La Vida Vampire

“Can you track the vandal?”


Pandora shook her head. I smelled only blood and sand. The scent stopped at the street. The vandal had left by car then. Cosmil frowned at the puzzle, but it was not his priority. Triton had shape -shifted into dolphin form with the dark moon to roam the coastline of the Pacific one last time. In twenty -four hours, when he shifted back to human form, he would rest for two days before his business affairs concluded. At the time he traveled east, he would be most vulnerable to detection.

If only Cosmil could unmask The Void, he might call on allies to contain it. He would perform the revealing spell one more time but save his highest energy and magick to cloak Triton’s movements. Meanwhile, Francesca must be guarded.

“Keep watch,” he murmured. “Let no harm befall them.”

As the panther bounded back up the tree, Cosmil’s body shimmered and disappeared.



I settled down to work on the tour details for Saber, breaking now and then to finish reading my design course lectures. I have a good memory, but reconstructing the two tours was harder than I thought it would be. I was pleased that absolutely nothing Mick had said or done pointed to him as the killer. Certainly not of a total stranger. Millie? She’d seemed disapproving of the couple from the get -go. There was the confrontation about Millie’s perfume overuse. There was the oddity about Yolette’s first husband’s death. Etienne had said it was an accident, but I’d heard Murder loud and clear in my head with no idea whose thought I’d plucked from the airwaves. Was the little set-to cause for Millie to kill Yolette? I couldn’t see it.

Now, Holland? He was a giant question mark. He carried a gun and was not what he seemed, but was he a killer?

When I’d written as much as I could, I rewarded myself by watching Bringing Up Baby. Afterward, I looked over my tour notes again, but pictures of Saber kept intruding. That faint musk scent I smelled when Saber was near puzzled me. It was so much fainter than most men’s cologne and aftershave, and I wasn’t even sure it was coming from his body. His laundry detergent?

Maybe I’d ask about it if we—

Wait! What was I thinking? I planned to spend as little time with Saber as possible. The fact that he made my pulse race a little faster was beside the point. Until the cops found Stony, they had squat. I’d deal with Saber long enough to be cleared, and that would be that. He could find a science project somewhere else.

At six o’clock Friday morning, I brushed my teeth, showered, and washed my hair. I left the flatiron heating longer than usual and actually got my hair smoothed. Well, all right, not smooth as in straight, but I didn ’t look like Janis Joplin on a bad hair day. Pleased, I spent just a touch more time on my makeup and dressed in jeans, a lightweight emerald green sweater, and sandals. Not that I was fixing myself up for Saber or anything.

The nor’easter had blown itself out, leaving the March morning comfortably breezy. Maggie dropped me at the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office just before eight, having lectured me about being cautious all the way from the penthouse. Man, did I have more sympathy for teenagers with carping parents! Still, I hugged her and told her to have fun before flying out of the car and into the office.

I waited only a few minutes for Detective March to escort me to the back. Today his suit was blue with a white shirt. He already looked slightly rumpled, and the day had just started.

“Your attorney’s not coming?” he asked as we walked through the bullpen.

“She might stop in, but she has court at nine.”

“How long before you have to sleep?”

“Nine thirty at the latest, or I’m dead to the world.”

He didn’t laugh. No sense of vampire humor, I guess.

“You said the rendering I showed you yesterday was close?”

Gads, had it only been yesterday afternoon? “Very.”

“Then this shouldn’t take much time, but don’t leave until you sign your statement. In here.”

He opened the door to the same side room Sandy and I had used to consult, and introduced me to the artist. A trim, middle-aged woman, Billie Ormand sat at the utilitarian table with a laptop and went right to work. We ’d been at it maybe ten minutes when Saber came in with a cup of coffee for Billie and ice for me.

I have to admit I was impressed he remembered the ice. Thoughtful was the last word I ’d have used to describe him yesterday.

But he did look good in jeans, an ocean blue polo shirt, and a sports jacket. Tired but good. I wondered how late he ’d worked.

When he left, Billie winked. “Hot guy.”

I smiled and tossed an ice cube in my mouth.

In another fifteen minutes, we had an image that could’ve been a photograph of Stony. Billie called March in, and Saber came along.