Immortal (25 page)

“Which is why you love me.” Katy pushed a fry into her mouth.

“Which is why I love you,” Kaleigh agreed.

“So, you going to the Council meeting tonight?”

“I don’t have to.”

“I’d go if I was allowed. Peigi said no one but Council members, though.” Katy frowned. “Said she didn’t want a
three-ring circus
.”

“I might go.” Because of her position, Kaleigh had a right to sit in on General or High Council meetings, though she did not yet have a vote. “I know Lia’s going to be scared. None of her family is allowed to go. I guess I could go and sit with her.”

Katy studied a fry before popping it in her mouth. “That would be nice of you.”

“What’s Kaleigh doing nice?” Regan came around the photo machine. “Get your feet off, ladies.”

Both girls lowered their feet and stood up.

“Kaleigh might go to the Council meeting and sit with the doomed.”

He looked at Kaleigh. “That
would
be nice of you.”

“I feel bad for her. What she did was wrong, but if there was some way she could have a second chance, I really think…”

“You think what?” he asked.

“I think she could do great things,” Kaleigh finished with a nod. “It’s just this feeling I have about her.”

“Too bad they’re going to lop off her head.” Katy pushed her container of fries into Kaleigh’s hands. “BRB. Potty break.” She walked away, licking her fingertips.

Regan continued to stand there, looking kind of thoughtful. At least for Regan.

Kaleigh waited.

He took one of Katy’s fries.

“I know this isn’t my place to say, me being the resident drug addict and all.”

“Recovering drug addict,” she corrected.

“Recovering,” he agreed with a nod. “But did anyone consider any alternative to dealing with this kid?”

“Alternative?”

He stroked his scruffy beard. “I keep thinking somewhere in the back of my mind, something like this happened once before.”

“With us? Not any time in the last fifty years. Not since the laws were rewritten and penalties became stiffer.”

“No, it wasn’t us. It was another family. Sixteenth century, maybe.”

“Who?” she demanded.

“I’m trying to remember. Jeez, give me a break. You know I must have killed some brain cells somewhere along the way.”

Kaleigh waited, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, the fry bucket tucked under her arm. “Come on, Regan. I really need you to remember this.”

“I’m thinking it was the Thomases.” He pointed his finger at her. “Lizzy Thomas told me about it.”

“The Thomases?”

“You know them. Well, you did. You will. English. Decent Vs for the most part. Most of the women are redheads. Hot. Even the old ones.” He took another fry.

“You’ve always had a thing for redheads. Can you remember anything else?”

He squinted as if digging mentally into the recesses of his mind. “There was this boy from, I can’t remember, Germany, Yugoslavia…or was it Poland? No, I think it was Germany. Somewhere where they make good sausage.”

“Anyway.”
Kaleigh pushed the container of fries into his hands.

“Anyway, the kid got caught up in a bad crowd. Was involved with a bunch of zombies from Istanbul and some ugly murders they committed. The Thomases captured him with the zombies, put the zombies to death, but they didn’t have the heart to behead the kid.”

“Then what did they do with him?” Kaleigh grabbed his arm. This was the first time she felt a glimmer of hope for Lia. Everyone had been so sure the girl’s fate was already sealed.

Regan munched on another fry. “I think…I think Liz said they adopted him.”

“Adopted him?”

“There was this crazy ritual they had to go through that involved blood draining and blood donations.” He waved a French fry in the air. “It was pretty intense. They had to, like, kill him and bring him back in this ceremony.”

Kaleigh planted herself in front of him. “How can I find out what actually happened? I mean, if I can find a precedent…”

“He wasn’t a Kahill, Kaleigh.”

“But we’ve followed other families’ precedents before,” she said quickly.

“When?”

She thought for a second and couldn’t for the life of her remember. But she
knew
they had. “I don’t know,” she groaned. “I’m telling you we have. Can you track her down?”

“Who?”

“The redhead. Lizzy.”

“Don’t you think you should talk to someone about this before you get your hopes up? Peigi? Gair, maybe?”

“No. I don’t want to give them the opportunity to stop me. It might be a waste of time, anyway. I just want to find out more about this adoption thing. Can you find Lizzy Thomas?”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

He grimaced. “No way. I haven’t seen her since, like, the eighteen nineties. It’s not like I have her phone number.”

Kaleigh made her hands into fists. “There has to be a way. Can’t you…I don’t know. Go to England? Find her?”

“I’m grounded, remember?”

She groaned in frustration. “What about the books?”

“Books?”

“Our records. All those books and piles of papers in the library in the museum basement. All that stuff about vampires.” Before leaving Ireland, the Kahills had buried what they couldn’t take with them, planning to return for it at a later date. Thankfully, they had left all their written records. Otherwise, they would have been lost in the shipwreck. Over the years since then, the books and records, along with other artifacts, had been dug up and brought to Clare Point. “Don’t we keep records of what happens in other families?”

“Some, I guess. I’m not exactly a big reader.”

“This is an unusual case. Surely someone wrote the information down.” She gazed at him anxiously. “Victor would know. He’s the current librarian.”

“He might. Problem is, apparently, he and Mary McCathal are AWOL.”

“AWOL?”

“Absent without leave. No one’s seen them in more than a week. No one knows where they went.”

Kaleigh’s eyes got big. “You think they ran away?”

Regan shrugged and ate another fry. “Possible. Victor was pretty pissed that the Council denied his request to marry Mary.” He grinned. “I like the sound of that, marry Mary.”

“He wanted to marry her?” Kaleigh rested one hand on her hip. “Where was I during all this?”

“Apparently, you were partying with a bunch of humans.”

“I was not
partying
with them.” Suddenly the fries smelled good and she was starving. She hadn’t eaten all day. “Give me one of those.” She nabbed a fry. “Technically, I’m supposed to get permission from the librarian to look through the records.”

“
And
you have to get the key from him.”

“And the key,” she concurred. “But Victor is AWOK.”

“AWOL,”
Regan corrected.

She made a face. “Whatever. Anyway, I need to get into the library. How do I do that if Victor’s not here?”

“You could ask the Council’s permission.”

She shook her head, reaching for another fry. “No time. They’re only meeting tonight to vote on sending Lia’s case to the High Council. I would have to wait until the next meeting to get permission. By then, she could be dead. I need to get in there now. Tonight.”

He thought for a minute. “You steal the key?”

She rolled her eyes. “You ever been in Victor’s house? It would take a century to find a key in all that junk.” She took the bucket of fries from him. “Can you pick a lock? One on a library door?”

“I could try.” Regan licked his fingers. “Or I could just open the door from the inside.”

Her eyes lit up. “You could materialize on the other side of the door.” She looked at him. “You’d do that? For me?”

“Give me the rest of those fries”—he pointed—“and I will.”

She pushed the container into his hands. “Can we go now?”

“Sorry. My trusty second in command got his wisdom teeth out the other day and he’s laid up. I have to stay here until I close.”

“You can’t sneak away for a few minutes?” she begged.

“With Mary gone, I feel like I need to do this right. You know, protect her interests.”

Kaleigh sighed, knowing he was right. It probably made more sense not to be breaking in in the middle of the day anyway. “Okay, tonight. But as soon as you close the arcade. I’ll meet you there.”

“Council will be meeting at midnight. Going to get a little crowded. You want to go to the meeting and then meet me after?”

She thought for a minute. If she did get into the library, she had no idea how long it would take her to find what she was looking for. Hours for sure, possibly days. And Lia didn’t have that kind of time. “I’ll meet you after you close. I’ll just skip the Council meeting. No one was expecting me.”

Katy approached them, wiping her hands on her shorts. “Out of paper towels in the bathroom, Regan.”

Kaleigh grabbed her hand. “You wanna go with me to talk to Lia?”

Katy’s mouth fell open. “The condemned?”

“Not if I can help it.” Kaleigh led Katy out of the arcade. “Later, alligator,” she told Regan.

“Hey, he’s got my fries,” Katy protested as Kaleigh pulled her past him.

“You don’t need them. Loads of saturated fat.” Kaleigh led her down the boardwalk, through the throngs of people. “It goes straight to your butt.”

Katy glanced over her shoulder. “You think my butt is getting big?”

“C
ome on,” Kaleigh whispered, looking at the library door and then down the dark hallway. The guards watching over Lia had just changed shifts down the hall and Pete Hill had come on. Upstairs, the General Council members were filing in.

“Regan?” Kaleigh whispered, pressing her palms against the library door. She hoped he hadn’t rematerialized in the bathroom down the hall or something. He said that sometimes happened to him if he
got his wires crossed
. Whatever that meant. Kaleigh didn’t know anything about teletransporting herself yet; she was still working on gum packets and ants.

“I’m sure she won’t give you any trouble,” Kaleigh heard Fin saying to Pete. He must have been visiting Lia; she could have no visitors from her family.

“Regan,” Kaleigh breathed, rattling the doorknob. “Where the hell did you go?”

Just as Kaleigh heard the door open down the hall and Fin’s voice louder, the lock on the library door clicked. Kaleigh turned the knob and rushed in, closing the door behind her. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Regan said from the dark. “I’m just a little rusty is all. Landed on top of a bookshelf.”

Even though she could see pretty well in the dark, Kaleigh felt for a light switch and flipped it on. The room filled with eerie fluorescent light. There were no windows in the library, so as long as she kept quiet and kept her mind closed to intruders, no one would know she was there. The library was rarely used so there was little chance anyone would come for some light reading, especially with Victor missing. She turned around to look at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The room smelled like paper and stale air. “All this stuff is about vampires?”

“Not just vampires.” Regan ran his finger down the spine of an old, ratty book. “Zombies, werewolves, yetis, you name it.”

“There’s such a thing as yetis?” she asked with amazement.

“Look, I’m going to go. I need to be home when Fin gets there. Otherwise he gets crazy and starts to worry about me. Then he calls Mary Kay and all mother-hell breaks loose.”

“No problem.” Kaleigh was already pulling down books, reading titles, and pushing the books back into place. Her plan was to start on one side of the room and work her way along the shelves. “This could take, like, a hundred years to read through all this stuff,” she said, trying not to feel too depressed. “But the High Council is not going to take my word, or yours or even Lizzy Thomas’s, if we could find her. I have to find evidence to support the idea of adopting Lia into our sept and sparing her life.”

“I’d offer to help you, but I’m not good at this kind of thing.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m probably wasting my time. The High Council isn’t going to listen to me, anyway.”

“You never know.” He rested his hand on the doorknob. “Put something across the bottom so no one sees the light coming from under the door in the dark hallway.”

“You’re good.” She followed him.

He offered a lazy grin. “Good luck.”

She smiled grimly. “Thanks.”

“And Kaleigh?”

“Uh-huh?” She didn’t look in his direction; she was reading book titles.

“Even if you don’t find anything. Even if you can’t pull this off…” He hesitated.

“Uh-huh?” She glanced at him.

“It doesn’t mean you failed her.” He sounded so serious. “You can’t take the weight of the world entirely on your own shoulders.”

“I know. ’Night, Regan. And thanks again.”

“’Night.”

Kaleigh let him out the door and then used a small throw rug to block any light that might seep under. Satisfied with her handiwork, she turned to gaze at the rows of books and manuscripts in front of her.

There wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to find anything here to help Lia. But when she stood witness to the girl’s beheading, at least she would know she had tried.

Fin waited with Elena in the dark parking lot of the museum, perched on the front bumper of his police cruiser. The air was warm and humid and filled with the sounds of a July night: chirping insects, the hum of the building’s heat pumps, the rustle of a mouse poking in the grass beneath a flowering cherry tree. Fin breathed deeply, separating the scents of the night: Elena’s skin, freshly cut grass, asphalt still warm from the day’s sun.

He held Elena’s hand. They didn’t talk. What was there to say? He had suggested there was no need for her to be here tonight. She wouldn’t be permitted to attend the meeting, and they already knew what would take place. At this point, this was all a mere formality; Lia had confessed to the murder of all three young men and had been able to offer no suitable justification. The Council would pass Lia’s case on to the High Council.

But Elena had told her sister she would be here to confirm the decision and so Fin waited with her.

He turned her hand in his, savoring the feel of her soft skin, her slender bone structure. He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

“I left Celeste with the task of packing up the house,” she said, her tone distant. “She needed something to keep her occupied.”

Fin didn’t know what to say, didn’t know that anything was required of him, so he just listened.

“She asked me”—her voice broke—“what we should do with Lia’s clothing. I thought, perhaps, it could be donated locally.” She looked at him. “Would that be possible?”

“Sure. Um, I know someone who volunteers at a shelter for battered women in the county. They always have teens passing through.”

“You could take care of that for me?”

The pain in her voice was palpable and her pain was becoming his. “Not a problem,” he managed.

She was quiet again for a minute, but he could tell she wanted to say something. He wished he could read her mind. Occasionally, over the last weeks, he realized now, he had heard her in his head, but he couldn’t control it. Neither could she, apparently. It was more like the psychic connection he felt occasionally with certain humans.

“Fin,” she said, taking the time to choose her words carefully. “I do not want you to feel in any way responsible for this.”

“If I had caught her after the first—”

“She would have already been guilty of murdering an innocent man,” Elena finished for him.

She was right. He knew she was right, but facts didn’t ease the feelings. He still felt guilty. He still wished there was some way he could have spared those boys’ lives, spared Elena and her family from this heartbreak.

Fin heard the rear door of the museum open and shadows of people appeared. The meeting was over. It was done. He held Elena’s hand tightly. “Would you like to come home with me? Maybe just for a little while?” he asked.

“Would I like to? Yes. Can I? No. I need to return to the cottage and be with my sister.” She pulled his hand into her lap and leaned over, pressing her cheek to their entwined hands.

He felt the dampness of her silent tears.

“I wish that we could make love again,” she whispered.

“Maybe—”

“Maybe,” she interrupted.

But both knew they would not. The High Council would meet tomorrow at midnight. The smartest thing for Elena and her family to do would be to return to Italy tomorrow. They would not be permitted to attend the High Council meeting. There would be no need to attend the beheading, even if the Council would make an exception and permit it.

“My work takes me to Italy sometimes,” Fin said. He watched several Council members cross the parking lot. They walked silently, somberly. “Maybe I could—”

“We do not permit outsiders to enter the villa.”

“Elena?” He studied her face. He couldn’t believe he was losing her so soon after finding her. “Don’t want to see me again?”

She held his gaze. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you, Fin. But it would be better if I just go. You knew from the beginning that this would only last a short time. I warned you. I must return to the villa. You have your job, your family, your hope.”

Fin wanted to tell her she was being unreasonable. That the present circumstances were keeping her from thinking clearly. But who was he to tell her how to feel? He knew the pain that accompanied the loss of a loved one; it could not be weighed or measured. Every man, every woman had to deal with it in his or her own way.

“I wish that we could take her body home, bury her in the family churchyard,” she said, watching the quiet figures fan out into the darkness.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. Too difficult to get the body through customs,” he said, hoping he would not have to elaborate.

“I understand.”

Spotting his mother’s next door neighbor, Fin got up. “I’ll be right back.” He walked up to Joe. “High Council?”

Joe scuffed the toe of his sneaker in the loose gravel of the parking lot. “Tomorrow night.” He didn’t meet Fin’s gaze.

“Thanks.” Fin squeezed his arm and walked back to where Elena waited. “It’s done,” he said. He stood in front of her.

She still sat on the front bumper of the police car. She was wearing a summer dress and a thin white cardigan over it. She fiddled with the hem of the sweater. “I should go.”

“You want me to give you a ride?”

She rose, smoothing the fabric of her dress. “I think I need to walk.”

“I could walk with you.”

Her eyes glistened with tears, but somehow she managed a smile. She stroked his cheek. “I prefer to walk alone.” Then she kissed him, her soft lips lingering over his.

Fin watched her walk away, and wondered if this was the last time he would ever see her.

Kaleigh woke to the feel of her cell phone vibrating in her shorts pocket. She lifted her head off the table and wiped a spot of drool off the page of a book. She wondered how long she had been asleep; there was no way to tell in the windowless room. The last time she had checked, it had been four-thirty in the morning.

The phone continued to vibrate and she fished it out of her pocket. It was Katy. “Hey.”

“You have to call your mom in, like, the next five minutes or we are
so
busted. This is the second time I called you. Are you still at the library?”

Still not entirely awake, Kaleigh drew the back of her hand across her mouth. It was sticky from the gummy bears she had eaten in the middle of the night when she got hungry. Now she was thirsty. Crazy thirsty.

“I’m still here.”

“Find anything?”

“If I found anything, would I still be here?” Kaleigh asked, exasperated. She got up to walk out her stiff legs. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Katy said gently. “But you gotta call your mom. I told her you were in the shower.”

Kaleigh yawned and dragged her finger along a bookshelf as she read book spines. She’d made a mess of the library. She’d checked every title of every book here and then she’d started leafing through diaries and notes. They weren’t well organized. Sometimes they were filed by date, other times region. Other times, there seemed to be no reason whatsoever for what she found where.

“I’ll call her,” Kaleigh said.

“You want to meet at the diner? Have some breakfast?”

“What I want is to pee.” Kaleigh exhaled. “Maybe some breakfast would be good. Then I’ll come back.”

“How you going to get back in?”

“Leave the door unlocked. Who’s going to check it? Then I’ll sneak back in.”

“I could come with you,” Katy offered. “We could tell our moms we’re going to the beach, then I could help you.”

“I don’t know,” Kaleigh hemmed. She pulled down a big cardboard box off one of the shelves and carried it to the table. “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

“It’s not like you have a lot of time,” Katy reasoned. “High Council meets tonight.”

Kaleigh plopped down in the chair and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I better call my mom. See you at the diner.”

“I’ll pack snacks,” Katy said excitedly. “See you in a few.”

It was a good thing Kaleigh let Katy join her because it was Katy, in the end, who found what they were looking for.

By six that evening, Kaleigh had been ready to give up. She’d checked so many books, pored over so many documents that her back hurt from lugging the books and boxes and her eyes hurt from trying to make out the faded ink of old tomes.

Kaleigh had just sunk onto the floor and declared there was no record of a German vampire being adopted by the Thomas family when Katy came upon something called “field notes” written by Robert Kahill in 1674. Kaleigh’s Rob. The recorded location was London, England.

“Listen to this,” Katy said excitedly. “There’s something here about helping some Vs catch some zombies who were killing citizens. The writing is crazy. Fancy English, but—”

“It’s no use, Katy. It’s not here.”

“Are you listening?” Katy shouted.

Kaleigh glanced at the door. “Maybe keep it down?”

“Johnny’s on duty. He brought a TV. He’s watching
Jeopardy!
, so unless you know the nickname for the West African beet bug, he’s not going to hear you.” Katy leaned over the table that was piled with books and loose papers. “Now get your cute little patootie over here and look at this.”