Necromancing Nim (35 page)

“Did you get any sense of where he is?” Colin asked, squatting next to the couch. “Is he alone? How many people does he have with him?”

I started to shake my head but abandoned the enterprise as a very bad idea. “I don’t know. I just know he’s coming, and he has some kind of plan, and he’s really pissed off at us.”

Sebastian came to sit on the couch, easing my head into his lap. It made the room into a tilt-a-whirl again, but when everything was settled, it felt nice. He laid a cool hand on my forehead and started to massage my temples. At first, it seemed like the caress was just going to make everything worse, but after a few firm movements of his fingers, the weak, queasy feeling began to fade.

“We should have known he’d move during the day,” he said quietly. “With the link to Nim still active it’s the closest he could come to an element of surprise.”

“Have I mentioned I really, really don’t like this guy?” I muttered.

“I don’t like him either.” Sebastian’s voice was quiet. “He’s killed too many people I care for.”

I wondered if he meant more than just the old lover I’d already heard about but decided it was best not to ask. When Sebastian was that quiet, it didn’t seem like a good idea to question. He seemed more dangerous when he was so careful with his voice.

“He’ll come after the stone,” said Colin in the low monotone of someone speaking the obvious. “We have to keep it away from him until we’re ready to destroy it.”

“How much longer?” I felt drifty and relaxed under Sebastian’s touch. Much better than woozy and nauseated. My sense of Pieter’s proximity seemed to have faded a bit, but it was still there, hovering in the background. I couldn’t tell if he’d gotten closer.

“You have to heal a bit before I can feed again.” His fingers slid along my shoulders as he spoke matter-of-factly, breaking down the schedule for his own death. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the tears behind wouldn’t flow. “Any idea how close he is?”

I frowned, glad to have something else to think about. “No, not really. Just a strong sense that he’s heading our way.”

“He can’t be that far,” Colin put in. “If he’s moving during the day, he probably worked out a way to do it fast.”

He was right. I took a long, slow breath, then carefully sat up. The room remained steady around me. Sebastian scooted back a bit, hand still on my shoulder, and began to rub my back.

His ministrations seemed to be clearing my head. Pieter’s presence no longer sickened me, but I could sense more details. They were wispy and strange and didn’t quite feel real. “He’s on a plane,” I muttered, “half-conscious, in the hold with the luggage. Maybe in a coffin. The stone…residual influence is reducing his sun sensitivity…” I stopped. “I don’t want to know this shit. I don’t want to be in his head.”

Sebastian’s hand shifted on my shoulder, stroking rather than holding me up. “I know, love, but right now it’s helping us.”

I couldn’t deny that, regardless of the consequences to me. “We should get out of this hotel. We’re in the middle of a big building full of innocent people who are likely to get hurt and killed in the crossfire.” I shifted again, moving away from Sebastian so his soothing ministrations didn’t affect my ability to concentrate.

Sebastian drew his hands back, seeming to understand what I was after. “She’s right,” he said to Colin. “How many vampire zombies do you want left in our wake?”

Colin frowned. “As few as possible.” He turned to Sebastian. “He’ll be after the stone, and we need to warn Roland.”

Sebastian nodded. “There are plenty of tunnels available. We can get to her—get to her sleeping place, I mean.”

“Did she tell you where it was?”

“No, but she told me how to contact her during the day if necessary.”

“We need to split up.” Colin’s attention swiveled to me. “You up to handling it on your own? Warning Roland?”

“No.” Sebastian’s protest came quickly and sharply, just as I was about to say I could handle it.

“Yes.” I gave Sebastian a narrow glare. “Yes, I most certainly am.”

“Nim, you can’t.”

Suddenly I didn’t care if Sebastian was hot, good in bed, or even concerned about me. He was pissing me off. “Look, doofus. Pieter’s after the stone. You guys have the stone. You run one way, I go the other. Pieter comes after you, I warn Roland so she can protect the data. Oh, and you give me the drive thingy.”

Colin’s decisive nod was both approving and maybe a little impressed. “Good plan.”

But Sebastian still felt the need to disagree. “I’m not sending her off by herself.”

I broke through Colin’s attempt to respond. “You’re not sending me off by myself, dumbass. I’m choosing to take that piece of the plan. I am capable of making my own decisions, thank you very much.”

“Nim…” Sebastian actually sounded hurt.

“She didn’t mean it,” Colin said breezily. “Now give her the drive and the directions so we can get the ever-loving fuck out of here.”

Teeth clenched, Sebastian sighed. “Fine.” He handed me the drive from the table. “She said to go to circulation at the Undergrad and ask for Lily. Lily’s copacetic, and she’ll take you where you need to go.”

“What does that even mean, copacetic?” And then I realized I knew. “Oh, my God. It’s like a human servant, isn’t it? You’ve been telling everybody I’m a human servant?”

Colin chuckled a little. “Best way to keep them from asking awkward questions about why you smell weird.”

“Oh, nice.” I didn’t even know how to respond to that. “Fine. So how will she know I’m copacetic? Is there a secret password or something?”

“She’s a real human servant, unlike you.” Colin still seemed amused. “She’ll know.” Sebastian shifted uncomfortably, and Colin turned to the other vampire. “It’s a good plan.”

“Yes,” Sebastian finally agreed. “Puts us a step or two ahead of Pieter. Dangerous surroundings, we have superior knowledge—it’ll keep him off our heels hopefully long enough to…do what we have to do.”

Sebastian’s slight hesitation sent me blinking again. I couldn’t think about this too much. Sebastian had made his choice, and it was the only choice he could have made. I couldn’t dissuade him from it, nor should I try. This was his role in the current crisis, and he’d accepted it. But hearing him stumble over the words hurt me.

I returned my focus to logistics. “How do we get back together?”

“Call us when you’re set with Roland,” said Colin. “We’ll make a plan then.”

I nodded. No longer queasy, my stomach now was tying itself up in very different kinds of knots. “Okay.”

“Good girl,” said Colin. The approval gave me a happy for about three seconds, until the words registered. I made a face at him.

“Don’t be an ass,” I snipped. I got up, steady on my feet for the first time since lunch. Sorting out my usual arsenal of anti-vampire goodies, I stuffed them into the pockets of my hoodie and went to find Roland.

There was no way in hell I was going into the tunnels in broad daylight when they were probably empty and weird and really poorly lit. Instead, I stayed out in the light, on the sidewalk, and headed south through the main quad and past it toward the south quad and the Undergraduate Library.

The University of Illinois Undergraduate Library is, indeed, underground. Supposedly, the decision to put the building below ground level was to keep from disturbing the Morrow Plots, experimental farming plots next door, but rumors abound that local vamps paid off the decision-makers at the time. Construction was completed in 1969, after all—the same year the vamps decided to come out. This does not, however, explain the sunken courtyard in the middle, made almost completely of windows. There’s a lot of sunlight in that building.

I was feeling a little better, not so disoriented now that I was up and moving. The weather was chilly and brisk but not unpleasant, and sunset remained a few hours away, the light bright enough to make me feel somewhat safe.

Separated from Sebastian, I could sense Pieter more distinctly again, with his distant but nearing miasma of general yuckiness, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been before. I felt more like I was observing him rather than being overwhelmed by him. Either way, he smelled bad.

I crossed the decoratively patterned sidewalk to the main entrance, a glass-walled, almost kiosk-like enclosed area. A sign on the door listed the hours, and another sign declared that the window baffles were under repair and any vampires should enter at their own risk prior to sunset. Nice. That smelled like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Inside and down the first set of stairs was the entryway to the library on one side of a lobby dominated by, naturally, an Espresso Royale. I wondered where the Nip/Suck was, but I didn’t have time to find out. Instead, I headed past the metal detectors and into the library proper.

The library was about as busy as was to be expected on a weekday afternoon. Folks browsed the books, sat at tables and carrels studying, scribbling notes or working on laptops. Most of them wore iPods or mp3 players of some kind or another. I hadn’t been out of college that long—not that I’d been in college that long in the first place—but things still held that strange, nostalgic mix of familiar and completely different that made me feel painfully old. And regretful—I probably should have stuck around to get a degree.

As instructed, I went to the circulation desk and asked for Lily. No one seemed taken aback or suspicious, so I leaned against the counter and waited.

After a few minutes, a young woman with a pierced lower lip and eyebrow approached me from the other side of the desk.

“Looking for something?” she asked me. Her voice was a shade too loud for a library atmosphere, but this part of the library was a bit rowdy, anyway, so no one gave either of us a second thought.

“Roland,” I said, figuring she’d know what I meant if she was definitely the right contact and would think I was after medieval literature if she wasn’t.

Her nose wrinkled. I tried hard to pay attention to her, but I had to focus on the middle of her face because I couldn’t stand to see her piercings. Nose, ears, bellybutton—those are all fine, but eyebrows and lips give me the willies.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” she pointed out, her voice as scrunchily annoyed as her face.

“I know.”

“You do know they tend to sleep this time of day?” She obviously thought I was a complete moron. I returned her accusatory gaze steadily. Well, as steadily as possible without having to actually focus on the pierced parts of her.

“The bad guys, unfortunately, don’t.” I tried to sound wise and intense and pointed and all that. I think I probably just sounded bitchy.

She stopped chewing her gum for a couple of seconds while she absorbed that. “How bad is it?”

“Damn bad.”

With a nod, she headed around the counter to join me. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

She led the way down to the second floor. The angle of the late afternoon sun meant very little sunlight made it in, regardless of the state of the baffles. The first floor had had the occasional line of light striped across the carpet, but down here things were more muted. Lily led the way toward the north corner, behind the book stacks, where she took a quick glance around, then pressed a spot in the wall. A door opened, revealing a corridor beyond. I blinked.

“It’s glamoured,” Lily explained, most likely to prepare me for her inexplicable disappearance when she walked through the door. “Just follow me—you’ll go through fine, even though it seems like there’s a wall there.”

“Okay,” I said and followed her. The door was, of course, perfectly visible to me. It slid silently shut behind us. We headed down a hallway that was better lit than most.

“Convenient, I guess, living under the library,” I said after a bit, mostly to break the silence.

“More like next to the library.” She shrugged. “I guess the stuff here could be, I don’t know, I guess dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands and that kind of thing, so they stay close.” She punctuated her run-on sentences with pops of her gum, which I supposed made things like periods and pauses unnecessary.

She opened a door that led to a stairwell, and we descended, heading lower than the lowest level of the library but not toward the tunnels where we’d gone before. We were moving back toward the quad rather than toward the main library. At least as far as I could tell. My sense of direction isn’t the best.

“How long have you worked for them?” I asked. The stairwell was getting darker, which was making me twitchy. Apparently, it wasn’t just Colin who tended to forget I can’t see in the dark. I also had that crawly feeling on my skin again, like Pieter might be on the move. I still couldn’t judge his proximity, though, and the nauseated reaction I’d had before hadn’t come back.

“Started a couple months into my freshman year. They pay better than McDonald’s. Plus it’s more interesting.”

“McDonald’s is probably safer.”

“Dunno. There’s deep frying there.”

She had a point. “True.”

“They’re cool too. They give good bonuses and benefits, and they know where to get really good pot.”

“Huh.” Obviously I was working for the wrong vampires. All mine seemed to know how to get was me into trouble.