Pomegranates full and fine (32 page)

Tolly watched her come. He did nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. Tango stopped a little more than a pace from him. The vampire’s silent stillness was eerie. “What—” she began, but Tolly cut her off.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.” Tolly’s face jumped in a sudden tic, but the rest of his body remained perfectly still. “I didn’t.”

Tango’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t mean for what to happen this way, Tolly?” His words were as calm as his body, and sincere. Tango kept her knife up, however,

ready for anything.

“All of this. Miranda scared, you angry. I’m sorry. But you had to know the connection.”

A reply rose to Tango’s lips —
I think I would have been happier not knowing, thanks
-— but she held it back. It was better that she had found out what Miranda was holding back from her. It was. “Apology accepted.” She stood to the side, offering Tolly a clear path to the door. “Get out.”

The vampire didn’t move.

Tango waited for a moment, struggling with her temper. Finally she hissed again, “Get out!”

“I can’t!” Tolly’s voice cracked with sorrow-filled frustration.

“I’ll carry you out if I have to.”

Tolly looked as if he were about to cry. “No. You can’t.”

“I can.” She took a step toward him.

“No, no, no!” Tolly’s hands, fingers still knotted together, snapped up to keep her back. As if they had been holding down his legs, one knee shot up crookedly. “You can’t!”

Tango shifted her grip on her knife. “Oh? And why not?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Tolly’s face fell, literally drooping. Tango made a sound that was halfway between a sigh and growl. Tolly’s sagging mouth twisted. “It’s not my fault. That’s why 1 made sure you saw what the pack was doing, isn’t it?”

“You tell me.”

Tolly screamed, a thin wailing sound, and grabbed for her. She hadn’t been expecting that. He didn’t move from the couch, but suddenly long, thin hands at the end of long, bony arms were seizing her shoulders.
“I can’t!”

“I can’t kick you out, but you can’t tell me why not?” Tango snarled. She wanted the mad vampire out. If she had to play his guessing game to get rid of him, she would. Tolly nodded sharply and ecstatically. “And you can’t tell me why you made sure I knew that the pack was committing the penny murders?” Tolly nodded again. Tango grimaced. “All right.
Why
can’t you tell me?”

“I promised!” Tolly crowed triumphantly. He jumped up from the couch and rushed along his own arms to embrace her. For a frightened moment Tango tensed, ready to stab him, but there was no malice in his actions. “I promised, 1 promised, I promised, I promised, I...”    '    '

Tango steered him toward the door. “Who?” she asked kindly, keeping him talking. “Who did you promise? Miranda?”

“No. She doesn’t know. The pack doesn’t know. Miranda thought that no one knew about her, but we did! And,” he added proudly, “I kept it a secret, just like I was supposed to.”

“We?” Tolly switched a lock of his long blond hair against her face. “Stop that!” They were almost at the door. Tolly flicked his hair at her again. She batted it aside. “Do that again and...”

“You’re not paying attention!” Tolly tried to tug away, but Tango kept a firm hold on him. His arm simply stretched as he retreated back into the apartment. His movements were jerky suddenly, and his face all sharp angles. “Listen to me! A promise isn’t always a good thing!”

Tango ground her teeth. “Stop this! Just leave!”

“Ken me!”

That Tolly knew about kenning should have told her something immediately, but frustration and stress had dulled her wits. Tango worked the kenning irritably and looked at him. She froze.

Glamour glistened like dew on the vampire’s skin. The Glamour of a Kithain enchantment. The same kind of enchantment that clung to her, a
geasa.
Tolly’s mysterious promise had been magically enforced. By Epp?

No.

Tolly’s hair flicking in her face. A
promise isn’t always a good thing.

“You know Riley,” Tango breathed. “Riley stole Epp’s ribbon and used it to put a
geasa
on you. You were the blond nondrinker in Hopeful!” A vampire. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She released her grip on Tolly’s arm. The limb slithered back to its owner like a retracting cord. “Do you know where he is?”

“Yes!” the mad vampire howled in relief. “And I couldn’t tell you!” He collapsed down onto his knees. One hand fumbled in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a carefully folded piece of blue paper. He shoved it at her. Tango unfolded it. Her note from Hopeful. “I pulled it down so I would remember,” he babbled. “It’s so hard to do anything without him. Miranda was a connection I could use. I hoped if you knew about her, you’d figure it out. But you didn’t. And you’re angry at her now. I’m so sorry. She didn’t want you to know. But I had to show you!”

“Tolly,” Tango asked soothingly, kneeling down beside him, “can you tell me where Riley is?” Her head was light, dizzy with anticipation. The thought crossed her mind that this could be some kind of trick. Some madness of Tolly’s. She couldn’t stand that possibility, though. Just the idea made her feel a little mad herself.

Tolly shook his head. “No. But I think Miranda’s in the same place by now.” He seized her hand and climbed to his feet. “We have to hurry.”

“Why?” Rescuing Riley was going to mean rescuing Miranda? In spite of Tolly’s confession, she was still very angry at the other woman.

“Because you’re the only one who can get Riley out, and I think tonight’s going to be our only chance to get you in.” Tolly sat her on the couch and ran his fingers over her face. His touch felt... odd. Tango grabbed his hand.

“How? Where? Can’t you tell me more?”

“I can only tell things to a person who already knows them. Riley made me promise too well.” He pushed her hand away and touched his fingers to her face again. “I’m sorry, Tango, but this is going to hurt like hell.” He dug his thumbs in on either side of the bridge of her nose and pushed, stretching her cheekbones apart.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They answered grinning:

“Our feast is but beginning.

Dr. Ian Tanner pulled his luxurious BMW up to the curb. From the shadows of the bushes nearby, Tango watched him closely. He was arriving exactly at eleven-thirty, just as Tolly had said that he would. Fashionably late, but for what? Tolly’s explanations of what was going to happen tonight were so incomplete that they were almost useless. She knew what to do next, though. As Tanner got out of his car and shut the door, she stepped out of hiding. The movement caught Tanner’s eye. He glanced around at her. And froze.

It wasn’t every day that a man met himself on a shadowy street.

Tango walked forward as smoothly as she could. Tanner was a fairly tall man, and it was difficult learning to move at such a height. Fortunately, it was a bit like walking on stilts, and she could do that easily enough. Still, her arms felt so long that she half-expected her knuckles to brush the ground. And her chest felt very strange.

Tolly’s ability to reshape living flesh wasn’t limited to his own body.

Dr. Tanner’s eyes grew wide as he watched her approach. Tango tried to ignore the faint whispering that she could hear. When she looked over Tanner’s shoulder, she could almost make out Tolly’s vague form behind him. The mad vampire was murmuring into the doctor’s ear, quiet words that would drive the other man mad as well. At least for a little while. It was a talent that, Tolly had said, was not quite as easily directed as Miranda’s ability to control minds with just a glance, but it got the job done.

Slowly, Tanner began to nod. His hands moved almost of their own accord, stripping off the dark business jacket he wore, then his other clothes. Miranda changed into them, leaving the clothes that she wore, ragged jeans and a shirt taken from Riley’s closet, for him to put on. Tanner’s clothes were a reasonably good fit. Tolly had gotten the basic body dimensions almost right. He had spent the most time reshaping her face and hands, and, rushing in order to surprise Tanner at his eleven-thirty arrival, very little time reshaping the rest of her body. Her shoulders were broader than normal, her chest flatter and broader as w'ell, her waist bigger. Everything else — arms and legs that were the right length but unnaturally thin, musculature that was all wrong for the build, a certain lack of bulging flesh in the crotch — would be hidden by Tanner’s suit. All she had to do was stay out of bright lights and avoid talking to people if at all possible. Tolly had altered her throat just enough to give her a deep, gruff voice that might or might not have been Tanner’s; the differences could be explained as a sore throat, but Tango didn’t want to push the disguise. The greatest danger would be in the personal knowledge of background and acquaintances that she so conspicuously lacked. Every time she talked, she would run the risk of exposing herself as an impostor.

With a few final, whispered instructions, Tolly pointed Tanner down the road and let him go. The man moved like a sleepwalker, but he had a happy smile on his face. “He thinks that all of his worries have been taken on by a clone,” Tolly said. “He’s off to find the sunny side of the street.”

“How long will it last?” Tango pulled on Tanner’s shoes. They were too big. Tolly hadn’t thought to reshape her feet. She decided that the pain of blisters would be better than the pain of more reshaping to correct the problem. She would have to go through the agony of having Tolly stretch and mold her flesh and bones again when he returned her to her own form. She didn’t want to endure that torture any more than was necessary.

“A day or two.” Tolly’s body was in constant motion, though his face stayed calm. Tango had come to realize what kind of concentration it must have taken for him to remain as still and focused as he had been when she’d discovered him. He looked her over and gave her a quick, jerking nod of approval. “Perfect. Here.” He handed her something he had taken from Tanner’s wrist.

A silver chain with an ornate clasp in the shape of a dog’s head. Tango’s breath whistled between her teeth. “Riley had one of these in his luggage.”

Tolly took it back and fastened it around her left wrist. “Ask him about it later.” Tango nodded. They had a plan — of sorts. Riley’s
geasa,
probably intended to keep the vampire from letting any sensitive information slip, was far more of a hindrance than a help. Tolly couldn’t tell her anything useful. All of her attempts to work out what would be going on tonight, what kind of danger Riley was in, or why Tango was the only one who could rescue him, had failed. Tango could guess at the kind of frustration Tolly had been going through since Riley had been kidnapped. She had, at least, managed to get some rudimentary information out of Tolly. There were ways to work around most
geasa.
Their plan, such as it was, consisted of Tango, disguised as Tanner, slipping away when she had the chance and going “past the stairs, under the stairs, and down.” Tolly had apparently studied Tanner closely at some time in the past and he knew the house, but when Tango asked why the vampire hadn’t taken Tanner’s form himself to look for Riley, Tolly just gave a disturbing grimace. “I can’t touch Riley now,” was all he would say.

“Why not?” she had asked in return. “What am I supposed to do that you can’t?”

Tolly had said nothing more, but insisted that she would know what to do when she found Riley.

It wasn’t especially helpful, but it was a plan.

“Ready?” the vampire asked her.

“Ready.”

“Good. This sanity was killing me.” His face split in a wide grin, suddenly as chaotic as the rest of his body. He lurched away up the street, in the opposite direction from that in which he had sent Tanner. As they had agreed, Tango followed about thirty feet behind him.

There were quite a number of fairly expensive cars parked along the curb here. One of the disadvantages of Tanner’s fashionably tardy arrival was that he had been forced to park at the end of the queue of cars. The grand old house that Tolly finally walked up to was the center of the parking jam; cars filled the driveway, then spilled out through ornamental iron gates and along the street. Tango tried not to look like she was staring at the handsome house as she followed Tolly up the walk. She had guessed that the person or people who had hired jubilee must have been reasonably wealthy. It appeared that she had been right.

The windows of the first floor were lit up, and she could see the dark shapes of a crowd of people moving inside. Presumably they were the owners of these cars. It puzzled her. What were Riley — and Tolly —• mixed up in? Sinister cocktail parties?

Ahead of her on the walk, Tolly stopped, bending sharply double to sniff at the blooms in a bed of flowers. His expression was blissfully happy.

Tango forced herself to keep walking, though her heart was suddenly pounding in her chest. Tolly had been supposed to reach the door first so that she would have a chance to watch him go in. Now... she swallowed. It was, she supposed, a miracle that they had gotten this far. She passed the mad vampire and walked up the steps onto the verandah of the old house. There was an old-fashioned doorbell in the center of the door, the kind that you turned to ring. She did so. The door was opened by a handsome blond man with an emotionless face. His body filled the doorway. He looked at her, waiting.

Was there a password? She hoped not. Some kind of invitation she needed to produce? Tango cursed Tolly silently. The only thing she could think of was the chain bracelet. She held up her left wrist in a vague gesture, one that she could turn into a brush at her hair if she was wrong. The sleeve of her jacket fell back just enough to allow the bracelet to glint in the light that fell over the blond man’s shoulder.

The man stepped aside, ushering her in. Tango walked past him with a silent sigh of relief.

A wide staircase with heavy banisters of dark wood soared up almost in front of her. A shadowy hallway ran beside it, leading back into the depths of the house.
Past the stairs,
she thought. But there was a sprinkling of people standing in the foyer of the big house, and more packing a parlor off to the left. She wasn’t going to be able to slip off unobserved. The blond man gestured her politely in the direction of the parlor. “Good evening, Dr. Tanner. You’ll find the usual refreshments laid out.”