Companions of the Night (18 page)

He continued playing, continued watching her, not looking at all upset at the mention of Regina. Did he periodically throw fits and tantrums just to keep her off balance? she wondered.

"So," she said, "I figure you're French, or were originally."

In the middle of the ragtime piece, he played the opening measures of "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem, giving it, too, a ragtime beat before switching back to the original tune.

"But you've been here long enough to lose any trace of an accent."

"Does this speculation eventually lead somewhere?" he asked.

"I was just wondering, which is older, you or America?"

"Ah," Ethan said, "are you referring to Columbus's discovery of America or Leif Eriksson's?"

The question left her breathless, to think that Ethan was somewhere between 350 and 1,000 years old.

"Joke," he said, seeing her face.

But she wasn't sure that it was.

And, in any case, he never did answer her question.

I
T WAS PAST
midnight when Kerry couldn't take the waiting any longer. "You don't have to say it," she said. "I know I'm not going to like it—but what's the plan?"

Ethan paused the tape to which he was listening and lifted the headphones from his ears. "What?"

He was learning, he had said, conversational Japanese, though he wasn't practicing out loud. No doubt he was too arrogant to risk stumbling over pronunciations in front of a witness, even a witness who wouldn't have any idea how far off he was. She figured this was final proof, if she needed more, that he was incredibly old. She knew she'd have to be incredibly old before she'd spend her time teaching herself Japanese.

Kerry suspected that he'd intentionally plunked her down in front of the TV on a night with no good shows so that she'd be bored enough to fall asleep while he pursued his own quiet activities. She'd had enough sleep during the day, she told herself, her eyes were getting droopy simply out of force of habit, because it was past midnight.
I will not give him any opportunities,
she told herself. Even fighting would be better than the risk of sleeping while he was awake.

"The plan," Kerry repeated. "Is there one?"

Ethan glanced at his watch, then put the headphones down and turned off the tape recorder completely. "I was planning," he said, with just the slightest emphasis on the word
planning,
"to throw you to the wolves."

"Could you be more specific?" Kerry asked with what she considered admirable calm.

"You said, when you first agreed to help me, that you could go places I couldn't. This is one of those occasions. If we walk into whatever place Marsala has barricaded himself, he's likely to do something foolish."

"Like?" She had a scene in mind straight out of Saturday-morning cartoons, with the professor sitting on boxes labeled
TNT
and
DYNAMITE
, holding the detonator on his lap.

Ethan shrugged. "Something loud and attention getting. He might accuse us of being the ones who caused the accident with the school bus, or admit that he was the one but claim that it was in an attempt to capture us—for whatever reason he might think up to accuse us—and he'll demand that the police be summoned. Or he might start shouting that he has proof that we killed Regina—or at the very least burned down her house I don't know; he might claim that I picked his pocket or you propositioned him, or he saw us trying to steal money from a cash register. Whatever. Something to cause a scene, to focus attention on us. And to keep the attention on us till sunrise."

"Okay," Kerry said. "I follow so far."

"That's if the two of us walk in together."

"This is the throwing-me-to-the-wolves part, isn't it?" she asked, trying to make light of it.

Ethan gave her a grin that was rather wolfish itself. "If you go in by yourself, he's not going to do any of that, because even if you burn up in front of everyone's eyes he's blown everything to get you. But he hasn't laid a finger on me. I don't think he's going to be satisfied with that."

"And you can't go in alone, instead of me, because...?"

"Well, I could say because I suspect he doesn't really believe you're a vampire, that he's used you to get to me and that he doesn't care one way or the other what becomes of you.

Kerry returned his patently insincere smile. "Or you could say...?"

"Because I personally am not willing to risk it. Take your pick."

"I like the first better," Kerry said.

"So do I," Ethan agreed cheerfully.

"Assuming we—I—find him, then what?"

"You convince him that you escaped from me. You can tell him that I fed on you. I could leave a mark." He reached across the table faster than she had time to react to and brushed the back of his fingers across her neck. She jerked away instinctively, even though she knew he could have stopped her if he wanted "Or not," he added with his vampire smile. "But: you hate me, I do despicable things, I've forced you to watch me feed on babies, I've raped you, I'm planning on overthrowing the government. I'm sure you can think of some reason."

They stared at each other across the table, him daring her to admit it. Or deny it. The more she thought about it, the less sure she was. "I tell him I hate you...," she prompted.

He smiled at her equivocal answer. "And ask him to help you get me. He will, of course, tell you all manner of lies."

"Unlike you."

"He might say he never kidnapped your family, that the vampires did that."

It had crossed her mind. She hadn't met Ethan till after eight-thirty, which would have given him four unaccounted-for hours between rising and running into her at the store.

He was watching her as though trying to gauge her response. "Or he might say that he talked to your father and convinced him of the danger you ran by associating with me. Your father agreed to help, and he and your brother are perfectly safe and in hiding. Hiding from me, Satan's demon spawn. Or he might say that he took them but then let them go Out of the goodness of his heart, one presumes. He has a good heart: he never intended to cause the bus accident, but a vampire drove him off the road and the next thing he knew he'd accidentally hit the bus."

"It was in the afternoon," Kerry reminded him.

"Maybe it was a bee, then. In any case, he
will
try very hard to turn you against me, and I'm sure he'll be very convincing."

"I find him," Kerry summarized, "tell him I hate you, listen to his lies but don't let them sway me from my purpose.... I
do
have a purpose, don't I?"
I could get killed,
she reminded herself,
despite Ethan's assurances.
But what chance did any of them have if she was too frightened to act?

Ethan said, "Our purpose is to get him out of his public hiding place." Before she could ask
How?
he said, "Tell him that you overpowered me."

"Yeah, like he's going to believe that.

"I tied you up before dawn, but you got loose while I was still asleep in my coffin, and you secured the lid shut so I couldn't get out—"

"Do you sleep in a coffin?" Kerry asked.

"No. —and you've been looking for him ever since. Which, you tell him, was what
I
planned to do tonight. So you've gone to him, first to warn him, second because he's the one person in the world who'll believe you about me, third to have him do your dirty work for you."

"Meaning, to kill you." Obviously. "And where will you be all this time?"

"My house, which is where you'll tell him I am. Except that I won't be in the helpless heap he anticipates."

"Will you kill him?" Even though she knew that Marsala might well have injured or killed her family, that went against everything she had ever believed in.

"My God, Kerry," Ethan said, "that can't be a surprise."

"No," she admitted.

"As it can't be a surprise that, given the chance, he'd kill me. And no matter what he tells you tonight, he'll be planning to kill you, too."

Ethan looked so calm, so matter-of-fact. Of course, she told herself, this was nothing new to him. She might even ask him,
And
you
aren't planning to kill me?
But she didn't.

"I won't ask for your help," he told her. "You get him in the house, and that's the last I'll ask. But it might help
you
to remind yourself that he's not just a danger to vampires; he's so intent on getting at us that he's a danger to your kind, too. No matter what, keep reminding yourself of that school bus tumbling into the ditch."

"All right," she said.

"Plus your father, your brother,
anybody
who gets in his way."

"
All right,
" she repeated more emphatically. "I'll do it. It's not a very good plan, you know. Too many loopholes, too many places where he might not believe me, where things might go wrong."

Ethan spread his hands in an I'm-open-to-suggestions gesture.

She didn't have any.

He watched her intently, gauging, not liking—she was sure—that his life would be in her hands. There
must
be other vampires, Kerry thought. If he didn't have to protect
them,
surely Ethan would just move on—to a different identity, in a different place. As he'd obviously had experience doing before. But finally he nodded. He handed her the keys to the new Monte Carlo. "Then it begins," he said "And, Kerry, need I mention? If you can't have him back here by six-thirty, don't bring him at all."

"Sunrise isn't until after seven."

"If you aren't here by six-thirty," he repeated, "I won't be either Which means if you bring him here
after
six-thirty—"

"I'll be on my own," she finished for him So he didn't trust her, not completely. "How about," she suggested, "if I don't find him by six, I'll come back here alone and we can look again tomorrow?"

He considered, then inclined his head in agreement. "Fine."

"What if I find him but he won't come until after sunrise?"

Ethan smiled at her. "Then I hope you can come up with a convincing reason for him why I'm not here. And"—again he threw her own words back at her—"you will be on your own. And so will your father and brother. Vampires are by nature a conservative and cautious lot. Unlike the young, we know exactly how much we have to lose. You don't want me nervous about your intentions."

"You don't need to threaten me," she said.

He just sat there looking at her, with his eyes cool and distant, an unspoken reminder that—should he decide she'd let him down—he had all the time in the world to plot revenge.

K
ERRY RECOGNIZED THE
first flaw in the plan as soon as she pulled the Monte Carlo away from the curb There was no way she could go to the supermarket to see if Professor Marsala was there because that was the one place she was bound to be recognized.

Doesn't matter,
she told herself. Surely if the professor planned to spend the greater part of the night in one place, it wouldn't be there, where somebody was sure to notice after the first two or three hours that he was lurking in the frozen-foods aisle. Restaurants and bars made much more sense.

The first place she looked was the Student Union at the college, since that was the place where the professor was most likely to find people he knew, people who were most apt to intervene if strangers with long, sharp teeth tried to drag him out. The place was incredibly noisy, with music and talking and a whole crowd of people out to have a good time on a Saturday night. It also wasn't very well lit, so that Kerry had to wander in among the tables, staring. No sign of the man whose picture she'd seen on the piano.

Next she started going to the restaurants. "I'm supposed to be meeting someone," she'd tell the host or hostess. "May I look to see if he's here yet?"

He never was.

The bars were worse. When she went into the first one, the bartender called out to her, "Proof."

"Excuse me?" Kerry wasn't trying to order something—all she'd done was walk into the place. Maybe she hadn't heard right. She had the impression everyone was staring at her, thinking how dumb she was.

"Proof of age," the bartender said. "Got to be twenty-one to be legal in New York State."

"I'm not twenty-one," Kerry stammered.

"No kidding. You can't be in here, then."

"I'm looking for"—she realized what it would sound like if she said
someone
—"my father."

"He's not here," the bartender said. "Please leave before I have to have you escorted out."

"How do you know he's not here?" she demanded.

"No fatherly types at all." The bartender signaled to someone, and Kerry said, "I'm going, I'm going."

She turned around in the doorway for a last look. No sign of Marsala, but the bouncer that the bartender had summoned was closing in fast.

Kerry left. Even if the professor
was
there, he'd have to leave eventually—she checked her watch—
soon,
before the place shut down for the night.

The second bar was bad, too, though in a different way.

A woman—she must have been the manager—came bustling over as soon as Kerry stepped across the threshold. "I'm looking for my father," Kerry said before the woman could start in on her. "Please." She heard the desperation in her voice, and apparently the manager did, too.

Her face softened. "Oh, you poor dearie," she said.

Kerry tried to look more like a poor dearie.

The woman escorted her from room to room—the place was a converted house—and even offered to call the police for her.

"No, no," Kerry said. "Don't bother. He always comes home eventually."

The woman patted her hand sympathetically and said, "Oh, you poor dearie," again.

Kerry even checked the other supermarket, the one where she didn't work. Not likely, she knew, but it was only two o'clock, which gave her another four and a half hours.

After that, she drove back to the college and started all over again. Her search was shorter this time, since several of the places had closed, and in those places that were still open there was less of a crowd.