Chapter 13
“Bastian!”
Whitby leapt into his arms, pushing her face into his and emitting kittenlike mews. There was no sign of De Luca. He must be speaking with his colleagues or helping control the crowd at the other end of the harbor.
“It’s good to see you, too.” Bastian chuckled as he scratched behind Whitby’s ear. The cat nuzzled into his hand, her body vibrating with purrs.
Then she bit him. Her teeth sank into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger—a sharp, mean little nip.
“Ouch! What was that for?”
“Don’t ever run off again!” Whitby glared at him, her claws needling through his shirt to prick his skin. Bastian smiled through the pain. The cat acted aloof so much of the time, but it was good to know she cared, at least a little.
She had been a nuisance when he first took her into his flat—a wild, angry thing that wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace. She cried and yowled at all hours, and more than once he had regretted adopting her.
Later, though, when they had found their footing, the cat showed she cared, in her own way.
Sometimes, she prepared his flask of pig’s blood herself, using her teeth and claws to transport the blood bag from the fridge to the counter, and from the counter into the flask.
She made a mess of it every time, but the pride in her tone as she summoned him—as if to a gourmet dinner—meant Bastian thanked her sincerely and always made a show of enjoying the meal.
“I won’t run off again,” Bastian told the cat. “Pinkie promise.”
“I don’t have pinkies.”
“Well, I toebean promise.”
Whitby nodded and leapt onto the harbor wall.
A crowd had gathered as word about the body spread.
The beach jostled with holidaymakers in their swimwear, all attempting to get a look at the second victim.
Bastian recognized a woman in a pink dress: Aunt Agata.
A wicker basket was hooked over one arm, out of which poked two oversized knitting needles, and the shopkeeper watched with a shrewd glint in her eye as, on the rocks below, a crime scene photographer battled the tide to take pictures of the body.
Emilio.
“Poor boy,” Whitby murmured.
“He was sweet,” Bastian agreed, feeling bad for the waiter. Sure, he’d given them the runaround, but he didn’t deserve to die.
“I wonder if news has reached the mayor yet,” Whitby said.
“It’s certainly reached everybody else.”
The cat’s ears flattened against her skull. “Mayor Moretti deserves a slap for what she pulled in her office. Offering you human blood like that. Does the woman have a death wish?”
Bastian nodded. “It was peculiar.”
“Supporting vampire rights is one thing, but keeping a stash of human blood in your office is quite another. Even if we ignore the question of where she got the blood, that is troubling behavior all by itself.”
“Yes,” Bastian said, trying to rid his mind of the image of the goblet. Every time he thought of it, his stomach gave a queasy gurgle, like it had been denied something it deserved.
“You were tempted,” the cat observed, no judgment in her tone. “When you ran, I had thought maybe…maybe it was like…”
She trailed off, and Bastian had an idea what she was thinking.
“It made you think about the park,” he said. The cat nodded.
The park happened early in his period of getting clean.
The hunger had been so intense, he thought he was losing his mind.
When the pangs got so painful that he nearly started to chew on his own flesh, he broke out of their Shoreditch flat and prowled the streets hunting for a victim.
When he grabbed a homeless woman in the park and prepared to feed on her, he had been thinking only of the blood.
The taste. The need. But then an image of Whitby had leapt forward in his mind—Whitby pacing the flat, worrying about him, scratching at the door, yowling with anger and disappointment—and he couldn’t do it.
He hated that he had even tried. He let the woman go.
Hours later, Whitby found him sitting on a park bench in full sun, his skin crisping, his eyes red and weeping.
He had intended to sit there until he caught flame, until the sun scorched him to dust, because dying would be easier than trying to change his nature.
But Whitby had talked him round. She assured him that setbacks were normal.
He’d had a slip-up, that was all. She escorted him back to the flat, and she fixed him a meal, and she didn’t mention it again.
A few days later, when the burns had healed and the hunger had settled, he renewed his efforts to get clean. There were no further setbacks.
“I’m glad you ran from the mayor,” Whitby said, bringing him back to the present, “even if it meant we lost you for a while.”
“Thanks.”
With the sun beating down from the cloudless sky, his vision swam and he knew he needed to get back inside soon. His thirst had dulled but the sun was beginning to take its toll.
He shook himself, tried to focus. He was about to tell Whitby about what happened with Salvador and Matteo when he caught a familiar musky scent on the breeze and turned to see De Luca approaching.
Something in Bastian’s chest loosened. Relief?
Or some other emotion Bastian couldn’t place?
The inspector was prickly and rigid, but Bastian found the sight of him oddly reassuring.
So far, De Luca had been nothing but completely—some might say aggravatingly—honorable.
He only wanted the best for his people, and he listened when Bastian spoke.
Of course, he looked good in his uniform, too, but Bastian wasn’t thinking about that, was he? Not even slightly.
De Luca’s expression was grim. His large ears were pink with stress.
“We don’t have long,” he said, checking over his shoulder, as if somebody were following him.
“Until?” Bastian asked.
“Did you do this?” De Luca said. He looked at Bastian with those bright blue eyes. They were so intense, they could only be an asset to the inspector. It was impossible to lie to a pair of eyes so pure.
“No, Inspector. I understand how it must look, but I promise you, I had nothing to do with Emilio’s death. I liked the kid.”
De Luca held his gaze for a moment longer, and Bastian felt like the inspector was taking in every inch of him.
He felt naked under that discerning stare, but he removed his Wayfarers briefly to return the stare without flinching, even though staring at De Luca caused him to notice those long lashes again, the way they caught the sunlight, which Bastian obviously found not in the least bit appealing.
Finally, De Luca blinked. He removed the handcuffs from his belt and said, “Give me your wrists.”
Bastian frowned. “Inspector, now isn’t the time for kinky afternoon delight—”
“I can help you,” De Luca interrupted. “But we have to be quick.”
“You’re not going to cuff him again, are you, Inspector?” Whitby said from the wall.
Bastian almost laughed, but something in the man’s earnest expression told him it wasn’t a trick.
De Luca wanted Bastian to trust him, and even though the thought of being cuffed again made Bastian’s gut squirm, he knew that trust went both ways.
Putting his Wayfarers back on, he clasped his hands behind his back, turning so that De Luca could fasten the cuffs.
He tensed in anticipation of the silver fire around his wrists, but none came.
De Luca hadn’t used silver restraints.
“Oh wonderful, look who it is now,” Whitby muttered, and Bastian saw Commissario Zappa stomping toward them from the beach.
His eyes burned with fury, and he was bigger than Bastian remembered, every muscle straining to burst through the fabric of his uniform.
A heart attack on legs if Bastian ever saw one.
“Should’ve known,” Zappa growled as he reached the trio. “De Luca, how did this happen? What are you doing out of the apartment?”
De Luca held on to Bastian’s arm. Bastian tried to ignore the delicious warmth of his touch, the way it seeped up into his shoulder, causing a glow in his own cool flesh.
“Commissario, I have been with the vampire since his arrest last night,” De Luca said. “We left the apartment when we heard the screams from the beach. I was concerned that my help was needed.”
Zappa’s nose wrinkled in a sneer. “That is not your job. Your job was to keep the vampire under house arrest and in your sight at all times.”
“But the killer—”
“We have the killer right here!” Zappa roared. “And he’s killed again! Incompetente!” He said something else in Italian, which Bastian only just understood.
You disgrace the memory of your father.
De Luca looked like he’d been punched. His cheeks flushed.
Anger seized Bastian’s chest.
“De Luca’s the one trying to find the killer,” he told Zappa. “What have you been doing all this time, darling? Getting your eyebrows waxed? They certainly need it.”
Zappa’s mouth flapped in outrage.
“Is there another infinity pin? On the body?” Bastian continued. “There is, isn’t there? I’m telling you, this is the same person that killed Luna.”
“I shall conjure a distraction to help us escape this babbling buffoon,” Whitby said. She began muttering an incantation, the breeze ruffling her fur, and Bastian wished desperately for it to work. Zappa looked like he was about to produce a stake.
“Silenzio,” Zappa ordered the cat, eyes bulging. “Whatever devil creature you are!”
“She’s my devil creature,” Bastian said. “Listen, I’m being set up, Commissario. Somebody must have known I’d be down by the harbor to find the body.”
“Preposterous! How could anybody have known—”
“Matteo,” Bastian said. “When we left the apartment, Matteo came at me with a gang. He practically forced me down to the harbor. I mean, us. He forced us down to the harbor.”
De Luca’s eyebrows rose but he said nothing.
Zappa looked like he was on the verge of cracking a tooth, his jaw was clenched so tight. He really didn’t like Bastian talking about his son.
“Matteo couldn’t have known that,” Zappa spat. “Besides, he is nowhere near the harbor. He is currently being treated for a broken arm at the hospital.”
“Broken arm?”
Bastian remembered the snapping sound that came when he fought free from Matteo during their fight. It hadn’t registered at the time because he had been too busy trying to save his unlife. Had he hurt the kid?
“He attacked me, dear.” Bastian refused to feel guilty. “You’re aware that he was Luna’s ex-boyfriend? That’s motive. Have you questioned him? Or are you allowing nepotism to run its course?”
Zappa snorted, and Bastian almost expected steam to rush from his nostrils.
“You will leave my son out of this, vampire.”
“De Luca, tell him—” Bastian began, but Zappa shouted over him.
“You will not address the inspector!” The commissario was panting, his shirt straining against his barrel chest. “You will come to the station where you will remain until the council arrive.”
“Are the cells unlocked?” De Luca asked, and Bastian recalled that was why he was placed under house arrest—they had lost the keys to the cells.
Zappa shot De Luca a lethal glare. His eyes were red-rimmed; his skin was wan.
Bastian wondered if his first impression of the man was correct, that Zappa was unwell, his heart struggling to cope with all that muscle.
Or was his sickly appearance simply what happened when a person permitted unchecked rage to rule their life?
“Please, Commissario,” De Luca said. “Allow me to escort the vampire back to his apartment. I’ll secure him in place, and we’ll stay there until the council gets here. You have my word.”
Bastian tried not to smile. De Luca was convincing. He was telling the commissario precisely what he wanted to hear.
Zappa puffed his cheeks and adjusted his belt. Finally, he jabbed a finger in the air and grunted, “Get out of my sight. And if you mess this up, De Luca, I’ll have your badge.”