by Meg Cabot
“Thanks, Genevieve,” Pat said. “Returning to a story we’ve been following for the past hour, that devastating house fire in Freewell, New Jersey—”
Meena gasped. Jonathan said, “Freewell? Isn’t that where—”
“Yes,” Alaric said. He turned up the volume. This was clearly the story he’d been waiting for.
“We have Dee Dee Chow, live on the scene in Freewell,” Pat said. “Dee Dee, what can you tell us?”
The shot shifted, and Meena saw a female reporter standing on a familiar-looking road crowded with police cars, fire trucks, and rescue vehicles. Behind her sloped a lawn that at one time might have been green. Now it was charred black and littered with yellow caution tape.
“Pat,” Dee Dee said, “witnesses say the fire started late this afternoon, when neighbors saw smoke billowing from beneath one of the garage doors and called 911.”
A confusing view of the scene from a helicopter told Meena nothing.
“But despite firefighters’ efforts, the inferno could not be contained and quickly spread throughout the house,” Dee Dee went on.
The shot widened farther, and Meena saw evil-looking orange flames shooting from every window of what had once been David Delmonico’s New Jersey mansion.
“Abraham,” she breathed. She hadn’t meant to say the word out loud. It just slipped out.
“Wait,” Jonathan said. “Abraham Holtzman? Was he in that house? What exactly were you guys doing in Freewell?”
Alaric’s gaze never left the screen. He said nothing.
“Although it’s too early in the investigation to speculate on a cause for the blaze,” Dee Dee continued, “officials say, due to the extreme heat and rapidness with which it spread, there is some speculation that an accelerant may have been employed.”
Meena looked up into Alaric’s impassive face. “How did you know about this?” she asked. “Is the team all right? Did Abraham report in?”
“Shhh,” he said impatiently.
“While firefighters have declared the scene still much too dangerous to enter in order to begin looking for human remains,” the reporter went on, “neighbors say that no one appeared to have been in the home at the time the fire broke out . . . which may be the only piece of good news so far for a family that appears to have lost everything. Reporting live from Freewell, I’m—”
Alaric stood up and switched off the television.
“So . . .” Meena popped up as well. “We’re going back to Freewell to look for Abraham and the others, right?”
“We most certainly are not going to Freewell,” Alaric said. “I’m keeping you as far away as possible from Freewell . . . from all of New Jersey, as a matter of fact. We’re going to the Met, and then we’re coming straight back here.”
“What?” Meena cried. “But Abraham—”
Alaric walked up to her until they stood just a few inches apart, apparently so he could look her in the eye. She restrained an urge to take a step backward. She didn’t want him to know how much his physical proximity unnerved her. Instead, she raised her chin and stared right back at him.
“I know you tried to warn me,” he said, in a quiet voice, one that was devoid of his usual self-confidence and swagger. “You didn’t want to leave him there, but I wouldn’t listen. I was too stubborn. Abraham told me that, you know. He said that it’s my worst fault. He said I think everyone should be like me. Including you. But it isn’t true. I just always want to be right. I wish to God I’d been right this time. But I wasn’t. Abraham is the closest thing I ever had to a father. But he’s not here right now, and you are. I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure you stay alive. So no, we’re not going to Freewell.”
Meena gaped up at him, completely blown away by this speech. Alaric almost never admitted he’d been wrong, and just as rarely spoke of his feelings, except to complain that he was hungry, or hot, or unhappy about someone who was speaking too loudly on a cell phone in a restaurant.
She wasn’t at all sure how to respond, especially since there was a look of almost boyish vulnerability on his face that made her long to put her arms around him and tell him everything was going to be all right.
But she knew that would not only be inappropriate—especially with her brother standing nearby, so awkwardly watching their entire exchange—it would be a lie. She’d known from the moment she’d seen Abraham disappearing around the corner of David’s house that they were never going to see him again.
“This is all my fault,” Meena said, her eyes filling with tears. “I should never have met David in the first place. If I hadn’t, none of this—”
Alaric reached up to use a thumb to wipe away a single tear that had begun to roll down her cheek.
“You were just trying to do what you thought was right. You didn’t know. How could you?”
“How could I not?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Knowing is what I do.”
“Well,” he said, “there’s nothing either of us can do about it now, except our jobs.”
She wasn’t positive she could even do that anymore, though. Her head felt like the Magic 8 Ball someone had given her as a child, and which she’d shaken way too many times in an effort to get answers about herself, since she knew the answers about everyone else.
Reply hazy, try again.
“Alaric,” she said, reaching out to take the large, callused hand that had just touched her face. “Listen to me. The reporter on the news said that no one seemed to be home at the time of the fire. So, that doesn’t mean Abraham and the others aren’t all right.”
“Then why haven’t they reported in?” Alaric asked. “You know how Abraham is. And Carolina was on the team, too. Abraham specifically requested her, because she’s so good in the field.”
Meena blanched. Carolina de Silva. Her only friend at work . . . besides Alaric, if she could consider him a friend. Carolina was regarded as one of the best guards on the force. If she hadn’t reported in, whatever happened in Freewell could only have been catastrophic . . .
But when she probed at the part of her mind that told her whether or not people were living or dead and pictured Abraham or Carolina, the only answer she got in response was Better not tell you now.
But she wasn’t sure if the words were what she desperately wanted to hear, or if Abraham and Carolina truly were in a place between life and death.
“And there’s no sign of any of the team members’ real-time GPS trackers on the computers back at headquarters either,” Alaric said bitterly. “Either their cell phones melted in the heat of the fire, or . . .”
His voice trailed off. He didn’t have to continue. Meena knew exactly what he was thinking.
Someone had disabled them.
Concentrate and ask again.
“It gets worse,” Alaric said, digging his cell phone from his pocket with his free hand. “On my way over, I received this e-mail from headquarters: ‘Due to continuing uncertainties regarding possible attacks by demonic entities, the Vatican has declared a worldwide state of emergency and an ongoing security threat to all personnel and their family members. Specifically, all nonessential travel to New Jersey is to be deferred until further notice.’ ”
Jonathan, across the room whistled. “Jeez,” he said. “Who knew New Jersey was such a hotbed for demonic activity?”
“It’s not just New Jersey,” Alaric said. He continued to read aloud. “ ‘Tonight’s event at the museum is also considered to have a high potential for volatility.’ ” He let out a bitter laugh. “ ‘All Alpha Level and above guards are to report to the museum’s parking-garage entrance within the hour. All others are to report to headquarters.’ ” Alaric dropped his cell back into his tuxedo pocket. “From there I suppose they’ll be sent over the bridge to Freewell, where they’ll be split into search parties to look for any sign of Holtzman and the rest of the ext
ermination team.”
“The museum?” Meena shook her head. “Why are they sending all Alpha Level guards to the museum?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “They’re more worried about a bunch of rich donors and bishops and stuff than they are about their own employees?”
Alaric shrugged. “The Vatican doesn’t declare a state of emergency every day. They’ve never done it before, in all the years I’ve worked for the Palatine. And I think it’s highly unlikely they’ve done it tonight because some New Jersey dentist’s wife has set fire to her house and is on the loose in the tristate area. I can guarantee you they’re worried about a slightly bigger threat than Brianna Delmonico. I get the impression they’re expecting a surprise celebrity guest at tonight’s gala, for whom they felt the need to step up security.”
“Really?” Jonathan asked, impressed. “Who? The mayor?”
“Not exactly,” Alaric said, glancing at the crucifixes over the living room windows.
Meena gasped as the realization sank in.
“No,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
Meena could do nothing but scowl out of the window of the cab on their way to the Met. She couldn’t help it.
She was just that angry.
And Alaric knew it.
“Cheer up,” he said, from his side of the backseat. “The archbishop will be there tonight. You can put in a formal request to be transferred. Maybe to Ireland. You’ll definitely never have to see me again if you transfer to Ireland. Too many leprechauns. I hate leprechauns. Greedy little bastards.”
“It’s not funny,” she said to him, her rage bubbling over. “I can’t believe you told them about my having seen Lucien last night.”
“Meena.” Alaric looked her straight in the eye. “I didn’t tell them.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “All you did in the car on the way back from New Jersey was go on and on about your theory that Lucien Antonescu is the one killing all those tourists. Don’t tell me that’s not why they issued that state of emergency. Of course it is, Alaric.”
At the apartment, when it had been revealed that the prince of darkness was back, Jonathan had cried, “Oh, great. This is just great. When were you going to tell me? Do I need to remind everyone that I once shot that guy? He’s probably sitting around right now with all his minions trying to figure out how to get back at me. Oh my God. I need to go lie down.” He’d then vanished with his SuperStaker into the bedroom.
“I told you in the car that Lucien couldn’t be the one committing those murders,” Meena raged to Alaric—although she kept her voice low enough that the taxi driver, behind the thick plastic screen separating the front from the backseat, couldn’t overhear her. “And why would he, of all people, show up at tonight’s event? Religious icons of any kind make vampires sick, so I highly doubt he’s going to want to go see a bunch of treasures from the Vatican, let alone want to hang around a lot of church officials. This whole thing has gotten so out of hand. It’s turned into some kind of witch hunt, like back in the sixteen-hundreds. You want to blame Lucien for everything wrong with the world, when the truth is—”
“I know. You already told me,” Alaric interrupted. His own gaze wasn’t exactly calm. “He’s so weak and anemic and you’re so worried about him, blah blah blah. But he wasn’t too weak to rip the door off that Volvo, was he?”
Meena shook her head. “You don’t get it,” she said, leaning back in the seat and glaring at the traffic outside her window. “You just don’t get it.”
“I get,” Alaric said, “that over fifty people have gone missing while visiting this city over the past few months—with ten of them having disappeared in the past two weeks alone—and there hasn’t been one word about it in the media beyond a mention here and there of a family not having checked out of their hotel room after visiting Madame Tussauds wax museum or Ground Zero. Maybe their vanishing from the Big Apple without a trace is news back in Wisconsin, or wherever they’re from, but here, because their bodies haven’t shown up, no one cares, except possibly for my immediate supervisor, who started looking into it the minute I showed him the commonality between all their cases. But now he’s gone missing, too, which frankly I find just a little too coincidental for comfort.”
Meena turned to look at him, too startled to remember that she was angry with him. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“You know exactly what I mean,” Alaric said. “My immediate supervisor is missing, and so is his team . . . and yet for some reason my superiors seem to think it’s more important to assign all their best guards to a party at a museum tonight rather than to the area where my colleagues vanished. I didn’t report your Lucien sighting to anyone yet because as far as I’m concerned, I don’t have anyone to report it to. Whoever’s in charge now that Abraham is gone either has his priorities somewhat askew, or he knows something we don’t.”
Meena thought for a moment. “Well,” she said finally, “if you didn’t report it, then that alert the Vatican sent out can’t have anything to do with Lucien.”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” he said. “But just in case . . .” He stuck his hand into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket, and pulled from it a small flat box in a familiar shade of robin’s-egg blue. “Here.”
He tossed it into her lap. The word Tiffany was stamped in black lettering on top of the box.
“Alaric.” Meena immediately felt herself turning red. “What is this?”
“Something I should have given you a long time ago,” he said. “You certainly need it more than anyone else I know. It might have kept you from getting that most recent bite. Which I can still see, by the way. You didn’t do a very good job with the concealer.”
With this decidedly unromantic remark—if he’d even meant the moment to be romantic—Alaric shifted his attention beyond his passenger window, leaving Meena with nothing to do but open the box.
Inside lay a sleek, gleaming silver cross on a slim black leather choker.
“Oh,” she said, in a soft voice.
It was perfect . . . exactly what she would have chosen for herself, if she’d ever have allowed herself to make such an extravagant purchase.
“Do me a favor,” he said, finally turning to look at her. “Put it on, and no matter what, do not take it off.”
She did as he asked, her fingers trembling.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Are you crying?” he asked, sounding shocked.
“No,” she said, averting her face as she fumbled with the clasp.
“You are,” he said accusingly. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she insisted. “It’s just so . . .” She struggled to come up with the right word. “Perfect. No one’s ever gotten me something so perfect before.”
“Here,” he said, clearly growing impatient with her inability to work the clasp. “Turn around.” She did as he asked, lifting her hair. She felt his fingers on the sensitive skin on the back of her neck. “The vampire gave you a purse,” he pointed out.
“It was a tote,” she corrected him.
“You wanted the purse,” he said. “I know you didn’t want this.” He finished fastening the clasp, and leaned back. “But you clearly need it.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “Meena.”
She looked at him. His gaze was very bright. Even if she’d wanted to, she could not have looked away.
“Yes?”
“I . . . bought a house in Antigua.”
She widened her eyes. “Today?”
A look of irritation flashed across his face.
“No, not today,” he said. “When would I have had time to buy a house in Antigua today?”
“I don’t know,” Meena said. She felt stupid. Especially because the information that he had bought a house in Antigua
had made her feel very sad. She had never thought about it before, but of course Alaric’s assignment in New York City was only temporary. Of course he would be moving away eventually. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. Congratulations?”
“Don’t congratulate me,” he said, looking more annoyed than ever. “Do you know why I bought a house in Antigua?”
She shook her head, bewildered.
“Because Antigua is the only island in the Caribbean that suffers from frequent droughts,” he said. “That’s how close to the equator it is. The sun shines every day, all day. It rains sometimes, but not often. And do you know what they’ve never had in Antigua?”
She shook her head, still bewildered.
He pointed at the cross.
“Vampires,” he said. “They don’t like it there. Too much sun.”
She smiled, realizing he was joking. Or, knowing him, possibly not.
“So,” she said, indicating the cross. “Is this for me to remember you by? When will you be leaving?”
He turned back to the window with a scowl. “Can’t wait to get rid of me, eh?” he said. “So you can be alone with the prince?”
“No,” she said, struck to the heart. Why could she never find the right thing to say to him? “That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t worry,” he’d said with what sounded almost like a snarl. “I won’t be leaving with any unsettled business.”
She did not like the sound of that.
“Alaric,” she said. “Look at me.”
He looked at her then. But only to say, “Let’s try to keep it professional, shall we?”
Chapter Eighteen
Meena Harper. What a delight it is to meet you.”
Father Henrique Mauricio looked even better in person than he had on TV. His skin seemed to glow with good health, and his teeth were pearly white, but just ever so slightly crooked, proving they were still his.
