Chapter 12
“That’s a good start,” Clyde said to Sara as she finished telling him about what she had learned from the lady at the Laundromat, “but I need you to find him.”
Clyde’s expression had remained stony as we each told him what we had found out. I noted a brief clenching of his jaw as he took in the details about the necromancer when Sara described him, but otherwise, there was no sign that the vampire was in the least affected by what we had to say. Though it was a tell, I wasn’t sure what it meant yet. He either already knew who the mage was, or he had a suspicion confirmed. Regardless, it just meant he hadn’t told us everything, which was something I already knew.
Sara shifted in her seat, a sign she was uncomfortable. It was a small miracle she’d been able to get as much information as she had out of that woman. Clyde probably didn’t realize we’d struck what was the private investigator’s equivalent of a gold vein, or maybe he just didn’t care.
I wasn’t all that surprised. Trinity had led us straight to Clyde as soon as we returned. The room we were in now was one we had passed through the first night on our way to see him. Well-lit and without the strobes, it was almost homey. There were numerous overstuffed chairs and couches, and the artwork on the walls, which hadn’t been there the night of the S&M-themed party, was of fields and horses and English countryside scenes.
He had placed himself in the center of it all, sprawled on a leather couch that matched the red silk-screen wallpaper. Fabian was seated on the other end with one leg thrown casually over the other.
Once again, Clyde wasn’t wearing a shirt, only this time he had on stone-washed jeans that weren’t so tight that nothing was left to the imagination. His followers—minions—whatever they were—had taken seats around him, some of them taking notes, others on the phone or tapping away on laptops, and a couple on the floor in front of Clyde, touching him and probably giving him the occasional compliment to stroke his ego. Or something else. Who knew, right?
I couldn’t help but wonder if every time he arranged to see us, he prepared in advance to pose in such a way that he would look devastating. If I hadn’t seen Royce do much the same every now and then, I might have been more impressed, but his posturing was getting old very fast.
As much as I wanted to call him on it, and ask him why he didn’t just use whatever connections he must have in the LAPD to track the necromancer down, it didn’t seem like a good time to push him. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask, but I already knew how he was going to answer.
“Clyde,” I said, quickly amending my words after seeing his expression, “Mr. Seabreeze, we don’t have access to our resources out here, and we can’t use our PI licenses or announce our presence to local authorities. It would defeat the purpose of our coming here. Is there anyway you can ask the police to look into this with the information we gave you? We’ve got a getaway vehicle description—a rented van. With that kind of information, they’d probably find this guy a lot faster than we can.”
“I don’t want the police involved in my affairs. There’s little they can do against a magical menace like a necromancer. If they were to find him first, they would inevitably die, and thus draw more bad press down on Others. I can’t allow it.”
His answer cemented my earlier theory that he knew who was behind this. From all I knew about him, he loved being in the spotlight, and he would undoubtedly have jumped on the opportunity to come across as the “victim” of some kind of hate crime if the culprit had been human instead of Other. This was something deeply personal, an affront to Clyde’s power structure and tenuous hold on this city.
I needed to get in touch with Royce as soon as possible and see if we could come back to New York or if there was somewhere else we could go. This place was more dangerous than where we’d been, if not in the same way, if Clyde was bringing down this kind of heat on himself.
As much as I wanted to come back with a smart-ass reply, I put on my best professional face and tone, bearing in mind that pissing him off would be unwise. “Okay. I’m not saying this to make you upset, but do you realize we have no way of following the leads we were able to scrounge up? It’s a dead end.”
His blue eyes gleamed, and I detected a hint of fang in his humorless smile as he leaned closer to me. “Really? No, Ms. Waynest, it hadn’t occurred to me.”
His sarcasm was really unnecessary. It took every last shred of willpower I had to keep from saying something snarky in return.
“I chose to use you for your investigative skills. If you are too incompetent to do the job, I’m sure you can find someone else to take you in.”
“No,” Sara said, stepping forward. Some of the other vampires in the room leaned in, their own eyes taking on a touch of red. “No, we’ll figure it out. We’re just going to need more time.”
Fabian rose from his seat beside Clyde, his eyes sliding over us in a way that nearly felt like fingers crawling over my skin. Creepy. I got the idea this was the first time he felt like we might be bringing something useful to the table, and that he also didn’t like it. There was something about the aura he was projecting that made me wonder what his stakes were in this.
“You’ve discovered much in a short period of time. I think perhaps you underestimate what you can do for us. Find the boy, and you will be suitably rewarded. ”
Clyde shot Fabian a look that I interpreted as “shut the hell up.” He then sat up and rested his elbows on his knees, giving Sara and me a smile that might have been endearing if he had kept his fangs to himself. “Continue your search as long as necessary. Use any of my resources you need to—but stay away from the local police. You wouldn’t want to be discovered and extradited back to New York, now, would you?”
Sara and I both shook our heads.
“Good. Give Trinity the details. I will see if I can have one of my people find out who rented that van and what the reported destination was supposed to be, though I am not sure the information will help you much. You two keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on the right track.”
Interesting. Clyde (and maybe Fabian?) had to know more than he was saying, but clearly wasn’t going to tell us what that was. At this point, I suspected he didn’t want to find out who was killing his people—he already had that information and wasn’t of a mind to share—he just wanted to know where they were. Maybe to test how good we were at our jobs, too.
If we found the necromancer, I had little doubt Clyde would try to kill the guy, but I also wondered what had started this mess and why they were both working so hard to fight each other while going unnoticed. The mage was covering his tracks, and Clyde didn’t want the cops involved. For Fabian to be here, I had the feeling something big was going on that meant Clyde had bitten off more than he could chew, and he needed the help of an older, more experienced vampire to make the Big Bad go away.
As for why they were so hell-bent on keeping things secret, it was possible old habits died hard. Others had kept their existence secret for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The decade or so that had passed since Rohrik Donovan and the Moonwalker pack had revealed that werewolves and vampires and magi and who knew what all were living alongside humanity wasn’t nearly long enough for most people to get used to it. The bulk of the supernatural community—the ones who had been around before their big reveal to the bulk of society—might have been experts at hiding their inter-Other wars from people, but somehow that didn’t seem like a good enough reason.
No, there was something deeply personal going on. But what?
The investigative part of me was itching to twist Clyde’s arm to work more out of him, but it wasn’t the time. Sara and I excused ourselves, and Trinity escorted us back to the guest house. If I was ever going to deliver that package of Analie’s, we’d need to figure out a way to travel without our babysitter. Maybe tomorrow I would see about having Clyde let us take the car without a driver. It was unlikely he’d allow it, but we could always ask.
Trinity hovered in the door once we were inside, frowning at us. I raised a brow in question.
“You two should be careful.”
Sara smirked, tossing her purse on the first step and leaning against the banister. “We’re doing our best, but I have the feeling your boss doesn’t care. You know something we don’t?”
Trinity backed out of the door, lowering her head. I wondered if she was trying to keep what she was saying from being picked up by the security camera, or if she actually felt bad about how Clyde was treating us.
“You’re doing better than I thought you would,” she said. “Still, it’s worse than you know. I can’t tell you, he’d—I just can’t. But trust me when I say you don’t want to be around when he finds out where this necromancer is staying. It’ll be bad—for all of us.”
With that, she turned on her heel and fled. We didn’t even get a chance to tell her the details about the van.
“What is it about vampires and cryptic statements? Is it physically impossible for them to say what’s on their minds?” Sara asked.
I laughed. “Yeah, something like that. You should have seen Royce when he finally admitted that he was hiding things from me. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Yeah, well, you almost didn’t. How are you feeling, anyway? Arnold told me he’s still trying to find out what’s going on with you.”
That made me cringe. I hadn’t thought Arnold would talk to Sara about my problems, but I shouldn’t have been too surprised. They were dating, after all.
Sara must have gathered that she’d hit a sore spot. She clapped me on the back and then started up the stairs. “Don’t worry too much. Once we get out of here, I’m sure Arnold will find a cure.”
Being reminded of the illness didn’t make me feel much better. Though Sara had sat with me while I was spitting out that black crud in the bathroom, I wasn’t sure exactly how much she knew about what was wrong with me. I didn’t want to face the idea that I was part lycanthrope or part vampire or whatever I might be. It had to pass. Whatever it was, it had to work its way out eventually. The pain had lessened, and I wasn’t growing fur in weird places. It had to be working its way out of my system.
Lowering my head and rubbing my fingertips over my eyes, I did my best to put it all away in the back of my head. Worrying about the infection on top of what Clyde was hiding, where we were going to turn for clues now that we had to follow what was essentially a dead end, and what was going to happen if Sara and I blew the lid on where the necromancer was hiding, was just one problem too many. Oh, and let us not forget that I was obligated to figure out how to get Analie’s package to a bunch of werewolves that might eat me if I showed up smelling like vampires.
If I could, I’d avoid thinking about the infection the entire time I was here, and maybe even after I got back to New York.
Denial. Not just a river in Egypt.
Those pleasant thoughts in mind, I trudged up the stairs after Sara, wishing I could call my mom and dad and see how they were doing. My dad might not speak to me, but my mom—maybe she wasn’t biased against me for being involved with Others. Not to mention my brothers. Mikey hadn’t seemed surprised or upset by my involvement with the Others and had even offered to represent me in court if it came down to that. It was good having a lawyer in the family.
Damien, on the other hand, had probably found out from the papers if my dad hadn’t told him first. I would have to find another disposable phone, or maybe see about borrowing one from somebody outside of Clyde’s retinue to see how they were doing. Not knowing was killing me, and even with Royce’s assurances that he’d been doing what he could to take care of them—discreetly—in my absence, it didn’t make it any easier to cope with not having heard my mother’s voice in over a month.
As I changed my clothes and crawled into bed, I had to fight the urge to cry. Someday this would all be over. I could hug my mom again. I could tease Damien about his crappy taste in movies, and Mike about never getting married.
I could tell Dad what an asshole he was for trying to disown me, and then show him that I wasn’t so different from the little girl whose bruised knees he had kissed better.
It was a long, lonely time before I finally managed to get to sleep.