Companions (13 page)

After a moment of considering a couple of recent encounters, she began, "Could we… could you
father a
— "

"It only happens between Roma and strigoi. Very rarely."

He probably thought he was being reassuring. She didn't pursue the point. "You were
born
a
vampire?"

"No. That came later." He put his fingers under her chin and tilted her face up to look at her.

"When one of them stole your life from you." No question.

"Yes." A simple answer.

"But they got more than they bargained for, didn't they?"

He made no attempt at modesty. "Much more. They've made a law since, that no
dhamphir
is ever
to be turned. But the horse was already out of the barn, as you would say."

"I wouldn't say that. I'm a city girl."

"I… dislike cities. "

"You live in a Suburban." He still thought of himself as a traveling gypsy peasant, didn't he?

Always restless, always on the move, wanted nowhere. "You should try settling down. You might
like it."

"With you?"

"On the other hand, the gypsy life probably suits you better."

"One of the things I like about you is how much you dislike me."

"At least we have that in common."

"But enough about me."

He moved his hand, no more than a gentle flick of a finger. The campfire rose up on a great gust
of wind, swirled around her, and Selena was suddenly trapped inside a threatening circle of flame.

Selena looked pastthe ring of fire and saw only a pair of penetrating ice-blue eyes. "A little
melodramatic, but nice work," she acknowledged.

"Couldn't you, just once, be terrified of me?"

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"It would only spoil you. Besides, I make it a point to be terrified of you at least once a year. On
our anniversary. "

"Remind me to be there for it sometime."

"Only if you promise to bring flowers." The fire surrounding her turned into a ring of lilies,
orchids, and lilacs. Her favorite flowers, damn his hide. She wondered if he thought this was
endearing enough to get her to tell him everything he wanted to know. "What do you want to
know?" She put her hands on her hips. "What do you mean, sneaking into a woman's head in the
middle of a workday?"

"You weren't supposed to notice. Besides, my motives were pure."

She knew then what he wanted and breathed a sigh of relief. She did not know when her hands
had come to rest on his shoulders or his on her waist. This closeness was no less disturbing and
distracting for all that it was an illusion. This was all a dream, or possibly a dream on his part,
and a hallucination on hers. She was technically awake, sitting at her desk, doing her job. "I can't
do it all."

This reaction brought a cocked eyebrow from him, and a mildly sarcastic, "You mean you don't
think you can do everything on your own?"

"I can't do your job. I'm not psychic enough to wipe all the evidence from every mind involved."

She hated everything she'd already done to cover up the vampire's death by destroying physical
evidence. "I'm a clean cop."

"I know."

When had his arms come around her? When did her head sink onto his shoulder? This was all too
comforting and cozy. "You're laying it on a little thick," she told him, but she rubbed her forehead
against his shoulder as she spoke. "You don't need to seduce me into helping with this."

"When have I ever seduced you?"

She didn't answer him. She conjured up the memories and information she'd caught him looking
for when he entered her mind. She gave him faces, names, facts, and impressions that would help
him make psychic connections with the people who all needed to forget an encounter with a dead
vampire. When it was done, she felt a last brush of energy from him, something that was almost
sweet, almost gentle.

When Selena came back into her physical surroundings, the first thing she did was touch the spot in the center of her forehead that felt as though lips had brushed across it in a lingering kiss.

"Hmmph," she muttered, blinked, and looked swiftly around the squad room to see how much time had passed in her mental absence and if anyone had noticed. No one was doing CPR on her, or even staring worriedly her way. Good. There was a cup of coffee by her hand. It was cold. The gold coin had dropped from her hand to the floor beside her chair. She scooped it up quickly and rose to her feet.

Raleigh was seated at the desk across from her. His hands were folded in his lap. There was a peaceful, vacant expression on his face. Steve was inside Raleigh's head, she supposed, doing the work she
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couldn't. A jolt of fear for her friend and partner went through her, but she had to grudgingly admit that this was something that needed to be done, and that a vampire was infinitely more qualified to do it than she was.

Besides, better to keep Steve occupied. She squeezed the coin tightly in her fist, studied the paper that came with the coin again, and checked the time. She had an appointment to keep.

The author of the note had not put the message into anything so incriminating as words, but Selena recognized it as a rendezvous point all the same. The slip of paper contained a drawing, a silhouette of a high-heeled woman's shoe centered underneath the rayed circle of the sun. It had taken Selena a while to make a guess at what the cryptic drawing meant, but at high noon she showed up at the sculpture garden at the entrance to Navy Pier. There was a statue here of a huge silver high-heeled pump constructed out of high-heeled women's shoes. A shoe made out of shoes that made quite a memorable impression. At least it had on Selena, who loved buying shoes, even though she wore a size eleven, spent her workdays in sensible flats and athletic shoes, and had to battle limited supply and transvestite shoppers in the hunt for sexy footwear.

The statue seemed like a logical place, and high noon seemed a logical time. Selena didn't base her assumption on the sun having been drawn on top of the shoe, but because what better time was there for mortals to meet to talk about vampires than in the middle of the day?

Selena was a veteran of too many stakeouts to stand in front of the statue and look like she was actually waiting for someone. Instead, she settled on a nearby bench with a bag of fast food like any officer worker enjoying a quick lunch by the lakefront. She fed pigeons French fries and appeared to look anywhere but at the big silver shoe. Her roving glance took in the sparkling water of Lake Michigan in the distance, the huge Ferris wheel that towered fifteen stories high over the other Navy Pier buildings, and the huge flood of tourists enjoying the attractions on this lovely day.

Selena didn't seem to pay attention to anything in particular, but it didn't take her long to spot her quarry, detecting a shift in energy even before turning her head to get a look at the source. The woman by the statue was slender, dark-haired, beautiful, and sunburned. She wore black leggings and an oversized white men's shirt. People subconsciously moved to get well out of her way, leaving her alone in front of the statue despite the crowds on the sidewalk. She paced the length of the silver shoe and back again with an intense nervous energy that Selena would have put down to drugs once upon a time.

It was a psychic drug the woman was on, Selena knew, and the stranger's aura gave off a bad reaction of some sort. She paced up and down in front of the statue while Selena stayed on the bench, waiting for the stranger to notice her. "Something not normal about that girl," Selena finally muttered. She rose from her seat, crumpled her empty food bag, tossed it in a trash bin next to the bench, and walked through a rising mass of disgruntled pigeons to face the other companion.

"What do you want with me?" Selena asked, coming up as the stranger turned in her pacing to face away from her.

The stranger spun around almost vampire fast. Selena took an automatic step back, and her eyes met the other woman's wild gaze. The scariest part was the look of worshipful recognition in the stranger's dark blue eyes.

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"Who the hell are you?" Selena asked. She opened her fist for a moment, to show a glimpse of the coin.

"Why me? What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

Selena almost bit her tongue to keep from going on. This was not how she'd planned to start the conversation. There was the matter of two dead vampires and one seriously injured one, and this woman was a link to all of it. Selena should be dealing with the facts of the case and developing information.

Instead, she had a hysterical urge to grab the woman and shake her while shouting that she wasn't —

"I'm
not
an Enforcer," she said with a calm she wasn't feeling. "Who are you, and why have you come to me?"

"Where's your master?" the other companion asked. She looked around as though expecting to have vampires leap out from behind the bushes and statuary. "Did his slaves follow you?"

She put a thin hand on Selena's arm. Selena noticed the bruises on the woman's arm and at her throat.

The woman was suffering from more than sunburn. And the energy that came off her: dark, confused, and in deep psychic pain.

Selena looked around, aware of what their conversation would sound like if they were overheard. She found herself falling into the sort of code used in the companions' chat room when she answered, "My friend and I don't have that sort of relationship."

"Are we alone?" The stranger tapped the center of her forehead. "In here?"

"He's busy working a case," Selena answered, fairly confident that Steve's psychic attention was concentrated on dream walking through the heads of the witness list she'd given him. "I'm free to talk.

Let's do it somewhere else."

Selena turned and walked away. The other companion raced to catch up with her, and Selena led her to her car in the depths of the Navy Pier parking garage. Once they were seated inside the car, Selena turned to the other woman and was disconcerted by that worshipful gaze once more. She flinched under its intensity. "Don't do that."

"You're her, aren't you? You are Layla." She sighed. "I could feel your strength from the beginning.

Knew you were the one."

The one what?
Selena wondered. She didn't want to ask. People who got labeled The One ended up having people trying to lob their heads off with swords, or going on quests, or finding out Darth Vader was their daddy. "Or all of the above," she muttered. The woman's words and tone sent a nasty, warning jolt through her that made her want to push the companion out of the car and drive away very fast. She kept a rein on the impulse and said, "You're one of the chat group."

"I'm Sandy. Cassandra." She gave a hard shudder and had to gag before she went on.
"He
always called me Cassandra.
He
said it was the name
he
liked.
He
never asked me. Donavan wasn't like
him.
Donavan loved me, but then
he
— "

"Sandy." Selena spoke with gentle firmness. "Let's talk about you right now. Who are you? What name do I know you by?"

"Sandswimmer, of course." She giggled, and took a while to stop.

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Selena's nerves grated at the sound, but she gripped the steering wheel tightly and waited quietly for the other woman to go on.

"I'm Sandy Schwimmer. I couldn't come up with a clever screen name, like you or DesertDog or the others. All I could think of was something short for my own name. That wasn't very smart, was it?"

"It's a good name," Selena answered. "Should I call you Sandy?"

"I like Sandy. Donavan called me Sandy. Poor Donavan."

Sandy's pain whenever she spoke Donavan's name was so sharp it was tangible against Selena's psychic senses. "You're Donavan's companion?" she asked, and was hit with a chaotic blast of anguish and fury that nearly knocked her out.

"Not anymore! Not since
he
came!" Tears streamed down her cheeks as Sandy beat her fists against the dashboard.
"He's
in me and Donavan and the others, and it
hurts!"

Selena's head hurt so much from being near the woman that she wanted to scream. She stared straight ahead and saw not a concrete wall but a dark kaleidoscope pattern made up of fragments of unrecognizable faces, hard, grasping hands, red, wet mouths… and sharp, glittering fangs. Her stomach heaved.

Selena forced the chaos away. She had to remain calm, couldn't let herself get upset. Steve might take notice. Whatever was going on with Sandy Schwimmer, this was no time to draw the Enforcer of Enforcers' attention.

"Sandy." She put a hand out, almost, but not quite, touching the other woman's shoulder. Selena couldn't bear the thought of contact. She kept her voice steady and reassuring. "Sandy, calm down. We have to talk calmly. Emotion draws attention, remember?"

"They won't find me. They can't." Sandy laughed, soft and bitter, with the hysteria drained out of it. "Not yet. There's too many of them inside me. They'll unravel me… but not yet."

Selena put her hands back on the steering wheel. She needed information as quickly as she could get it.

For all her experience at interviewing witnesses and suspects, she was at a loss at where to start, what angle to take with the woman. The ground here was shaky, as shaky as Sandswimmer's sanity. Selena decided to go back to the point they had in common and take it from there.