He would have another house, I thought. One suitably grand with a professional garden and lawn service that kept it beautiful. There he would receive his business guests.
This place, with its neglected and overgrown gardens, was his home. What did it tell me about him?
Other than that he liked quality over size and preferred privacy to beauty or order.
The walls surrounding the grounds were older than the house, made of quarried stone and hand laid without mortar. The gate was wrought iron and ornate. His house wasn't really small - it just looked undersized for the presentation it was given. Doubtless the house it had replaced had been huge and better suited to the property, if not to the vampire.
Corban paused in front of the door. "Run if you can," he said. "It isn't right... not your problem."
"Blackwood has made it my problem," I told him. I walked in front of him and pushed open the door.
"Hey, honey, I'm home," I announced in my best fifties-movie-starlet voice. Kyle, I felt, would have approved of the voice, but not the wardrobe. My shirt was going on a day and a half, the jeans... I didn't remember how long I'd been wearing the jeans. Not much longer than the shirt. The entryway was empty. But not for long.
"Mercedes Thompson, my dear," said the vampire. "Welcome to my home at long last." He glanced at Corban. "You have served. Go rest, my dear guest."
Corban hesitated. "Chad?"
The vampire had been looking at me like I was something that delighted him... maybe he needed some breakfast. Corban's interruption caused a flash of irritation to sweep briefly across his face. "Have you not completed the mission I gave you? What harm could the boy come to if that is true? Now go rest."
I let all thoughts of Corban drift from me. His fate, his son's fate... Amber's fate were beyond my control right now. I could afford only to concentrate on the here and now.
It was a trick Bran had taught to us all on our first hunt. Not to worry about what had been or what would be, just the now. Not what a human might feel knowing she'd killed a rabbit that had never done her any harm. That she'd killed it with teeth and claws, and eaten it raw with relish... including parts her human side would rather have not known were inside a soft and fuzzy bunny.
So I forgot about the bunny, about what the results of tonight might be, and focused on the here and now. I forced back the panic that wanted to stop my breath and thought, Here and now.
The vampire had given up his business suit. Like most of the vampires I'd met, he was more comfortable in clothing of other eras. Werewolves learn to go with the times so they don't fall into the temptation of living in the past.
I can place women's fashions of the past hundred years within about ten years, and before that to the nearest century. Men's clothing not so much, especially when they are not formal clothes. The button fly on his cotton pants told me it was before zippers were used much. His shirt was dark brown with a tunic neck that would allow it to be pulled over his head, so there were no buttons on it.
Know your prey, Bran had told us. Observe.
"James Blackwood," I said. "You know, when Corban introduced us, I couldn't believe my ears."
He smiled, pleased. "I scared you." But then he frowned. "You are not frightened now."
Rabbit, I thought hard. And made the mistake of meeting his eyes the way I had that little bunny's so long ago - as I had Aurielle's last night. But neither Aurielle nor the bunny had been a vampire.
I
WOKE UP TUCKED INTO A TWIN-SIZED BED, AND, NO MATTER how hard I tried, I couldn't see beyond that moment when he'd met my eyes. The room was mostly dark, with no sign of a window to be seen. The only light came from a night-light plugged into a wall socket next to a door. I threw back the covers and saw that he'd stripped me to my panties. Shuddering, I dropped to my knees... remembering... remembering other things.
"Tim is dead," I said, and the sound came out in a growl worthy of Adam. And once I'd heard it and knew it for a fact, I realized I didn't smell of sex the way that Amber had. I did, however, smell of blood. I reached up to my neck and found the first set of bite marks, the second, and a new third just a centimeter to the left of the second.
Stefan's had healed.
I shook a little in relief that it wasn't worse, then a little more in anger that didn't quite hide how frightened I was. But relief and anger wouldn't leave me helpless in the middle of a panic attack.
The door was locked, and he had left me with nothing to pick it with. The light switch worked, but it didn't show me anything I hadn't seen. A plastic bin that held only my jeans and T-shirt. There was a quarter and the letter for Stefan in my pants pockets, but he'd taken the pair of screws I'd collected while trying to fix the woman's clutch at the rest stop on the way to Amber's house.
The bed was a stack of foam mattress pads that would yield nothing I could make into weapon or tool. "His prey never escapes," whispered a voice in my ear.
I froze where I knelt beside the bed. There was no one else in the room with me.
"I should know," it... he said. "I've watched them try."
I turned slowly around but saw nothing... but the smell of blood was growing stronger.
"Was it you at the boy's house?" I asked.
"Poor boy," said the voice sadly, but it was more solid now. "Poor boy with the yellow car. I wish I had a yellow car..."
Ghosts are odd things. The trick would be getting all the information I could without driving it away by asking something that conflicted with its understanding of the world. This one seemed pretty cognizant for a ghost.