Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (98 page)

“You hungry?” asked Kingsley. I noticed his five o’clock shadow was looking more like a three-day growth. The surest indicator that a full moon was rising.

“
Hungry enough to suck you dry,” I said.

Now he shivered. “With talk like that, we might just skip dinner.”

We were seated immediately at our favorite table near the front window. The waiters here knew my preferences and, after giving us one of their finest white wines—one of the few non-hemoglobic beverages I can enjoy—they brought us our meals. Salmon for Kingsley. Steak for me. Rare.

Very, very rare.

Rather than use a knife and fork, I used a spoon, and, as casually as I could, I dipped it into the warm blood that had pooled around the meat and brought it to my lips. I tried not to feel like the ghoul that I was.

Just a girl with her man, I told myself. A man, of course, who just so happened to be bigger than most men. And far hairier. Especially at this time of the month.

Kingsley, suffering from no such eating restrictions, went to work on the salmon. Although the defense attorney dressed immaculately, he ate like a pig. And, yeah, I was jealous as hell.

The waiter came by and filled my wine glass. Since I had taken precisely three sips, the filling part didn’t take long. Kingsley ordered another beer, and when the waiter was gone, I said to him, “I found another medallion.”

“Another what?” he mumbled around his salmon. Or, rather, I
think
he said.

“
Medallion. You know, like the one before. But this one is inlaid with emerald roses, rather than ruby.”

Kingsley’s lips were shiny with grease. His impossibly full lips. His longish hair hung just below his collar. He was the picture of the maverick attorney, who just so happened to look like a ravenous wolf, too. “Tell me about it,” he said.

And I did. I told him about the case I had taken on around Christmas, a case in which I had helped a sweet man find a family heirloom, of sorts. A sweet man who just so happened to be a hoarder, too. For payment, I was permitted to pick anything I wanted from his piles of junk. I had cheated. I had used my intuition to hone in on something particularly valuable, something that had lain hidden and mostly forgotten under piles of crap.

A box. With a medallion.

A medallion that was a near-exact replica of the one I had owned six months ago. And that medallion had contained powerful magicks. So powerful, in fact, that it had reversed vampirism.

“
So the question is,” I said. “Can this medallion do the same?”

During my recounting, Kingsley had finished his salmon and was now working on his cubed rosemary potatoes. The fork in his hand looked miniature. “Do you have the medallion with you now?” he asked.

I did. I showed it to him. Kingsley immediately frowned. A frown for Kingsley meant his bushy eyebrows came together to form one long incredibly bushy eyebrow. “You should have left it at home,” he said, glancing around.

“
And miss seeing your bushy eyebrows come together?”

“
I’m serious, Sam. Stuff like this...” he lowered his voice. “You, of all people, know the lengths some people—”

“
Or vampires.”

His long eyebrow quivered. “Yes, Sam. Vampires. Some vampires will kill—”

“And kidnap.”

“
Yes, and kidnap for these things.”

I set it on the table and mostly covered it with my hand. “And what is this thing? Another immortality reverser?”

Kingsley shook his head sharply. “No. There was only one of those made.”

“
And you know this how?”

“
I know some things,” he said.

“
Because you’ve been around longer than me.”

“
A lot longer than you, Sam.”

“
Fine. So only one of those were made. Then what’s this?” I moved my hand aside, revealing the shining medallion again. It caught the overhead chandelier light and returned a thousandfold, and the three emeralds within twinkled like green stars. Or like lime jello. Which so happened to be Anthony’s and Tammy’s favorite jello.

Kingsley glanced briefly at the medallion before reaching across the table and covering my hand with his own. Hell, he covered most of my wrist, too. And some of my napkin and plate. Big hands.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I can tell you one thing.”

“
And what’s that?”

“
It’s valuable as hell. Which means...” And his voice trailed off.

Unfortunately, I knew the ending to this sentence all too well. “Which means some people will kill for it.”

“Some people,” said Kingsley, “or some vampires.”

Chapter Ten

“
You tampered with evidence. What were you thinking, Sam?” scolded Detective Sherbet.

“
I was thinking about finding our killer.”

We were in his glass office. Some of the officers on duty were watching us from outside the office. One or two were shaking their heads in a way that suggested they did not approve of me or of the department using my inferior services.

“Your men don’t like me,” I said.

“
They see it as a slap in the face, a blow to their ego,” said Sherbet, sitting back in his chair. He laced his thick fingers over his rotund belly. The rotund belly was looking a little more rotund these days. This time, however, I shielded my thoughts from him. He didn’t need to know what I thought of his belly. He went on, “They don’t understand why I brought you in, so they see you as a sort of indictment on their own abilities.”

“
If they only knew,” I said.

“
Truth is, sometimes I wish I didn’t know, Sam. I mean, isn’t this kind of stuff supposed to just be in books and movies?”

I said, “Someone told me recently that if enough people believe in something, put their attention on something, then that something becomes a reality.”

Sherbet immediate shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said, which didn’t surprise me much. Detectives lived and died by things that made sense. Cold hard facts. “Who told you this?”

“
My guardian angel. Actually, my ex-guardian angel.”

Sherbet blinked. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Sadly, no. He visited me over Christmas. Expressed his undying love for me, in fact.”

“
Please stop. There’s only so much I can handle.” Sherbet massaged his temples. “We sound crazy, you know.”

“
Maybe we are,” I said.

“
Crazy, I can accept. Guardian angels, not so much. Can I really can read your mind, Sam?”

“
Yes.”

“
And you can read my mind?” he asked.

“
If I wanted to.”

“
My head hurts, Sam.”

“
I imagine it does.”

He looked at me some more. As he did so, his jowls quivered a little. His nose was faintly red. “How do you do it?” he finally asked.

I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what
it
was. I said, “One day at a time. One minute at a time.”

“
If it were me, I would go bugfuck crazy.”

We were quiet some more. The smell of coffee seemed to permanently hang suspended in the air of his office, although I could see no coffee cups. Outside his glass office wall, I could hear phones ringing, phones being answered, the rapid typing on keyboards.

“Back to you tampering with evidence,” said Sherbet. “Officially, I have to ask you to never do that again.”

“
And unofficially?”

“
Unofficially, I have to ask you what you learned.”

“
He’s not a vampire,” I said. “At least, I don’t think he is.”

“
Then what is he? Why does he drain the bodies of blood?”

“
Think of him as a supplier.”

“
A supplier? Of what? Blood?”

“
Yes.”

“
For who?”

I didn’t say anything. I let the detective think this through. As he studied me, I glanced around his small office. There was a picture of his wife next to his keyboard, a lovely woman I’d met just this past Christmas, a woman who was easily twenty years younger than Sherbet.

You go, Detective.

Finally, he said, “Are you implying he supplies blood to...vampires?”

“Maybe. I don’t know for sure.”

“
Which begs the question: where do vampires get their blood?”

“
We get it from all over, Detective. I get mine, as you know, from a local butchery.”

“
Animal blood.”

“
Right.”

“
So, this guy supplies human blood.”

“
Right.”

“
Have you ever heard anything like that, Sam?”

“
Not quite like that.”

“
What have you heard?”

“
That some people act as donors.”

“
Willing donors?”

“
Some of them,” I said.

“
And some not so willingly?”

“
Would be my guess,” I said.

Sherbet started shaking his head, and he didn’t quit shaking it until he spoke again. Finally, he said, “So, what else do you know about our killer?”

“He’s got blue eyes.”

“
That’s it?”

“
That’s it.”

“
No other psychic hits?”

“
He hangs the bodies upside down to drain.”

“
Like a butcher.”

“
Yes,” I said.

“
Which makes sense if he’s a blood supplier; after all, he wouldn’t want to waste a single drop.”

“
Blood is money,” I said.

“
Jesus. Where did he kill his victims?”

I shook my head. “Hard to know. Brian Meeks regained consciousness while hanging upside down.”

“Jesus,” he said again. “And you saw this, what, through his eyes? From touching his stuff?”

“
That’s how it seems to work.”

“
Do you have any fucking idea how crazy we sound?”

“
Some idea,” I said.

Sherbet shook his head. “Did he—or you—see anything else while he was hanging upside down?”

“Yes.”

“
Don’t say it, Sam,” said Sherbet, and I think he caught a glimpse of my thoughts.

“
More bodies,” I said.

“
I asked you not to say it.”

Chapter Eleven

With the body now identified and most of the Fullerton Police Department looking deeply into Brian Meeks’s personal and professional life, Detective Sherbet had asked me to lay low for a while and let his boys think they were doing some actual work.

I told him no problem, smiled warmly, and promptly looked into Brian Meeks’s personal and professional life.

Since I knew the cops were currently turning his small apartment upside down, looking for anything and everything that could help identify the killer, that left his professional life.

Which is why I found myself outside the Fullerton Playhouse. Turns out that Brian Meeks had been an actor here in Fullerton, working primarily with local theater and community colleges. Which might explain why he lived in a one-bedroom apartment.

The Fullerton Playhouse is located on Commonwealth, near the Amtrak train station, and near what had been one of my favorite restaurants, back when my diet wasn’t so one-dimensional. The Olde Spaghetti House will always have a special place in my heart. The fact that I would never again eat mizithra cheese spaghetti again was a crime in and of itself.

I parked in the mostly empty parking lot next to the wooden playhouse. A marquee sign out front read, “Elvis Has
Not
Left the Building: The Musical.” Under the sign were the words: “The King is Back!”

Boy, was he ever. Last year, while searching for a missing little girl, I had teamed up with, among others, an investigator from Los Angeles. An investigator from whom I had received a very strange psychic hit. An investigator who vaguely looked and sounded like the King himself.

Turned out, the old guy had secrets of his own, secrets I would take with me to my grave, whenever the hell that might be.