A Bite to Remember (21 page)

“Oh yes,” Vincent said dryly. “He knew that wasn’t an accident. He thought that was me.”

“Well, surely you explained to him that it wasn’t you, that you hadn’t been biting them,” she asked with a frown.

“Yes, of course I did,” he assured her. He added, “That doesn’t mean he believed me.”

Jackie began to rub her fingers over her forehead, then shook her head. “I didn’t like Max much. Until you got firm with him, he seemed…”

“Arrogant? Patronizing? Disrespectful?” Marguerite suggested.

“That about covers it,” Jackie’s voice sounded dry. “Met him before, have you?”

“No. I’ve never met Max or anyone else who works for Vincent.” Marguerite glanced toward her nephew briefly and when he didn’t protest explained, “However, I’ve seen that attitude in others. I fear Vincent’s condition makes some of our kind feel superior to him.”

“Superior?” Jackie asked slowly.

Marguerite nodded. “Immortals like to think of themselves as perfect. Perfect health, peak strength, peak intellectual abilities…” She shrugged. “And some mistakenly believe that the genetic anomaly that prevents Vincent’s feeding off bagged blood—like the rest of us—suggests he isn’t quite perfect.”

Jackie was silent for a minute, then shook her head. “But this anomaly wouldn’t have shown itself until about fifty years ago or so when everyone switched to bagged blood.”

“Yes,” Marguerite agreed.

“So, up to that point, everyone accepted him as fine, immortal, equal?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then, when you all switched to bagged blood and he and his father found they couldn’t feed that way, some of the others…”

“Began to look down on them and consider them inferior,” Marguerite finished.

Vincent heard the anger in his aunt’s voice, but he was used to it. It bothered her more than it did him. Vincent had enough confidence in himself he didn’t much care how others thought of him.

Except Jackie, he acknowledged to himself now. Vincent was very interested in her reaction. Had she turned a pitying look his way, he would have been upset. Instead, she looked merely bewildered as she turned to him to ask, “Why would you keep someone like that working for you then?”

Vincent felt himself relax. Smiling faintly, he shrugged, “If I refused to hire anyone with that attitude, I wouldn’t
have any immortals working for me. It’s pretty common. Besides, Max is good at his job, and he never pushes too hard with me.”

Jackie nodded a slow acknowledgment to that. She’d noticed that while Max had shown a hint of arrogance, and seemed a touch patronizing and just that bit disrespectful, he hadn’t been foolish enough to make any of these attitudes terribly obvious. On the other hand, she’d also noticed that some of Vincent’s natural good humor and easygoing attitude had been missing at the office, replaced with a cool steel she hadn’t seen in him before.

“Okay,” she said finally. “So, Max was there. Who else was in security?”

“There was a Bob, a Tony, a John, and a Francis.”

Jackie bit her lip as she wrote the names down and then asked, “I don’t suppose you caught their last names?”

“No, sorry.” He grimaced. “I didn’t need to know their last names.”

Jackie waved his apology aside. “We can get a list of the other security people from Max. Let’s move on to production. I imagine you took Lily, she—”

“No.” Vincent shook his head.

“No?” she asked with surprise. “But she’s your production assistant.”

“Yes, but she was on vacation at the time,” he explained, “So I took Sharon instead.”

Jackie blinked. “But Sharon’s a secretary, why would you take her as a production assistant?”

“I didn’t really need a production assistant. I was the lead actor, so we had a different producer on the play. What I
really needed was more of a personal assistant and Sharon could handle that easily enough.”

“I see,” she murmured, crossing out Lily’s name and putting Sharon’s in place instead. Jackie then raised her head and said, “Why don’t you just start listing off everyone you can think of and I’ll write them down. Then we’ll pick the brains of those people to see who they recall.”

Eleven

The nightclub was loud, hot, dark, and crowded.

Jackie fiddled absently with the straw sticking out of her Diet Coke, her gaze moving slowly over the people sitting, milling, and dancing around them. Jackie was having that hinky feeling again. She was sure the saboteur was somewhere in the crowd; watching them…and awaiting an opportunity to make his next move. Now that the saboteur had stepped up the game, moving it to murder, whatever was coming couldn’t be good.

“Relax, Jackie. He’s not going to strike in the middle of a dance club.” Vincent spoke close to her ear, and still he had to shout to be heard over the cacophony of sounds around them.

Forcing a smile, she gave up her survey of their surroundings and glanced around the table, noting that while Tiny looked as tense and alert as she, both Vincent and Marguerite appeared relaxed. It just went to prove that Marguerite
was as talented an actor as Vincent, because Jackie knew the two immortals weren’t as relaxed as they appeared. Or, at least, she didn’t think they could be.

It was two days since Jackie had awakened Vincent with his drugstore Darryl breakfast. They’d spent the time since then collecting their list of names of employees on the play
Dracula, the Musical
. First, they’d put down everyone Vincent recalled, then they’d gone to interview Max and Sharon—the only people in the company that were on the list—to see who they recalled.

Max had been busy, questioning everyone in V. A. Productions about what they’d seen or heard at the time of Stephano’s attack—or murder, as they were all led to believe it was. However, he’d taken time out to aid them in the list and been very helpful, recalling even more names than Vincent.

Sharon, on the other hand, hadn’t been very helpful at all. The secretary hadn’t been openly difficult, she’d merely claimed to have a bad memory, at least when it came to mortals. While she’d been able to name the immortals working on the play easily enough, when it came to mortals, Sharon recalled them only as some “little blond mortal” or “some rude little mortal.”

Jackie had been interviewing the woman alone and suspected that if Vincent had been with her, the woman would have been more helpful. However, there had been at least a dozen people at the company in a panic to talk to him after the events of the day before, and she’d suggested he deal with them while she spoke to Sharon.

Some of the people on the list they’d managed to compile had worked for the company before, or were working for
them now in some capacity or other and so were on file. Jackie had pulled those, and made copies of everything before they’d headed back to Vincent’s home. Leaving Tiny to begin investigating the people so far on the list, she and Vincent had then continued compiling it, going to each person listed to see if any more names could be added.

That had taken the better part of the last two days. Which might have seemed a waste of time since her computer whiz was supposed to arrive today, but as it happened, his appendix burst. He was laid up in a hospital in New York and would not be any use to them.

The moment she’d received the news this morning, Jackie had immediately started putting out feelers for a computer expert here in California to help them with the matter. In the meantime, however, they had their own list to work with. They’d worked that list every spare moment of the last two days, stopping only to eat.

The first night, they’d had Chinese takeout; Vincent snacking on the delivery guy before sending him on his way and joining Jackie and Tiny to gorge on the delivered food itself. The next day, Jackie had arranged for Vincent’s pool to be cleaned and he’d breakfasted on the pool cleaner on awaking at 4
P.M.
They’d ordered pizza that night. All of them were busy with the list, too busy to take time out to cook. Besides, feeding off the delivery drivers was the safest way for Vincent to feed at the moment.

Today, Jackie had called in a cleaning service to clean the windows. Vincent had breakfasted. She’d been trying to come up with another way for him to feed when Tiny had pointed out that the saboteur would soon realize Vincent
must be feeding off the delivery guys and others if he didn’t soon hit a nightclub, his usual hunting ground.

In a panic at the idea of someone being marked for death because she’d brought them to the house, Jackie had decided they should go out to a club tonight. A decision that was aided by the fact that Stephano Notte still hadn’t woken up. Both Vincent and Marguerite were growing concerned at this turn of events. It seemed that this was unheard of, at least neither of them had heard of it, nor Neil apparently. The turning was normally a painful event that the turnee screamed and thrashed their way through, but this wasn’t the case with Stephano. He had lain silent and still throughout, and he wasn’t waking up as they’d expected. All three immortals were concerned and that concern had spread to Jackie and Tiny. The house had become a dark, depressing place to be.

That being the case, Vincent had easily agreed to Jackie’s suggestion of visiting the clubs, but had warned her that he had no intention of feeding. Jackie understood. She was even glad he wouldn’t. However, she was hoping if they made it difficult enough to keep up with them, the saboteur would simply think Vincent had fed and he’d missed it. To that end, they’d been club hopping for the last several hours. They’d driven to the first club, stayed half an hour, walked out, hopped in one of the taxis waiting in front of the club and had it take them to another club, where they’d stayed another half an hour before grabbing another taxi.

They were now at their fourth club, and Jackie found herself scanning the faces around them, hoping to recognize someone either from one of the other clubs they’d hit tonight, or from the people who were on the list of employees
of the New York play. They’d spoken to almost everyone on the list so far. At least, everyone living here in Los Angeles. Although, so far, they’d only concentrated on making the list, not really questioning them about what they’d seen or heard that might help them figure out who the saboteur/ killer was.

Jackie hadn’t recognized anyone in the clubs yet, so she was beginning to hope the saboteur hadn’t been able to keep up and had either lost them at some point, or would think that while he’d been scrambling to catch up, Vincent had slipped away to feed.

“Come on. A little dancing will help you relax,” Vincent shouted by her ear, then caught her hand and stood to tug her out onto the dance floor.

Jackie started to protest, but gave it up since Vincent wasn’t listening anyway. Besides, she could see a lot more people from the dance floor than at the table.

“Did I mention you look lovely in that dress?”

Jackie stumbled over her own feet as Vincent murmured that compliment by her ear. Her hands immediately dug into his shoulder and hand in an effort to keep her balance, then she glanced sharply up to his face.

“No, huh?” Vincent asked with amusement as he took in her startled expression. “That was truly remiss of me.”

“Oh.” Jackie cleared her throat, but couldn’t seem to come up with anything brighter than that to say as his hand moved on her back, urging her closer.

“You look incredible in red,” Vincent added, apparently not finished with his compliments.

“Uh.” Jackie swallowed, terribly aware of his hand moving
lower on her back. Where his hand moved, a trail of fire followed, leaving tingling flesh in its wake.

“I have to thank you for the last few days, Jackie,” he said solemnly, ducking his head to speak by her ear. “Without you, I would have been in a horrible state. It’s no fun going hungry, but for one of my kind, it can be torture.”

“Oh, well, it’s my job,” she muttered with embarrassment.

Jackie tried to duck her head away to avoid his gaze when he pulled back, but he stopped her with a hand to her chin. Forcing her face up to meet his solemn gaze, Vincent shook his head and said firmly, “No, it isn’t. We both know that. And I know about your attitude to my kind too, which makes it even more special. Thank you.”

Jackie managed to pull her face free and glance away only because he let her. She found out why when his lips brushed butterfly light across her ear as he whispered, “Thank you.” Then they fluttered to her cheek as he murmured, “thank you” again, and finally, they hovered over her own lips and he breathed, “thank you” once more before he kissed her. This time it was no soft butterfly of sensation; Vincent’s mouth was firm on hers as he showed her just how grateful he was.

Jackie—ever the consummate professional—immediately pulled away…or would have if her body were cooperating. Unfortunately, her body overrode her mind’s orders and, instead, she melted against him like chocolate on a hot sidewalk. A small sigh of defeat acknowledged her body’s defection as her mouth opened beneath his to allow his tongue to sweep in. A moan slid up her throat as desire awoke in her belly and Jackie let her arms creep up around
his neck, suddenly a firm believer in the old saying “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

“Oh sorry.”

Jackie and Vincent pulled apart as they were jostled by another dancer. She turned and glanced around to see who it had been, but whoever it was had already moved away and disappeared into the crowd.

Sighing, she glanced back to Vincent, shaking her head when he moved to take her back into his arms.

“Ladies room,” she said as an excuse for her defection, then turned and made her way quickly off the dance floor, headed for the bathrooms. Jackie glanced back once she’d reached the hall leading out of the main area, just to be sure Vincent had returned to the safety of their table. Spotting him reclaiming his seat, she relaxed and moved up the hall, firmly lecturing herself on her business ethics.

“One does not go around kissing their clients,” she reprimanded herself. “A good private detective never allows themselves to become involved with—and therefore distracted from their prime purpose of protecting—the client. God, he’s a good kisser.”