Authors: V.K. Forrest
Ravenous (3 page)
“I . . . I’m sorry I called you.” His leather coat was open and she rested her cheek on the soft T-shirt he wore under it. She could feel his heart beating; it was strangely slow, compared to the pounding in her own chest. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He didn’t say anything. No “it’s okay,” or “I’m glad you called.” He just stood there, his arms around her, giving her a minute to compose herself.
Snuggled against him, it occurred to her that she was wearing nothing but a pair of flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt advertising a 5K she’d run in about a hundred years ago. No bra. Not exactly the way she wanted a cute guy or half the town to see her. But what exactly did a girl wear to her uncle’s murder?
“Mai, I think they’ve got more questions for you,” Liam said finally. “You up to it?”
“The sooner I answer their questions, the sooner they’ll leave?” she asked, reluctant to pull herself out of his warm arms and reenter the lion’s den.
“Something like that.” He hesitated. “You’re best to just keep answering their questions straight up, but don’t volunteer any information they don’t ask for. That’ll just lead to even more questions.”
That had been her thought exactly.
“You’ll stay until they’re gone?” She backed out of his arms, looking up at him. He seemed like a confident guy. Trustworthy. Though just a little scary on some level; where she was getting that vibe, she wasn’t sure.
“I’ll stay until they go,” he agreed. His black-eyed gaze met hers. “Then I have a couple of questions of my own.”
Chapter 3
T
he cops tried to push Liam out the door, but at Mai’s insistence, they finally agreed to let him stay. He stood off to the side and listened to them question Mai; they repeated the same questions in a different way or in a different order. It was pretty typical crime-scene questioning of witnesses or potential suspects. They seemed to be bright enough to realize she probably hadn’t done it, but they still asked for the clothes she was wearing, as well as her father’s.
he cops tried to push Liam out the door, but at Mai’s insistence, they finally agreed to let him stay. He stood off to the side and listened to them question Mai; they repeated the same questions in a different way or in a different order. It was pretty typical crime-scene questioning of witnesses or potential suspects. They seemed to be bright enough to realize she probably hadn’t done it, but they still asked for the clothes she was wearing, as well as her father’s.
It was after 6 a.m. by the time the coroner came and went, the ambulance left, carrying Donato Ricci to the morgue, and the cops, EMTs, and firemen cleared out. Mai would be expected at the state police troop later in the day.
Liam followed Mai back to the house and waited in the kitchen while she put her father to bed. He seemed a little confused, but it was hard to tell if the old man wasn’t quite right upstairs, or if his daughter was just treating him that way. When the police had tried to question him, she’d gotten pretty defensive. Liam wondered if she was covering for him. The old guy didn’t look like a murderer, but they never did.
Liam tried not to look around the cozy house while he waited. He didn’t need to check out her belongings, and he didn’t need to know Mai. He couldn’t risk getting to know her.
He could hear her talking softly to her father upstairs. She was good with him. Kind. Patient. He wondered if she had been the same way with the dead uncle. Or had she felt over-burdened by caring for not one, but two old men, and taken it out on him? As far as he was concerned, it was a blessing that the Kahill vampires died in their seventies. The fact that they were immediately reborn as teens was a bit of a bummer, but then so was everlasting life.
Liam spotted an English porcelain teapot on the counter and, on impulse, he filled the electric teakettle with water. He didn’t drink tea, but his mother did and he knew how she liked it. When the water was hot, he put some in the teapot to warm it, poured it out, and added tea leaves from a canister. He poured fresh hot water over the tea and left it to steep. He thought about getting a mug out of a cabinet for Mai, but that seemed too personal, opening cabinet doors.
He wondered if he should just go. He didn’t belong here. This wasn’t any of his business.
She came downstairs before he could slip out.
“Liam. You’re still here.” She sounded surprised.
“Of course.” He felt like a bit of a shit saying it like that. It was as if she had known what he was thinking. And she wasn’t even a vampire.
“I made you some tea,” he offered lamely.
“Sweet Jesus, thank you.” She got a mug down. French Provincial, with a rooster on it; not at all what he was expecting from her. “You want some?”
“Nah. I should go.” Earlier, he’d been full of questions for her. The cops seemed to accept the
my crazy old uncle was wandering around at night and came upon a burglar
story, but Liam wasn’t buying it. Burglars didn’t interrogate old guys, and they didn’t torture them before they killed them. Either Mai was lying through her teeth, or at the very least, she wasn’t giving the full story. Something interesting had gone down here tonight and there was more to it than stolen cutlery.
my crazy old uncle was wandering around at night and came upon a burglar
story, but Liam wasn’t buying it. Burglars didn’t interrogate old guys, and they didn’t torture them before they killed them. Either Mai was lying through her teeth, or at the very least, she wasn’t giving the full story. Something interesting had gone down here tonight and there was more to it than stolen cutlery.
But it wasn’t his problem. “I . . . I’m gonna go,” he said, motioning toward the door.
“Okay.”
Her response so surprised him that he glanced back at her. She was putting honey in her cup of tea. She didn’t look up.
“Thank you for coming. I mean it. I . . . I apologize again for calling you, for dragging you into this.” She licked her spoon. “I don’t know what possessed me to do such a thing. Shock, I guess.”
He moved toward the back door. “You going to be okay? Your dad. The police. The funeral home.”
She held the mug with both hands and blew on the tea. She’d been pretty tough when the police had been trying to question her father, but she looked vulnerable right now. Scared. Liam remembered the feel of her in his arms and a part of him ached to feel her there again. He opened the back door. “Call me if you need anything else.”
He waited for her to make eye contact with him. When she didn’t, mentally, he beckoned her. When his gaze locked with hers, he said softly, “I mean it.”
“Right.” She gave a little laugh. “And I have the number.” She showed him her hand.
He went out into the cool, dewy morning, telling himself to just walk away.
Walk away.
Walk away.
Liam spent most of the day working in the shop. He opened boxes, stacked stuff in some semblance of order, and made a list of items to put up for sale on the Internet. He knew approximately what the antiques were worth, but he’d have to do some research on some of the items that had been sitting around for decades. What did a person charge for a brand-new 1956 Disney domed school bus lunchbox?
When he had left Mai’s, he was determined to have no further contact with her, but then he’d had second thoughts. It was after one when he called her cell. She didn’t pick up. He left a message for her to call him. He called again twenty minutes later. Again, she didn’t answer. Why would she? She was clearly embarrassed about having called him, a stranger, in the middle of the night to come to her aid. She didn’t want to talk to him. Not ever. He was good with that. He was only calling to see if she and her father were okay.
It was after four and the autumn shadows had lengthened in the shop when Kaleigh knocked at the front door. He unlocked it and let her in.
“You’re back,” she said.
She looked cute in jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in pigtails. Liam had always liked Kaleigh, though she scared him sometimes. She had a way of seeing through the bullshit, seeing right to the heart of things, to
his
heart.
his
heart.
“Right. Like you didn’t already know. I saw you sitting at the café yesterday, spying on me.”
She walked in and he closed and locked the door behind her. “I wasn’t
spying
on you. I was hanging out with Katy and trying to gird up my loins to take the SATs this morning.”
spying
on you. I was hanging out with Katy and trying to gird up my loins to take the SATs this morning.”
“How’d they go?”
“Sucked.” She shrugged. “Boring. Took all morning. But I did fine. Scores’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”
She looked around at the mess. It seemed worse since he had started opening and moving boxes. In some places there were just paths between shoulder-high walls of boxes, sort of like a creepy hamster trail, only for people.
“Time for a little housecleaning?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“Maybe if you came home more often.” She turned to him, slinging her fringed purple bag over her shoulder. “I was kind of surprised you didn’t come home when your dad . . . died.”
He’d actually been murdered, which was pretty unusual in vampire circles. Three years before, his father, the town postmaster, had been killed by some crazy human teenagers. They had discovered the Kahills were vampires and appointed themselves vampire slayers. Liam’s father had been beheaded, which prevented him from ever being reborn. Dying without a chance to save his soul left him in some kind of purgatory that Liam tried not to think about. Four of the sept members had died before Fia Kahill, an FBI agent and one of their own, had caught the little bastards. Kaleigh had been one of the kids involved with the human boys, but Liam didn’t hold it against her. It was damned hard being a vampire teen, and every adult in the community was as responsible for their actions as they were. Maybe more so.
“I was undercover,” he explained. “An ugly case in Dublin. When I finally got the chance to talk to Ma, she said I should stay put, so I did.”
The explanation sounded lamer now than it had seemed at the time. He regretted not being here with his mother, but he knew he wouldn’t have been much help to her anyway. He wasn’t good with grieving mothers, with anyone grieving, for that matter. Anyway, she seemed to have bounced back pretty well. This past summer she’d been involved in one of the juiciest Clare Point scandals in years. She and the old geezer, Victor Simpson, after being denied permission to marry, had run away from home and were currently sipping umbrella drinks somewhere in southern Florida.
Kaleigh glanced up at him. Even though she looked like a typical American teenager, her eyes were those of an old soul. She was the sept’s wisewoman and the smartest person he knew on earth. Or at least she
would
be, once she came into her own again.
would
be, once she came into her own again.
Liam grabbed the nearest box and pulled a utility knife out of his back pocket. “So . . . how’s the mind-reading going? I hear you’re getting pretty good at it, sticking your nose in other people’s business. Listening in on people’s thoughts, uninvited.”
She frowned. “Who have you been talking to? The ladies at the diner? Did they also tell you that you were escorted home, handcuffed and shackled in the hold of a ship because you ate some guys in Paris?”
He leaned over the box to cut the packing tape, grimacing. “That’s gross.”
“That’s what I said.” She hopped up on a flimsy wooden crate. “Okay if I sit here?”
He glanced up, then back at what he was doing. “Guess we’ll see in a minute. Hopefully that’s not those Qing Dynasty statues I misplaced.”
She leaned back, looking around. “I graduate in May. My parents think I should go away to college. Connor wants me to go, too. So he can have my bedroom.”
“I agree.”
“That Connor should have my bedroom?”
“That you should go to college. Maybe even in another country.
Université de Paris?
You remember how much you love Paris?”
Université de Paris?
You remember how much you love Paris?”
“I can barely remember the Rice Krispies I had for breakfast this morning. And I can’t speak French.”
“You do speak French. You just don’t remember yet. And German, and Greek and Portuguese and—”
“Enough already, Liam.” She held up her hand. “I’m not even eighteen yet. Give me some time. There are some days when I feel like my head is going to explode. Everyone has all these expectations. They keep telling me about how smart I am and how much everyone relies on me. I don’t see how there’s any way I can live up to that.”
He sighed, pulling an ugly vase out of a box of Styrofoam peanuts. “I hear you on that one.”
She tilted her head one way and then the other. “I hope you didn’t pay much for that thing.”
He glanced at the bottom; there was no potter’s mark. It was South American, but he couldn’t place the piece. It was either Mayan or roadside Tijuana. “I hope not, either.” He threw a handful of the white peanuts at her.
“So . . . seriously. Why are you back?” She plucked a piece of Styrofoam off her knee.
“You’ve been in the diner. I know you heard all the gory details.”
“Just the part about you making shish kebabs out of some French dude’s liver. Hey, you want to go get something to eat? I think it’s liver-and-onions night at the diner.”
He returned the vase carefully to the box, wondering where its manifesto was. “And I was hoping it was muskrat night.”
“Okay, so pizza.”
“You’re not supposed to be reading my mind, Kaleigh.” He waggled his finger at her.
She made a face, jumping down off the box. “I wasn’t reading your stupid, sick, dark-ass mind. I don’t like liver and onions, either.” She headed for the door. “So you coming or not? Arlan’s paying. I found money in the glove box of his truck when I semi-borrowed it this morning.” She plucked a twenty out of the back pocket of her jeans and waved it at him as she went.
“Semi-borrowed?”
“He’s out of town. I know where he keeps his keys.”
“You stole Arlan’s truck?”
“Borrowed.” She unlocked the front door and stepped into the dusky light of late afternoon, early evening. “It doesn’t count as stealing if I put gas in the tank, does it?”
Liam locked the front door, glancing at the
CLOSED
sign. It made him think of Mai. “You put gas in Arlan’s truck?”
CLOSED
sign. It made him think of Mai. “You put gas in Arlan’s truck?”
“It was purely a hypothetical question.”
Liam laughed. He wouldn’t go so far as to say it was good to be home, but he felt a certain sense of relief at being among his own again.
Liam’s cell phone rang as he walked alone in the dark. It had been nice to have dinner with Kaleigh, but it was hard for him to be with anyone for long. He was too much a loner. He answered the phone without checking the caller ID. Big mistake. It wasn’t Mai.
“So finally you answer your phone.”
“How are you, Ma?”
“Worried about you.”
He followed the sidewalk down Main Street, the slight ocean breeze on his back. “So that makes us even. I’m worried about you. You didn’t really run off to Miami with Victor Simpson, did you?”
“I think you’ve got bigger troubles than who I’m kanoodling with.”
“Kanoodling? Ma, could you please not say things like that? I just ate.” He lowered the phone for a moment, grimacing, then lifted it to his ear again. “You know I can’t stand Victor Simpson. He was a cantankerous old bastard before Regan made him a vampire. Ma, you can’t stand him.”
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