by Jana Denardo
“You don’t need my permission. If you need to go, go on. Do you want me to come with you?” He squeezed Luc’s shoulder.
“You can help Siobhan look around. I’ll be okay, but I need to not be in here.” Luc waved his hands around at all the plastic horses, which seemed to horrify Siobhan, judging by her huge eyes.
“We’re right here if you need us.”
Luc nodded, stepping back outside. He collapsed down on the stoop so hard his tailbone hurt like hell. He hunched over his knees, covering his face. Even here, away from the garish neon, the lights were too bright. The wind scoured his skin. What happened when they found Eleni? Luc hadn’t asked any questions about that, but he hoped it had to do with fire and stakes and beheadings.
Holy water, at least it was a myth. Luc would put it to a test. He had to. As he stayed curled up over his legs, the Act of Contrition rolled about in his mind. He whispered it to himself. What if what he was now did offend God? What if no amount of contrition and prayer would redeem him? Better to stay alive forever then. A tremor started in his hands, slowly working its way up at the thought of God, Jesus, and Mary turning their backs on him. He could almost believe they wouldn’t care about his sexuality, but being a vampire? Were they God’s creations or Satan’s? He knew he couldn’t talk to Arrigo about it. Maybe Siobhan would listen. Until then, he’d live like he always tried to, in a way to make Jesus happy.
“Hello, there.”
Luc jumped up at the voice, an elderly lady limping her away across the yard.
“Sorry, son. Didn’t mean to startle you. Are you one of Rachel’s nephews? I haven’t seen her niece in days.”
“I… well, it’s more complicated than that.” Luc wished thinking on his feet was one of his strengths. “Hang on.” He ducked his head inside, waving frantically. Arrigo ran over.
“What’s wrong?”
Luc pointed. “I believe this is one of Rachel’s neighbors asking about her.”
“Oh, another nephew? Or a friend of her niece. I’m Mrs. Habinger, by the way.”
“A friend,” Arrigo replied smooth as milk. “Have you seen her niece around?”
The old woman’s lips pinched, deepening her wrinkles. “Not in a few days, and I haven’t seen Rachel in weeks. Her niece said Rachel went back with relatives in the East.”
“Well, we’re sorry to miss her. Her niece left us the key but probably hasn’t gotten back from the Strip yet.” Arrigo lied smoothly, so much so Luc wondered if he could ever really trust him. The man was probably hell on wheels at the poker table.
“When you see her, tell her I’m worried about Rachel. It’s unlike her not to call me for so long.”
“We will, ma’am.” Arrigo put an arm on Luc’s back, pushing him into the house. He waited for a moment before following Luc in, probably to see if Mrs. Habinger had gone back to her own place. “Siobhan, it’s what we thought. She probably killed the occupant of this place. Call the Chiaroscuro. We need to have this place sanitized before the neighbor gets suspicious and calls in the police when they realize the place is deserted.”
“Are you going to handle the neighbor?” Siobhan dug out her phone.
Arrigo nodded, heading back out. Luc, panic filling him, raced after him. He didn’t want to see an innocent old woman hurt.
“What are you going to do?”
Arrigo twisted around, putting a finger to his lips. “Nothing bad. Relax.” He picked up his pace. “Oh, Mrs. Habinger, I have a question.”
“Yes, young man.” She stopped and turned with a smile.
Luc hoped he could trust Arrigo, especially when he put a hand on her shoulder but said nothing. The woman seemed quiet, almost relaxed, like a drunk ready to pass out. Arrigo leaned in, whispering. Arrigo let her go back inside her house.
He strutted back to Luc, indicating for him to follow him back to Rachel’s house. “See how our ability to mesmerize works? Remember from last night? I wish I could make her forget us entirely, but our abilities aren’t that good. I tried to plant that suggestion, but who knows if it’ll take.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Luc made a face. “I’m flunking vampire school, aren’t I?”
Arrigo smiled that pretty smile of his. “Repetition is the key. You had to touch any number of surfaces in this house, right?”
“Yeah. Man, you think Eleni killed Rachel, don’t you?” Luc shuddered, his stomach lurching. “And if they find my prints in there… hell.”
“That’s why I called for it to be sanitized. Don’t worry, Luc. You will be fine. No one will know any of us were here, but yes, we need to get out of here before someone writes down our license number as a suspicious car.” Arrigo poked his head into the house. “Michael, we need to go. Do you have enough?”
“Yeah, I’m taking this.” Michael appeared in the doorway, holding a couch pillow. “She got most of her scent off the bedding and towels. There is no clothing left, but she didn’t think about the couch.”
“Great. Put it in the trunk. Siobhan?” Arrigo asked.
“Ready. There’s nothing here. She didn’t avoid capture all these years by being sloppy.” Siobhan came out after flicking off the light.
“You, swamp boy.” Michael crooked a finger at Luc.
“I’m Cajun, and I have a name.” Luc didn’t know what it was about this guy, but he was more than happy to snap at Michael like no one before.
“Whatever, Luc,” Michael sneered. “I need to go to the place Arrigo found you. There’s no real scent out here. Maybe there.”
“As far as I can tell, she threw me out. Would she have lingered?” Luc swallowed hard, hoping not to vomit. “If there’s nothing here, how can there be anything there?”
“I have to try. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but I can’t go back. I just can’t.” Luc wrapped his arms around himself. “I won’t go. Arrigo, can’t you take him?”
Arrigo flinched as if pained by the idea. “Yes, I should have done it before this. I wasn’t thinking. Do you think you can find the trail?”
Michael let his hands slap against his legs. “I probably can’t, but I need to try. It’s only been a day since you found him. If I don’t try….”
“I understand. Siobhan, take us back to Michael’s car. I’ll ride out there with him. Luc, you should stay with Siobhan.”
“Yeah. That’s good.” Luc ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I’m not more help.”
“You got us here.” Michael wiggled his stolen couch pillow. “Got me this. So thanks.”
Luc bobbed his head. “Glad I could help.”
He relaxed when they all piled back in the car, and a silence came over them. Luc hoped no one disturbed it. He didn’t want to feel worse than he did about not helping further, but no way in hell he could go back to the place where he had been huddled up terrified and witless for what had felt like eternity. Coming to the house where he’d been attacked was bad enough.
Arrigo and Michael climbed out when they got to where he left his car. Siobhan said nothing until she turned the car back toward the Strip. She rested a hand on Luc’s arm. “Are you okay? I know this has been hard on you and not one second of it has been fair.”
Luc dragged in a deep breath. “Story of my life. Really, you ain’t asking that much of me.”
“Yes, we are. I was turned against my wishes too.” Siobhan squeezed her eyes shut as if to shut out the pain of her memory. “I understand in a way Arrigo doesn’t.”
Luc sat up straighter. “He wanted this?”
Her fingers clenched the steering wheel before relaxing. “It’s his story to tell, but yes. I was betrayed much like you were. That’s one of the reasons Arrigo wants me to stay around and be your mentor. It helps to have a team of mentors, or at least two. If you want me to go, I will, but I wanted you to know I understand at least a little about how you might be feeling.”
Luc turned as much as his seat belt would let him and looked at Siobhan. “I want you to stay. I know
I don’t know you well, but I feel comfortable with you. Don’t know why.”
She glanced away from the road long enough to smile at him. “Thank you. I swear, Luc, we’re going to do our best to help you through all of this.”
“Thanks.”
Luc didn’t know why he trusted her words so much, but he did. He probably needed Arrigo and Siobhan to give him a better idea of everything expected of him, but it could wait a day or two. For now, Luc contented himself with letting Siobhan take him home. He hoped Arrigo and Michael found some kind of clue as to where Eleni had hared off to. There wasn’t anything more he could do to help. Hell, he wasn’t even sure how he was going to slip away from his family yet, but Luc knew he couldn’t go back there either. Arrigo and Siobhan promised to take him to his father’s house in a few days to get his things. He had to prepare himself for that. Scary as that was, maybe he needed to take that as cause to be a little bit happy. What could it hurt?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LUC SUCKED in a breath like the last gasp of a drowning man. He tightened his grip on his cardboard box, standing outside the door to his father’s house, wishing Siobhan stood next to him. Siobhan had gone to investigate a lead; Sykes, a mage who’d lost a friend to Eleni in the past and was eager to help find her. She did agree to meet up later when he went to confront his family at the bar.
Now that Luc was there, he didn’t want Arrigo to see how he’d lived. What if Da was home? Could Arrigo fight off Da? Hadn’t he decided yeah Arrigo could kill him easily, and surely two vampires would be better than one?
“They should be at work.” Luc shifted his weight, staring up at the shitty house he’d called home since Katrina blew away the one he’d grown up in. He dreaded going inside, but what choice did he have? He didn’t have much in the way of belongings, but there were some things he didn’t want to lose. “Wish Siobhan was here.”
“She’ll meet us at the Alibi.” Shifting the suitcase he carried to his left hand, Arrigo rested his hand on Luc’s shoulder, no doubt feeling him shake. “If you’d rather do this with her, we can try it another night.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you. I guess I feel safer with both of you around me.” Luc hunched his shoulders. He should have lied. Arrigo had to think he was such a wuss.
“That’s why she’ll meet us at the bar.” Arrigo rubbed Luc’s back. “Even if one of them isn’t at work, there is nothing they can do to us that I can’t handle. You don’t have to be afraid of them anymore, Luc.”
“Part of me knows that, but the bigger part of me is saying it’s a lie.” He took a few steps closer to the door. He was being ridiculous. He could quite literally tear their throats out. What the hell was he so afraid of? Luc set the cardboard box down and opened the door. Quiet darkness waited for them. He picked up the box and walked in. Luc knew instantly the home was empty. It wasn’t that they were asleep somewhere with the lights out. He didn’t understand how he knew, but Luc felt the emptiness. It could be his imagination since he expected the house should be empty, but this was something more. He flipped on the lights and Arrigo shut the door behind them. Luc went straight for his bedroom.
“Nothing out here or in the kitchen you want?”
“Nope, everything I need is in my room.”
Luc turned on the light in his closet-size bedroom, feeling a rush of blood heating his face. After his short time in Arrigo’s posh penthouse, the shame of how he actually lived overwhelmed him. Luc bit the inside of his lip. He should have been brave enough to come alone.
Arrigo put the suitcase on the frayed bedspread and opened it. “Why don’t I start with the clothes, and you box up whatever else you want to take?”
Luc glanced at the closet. Why didn’t he come there and get the few things he really wanted? Those clothes sucked. Arrigo would know it. “They’re probably not fit to be rags to dust your place.”
Arrigo shot him a look. “Worry about that later. It won’t take me long.”
Meaning he didn’t have shit to pack anyhow, just some crummy T-shirts and jeans. He didn’t have shorts because “only fags wore sissy shorts,” according to Da. He nodded and emptied his bed-stand drawer right into the box without even looking at what was in it. He didn’t want to spend another minute dealing with it in this house. He’d sort the shit out later.
Luc got on his knees and pulled a sack out from under his bed. As he scooped a small box, Arrigo ask, “Want these work boots?”
“Yeah, you never know. I might need them.” Luc didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he was going hunting no more or shrimping or anything else he might need old boots for. Still, they were in better shape than the duct-taped shoes Arrigo had made him throw away.
“Okay. Hey, there’s a gun in here.”
“My hunting rifle. I have a license for it. It’s in the sack.” Luc got back on his feet, still holding the keepsake box. This cedar box with its engraved birds and leaves was what he wanted to rescue from his father’s place. “We don’t have to take it if you don’t want it in the house.”
“I’d rather not walk through the Veer with a rifle, but I want to leave a weapon here even less. We can stash it in the office.” Arrigo put the gun on the bed.
“It’s not loaded. I don’t even have rounds. Da keeps those.” Luc set the wooden box on his bed, beside the rifle. He picked up the cardboard box and pushed in next to Arrigo at the closet. He reached up and knocked all the CDs and DVDs he had tossed up on the shelf into the box. “That’s about it for me. I’ll shove the radio in here and help you with the clothes.”
“No bo… laptop or anything?” Arrigo stuttered over the words. Luc figured he was going to say books because Arrigo was obviously a reader, judging by all the shelves of them around his place. He’d probably remembered at the last second Luc wasn’t.
“No, Da wasn’t wasting money like that on the likes of me.”
Arrigo looked around the room. Maybe it surprised him Luc had no knickknacks, posters, pictures, or anything showing he took any interest in anything. Shrugging, he went back to putting the last few items of clothes into the suitcase. At least Luc wouldn’t be cluttering up Arrigo’s second bedroom with too much crap. They’d agreed it would be his space since Arrigo had gone through the effort to lightproof it and Luc didn’t feel ready to share a bed every night, no matter how much he cared about Arrigo. It was one change too many for him. He needed more time to let everything soak in.
“Well, that was pretty painless.”
“For you,” Luc said, wondering if that was code for “wow you don’t have anything, do you?” “I’m actually feeling weird about leaving here.”
“Making a break from your family isn’t easy even when they’re horrible people. You’re allowed to feel conflicted, Luc.”
“Yeah maybe, but it’s dumb. They hate me. They hurt me, and I’m standing here feeling like my dog got ran over because I’m leaving.” Luc shook his head and then picked up the wood box off the bed. “I’m an idiot sometimes.”
“No, you’re just human.” Arrigo looked at the box. “That’s pretty.”
“Thanks. I made it. Vieux Carter showed me how to work wood when I was little. I needed a secret place for my stuff.” He pushed two of the carved birds on it and opened it not at the visible hinge but at one hidden in the leaves. Inside rested a jewelry box and a little stuffed blue plush squirrel. “Da would have whooped my ass and ripped this up if he knew I still had it. Mom hid it for me, and when she left, I put it in the attic. A couple years later, I made this box. You probably think it’s silly.”
“I have stuff from my youth, so no I do not.”
Luc chuckled softly. “Really?”
“I’ll show you, but it’s not as cute as a squirrel. What’s in the jewelry box?”
Luc opened it and showed him a simple silver cross. “It was Mom’s. I couldn’t believe she left it behind.”
“So she left you with your father?”
Luc made a face. He didn’t
want to talk about this, especially there. “Yeah, guess she thought he’d be more likely to track her down if she took me or Henri.” Tears made his eyes swell. “I wish she would have. She went to the hospital and never came back.”
“Oh?”
“Da hit her, no surprise there, right? He said he was taking her to the hospital and made me clean up the blood in the kitchen. I found the necklace under the table. I kept it for when she came home… but she never did.”
“Luc,” Arrigo said softly. “Did she leave, or did he kill her?”
Luc snapped the jewelry box closed and jammed it back in the secret compartment. He closed everything up, putting it in the cardboard box. “How can you ask that?”
“Because we both know the answer has a strong chance of it being the latter.”
“I dunno. All I know is she didn’t come home.” He hefted the box up, his hands shaking. Yes, he’d wondered that all his life but preferred to think his mom was out there alive, safe, and happy. No, his mom couldn’t be dead. He refused to believe it, to even think about it. “She left, okay? I can’t blame her. If anything bad happened, wouldn’t the cops have come? I don’t wanna talk about it. Want to get the sack along with the suitcase? You can shove the boots in there, and I’ll get the rifle.”
Thankfully Arrigo didn’t force him to continue to talk about his mother. They got everything into the car. Arrigo arranged things so the rifle was pretty well hidden in the trunk. Luc got in, steeling himself for what was to come next.
Arrigo slid behind the steering wheel and then took Luc’s hand to give it a brief squeeze. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck no. I just walked out of my life, and now we’re going to tell my da I’m done with them.” Luc held up a hand. “You know this ain’t gonna go well, right?”
“Yes, I’m hoping we can do it without having to throw any punches.”
“Funny, I was kinda hoping to do that.” Luc grinned ferally.
Arrigo gave him stink eye. “You remember me telling you you’re much stronger than human now, right?”
