Romancing The Dead (6 page)

I managed to make small talk about roses and mullein and wild mustard with a few of the friendlier ladies while we all waited for Sebastian to arrive. About ten minutes before the lecture was to start, I thought I spotted him slipping in the side door. I rushed over, grateful to finally have someone decent to talk to.

About a foot away, I realized my mistake.

My warm, welcoming smile withered. It wasn’t Sebastian who’d just walked in—it was his son, Mátyás. 3.

Mercury

KEYWORDS:
The Intellect, Volatile Action, and Children

Noticing my quickly crumpling smile, Mátyás’s own expression brightened. That was the thing about Mátyás: you could always count on him taking a tiny bit of pleasure from other people’s misfortunes, especially mine. The last time I saw Mátyás, one of his cronies had put an arrow through my thigh. Just seeing that sarcastic smirk again made my leg twinge. Mátyás had Sebastian’s aristocratic features, with irises a shade paler, almost golden. His black hair fell just long enough to be perpetually in front of his eyes. Truth was, Mátyás could have been handsome, if he wasn ’t always so bitter and angry looking.

Of course, he
was
cursed to be a teenager forever, so it wasn’t entirely his fault. I imagined it would be pretty miserable to be seventeen for the past hundred and fifty-some years. I would feel a bit more pity for him, if he didn’t have the annoying tendency to refer to me as his daddy’s “chew toy.”

“Darling Garnet, it’s so very nice to see you alive and well,” he drawled in a way that implied the exact opposite. “Where is dear old papa?”

“What are you doing here? This isn’t really your kind of scene, is it?”

Mátyás shrugged, while looking around me for Sebastian. “I stopped by the farm to drop off my things. I noticed the calendar on the fridge. Where is he? We need to talk.”

“You’re staying at Sebastian’s? For how long?” And, then, as it occurred to me, I added, “You have a key?”

His smile was toothy as he pulled a ring out of his pocket and jangled it in front of my face. I scratched my chin with the middle finger of my left hand. Yes, juvenile, but something about Mátyás brought out the worst in me. Besides, this way I had the opportunity to both give him the finger and flash the engagement ring. He stared at my ring finger with a look that I could only describe as stricken. “So it
is
true. Dear God. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Nice,” I said.

Mátyás opened his mouth, no doubt to shoot off another insult, when one of the gardening matrons cleared her throat, surprising us both.

“Excuse me, Ms. Lacey?” the lady asked, peering at the name badge I’d been given when I first came in. “You’re Mr. Von Traum’s guest tonight, right?” I nodded. “Is there a problem?” she asked. “Is Mr. Von Traum expected to be late?”

I reached for my cell phone only to remember that I’d smashed it when I tumbled over my bike. “I’m afraid I don’t know,” I told the lady. “The last time I talked to him, he was planning to be here. ” In fact, he’d been the one to remind me not to be late.

“Mátyás, do you have a phone? Mine’s broken.”

Without a word, Mátyás pulled a cell out of his suit coat pocket and handed it to me. I dialed Sebastian’s number and got his voice mail. I left him a message reminding him that he was supposed to be here in —I checked the wall clock—three minutes. “This isn’t like him,” I told the gardening lady, as I handed Mátyás’s phone back. “Something must be really wrong.”

“People have paid for their tickets. The food has been catered,” she said, her voice starting to sound a bit shrill. “There’s nearly a hundred and fifty people here. It’s the best attendance we’ve ever had.”

My own nerves were starting to jangle. “Sebastian isn’t the sort to just blow this off. Something terrible must have happened. He must have been in a car accident, or . . .”

“Or, he’s off playing blood sports with another woman,” Mátyás suggested casually. The gardening lady, who had continued to sputter about arrangements that would have to be undone, stopped and stared gape mouthed at Mátyás. Mátyás locked eyes with me. “Or have you asked him to give all that up as part of your new life together? Say, how
is
that working out for you?”

“This is not the time, Mátyás. I’m seriously worried about Sebastian.”

“Should I cancel? Or do you really think he’s just held up?” The lady asked Mátyás, apparently hoping for a better answer from him than what she’d been getting from me.

“My father is fairly indestructible,” Mátyás reminded me. “Very little keeps him from what he
wants
.”

“Maybe you should try calling him again,” the club president helpfully suggested. When the door swung open, we all turned expectantly. The young woman who ducked in smiled apologetically when she noticed all the attention focused on her.

Sebastian hated being late. He thought tardiness was a social affront. When we went places together, we were often the first to arrive. I remembered when he’d miscalculated the time it would take to negotiate the traffic to Hal’s house and we’d resolutely sat in the car so we wouldn’t be twenty minutes early for the holiday party.

Even if Mátyás was right and Sebastian was with a ghoul, he’d still find a way to make it here on time. This wasn’t like him. Something was really wrong.

“He’s not coming,” I said, and somehow I knew it was true.

Despite my pronouncement, the club president fussed and fretted until almost thirty minutes past the hour before calling the engagement off. I stayed to help fold up chairs, still hopeful that Sebastian might show. Mátyás hung around to gloat, though I noticed him surreptitiously checking his cell a couple of times, so he might have been a bit worried himself.

“She must be something else,” Mátyás said from where he leaned against the wall near the stack of folding chairs.

“Who?”

“The ghoul,” Mátyás said, sounding a bit disappointed that I missed the point of his clever barb.

“Give me your phone,” I said.

“I’ve already tried him. He’s still not answering.”

I raised an eyebrow, surprised he confessed to being worried. “I want to call a taxi. I’m going home. Maybe . . .” I was going to say that maybe I’d see him later, but I didn’t like the implication that he might be gone for good. “He’d go there.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

I put my finger in my ear and wiggled it. I swore Mátyás just offered to take me home. He rolled his eyes. “Seriously. Come on. My Jaguar has got to be more comfortable than a cab.”

Go into a car with him? After he and his cronies tried to kill me? When he had left me for dead? I looked at him, his hair falling in front of his eyes and his tailored suit covering his teenage lanky fram. He looked like a kid. “Are you sure you’re even legal to drive?”

“A hundred and fifty years plus,” he said with a wry smile and a jingle of his keys. After the cool of the University Club, outside felt like a sauna. Despite the setting sun, heat waves shimmered on the asphalt as we walked to Mátyás’s brand-new, jet-black Jag. Despite having a boyfriend who was very into vehicles, I didn’t normally understand the appeal of all that steel and such. This car, however, looked cool. It was low and predatory and dangerously fast. He caught me admiring his car and let slip an I-can-tell-you-think-it’s-sexy grin. I grimaced in return, annoyed that he noticed me checking out his ride.

Mátyás beeped the doors open. My butt clenched when I slid onto the painfully hot leather seat. The air conditioner brought the smell of new car. I jiggled my legs until I stopped sticking to the seat. Mátyás watched me out of the corner of his eye as his did all the usual preparations to drive.

I said what I sensed he wanted to hear, but I gave it to him dry and uninterested. “Yeah, yeah. It’s a cool car.” It was true anyway. Even the dashboard looked spiffy and space-age. It must have cost a fortune. I wondered where Mátyás got the money for something this expensive. Then, the scrapes on my leg twitched and I remembered the Vatican agents. Had he gotten paid to betray his father? “Thirty silver pieces buys a lot these days, eh?”

Our uneasy truce shattered. He shot me a bitter look and flipped on the CD player with his knuckle. The thrash of speed -metal guitar filled the interior, killing any attempt at conversation. Suited me fine. I only wished I had my cell phone so I could check to see if there were any messages from Sebastian.

Where could he be?

Goddess, I prayed that he was okay.

I stared out the window, biting my fingernails to the quick with worry. At some point the sun set completely and the strobe of streetlights was replaced by long stretches of complete darkness. When the whiff of manure came in through the vents, I thought to ask, “Where are you taking me?”

He turned down the music a notch, and said, with what appeared to be genuine confusion, “Home. Aren’t you living at the farm?”

How was it that Mátyás always managed to stumble right into all the thorny issues in my life? “No,” I muttered. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Oh. My bad.”

I snorted. If only he really meant that. “We might as well check to see if Sebastian stopped there.”

Mátyás hummed happily along with the music the rest of the way.

I strained to see Sebastian’s car in the driveway as we approached the farmhouse. My heart pounded at the emptiness. “He’s not here,” I said.

Mátyás’s smile widened as he pulled in to the dirt drive. “She must be one hell of a ghoul.”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “I’m really starting to freak out. Aren’t you worried?”

“He’s a thousand-year-old vampire, Garnet,” Mátyás said, switching the engine off. “He’s got mad survival skills.”

“Maybe,” I said, struggling out of my seat belt.

“Where are you going? His car isn’t here.”

“I know,” I said, opening the door. “But I still want to check things out. You know, see if there’s any sign of a struggle.”

He laughed. “Who are you, Miss Marple now?”

“Look, as you say, he’s a thousand years old. You don’t think he made any enemies in all that time?”

Mátyás unsnapped his own seat belt with an incredulous shake of his head. “Okay, Inspector Clouseau, lead on.”

There’s something inherently spooky about approaching a farmhouse at night. Sebastian’s was no exception, especially given the fact that he normally had the house warded to appear abandoned. Where the porch naturally sagged a little with time, the shadows and Sebastian’s spell made it seem in complete disrepair. The lights were off and the windows reflected only hollow blackness. I had to rub my eyes to banish Sebastian’s wards, but even then the place seemed dark and forbidding. The house was set quite a ways back from the highway, and my feet scrunched on the beige sandstone gravel of the drive. A highway light illuminated the country graveyard next door, with its lichen-stained, tilting headstones. The surrounding cornfields rustled with hushed whispers and bullfrogs bellowed lowly in the damp roadside ditches.

I scrambled to the unlit porch and put my hand on the doorknob.

“Honey, we’re home!” Mátyás shouted from behind, making me jump. Noticing my reaction, he smiled broadly. With a jerk of his chin in the direction of the cemetery, he said, “Home, creepy home, eh? Perhaps I can understand your cold feet. I mean, especially given the place really is haunted.”

I pursed my lips in response. A ghost had come with Sebastian’s house. Sebastian always said that he figured that Benjamin was the reason he was able to get such a good deal on the mortgage, but I knew he enjoyed sharing his house with a poltergeist. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we weren’t pretty sure Benjamin had ax murdered his wife in the “guest” room upstairs. It was only a guest room in theory because no one had ever stayed there since the murder, and Benjamin wouldn ’t let anyone change a thing about it either.

Maybe I
would
take Sebastian up on that offer to move somewhere new. “Let’s see if he’s home, shall we?” I asked Mátyás, irritated that he’d somehow made me uncomfortable about a house I already spent more than half my time at. I tried the knob. I was strangely relieved to find the door locked, and not, say, hanging off its hinges. Today ’s newspaper was tucked by the threshold. I grabbed it and the mail from his box. Using my key, I let myself in the front door. I flipped on the overhead light. The house was quiet, empty.

Being a hundred-year-old farm house, Sebastian’s living room wasn’t grand or spacious. He filled the rectangular space with modern, comfy suede couches and leather chairs. Books lined glass-fronted, built-in cases. An expensive Persian rug accented polished maple floors. Abstract art hung on the ivory-gold painted walls. Central air kept the place cool. A book rested on the arm of Sebastian’s favorite high-back leather chair.

I sighed. His place was much more grown-up and classy than mine. My stuff was
so
going to get sent back to the rummage sale it came from when we combined households.

“So,” Mátyás said, flopping down on to the couch. “No signs of a break-in?” he asked from where he peeked in over my shoulder.

“Are you sure the bedroom’s empty?”

“Sebastian?” I walked over to the open staircase and called up in concession to Mátyás’s suggestion. “Hello? Anyone at home?”

A wind ruffled the lace curtains on the landing upstairs, even though the window was closed. Cold kissed my cheek. “I mean besides you, Benjamin.”

When Mátyás put his boots up on the glass coffee table, I almost heard Benjamin’s growl of dislike. With a sudden jerk, Mátyás’s feet were shoved off. Mátyás sat up straighter, looking around for the culprit. He gave me a glare like I ’d put Benjamin up to it. I shrugged as innocently as I could muster. It wasn’t my fault Benjamin had good taste in people. I checked Sebastian’s answering machine to see if he ’d called here thinking I might come back. There was a message from Jensen’s telling him details about the Mustang and another from the Horticultural Society lady expressing her extreme disappointment that Sebastian was a no-show at tonight’s event. I noticed she didn ’t offer a date for rescheduling. Ouch. Automatically, I scribbled down notes detailing the calls on the pad near the phone as was our routine. Mátyás sat on the couch still glancing around a bit nervously, as though he expected Benjamin to make another move on him. I leaned against the railing of the open staircase and noted how Mátyás looked uncomfortable and out of place. The last time he ’d been in this house, he’d secretly been allied with Vatican assassins that wanted his father’s alchemical formula for vampirism. We’d nearly died to protect it. Mátyás had let us live, but not for a lack of trying.