Crave (26 page)

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Authors: Karen E. Taylor

BOOK: Crave
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But Max was dead and so was the past. It was time to start looking to the future. I was jolted from my thoughts by the arrival of the waiter with a glass of wine I hadn't ordered.
“It's from the young man at the end of the bar.”
I was afraid to look for a minute, but eventually my eyes traveled to where the waiter had pointed, expecting to see Larry Martin standing there. Instead I was delighted to see Christopher Greer.
I flashed him a bright smile and waved him over, before I remembered what Mitch had told me the other day. Chris wanted to kill me so that his father could return to a normal life. I panicked slightly, but it was too late to take away the smile and the wave. Chris was already moving toward me, weaving his way through the tables and the people.
“Hi.” His voice didn't sound like the voice of someone who wanted to kill me.
“Good evening, Chris. Join me?”
“Where's Dad?”
“Oh, he'll be on his way fairly soon. Last time I saw him he was singing in the shower.”
“Oh, no, Dad was singing?” Chris pulled out a chair and sat down. “When I was a kid that used to drive my mother crazy. What song was it?”
“Hard to say,” I smiled at him and took a sip of my wine, “they all sort of blend together. Does it matter?”
“Sometimes you can gauge his mood by the song.”
“That must be a corollary to the fact that he only orders a scotch on the rocks when he's angry.”
“Yeah. Funny, isn't it, how all our little day-to-day habits can sometimes say more about us than anything else? Like how I knew you were in a good mood before I even sat down.”
“Me? Really? How could you tell?”
“You were studying the people around you. When you're not happy you tend to stare into thin air.”
I took another sip of my wine. “I'm afraid I don't know enough about you to guess your moods, Chris. You'll have to help. What kind of mood are you in? Happy? Sad? Murderous?”
He jumped guiltily at the last word. “Dad told you I said that?”
“Well, you can't blame him too much, I suppose. He's been very worried about you, and how you seem to refuse to accept what has happened. There's not really anything that can be done to change your father back at this point. And even if there were, I'm not sure he'd thank you for it.”
“So what did you say when he told you I wanted to kill you?”
I glanced up at him and smiled. “You won't like it, I'll bet.”
“I'm a big boy, Deirdre, I can take it.”
“Oh, it wasn't all that bad, Chris. You don't seem to understand that in spite of how you feel about me, I like you. You're a good kid and a good son. Most of the time.” He blushed at that and I smiled at him. “First thing I did when Mitch told me that you'd vowed to kill me was laugh. And then I said something about how attempting to kill me was becoming a very popular sport.”
“Why? Who else was trying to kill you?”
“Else? Are you still angry with me?”
He shook his head. “Nope. And you know, I'm not sure I ever was angry with you. Dad, yeah, for leaving town and not telling me what had happened. And myself, for not being able to accept you, when it's obvious that you make him very happy.”
“You saw Sam tonight, didn't you?”
He gave me a sheepish grin very similar to his father's. “Yeah, you can tell, can't you?”
“A little. There's nothing wrong with that, though. Sam's a good doctor and I'm glad he's helping. If you had tried to kill me, it would have been a very difficult thing for Mitch.”
He laughed. “To say nothing of how difficult it would have been for you.”
He motioned the waiter over. “Another Coke for me, please, and a glass of wine for the beautiful lady.”
I smiled at him.
“Well, you are. And I'm sorry I said I wanted to kill you. I'd been drinking heavily ever since you and Dad got married. I got a little crazy, I guess.”
“It happens.” I took a sip of wine.
“So who is trying to kill you?”
“Larry Martin.”
“The bastard that tried to kill Dad?”
I nodded. “One and the same. Trouble is he's already killed four vampires and everyone around here is just a little tense about the situation.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“If you'd asked me that question a day or so ago, I wouldn't have been able to answer. Now it's easy. I'll get him before he gets me.”
“When you get him, save a piece of him for me, okay?”
I toasted Chris with my glass of wine. “You've got a deal.”
Chapter 29
C
hris got up from the table and put some money down to pay the bill.
“You're not leaving, are you? Don't you want to stay and see your father?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight. I really came to find you, to apologize for how shitty I've been with you. You can't help what you are. I think I always knew that, but it took me a while to really know it.”
“Well, I'll tell Mitch that I saw you and that everything is fine. Then he'll have one less situation to worry about.”
“Okay. Thanks for being so nice about all this.”
I rose, moved around the table and gave Chris a hug. “No problem. Now if you'd shown up with a hammer and a stake that would have been a different story.”
He laughed and hugged me back. He even kissed my cheek lightly. Then he walked away and I sat back down, sipped at my wine, and watched the people around me.
Five minutes later, Mitch showed up.
“You just missed Chris,” I said when he sat down.
“Chris was here? Tonight? Wasn't he supposed to have an appointment with Sam?”
“Yes, he stopped here on his way back.”
“I see that you're still alive. Either you did some real good sweet talking or he feels better.”
I gave a small laugh. “He feels better. I save my sweet talking for handsome police detectives.” My eyes swept over him. He was wearing a pair of tight jeans, with a button-down shirt and his suit coat. I wondered how many people knew that the suit coat meant that he was wearing his shoulder holster. “You look very nice tonight. Almost good enough to eat.”
“Don't start, Deirdre,” he said with a mock groan, “we have to go to Vivienne's pretty soon.”
“But we don't have to stay, do we?”
“No, but then I have a council meeting. What's gotten into you these days anyway? You're even more amorous than usual.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Never.” He reached over and took my hand. “But there's just not enough time in the day to take care of everyone else and satisfy your insatiable appetites.”
“Ah, but that's why there are nights.”
“Okay, okay.” He stroked the sleeve of my dress. “I'll try to make room in my busy schedule for you.”
“Why thank you, Detective. That's very kind of you.”
“Kind, nothing. Whatever's gotten into you has also gotten into me. It's like I can't get enough of you.”
“Living under a death sentence might have something to do with it. And the fact that we actually spent time away from each other. To say nothing of how you've been romping naked with blond French women.”
He chuckled. “That does tend to have an interesting effect on the male libido.”
“No doubt. And speaking of which, I guess we should be moving along. She'll have everything ready for us and we won't be there.”
 
But when we knocked at her door, there was no answer. We knocked again and called her name and still there was no response. “Maybe she forgot,” I said.
“Viv? Forget something?” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You must be joking. That woman never forgets a thing.”
“Well then, maybe she found something more interesting to do than endure a visit from an old married couple.”
“Yeah, that could be it. She might even have taken her own advice and gone out to ride a roller coaster. But I don't like it, her going away and not letting us know.”
“Mitch, my love, I would back Vivienne against an entire army of Larry Martins. She'll show up a little later on, with a saunter in her step and a smug smile on her face. Let's go back to our room so that I can have one, too.”
 
When she didn't show up for the council meeting Mitch tried to hide his concern. The leaders were more despondent than usual due to the death of John Hardwicke that morning and were not noticing anything. Several of them argued that he shouldn't have removed the vase and the roses without first seeking full approval. The rest simply sat, completely demoralized. Mitch outlined his plan for not having a plan. He compared Larry to a terrorist, who gets just as much delight in watching people scurry around in terror as he does from blowing up buildings.
“We don't want to feed off his behavior,” Mitch told them. “We need to deal with him in a rational and sane manner, rather than running around in panic.”
“Are you saying we shouldn't worry about him at all? That the danger is over?”
“I'm saying no such thing. Just don't let him preoccupy your thoughts. He's only one man, after all. We allowed him to frighten us and I suspect he loved every minute of it.”
It was not terribly surprising that the Cadre members found Mitch's speech distressing. They wanted him to tell them what to do, they wanted rules and regulations to follow, even if they were outdated and useless. The Cadre had become so used to taking orders from Victor that they'd lost all of their initiative. I looked around the table before we left; these were the dinosaurs of our breed, I thought. And they were not necessarily at fault. The organization that had brought them together for mutual protection had turned most of them into cowards.
As we walked out of the room I found myself remembering Sam's thoughts that every so often a Larry Martin is needed just to shake things up.
We checked Vivienne's room one more time. There was still no answer and Mitch's look of worry increased.
“She'll be okay, Mitch,” I said, “you can almost count on it.”
“I hope so. I've grown pretty fond of her these past couple of days. She just seems so small and frail and innocent.”
I started to laugh as we went back into our room. “We are talking about the same woman, aren't we? Vivienne Courbet? She might be small, but she is far from frail. And innocent?” I put my hand over my mouth to control my laughter. “She's got you completely fooled, Mitch, if you can even voice such a thought.”
He gave me a sick little grin. “You're probably right.”
“Probably, nothing. You should have heard her today at the hospital. I thought Sam was going to hit the ceiling.” I stopped for a second. “Sam.”
“What about Sam?”
“Vivienne is with Sam tonight; I'd put money on it.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I have no doubts about it whatsoever. Trust me on this one, Mitch, I know I'm right.”
“Fine. I'll quit worrying then. I just hope you're not too disappointed.”
“Disappointed? Because Vivienne is with Sam? Hardly, my love. I think they make a lovely couple.”
“No, disappointed because you didn't get to learn any tricks tonight.”
“I've never cared about the tricks, Mitch. If you can and want to do it, that's fine. There may come a day when the changing is important to me. I can learn then. And you can teach me.”
“So, what shall we do now that Ms. Courbet has stood us up?”
“I think we should just go to bed. I didn't get any sleep today at all. Every fifteen minutes or so, Sam would come around and test our non-existent reactions. I'm tired. I just want to stretch out and sleep for about a year.”
“Bed it is then.”
 
I didn't actually sleep much that night. Mitch and I lay together and he began to talk. About his past, about his failed first marriage, about his childhood hopes and aspirations. And he talked about Chris, especially when he was younger.
“He used to have these horrible tantrums. We never knew what they were about. I'm not real sure he did either. We tried everything we could to stop them. We bribed, we pleaded, we yelled, we even spanked. None of it did any good. Then one day he threw a real fit. He and I were shopping somewhere and he flung himself to the floor, screaming bloody murder. I couldn't take it anymore, I didn't want to deal with him at all so I just turned my back on him. He quit screaming until he crawled around my feet to sit in front of me. He started back in and I turned around again. We did this about four or five times and he stopped. Completely. Never had another tantrum afterwards. Kids are strange sometimes, we expect them to think like us and they never do.”
He talked most of the night and I said little. I just snuggled in closer to him, my head resting on his chest, listening to his rumbling voice.
And at sunrise I had no visions. It was as if the symbolic gesture of destroying the roses had broken the spell on me. I sighed and curled deeper under the covers, sleeping at last.
 
When I woke the next evening I felt fully rested. Ready for almost anything. Mitch was up and moving around in the bathroom. I could sense the activity above me in the restaurant and the occupants in the rooms surrounding us slowly coming to life. “Mitch?” I called loudly so that he could hear me.
“Yeah, babe, what do you need?”
“Nothing, I guess. I just feel like we should be doing something. About Larry.”
He walked out of the bathroom, naked except for a towel wrapped around his neck. He still had a spot of shaving cream close to his right ear. I rubbed my finger in the same spot on my own face and he wiped it off with the end of his towel.
“Yeah, I've been thinking that, too. It's one thing to say we won't allow him to panic us. And another to just let him run wild. We still have to stop him, you know.”
“Exactly. Did you ever get a look at Max's journals?”
“I scanned some of the more recent ones, yeah. They would make interesting reading some day and they explained a lot about how Larry accelerated his power. But they didn't have any practical solutions for this kind of situation.”
“Too bad, that would have been nice.”
“That's what I thought, too. But I'm afraid we're pretty much on our own with this one.”
As if on cue, someone knocked on the door outside. “Deirdre, Mitch, are you there?” It was Vivienne.
“I told you she'd be okay, didn't I?”
He took the towel from around his neck, wrapped it around his waist and opened the door.
She flew in to the room. “Sorry I stood you up last night, but another opportunity arose and I figured you'd understand.”
“Hello, Vivienne. And how is Sam?”
“Sam's wonderful.” Her voice sounded wistful. “But how did you know I was with Sam?”
I shrugged. “I just did. Mitch was a nervous wreck about you not being here, though. Next time leave a note.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Mitch laughed and Vivienne looked over at him and whistled. “Nice towel,
mon chou.
”
“Thanks, Viv.” He walked over to the dresser and got some clothes.
“No need to get dressed on my account, Mitch,” she said with a sly smile. “I've seen you naked before.”
“But not in front of my wife and not quite this soon after sleep. I'll be more comfortable dressed.”
“Fine, but I want to go on record as saying I'm disappointed in you.”
Mitch just smiled and shook his head, took his clothes into the bathroom and shut the door.
“He's no fun.”
“That's a matter of opinion, Vivienne. So what's the big deal that you had to come knocking on the door so early?”
“Tonight I decided you are going to sell me the Ballroom.”
“Just like that?”
She smiled.
“Oui,
just like that.”
“But what about Larry Martin? We have to do something about him.”
“Larry Martin will be around to deal with later on. His type does not go away. And a night out won't hurt either you or Mitch. Perhaps we will even find him there, at the club.”
 
I had never expected that I would feel sentimental about the Ballroom of Romance. But as our taxi pulled up in front, I was surprised to find myself crying. The Ballroom had been a staple of this city's night life for over twelve years. And for a good part of those twelve years it was like my second home. But everything changes and the Ballroom was a part of the past.
There was no crowd outside the door as there would have been in years past. But it was still a good location and pulled in a lot of people. Vivienne was going to get a very good bargain.
Mark saw us enter and met us at the door. “Evening, Vivienne, Deirdre, Mitch. How's business?”
“That's what I need to be asking you, Marky.”
He tilted his head a bit. “I won't even ask what that's supposed to mean. I'm glad to see the three of you, though. Especially you, Mitch. Fred's missing.”

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