Summoning Sebastian (4 page)

“He's not a person at all, Nim.” His voice was gentle. “He's a vampire. Not even a vampire. A ghost of a vampire. Or a spirit echo. Nim, we don't even know what the fuck he is right now. We have no idea what he's capable of in this form, or if he's even himself.”

“He's himself,” I insisted. But Colin was right. We didn't know. All we knew was that he could appear sometimes in our bedroom. Or in the living room next to the couch. Or that one time in the kitchen. I scrubbed my face and hit the heart of the matter. “He has to be.”

Colin pushed his mug aside and scooted closer, draping an arm around me. “Even if this is him, that doesn't mean we can't bring him back. It just means there's another puzzle in the way. Something else to be solved.”

Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, much to my annoyance. There was too much emotion roiling through me. I didn't know what to do with it all. “I'm so tired of puzzles.”

“I know, love. I know.” He kissed my temple. “You're tired of puzzles because I dumped them all on you. But now we need to get help. And fast.”

“What do you propose?”

“I'm calling Roland.”

Chapter Four

“I'
m sorry, sir, but no. Customers leaving a legal dispensary are not considered cannabis-infused edibles.”
—“Overheard in Denver” (Twitter feed)

Ro
land wasn't in her office when I called, nor did she answer her cell phone. Because God forbid she shouldn't be at my beck and call and actually go teach classes or have conferences with students or any of the other things she did as part of her job. I left messages on all her available voice mails. After coffee, when she hadn't called back yet, Colin and I decided to head in to work. We might as well be productive. Roland would know what we were calling about; she'd get back to us as soon as she had a chance.

Work turned out to be awkward. There was a police car parked in the parking garage next to Colin's reserved spot. I recognized the number on the vehicle. I could tell my life was getting far too weird when I knew exactly what cop was going to be waiting for us in the office. Then again, Officer Eric had haunted the fringes of my existence for an eternity. Okay, maybe a year. Year and a half, tops.

Sure enough, Eric was waiting for us, drinking our office coffee from a Styrofoam cup and chatting up the new receptionist. The previous receptionist had finally decided talking to vampires on the phone was too stressful for her and had left us a couple of weeks ago. She'd said it was because of her course load at DU, but I knew better. Vampires were enough to make anybody go batshit.

The new receptionist was a vampire, newly turned. I wonder if Eric, who was currently making googly eyes at her, realized this. Eric has a long, dark, deep streak of prejudice when it comes to vampires. It was one of the reasons we quit dating. Yes, we dated. Like, two dates, maybe three. Shut up.

Eric swiveled those big, green, anime eyes at us as we came in the door. The flirty look lingered a few moments longer, directed at me, then he straightened and put on his über-serious policeman persona.

“Ms. Taylor,” he said. “Colin.” He probably would have said Mr. Whatever, except, as far as anyone knew, Colin didn't claim a last name. I knew it wasn't Bernstein or Carter.

“Eric,” I replied, notably lacking in polite titles like officer or whatever he went by. I was pretty sure he wasn't a detective. “Why are you drinking the good coffee?”

He gave me a smirky grin. “Because Tina here told me to help myself.”

Colin took that opportunity to break up our awkward flirting. “What do you want?” Not much politeness out of Colin either, but that was par for the course.

“I'd think you would have figured that out by now.”

“I'm a vampire, not a mind reader,” Colin snapped back. He passed me a look. We were together in this trial, it told me. Companions in the pain and suffering that was dealing with our adopted cop. Damn. I'd hoped I could go get snacks or something and leave the heavy lifting to Colin.

Eric took another step farther into über serious. Super-über serious, I suppose. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“My office.” Colin turned on a heel and led the way. He hadn't taken off his long coat, so it took a neat, black swirl around his hips and thighs. Sexy. I took a moment to appreciate the view, then followed.

Once we were settled into Colin's office—Colin behind the desk, me in a comfy chair, and Eric in a non-comfy chair—Eric pulled a mini tablet out of his pocket and started showing us pictures.

“This is a police sketch that was made earlier tonight based on eyewitness accounts of an attack in downtown Denver. You're familiar with the case?”

Colin gave a brief nod. I kept my mouth shut. In higher resolution, the picture looked a bit threadier, with the sketch artist's erasures and guidelines visible, but it also looked even more like Sebastian.

Eric set the tablet on the desk. “Why don't you take a closer look?”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Colin leaned back in his chair. “Why should I?”

A muscle twitched in Eric's jaw. “You've seen this sketch?”

“Saw it on TV, yes.”

“Then you know where I'm heading with this.”

Colin did a thing with his eyebrows that somehow expressed annoyance, doubt and scorn all at the same time. He leaned forward and took a gander at the tablet. “Sorry. You'll have to make yourself a bit more clear.”

I knew Eric wanted Colin to confirm the resemblance to Sebastian without any prompting so he couldn't be accused of asking leading questions. Colin wasn't cooperating. Typical. I'm not sure the word cooperate is an active part of Colin's vocabulary on the best of days.

“How long has it been since you saw Sebastian Marcheleto?” A turn in the conversation. Good tactic.

Colin's eyes went dark and angry, brows drawing together. It was a scary look. Eric's jaw clenched. “The last time I saw Sebastian,” Colin said quietly, “was six weeks ago when he died in my arms. Now why don't you get the fucking hell out of my office?”

Eric was silent for a moment, absorbing the curve ball Colin had just thrown him. Then he rallied. “There are no records of Mr. Marcheleto's death.”

“Check the records vampire-side. You know the human side doesn't always get caught up right away.”

“A death record should have been filed on both sides simultaneously.”

Colin shrugged. “Not my responsibility. I'm not his family. And there wasn't anything left to show a medical examiner for a confirmation. So, again, why don't you get the fucking hell out of my office?”

I could see the gears turning in Eric's head. He was trying to come up with another protest, or another question, or anything he could think of to keep Colin talking. But he must have come up blank, because finally he stood. “I'll check the records. If there's nothing on file, I'll be back.”

Colin gave him a curt nod and watched him leave the office. When the door had shut behind him—not, unfortunately, hitting him in the ass on his way out—Colin said, “What the fuck did you ever see in him?”

It was a fair question. “Pretty eyes,” I offered. And a really nice ass, but I wasn't going to tell Colin that. “What do we do next?”

He shrugged. “The same thing we were going to do anyway. Wait for Roland.”

Rolan
d finally called at 11:30—12:30 her time and so right in the middle of her lunch hour.

“I'm sorry I didn't get back sooner,” she said when I answered. “I had a meeting.”

“No problem. I'm going to put you on speaker.”

So we spent the next half hour going through everything Colin and I had translated and assembled over the last couple of days. She said very little, asking the occasional question, clarifying a translation here and there, offering an alternative for a few words. I could tell she had her own copies of the tablets up on her computer and was comparing our work to her own and to the originals.

When I finished, adding Colin's innovative interpretations of word order, she was silent so long I thought maybe we'd been cut off.

“Roland?”

“Yeah,” she answered immediately. “Yeah, I'm here. Colin, I'm coming out. I'll be there tomorrow.”

“Send me your info. I'll pay for your flight.”

He wrapped up the call and hung up, then folded his hands under his chin and put on his broody face.

“What?”

“We have some time. Let's go do some investigating.”

“Investigating?”

“Yeah.” He pushed up from his seat. “Come on.”

I did
n't know what we were investigating until we'd driven through the heart of downtown, headed east on Colfax. When we passed the Fillmore Auditorium and kept going, I poked him. “We're going to check out a murder scene, aren't we?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

When he stopped the car, I recognized the surroundings from the news reports for the incident that had injured the human bystander. There was still some crime scene tape here and there, but most of it had come loose and was dangling onto the ground. I couldn't tell if this was because the cops were done with it or because the high winds of recent days had played havoc with it. Either way, it didn't look to me like there was much else the cops could do here. There'd been too much foot traffic. Mostly due to the recreational weed dispensary a few doors down, which was closed at the moment, and the open-twenty-four-seven doughnut shop two doors down from it. Great product placement, I thought. In addition, I saw a trio of women across the street, lingering under a lamppost. I'd bet dollars to the doughnuts I was suddenly starting to crave that they were of the working-at-night sort. Idly, I wondered if they sold their own blood as well as sex. It was a growing market.

Colin paid no attention to the police tape or the dispensary or the women or the people emerging from the doughnut shop with ginormous boxes of doughnuts, because Colin was Colin and pretty much did whatever he wanted. He scanned the ground intently. I followed him, not wanting to get left alone in the dark. I wasn't much help when it came to looking for clues because, hello, dark, but I could provide moral support.

“What are you looking for?”

“Not sure yet.”

“You'll know it when you see it?”

“I hope so.”

I had to admit, the whole endeavor was kind of exciting. It was nice to get out of the house, out of the office, away from the manuscript, out from under Colin. Well, I hadn't quite hit my tolerance levels on that last one, but still. A change of scenery never hurt anybody. I peered at the ground too, in case my human eyesight could pick out something Colin might miss. Not much chance of that.

“I should have brought my night-vision goggles.” I never remember my night-vision goggles. Mostly because I hate them.

Colin shrugged it off. “I can see better than you can, anyway.”

We poked around for a while, checking nooks and crannies and holes in the ground. It seemed fairly pointless, then suddenly Colin dropped to a squat next to a concrete planter, poking at something in the mostly dead foliage inside it.

“What is it?” I moved to stand next to him.

“I'm not sure yet.” Carefully, he pushed the wilted plants aside, then pulled at something the movement had revealed. I caught a silvery glint but not much else. He pulled and pulled, drawing something up from the ground. It appeared to be a length of thin chain of some kind with bits and pieces attached to it. Finally he straightened, holding it with one end in each hand. He was being careful with it, and when I stepped just a bit closer, I could tell why. The chain was made of silver.

“Whoa.” I reached for it, and Colin handed it over, rubbing his hands against his pants as I relieved him of his burden. “You okay?”

“Stings a little.” He peered at his fingers in the dark, but I couldn't see well enough to tell if he needed medical attention. I didn't smell that very particular odor of burnt vampire, so I figured he was probably okay.

“You should have let me get it.” I held it up, trying to make out details, but there just wasn't enough light. “Any idea what it is?”

“Yes. I have an idea. I'm not sure, though. I need to take it back to the office and look up a few things.”

“Let's go, then.”

We went.

The s
tring, as it turned out, held numerous small charms and other, less savory items wrapped into its strands. Small leaves were secured by their stems, silver charms with runes on them hung from the silver by their catches, and little bits of bone decorated the bottom couple of inches. It wasn't exactly the kind of silver chain you'd want to wear at your wedding.

Colin did the online searching. That was usually my job, but I'd taught him some skills in exchange for his instruction regarding Linear V and the translations of the tablet. He'd gotten pretty good at it. Not quite up to my standards yet, but I let him have his delusions. Plus there was a search engine just for vampires that he still hadn't coughed up the passwords for. The information he was looking for was lurking somewhere in that labyrinthine mess of websites, forums and blogs. I still wasn't clear on how the vamps kept it separate from so much of the rest of the Internet, but then IT wasn't my specialty. Probably secure servers and password-protected sites and who knew what else. They were a secretive bunch.

I went to fetch coffee and chatted with the receptionist for a minute or two while Colin worked. She gave me more phone messages, which I promised to deliver posthaste. Glancing at them, I recognized several of the numbers as people who'd called the previous night and presumably had not received return phone calls. A shocker, that. Colin had a carefully constructed hierarchy regarding who was granted the privilege of his personal phone call. None of these folks rated. They'd be shuffled down to our customer service department—an extraordinarily patient and polite vampire named Ursula. Her sweet voice and Polish accent would placate the callers, and Colin wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.

When I came back and set Colin's coffee mug on the desk next to him, he was scribbling notes on a pad of paper. The computer screen held pictures of other silver chains similar to the one stretched out on his desk pad. They held different tokens—some of them even less savory than those on our chain. It appeared to be an entire fashion subculture. Or something.

I slid back into my seat. “So what is it?”

He kept scribbling without looking up. “It's a control device. Kind of. It's used to attract a certain vampire, and some of the lore says it can be used to control them.”

“Lore? It's not a proven process?”

Colin shook his head. “I'm sure it is, but nobody who's used it has posted detailed instructions anywhere online.”

“How inconvenient of them.”

“Rude, more like.” He mulled. “I wonder…”

His line of thought was far too obvious. I wasn't sure if I was disturbed by this or not. “Yeah. I wonder too.”