by Tegan Maher
She picked up on the first ring, and I explained what was going on.
As I'd expected, her voice hardened. "I have contacts with the pack in the area where she was found. I'll contact them first as well as the packs in the surrounding areas and get back to you as soon as I hear anything."
"Sean's doing the same thing," I said.
"Good. And Cori?"
"Yes?"
"Don't let her sign anything until we find out one way or the other who he really is."
Sean, with his bat ears, heard the comment and nodded. "I'll talk to her directly. She may respond better to me than to you."
He must have picked up on my hurt because his eyes softened. "It's only because she sees you as a peer, and a young one at that. She loves you, but she sees me as a father figure. Not only has she known me her entire vampire life, I've never done anything that wasn't in her best interests, and have prevented her from making unwise decisions before. I have a track record, as your generation would say."
I had to give him that. When the chips were down, I'd listen to my mother or father—or even Sean for that matter despite—before I'd listen to most of my friends. That didn't mean I wouldn't follow my own gut first, though. And that was what worried me.
Kat had been alone all her life. She had me and Sean, and friends throughout the world as well as right there in town, but when it came to blood, she had nobody. The problem was that, unlike most vampires, she had no memory of her mortal life.
Sometimes she knew things, but didn't know how she knew them. For instance, she'd discovered she knew how to play the piano when we were messing around in the instrument store in the mall. But as far as actual memories, she had nothing. That's what worried us.
Her desire to have a family was clouding her judgment. That went against everything I knew about her. Because she'd been alone all her life and had that huge blind spot, she tended to be one of the most cynical people I'd ever met. In fact, she was the one who usually reined me in before I could do something rash. Now I was willing to do the same for her.
I just hoped it didn't cost me her friendship in the process.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHILE SEAN AND MY MOTHER did whatever it was they did, I had a murder to solve. It was late and I was tired, but I needed to get some clarity.
"How do you feel about a run?" I asked Alex.
Running was my go-to exercise for clearing my head. While I was in wolf form, my instincts took over and I just existed. I maintained my human ability to think, but it was like I could shove everything to the back of my head and leave it there to stew while the tangible moved to the forefront of my mind.
"I'm all about it," he said. "I haven't been on a good run since we left, and we may just stumble onto something we haven't already thought of."
We had a huge backyard with an eight-foot privacy fence and a gate that led into the woods behind the house. When I'd bought the property, I'd bought the lots behind the house, too. In theory, I never had to worry about trespassers.
The woods ended up at the lake, and I'd worn several great paths down so that I didn't have to pick my way through brush. The gate was also equipped with a latch that could be opened from either side with a paw, so we were good to go.
He took one corner of the yard to change and I went to the other, beneath a giant oak that had a bench where I could put my clothes. When I was alone, I'd undress in my room. Since I'd started hanging out with Alex, I'd started making concessions.
Once changed, I took a minute to shake and stretch—it felt good to be in wolf form. I flexed my toes and dug into the soft earth, and put my nose in the air, picking out the different scents of damp earth, foliage, and in the distance, the lake. I shoulder-bumped Alex, who was almost twice my size, then pushed my way out the back gate.
For the first few minutes, we just ran for the sheer pleasure of it. My mind was full of the sounds and smells of the night and the utter delight in being alive. I reveled in the way my muscles stretched, pulling me forward at a pace that ate up the distance.
The murder and Kat's situation faded to the back of my mind, and the stress melted from my body.
When we made it to the lake, we stopped for a drink and I rolled in the soft dirt, scratching my back against the pine needles and small rocks. There was nothing in the human world that could compare; unlike some people I knew who considered being a werewolf a curse, I couldn't imagine not being able to exist in dual forms.
Of course, I'd been born to it, while others had been bitten. Those who'd been changed against their wills were often less accepting, and I couldn't blame them. I also couldn't understand why they had a hard time accepting the gift, even though it hadn't been a gift at the time.
Over the years, changing a human without permission had become taboo; the punishment for doing so outside of a life-saving situation was usually death. Still we lived a long time, so there were still many alive who carried that bitterness. I'd recently encountered just such a man, and the experience had been horrifying.
After shaking the dirt out of my fur, Alex took off on a path that skirted the lake and led around town; it seemed we were going the long way around. That was fine with me because I was nowhere near ready to change back. I was a little surprised when, ten or fifteen minutes later, he slowed to a stop behind a tract of houses.
We were still in the cover of the trees, but I looked around to orient myself. We were in the woods behind the Barkers' house. He crept through the backyard, keeping to the shadows, and stopped underneath the side living room window.
Carly was sitting on the couch crying while Clifford paced back and forth, cussing her until a fly wouldn't have landed on her. Though it was well-deserved, I almost felt sorry for her after listening to him go on for several minutes. Most of it was just about her faithlessness and how he should have known better, but then he changed the subject.
I'd half tuned out his rant until Charles Vanderveer's name caught my ears.
"And now they're on my trail. I figured with him dead, everything would fade away, but no. I have cops sniffing around my house"—I snickered a little at how literal that statement was—"and I'll likely end up going to jail for it. All because my wife couldn't keep her knees together."
I glanced at Alex, who was engrossed in the scene before us. Clifford continued on his rant, though he didn't say anything else about the investigation. We were just about to turn away when he dropped one more nugget.
"And when they saw my tattoo, it was the final nail in my coffin. I know they connected it to that damned joker in the cards on the body."
I hoped he say more, but he didn’t. He heaped more insults onto her, until she finally broke.
"You hate me so bad? I'll pack a bag and leave right now." The look on her face was half derision, half fear.
"You'll keep your ass where I tell you to keep it. If you leave now, it'll just make matters worse."
"You already made matters worse when you said all those things about me to them. You'da been better off keeping your mouth shut and lettin' it play out, but no—you just had to get in a few digs. You made yourself look even worse than you already did."
"That's my money, and you’re not going anywhere with it. You don’t deserve it, and I'll make sure of it," he growled, and the look on his face when he turned to her made me think he was about to punch her.
He threw his beer can at her, but she managed to dodge it.
"Just get out of my sight. You make me sick," he sneered.
The mention of money changed her attitude. "You know I love you. I know I screwed up, but we can work things out."
"I said, get out of my sight."
She stood and, with one final glance at him, left the room.
We turned and crept back into the woods, then made our way home. Though the stop had shed some light on the situation, it had sucked all the fun right out of the run and I was as stressed when I changed back as I was when we'd left. So much for a relaxing jaunt into
the woods.
Alex changed back and dressed faster than I did and was waiting on the back stoop for me when we got back.
"Now are you convinced he did it?" I asked.
He took a deep breath and let it out. "It doesn't matter whether I'm convinced or not. We still have to tie him to it. Plus, where does the black flor come into play?"
That was the one piece of the puzzle that was still bothering me, too.
"I don't know ... yet. But I'm gonna find out."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHEN WE GOT BACK INSIDE, I had a message waiting from Sean. All it said was to call him. Did the man never sleep? I hit the call button and waited while it rang. It didn't take long and he skipped the pleasantries.
"My people have never heard of him, but they're passing the picture around. There's no such thing as a vampire as old as he claims to be that flies under the radar. He's made contact with somebody, and I'll find out who."
I heaved a sigh. "Are we sure he's not telling the truth? I mean, she did change her name because she had to go by something, and you said yourself you left the area shortly after you found her. Maybe he just didn't find her in time." It sounded lame even to my own ears, but it was a possibility we had to consider.
"He's not telling the truth,” he said with conviction. “Or if he is, he's twisting it. Kat's been visible in the human world since she got a handle on her bloodlust. She was known to the vampire community as soon as I found her. I was hosting a soiree in Venice at the time, and I introduced her to everybody who was anybody in our circle then. She wouldn't have been hard to find if he was looking."
Deep down, I believed that, too. If I'd thought for a minute he was her brother, I'd have been the first one to roll out the welcome mat. She deserved to have happiness. But I wasn't buying it. He may have looked suave and worn a thin veneer of civility, but beneath all that was a slime ball. I could sense it.
"And I talked to Charlotte about your vision," he said. "Or rather, lack thereof."
"Why? It was just a matter of my screwy psychic abilities. I don't get a read on most of the people I touch, and to be honest, I'm glad. I don't want to know about every skeleton in Castle's Bluff."
"That would be well and good if that were the case, but she doesn't think it was. She thinks he had a barrier up that served as a sort of mirror. It's a simpler way to keep people out of your head. Surface thoughts are still visible, but a good actor can control those."
He paused. "If you think back, he kept his hands full so that he wouldn't have to shake. I believe he did that because my powers don't work the same as yours do. Yours are latent; you only see what's there. Mine are not. I can see what's on the surface too, but I can also sift through what's there until I find what I'm looking for. For that matter, I can change his thoughts if I want, or even plant new memories."
I knew he could do that because of what he did to Zach. That was why I had so much guilt where he was concerned; Sean mostly created the life he was living and the memories he had of his past. He left some of them alone, but not the ones that had shaped who Zach was. My friend was much happier, but wasn't the same man that he'd been when he'd arrived.
"No, I hadn't noticed until you just pointed it out. Any way you can slip to the Hook and take another shot at it?"
"I don't think that's a good idea for now. The man has a plan and needs her alive to carry it out; otherwise, he would have killed her when he found her, or at least tried. If I go there now, she'll get suspicious. Let's wait to hear back from your mother and the rest of my connections. Right now, she's following her heart, but if we have solid proof to take to her, she'll have to listen with her logic."
I knew he was right, but that didn't mean I liked it. "Okay, your way it is, then."
After filling him in on what I'd learned about Clifford, we had a minor power struggle. He wanted to go in and pick the guy up right then and question him vampire-style, but I reminded him of our deal.
"He's human. Even if he's not guilty, he'll admit to just about anything in five minutes flat once he gets a taste of your investigative methods." I used the term loosely. Sean's way of getting information out of people wasn't exactly pleasant, but since they were usually vampires, they knew what they were getting themselves into before they landed in the hot seat.
"Let me have a crack at him using my skill, then," he said.
"Are you sure you won't accidentally plant what you want to see in there while you're pilfering through his gourd? We're talking about a human, not another paranormal."
He huffed in exasperation. "I'm almost a thousand years old, Cordelia. I'm fairly certain I can control myself enough to take a peek into a human mind."
I was sure he could, too, but what I wasn't certain of was his willingness to do so without breaking anything while he was in there, or that his powers of persuasion might not go a tick too far simply because his vampire mind was so much stronger.
The human brain was a delicate thing; you couldn't just run through it like a bull in a china shop without consequences, intended or not. It would be the psychic version of busting a window and planting the murder weapon in the dude's car. Except in his case, poor Clifford would believe he did it, too.
Sean was fair, but I knew that once he was convinced the guy was guilty, the legal rules and games humans played would go right out the window. If Sean had a chance to get to him, I wouldn't be 100 percent certain even if the guy confessed.
"Give me a day or two to do things my way," I said. "Then if we don't have anything, we'll try it your way."
He agreed, but when I hung up, I knew I'd just placed myself on a timer. I had two days to figure out who did it before Sean took matters into his own hands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DUE TO THE WHOLE GIOVANNI thing, I hadn't gotten a chance to question Kat about who'd been at the Hook the night of the murder. That meant I either had to wait up and talk to her alone when she got home—assuming he didn’t come home with her—or go talk to the server who'd been on duty that night.
Considering the way we'd left things, I decided to give us both some space and talk to the girl who'd been cocktailing that night instead.
When I got up, I was disgusted to see that the guest-room door was shut and Giovanni's shoes were by the front door. That was going to be a delicate subject to bring up, but I wasn't comfortable having him in the house.
Chaos wasn't either. She'd woken up when they'd gotten home.
"She's like a different person," my fox said the next morning as we ate breakfast. "She's happier than I've ever seen her, but it’s a weird happy."
"I know," I said, frowning into my bowl of cereal. "That probably pisses me off more than anything. It's dirty pool he's playing."
She hummed in agreement as she finished her fruit. "What's in it for him, though? What does Kat have that he wants?"
I lifted a shoulder as I drained the milk out of my bowl. "I don't know. She's got a shit ton of money. She's spent three hundred years investing, and she's savvy. When you have that long to follow the trends and let your money accumulate, you end up sitting pretty."
Kat was a bit of a tech nerd, and when Microsoft went public in the mid-eighties, she'd bought twenty thousand shares and was still sitting on them. Just that alone made her job at the Hook laughable. She did it because she liked it; she claimed she'd never be somebody who was content to sit back and languish, and she liked the excitement and grittiness of bartending. I guess when you took out the two worst things about the job—hurting, mortal feet, and the necessity of putting up with bullshit because you couldn’t afford to tell somebody off and lose your job—it probably was a good time sometimes.
Chaos agreed with me, but still looked skeptical. "That's true, but why now? She's been rich for at least a couple centuries."
"I don't know," I said. "But you can bet your bottom dollar we're gonna find out."
I finished up and got ready for my day, pulling my summer blazer on over my tank top
and jeans. It always paid to look professional, plus it hid the gun I had to carry to maintain my human persona. Cops didn't walk around unarmed.
It was too early to call anybody who regularly worked nights, so I stopped and grabbed a latte and a blueberry muffin on my way to the office. I figured I'd do some digging of my own.
There'd been two glasses in the sink when I'd gotten up. One of them had lipstick, so it wasn't hard to figure that the other belonged to Giovanni. I'd washed Kat's and put it away then tucked the other in a gallon baggie and brought it with me. I'd drop it off to Colleen as soon as she made it in.
By the time I'd eaten my muffin, finished my coffee, and taken care of the mundane paperwork that took up a quarter of my time, it was late enough in the morning that it was probably safe to call the girl who’d been working the night of the murder.
Kristina, a local bear shifter, was the full-time cocktail waitress, but she worked Wednesday through Sunday. I had her on speed dial, so I gave her a call.
"Hey Kris," I said when she answered. "It's Cori."
"No kidding," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. "Thanks for confirming that my caller ID is still working. What are you up to this wonderful evening?"
"Wow, you're chipper," I said.
"Sweetie, I'm not workin'. That alone is enough to put a spring in my step and a song on my lips. Now, did you call just to shoot the breeze, or is there some official—or unofficial—business you need to discuss?"
What an odd way for her to put it. "What unofficial business would I have?" As soon as I said it, I realized how rude it was. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I just mean, is there something specific on your mind?"
"Of course there's something specific on my mind," she said. "That poser dude that's struttin' around callin' himself Kat’s brother."
Kristina was astute and a sharp judge of character. "So you aren't buyin' what he's sellin' either?"
