Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (20 page)

The news anchor looked into the camera. “If you have any knowledge about this crime, we need your help.” The phone number for anonymous tips came up on the screen. “And remember: if you see something, say something.”

My hand was shaking as I set down my wine glass. Teag reached over and put a hand on my arm. “It’s okay, Cassidy. No one was hurt. The store is all right. Everyone’s okay.”

I blinked back tears, and at the same time, felt a swell of anger fill me. “This time,” I said savagely. “But what about next time? The attack in Boston, the retirement center, the cemetery… none of us are safe!”

Anthony looked at us worriedly. “This is where I put on my lawyer hat and remind you that withholding information from a criminal investigation is a crime.”

Teag met his gaze. “Even if the perp is somehow connected to ghost-eating supernatural monsters?”

“And a powerful sorcerer who can call up fallen angels?” I added.

Anthony knocked back the rest of his wine in a gulp that didn’t do the vintage justice. “Is there any way you might be able to rephrase that if your testimony was required?”

“No.” Teag and I spoke in unison.

Anthony sighed. “Assuming that I actually heard you say something just now – which I didn’t – and understood what you said – which I didn’t – theoretically, would that situation have anything to do with what we might or might not have seen happen on the ghost tour?”

“Yeah,” Teag replied, finishing off his glass. “This is the part we weren’t going to mention to keep you from worrying.”

Anthony said something pointed which was not the kind of phrase they teach at law school. “And you two are involved because, why? You’re antique dealers, not paranormal vigilantes…”

His voice trailed off as he realized what he had just said. Teag and I looked back at him, neither confirming nor denying.

“Oh, no. Please tell me that I didn’t just –” A series of emotions crossed Anthony’s face. I could tell he was putting the pieces together, especially when the last expression was one of horror.

“Those explosions out at the Navy Yard a while back… how badly you were hurt, you said…”

Teag reached across the table and took Anthony’s hand. “Do you remember when you were working on that case about the whistleblower who outed the crooked financial firm? Remember the death threats you got – at the office, and here, where I heard them on the machine and almost had a heart attack?”

“I remember,” Anthony said in a choked voice.

“I asked if you would consider dropping the case,” Teag said quietly. “And you told me that it was part of your job to take risks. That someone had to take the unpopular cases, the ones that resulted in rulings that could change things for the better. And that you had to do it, because not everyone could.”

“I meant me, dammit!” Anthony said with a glare, his voice rising to a shout. “Not you!”

Teag gave a sad smile. “I’ve found a calling of my own,” he said with gentle determination. “Something much bigger than I ever expected to be part of. Something that makes a difference, even though if we do it right, no one will ever know. We aren’t alone. We have colleagues – powerful ones. But we’re saving lives, Anthony. Because of what we do, lots of people get to live.”

“You go up against those things?” Anthony said, not bothering to hide the fear in his voice. “Angry ghosts? Bad magic?” He shook his head. “Isn’t there someone else?”

Teag met his gaze. “I have to do it, Tony. Because not everyone can.”

Anthony wrapped his arms around Teag and hugged him fiercely. And then, unexpectedly, he reached out and grabbed my hand as well. “Now you listen to me,” he said urgently. “I don’t like this. I don’t understand it. And frankly, it scares the shit out of me. But I love you,” he said, looking toward Teag, “and you’re one of my best friends,” he said, meeting my gaze. “And I am not –
not
– okay with losing either of you. So just don’t let that happen. Okay?”

Teag managed a teary smile and hugged Anthony tightly. “Okay,” he said, although all three of us knew the promise wasn’t really within our full ability to keep.

“Okay,” I replied. And I really hoped it would be.

I
LEFT SHORTLY
after that. Teag and Anthony had things to discuss, and I was a third wheel. I drove the rental car I’d gotten from the insurance company home on the main streets, steering clear of any landmarks with particularly dark histories, and was pleased to find a spot on the curb right in front of the door onto my piazza. Pleased, but not completely surprised. I had asked Lucinda to put a distraction warding on the parking place, something that doesn’t so much keep other people from taking the spot as it keeps them from noticing it’s even there.

I looked all around before I unlocked my door, worried that I’d find either restless ghosts or Daniel Hunter. I wasn’t sure which was worse, but I didn’t want to see either. My head ached, and it wasn’t from the wine. There was too much going on too fast in too many places, and I didn’t have enough of a grip on what we were doing to fix it. I grabbed my purse, shook out the dog collar so that I’d have Bo’s ghost as an escort, and kept my walking stick in hand. Forget about blasting something with cold power. Anything that got between me and that gate tonight was going to fry.

Good thing that Sorren was already inside, sitting on my couch, petting my dog.

“Don’t,” he said as I came through the door and froze. Bo’s ghost wagged and winked out. Sorren’s tone wasn’t compulsion. He had promised he wouldn’t use compulsion on me, unless it was truly a life-or-death situation. Because of my family’s long bond with Sorren, neither glamouring nor compulsion would work right on me anyhow. But there was a tone of command in Sorren’s voice that made me stop in my tracks long enough to think before I reacted.

That was good, since neither my vampire boss nor my dog – or my couch – are flame-proof.

“You’re back sooner than I expected. I thought the clean-up in Boston would take longer.”

“I need your help.”

Sorren didn’t look good; he was paler than usual and his eyes looked haunted. There were a lot of things I wanted to ask Sorren, and a lot of things I thought he might say, but that wasn’t one of them. “How?” I asked.

“Have you seen the news tonight?” There was a sadness in his voice I hadn’t heard before.

I nodded, put down my purse and came closer. Sorren was slumped on the couch, petting Baxter absently. If I hadn’t known what he was, I would have pegged him for a grad student who had just failed out. My god, he looked awful.

“Trifles and Folly is okay,” I said. “I’ve already had two phone calls from the police on the way home. No damage.” I paused. “You want me to go to Palmetto Meadows, don’t you?”

He looked up sharply. “You know?”

I nodded. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I was there a couple of nights ago, when I took Baxter for our therapy dog evening. I saw you in the garden with Mrs. Butler.” I paused. “And I also met old Mr. Thompson – the warlock.”

Sorren gave a melancholy chuckle. “You never cease to amaze me, Cassidy.”

“Do you need me to go over there now and make sure she’s all right?” I asked. Going out again was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew what it was like to be worried about a loved one.

Sorren shook his head. “No, but thank you. I appreciate the offer. When I heard, I went myself, got close enough to make sure there was no real danger. But I didn’t dare go in. Too many questions.”

I nodded. Sorren had assumed many names over the years, and had been careful to disappear and reinvent himself at regular enough intervals so that no one wondered about his extremely long lifespan and exceptionally youthful appearance. Still, falsifying identification and creating fictitious back stories was harder these days, even for the Witness Protection Program. Fingerprints didn’t change, and retina scans didn’t lie. The nursing home would not have run a background check on ‘Mr. Sorrensson’, but the FBI might.

“I can go over first thing in the morning,” I offered, and glanced at my watch. “Odds are, the residents are in bed by now anyhow, and there are probably police on watch. I can say that I was worried about the friends Baxter and I have made, and wanted to see if there was anything I could do.”

“Thank you, Cassidy,” Sorren said raggedly. “There are many things the Dark Gift enables me to do, but often, it’s the simplest things it denies me.”

Like going abroad in daylight
,
I thought. Or spending a mortal lifetime with a woman he cared about.

“No problem,” I assured him. Belatedly, Baxter seemed to notice that I had arrived home. Sorren carefully put him on the floor, and Baxter waggled his way over, utterly unconcerned about the obvious breach of etiquette. I picked him up and hugged him, then took him back and set him on Sorren’s lap. Sorren looked up at me quizzically.

“You look like you need him at the moment more than I do,” I replied. I went out to the kitchen. I only had one glass of wine with dinner, but this was definitely shaping up to be a two-glass day.

I brought the wine back in with me and settled into an armchair facing Sorren. Baxter was on his lap with a goofy grin. For a moment, it was awkwardly silent.

“I met her in 1940,” Sorren said finally. “She was twenty. I was… older than that,” he said with a sad smile. “She loved horses and mint juleps – and me. Even though she figured out quickly enough just what I was,” he added, and if he had needed to breathe, he might have sighed. “She had a touch of her mother’s Sight.”

“I could tell that you two were close,” I said, not entirely sure what to say. Technically, Sorren was my boss, or at least, my patron. Then again, in my last job, I had sat with my boss on more than one occasion while she drank herself numb and talked about her divorce. Chalk it up to being a good listener. But more than anything, Sorren was a friend. He’d had my back in a lot of fights. I wanted to hear him out.

“Helen was the last mortal I permitted myself to become romantically involved with,” he said quietly. “Ever. It’s just not fair, to either of us… and sometimes it’s so hard.” He smiled. “But damn, she was a very special woman. Smart. Funny. An amazing dancer. Not afraid of anything. So open to curiosity. Do you have any idea how rare that was back then?”

Or even now,
I thought, remembering Anthony’s struggle to reconcile himself to what his own senses testified.

He didn’t really expect an answer, so I didn’t give one. Helen Butler was over ninety years old. There were a lot of things people didn’t talk about back then, including vampires. She must have been exceptional to handle that.

“I’m guessing that eventually she found someone else.” Since she was ‘Mrs.’ Butler instead of ‘Miss’, that was pretty obvious.

Sorren nodded. “We were together for several years. But eventually, it had to end. She wanted a real home, and children. Neither of which I could provide. She did not want to be turned. I looked in on her from a distance, now and again to make sure she was well. The years go so quickly for mortals, and so slowly for us. Her husband died a decade ago. She outlived her children. And then the Alzheimer’s set in…”

“And you found a way to reconnect,” I supplied. “To make sure she was taken care of.”

He looked away. “I can’t cure Alzheimer’s. But for most people, it makes the past more real than the present. I can glamour her, just a bit, and nudge those memories to the fore. And as far as she’s concerned, for a little while, it’s seventy years ago, and nothing has changed.”

Damn. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so for a few moments, we were quiet. Finally, Sorren sat up and shook himself out of his mood. “Thank you,” he said again. “But there are other things that also need attention.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got some news on that,” I replied, filling him in on what I knew of the bombing, what Teag and I had experienced with Valerie, as well as Anthony’s news. I added the unexpected visit from Daniel Hunter, plus what we had seen at Tarleton House and Father Anne’s Nephilim information.

“Hunter is an asset, but he’s also a wild card,” Sorren replied, scratching Baxter behind the ears. “I’ve worked with him once or twice. He’s more of a hit man or a bounty hunter than anything else, which means that his real allegiance is to himself.”

“Lovely.”

Sorren shrugged. “In an all-out fight, he’s handy to have around. He’s not a member of the Alliance. More of a resource we call in when we need to. So no, I don’t entirely trust him. But I think we’re going to need some hired guns for this fight, and he’s one of the best.”

His expression darkened when I told him about Coffee Guy and the attack at Magnolia Cemetery and the paintings in Father Anne’s book. He made me repeat some of the details of the attack, and describe exactly what I remembered of the monster.

“You are absolutely certain that the man you saw at Honeysuckle Café became the monster that attacked you outside the cemetery?” Sorren asked.

“Not a doubt in my mind,” I said. “I had a bad feeling about the guy, even though he was handsome enough to be on a romance novel cover. He just seemed… too perfect. More like a painting than a person. And when I brushed his hand, I knew he had some kind of magic, and I got the clear impression he didn’t want me to know that.”