Always the Vampire (22 page)

But, damn. Why would he be having a flare unless his attackers had reinfected him? Or Lynn had been the culprit. Other diseases spread through blood and other body fluids, and from the bit of love scene Triton had projected during our image-projecting exercise, it was a darn good bet he’d been intimate with Lynn.

Lia touched my arm.

“Come. Help me with the circle.”

With a last glance at Cosmil checking the pulse in Triton’s ankles, I trailed after Lia to a cabinet filled with candles of every color and a whole shelf of leather-tied pouches. Just like the ones Lia had brought with her, but my gut told me Cosmil had made these.

Lia piled nine jars containing candles in my arms, while she snagged pouches, crystals, and a handful of sage bound in rough twine.

“Hurry, now,” she said and motioned me outside.

She walked straight to the center of Cosmil’s circle of trees. I followed with glass jars clanking.

“Put the colored candles in the cardinal directions. You know which color goes where?”

Amazingly, I did. A quick vision showed me what to do.

“When you’ve done that, put the white candles in the noncardinal directions, and set the black candle in the circle center.”

While I distributed the jars around the perimeter, Lia laid a length of white cotton on the grass and arranged the healing aids she’d carried. As I started to place the black candle, Cosmil and Saber exited the shack carrying Triton. Saber had Triton’s shoulders, Cosmil his feet. I hesitated.

“Give me the candle, Cesca, and leave the circle.”

“You don’t want my help to do the healing?”

She shook her head. “It’s too soon. You and Saber need to practice, and I fear your energy in particular may agitate Triton.”

“Understood, but, Lia, can you pinpoint what caused the flare?”

“Is the cause important?”

“It just bugs me that Saber and Triton are infected when I’m not.”

Lia patted my shoulder. “We’ll try to discover the underlying reason Triton has suddenly become so sick, but treating him quickly is more important. You must go now.”

I hustled out of the circle as Saber stepped into it.

“You two may go home,” Cosmil said when they’d laid Triton on the ground. “We will do better alone.”

Saber nodded. “Lia, do you want my car keys, or do you know your way back to my house?”

She glanced at Triton’s still form and shook her head. “I will be staying the night.”

A vision flashed of Lia and Cosmil working on Triton, but it went blank before I saw the outcome. My heart hurt with sympathy for Triton. My head locked on one fact. Damn, a man down and the battle hadn’t even begun.

 

 

I led the way home in my truck and Saber followed in his SUV, but when we arrived at the cottage at midnight, we were of one mind.

We needed to conduct a good old-fashioned investigation.

Saber had retrieved his own laptop when he’d picked up Lia for training. With a chair from the kitchen, he set up next to my workstation at the desk. Snowball shadowed him, but she must’ve sensed our urgency, because she didn’t leap onto the keyboard tonight. She curled on an armchair.

We started with an online phone directory and found ten Heaths. No listings for Lynn Ann, Lynn, Ann, or L.A. No hits in the towns around Daytona, either, and we did searches from Flagler Beach to Ormond Beach to New Smyrna, and even Deland.

“Why couldn’t she be easy to find?” I muttered.

“What would you have done? Driven down to confront her?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“You really are a little tyrant.”

I heaved a shoulder-slumping sigh. “Tonight I was worse. I should have been more tactful. Triton has waited over two centuries to find a mate, and I accused her of being an enemy spy.”

“Honey, he had his own doubts, or he wouldn’t have been defensive about Lynn to begin with. And if he’d been in his right mind, he would’ve blown you off. Instead, he went from annoyed to angry to black rage in minutes.”

“Did you smell his breath as he collapsed?”

“It’s from the infection. It may not be a universal sign, but about ninety percent of the vampires I met with had that rank breath. They were sucking down more breath mints than blood.”

I reached for his hand. “Are you feeling okay?

Saber laced his fingers through mine and gave me a long look. “Triton made a lot of accusations. Were any of them true?”

“I admit to having a few what-if twinges that first day I saw him, but he was right all those years ago. We knew each other too well to marry. We’d have snipped each other to death inside a year.”

“One more question. Did you ogle Triton?”

“More like glanced.”

“And?”

“I might’ve admired some aspects of the view.”

“You’re a tease.”

“Not about this.” I framed his face with my hands. “You’re my guy, Saber. Only you.”

He leaned in for a kiss. “I’m available for ogling later.”

“I’m counting on it.”

One more kiss and we each turned back to our monitors.

Saber accessed law enforcement and background check websites to which he had access while I thought back to what little Triton had revealed about Lynn.

One, she’d been shifting about five years. Two, she lived with college friends. Three, she worked at a New Age shop. Not a wealth of information to go on, but three clues were better than none. Plus everyone over twelve seemed to be on a social network. Couldn’t hurt to start with a general name search. Maybe I’d get lucky.

Sure enough, I found a few matches on people-search and business-directory sites. The name was spelled differently, but I clicked to the photos with fingers crossed. No hits.

Okay, if Lynn had begun shifting at the usual age of sixteen or so and had been shifting five years, that put her at between twenty and twenty-two years old. She and the roommates might still attend college, but I knew I wouldn’t find a public roster of current students. However, if Lynn had graduated, maybe I had a shot at locating a list with her name on it.

That shot went wide. None of the universities, colleges, or vocational schools published the names of their graduates for public consumption.

Last chance. I found four New Age stores in the general area, clicked on each website in hopes of finding a photo with Lynn in it. Again, no luck, but I sent carefully worded e-mails to the contacts, asking if Lynn worked there.

Which reminded me that I’d also written to several astrologers days ago. I opened my e-mail program to check for responses and found only one. That for a tiny discount on an expensive full reading.

I sighed and stretched in my swivel chair.

“No luck?” Saber asked.

“Not unless one of the New Age stores answers an e-mail. You?”

He smirked. “Take a look.”

I leaned sideways to see the two images on his screen. On the left, Lynn’s Florida driver’s license appeared. On the right, there were two mug shots of her. She was younger, but there was no mistaking that sleek hair.

“She was arrested at eighteen in Orlando for drunk and disorderly conduct during a spring break time frame and again that summer in Volusia County on a minor possession charge. She completed probation and has kept a clean record since.”

“Do you have a last known address?”

“It’s the foster parents’ address in Ormond Beach.”

“Is there a chance she’s still in touch with them?”

“I’ll find out tomorrow. Did you remember to cancel out of bridge club?”

“I talked to Shelly Friday, but I’ll check to be sure she has me covered.” I grabbed a notepad and scribbled that reminder. “We also need to talk about the couples shower.”

“The barbeque bash? It’s at four Sunday, right? I’ve got the cooking covered. Hamburgers and chicken breasts.”

“We’ll get the slaw and beans from the store. Oh, and remember that the rental company is delivering the tents, tables, and chairs about one o’clock on Saturday afternoon.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Uh, Saber, what are we going to do with Lia during the party?”

“I suppose we have to invite her or bring her here or ask if she’ll hang out with Cosmil.”

“I opt for door number three. Okay, when can we go food shopping?”

“Bring your master schedule up on the computer.”

I did, and with a printed copy for each of us, we moved to the sofa to coordinate our schedules for the next few days. We could shop tomorrow afternoon if Saber wasn’t paying a call on Lynn’s foster parents. Thursday and Friday before my eight o’clock ghost tours were also open, so we penciled in each possibility.

The looming question was when we’d be training again. And if Triton would be with us. Should we call to check on him?

“No, we won’t call. Cosmil will send Pandora with news.”

“Did you read my expression or my mind?”

“Both.” He plucked my pencil and paper from my hands, and put both our sets on the coffee table. “Want to read what I’m thinking?”

I peered at his forehead. “Hmmm. Is it bring beer and show up naked?”

“Not quite. No beer.”

I ran my fingertips up his arm. “Lia did say we should practice that energy exchange.”

“Then I say we should practice all night.”

 

 

Our lovemaking may not have been Lia’s idea of energy channeling, but it sure worked for us. Saber finally slipped into a peaceful slumber around three with no nightmares on the dreamscape horizon.

I got up to read my design-class lessons and do homework, but worrying over Triton took a big chunk of concentration. I hoped Cosmil’s and Lia’s healing would be successful, because I already had concerns that Triton wouldn’t be a reliable team member. Not if he had no fuse on his temper. Worse, I fretted that being around him would aggravate Saber’s infection. Not that the Void was an airborne virus, but then, could we take the chance it wasn’t? Last, I prayed hard that Triton would heal because I did love him. In spite of the way we snipped at each other, I didn’t want to find my old friend only to lose him again.

As dawn broke on Wednesday morning, I gave up on class work and crawled back under the sheets. Snowball’s rumbling purr and Saber’s soft snore were just the background noise to lull me to sleep.

I heard the phone later. Saber answered on the first ring, and I heard his voice but not the words. Only an emergency would get me out of bed at this hour, so when Saber didn’t come to the bedroom, I drifted off again.

I startled awake from a dream of being on a flat rooftop. Saber had lain bleeding a dozen paces away, but I couldn’t reach him. My black knee boots stuck fast to the roof, and I couldn’t get them off my feet. I’d screamed and cried to no avail. Saber hadn’t stirred, and no one came to help.

As the dream faded, my panicked breathing eased enough to wonder at the spate of bad dreams Saber and I were having. Did I chalk it all up to stress, or was something more at work? Saber’s nightmare had been based in fact, and I’d never had many prophetic dreams. Maybe it was extreme stress.

One thing was sure, the dream had left my teeth feeling like they’d grown moss. I needed a toothbrush and a wake up shower.

In fifteen minutes, I had my hair in its standard ponytail, a smidge of makeup on, and was dressed in hot pink shorts, a pale pink bra-top camisole, and white sandals. I didn’t see Snowball when I went to the kitchen for my daily slug of Starbloods, but I sure heard her yowl when the perimeter alarm blared a second later.

I jumped and spewed Starbloods in the kitchen sink, which splashed back onto my fresh clothes. Damn.

I quickly rinsed my mouth then whirled to go shut off the siren just as Saber stepped into the house carrying a lumpy plastic drug store bag. He quickly dealt with the blaring alarm then gave me a once over glance.

“You have Starbloods on your blouse.”

“I have punctured eardrums, too.” I pointed at the bag. “Did you go to the store without me?”

“No, Lynn’s foster mother gave me greenhouse tomatoes.”

“You saw Lynn’s mom?” I nearly danced a jig. “What cover story did you give her? What did she say? Tell me all while I treat these stains.”

I dashed to the laundry room to dab stain remover on my cami. Saber put the sack of tomatoes on the counter then joined me.

“I told her part of the truth. That I was an investigator tracking down Lynn for a distant relative. Mr. Tidwell is deceased, and Kate Tidwell isn’t in the best of health, but she said they had cared for Lynn since she was four. They had no other children, and since Lynn responded so well to them, they were allowed to keep her. They even tried to adopt Lynn several times, but the proceedings were blocked. And not by the state.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“From what little I know about adoption, yeah. Anyway, Kate Tidwell said Lynn was a good girl who made good grades, and everything was fine until she was in her mid-teens. Then they caught her lying about spending the night with girlfriends and sneaking in early in the morning.”

I capped the stain-buster stick. “Which is roughly when she would’ve started shifting.”

“Right. Kate even said the incidents only happened about once a month. The telling point is that she has a good bit of background on Lynn. It doesn’t match what you told me of Triton’s history exactly, but it’s close. Abandoned at about age three, taken by the state, placed with a first family, then with the Tidwells. Lynn’s conception might have been from a magical source, but nothing I uncovered indicates that she’s being manipulated.”

“Plus it would be a ridiculously long-term plan to create a mate for Triton twenty years ago. Is Lynn still in touch with Kate?”

“At least once a week. Kate confirmed Lynn attends community college part time and lives with roommates in a duplex. They just moved in, so Kate didn’t have Lynn’s address or directions to the new place.”