are you here?” she demanded.
He thrust a cup of coffee at her. “I thought you might need this.”
The truth, however, was that he needed it. Especially now that he’d seen the scarf.
“I called Abraham, not you,” she said rudely.
“I noticed,” he said. “Do you want the coffee or not?”
She looked down at the cup. “Light?”
She had on sunglasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes. But he guessed from the throatiness in her voice that she’d been crying.
“I think I know by now how you take your coffee,” he said stiffly.
She took it from him. “Thanks,” she grumbled.
They stood outside the station house in silence, drinking coffee and watching the good people of Freewell drive by on their way to work … or wherever they were going so early on a Saturday morning.
The police department was a fairly new building, on a grassy embankment attractively landscaped with new trees. Birds sang prettily in the treetops, oblivious to the impending doom. Alaric reflected that, if they had been in front of a station house in the city, police officers would have been hauling transvestite hookers past them. Instead, a squirrel, foraging for nuts for the winter, hopped nearby.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on,” Alaric asked, “or am I supposed to guess?”
“It’s not what you think,” Meena said.
“I thought you could only tell how people are going to die, not what they’re thinking.”
“You’re not exactly hard to read, Alaric,” she said.
This stung. He said, “Well, as it happens, neither are you. The last time you wore a scarf like that around your neck, it nearly cost me a leg. So I’d appreciate a little heads-up this time, since I happen to enjoy being able to walk.”
Her cheeks went almost the same color pink of the scarf.
“All right,” she said, reaching up to remove the sunglasses. Beneath them her dark eyes, which she’d carefully made up, were nevertheless red-rimmed from crying. “Yes. I did get bitten last night. But it wasn’t by Lucien, Alaric. Not this time, I swear.”
He felt the sidewalk sway beneath him. He didn’t understand this, because despite his protests that they should get to Freewell as quickly as possible, Abraham had pulled into a fast-food drive-through in the Prius (Alaric would never get over the indignity of having been forced to ride in such a vehicle) along the way, insisting that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and they’d need the protein.
Now Alaric was glad, even if the alleged “McMuffin” he had eaten was sitting like a rock in his stomach.
“Impossible,” he said to her. “We haven’t had a vampire sighting in the city—in North America—in six months. We killed all the Dracul. You know that. You were there.”
“This wasn’t a Dracul,” she said.
Alaric shook his head, confused. “But there’s never been another clan reported in—”
“Well,” Meena said, “then someone needs to alert Homeland Security. Because last night I had a close encounter with an illegal immigrant of the very fanged kind.”
“Why didn’t you call it in until this morning?” Alaric demanded. “What’s going on, exactly, Meena? Abraham wouldn’t tell me anything. He said you’d tell me. If you chose to.” He didn’t mention how angry this information had made him. What had Holtzman meant, if Meena chose to tell him?
And why had Meena chosen to tell Holtzman anything instead of him? He was the one who’d saved her life at St. George’s, not Holtzman. Was this all because he refused to believe her theory about Antonescu?
But who could? It was crazy. Demons were inherently evil. They were not capable of free will. He didn’t care what Saint Thomas Aquinas had written eight hundred years ago.
“Look, I appreciate the coffee, but can we just go inside?” Meena said, suddenly looking less mulish, and more tired. “It took me forever to get a cab from the train station, and now I’m late, and I’m sure everyone is wondering where I am.”
“Abraham’s already inside,” Alaric said. “He’s told everyone he’s your lawyer.”
Meena rolled her eyes and tossed her coffee cup into a nearby trash can. “Great. My lawyer. Now it looks like I did something wrong.”
Alaric caught her by the wrist as she started to walk past him and into the building. Her bones felt as small and fine as a bird’s.
“Did you do something wrong?” he asked, his gaze burning down into hers. He didn’t want to ask it. He knew it was wrong of him, and he probably shouldn’t have.
But he couldn’t help it.
She reached up with her free hand to push some bright copper hair from her eyes. Eyes that, he saw, were suddenly brimming with tears. “I guess that depends from whose point of view you’re looking at it. Yours? No. My own? Yeah. Yeah, I definitely did.”
He felt a sudden wave of tenderness toward her that, had it been anyone else, he’d have ignored. He tried to ignore it. She’d violated every rule in the book.
Then again, so had he, at one time or another.
But this was different. She’d also put herself in danger. And then she hadn’t called him. It hurt his feelings … even though he’d go to his grave before he’d admit it.
But now she was shaken and upset about something. And she’d called Holtzman. He wanted to be the person she turned to when she was shaken and upset. Not Holtzman.
How could he have let everything go so wrong? And how could he possibly fix it?
She looked pointedly down at the wrist he was holding. Instantly, he released it. She turned away and started to walk past him, into the building.
He should have let it end there. But he couldn’t.
So instead, he reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her toward him in an embrace that was awkward as much because she wasn’t expecting it as because Alaric Wulf was not used to hugging people, and wasn’t very good at it.
“It’s all right,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He stroked her hair. The fine threads, a little coarse from all the dye her friend Leisha had been using on them lately, were hot from the sun. “Whatever it is. It’s going to be fine.”
She finally seemed to realize what he was doing and stopped trying to pull away. To his surprise, he actually felt her relax in his arms. Something warm and wet touched his neck, and he realized, with a shock, that it was her tears.
“I don’t think so, Alaric,” she whispered. “I really don’t. Not this time.”
He didn’t know what to do. He’d gotten so accustomed to her giving him the cold shoulder that for her to completely drop all her defenses and melt against him like this was a little unnerving. He almost preferred the hostile glances and sarcasm. It was certainly better than tears. Hundreds of women had cried in front of him before, and it had never bothered him.
But this was awful.
He tightened his grip and said, lamely, “It can’t be that bad.” Then he wanted to kick himself. Actually, it really could be that bad. What did he know?
A squad car pulled up beside them. A Freewell police officer got out from behind the wheel, then walked around to haul a surprisingly tall and colorfully dressed—for suburban New Jersey—drag queen from the backseat.
“Honey,” the drag queen said to Meena as the officer