Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Caxton thought. She grabbed at her forehead and squeezed it with her free hand. When Jameson hadn’t attacked in Syracuse she’d thought he was lying low. That she’d created too much trouble for him—or that he was waiting for her to make some stupid move, to take Raleigh and Simon someplace undefended, someplace they could be gotten at easily. She hadn’t even considered he might be busy with some other agenda. “I don’t understand—he visited you, he offered you the curse?
That doesn’t make sense. You’re not part of his family.”
“Does your last name have to be Arkeley to be part of that brood?” Polder asked. “He’s coming for everyone he loves, Laura. Everyone he ever loved.”
Of course.
Vesta had told Caxton how she and Jameson had once had an affair. She must still mean something to him, no matter how far he’d fallen into darkness. “Listen,” Caxton said. “He’s not still there, at your house?”
“No, he’s gone. I suppose I should have made some attempt to fight him, or at least track him when he left, but I was too scared. I know you understand that.”
Caxton did.
“He gave me the same deadline he gave the others. Twenty-?four hours to consider his offer. A refusal is as good as a death sentence. You have to find him before sundown tomorrow!”
“I will,” Caxton promised, though she had no idea how. “Listen, I’ll come to you. Stay where you are and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m on my way to you right now. In fact, I can already see your headquarters building. Come out to the parking lot to meet me.” Polder ended the call. Caxton bit her lip and wondered what she was going to do next. She no longer had any authority to put Vesta in protective custody. She could send Vesta to Fetlock, to ask for his help, but she wondered if the older woman would even want that. Vesta was a borderline agoraphobic, rarely leaving her own house for more than a few hours and never at night—except of course for when she’d completed her final duty to Astarte. For Vesta to drive to Harrisburg after sunset she must truly be panicked. I’ll do what I can for her, Caxton thought. I owe her. For advice, over the years, and for the spiral pendant she still wore around her neck, which was her only protection against vampiric powers. She headed out the front door of the headquarters building, out into the parking lot, and saw a pair of headlights coming toward her. The lights of an old truck, the kind of ancient pickup you saw on farms still in central Pennsylvania. A body of pure rust held together by duct tape and sheer desperation. She didn’t remember the Polders having such a vehicle—maybe Vesta had been forced to go to her neighbors and plead to borrow some transportation, anything. Caxton waved the truck toward a parking space near the door, but Vesta just pulled up short halfway into the lot, partially blocking the exit, and switched off her lights.
Well, Caxton thought, so she’s not a very good driver. In fact, she wondered if Polder even had a license. She waved again, and saw Vesta push open the truck’s creaking door and slide down onto the snowy pavement. She was dressed as she always had been, in her long, austere black dress. For some reason she’d pulled her hair back in a severe bun and wore the black veil she’d worn on the day of Jameson’s funeral.
Vesta called to her from ten yards away in a voice high and near breaking with grief and fear. “I am sorry, Laura, to have to come to you this way. I had no choice.”
“That’s alright, I’m just glad you’re safe,” Caxton replied. “Come inside, get out of the cold. I want to hear everything. Tell me what happened with Jameson.”
“He’s changed,” Vesta said, walking slowly toward Caxton. “Evil is consuming him. Once he seemed to think that the death of a loved one was a mercy.”
More cars were coming up the drive into the parking lot—several of them. They were running with no lights at all, coming fast, and she could see they were full of people. As one of them bounced up over the curb and slewed into the parking lot, Caxton just had time to wonder what was going on before Vesta spoke again.