Undying (8 page)

“You used to like it when I didn’t keep my dick in my pants.”

She groaned and looked away. “So, you get anything out of my informant,
before
you slept with her?
After,
maybe?”

“I have to tell you, she’s not much of an informant, Fee.” He was trying to tease her, but she obviously wasn’t in the mood.

“So that’s a no.” Fia still wouldn’t look at him.

“Actually, I think she knows something, but I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to get it out of her.”

“And you know this how, Mr. Man-whore?”

He smiled. “You’re jealous.”

She looked straight ahead. “I’m not jealous, Arlan. I’m annoyed with you. I have a potential witness to multiple homicides and you’re screwing around with her. Literally and emotionally. I expected better out of you. I thought you could handle this. That you could do it for me.”

“But I did do it.” By the time the words were out of his mouth, he realized he’d made one joke too many.

Fia glared.

“I tried, okay? I was upfront with why I was there, Fee. She wanted to talk to
you,
not me. Remember, if it wasn’t for this issue with Regan, you could have been there yourself,” he chastised gently.

The swing came to a halt. Neither pushed it again.

“So she didn’t want to talk to you about the murders, but she wanted to sleep with you?”

He hesitated, setting his empty glass on the floor beside the swing. She was right of course. Fia was right. She always was. “Yeah. She wanted to sleep with me. She’s the one who came on to me.”

Fia looked at him doubtfully.

“She did,” he defended. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”

Fia scowled, putting her own glass down. “You do anything else to her?”

“Anything else?” he asked innocently.

She was referring to bloodletting. It was against sept law, they all knew it. And they all, on occasion, broke the law. Even Fia. He knew that for a fact. Fia had a little problem with stalking men in bars and feeding on them, an act doubly forbidden by the sept. At least she had before her current boyfriend.

“No. No, of course not,” he said, trying to sound offended, feeling guilty at the same time for the dark thoughts that
had
crept through his mind this morning while Maggie lay asleep in his arms. “I just had sex with her. Plain old intercourse. Just the ol’ in and out. Nothing else.”

“I suppose that’s something.” Fia exhaled. She gazed out at the nicely trimmed green lawn in front of the rambling Victorian house. “I don’t suppose she gave you a way for me to contact her? A phone number? An e-mail address?”

“No. But she said she’d call you.”

“So you just left her. Screwed her and left her?”

“Fee, what was I supposed to do?”

She shook her head. “You could have
not
screwed her. What if you scared her off? What if she doesn’t call me? This is five more murders. This guy is a bad one and the human authorities are no closer to catching him than they were last year. I can tell you that right now.” She rose from the swing and walked over to the porch rail.

Arlan followed her, unable to explain to Fia the connection he’d felt to Maggie last night. She would never understand, even if he tried to explain it. But then how could she when he didn’t understand himself? “I really am sorry. I screwed up.”

“You’re right. You did.” She put her hands on the rail and leaned forward.

“But she’s going to call you. I know she is. She wants to talk to you. She wants to help catch this freak.”

“And you know this how?” She looked up at him.

He reached over and rubbed her back gently. “I don’t know. I just have a feeling about her. You’ll hear from her again.”

“I sure hope you’re right.” She shifted her gaze from him to the lawn again.

He leaned on the rail next to her. “So what do you think we should do about Regan?”

“Nothing we can do. I think I convinced Ma of that last night. We just have to wait. You know him. He’ll pop up.”

Arlan realized this was the perfect opportunity to tell Fia that Regan had probably gone AWOL
prior
to the kill. But still, it seemed like tattling. It wasn’t the first time Regan hadn’t showed. And in every previous instance, he’d been off playing when he should have been working. Regan was just immature. He’d work his way into the job.

But what about the call home?

It wouldn’t be the first time Regan had called someone drunk, babbling some overblown story.

But he didn’t usually call his mother.

“You…you want me to see if I can find out when his flight was supposed to leave?” Arlan asked. “See where he was going? I’m not even sure he was coming back to the States. We’ve still got several active investigations going on in that part of the world.”

“I can do it,” she said.

“No. You’re busy. You’ve got this case.” He lowered his hand. “Other cases,” he added, remembering she wasn’t officially on the Buried Alive case.

“Yeah, I talked to the Baltimore guys about letting me in on the investigation. Just as a consultant. Of course, their bosses have to talk to my bosses. It might work out. Might not.”

“Having Maggie would get you in.”

“Probably.”

“She’ll call.”

Fia’s cell rang and she slid it out of her jeans pocket. She checked the caller ID and looked at him.

“Lover boy?” he asked.

“Excuse me,” she said curtly, and walked away. “Glen,” she said into the phone.

Arlan watched her move to the far side of the porch, talking quietly to her boyfriend. Her
human
boyfriend. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and went down the porch steps, fighting the urge to look back. Fia didn’t need to be jealous over him sleeping with a human. Arlan had enough jealousy bottled up inside him for both of them.

W
omen.
They always were his downfall. Arlan knew that. If he could just swear them off for good, he’d be better off. Arlan kept himself busy the rest of the day so as to not think about Fia or Maggie, but he didn’t have much success.

He loved women. He loved them in all shapes and sizes and colors. Young women to old women; it made little difference to him. And in all fairness, they liked him.

A carpenter by trade, when he wasn’t on sept business, he did light construction work in town. After giving an estimate to repair a deck and construct a built-in entertainment center, Arlan stopped at the market and bought a steak, a bag of potatoes, and some frozen green beans. He passed on the sour cream he wanted for his baked potato. He knew Fia was just teasing; he was certainly not growing a paunch. But it was never too soon to start a healthier lifestyle.

At home, he emptied out his refrigerator of containers with unidentifiable foods, put a potato in the oven, and washed the crusty dishes he’d left in the sink when he went to Greece. With the kitchen in order and the stinky garbage in the outside bin, Arlan went out on his back deck to light a fire in his barbeque grill. Most people had gone to gas grills, but he was a purist at heart. He loved the smell of charcoal burning and the smoky taste of his rare steak, flavored by the embers.

Arlan carefully stacked the briquettes he removed from the bag and then pulled his trusty lighter from his back pocket. Charcoal fires got a bum rap because they took so long to prepare. However, match-light charcoal was a miraculous innovation. In twenty minutes he’d have a perfect bed of coals to cook that perfect steak.

He flicked the lighter and nothing happened. He flicked it again. Then he realized the safety switch was on. He slid the switch and flicked the trigger again. He was rewarded with a small blue flame. He could smell his baked potato roasting in the oven and could imagine the taste of the T-bone, bloody rare and barely warm in the center.

The blue flame on the end of the lighter went out. He looked closer. The briquette hadn’t lit. He flicked the lighter, impatiently. It took three flicks to get a flame again. The fluid inside had to be running low. “Come on,” he muttered. He was getting hungry. “Light.”

The cold black tower seemed to mock him.

“Damn it,” he muttered. He’d been fine all day after being chastised by Fia for sleeping with Maggie. He’d been fine. He could deal with disappointing Fia. But what he could not deal with tonight was charcoal that wouldn’t light. He flicked the lighter again and again.

“Bloody bastard.”

The latch on the gate in his backyard clicked and the heavy gate swung open. “Arlan, that you?”

He recognized the woman’s voice. After living with the same people for centuries, everyone knew everyone else’s voice, their smell, the sound of the way they walked. “Hey, Peigi.” He poked one of the charcoal briquettes with the end of the lighter and flicked the trigger repeatedly, his irritation rising.
Click, click.

“I rang the doorbell.”

“Broken.” He flicked the trigger.
Click, click.
“It’s on my to-do list.” Had been for at least two years. It was a long list, but when life went on forever, two years was barely a drop in a very big bucket.

Peigi was a short, lumpy woman of about sixty. Her gray hair was styled in a sensible bowl cut and she wore baggy shorts, a striped T-shirt, and sensible shoes. She looked like a middle-aged model for L.L. Bean. Peigi Ross was a
sensible
woman. “Having trouble lighting that?” She pointed to the round charcoal grill.

“Nah.” He clicked the lighter. “What can I do for you?”

“We have a favor to ask.”

Along with being sensible, Peigi was also direct.

“We?” He didn’t like the sound of that.
We
meant the sept.
We
usually meant something dangerous like killing a notorious vampire slayer or cat-sitting for Miss Lucy’s five cats.

“I’m listening.”
Click, click. Click, click
. “Damn it. I wonder if the charcoal got damp. It’s a new bag. I used charcoal from it the day before I left.”
Click, click. Click, click.
Now the lighter wasn’t lighting at all.

“As you know, Johnny Hill’s gout is acting up again.”

“I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard that.”

“Both feet now,” Peigi said. “It’s too long a walk for him from his house to the museum for High Council.”

Arlan looked up. His thumb was beginning to cramp. “He can’t take his car?”

“We don’t drive to meetings. We walk. We’ve always walked, you know that.” She watched him push the briquettes around with the end of the lighter. “Would you like me to do that?”

“I can get it.” He shook the lighter, listening to see if he heard any fluid sloshing around, and tried again. “So what does Johnny want? He need me to take him to meetings?”

Click, click
. “I can drive him. Why didn’t he ask me himself?”

“We don’t drive and we don’t ride. What he needs is some time off.” She placed her hands on her sensible, middle-aged hips. “He wants you to take his place on the High Council.”

“I absolutely am not—”

“Temporarily,” she interrupted.

“Peigi.” Arlan stepped back from the grill, as frustrated by the conversation as he was by the fact that he couldn’t get the damned charcoal to light. “You know me. I’m not High Council material. I’m grunt work material.”

“Nonsense,” she fussed. “You’d be an excellent High Council member. You’re already on our short list, should a permanent position become open.”

“Peigi,” Arlan groaned. “I can’t make those kinds of decisions. Trying to decide who should live and who should die. Who’s evil and who’s just bad.” He clicked the lighter halfheartedly over the grill, shaking his head adamantly. “You know how I am. I like being told where to go, what to do.”

“Step back,” she ordered sharply.

When Peigi Ross told you to step back, you stepped back.

There was a sudden whoosh of air as if all the oxygen in the space in front of him had been depleted. Flames leaped from the barbeque, twenty feet into the air. Arlan took another quick step back, swearing he could feel his eyebrows singeing. He raised his hand to deflect the heat from his face. “I think that’ll do it, Peigi.”

All sept members shared some inhuman abilities: their sense of smell was amazing, they were able to speak telepathically to each other, and then of course there was the bit about living eternally. But they each also had unique gifts that contributed to the common welfare of the sept. Peigi’s gift happened to be pyrokinetics. Simply by setting her mind to it, she could light a cigarette or make a ten-story apartment building burst into flames so hot that the place would burn to the ground in a matter of minutes. She was like the Drew Barrymore character in the movie, only all grown up and gray-haired.

“Think you could have warned me?” Arlan muttered, still holding his hand up to block the heat.

“So you’ll be there tomorrow night?” Peigi was already on the deck steps, on her way out.

“I didn’t say that, Peigi.”

“Come by. See how you like it.”

“You give me a black hooded cloak and a fifteen-hundred-year-old dagger and you ask me to
try it out
?” He followed her to the edge of the deck. The boards needed staining and resealing. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I’ll tell Gair he can expect you,” she sang, giving a one-handed wave as she stopped to open the back gate. “Enjoy your steak. Glad to have you home.”

Arlan turned around. There was no sense arguing with her any further. If Peigi Ross told him to do something, he was going to do it. No matter how loudly he protested or who he complained to, sooner or later, he would do it. She knew that. He liked her the way he liked all women and she took unfair advantage of that. It was one more aspect of Peigi’s personality that made her so sensible.

Sensible Peigi, in her sensible shoes, who could set a freighter on fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In a rainstorm.

Macy sat in her car with her hands white-knuckled on the wheel, her forehead pressed to the center. She’d already inadvertently beeped the horn once.

The parking lot of the rinky-dink hotel where she’d spent the night was empty. Traffic passing by the place was almost nonexistent. It was like she was frozen. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t drive. All she could do was sit here. It was as if she was having some sort of silent panic attack.

She’d already been to the bathroom in the lobby twice. The clerk had watched her closely when she’d purchased a bottle of green tea and a pack of crackers from the vending machine. He’d asked her if anything was wrong. And she’d mumbled something about waiting for her cousin.

Macy lifted her head, taking in a deep breath. The sun was low in the sky. When she’d left the room, it had been directly overhead. Had she really been sitting here that long? She had to go before the clerk got really suspicious and called the cops.

Macy didn’t talk to cops. Not if she could help it. Just Fia, and she didn’t really count, did she? No, there was something different about Fia than other cops. Something that made Macy trust her, made Macy believe she understood secrets. She suspected Fia had secrets of her own.

Macy released the wheel one finger at a time. Her hands were hot and sweaty and sticky.

She thought about Arlan. He’d been smart to run. He knew what kind of woman to run from.

Then she thought about the coffee and donuts he had left her. And the flower. She’d pressed the flower in a book she was reading. How girlishly silly was that?

No sillier than the idea that she might be able to help Fia Kahill catch the killer. Catch the man who had ruined her life. Would continue to ruin lives.

Macy exhaled.

It was time to go. Time to go back to the cottage. She started the car. Pulled out of the parking lot.

But instead of turning right, heading south toward the Bay Bridge Tunnel, she turned left. North.

What was north? Who was north? What was drawing her this way? Was it Teddy? Was this it? Would he finally kill her? Was he on a
hot streak
as the cops liked to call it? Was she the only thing that would end his hot streak? Would her death cool his jets?

Her life seemed like a small sacrifice to her to save the lives of others.

But she knew it wasn’t that simple.

Arlan was just flipping his steak on the grill when he heard the back gate creak open again. He couldn’t believe Peigi’d had the audacity to return after she’d bullied him like that. But when he looked up, ready to give her hell, he saw his niece, Kaleigh, closing the gate behind her.

“Hey,” she called. “You’re back.”

He hung the cooking tongs on a hook on the grill and closed the lid. He opened his arms. “I’m back.”

“I thought you were supposed to be home last night.” She walked into his arms.

After a hug, he sat down in a chair and pushed another toward her with his foot. “I ran an errand with Fia. Stayed the night in Virginia and drove home this morning.”

She plopped down in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest. To look at her, she appeared to be like any other teenager across America. Her red hair was long, pulled straight back in a ponytail. She wore denim shorts so short that her mother probably called them obscene and her double-layered tank tops appeared to be spray-painted onto her torso. She wore big hoop earrings and cherry lip gloss.

But Kaleigh was by no means a typical teenager. She wasn’t even typical for a teenage vampire. Kaleigh was the sept’s wisewoman who, when she grew completely into her own again, would be the most powerfully psychic member of the sept.

With each death and rebirth, Kaleigh seemed to grow stronger, more perceptive and more commanding. As an adult, she would have all the sept’s powers rolled into one. She was the person everyone relied on when making decisions, not just for the entire sept, but personal, as well. However, like everyone else in Clare Point, she had to die, be reborn as a teen and grow into herself once again. It had been less than two years since the girl’s last rebirth, so she was still maturing.

A kid or not, Arlan certainly wouldn’t challenge Kaleigh to any kind of psychic duel. When she got wound up, she could be scary. She scared them all, which was probably what generated such a healthy respect for her, even in this state.

“You want a beer?” He picked the bottle up from where he’d set it on the deck when he got up to flip his steak.

“I’m underage, remember?” She snatched the bottle from him, took a drink—an obviously
experienced
drinker—and handed back the bottle. “I don’t drink.” She smirked.

He grinned and tipped the bottle, finishing it off. “You need something or you just looking for free beer?”

She shrugged, perfectly imitating a human teenager. “Mostly free beer.” She sat back in her chair, slipped a tube of lip gloss out of her pocket and began to apply it. “I’m working at the Dairy Queen.”