Bones sat next to me. He wore a suit and tie. A briefcase was at his feet, right next to his shiny business shoes. In his professional ensemble, complete with thin, rimless glasses, he appeared the very picture of mundane respectability. Talk about a disguise.
“So you see, Mrs. Phillips, why we would feel this was important enough to interrupt you at your place of employment,” Bones was saying. “We at the Internal Revenue Service take tax evasion very seriously.”
“Of course you would,” the brunette sitting at her desk opposite us agreed. She kept twisting her fake pearls around her neck. Madeline Phillips was a real estate agent in Hocking County. Her office was tidy, with several pictures of her and a smiling Amanda Phillips in the room.
“Now, if I understand you correctly…” Bones consulted the paperwork in his hands, which had nothing to do with tax laws. “You filed last year that your daughter Amanda was living at home, still a dependent, and attending Hocking Community College. Is that your position for this current year as well?”
A firm nod. “Yes.”
My head banged louder. The pantyhose I wore felt like a lower-body straitjacket. I’d never worn any before, and I wasn’t going to make it a habit. They went well with my long wool skirt and matching jacket, however.
Bones leaned forward. “Mrs. Phillips. You called the police last July to report that your daughter hadn’t come home. Then you never followed up with that. Are you telling me Amanda lives with you, even as of today?”
Her fingers drummed on the desk. “Yes. Granted, she had me worried that night, but she apologized and hasn’t done it since. You’re too young to have a twenty-year-old child, but let me tell you, they’re a handful. She’s always on the run.”
Madeleine Phillips was wrong on both counts. Bones could be a great-great-great grandfather if vampires reproduced, and Amanda hadn’t been on the run at all lately. She was dead. And if that weren’t bad enough, according to Winston, she’d been dead for over a month.
I got up and closed the verticals without being asked. Our charade of being IRS agents in order to get a private meeting with Mrs. Phillips was over. It was time to go green and find out if this woman was the coldest bitch on the planet… or the most deceived.
When I turned around, locking the door as a last precaution, Bones already had his brights on. He leaned over the desk toward Madeline, his unnecessary glasses off.
“Look deeper, that’s right… Now tell me, when did you really last see Amanda?”
Her eyes were crystal blue and transfixed on his. “I-I don’t know… I don’t know!”
“Kitten, you might want to turn your back.”
“Why?” God, he wasn’t going to start beating the shit out of her, was he?
“She’s been bitten—I can feel it,” he replied flatly. “I’ll have to drink from her to push her past it. Otherwise she can’t answer me with the truth.”
Oh. I cleared my throat. No, I didn’t care to see Bones feed, he was right about that. But it seemed cowardly in the extreme to turn around.
“Go ahead. Do what you have to do.”
Bones met my eyes briefly, then circled around the desk to where Madeline sat. Her hair was already up in a bun, so he didn’t have to bother with that. He undid a button on her shirt, pulling her collar open farther, and bent to her neck.
I only saw the back of his head and her face. Heard her slight intake of breath, saw her mouth open to make the sound, and then watched her eyelids slowly close. When they were all the way shut, he pulled back, rebuttoning her blouse and kneeling in front of her.
“No marks,” I said, feeling very strange and remembering how there hadn’t been any on the other girl I’d stumbled on him feeding from weeks ago. “How, ah… How do you close the holes?”
“You already know that.”
My fingers clenched, which was ridiculous. Yeah, I had a good idea, but hearing it confirmed didn’t make me any happier. He’d cut his tongue on a fang and held it over the spot until it healed. Since we’d been sleeping together, my method of swallowing his blood had gone from licking it off his fingers to sucking it from his tongue after he did that while we kissed. It was no surprise to discover he had more than one use for it and learn where he’d gotten the idea from.
“It’s not the same,” he said quietly, studying my face.
“We have more important things going on. Ask her about her daughter, for God’s sake.” My voice was harsher than I’d meant it to be, because I wasn’t really mad at him. I was sick over this whole thing. So many girls missing or dead, and we still didn’t know how many people were involved. Before we came here, we’d looked into the other names Winston had given me. Aside from Violet Perkins, whose human boyfriend had strangled her in a mescaline-induced rage, none of the others had even been reported missing. They were dead, and no one, not even their families, knew anything about it.
He stared at me for another second before returning his gaze to Madeline. “Now tell me, and nothing is hidden any longer, when did you last see Amanda? You don’t have to be afraid. No one will hurt you.”
She started to shake. Tears flowed, and her face transformed into an expression of agony. “I don’t know where my little girl is! She went out after her birthday in July, months ago, and she never came home!” Her voice rose. “She never came home!”
Bones held a finger to her lips. “Easy now, Madeline. Shhh. I’m going to help you, so don’t fret. Who made you believe Amanda was home? When did it happen?”
In a steadier tone, she relayed how the day after her daughter hadn’t come home, someone else had. Madeline couldn’t tell us what he looked like. She’d been hit with his eyes too fast, but she knew it was a man, for what little information that was worth. He’d instilled in her that Amanda was fine, she’d just seen her, and to go about her usual routine and do nothing further with the police. It had helped that her ex-husband was a loser neither of them had seen in years. Madeline’s parents were deceased, and she had no other children. To any of Amanda’s friends who called, Madeline had been programmed to say she’d moved. Just like the Spencers, though their daughter had told them that herself, and the jury was still out on whether Natalie was a victim or a villain.
So Madeline continued to pay for an education which wasn’t utilized, kept Amanda’s insurance current on a vehicle that wasn’t there, and was oblivious to the fact that she’d never seen her daughter again.
“All right, Madeline,” Bones said when she was finished. “I want you to look at the clock. It’s three minutes to five. When its five o’clock, you won’t remember anything you’ve just said. Or anything I’ve asked you. We’re just two IRS agents who inquired about your returns, and now you’re no longer going to lie on your taxes. We didn’t talk about anything else, and nothing has changed with your daughter.”
“What?” I gasped.
“She walks out of this room saying anything else, and what do you think will happen?” he asked me without looking away. “They know who she is. She’ll be lucky if they just kill her, but in all likelihood, they’ll have a waste-not, want-not attitude. You want to sentence her to that? I’d say she’s had enough cruelty done to her.”
“But… But it’s…” There weren’t enough words to describe how wrong that felt, leaving her in her state of instilled illusions.
“Not until they’re dead, Kitten. That’s the only way she’ll be safe.”
There was no other point I could argue. He was right. It was still wrong, but in this case, wrong was the best we could do for her.
Seconds ticked past. Bones moved away and was seated again when the clock struck five. Madeline blinked—and then her features settled back into polite wariness without a hint of their former pain.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Phillips,” he said, rising. “We’ll be leaving now.”
She stood as well, unaware that tears were still drying on her face. “I’ll have my accountant go over those figures more carefully next time.”
He nodded. “We won’t need to return if you do, I’m sure.”
I left without speaking. What could I say? Have a nice day?
Bones placed a hand on my back as we left the building. His touch was light, barely discernable, yet it kept my legs straight as we walked. I wanted to cry. I wanted to kill someone. I didn’t want to ever know things like this could actually happen.
“They kept her alive for two months,” was what I said as we got into the rental car.
Bones didn’t start it. He just looked at me. “You’ve already done a great deal to help these girls. More than can be expected. There’s no shame in letting me take it the rest of the way. You won’t be abandoning them.”
I considered dropping out for a selfish, weak second. Then I shook my head. “I’m in it until the end. However long that takes.”
He put the key in the ignition and didn’t say anything else. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes.
After several minutes, something unrelated nagged at me. “Why did you tell Madeline to stop fudging numbers on her taxes? How did you know she was doing that?”
“Come now, Kitten,” Bones said with a knowing grunt. “Who doesn’t?”