Vamparazzi (23 page)

“Ah, but a man who fought off lunatic Janes last night can certainly confront one small cat today.”

“She has claws
and
fangs,” he pointed out.

“Fair point. And speaking of fangs, the cops let Daemon go.”

“I know. I saw Bill's message.” Leischneudel said hesitantly, as if broaching a shocking subject, “I really don't think he's a vampire, you know. Daemon, I mean. Not Bill.”

“Well, I admit to a moment of terrifying belief in the Vampire Ravel when he was gnawing on my neck onstage last . . .”

“He should
not
have done that! That was so
wrong.
” Despite everything else that had happened since then, Leischneudel was obviously still shocked by that solecism.

“But otherwise,” I said, “yeah, I know he's not a vampire.”

“And I really don't think he could have killed that girl,” Leischneudel said pensively. “Not the way ... the way it was done.”

“No, I don't believe he did it. And now we know he hasn't been arrested for it.” Well, not yet, anyhow.

“After all that's happened, can you do the show today?” Leischneudel asked with concern. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I'll need to put antibiotic ointment on my abrasions, and slather pain-relieving liniment all over my aching body, and possibly get a rabies shot for the bite on my neck. As well as put a vat of stage makeup on my face. But I'll be okay. And the show must go on.”

“There's something you should probably know.”

I was surprised by how tentative his voice sounded. “Yes?”

“There are pictures of you on the Internet today. Photos. From last night—or very early this morning, I guess.”

I had a sudden memory of flashbulbs going off in my face. Both in reality and in my dreams, casting light in the darkness . . .

Leischneudel said, “They're not the most flattering photos ever taken of you.”

“No, I suppose not,” I said absently. I hadn't been at my best by 5:00 A.M., even
before
being physically assaulted.

Flashes of light illuminating the way . . .

What if there really
was
a vampire preying on people ?

“Pictures,” I murmured. What did
that
mean?

“I can hardly recognize you in some of them,” Leischneudel said, “and I know you, after all.”

Lopez had two victims, maybe three. Angeline was probably number four. All exsanguinated and left in underground locations.

Daemon's involvement as a suspect ensured that Angeline's murder would be complicated to prosecute successfully—impossible, perhaps, if the police took so much as a single misstep. Of course Lopez was being cautious and thorough. He had to be. It was his duty.

But I knew someone every bit as capable and dedicated as Lopez who didn't share the constraints of his world.

Photos. Pictures. A clear image to analyze.

Yes, I thought with relief, I knew who could give me some clarity on the big picture here.

“So I'll come by for you a little before four o'clock?” Leischneudel said.

“No,” I replied. “I won't be here. We'll have to go to the theater separately today.”

This suggestion met with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “Separately?”

“It'll be okay.” Trying to sound confident, I said, “All things considered, I'm sure there will be plenty of policemen on crowd control today.”

“But where will you be? I could meet you somewhere, and then we could—”

“I'm not quite sure where I'll be,” I lied, not wanting to bring Leischneudel along while I asked a 350-year-old mage about vampires. “And I don't want to make you late for work, if I'm running behind schedule.”

“Esther, are you all right?”

“I'm fine. I just have to go see a man about a camera.”

“W
ell, there is one obvious question I must ask immediately,” said Dr. Maximillian Zadok (Oxford University, class of 1678), gazing at me intently as he considered the events I had just related to him in full. A short, slightly chubby man with innocent blue eyes, longish white hair, and a tidy beard, he spoke English with the faint trace of an accent, reflecting his origins in Central Europe centuries ago. “Are there any Lithuanians involved in this matter?”

“Lithu . . . Oh. Um.”

As long as I had known Max (which had only been six or seven months—but it often
seemed
much longer), he'd had a . . . a
thing
about Lithuanians. He had never explained it, and I had never really pursued it; but as near as I could tell, he and Lithuanians seemed to be like two Mafia families. Not necessarily enemies, but separate and wary; and if you belonged to one, then you couldn't belong to the other.

His raising the subject again sparked my curiosity; but with more urgent questions at hand, such as whether a vampire was stalking the city, this didn't seem the time for me to insist on an explanation about Max's complicated relationship with the people of a small Baltic nation.

“Er, no, to my knowledge, there are no Lithuanians involved,” I said. “I haven't gone around specifically asking everyone's ethnicity, but no self-identified Lithuanians have stepped forward.”

“No?” Max frowned. “I find that surprising. Even puzzling.”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Hmm.” He stroked his beard, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Tell me, were the victims' intestines consumed?”

“By
consumed,
you mean . . .”

“Eaten.”

“Yeah, I was afraid that was what you meant,” I said. “I have no idea. I suppose it's possible. Even though Lopez was so tired that he said more than he meant to, that's the kind of detail I'm pretty sure he would deliberately omit when talking to me.” If only to spare me from having nightmares.

“Oh, I meant to ask, how
is
Detective Lopez?”

I had come to Zadok's Rare and Used Books, located in a townhouse on a side street in Greenwich Village, after showering, dressing, eating, and packing my tote bag with everything I'd need to get me through the day. If anyone in New York could shed light into the dark corners of this situation, it was surely Max—talented mage, long-lived alchemist, ardent student of magic and mysticism, and local representative of the Magnum Collegium, an ancient worldwide (albeit obscure) organization dedicated to confronting Evil wherever it lurked. Max's help and guidance had saved my life (and the lives of others) on previous occasions, and it was through our friendship that I had discovered that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than were dreamt of in my philosophy.

“How is Lopez?” I said. “If you mean, did anything weird or mysterious happen while he was with me, the answer is no.”

There had been previous . . . incidents.

I'd been in deadly danger one night when Lopez was trying to rescue me, in a pitch-dark church where the electricity had been disabled; my life was saved when the lights inexplicably started working again, apparently in response to his will. On another occasion, he had experienced possession by a fiery Vodou spirit. And then there was the memorable night my bed caught fire for no apparent reason ... while he was in it.

Lopez barely even acknowledged it as a noticeable coincidence that the church lights that night had started working when he wanted them to. He didn't remember the spirit possession at all (which, Max had told me, was a common reaction among those who'd been possessed). And he thought something was wrong—
really
wrong—with my mattress, so he wanted an arson investigator to examine it. (However, like most things left outside in my neighborhood, the ruined mattress promptly vanished.)

Max wasn't sure what to make of these episodes, but he thought it was possible that Lopez possessed unconscious, unwitting mystical talent of some sort. I knew without asking that my ex-almost-boyfriend would find such a theory only slightly less absurd than Daemon's claims about being a vampire. And I . . . I really didn't know what to think.

“Actually, I was just asking after his health and well-being,” Max said. “I haven't encountered him since that ferocious night in Harlem when death came uncomfortably close to embracing him.”

“
Too
close,” I said. “Much,
much
too close. I can't get him involved in anything like that again, Max.”

“He seems to be deeply involved in
this
matter already,” my friend pointed out gently. “As is his way when there is danger afoot.”

“Well, I guess the one thing we can all agree on is that there's
danger,
” I said. “The question is, is it the sort of ‘mundane' danger that the police are equipped to deal with—such as a serial killer with, um, exsanguination equipment? Or is the killer—despite Lopez's undisguised contempt for this theory—an immortal creature of the night sinking its fangs into people's necks to drink their blood?”

“Oh, I very much doubt it's
that,
” Max said, shaking his head.

“Really?”

“Indeed, no. I share Detective Lopez's conviction that such a theory is too outlandish to entertain seriously.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” I said, feeling relieved and very glad that I had come here and told Max everything.
Vampires.
What had I been thinking? I laughed a little. “It must be the atmosphere I've been living in lately. You know—this gothic play, our bizarre leading man, the vamparazzi. I guess it all got to me. I really worked myself into a state of nerves by the time I got here.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Max said kindly.

He patted my hand, then offered to pour me more tea. I accepted. We were chatting in a pair of comfortable old easy chairs next to the little gas fireplace in the bookstore. Nearby was the small refreshment station that Max kept stocked with coffee, tea, cookies, and other treats for his customers. There was also a large, careworn walnut table with books, papers, an abacus, writing implements, and other paraphernalia on it. Along the far wall of the shop there was an extremely large wooden cupboard that happened to be possessed; although the cupboard was prone to alarming displays of smoke, noise, shrieks, and agitated rattling, it seemed to be silent and dormant today—as it often was for weeks at a time.

The shop had well-worn hardwood floors, a broadbeamed ceiling, and dusky rose walls. Its layout was defined by a rabbit warren of tall bookcases stuffed with a wide variety of books about the occult, printed in more than a dozen languages. The stock ranged from recent paperbacks to old, rare, and very expensive leatherbound tomes.

The bookstore had a small, fiercely loyal customer base, and it got some foot traffic from curious passersby. But the shop was primarily an innocuous front for Max's real work, which was protecting New York and its inhabitants from Evil. I didn't know whether fighting Evil paid well (did the Magnum Collegium dole out fiscal rewards and bonuses?) or whether Max had invested wisely over the course of his three and a half centuries of life; I just knew that he seemed to have a comfortable income, and I rather doubted it came from the desultory business that the bookstore did.

After Max poured me another cup of tea, he also offered me a cookie. I declined, but the mere mention of something edible caused Nelli to wake up, lift her head, and look at us imploringly, her expression suggesting that she was only moments away from dying of starvation.

“No, Nelli,” Max said firmly. “We've discussed this before. The veterinarian says that sugar will wreak havoc with your delicate metabolism.”

She gave a little groan of disappointment and laid her head back down on her paws.

Nelli was Max's canine familiar. I had been present on the chaotic occasion when she transmuted from an ethereal dimension and assumed physical form in this one, in response to Max's supplication for assistance in confronting Evil in New York City. Although she was (despite Max's objection to the word as inaccurate and inadequate for a being of Nelli's complex mystical nature) a dog, she was nearly as big as a Shetland pony. Her massive head was long and square-jawed, framed by two floppy, overlong ears. The fur on her paws and face was silky brown, and the rest of her well-muscled physique was covered by short, smooth, tan fur.

I leaned back in my chair and sipped my tea, realizing that I had let myself get carried away. “What with all the craziness surrounding the show, I guess the pump was really primed, so to speak, when Lopez told me about the exsanguinations.” I shook my head. “I talked myself into thinking there's a vampire prowling the city.”

“Oh, that could very well be the case,” Max said, matter-of-factly. “Although vampires are not the
only
beings who consume the blood of their victims, exsanguination is such a prevalent feature of vampirism that it would be foolhardy not to consider the possibility of a vampire being responsible for these slayings.”

“But we can certainly rule out
imaginary
creatures.”

Confused, I sputtered, “But you—you . . .
Vampires?
You just said . . . Lopez . . . too outlandish . . .”

“Oh, dear. I see.” Max made an
tsk-tsk
noise while shaking his head. “Fiction writers have a
great deal
to answer for. The absurd misinformation they have encouraged people to believe about a truly dangerous phenomenon is inexcusable! I don't wish to sound unduly critical or censorious—and no one enjoys a good yarn more than I do—but I consider perpetration of such absurd falsehoods to be unconscionably irresponsible.”