Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Fifteen


The witch was interesting. She hadn’t picked up on who or what he was, and she wasn’t telepathic. On the other hand, he thought he’d probably have trouble mesmerizing her. She had an inner strength that heightened her gift until she almost thrummed with power. He liked that, although it sat oddly with her mother-hen emotions concerning Sera. She hid those feelings pretty well, but he could still read her like an open book. And along with her natural curiosity, she was undoubtedly alarmed by his casual presence among them.

He didn’t blame her for that. Less understandable was Sera’s reaction to him. After last night’s explosive sex and the new closeness they’d found, he’d expected rather more warmth in her manner. But she’d seemed more dismayed than pleasantly surprised or even made curious by his unexpected arrival, and now she was deliberately avoiding speaking to him.

It was Sera’s other mother hen, the aggressive Jilly, who provided the clue with a cup of coffee.

“You’re history.”

Since the words were spoken so gleefully, he had little doubt what they meant, especially accompanied by a powerful mental vision. He could have rummaged in her mind for more information. He chose instead to look over her head at Sera.

She was talking to the witch, Melanie. Her eyes flickered to him once and veered away.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He received a shrug, physical and mental, so he gave her one back and left.

Clearly, he was accomplishing nothing by hanging around here. He was already uncomfortably aware that dropping in to discuss his next move with Sera had been an excuse to see her again—a mistake he couldn’t fix while she was surrounded by humans. Time to do something useful instead.

He stopped off in her flat to reclaim his heavy biker’s helmet with its specially made visor. He put it on, refastened his jacket up to his chin, and donned the thick bikers’ gloves. Ready, he jumped downstairs in one leap, opened the door into the idyllic grayness that was Scotland in late summer, got on his motorbike, and rode round to the C & H building car park.

It was easy enough to mesmerize the doorman. After which, he simply followed his nose, releasing the digitally locked doors with his mind as necessary. He took a chance and removed his helmet so that he didn’t excite any suspicion. There was a PA in an outer office, to whom he merely nodded soothingly as he deposited his helmet on the end of her desk, and walked passed her into Jason Bell’s inner sanctum.

The fledgling vampire was dozing over his computer. Blair went round for a look. There was an email on his screen asking him to make an informal investigation into various irregularities and anomalies in some of the firm’s accounts. Blair’s lips curled. Then he had the germ of an idea.

While he considered it, he clicked on Jason’s appointments and found what he wanted almost immediately. Dead or undead, it seemed, Jason was well organized and meticulous.

Blair gave Jason a nudge, and the fledgling awoke with a start that was more human than vampire.

“Oh dear,” he said, as if he’d prepared the words in advance. “Sleeping on the job! I need more coffee.”

“You need a stake through the heart,” Blair said brutally. “Which is what you’ll get, sleeping as soundly as that. I could do you the kindness now.”

Jason clutched his head, no doubt in pain from the previously unused mental pathways Blair had just forced himself into. “Shit, it’s you,” he uttered, belatedly realizing his danger. To his credit, he tried to do something about it, even exercised his new vampire powers by trying to leap over Blair’s head to relative safety on the other side of the room.

But Blair was in no mood to play. Before Jason was more than a foot in the air, he simply reached up and yanked him back by the tie. Jason landed with a bump back in his seat, blinking at Blair in bewilderment that turned swiftly to fear.

“That’s right,” Blair said encouragingly. “I could have killed you twice by now. I still might, if you piss me off any more.”

Moving faster than a fledgling would yet have learned to achieve or even to see as more than a blur, he fetched another chair from the other side of the room and straddled it with his arms resting along the back.

“What are you doing here?” Jason blurted. “How did you even get here in daylight?”

“There are ways,” Blair told him. “You guys need to start using your undead brains. What did Smith do to you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ella bit you and killed you and turned you into a vampire,” Blair reminded him. “When you woke, Arthur took you from your parents’ house to explain your new situation and sent you to work before dawn. And here at work, Nicholas Smith came to see you.”

“I couldn’t remember anything,” Jason recalled. Although not particularly handsome, he had the kind of open, self-confident face than inspired trust in humans. But abruptly, his dignity crumbled, leaving a very unsure if still very well-dressed young man. “I was terrified. Nicholas helped me get my memory back.”

“How’d he do that?”

“Just talking to me. Things began to come back.”

“How come? You’d never met him before.”

Jason frowned. “Yes, I had. I remembered him.”

Blair searched his eyes and as much of his leaking thoughts as he could stomach. There wasn’t much more on that subject. It was all a blur to Jason. “And he made you keep on working.”

Jason frowned. “I chose to keep working.”

“Why? You’re dead.”

“Undead. What do you want with me?”

Blair shrugged. “I’m trying to get the hang of this scam your boss wants me to join. Vampires working in banks is a new one on me.”

“We have the power to alter monetary wealth and society.”

“Spoken like a true thrall. How d’you do it, then?”

“Do the mechanics matter to you?”

“Not really. I’m more interested in whether or not you can pull it off. You can’t have vampires in all the banks.”

“All the major Scottish banks and headquarters. Several investment companies and insurance companies. We’ve already begun.”

Blair rested his chin on his hands. “What if you get caught? You bite the police?”

“It won’t come to the police.”

Jason’s absolute confidence on this point was interesting. Why would it not come to the police? Because if irregularities were discovered, a fall guy was sacrificed?

Blair stood up. “You’ve been very helpful, Jason,” he said civilly. “Thanks. Say hello to old Nick for me.” And he walked out the door, nodded to the PA as he picked up his helmet, and left the building.

****

Sera pushed the enormous old book a few inches away from her and sat back, rubbing her eyes. Leaving the others minding the shop, she and Melanie had retreated to the flat and spread a big bunch of books out on the table. Mel had discovered a few promising lines of inquiry, which Sera was doing her best to pursue, but despite the importance of the research, personal stuff kept getting in the way.

“Smith said she dumped him,” Sera blurted.

Mel glanced up, letting her reading spectacles droop halfway down her nose. She looked like a slightly mad but sexy professor. “Rebecca? Your mother? Yes, she dumped him.”

“I suppose I don’t need to ask why.”

Mel shrugged. “He was egotistical, selfish, and vain, and fortunately, she discovered her mistake in time.”

“Not quite.”

Mel took the specs off, staring at her. “Oh no, you weren’t the mistake, Sera. Never think that. Even unborn, you were the light of her world. She forgave Nick because of you. But she didn’t want him in her life or in yours. And at least in that, they were in agreement. Nick wanted nothing to do with children.”

“Did he know when I was born?” She kept her voice carefully neutral. Tears were very close to the surface, tears for the mother she’d never known. And bitter anger toward the father who’d let her go into care.

“He must have,” Mel said gently. “We moved in a pretty small circle. But he was young, male, and selfish, blah blah blah.”

Sera stared determinedly at the gothic print of the book in front of her.

“Look, Sera. I never liked Nick, but it was definitely the wrong time for him to have kids. Your mother wanted a child and picked the wrong man to have her with. She kicked him out before she even knew she was pregnant. He might have thought—or talked himself into thinking—that you weren’t his.”

“Then why’s he so keen to own me now?”

“Because people change and grow up. It doesn’t sound like he’s any less selfish, but he may have different priorities.” She seemed to hesitate. “Or you may have something he wants.”

“I wondered about that. What, though? Does he imagine I can influence Blair?”

“Can you?”

Sera lifted her gaze to Mel’s, gave a lopsided smile, and looked away again. “No.”

“Then I doubt it’s that. Read on. We’ll discover the truth eventually.”

Sera dragged the book back toward her.

“Serafina.” The familiar voice in her head made her jump.

“What?” she demanded aggressively.

“Nothing,” Mel said in surprise.

“You should work on that telepathy or you’re going to freak out your friends,” Blair remarked. “You don’t need to think aloud.”

“I didn’t invite you into my head,” she retorted.

“I’m not in your head, Sera,” Melanie said anxiously. “Are you all…? Oh.”

Sera directed a helpless shrug at her friend while she listened to the voice in her mind.

“I’ve just been to see Jason. He met Smith before he died as well as after. I think you might be looking at some combination of spells, one planted in the living and activated in the dead. Or undead.”

“Thanks. I’ll pass it along.”

“I’m all gratitude. Here’s another angle. Your mate Jilly hacks computers.”

“She most certainly does not!” Sera said robustly, although she spoiled the effect slightly by adding, “Why?”

“Get her to hack into the banks.”

Sera sat bolt upright. “Are you mad? She’d never get in, and if she did, they’d crucify her!”

“She doesn’t need to get in, just cause enough of a scare to wake up the banks’ security, start a few investigations rolling. It should slow things down, might even lose a few vampires their jobs.”

Sera found herself grinning. “That’s not such a bad idea. If she can pull it off…”

She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. Her mind felt curiously silent, almost…lonely. Dismissing such a stupid idea with impatience, she refocused on Mel, who was staring at her. “What?”

“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen you do. Who were you talking to?”

“Blair,” she said uncomfortably, then covered the moment by repeating what he’d told her, after which she ran downstairs to talk to Jilly about committing a crime that could earn her life in prison.

****

When her last appointment of the day had left, Sera swept Jilly, Jack, and Elspeth upstairs to her flat and set everyone to work—Jilly on infiltrating bank security online, and the rest on research under Melanie’s instructions.

However, despite Blair’s clues, which had got Mel quite excited, it was difficult reading and slow going.

“How long is it going to take us to read all this stuff?” Sera said at last, waving one helpless hand around all the piles of books.

“Depends how lucky we get,” Mel said ruefully.

Sera groaned. “Okay. Who wants pizza?”

An array of hands sprang up. Mel pushed back her chair. “I’ll get them,” she said. “I need some air.”

Sera settled back to work, conscious that her stomach was rumbling loudly enough to present yet another distraction. Fortunately, Melanie was back pretty quickly, and as they heard the flat door open, Sera noticed everyone’s heads lifted in relief. Only Sera felt the prickles of mingled warning and excitement that came with the presence of Blair.

She found she was holding her breath as the living room door opened and Melanie walked in with a stack of pizza boxes.

“I found him in the street,” Melanie said apologetically to Sera.

Jilly frowned up from her laptop long enough to say irritably, “What’d you bring him here for?”

As Blair walked casually in, Elspeth cleared a space on the table for Mel to lay down her burden and smiled at Blair in a friendly fashion. She was the only one who did.

“We’re busy,” Sera told him, deftly catching the pizza box Mel threw to her.

“I didn’t come to eat pizza.”

“I thought he could help,” Melanie said quickly.

“How?” Jack demanded.

Blair continued to regard Sera. “I can read a lot faster than you.”

Sera listened to the beats of her heart. When she found she was counting them, she said, “We need his help.”

It was less than an hour later when the doorbell rang. Sighing, Sera stood up from her position on the living room floor, snatched the stake from her jacket pocket, and went downstairs. Blair didn’t budge from his position on the sofa, but she knew from his very stillness that he was listening.

She couldn’t sense vampire on the other side of the door. Was it Nicholas Smith again?

She opened the door and saw bright orange hair gleaming in the street light. She frowned. “Constable McGowan?”

“Got a minute?” He sounded half aggressive, half rueful. And he wasn’t in uniform.

“Er—I’m a bit busy. I’ve got people round.”

“Clients?”

“Friends.”

“I won’t take long.”

Sera hesitated. He was out of uniform, which suggested his visit was unofficial. To keep him out would only make him unnecessarily suspicious. And yet how could she invite him in when Jilly was hacking into banks?

She compromised. Opening the door to admit him, she turned and headed back up the stairs calling, “Cup of coffee for PC McGowan!”

He seemed slightly surprised by this.

“That’s my warning for them to flush all the dope down the toilet,” she explained.

“I didn’t think you really had visitors,” he said unexpectedly. “I thought it was an excuse.”

“I don’t make excuses,” Sera said. “I’m more likely to shut the door in your face.”

Praying Jilly had closed the laptop, Sera led the way into the living room.

Jilly hadn’t shut the laptop, though at least she’d changed position to sit in the armchair in the corner so no one else could see what she was doing. But her shoulders were tense, her eyes wary as she glanced up.

“Know everyone?” Sera asked casually. “Jack, Melanie, Elspeth, Jilly, Blair. PC McGowan. Anyone make that coffee?”

“There’s some in the pot in the kitchen,” Mel said.

“Not for me, thanks,” McGowan said, looking around him in some bafflement. The floor, the table, and every available space on chairs and the sofa were covered in books and handwritten notes. Everyone was reading large and ancient books, apart from Jilly, who hunched like an old woman over her laptop. “Have I interrupted some kind of study group?”

“Sort of,” Sera said.

His smile was slightly twisted. “I will say you keep taking me by surprise.”

“I think we can call that one mutual,” Jilly murmured, staring at her screen. She grinned at it. “Yes!”

“I think you have to have that coffee,” Sera said hastily, ushering him back out of the living room and into the kitchen. “We can talk in here. So,” she added as she reached for a clean cup, “what can I do for you?”

“Satisfy my curiosity,” McGowan said, leaning against the worktop to watch her. “I’ve been making enquiries about you. Very few of your clients are dissatisfied.”

“That’s nice,” Sera said inanely, pouring coffee into the cup. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Yes, please. But I have to say I find your scale of charges incomprehensible.”

“Depends on so many things,” Sera said vaguely.

“The Gordons told me you spent two evenings with them for the princely sum of ten pounds.”

“What can I say? I’m cheap.”

“Not according to Dianne Thomson. Do you adapt your charges according to what you think your clients can pay?”

“No, no. The charges are fixed. I give discretionary discounts.”

“Look, Miss Mac—Sera, I’m not trying to catch you out here. We both know ten pounds is a purely token payment. Why did you go to all that trouble for nothing?”

Sera shoved his cup along the worktop to him. “Because I can.” She poured another cup for herself.

His gaze was piercing. She thought he might have a future in CID. “Moira Gordon really believes you talk to the dead. So do a lot of other people.”

She met his gaze directly. “What do you want me to say, Constable? You don’t have to believe it. I don’t mind.”

“You can what?”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

“A minute ago, you said you went to all that trouble for the Gordons because you could. Because you could what? Free the spirit of her dead daughter?”

“Why are you so angry about the whole thing?”

He half turned away, dragging his fingers through his bright hair. “A so-called medium ripped off my mum a couple of years ago. She claimed to speak to the ghost of my dead sister while she milked my mother of her life savings. I couldn’t stop her. Now my mother, who worked hard all her life, lives in a shitty wee council flat, and no, she won’t take a penny from me.”

Sera nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. About your sister and the con woman. They’re all out there, and policemen’s families aren’t immune either.” She sipped her coffee and looked him in the eye. “If you’ve got someone who needs help, I’ll do my best. I don’t guarantee to do it for ten pounds, and I don’t guarantee it will be what you want.”

His lip curled. “It isn’t in your power to give us what we want.”

“Suppose not.”

“Is that what you’re doing with the Bells? Giving them what they want?”

So this was the real reason he was here… And yet, looking at him, Sera wasn’t so sure. She sensed some deep discomfort in him that certainly hadn’t been there on their first two encounters. As if he was beginning to believe in her and hated himself for it.

She smiled. “You really are a policeman, aren’t you? All right. The night Jason died, I admit I was taking the piss. I didn’t believe the vampire stories—who would? I thought he was taking the Mickey out of me and decided to do it back at him only better. I’d no idea it would backfire and Jason would end up…as he is.”

“And how is that?”

Sera spoke into her coffee mug. “You wouldn’t believe me, Constable. But I didn’t make it happen.”

“Are you still working for Ferdinand Bell?”

“I think so. Although I’m not sure I’ll get my fee.”

He took a final gulp of coffee and held out the mug to her. “Then why are you doing it?”

Sera reached for the mug and made a stab in the dark. “Why are you working when you’re off duty?”

Their fingers touched on the mug handle, and vision blasted into Sera’s head. Jason on his bed with puncture wounds in his neck. A woman with the same wounds, sprawled on a plush velvet sofa, the kind you got in certain bars. And behind both of those, the girl in the car crash.

Like everyone else’s, PC McGowan’s motives were mixed. As if he felt something, a frown pulled at his brow. Then a shadow darkened the doorway. She didn’t need to look up to know it was Blair.

Sera pushed both the mugs in the vague direction of the sink.

McGowan muttered, “I have to go. Thanks for your time.”

He edged past Blair with a hard, unsmiling stare that was returned in full. As the policeman strode along the hall and downstairs to the front door, Blair asked, “What did he want?”

“I don’t think he knows.” He was in good company. “Come on, back to drudgery.”

In the living room, Jack was saying, “Mel, we’ve gone through all the vampire references you listed, and there’s just nothing there that helps us.”

Melanie groaned. “There has to be something. What are we missing?”

Blair brushed past Sera, his fingers trailing against her wrist and making her shiver as always with the mixture of sexual awareness and the zing of dark, ancient memory. She stopped and stared at him as he walked across the room and sank back on the sofa beside his books.

“Vampires,” she said aloud.

The others looked at her doubtfully.

“What makes them vampires?” she said impatiently. “How do they get to be the way they are? How is it possible? If we knew that, maybe we’d have more chance of understanding what’s making Smith’s vampires different.”

Every gaze turned on Blair, who looked up from his book with odd reluctance.

Melanie said thoughtfully, “No one’s ever explained it to me, though in fairness, I’ve never asked before.” She waved one dismissive hand at the book-strewn table. “These books tell us what affects vampires, but not why, not how vampires came to be.”

Because they were linked, however much Sera might have been trying to break that link today, she felt Blair’s unexpected discomfort. More than that, she had the impression he didn’t really understand the feeling himself. It had something to do with vampire isolation. For centuries, perhaps forever, their survival had been dependent on the human belief that the undead were merely figments of legend and literary imagination. Now, everyone in this room was aware and wanted to know more.

Deep down, Sera could identify with Blair’s reluctance, but this was no time to consider the half-understood sensitivities of one being.

“The Founder,” she said briskly. “You’ve mentioned him a few times. Said that all vampires are descended from him, that you inherited his gift of telepathy and his lack of vocal speech. Who was he? What was his story? How did he get to be a vampire? Did he start off as human, or was he some other species altogether? What—”

She broke off as his lowered eyes lifted suddenly, harsh and accusing. As if she’d betrayed him.

“Stuff that, Blair,” she said evenly. “This is important.”

Blair’s mind shut down from her. No emotions whatsoever escaped, and some tiny, lonely part of her grieved at the loss. Why? She’d already lost him.

He placed his palms on the open pages of his book and gazed at them instead of at her.

“The Founder’s story is legend. I can’t vouch for any of the truth, although my maker was made by him. We don’t dwell in the past; it’s too long for most of us. But we know his story as a reminder of the very good reasons we live in secrecy from humans. We’re a different world that merely feeds off yours.

“According to this legend, the Founder was once a human male who lived thousands of years ago. Which millennium is scarcely important now, though it was before Christ. Various countries claim him, but the most common belief is that he was born somewhere in the Mediterranean regions. He’s been called a wise man, a sorcerer, a druid; different names, probably, for the same thing. He was a driven man, obsessed with the reasons for human existence and the need to extend that existence for as long as possible. He knew all about the human body, and about medicine, such as it was at the time. And, of course, his studies went further, into the spirits of the dead and magic. It wasn’t unusual then. Many people talked to their ancestors, spoke with the dead.”

Blair lifted his head, cast his gaze around all the blank, expectant faces watching him and hearing nothing, and came to rest finally on Sera as he sent her the next, deliberate words. “As I’m sure you know, Christians were not the first religious bigots. The Founder was discovering things that didn’t agree any more with anyone’s knowledge or beliefs. They hounded him out, abused him, half killed him on more than one occasion, but he kept on looking and studying.”

“For immortality?” Sera whispered.

Blair nodded. “Tell them.”

Stumbling, she repeated what he’d told her while he waited patiently and then began again.

“Rumors spread that he’d succeeded in his goal, and then, of course, everyone wanted what he had. He was pursued and captured and tortured for his secret. But the Founder, still human, although by this stage he knew how to achieve immortality, also understood that it couldn’t be for everyone. If the world was peopled by vampires, who would supply the blood? So he wouldn’t tell. He understood the awful abuses such power would open up in the wrong hands. So he never told. In the end, they cut out his tongue and damaged him so badly internally that his vocal cords never worked again.

“Almost dead, he escaped with the aid of magic and spirits.” Blair’s lip curled. “I know. Legend is curiously silent on the mechanics. One story says he had human help and that this human was the first vampire he made. Suffice it to say that ‘with one bound, Jack was free,’ and managed, as his body expired, to perform the magic that reanimated it. We know he drank human blood as part of this ritual and needed to do so ever after. So do we. It’s the Founder’s blood that makes us. We don’t bow to the Founder or worship him, but somehow, his story always stays alive.”

Blair’s eyes, briefly out of focus as he talked, came back to Sera. He jerked his head at the others, and Sera hastily repeated his words, rushing so that she could ask the questions piling up in her mind.

“What happened to him in the end?”

“In the end? I don’t read the future.”

Sera’s lips fell apart. “You mean he’s still out there somewhere?”

A faint smile crossed Blair’s closed face, briefly softening it. “Somewhere.”

“We need the Founder,” Melanie said determinedly.

“Well, you can’t have him,” Blair said, sounding more amused than anything else. The idea was clearly ridiculous, but Mel continued to gaze hopefully from him to Sera and back again.

“Couldn’t you find him?” Sera suggested. “And ask?”

“No one ‘finds’ the Founder. If necessary, he’ll come to you. I understand it’s a good thing if that’s never necessary. Shall we move on?”

With a quick shrug and a shake of her head for the benefit of the others, Sera tumbled into her next question.

“Okay. You inherited certain qualities of the Founder through his blood? Even things that he wasn’t born with, like muteness?”

Blair nodded. “Apparently.”

“But how? It’s like being born with one leg because your father lost his in the war. It doesn’t make sense.”

“True. But then, we still have tongues, which he didn’t when he died, and all our other organs are in perfect condition and remain so.”

Sera frowned. “As if the Founder chose what should be passed on? Why would he not let you speak?”

Blair’s smile was lopsided, and Sera understood.

“To further isolate you from humans, for all the reasons you said before, safety…” Her breath caught. “Smith’s vampires don’t want to be isolated. They need to be with humans to do the banking thing. Could Smith have altered the Founder’s original spell?”

She stared at Melanie, who closed her mouth with a snap.

“Does anyone know the Founder’s original spell?” Mel asked faintly.

Blair shook his head.

“But people must have discovered something similar,” Sera said excitedly, pacing across the room to her. “Even if it went down a different road. Point us, Mel.”

Although Melanie looked more alarmed than inspired, it didn’t stop everyone staring at her in hopeful silence. Only the faint rustling sound of Blair turning the pages of his book disturbed the quiet.

Then Blair stood up and walked over to where Sera stood with Melanie. Somewhat to Sera’s pique, he laid the book on the table in front of Mel, who glanced from him to Sera and down to the pages.

Blair put his finger on the page. “There’s a pre-death spell to animate the dead. To be cast several days before death takes place, to make the body responsive to reanimation. It’s associated with zombies rather than vampires, but the important point is it’s meant to instill obedience to the caster.”

“And if the spell’s cast before the turning, before the person is a vampire, then it bypasses the Founder’s magic,” Sera said triumphantly. “No wonder they seem a different species from you…”

Melanie began to read while everyone else watched her. After a moment, Sera peered over her shoulder. The words didn’t make any sense to her.

At last, Melanie raised her gaze to Blair’s face. “Would that work on a vampire?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t think Smith knew whatever he used would work either. I doubt it had ever been tried before in conjunction with the creation of a vampire.”

“Then why would he risk it?” Sera asked.

“Because that’s what he does. He takes risks and grabs opportunities, and makes his plans accordingly. I think he can talk to the dead, as you do. And I think that gave him the idea which he put into practice when he encountered a vampire. Arthur, probably. Whatever magic he used to compel obedience has interfered with whatever occurs naturally to turn the dead into the undead.”

For the benefit of the others who were looking bewildered—even Jilly had glanced up from her laptop, frowning—Sera repeated Blair’s words, adding hastily, “It makes a weird kind of sense to me, but it isn’t proof. You’re just guessing. We’re all just guessing.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But it struck me today when I was talking to Jason. Even for fledglings, they don’t think for themselves. They’re more like zombies, acting from instinct or obedience, not from desire.”

Slowly, mulling it over, Sera repeated Blair’s speech.

“F*ck,” Jack said in some awe. “Is he saying we’re dealing with a hybrid of vampire, zombie, and banker? How scary is that?”

Melanie pointed her pen at Blair. “I think you’re on to something. We need an enchantment to reverse zombie spells.”

“Simple,” Sera said faintly.

****

By the time Sera fell asleep, there was hope. They’d found a powerful counter-spell to the one Blair had brought to their attention, and Melanie was sure she knew now how to break the caster’s hold.

“Postpone the celebrations,” she advised. “We’ll give it a shot tomorrow when I’ve slept.”

Jilly had already fallen asleep, satisfied she’d caused at least some havoc in the banking world while covering her tracks.

“Even if they do catch you,” Elspeth comforted, “I’m sure they’ll be more lenient when you haven’t actually stolen anything.”

“Not sure it works that way,” Jilly murmured, shoving the laptop off her knee and curling into the chair with her eyes closed. Sera threw a blanket over her.

Under protest, Elspeth was given Sera’s bed. The rest crashed out on the floor or sofa. As Sera gave in to exhaustion, she was aware of Blair standing by the window, looking into the night. He was very still, very straight, and something about his long, lean back and the way his hair curled over his neck made her heart ache. Tonight, he might have been human.

But he wasn’t.

There were so many reasons to draw back from whatever it was she’d found with him. She knew she was doing the right thing.

And yet, when she woke up suddenly to the clicking of the front door lock, she was on her feet and running down the stairs in nameless panic before she was properly conscious.

He must have heard her coming. At the speed he moved, he could have been halfway home before her foot hit the top step. Instead, he stood below her, one hand on the half-open door as he watched her descent.

“You’re going,” she whispered stupidly.

“It’s nearly dawn.”

Reaching the bottom, she walked slowly toward him, not knowing what to say except a lame, “Thanks for your help tonight.”

He inclined his head. It didn’t appear to be ironic. His expression was serious, if otherwise unreadable. She stood beside him, waiting for him to say something or to go. She didn’t know which she wanted.

Slowly, unsmiling, he lifted his hand and touched her cheek, cupping it in his palm. It felt tender and sweet. Until she blinked, and then his touch and his presence were both gone. The door didn’t make a sound as it closed behind him.

Sera stared at it without seeing. She raised her hand, placing it over the skin he’d caressed. It felt like good-bye.