Unbitten (25 page)

“It’s not that I’m upset with you,”
she said, not wanting him to feel hurt, or, more precisely,
not wanting to be the agent of his feeling hurt. “Or,
that is, I’m not upset with
you
-you. But
this vampire thing–you’re going to have to give
me a minute.”

She smiled at him, a brittle sort of smile, and opened the
door, noticing again this unexpected feeling–how much
she wished he were not there.

Tristan Durant had known the phone call was coming
eventually–someday–but somehow, he had expected
it to remain in the future, and yet, it was happening now,
today, and he had better pull himself together.

One of the housemaids from the Château had called.
She believed something had happened to one of the guests, a
young woman, an American. Tristan had the distinct
impression that the housemaid was bitter over something
that had happened with David de la Motte, but that part of
the call was a bit garbled. The woman liked to imply more
than she liked to make direct statements, that was for
sure.

First he called Roland, bringing him in on his day off.

Second, he called Jessica, who was back in New York by now.

“Hello, my little cabbage,” he said.

Jessica laughed the laugh of someone not awake.

“I am sorry to call in the middle of your
night,” he said. “And I wish, I deeply and
dramatically wish, that I were waking you up in some other
way than the telephone. With my fingertips, for example. Or
my lips on your…” he stopped suddenly. This
would not do.

Tristan cleared his throat. “So sorry,” he
said. “Your sleepy voice sounds so dear that I lost
my place there for a moment. Actually, I am calling at this
obscene hour because there is a problem at the
Château, with a guest. There’s a possibility
that it may have been a vampire attack. Roland and I are
about to go out there and check it out, but I wanted to
have a word with you first, and make sure we get off on the
right foot.”

Jessica sat up in bed, alert. “What do you know so
far?” she asked.

“Next to nothing. A housemaid called. She said there
was a guest, a young American girl, college-aged, who
disappeared but left her luggage behind. Then a day later,
the luggage disappeared, but the maid could not find anyone
who had sent it ahead or anything like that. She believes
something happened to the girl.

“As often happens in these cases, the maid seems to
have a beef with David de la Motte, and that part is a bit
confused. I don’t think she’s entirely
reliable, or at least, she has some motivations that are
not entirely clear.

“In any case. Just to make sure. What kind of gear do
we need to take? I am expecting this to be routine, at
first, only trying to get an understanding of the
situation, not attempting anything more…final. But
of course we should be protected and ready for the
unexpected.”

“Yes,” said Jessica, agreeing with the last
part especially. “You’re going to feel a bit
stupid with some of it, at least I certainly did the first
time,” she said.

“Each of you needs a silver cross on your
body,” she said. Saying the word “body”
to Tristan made something happen in her own body, but she
swept that aside, focusing on what she was saying.
“The crosses are more powerful if you have religious
faith, but they are not useless if you do not. You should
have stakes with you, extremely sharp ones. Did you get
that launcher I told you about?”

Tristan felt the sting of having screwed up. “Not
yet,” he said, in a small voice. “But if
necessary, we can manually stake him, yes?”

“Yes. It will help if Roland is strong too.
It’s not like vampires take a staking without
fighting back. And from what you said, David de la Motte is
somewhat formidable, physically.”

“It is true,” said Tristan. He didn’t
especially like hearing Jessica talk about David like that.
Feeling like a thirteen year old, he had a quick flash of
being able to tell her how he had vanquished David de la
Motte, and basking in her admiration. He shook his head
quickly to clear it.

“I know it seems practically medieval,” she
said, “but that’s pretty much your arsenal,
right there. If you can drag him out into the sunlight, all
the better. And…”

“Yes,
chérie
,” Tristan asked
softly.

“It’s important that if you do try to take
David de la Motte down, that you have absolute privacy when
you do it. You understand.”

“Certainly, Jessica,” he said. “I would
not look forward to seeing photos of Roland and me with
stakes and crosses all over the internet.”

“No,” she said, “you would not.”

Tristan heard a rustle, as though of bedclothes or a
nightgown.

“Be very careful, my love,” said Jessica.
“Vampires have survived so long, against great odds,
not only because they are strong but because they tend to
be quite crafty. Be on your utmost guard. And call me the
second you get back.”

They said their fond and increasingly warmer goodbyes.

Jessica got up from bed, naked, and walked to her window.
The lights down Amsterdam Avenue went in a long glowing
stripe. She could see traffic lights blinking from red to
green, the neon of the new bar a few blocks down. Some
straggling partiers making their 3 a.m. way home, or to the
next place. It looked lonely out there, but then, these
days, anyplace without Tristan felt lonely.

Roland arrived and he and Tristan conferred for a moment
outside the
gendarmerie.

“Here’s a cross I got for you,” Roland
said, holding out an elaborate and quite large Celtic cross
on a chain. “It’s my grandmother’s. The
one whose idea of decoration is bloody crucifixes on the
wall by your bed.”

“I suppose the best thing is to put them on under our
shirts,” said Tristan. “I’ve got stakes
in my briefcase.” He couldn’t help feeling like
that thirteen year old again, like they were planning some
game in the woods. It gave the operation a feeling of
unseriousness, putting a pile of sticks in his briefcase.
He was grateful that Roland appeared to have no misgivings,
no hesitation in believing what Tristan had told him.

“All right then. We ready?”

Roland nodded.

“We’re just doing routine police work this
morning. Just asking some questions, interviewing that
housemaid, possibly some guests, and seeing if we can find
out where the American girl is. For all we know, it could
be a false alarm.”

Tristan felt a little funny saying that, because he
couldn’t be altogether sure whether he wanted it to
be a false alarm or not.

Jo woke up and quickly put on her riding clothes. It was
chilly enough that she could wrap a scarf around her neck
to hide the bite marks–she arranged it as she was
headed down to breakfast. She was starving, and she was
looking forward to her coffee and throwing moderation
completely out the window when it came to Marcel’s
pastries.

So David was, when you just came right down to it, not even
human. Well, that does put things in a new light, she
thought, wondering with a snort what Marianne would say to
the latest turn of events. But in the light of day, David
and his vampire story just seemed ridiculous. Just how
gullible did he think she was? Is he going to be chatting
to me about shape-shifted squirrels next? Pixies living in
the flower borders? Trolls under the bridge in the village?

She gratefully slurped up some coffee when it arrived,
loving its dark, enlivening flavor. Two croissants, one
chocolate and one almond, followed by a plain but
delectably chewy roll slathered in butter, and she was
starting to feel a little less drained. Being around David
and all his drama–that’s exactly what it was.
Draining. She shivered slightly, and reached for another
pastry.

Just then, Henri appeared in the dining room doorway
wearing his sun protection gear. He looked around the room,
pushing the netting back from his face.

The guests were few that morning, at that early hour. The
Italians were nowhere to be seen, and the New Zealanders
had already come and gone and taken off on a long walk. No
sign of the family of Brits.

Jo nodded to Henri, suddenly wondering–is he a
vampire too? And what is that get-up he’s always
wearing?

Henri had worked all night, trying to bring order to the
hurricane in his lab. Even though he was exhausted,
emotionally and physically, he did not feel ready for
sleep. What he wanted, for reasons he could not quite
understand, was to see Jo.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Henri asked.

“Not at all,” said Jo, with her mouth full.

She noticed something about his eyes. They were dark blue,
the color of deep ocean, but they had glints of something
else, gold maybe, that seemed to catch in the light and
almost shimmer.

“Of course you can join me, Henri,” she said,
looking away from his eyes and back to her cup. “I am
so looking forward to today. Drogo is in for it. Thierry
and I have got the dressage all worked out and he is going
to be put through his paces today, I’m telling
you!” Jo’s face was glowing as she talked.

Henri smiled at her and slowly drank his coffee. He
didn’t even drink coffee, as a rule, and he was
heading to bed soon, but he kept drinking it anyway.

“When is the show?” he asked her.

“Just a few days away, if you can believe it. We are
not ready, Drogo and I. So I expect to work super hard
today, and then leave him some time to rest before we
travel. Traveling is very hard on a horse like Drogo, as
you can imagine. Very hard.”

“So you have forgiven him for abandoning you out in
the forest?”

Jo looked up and met Henri’s eyes, noticing those
gold glints again. “Well, no, actually, I
haven’t. It’s true, we didn’t know each
other all that well yet when it happened. But still, he
left me many miles out in the forest, as you well know.
I’m not over it, no. I like my fellows to be a bit
more dependable.”

It was not lost on Jo that she was not only talking about
the horse. She wondered if Henri had even known that she
and David had been involved. She had no idea whether they
were close or not–David had barely mentioned his
brother in the time Jo had spent with him.

Marianne was probably dying to tell me to get the hell out
of here, she thought. Marianne was usually right. But now
that the hold David had over her was broken, Jo was feeling
a burst of lightness, of enthusiasm for her work, for her
horse, and for being in France. She could see now that the
complications with David had muffled her; she had been
spending on her energy on him, and not getting any in
return. She thought, not for the first time, that
infatuation was a kind of drunkenness, and she just had to
get through a short hangover and then she’d be done
with it.

If there was danger, well, Jo wasn’t worried about
that. All she wanted was to finish shaking off the effects
of the affair with David, work with her horse, and eat
pastries. This morning she felt free and strong and ready
to throw herself with her old excitement into whatever she
was doing. The fact that the Château had turned out
to be a nest of vampires, well–Jo cracked up
laughing. She could not stop trying to come up with
alternative explanations for David’s biting her, and
at the same time, she admitted to herself that she thought
the idea was more than intriguing, it was actually
captivating.

She didn’t know whether to believe it, or to be
laughing her ass off at the joke.

How many times in your life does your whole sense of what
is possible get turned on its head?

“I’m sorry I didn’t come see you after
that…adventure we had in the forest,” said
Henri. “I meant to. Sometimes I get terribly
distracted with my work and forget things I really intend
to do.”

“It’s all right,” said Jo. “It
was
very odd, though, wasn’t it? So those
women are neighbors? Do you know them very well?”