I hurried over to him. “What are you doing here?”
Lionel continued to stare at Kingston. “That’s a vampire.” He had found an overcoat to wear over his tattered clothes. He reached inside the coat to pull out his pendant.
I grabbed his hand and stopped him. “What do you think you are doing? You shouldn’t be here. And you certainly shouldn’t dream of displaying the Cressington insignia.”
“But what he was doing...to you...”
I dragged him toward the exit, opened the door, and pushed him through. “We have to get out of here. I told you not come.”
“Danielle and I discovered something. I came to tell you.”
“What did you find out?”
“What was that vampire doing to you?”
I ignored him, guiding him back to his car. “Get in.”
He didn’t, instead staring at me across the roof of the car. “It looked voluntary,” he said. “Like you wanted it. You aren’t one of those perverts who enjoy having their blood sucked. What are they called?”
“Fawns?”
“No, something else.”
“Bloodbags?”
“Yes, that. Are you one of those?”
“I’m not. Well, I kind of was just there. I’ll explain later. Just tell me what you found out first.” I opened the passenger door and got in. Lionel did the same on the other side. I spoke up before he had a chance to say anything. “We haven’t much time. Tell me.”
“Danielle and I were talking,” Lionel said, “and I asked Danielle what could possibly cause Val to do what she had. Danielle realized that something must have happened to Val’s daughter. So, I rang up a contact I have in the police force, and we found out that a Connie Beaugard, with a mutilated body and unknown cause of death, was stolen from the city morgue.”
“Stolen. Why would Mortissa...?” I remembered the photo of Val and Connie in front of the Colescu mausoleum with the words “together forever” written on the back, and it hit me. It wasn’t Mortissa who had stolen the body, it was Val. “I know where to find her. Do you know where Mount Moriah Cemetery is?”
“Sure. But it’s closed down.”
“Just go. Drive us there. Fast.”
“Are you sure?” Lionel asked, switching on the engine and pulling out. “If we don’t find her there, we’ll be all out of options.”
“I’m right.” Despite some doubts, I added as much certainty into my voice as I could. I was basing a lot on an old photograph with words scrawled on the back. Still, no one had any better ideas. “Unless you’ve thou—” I turned around only to discover the back seat was empty. “Where’s Danielle?”
“Before I entered the casino, I told her she should go home,” Lionel said.
“And she agreed?” I would have expected her to want to stay and help.
“She was reluctant. So I shouted her down, calling her a lowdown lousy hood mage, and told her to scram before I called Father.”
“You did not.”
“I thought about it, then decided you’d call it ham-fisted. So I instead explained that with her life force so low, she wouldn’t be any help. That she should rest up.”
“What did she say?” I wasn’t sure she realized we had to undo the curse by dawn.
“She gave me a cell number and made me promise to call when we needed help. Dumb fool. I wanted her gone so I wouldn’t be tempted to betray her to my family, and she insists on giving me her number.”
“She must think a lot of your good nature.”
“Yes, well.” He glanced my way. “Good nature is only good for being abused, I’ve found.”
“Are you referring to me?”
“How can you even interact with vampires, never mind letting one do that to you?” Lionel shuddered.
“In my work as investigator, I work with all kinds. Vampires aren’t even the worst.”
“So you are going to defend vampires now? What they do? What they are?”
“Just as all mages aren’t the same, neither are vampires.”
Lionel shook his head. “They might not all be the same, but they are all killers.”
“Do vampires really have a choice?” I asked quietly. “Imagine a young woman, or man, attacked. Killed, or so she thinks, until she opens her eyes and finds herself changed. More powerful than before, but reigned by dark desires. At what point does she make the choice? When she first decides to hide from the day and not let the sun burn her flesh to char?”
I closed my eyes, remembering back to that night centuries ago. I’d never discovered who had turned me or why. Heavy dewdrops bowed leaves low; the churned-up earth smelled of decay. I knew what I had become, could already feel the dark hunger lurking inside me. And as the glimmers of an orange dawn rose in the east, I had briefly considered letting the sun take me.
“Forget about vampires in general,” Lionel said. “What about that one in particular who nuzzled at your neck, sucking you up like you were a spoon of dirty heroin?”
My eyes popped open again. “What about him?”
“Did you think of me when you agreed to let him do that to you?” Lionel asked.
“Why would I?”
“I see.”
“It’s just...” I trailed off. I couldn’t exactly say it wasn’t sexual. The pleasure, the bonding, the intimacy was similar. “You don’t have any call on me. It was just one kiss between us.”
“Of course. I had forgotten where I met you. The Pink Palace.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My voice rose along with my anger.
“You’re the investigator. Figure it out,” he shouted.
I opened my mouth to shout back, then forced myself to calm down. I was in the wrong, not him. Vampires were always in the wrong, I guessed, though not thinking about Lionel when I’d agreed to let Kingston feed on me had nothing to do with my vampire nature. Lionel obviously felt more for me than I did for him. What did I feel for him? It had been so long since I’d experienced anything good in my life that I didn’t know how to process what I was feeling.
A silence grew between us. I glanced across at Lionel’s profile. He stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched, fingers tight on the steering wheel. Was I abusing his good nature as he’d implied? He thought he was falling for me, but all I had done was lie to him. “Lionel.”
“Yes?”
I sought for words to explain the truth and came up empty. “Nothing.”
Silence returned, a silence in which uncomfortable feelings swirled above us like swollen storm clouds. We needed to work together to defeat Val and her curse. It was better to put all feelings and unspoken truths aside, and just deal with that. Afterward...Afterward, we would go our separate ways. A longing for more than that surged up within me, but I forced it back. Everything between us was based on a lie, which meant there was nothing between us. I had to accept that.
After a forever that only lasted a few minutes, Lionel parked the car and turned off the engine. “Why are we going to a closed cemetery again? You never told me what you learned from Grimstar in the casino.”
I got out of the car and waited for him to follow. “Remember that photo we saw of Val and her daughter in front of a tomb?” I couldn’t explain that I recognized it myself. “I described it to Grimstar, and he told me it was owned by Mortissa. When I remembered what was written on the back of the photo and heard about Connie’s body being taken, I realized that Val must have brought her daughter to the tomb.”
We passed under an archway smothered by leafy vines. Beyond, silhouettes of tombstones, mausoleums, and tall obelisks stood sentinel, though those too were beginning to be overrun by vegetation. The brightening sky told me that less than an hour remained in the night. I quickened my step.
“What else did you learn from the necromancer?” Lionel asked.
Thin trees creaked in the wind. “That killing Val might be our only way to stop the curse,” I said.
“Killing her?” Lionel came to a stop.
“Keep moving.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him forward.
“I’ve never killed anyone before. Certainly not an old woman.”
“Don’t think of her as an old woman. Think of her as an evil person who is communing with demons, inflicting horrible curses on the world, and crushing people with old buildings.”
“Still.”
“We might not have to kill her. It’s possible we can persuade her to undo it. If not, I’ll deal with her.”
“Of course you will,” a voice said. I spun around to see a shadow rise from the overgrown grass. “You are a killer, after all.”