Chapter 23
When Alex was seventeen a fire had raged through the canyons north of the squat in Van Nuys.
She’d watched the smoke spread in a black smear across the mountains, the smell no different from a campfire.
But some primitive part of her mind had understood that sweet charred scent as a threat.
It had made her want to grab a change of underwear and the keys to their banged-up Civic and drive all the way to the Pacific.
Inside, Len was watching the footage on TV. “The congregation’s moving up the hill,” he said sagely.
Conflagration. She’d felt the pull of the coast. She could go north, drive into the mists of the redwoods, the shelter of low clouds and salt air.
Instead, she sat down on the couch, and they smoked and she felt the wild part of her carried up like a spark, an ember that might land anywhere and spread disaster.
Now she stood in the JE courtyard, looking at Nell in her expensive coat, cradling her bouquet of flowers like a beauty queen, and she thought of Mercy walking to class, to the dorm, home from church.
Congregation. Conflagration. Alex felt herself losing the leash of her sanity, felt it become the fuse on a stick of dynamite, already burning.
But she couldn’t let herself go off yet. She needed to think, be smart. This enemy was too wily and too strong to just come at straight on.
Her phone buzzed and she startled.
“You should answer that,” said Nell.
Alex was going to knock that amused look off her face. “It’s good you already smile with your mouth closed.”
The number on her screen was a Connecticut area code. Did Linus Reiter have a cell?
“Where is she?” Alex asked.
“Galaxy Stern.”
The sound of that cool voice saying her name set the fuse burning faster. But she couldn’t afford the fire. Not yet.
“Where is she?”
“Your friend is safe, though I cannot speak to sound. Nell will bring you to Sweetwell so we can talk, and then both of you can go back to dear old Yale.”
Alex felt very certain that if she walked through the doors of Reiter’s home, she would not leave it again, not until he’d drained her dry.
In movies, women gasped and swooned when the vampire bit.
Reiter hadn’t bothered with seduction. His attack had been pure violence.
He’d had the precision of a surgeon, entering her with his scalpels to pull out every bit of life he could.
But the wound he left had been ugly, jagged, an animal bite.
“I’m not going to your murder house.”
Reiter made a soft sound of disagreement. “To negotiate you need leverage and you have none.”
Alex glanced at Nell. “I have your familiar.”
“She’s a darling girl, but Yale manufactures darling girls to order.”
Again Alex looked at this young woman with her long red hair and carefully tended bangs. “Should I put you on speaker, Reiter?” she asked, touching a few buttons on her screen.
“That would be unwise.”
“You realize he doesn’t care if you live or die, right, Nell?”
“He has promised me life eternal.”
“Did you get that in writing?”
Nell was short. Alex thought about grabbing her by the collar, but she didn’t want to try to manage a writhing undergrad with one hand. Instead, she punched Nell in the stomach, a single sharp jab to the solar plexus.
The girl gasped and bent double, dropping her clutch of flowers, trying to find her breath.
“You may not care if she dies, but you’re going to care plenty when I string her guts up across the Sweetwell gates. Think that will be enough probable cause to search your property? To get a look beneath those gardens?”
“I have many powerful friends.”
“And I’m a first-class shit-stirrer. I might not bring you down, but I can get a swarm of cops crawling over your house, rifling through your treasures.”
The pause that followed soothed the terror in Alex as much as Nell wheezing for breath. Vampires loved to nest and Linus Reiter had spent a century getting his home just so.
“You’re not going to kill me,” Nell managed, her hands still on her knees.
“Of course not, kiddo.” Alex winked. “Not unless I have to.”
Nell opened and closed her mouth. She looked like a fish yanked from a stream.
“What do you think, Reiter?” Alex continued, pushing her advantage. “Detective Turner can get some of his domestic-beer-drinking pals down there to paw through your cabinets, dig up all your pretty flowers along with your secrets.”
“I’m not looking for a fight,” Reiter said mildly.
“Isn’t it funny how you find things when you’re not looking for them?”
“You’re a tiresome little thing.”
“I’m the gnat of all gnats and I’m not going to Sweetwell unless it’s to paint the walls red with your darling girl’s blood.”
“Stop frightening her. She’s not very bright or very brave.”
“Michelle Alameddine was both.”
Reiter made another disapproving sound. “Very well. Savin Rock.”
“Where?”
“I’ve told Nell to take your phone. I don’t want any grand heroics from the cavalry.”
“Why Savin Rock?” Alex demanded, though he’d already hung up.
“Phone,” Nell said.
Alex handed it over and Nell slipped it into her pocket.
Nell’s car was parked on High Street, right outside JE, and Alex wondered how many times she’d had to circle the block to land a spot like that. It was a posh SUV that smelled as if it had just been driven off the lot. Quite the upgrade from the Subaru.
“If I get the idea you’re heading to Old Greenwich, I’ll make you run us off the road,” Alex warned her.
“You’re all talk,” Nell whispered furiously.
“I beat my ex-boyfriend’s head in with a bat,” Alex said gently. “His brain had the texture of milk pudding.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“You’re the one working for a vampire.”
“He chose me.”
“Yes, I know. He told you that you were special and that a grand destiny of immortality awaits. He promised Michelle Alameddine eternity and he stuffed her body into a trunk.”
Nell said nothing, just steered them onto the highway. Alex was shit with directions, but she knew they were headed south, the same direction as Old Greenwich. Savin Rock sounded familiar, but she couldn’t remember why. She only knew it was somewhere in West Haven, not terribly far from Black Elm.
“How far is it to Savin Rock?”
“You don’t need to shout at me. We should be there in less than thirty minutes.”
“What can I do to get you to give me back my phone?”
“Nothing.”
Alex knew she was being reckless, but they were hurtling through the dark and she had no way to reach her friends. She let hellfire flare over her body, the blue light flickering against the dashboard.
Nell shrieked and swerved, then righted the SUV. “What is that? What are you doing?”
“I have power too, Nell,” Alex said. “I could share it with you.”
Even if she could, she wouldn’t, but Reiter’s lie was easy enough to parrot.
Nell glanced at her, back at the road, then glanced at her again. Good. She was distracted, intrigued.
“What are you?”
“Someone who doesn’t want to drink your blood.”
“Is this why he’s so fascinated by you?” Nell asked.
“Are you actually jealous?”
“No!”
Nell’s teeth worried her lower lip. In this moment, by the blue light, she looked almost like Dawes, and Alex felt a pang move through her.
She hadn’t faced a fight on her own since the first time she’d tried to deal with Reiter.
This was like being a child again, crying out for help.
Save me. I can’t do this alone. But no one had heard her then. Who would come to her rescue now?
Nell shook her head. “He is ancient.”
“He’s not even two hundred years old. He was in Skull and Bones, for fuck’s sake.
He drank cups at Mory’s and palled around with guys called Punter.
” None of this was precisely true. The creature Nell knew was the demon who had devoured a boy named Lionel Reiter, who had taken his form, then stolen his life, his name, his beautiful home.
“You’re ridiculous. He’s a vampire, an immortal. And I will be too.”
“I read the same books and saw the same movies. He is not what you want him to be.”
But the power of those myths was too strong, too old, built into the fabric of the world. Free me from pain, from time, from age. Make me beautiful. Make me fearsome. Make me a predator instead of prey.
“He told me you were clever,” Nell said, maybe not with the pure conviction she’d had before, but Alex could tell this was a lost cause.
She let the fire bank. “I don’t actually care what happens to you, Nell. I just don’t want Reiter to win.”
Nell looked baffled. “He will, though.”
No false bravado. No smug sneer. Just certainty. And Alex had to wonder if she wasn’t right.
She thought of telling Nell she could talk to the dead.
Maybe Nell had a friend or a relative on the other side.
But it wasn’t like she could call someone up on demand.
She could try to cold read her, but there wasn’t much time.
And Alex didn’t think Nell would be swayed.
She believed completely in the dark gift Reiter had promised her, and more importantly, she was certain that Reiter would best Alex.
Who didn’t want to be on the winning side?
“What exit is this?” Alex asked as they pulled off the highway. “Kimberly?”
Nell cast her a puzzled glance. “Yes. That’s what the sign says?”
“I just want to make sure there aren’t any surprises.”
They were headed through a residential neighborhood now, the houses wedged close, anonymous in the dark.
Alex wondered if people were eating dinner together in those houses or gathering around the television.
Did families still do that? She looked up at the lights in what had to be bedroom windows.
She could picture some kid sitting down at a desk to do his homework, distracted by the traffic below.
If she cried out, he might hear her as they passed.
He might look up from math or social sciences or a map of the world. He would forget in the next moment.
“Center Street,” she said, reading the name off one of the signs. “Center and Washington.”
“So?”