Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Two


In the circumstances, the paramedics carried Jason not to hospital but to his own bedroom. As everyone else moved inside to await the inevitable arrival of the police or toward home, Sera slumped against the maze hedge, flanked by a uniquely silent Jilly and Jack.

“Tell me those clippers are still in your pocket,” she said to Jack. He brought his hand from his pocket and showed her. The points were clean.

“I guess Ferdy really had a stalker,” Jilly said heavily.

Sera shook her head. Not unless the kilted stranger of the fast getaway was the stalker after all. “This must have been one of the guests. Jack heard people giggling and talking in the maze.” Which was when the stranger had been performing his little scene with Tam. None of this made sense.

She delved into her pocket for her phone. “Where’s Tam? He came out of the trees with me but did a bunk when he heard what happened. I need to know who that other actor is, and how the hell…” She broke off as Tam’s familiar grunt sounded over the phone. “Tam?”

“Sera, I’m out of this. Call me tomorrow,” Tam said. He sounded breathless, as if he was running.

“Wait! Are you clear of the house?”

“How stupid do you think I am? Of course, I’m clear of it. Well clear. Is that bloke dead right enough?”

“Very. Tam, who was that man with you? The guy in the kilt?”

“No idea. His name’s Blair, if that helps.”

“Is he with you?”

“No, I presume he’s still at the bloody party with you! Look, I’m getting in my car now—”

“What happened to your neck?” Sera interrupted, gripping the phone harder as if that could somehow keep Tam on the line. “What made those marks?”

“What marks?” Tam sounded bewildered. Over the phone came the distinctive sound of a closing car door. “There’s nothing wrong with my neck, unless it got scratched by brambles. Bye, Sera.”

He managed to break the connection in a particularly determined kind of way, and Sera gave up, dropping the phone back in her pocket.

Jilly said, “We f*cked up, didn’t we?”

“Big style,” Sera agreed. Tragically big. The sound of police sirens screamed through the air. A man was dead. Dead. And she’d been too busy arsing around to prevent it. Again. History had a sick sense of humor to keep repeating itself like this. “It’s going to be a long night.”

One of many as she learned to live with this.

****

Blair could still smell his quarry on the wind. Although she drove, she’d left the car window open, and he was more than capable, once he’d reformed into corporeal state, of following across the city on foot. Fading was a useful un-life skill, but unfortunately it played havoc with the senses, and it was largely luck that had reformed him only feet from the vampiress’s car. This was the best lead he’d had, and he was damned if he’d lose it. Although he was conscious of a twinge of regret. It would have been good to stay a little longer with the beautiful psychic. He was hungry, since she’d interrupted his meal, and the scent of her blood had been extremely alluring. But he was too old, much, much too old to let even the most intriguing of women get in the way of his supreme goal. Which was, of course, personal comfort.

By the time his quarry reached the Roseburn area, Blair was running across the rooftops, keeping time with her car below. She parked in a residential street of Victorian houses and got out. She looked slim and sexy in her black silk dress. It didn’t seem to matter to her that it was torn and stained with human blood.

Blair thought quite seriously about jumping down and draining her dry. She’d just caused him a massive amount of trouble, present and future. But on the other hand, he needed to know more, and perhaps he owed her for leading him here. He’d see what he could learn first.

She went up a short garden path to a quiet, detached house. A bit of wood stuck out above the door, with two short chains dangling from it, as if it had once held a bed-and-breakfast or hotel sign. The building bore an air of neglect, and it seemed to be in darkness. Blair leapt across the street to the house’s roof, and the vampiress in the black dress glanced uneasily upward as if, at last, she’d sensed something. However, whether or not she saw him, she was distracted as soon as the front door opened.

Blair leaned right out from the roof at an impossible angle in order to see. A middle-aged man, attractively gray, had opened the door. The girl brushed past him, and he made to follow. Then he paused, hesitating, and slowly turned his face upward.

Interesting. Another human psychic who’d sensed his presence faster than the vampire. Perhaps that was why he reminded Blair of the scolding girl at the party.

“Uh… Good evening,” the man said, apparently unfazed by a vampire leaning at almost ninety degrees off his guttering.

Blair inclined his head. Even more interesting, although the girl in the black dress was the only vampire currently in the house, the whole building reeked of undead presence.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

Blair was disinclined to answer that. He considered going inside, killing the man and the vampiress by way of a territorial message to the others. It was one solution, and it might work. But he realized that alongside his irritation lurked a grain of curiosity which a murder spree would not satisfy.

“Can I help you?” the man asked. “Would you like to come in?”

Blair stepped off the guttering, and the man fell back in spontaneous alarm. As Blair landed, soft as a cat, his knees only slightly bent to absorb the force, the man reached for the door with one hand and shoved the other into his pocket as if for a weapon. Blair smiled.

“Not yet,” he said telepathically and walked away. He had the feeling the man understood. Blair waited until the man closed the door; then he walked up the first side street, jumped onto the nearest roof, and doubled back. Perhaps he’d just spy for a while. Besides, a rather juicy couple of young men were wandering up the road, and he rather fancied a midnight snack.

****

Being discovered in the dead man’s bedroom was not the introduction to the police that Sera would have chosen. She’d calculated it was worth the risk—erroneously, as it happened.

She’d snuck in while close family and friends looked after Jason’s parents downstairs, and sat on the edge of the bed to take Jason’s cold hand and will him to talk to her. With his eyes closed and all vitality gone, he looked unexpectedly young and unassuming. His straight, brown hair was mussed-up, almost like a schoolboy’s, and he had a faint scattering of freckles that brought a lump to her throat. She couldn’t bring him back, any more than she could have brought Mattie back, but she could at least discover what had happened to him. Who had happened to him.

With his hand in hers, she closed her eyes and reached out to him.

Blankness. She picked up nothing from the touch of his dead skin; no bewildered or angry spirit came anywhere near her. It almost felt like Jason had never been.

Maybe she was too wound-up. Maybe memories of Mattie were interfering. After all, the events surrounding Mattie’s death had been a major turning point in her life—the last time anyone had made a decision for her. Now Sera was in control; she made the decisions. Although they weren’t always good ones, or this young man wouldn’t be dead and silent on the bed beside her.

With an effort, Sera refocused her mind, trying to banish all the personal baggage. There was only Jason Bell, suddenly and mysteriously dead.

And still silent.

The bedroom door clicked open, jolting Sera back to her soundings. Her fingers scrabbled, searching for something, anything of Jason’s to keep for later. Encountering a cufflink, she twisted it free and palmed it, just as a uniformed police constable entered with Ferdy.

The policeman raised his ginger eyebrows at her in surprise. She stood at once, refusing to look as guilty as she felt as she surreptitiously dropped Jason’s purloined cufflink into her leather jacket pocket.

“Is this your daughter?” the policeman asked Ferdy.

“Oh no, this is Miss MacBride. I hired her in connection with the stalker we were telling you about.”

The policeman’s already suspicious eyes hardened. “You’re a private investigator?” he asked, not bothering to hide his distaste.

Sera looked him in the eye. “I’m a psychic investigator.” As she expected, that deprived the boy in blue of speech long enough for her to add, “I’m Sera MacBride, owner of Serafina’s Psychic Investigations.”

The constable’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing in here?”

Sera held his look; she was used to his kind of contempt. “Trying to reach his spirit.”

The policeman snorted. But he had to swallow whatever cutting remark he’d been about to make when Ferdy asked quickly, “Did you reach him? Did you reach my boy?”

Sera shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. Perhaps it’s too soon.” Or perhaps, like Mattie’s spirit, he’d never talk to her, because it was her fault he was dead.

“Aye. Perhaps,” said the copper disparagingly. “Did you touch the body at all?” Although he was busy writing in his notebook, his eyes tried to pierce her with quick darts over the top of it.

“No,” Sera lied.

“Come downstairs with me, please.” Despite the deliberate civility, it was not a request. Sera only shrugged and passed under his arm out of the door.

“Is that it?” Sera asked, heading for the stairs. “Aren’t you going to examine him, take photos and stuff?”

“My colleagues from CID will be here shortly.” The bedroom door shut with a definite click, and the constable followed her and Ferdy downstairs. But as Ferdy went to join his wife and closest friends among the guests, the policeman detained her in the spacious hall. “A few questions, Miss MacBride.”

“Sure.”

“What did Mr. Bell hire you to do, exactly?”

“Stop whoever—or whatever—was stalking him and his family.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet.”

“How much did you charge him for all the garlic and crosses?”

“It’s all part of the service,” Sera said brazenly.

“Aye? I bet you don’t give him a rebate either.”

“Why should I? It worked, didn’t it?”

“How do you come to that conclusion?”

Sera smiled. “Have you seen any vampires in the house?”

She turned away from him, meaning to go into the larger room where the rest of the guests were giving their names to another policeman before being allowed to leave. But at the last minute, he grabbed her jacket sleeve.

“How do you sleep at night?” he snarled. “Ripping folk off when they’re down, playing on their grief like a vulture. You people make me sick.”

An automatic retort sprang to Sera’s lips, but she never made it. She waited silently, staring at his name badge—PC Alex McGowan—until he released her, then walked away in search of her henchmen. Right now, she made herself sick.

****

It was as they were being allowed to leave at last that Sera finally found her moment to ask Ferdy about his mysterious guest. He came up to her as she made her way to the front door with Jilly and earnestly asked her to visit him tomorrow morning.

“Of course,” Sera said at once. “Mr. Bell… Did you invite anyone called Blair to your party?”

“Jane Blair? Our neighbor? Retired school teacher from Mary Erskine’s?”

“Definitely not! Tall young man, dark or auburn hair, wearing a kilt? Might be an actor or another investigator? Like us?”

Ferdy shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells. And I didn’t hire another investigator. Why?”

“I’ll explain tomorrow,” she said hurriedly. Plainclothes police were arriving, and this time they’d brought all the suited-up forensics people she expected. She didn’t watch Taggart and CSI for nothing. They were piling into the house with their equipment and climbing the stairs after PC McGowan, who didn’t like Sera, and everyone else was waiting to speak to Ferdy.

It was pandemonium, and yet as Sera muttered sympathy and farewell and reached for the door handle, the policeman’s exclamation cut through the din like an axe.

“What! Where the hell’s the body?”

****

Sera’s Citroën screeched to a halt outside Jack’s modern block of luxury flats overlooking Haymarket, just as Jack inserted his key in the door. He glanced over his shoulder without surprise as Sera unwound the window. “Get in,” she called.

He didn’t even attempt to remonstrate, just took his key out of the door, walked back down the steps, and climbed into the backseat of Sera’s car.

“Nice one, Doc,” Jilly flung at him from the front passenger seat. “Your dead man walked.”

Jack sighed. “I know. But be fair. He fooled an actual doctor too. What is it with these people? What are he and old Ferdy up to?”

“F*ck knows,” said Jilly baldly.

In the rearview mirror, Sera saw Jack blink. He still hadn’t got used to the shock of such foul language emanating from the angelic-looking Jilly, whose halo of shining golden hair and frail, perfect beauty belied her much earthier character.

“Where are we going?” Jack asked.

“Tam’s,” Sera said.

“He won’t be in,” said Jilly, who was Tam’s cousin and knew his habits pretty well. “He’ll be in Spier’s Bar.”

Sera nodded and kept driving.

“Have they found him?” Jack asked.

“Jason? No. Not yet.”

“Wouldn’t we be better looking for him than for Tam?”

“I need Tam to tell me who this Blair character is. I found him wrestling with Tam in the trees, as if they were playing out some vampire scene of their own. Tam was cagey about the whole thing.”

“Probably thought it was funny till you showed up, then crapped his pants,” Jilly offered. “Tam likes a laugh, but he’s always been scared shitless of you.”

“Not as scared as he’s going to be,” Sera promised.

Jilly glanced at her. “It wasn’t his fault, you know.”

“No,” Sera agreed. “It was mine.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Sera. At least Jason isn’t dead.”

“Thing is,” Sera said, gazing fixedly at the headlights in front, “I’m pretty sure he is.”

Jilly’s fair head swiveled to stare. “You mean someone stole the body? Who the hell could have done that with the house full of police? Dead bodies are heavy. You can’t just stuff them under your coat and swan off with them unnoticed!”

“There were only two policemen when the body disappeared, and they were both downstairs taking names. I’ll bet there’s another staircase in that house and a back way out.”

“Who would do it, though?” Jack demanded.

“And why?” Jilly added.

“Blair. I don’t know why.” She glanced at Jilly, then at the rearview mirror to meet Jack’s gaze. “I f*cked up, and all we can do now is get Ferdy his dead boy back and find his killer. If Blair didn’t do it, I’ll bet he knows the guy who did.” For instance, that shadowy woman in the torn, strappy dress who’d headed round the side of the house just before Blair did. Had he been with her? Were they accomplices?

Just as Jilly had prophesied, Tam was discovered propping up the bar at Spier’s. A rather unlikely and frequently out-of-work actor, Thomas Allen, aka Tam the Tank, specialized in heavy gangster roles. But apart from a slight shiftiness around the eyes, he didn’t look terribly villainous tonight.

He straightened as he caught sight of Sera’s entourage easing their way through the tables toward him. A brief expression like a hunted deer flitted across his lived-in face before it was replaced by a shrug of resignation.

“What are you having?” he asked, turning back toward the bar.

“Truth, Tam,” Sera said. “No twist. Who is Blair? Where does he live?”

Tam sighed. “I don’t know who he is. I never laid eyes on him before tonight. He just—appeared. While I was waiting for you.”

“Whose idea was it to pull the bite-mark stunt?”

“Nobody’s!” Clearly harassed by the three glaring faces around him, Tam laid down his pint. “Look, I don’t know why you keep going on about biting—”

He broke off as Sera reached up and pulled down the collar of his jacket. There was nothing more interesting than stubble on the left side of his neck. Annoyed by her faulty recollection, Sera yanked at the other side of his jacket, then frowned as she let her hand fall.

“See?” Tam exclaimed. He didn’t even sound smug.

“There’s nothing,” Jack observed. “Certainly nothing like those marks on Jason.”

“Was it makeup?” Sera hazarded.

“Oh, for the love of— No makeup. No bite.”

“You’re saying I was seeing things that weren’t there?” Sera asked with blatant disbelief.

“And hearing things,” Tam retorted. “The guy never even spoke to you.”

“What did he say to you?”

“The same! Nothing!”

Sera eased her hip onto a barstool to point out the obvious flaw in Tam’s story. “Then how,” she asked, “did he tell you his name?”

Tam stared back at her, clearly at a loss.

“Did he write it down in the dark? Tap it out in Morse code?”

“No!” Tam exclaimed. “That is… I don’t know!”

“Whose idea was the wrestling match? His or yours?”

“Wrestling?”

“You appeared to be squeezing the life out of each other. He was winning. You called him gay. Why was that? Tam, I don’t care if it was a lovers’ clinch or some practical joke to teach me a lesson. A man’s dead, and I need to know the truth of what the hell this guy was doing there.”

“I don’t know, all right? I don’t know.” Tam turned away, picked up his beer, and drank.

Deliberately, Sera reached out and covered the hand he rested on his thigh. Tam’s whole body jerked. His glass rattled against his teeth and froze. Over it, his gaze locked with Sera’s in something akin to terror.

Right now, Sera knew how he felt. He was telling the truth, and that was scarier than anything. She let him go. “Sorry, Tam,” she muttered and swung round to leave, pushing straight for the door without even a good-bye.

****

Blair learned nothing by squatting on the roof of the vampiress’s shelter. She simply went to sleep. For a while, Blair amused himself by drinking from passersby until he felt full. After which, he settled back on the roof and smelled the blood of the human inside with a more detached interest. There was some connection between him and the psychic girl at the party, he’d swear it.

He mulled that over for a bit, getting somewhat lost in fantasies that involved drinking from the girl’s naked body while he made love to her. Nice idea, although he’d had the impression that she didn’t even believe in vampires, so he strongly doubted she was in league with any. Nor did she strike him as the sort of woman who would just stand there and let him drink her blood. Or f*ck her. No doubt either would earn him a painful jab from one of her little pointy sticks.

So what was the connection between her and this other human? And what was the man in the house doing with vampires? Was he some kind of servant? He wished the vampiress would wake up and think, because all he’d got so far from either her or the human male was that they were pretty damned pleased with themselves. In fact, as the hours passed, he grew so bored that had it not been for the promise Ailis had forced from him forty years ago—to look out for the community in her absence—he’d have broken in and eaten them through sheer annoyance at having his time wasted.

He curled his lip at that thought. Time was something a vampire had in abundance. Overabundance. Although Ailis, damn her beautiful, manipulative soul, had prevented any curtailment of his. So now he equated his comfort with the good of the community and occasionally even managed to have fun doing it. Like encountering the psychic girl.

Which brought him back to the smug psychic man inside the house with the smug vampiress.

It was close to dawn before a possible reason for their self-satisfaction suggested itself.

Oh, f*cking hell! I’ve been watching the wrong place. Springing to his feet, Blair began the race back to Davidson’s Mains and the Bells’ house.

He was in time to see Jason step out of the front door in the pale gray light of the predawn. Dressed in a smart three-piece suit, he climbed into the white sports car which was waiting only feet from the door and drove away at breakneck speed.

Blair scowled. Under my bloody nose, you bastards. This has got to stop.

Only he couldn’t afford the chase right now. The sun was on its way up, and he needed to be home.

****

When Jilly entered the welcoming front office of Serafina’s Psychic Investigations, she found Jack poring over telephone books, and Elspeth, the gray-haired receptionist, rummaging so dementedly through her desk drawers that she could spare no more than an inarticulate grunt in response to Jilly’s “Good morning.” She’d obviously lost her vodka again.

“Where’s Herself?” Jilly asked, throwing her jacket and laptop bag onto her own desk. She pointed at the door to the inner office, where clients could be private. “In there?”

“Haven’t seen her,” Jack said in a depressed tone of voice. “I don’t think she’s come down yet.”

Elspeth shut the drawer. “We need milk.”

Milk and vodka. Jilly had no idea why Sera insisted on employing Elspeth, unless it was so she could pinch her alcohol supply late at night.

“And then,” Elspeth said, struggling into her coat while Jilly set her laptop up on the desk, “I’ll make coffee.”

“Great. I could murder a cup.” Jilly slid into her chair and glanced at Jack. “You looking for Blairs?”

Jack shoved his phonebook across the desk. “Hundreds of them. And that’s only if Blair’s the surname. I’ve tried all the likely local agencies too—no actors or magicians or ventriloquists on their books matching our man’s description.”

“You want to try social networking sites.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know if he’s based in Scotland, let alone Edinburgh. Sera said he sounded Scottish, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t actually know the guy exists.”

“Oh, he exists,” Jilly argued. “Seems to be the one thing Sera and Tam agree on.”

Jack dragged one hand through his unruly, curly brown hair. “What is all this neck-biting stuff? Is someone taking the mick out of Ferdy?”

“You mean apart from us?”

Jack scratched his chin. “What if Jason was taking the mick out of us in retaliation? Because he didn’t like us making a fool of his father?”

Jilly raised one eyebrow at him. “You’re the one who gave him mouth-to-mouth and claimed he was dead.”

“Shit, Jilly, you saw him! All white and shrunken, exactly as if someone had let all the blood out of him.”

Jilly sat back in her chair, savoring the moment. “You’re suggesting a vampire really did bite him?”

To her surprise, Jack’s gaze didn’t falter. “I’m saying, what’s Sera’s problem with this? Why doesn’t she believe in vampires when…”

“When she believes in all the other mumbo jumbo?”

“Doesn’t she?”

Unsure what response to make, Jilly played for time. “Why ask me?”

“You’ve known her longer than I have. I realize she takes the piss, puts on shows, but sometimes…”

“What?”

“You know,” Jack said darkly.

Jilly, who’d been acquainted with Sera since they were outsiders together at school, had long ago accepted the strange gifts of her friend and respected absolutely Sera’s right to pretend charlatanism if she chose. It was Sera’s place, not Jilly’s, to tell Jack as little or as much as she saw fit. Besides, Sera’s real problem right now was not so much with the existence of vampires as with the possible death of Jason Bell under her nose, which was setting off all sorts of blame issues that Jilly really didn’t want her to go through again.

So she merely smirked at Jack as she stood up. “You believe in the powers of our glorious leader. I’m going to tell her.”

“No, you’re not,” Jack disputed as she crossed to the inner office.

“Actually,” said Jilly, opening the door and stepping inside, “I am.”

The office was indeed empty and the door in the side wall which led to Sera’s flat carelessly left unlocked. Jilly knocked and barged in.

“Sera, it’s me!” she called as she ran up the stairs.

Sera sat on her living room floor in the same jeans and T-shirt she’d worn last night, looking white and exhausted, her short, jet-black hair sticking up like spikes. The skin seemed to be stretched so tightly across the fine bones of her face that her skull looked in danger of bursting through. Dark shadows lurked around her startlingly bright blue eyes.

Although she was surrounded by the mess of life—books and coffee cups scattered across the floor and coffee table; a pair of boots in a heap in the corner where they’d obviously been flung; two jackets and a sweater over the back of the sofa, and a half-full vodka bottle on the chair—the space immediately in front of her was clear, apart from one lonely cufflink. A square of jet set in gold, it looked vaguely familiar.

“Is that Jason’s?”

Sera nodded.

“Does Ferdy know you’ve got it?”

“Nope. Nor do the police.”

Jilly picked up the vodka and sat in the chair, dangling the bottle between her legs. “Get much?” she asked casually.

“Not a bloody thing.”

“Maybe he’s just not dead.”

“Or maybe he hasn’t learned yet that he can talk to me. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Jilly shrugged. “I’d say his choice of conversational partners in this life would be somewhat limited. If he was dead.”

“He’s dead,” Sera insisted. She glanced up, and Jilly felt a fresh stab of anxiety for her friend. “There was no life in him in the maze. I’d have sensed it.”

Sera’s pallor, the uncharacteristic tightness around her lips, could be explained by tiredness, but it didn’t account for the stricken, almost dead look behind her eyes. Jilly had seen that look only once before when Mattie, the only foster mother Sera had ever cared for, had died of a sudden, massive stroke. Sera, alone in the house with Mattie at the time, had found the body. At the age of fourteen, she already talked to the dead, but Mattie had never spoken to Sera. Sera had taken that as blame, and Jilly could see she was interpreting Jason’s silence in the same way.

Jilly’s throat closed up. Her heart ached for her friend, but it was a wound that was never prodded between them because it had already come close to ending their friendship. They’d known each other since childhood, two outsiders finding strength in alliance.

If Jilly’s problem had been too much family, Sera’s had been too little. Kicked from foster family to foster family via several stints in children’s homes, Sera had always come up fighting, physically and mentally. In all the years of Jilly’s acquaintance with her, despite the cruelty of other children, the abuse and neglect of adults, and the dreadful loneliness she must have suffered, Serafina had only ever shed tears for Mattie. And Jilly had seen, which had made her unbearable to Sera. Jilly had saved things at the time only by pretending not to notice and never, ever referring to it.

Although they were adults now, Jilly still shied away from the subject, even from disparaging whatever comparisons Sera had got into her head between Mattie’s death and Jason Bell’s. Pity and understanding would solve nothing for Sera.

So Jilly just said in a neutral tone of voice, “Maybe you’re right. Have you been to bed?”

“I fell asleep on the floor,” Sera said vaguely. “What time is it? Are you in early, or am I late?”

“Guess.”

To her relief, a faint smile curved Sera’s tired lips. “I’d better shower and change if I’m going to see Ferdy.”

“Want company?” Jilly asked casually. If they dared to blame Sera for this, she’d damn well be there to ram the accusation back down their rich, privileged throats, mourning or no mourning.

“No, thanks,” Sera answered. “I’d rather you tracked this Blair down.”

“Jack’s having no joy,” Jilly warned her. “But,” she added as Sera rose to somewhat weary feet, “he did, for once, have something sensible to say. Or at least imply.” She hesitated until Sera glanced back over her shoulder, and then gave an apologetic, lopsided smile. “I know it’s ridiculous, but what if vampires exist in this world, the same as spirits do?”

“The spirit is natural,” Sera said at once. “It’s what’s left and moves on when the body dies. And bodies do die. They don’t become zombies or vampires or anything else. Jack’s yanking your chain. Like someone’s trying to yank mine.”

“Okay.” Jilly stood. “In that case, he still hasn’t said anything sensible.” She held up the bottle. “Did you pinch this for yourself or just to keep it from Elspeth?”

“For me, but I forgot to drink any of it. I think. Is she looking for it?”

“Gone to buy more.”

“Better not give her it back, then, or she’ll think she’s going mad too.”

“You pay her too much.” Jilly dropped the bottle back onto the chair and left. It seemed to be all she could do.