Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (12 page)

“So, where are we going after Florence?” Vivi asked. “To Venice?”

I hesitated. Raphael lived on Isla Carbonara, a speck of an island between Venice and Murano. After Jude had gone missing, Raphael had brought me to his villa. We’d been friends for the last fifteen years, but from the moment we’d met, we’d been able to converse telepathically. I couldn’t do this with anyone else. Not Jude. Not Vivi. Not Uncle Nigel.

But I wasn’t ready to see Raphael. A few months ago, I began having dreams about him, the kind that left my pulse thumping, my body slick with perspiration, my hips rising off the bed. Our relationship had always been warm but platonic. I wanted to give myself time to sort through these dreams. If I got near him right now, I wasn’t sure what I’d do, and I didn’t want to damage our friendship.

“No, we’re not visiting Raphael,” I said.

Vivi looked surprised. “What? We’re not seeing the Prince of Darkness?”

“Raphael is your godfather. Don’t call him that.”

“Why did you pick a thousand-year-old vamp to be my godfather? Why not Uncle Nigel? He raised you. And don’t say Uncle Nigel is too old. He will be seventy-two forever.”

I didn’t answer. My uncle was the sweetest, most loving man, but he could not stand discord. He hadn’t always been a vampire, and he thought of his “condition” as macabre and inconvenient. He’d wanted to conceal it from Vivi until she was an adult, but I’d told her the truth. I’d told her everything, skimming over the barest details. Now I wondered if facts were just as damaging as lies.

I followed the smell of roasted lamb to the Antoco Faltone. A bald waiter with dark moles on his cheeks led us to a table and set down menus. I was in the mood for a truffle ravioli. Vivi wanted bread soup, zucchini flowers, risotto, and figs.

After we ordered, I straightened my spoon and knife.

“Mom, you’re so OCD,” Vivi said.

“I’m not.” My fingers crept to my lap, and I aligned my napkin with a crease in my pants.

“Why does everything have to be perfectly straight?” she asked.

I’d explained many times, but she didn’t understand. I’d lost control of my life, and arranging the utensils gave me a sense of security.

The waiter set down our food, his bald head dotted with perspiration. I repressed an urge to straighten the plates. I dug into the salad, but Vivi frowned at her soup.

The waiter’s eyebrows shot up. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“Not with the food,” she said, flashing a stare that could peel the skin from a tomato.

A blush crept up the waiter’s face, and then he hurried to another table.

“Vivi, don’t be bad-mannered because you’re in a bad mood,” I whispered.

“This isn’t a mood, it’s for real. You’re making me spend the whole summer in Scotland.”

“We’ve gone over this.”

“You rented a castle!” She spat out the word as if it were an olive pit.

“Only for three months.” I forked up a truffle.

“Do we
have
to go?” Vivi asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t my feelings matter?”

“Of course. But I’ve already leased the castle. I’ve paid a hefty deposit, too. I can’t throw away that money.”

“You’ve got plenty of cash. Raphael helped you get rich on the stock market.”

“We aren’t rich.”

“Huh. You’ve got enough money to buy Innisfair. If you don’t, Raphael would probably give it to you.”

“I don’t know anything about running a thoroughbred farm.”

“The Aussies call them stations, not farms.”

“See?” I waved my fork. “I’m clueless.”

“But we can learn. Keats will help us.”

“I’ve always hoped that you and I could live at Dalgliesh one day.”

“I’d rather eat fried grasshoppers.”

“I thought you liked the castle.” Every September,
when Dalgliesh was closed to tourists, we visited Lady Patricia. Vivi had played in the maze, explored the turrets, and walked the Scottish terriers. I’d thought the trips had gone well. Lady Patricia was seventy-nine years old. Technically, when her husband, Sir John Barrett, had died, Dalgliesh Castle had passed into Jude’s hands, but Vivi wouldn’t inherit the property until Jude died. Lady Patricia was afraid we might lose Dalgliesh, and she begged me to have Jude declared legally dead. I’d reluctantly agreed, and ever since, Vivi had been in a temper.

“Dalgliesh is okay,” Vivi said. “But I don’t want to live there.” She blinked convulsively as if cinders had flown into her eyes.

The back of my neck tingled, the way it always did when she was concealing something. “What’s really bothering you?”

A tear curved around her mouth and beaded on the edge of her lip. “Nothing.”

I remembered that her idea of the perfect mother was Dame Helen Mirren. I straightened the olive oil cruet.

“Please stop doing that,” she said, her eyes brimming. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just…I need air.”

She threw down her napkin, pushed back her chair, and vaulted to her feet. The people at the next table gaped as she ran out of the restaurant. I left a pile of euros on the table and walked outside, my heart tripping against my breast bone. I wasn’t sure where she had gone, but this lane went to the River Arno. I’d look there first. I loved this child beyond all else. Was I being too hard on her? Until now, she’d never cared where we lived. Usually
we summered at one of Raphael’s homes, but I’d leased the Scottish house, mainly because Manderford was located on the sunny East Lothian coast, a place noted for dry, radiant summers. I’d hoped that Scotland’s long daylight hours would add a layer of protection from the Sinai Cabal, not that I’d heard from them in years. But I wasn’t taking chances. I was also looking forward to mucking around on the beach with Vivi, exploring the museums in Edinburgh, and researching the history of the North Berwick witch trials—the region was infamous for sixteenth-century burnings. I wondered if any of the accused had been half-vampires like myself. Many hybrids had perished during the Inquisition.

I let out a sigh when I spotted Vivi beside the bridge. I remembered that long-ago night when Raphael had shown up at São Tomé. He’d led me out of the cottage, Vivi asleep on his shoulder. Now she stood just ahead of me, her pink hair stirring in the wind, but she still looked like my baby.

As I moved toward her, I took a breath and tried to channel Dame Helen. What came out was vintage momster: “Thank goodness you’re all right.”

Vivi’s shoulders hunched. “It’s daylight. All the Italian vampires are in their crypts.”

“You’re just tired. Let’s go to the hotel.” I put my arm around her.

She leaned away. “Why did you make my father officially dead? You know he’s gone. Why did you need it on a piece of paper?”

So that was the real problem. We’d discussed the situation about Dalgliesh many times, but she was too caught
up in her own misery to care about a pile of rocks. I knew how she felt. I’d spent so many years in mourning, I wasn’t ready to move on. I wouldn’t know how. What did legally dead mean, anyway? A document hadn’t changed anything.

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t want to go to Scotland. There’s nothing but heather and men in kilts. Maybe
that’s
why we’re going. So you can fall in love.”

I wrapped my arms around my waist. An image from one of my dreams rose up. God, what was wrong with me? Actually, I had a theory. I was thirty-nine years old, on the cusp of my sexual peak, a dicey place for a hybrid, and my dreams were a manifestation of a hormonal storm. Yes, indeed. A summer away from Raphael would give distance from my prurient thoughts.

“The East Lothian coast has long, bright days,” I said.

“Alaska is sunny this time of year.”

“We’ll go there someday.”

She looked away. “No, we won’t. We’re gonna run forever. Because of that stupid prophecy, right?”

“I shouldn’t have told you about that.”

“No, I’m glad. Because at least I understand. And I’ve been thinking. Maybe you’re scared of vampires the way you’re scared of your silverware not being matched up. Don’t make a face, Mom. Seriously, when has a mean vampire ever bothered us? See? You can’t name a time. Maybe you’re worried for no reason.”

She had a point. No bald, bearded monks had shown up in a decade. Maybe they’d lost faith in the prophecy, or maybe they’d zeroed in on another hybrid.

“I like the idea of putting down roots,” I said. However,
when it came to geography, I had to stop thinking of myself. Vivi was a teenager, not a little girl. From now on, I would ask her opinion before I made plans. “We’ll find a place we both like,” I added.

“That sounds good, Mom.” All of her teenage bluster was gone. Her eyes shimmered, but the tears just stayed there and didn’t run down her cheeks.

“Scotland isn’t the only thing that’s upsetting you,” I said. “What’s wrong, Meep?”

She wiped her eyes. “I had a dream about Mr. Keats last night. We were looking for rabbit holes. Not that I’m worried about him or anything. My brain is just telling me that we shouldn’t have left Australia. Right, Mom?”

“Right.” I hated lying, but I didn’t think she was in the mood for a dissertation. Hybrid vampires have Freudian dreams like anyone else, but sometimes we see future events. Unfortunately the images are buried in symbols, and interpreting them is a highly individualized process. A dream about apples would make me think of temptation or Aphrodite’s golden apples. Vivi might think of Snow White, a young girl who’d been victimized by adults. Or she could develop a craving for an apple tart.

She reached for my hand. “Can we get gelato?”

“Sure.” I was still troubled about her dream, and I let my gaze linger on her face. Mothers aren’t hardwired to see their child’s chronological age. When I looked at Vivi, I didn’t see a teenager with black hair and chunky pink bangs. I saw a toddler in my high heels and Jude’s bowler hat, her diaper sagging past her knees. I saw a girl with shiny chestnut pigtails, tying her shoelaces for the first
time. I saw a six-year-old flying ahead of me on a pink bicycle in Central Park.

If my mother had lived, she wouldn’t see me as a grown woman. She’d see a curly-haired girl with gooseberry jam on her face; a kid who needed protection from wasps and rogue vampires.

Women learn how to be mothers from the people who raised them. My mother had sung a lullaby to me, and I’d sung it to Vivi, but I hadn’t known when to stop. Some part of me was still chewing on those words.

INNISFAIR HORSE STATION

HAHNDORF, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

An icy wind tugged at Keats’s jacket as he opened the white mailbox. He pulled out a postcard and grinned. The glossy front showed a picture of the Tuscan hills; on the back, he recognized Vivi’s back-slanted, minuscule handwriting. He hoped the little corker was all right. But he couldn’t read her handwriting without his glasses, and he’d left them at his house. He tucked the card into his pocket, then climbed into his truck and drove toward the north pasture.

Every Wednesday after breakfast, he rode the fence line at Innisfair, looking for loose boards. A stallion paced restlessly in the tall, dry grass, his breath steaming in the morning air. Behind him, the land sloped upward to
the red-roofed mansion, where yellow leaves skated over the lawn.

Keats sighed. Now that the Barretts were gone, the house looked sad and empty. Keats’s small stone cottage sat below the main house at the bottom of the long driveway, but the cats on the front porch made it seem welcoming.

As he drove along the fence row, he saw a brown, motionless heap in the distance. A dead horse, most likely. A ball of tension gathered in Keats’s chest. When he got closer to the animal, his palms slid over the steering wheel.

It was Ozzie. He’d been ripped from throat to belly.

Keats got out of the truck. The afternoon light fell at a slant, suffusing the field with gold. His heart thudded as he squatted beside the horse. Ozzie’s eyes were glazed, his mane stiff with dried blood.

Keats shut the gelding’s eyes, then dug his boot heels into the grass and pivoted, blinking down at the grass. A massive wound like this should have pooled, but the ground was dry, except for a heap of entrails.

He turned back to Ozzie, studying the gelding’s legs. No bite marks. No broken bones. What had brought him down? Years ago on Fraser Island, a large pack of dingoes had killed a horse, but there had been a lot of blood then, and Keats couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a dingo at Innisfair.

He rocked on his haunches, the sun beating against the top of his head. The wind picked up and the leaves spun in eddies. Dark blue clouds roiled over the Adelaide
Hills. A storm was coming, and he needed to tend to Ozzie. Sighing heavily, Keats took out his cell phone and punched in numbers.

That evening, as rain sluiced down, he drove away from the barn. His headlights picked through the downpour, sweeping over his stone cottage. He shoved a bush hat onto his head, got out of the truck, and ran up to the veranda. Two striped barn cats always slept on the wooden swing, but the cushion was empty. He checked their kibble bowl. It hadn’t been touched. He stared for a minute, his head lowered, water pouring off the brim of his hat.