It was a very short message. “Keep the boy from harm, Laura. I have plans for him.”
It was recognizably a woman’s voice, though so creaky and rough she could barely make out the words. At first she didn’t understand, couldn’t think of who it might be. Then she remembered she had heard that voice before, just once, more than a year previously. It was the voice of Justinia Malvern. She was talking again. Jameson had fed her enough blood to give her her voice back. That meant it was only a matter of time before she would start walking under her own power. It didn’t matter. Caxton told herself that, over and over. The kids were both in protective custody. She was making progress. She signed the necessary papers and had Simon released into her recognizance. The boy looked almost pathetically grateful as she led him out of the police station and into the parking lot. It had stopped snowing during the night, and all of Syracuse was buried under a thick layer of white that hurt her eyes to look at. She slipped on her sunglasses and eventually found her car. It was under six inches of snow, but the red paint showed through here and there. Together she and Simon dug it out and then climbed inside, their breath pluming across the windows and leaving them fogged. Before they got on the highway she stopped at a fast-?food restaurant for breakfast. Simon, it turned out, was a vegetarian. They had trouble finding him a salad, but eventually he settled for one with a few withered vegetables and some strips of fried chicken he could pick out. He laid them carefully on a napkin, which he then folded up and stuck inside the bag. This he crumpled up in his hands and put in his pocket for later disposal.
Caxton looked into the Mazda’s backseat and saw all the wrappers and bags she’d thrown back there. Neither of them said anything.
The snowplows had cleared the highways and laid down a thick scurf of rock salt. The road surface was wet and shiny, but the chains on her tires held it just fine.
It was only a little after noon when she arrived back at Harrisburg and the state police headquarters. She brought Simon inside and went looking for Glauer. He was down in the SSU briefing room, pinning up a picture of Raleigh’s friend Violet under VAMPIRE PATTERN #1. In the picture the girl wore a black hooded sweatshirt, unzipped to show some generous cleavage, and piercings in her nose and ears. She looked unhappy. Nothing like the smiling girl in a baggy sweater Caxton had seen die at the convent.
“Where’d you get that?” Caxton asked.
“The girl’s parents. They agreed to the cremation, by the way. They did it last night, as a rush job.”
“Good,” Caxton said, “though it was probably unnecessary. Jameson would know I had a guard on her body. If he raised her I could have interrogated her.”
“Sure,” Glauer said. He wrote Violet’s name on the board with a dry erase marker. VIOLET HARMON. Caxton hadn’t even known her last name before.
“I brought Simon back in one piece,” Caxton said, and introduced the boy to the big cop.
“I’m so sorry, for everything that’s happened,” Glauer said, his big hand folding around one of Simon’s.
“I promise, we did everything we could to help your mother.”
“I’m sure you did,” Simon said.
“Listen, your sister is here. Do you want to see her?”
The boy frowned. “Why?” he asked. Then he shook his head as if to clear it.
“You should talk about what’s happened.” Glauer patted Simon on the shoulder. “Your family needs to be together at a time like this. Love and support mean everything in the face of grief.”
Simon shrugged. “I’ve never really done the big brother thing before.”
“Just wait in the lounge, then,” Glauer said, and gestured toward the door. When Simon went out of the room the big cop turned to Caxton and rolled his eyes. “He’s about as bad as you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Caxton asked, but with a smile. Nothing could ruin her good mood. When Glauer didn’t answer she followed him out into the hallway. “I take it,” she said, “from the fact that everybody here is still alive, that Jameson didn’t attack last night.”
“No, he didn’t,” Glauer told her. “And I’ll admit I was kind of relieved. You made it sound like one night alone with Raleigh was going to be the death of me. Instead it was kind of fun.”
“Really?” Caxton’s smile broadened. “She’s a little young for you, isn’t she?”
Glauer blushed but assured her nothing like what she was insinuating had happened. “She got bored pretty early, which didn’t surprise me. I mean, what’s a nineteen-?year-?old girl going to do spending the night in an office building? We played a game of Scrabble—”
“Who won?” Caxton asked.