The Girls With Games of Blood (16 page)

He looked up and yelped in surprise. Zginski stood in the office door. Behind him, the kitchen crew worked to keep up with the lunch orders.

“Dang, Mr. Z., you keep slipping up on me like a copperhead, you’ll give me a heart attack one of these days.” He sat back and took a few deep breaths.

“How are the ledgers for this month?” Zginski asked with no preliminaries. With the kitchen’s bright lights behind him, Barrister couldn’t see his face.

He smiled and said casually, “Well, we’ve had some expenses I didn’t count on, and the price of everything’s gone up, so . . .”

“Will you turn a profit?”

Barrister couldn’t bring himself to look at Zginski. “I don’t think so. We’ll get close. But . . . no.”

“I invested in your establishment with the idea of increasing my wealth, not watching it dwindle,” Zginski said. His tone was even and calm, but the threat was there.

“Look, I know you own a big chunk of me—”

“I own thirty percent of your restaurant; I have no interest in owning any percentage of you.”

“That’s just a figure of speech. We use those here in America. But really, I got plans. I’ve found this amazing musician who’s starting here tomorrow night, and once word gets out about her, the place will be packed to the gills.”

“The place is ‘packed to the gills’ right now. Acquiring patrons does not seem to be the problem. The trouble seems to be in the management.”

Barrister swallowed hard. “Hey, look, I’m doing the best I can.”

“I am certain of that. But is it good enough?”

Barrister got to his feet. He was a foot taller than Zginski and sixty pounds heavier. “Listen, you ex-Commie bastard, you think you can come in here—”

“If you wish to be rid of me,” Zginski said calmly, “simply return my investment, in cash, and I shall depart.”

Barrister forced down his anger. “Now, don’t get crazy on me, we can work this out. This place is a gold mine, you know? We just have to dig down to the vein.” He mimed using a shovel.

“We will talk again soon,” Zginski said, and left.

Barrister’s hands shook as he continued looking for the camera. Letting Zginski buy in to the Ringside had been the dumbest thing he’d ever done; the more he thought about it, in fact, the less sense it made. What the hell had he been drinking that day?

Z
GINSKI EMERGED INTO
the afternoon sun and immediately put on his dark-lensed glasses. Recently he’d seen a film on television, one of the innumerable versions of
Dracula,
in which the title character crumbled to dust at the mere touch of a sunbeam. It amused him anew to think that Fauvette and her friends also once believed that they, too, would perish if sunlight struck them. Perhaps he erred by letting them learn otherwise.

He had invested a large amount of Alisa’s money in the restaurant, subtly using his powers to overcome Barrister’s resistance. Barrister really needed no additional capital, since he was well on his way to becoming profitable, but Zginski had long-range plans that involved acquiring an establishment like this. The Ringside already had a regular clientele, and before the end of the year he intended to be its sole owner. It was the main reason he had, with equal subtlety, steered Fauvette toward Barrister as a victim. Barrister’s fate did not concern him.

He shut the delivery door behind him. Tzigane, once again parked by the Dumpster, gleamed in the light. Crabtree had done a fine job polishing the car, and not even dust
from recent driving had dimmed the reflective chrome. He sighed contentedly.

The door opened again and Fauvette said, “So that’s it, huh?” She stood beside him and shielded her eyes with one hand. “It’s definitely . . . shiny.”

“She is,” he agreed. “I call her ‘Tzigane.’ ”

“What’s that mean?”

“It is a woman’s name in my country.”

“The name of . . . ?”

In a moment of weakness, Zginski had confided more about his past to Fauvette than he’d ever told anyone. “Yes, if you must know. For good or ill, the first Tzigane changed my life. I suspect that this Tzigane will do the same.”

“Oh,” Fauvette said. She moved closer, wishing the sun wasn’t so damned bright. It might not kill her as she once believed, but it certainly left her feeling drained. “You ran off before we could talk earlier.”

“Did we need to speak?”

“Well, we didn’t talk the other day because you were showing off for Patience, and now today . . . I don’t know, I guess I thought you might
want
to.”

He looked at her. She saw her reflection in his sunglasses. “Because of that night in the warehouse?”

His cold, superior tone made her angry. “Would that be a bad reason? I thought it meant something, you know? To us both.”

He smiled. She had always been a simple creature, and now that she so blatantly wanted him to herself, her simplicity was somehow pathetic. Still, he had a tiny affection for her, the way a huntsman might for a favorite dog. Or so he convinced himself. And she was still useful to him, so he allowed her to nurse her little crush.

He touched her cheek paternally. “It is a perfectly fine reason. Alas, I cannot accommodate it at this time.”

Her eyes blazed with anger at his condescension, but
before she could knock his hand away he walked across the parking lot to the car. When he settled into the seat he smelled leather and petrochemicals, and the rumble when he turned the ignition made him sigh with contentment. When he looked back at the building, the door was closed and Fauvette was gone.

He pulled carefully out into traffic and headed across town to rest at Alisa’s.

Cocker sat in his own car. The steak Barrister had promised him, secure in its take-out box, filled the hot interior with its delicious odor. He could see the Mustang’s front bumper from where he was parked, and stared at it so intently that when it suddenly moved forward he jumped. The car pulled past him and into traffic without a glance from its driver.

Cocker followed, keeping at least one vehicle between himself and Zginski. The distinctive Mustang was easy to trail since Zginski drove tentatively and slowly, like an old lady.

Cocker’s plan was simple and linear. If he discovered where the disrespectful foreigner lived, he could work with the local police to arrange an arrest, and if he could get Zginski arrested, he could then get him transferred back to McHale County. Although he was no longer sheriff he still had the keys to the jail, and the current head man had once been his deputy. No one would stop him from visiting Zginski in his cell, or from giving his trademark baseball bat a good workout.

He clenched his teeth and felt the now-familiar jolt of pain where his shattered jawbone had been spliced together. He had been on a similar mission the night Vicki Lynn was killed, and for a moment her presence beside him in the car was almost tangible.
That
stakeout and pursuit had ended in horror, and he got a chill at the thought this one might. But
that was silly; what threat could the slight, no doubt light-in-his-loafers foreigner pose to him?

Fauvette wandered into Barrister’s empty office, closed the door, and sat on the couch. With the lights out and the blinds drawn, it was almost like a refuge. She tried to calm her racing thoughts, but too much had changed too quickly and it all logjammed in her mind.

For decades she had roamed the shadows of Memphis, taking lives as needed from among society’s lowest tiers. Then along came Zginski, who showed her that her greatest fear—the light of the sun—was essentially harmless. He gave her back the daylight, and her world altered irrevocably.

And then . . .

The night she became a vampire, dying wasn’t the worst thing that happened. The old vampire who killed her left her body lying in plain sight, and her virginal corpse was raped by those awful Scoval brothers while it was still warm. Vampires who died and rose as virgins were spared any of the emotions of physical desire, but Fauvette died a virgin, then rose as a deflowered woman. As a result she felt desire as much as anyone, but her virginity was restored each time it was taken. She was doomed to an eternity reliving the pain that most women felt only once.

Until, that is, Zginski also gave her back her sexuality, by using his powerful vampiric influence to arouse her to such a level that the pain of losing her maidenhead was lost in the roar of her lustful blood. It had been an amazing experience, and she desperately wanted it again.

But Zginski seemed to think no more of it, or her, than he did his latest victim. And she knew how truly little that was.

Still, there were times when he looked at her and the hard selfishness in his eyes melted just enough to give her hope. He would smile or touch her face with unexpected
gentleness. Perhaps, she thought, he was as confused by his own feelings as she was.

That is, until Patience, full of music and mystery, showed up.

But she couldn’t hate Patience, could she? She’d practically begged her to share the way she fed on energy instead of blood, and the woman’s embrace had been the most comforting thing Fauvette had experienced since becoming what she was.

No, she couldn’t hate Patience. Or Zginski. She could only hate herself, for being too weak and insubstantial to hold his attention, and too needy and childish to ever be Patience’s equal.

She hung her head and sighed.

Because he was both preoccupied and sun-weakened, at first Zginski did not realize that someone followed him. But finally he sensed the danger, and a glance in the rearview mirror showed him the nondescript car two vehicles back. He immediately recognized it as Byron Cocker’s.

Zginski frowned. This was both worrying and perplexing. He had very deliberately put the onus of the transaction on Crabtree so Cocker would blame him and forget about Zginski. So why was Cocker now following him? And when had it started? Did the man already know about his connection to Alisa?

He suddenly changed lanes to verify his suspicions. Someone in another car honked a horn. At first Cocker’s vehicle stayed where it was, then slowly it drifted behind him again.

Zginski flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. The man clearly had skill at this sort of thing, something Zginski lacked. And, with the sun beating down from the arid sky, his powers were too weak to compensate. But he’d seen
Vanishing Point, The Seven-Ups, Grand Theft Auto,
and of course
Gone in 60 Seconds.
Surely he’d learned something.