stands beside it.
“Gould played it when he was a student in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music," she says, touching it almost with affection. "We got it at auction in an estate sale.”
There's nothing spectacular about the piano – an old Steinway grand. The only thing that makes it special is that Gould had played it when he was still unknown. It shows its age, but the mere fact Gould had played it makes my heart beat faster. I sit at the piano and run my fingers over the keys lightly, thinking of Gould himself touching them when he was even younger than me. Just to warm up, I play some scales and soon, I feel familiar enough with the instrument that I decide to play the Aria from the Goldberg Variations.
Sarah lets out an “ohhh” when she recognizes the piece and I smile to myself. Another Bach freak. I play it with a slower tempo, like Gould's final recording rather than faster, like his first.
“I can almost hear him humming,” Sarah says as I play. I glance at her and see that Dylan has appeared and is standing behind her in the darkness of the doorway. I turn back to the keys, trying not to let Dylan’s appearance throw me off. I stumble a bit but keep on going until I finish the Aria. Then, I move into the first variation and play it till the end.
“That’s it for the Goldberg Variations," I say and shrug. "I didn’t learn all of it.”
“Play something else,” Sarah says.
"What would you like to hear?”
“Play more Bach,” Sarah says. “He’s my favorite.” She smiles so winningly, I can't resist.
I play Bach’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, a piece from The Well Tempered Cl
avier. It's one of my favorites. I like the darkness of the piece. It reminds me of Prague.
While I play, Dylan comes over and stands beside the piano, watching me. I try to block out thinking of him and what he might be, focusing instead on the music, on the feel of the keys, trying to get my touch right for Bach. When I finish, they all clap and I bow as a joke, and then start to leave the piano, but Sarah's mother stops me.
“Please,” she says and holds out a hand. “Keep playing. It’s so nice to hear someone with real talent and training. Most of my students are just putting in time.”
I sit back down. “What would you like to hear?”
“Debussy," Dylan says.
I think for a moment and then start playing a piece from Pour le Piano – the Sarabande, which I like due to its chromatism. When I finish, Dylan leans against the piano.
“Did you know,” he says, “that Debussy composed according to the golden ratio? You can find evidence of the Fibonacci Sequence in his compositions.”
I frown, remembering something about that – Michel mentioned it as well.
“The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical progression of numbers,” he adds, as if to explain.
"Yes, I know," I say, trying not to sound defensive. "It seems the opposite to my sense of Debussy, which is so much passion and beauty that it goes beyond math."
"Math is beautiful," Dylan says. "Numbers, patterns, built right into the universe."
I frown again. Sounds like what Michel said to me on the beach when he showed me the shell.
“That’s Dylan,” Mr. Rhys says, patting Dylan on the shoulder. “Always into the math of things. You play beautifully, Eve. Why aren't you studying music? You're in pre-med, from your records.”
I shake my head. “I haven’t taken lessons for years. My father was so involved in my training.” I stop, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. “I don’t have the heart to study music any more since he was institutionalized.”
"I'm sorry," Mrs. Rhys says. An awkward silence passes and Mr. Rhys clears his throat.
