“Mr. Barclay sends his regards,” the vampire said, extending the envelope.
I tried to keep my hand from shaking as I took it but was only partially successful.
“Mr. Barclay should try making an appointment or use the postal service,” I said, whirling away from him and unlocking the door. I slipped inside and pulled the door closed after me.
I ran up the stairs, stopping at each landing and scouting the hallways before proceeding. Finally reaching my apartment, I let myself in and sent extra power into my wards, then turned on the light and fell onto the couch. My heart was still pounding.
After I calmed down a little, I hung up my coat, then went to the kitchen and poured myself a double measure of whiskey. Only then did I open the envelope and pull out the letter inside.
Miss McLane,
I have missed you. It would give me great pleasure to have you join me for dinner at my home on Tuesday, November 16.
I have noted with great interest your meetings with my colleagues and should be fascinated to hear about them. I hope you have thought about the great rewards that could be yours should you reconsider my offer of us joining forces.
With my kindest regards,
Rodrick Barclay
My first thought was that it would be a cold day in hell when I next visited Barclay at his home. He had tried to kidnap me and have me killed, and he also worked with an Illuminati operative trying to silence me. Of course, I was convinced that he was crazy, so he probably didn’t see any contradictions in his behavior.
The problem was in how to tell a homicidal lunatic that you didn’t want to play with him. None of my training covered that sort of thing. I just knew that I felt very lonely and wished an adult would show up to make everything better.
Chapter 5
As soon as I got out of bed, I hauled my butt down to Rosie’s to show Sam the note from Rodrick Barclay.
“The man is truly daft,” Sam said, gazing at the letter as I dug into my breakfast. “Does he really think you’d show up there after he tried to kidnap you?”
I took a sip of coffee to wash down a mouthful of omelet, then said, “Note that there’s no way to contact him to say I decline. And how am I supposed to get there? Fly? He just seems to assume that my chauffeur will deposit me on his doorstep. Hell, he doesn’t even give me a time.”
Sam chuckled. “He doesn’t say if he’s going to feed you dinner, or if you’re going to be dinner. If the latter, then I guess it doesn’t matter what time you show up.”
I stared at him, aghast. I hadn’t even considered that.
“Surely, you don’t think Barclay considers a million dollars as a ‘great reward’,” Sam said. “A million is just a pittance. And while we’re on the subject, did that other chap, Gallagher, offer to make you queen of his realm, also?”
Luckily, I wasn’t drinking or chewing on anything when he asked me that.
I sputtered for a moment, then calmed down. “No, he was more straightforward. He just invited me to a party so he could screw me and drink my blood. Said I would enjoy it.”
“An honest bloodsucker,” Sam said in a musing voice. “Who woulda thought?”
“So, what do I do about Barclay?”
Sam shook his head. “I have no idea. You don’t want to ask any of his competitors for help, because in their way of looking at things, that would put you under their protection. And being in debt to a vampire is as bad as a debt to the Fae.” He sighed. “You could go up there and kill him, I suppose. The only problem would be getting out alive. While Lord Carleton was very picky about who he chose to turn, my sources tell me that Barclay is actively building up his forces.”
“You’re joking.”
“Ask your friend Lieutenant Blair if there has been an uptick in missing persons lately.”
“But what do I do about Barclay tonight?” I said. “I mean, I can sit alone in my apartment and hide behind my wards, but that’s a lousy way to spend my night off. And the problem will still be there tomorrow.”
“Come in here tonight,” Sam said. “Go home, get your toothbrush, and you can sleep in the apartment upstairs. I’ll think on it and try to figure out what to do about Barclay.”
I knew there was an apartment on the bar’s second floor—that’s where Sam’s mother Rosie lived when she was alive—but I had never seen it. Sam sometimes spent the night there when he didn’t feel like driving home.
When I left the Illuminati, I had taken a hand-written book, The History of the Illuminati. To my knowledge, I had the only copy, and I was the only living person who had ever read it. It mentioned vampire wars at least a dozen times, mostly during ages past in Europe or the Middle East. One of the consistent details about all of those conflicts was that the different factions built up their manpower in preparation for the fight.
A vampire “turned” a human into a vampire by draining their blood to near death, then feeding the human some of the vampire’s blood. After three days, during which the person appeared to be dead, most of the new vampires arose—ravenous, nearly mindless, and absolutely in thrall to their parent. Blood and discipline over several weeks brought the mind back to a functional level. But just like human teenagers were driven by their hormones, new vamps were driven by their predatory instincts and need for blood. That made them highly dangerous, and only their parent could control them.
I wondered if Barclay was the only one building his forces, or if Flynn, Gallagher, and Montgomery were also turning victims as fast as they could. Flynn’s and Montgomery’s nightclubs provided a steady flow of candidates.
Humans often became addicted to a vampire’s bite. The enzyme that prevented coagulation also released endorphins and other pleasure hormones in the victim. As a result, groupies—called “thralls” by the vamps, and often called “blood whores” by outsiders—usually provided older and wealthier vampires with a steady supply of blood. Someone like Flynn certainly didn’t hang out in public parks when he was hungry, hoping a stupid coed happened by, and I doubted he was drinking sheep’s blood.
Normally, vampires avoided turning their bloodstock into new vamps. An overabundance of bloodsuckers tended to overgraze the available food supply, and angry villagers tended to notice when too many of their family members disappeared. Thus, Lord Carleton had only four children senior enough to vie for his seat. But those considerations went out the window when a war threatened and cannon fodder was needed.
I hiked back to my place and borrowed the phone in the apartment complex office to call Jordan Blair. It reminded me that I really should check into whether I could afford a phone now that I’d been working long enough and I wasn’t living on my tips from day to day.
“Erin, what a pleasant surprise,” Blair said when I identified myself. “What’s going on?”
“I’m wondering if you’ve seen an increase in missing persons. Say, over the past three months?”
“I don’t know. I can check.” His voice took on a suspicious tone. “Why are you interested?”
“Get me an answer, and then I’ll tell you,” I said. “I’ll even buy you and Frankie a drink on Thursday night if you stop by the bar.”
There was a moment of silence, then he said, “I’ll ask Frankie to find out. Why do I have a feeling neither of us is going to be happy about the answer? See you Thursday.”
Francis “Frankie” Jones was Blair’s boss and the Assistant District Attorney whose responsibility was keeping the supernatural world from public notice. Unlike Blair, Frankie was talented, an aeromancer of considerable strength. I had helped her a couple of times, and we’d developed a kind of friendship.
Feeling restless and unsettled, I took the train downtown all the way to the harbor and walked around, watching the ocean and the gulls and feeling the breeze. I ate fish and chips at a little café, then walked some more.
It had been more than three months since I delivered the artifact to Master Benedict that destroyed the Illuminati, and my life was vastly different than it had been before. I was used to structure, to knowing how I fit into the world, of who I was. A Hunter. A powerful mage. A trusted aide and confidant of one of the most powerful men in the world. His bedmate. He made me feel safe and wanted.
Then all of that changed, and I was cast adrift, making my own decisions, charting my own path. And I had absolutely no training and no experience in doing that. I realized that at twenty-three, I was woefully unprepared to be an adult.
Oh, I could function and act like an adult. Sam said I did a great job running the bar, and people seemed to like me. But that was a structured environment. The bar had rules and standards. I had friends for the first time since I was a little girl. I was still figuring out what that meant, but it felt good. They made me feel good. They made me feel as though I was worth something.
But when I was alone, I felt lost a lot of the time. I read that I should have goals, a plan for my life. By the time I was twenty-three, I should know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to be. I had absolutely no idea. I just lived from day to day. And in the back of my mind, always, was the terror that the Illuminati would find me and find out what I’d done. The Hunters would descend on Westport, and they would kill me, and probably kill anyone they suspected I might have talked to. And my soul would go to whatever hell a murderer and thief deserved.
Late in the afternoon, I grabbed a bus to the nearest train station, then took it back to my apartment. I stuffed a change of clothes and some toiletries into my backpack and took the creek-side path back to Rosie’s.
Sam took me up to his mom’s former apartment and showed me a bedroom I could use. I didn’t know what to expect, but the place took me by surprise. It was large—the size of the bar downstairs. Three bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, two bathrooms, a laundry room, and a large living room, or parlor, were decorated in nineteenth-century Victorian style. Heavy wood furniture, Persian rugs on the floor, and Tiffany lamps. Rosie had lived in style.