Undying (23 page)

Arlan had asked how that was possible, but he knew very well that often serial killers murder off the radar, especially early in their “careers.” He’d once tracked a man in Bordeaux who admitted at the hour of his death that authorities had only known of half of the thirty-seven men and women he’d tortured and murdered.

The thought of Dauncy left a sour taste in his mouth; he wiped it with the back of his hand.

“What can I do to help?” Eva asked.

“Right now, probably just tell her you’re leaving, and go on to work.” He eyed the clean black apron thrown over a chair. “She knows where to find you if she wants to. I think she just needs some time alone.”

“You think she’ll take off before we catch this bastard?”

“Hard to say.” Arlan watched Macy squat down on one knee and peer through her camera’s viewfinder. “She’s made a life for herself by never staying long in one place. That kind of pattern is hard to change.”

Eva watched him. “You really have a thing for her, don’t you?” she said, wonder in her voice. “Arlan Kahill, have you fallen in love with a human?”

He glanced at Eva and then away, trying to harden his heart. “Nah, I know better than that.”

She swatted him on the behind as she walked away. “You better.”

Teddy gazed out the small window of the airplane, wishing he didn’t have to travel today. He would rather have stayed at home and cut out all the articles they had written about him in the newspapers. He was flying south today. Atlanta. Macy sometimes worked in the Atlanta area but she wasn’t there now.

No. She was much closer to home. She hadn’t said so, but at night, when he sat on his front porch, looking up at the moon, he could feel her near him. They were growing closer each day. And despite what his mother said, he knew she was falling in love with him.

Teddy had been waiting his whole life for this. He’d hoped. He’d prayed. He’d been patient. And now, it was time to make plans.

K
aleigh sat with her friends around the bonfire they’d built on the beach, laughing at something stupid one of the guys had said. Fourth of July was always one of her favorite holidays because the whole town threw a big Independence Day block party. It was also one of the few times each year that a bonfire permit for the beach was issued. There had been a parade today and with traffic rerouted, booths had been set up on the street that ran along the beach, featuring food for sale and carnival games to play. A block off the water, a strip mall parking lot had been turned into a mini midway featuring kiddy rides. Of course there were no “kiddies” in the sept, but the tourists seemed to enjoy the carnival. There was also a bandstand and dance area at the end of one of the streets along the waterfront. A goofy country and western group was playing now, but later tonight, an awesome local rock band would play. The whole day would have been better without the human tourists who seemd to come in flocks, but Kaleigh understood the sept needed them, at least financially. The yearly block party also made Clare Point seem ordinary, despite its extraordinary townspeople.

Someone joined the circle of vampires-only teens around the bonfire and Rob Hill scooted closer to Kaleigh to make room. His arm brushed hers, but she didn’t pull away. She kind of liked him close like this. She’d been seeing Rob a couple of times a week. They weren’t
dating,
but they were definitely making the effort to hang out with the same people, do the same things. Yesterday he’d stopped by the DQ just to say hi. His timid attention was nice as long as Kaleigh didn’t dwell on what Rob had looked like a couple of weeks ago at his wake. She knew that was how the circle of life worked in the sept; she just didn’t want to think about it too hard.

“Let’s play a game.” Katy, one of Kaleigh’s good friends, stood and clapped her hands, something she did whenever she was giving the group an order. She had to speak above the music blaring from a boom box someone had brought with them.

“Yeah, let’s play a game,” someone piped in.

“Like spin the bottle?” one of the guys chimed in. “Or truth or dare!”

All the girls groaned. Someone threw an empty Coke can.

“We’re not kissing your lame vampire asses,” one of the girls on the other side of the campfire called.

“No, I know what we can play.” Katy eyed Kaleigh.

Kaleigh shook her head.
Don’t you dare,
she telepathed, blocking the message to anyone but Katy. She knew very well where Katy, who was
supposed
to be her best friend, was going with this. They had played the game the other night at a sleepover—Kaleigh, Katy, and Maria. It had been fun, but that was different. It had been private. Here, she was in front of everyone, in front of all the guys. What if it didn’t work? How lame would that be?

“Come on,” Katy pushed. “It’ll be fun. It’s sort of a guessing game,” she told the group.

“It will
not
be fun,” Kaleigh said between clenched teeth.

“Come on, it will,” Maria chimed in.

Kaleigh groaned.

“Look, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Rob said quietly in her ear.

She looked at him. That was so sweet of him. “Nah, it’s okay,” she said. “It’s kind of like having a dog that can do tricks, for Katy. She likes to show me off.” She rolled her eyes. “Go ahead, Katy,” she called.

“Okay.” Katy got up on her knees. She was wearing jeans shorts and a bikini top that was little more than two triangles of pink fabric. “Johnny, hold up some fingers behind your back,” she called to one of the guys on the opposite side of the bonfire.

Kaleigh could barely see his face because of the bright flames licking the driftwood between them.

“Got it,” he called.

“How many?” Katy shot at Kaleigh.

She frowned. Boring. “Four.”

“What about me?” one of the other guys hollered.

“Three.”

“Me?”

“Six,” she said. This was stupid. She’d been able to do this for almost a year. It was the new development that was really freaking her out, and fascinating her friends, apparently.

“Me?”

“One, Wills,” Kaleigh said. “You’re giving me the finger behind your back, guaranteeing you get your ice cream after its melted next time I serve you.”

Red-faced, he shot her the bird for all to see.

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of returning the favor.

The teens howled with glee. Some chimed in with how impressed they were. How, if they had that ability, they would use it.

“Wait, wait, it gets better,” Katy said, up on her knees in the sand again. She liked being the ringleader and she liked ordering people around. Kaleigh told her all the time that she should go to law school and become a judge. It was time the Kahills got someone on the Supreme Court, anyway. “Somebody, anybody, I want you to go over to the cooler and get a soda. And block your thoughts. Don’t let her read what you’re thinking.”

“I’ll go.” Joe shot up out of the sand.

Katy turned to Kaleigh. “Kaleigh’s going to tell the rest of us what he’s going to get.
Before
he gets it. Go ahead, Joe.” She shooed him with her hand. “Keep your back to us.”

Everyone watched Joe, shirtless, saunter off into the dark. They’d dragged a cooler from one of the girls’ houses nearby to the beach and it sat about thirty feet from the bonfire. Inside were dozens of sodas mounded over with ice.

“Tell us when you’re there,” Katy hollered. “But don’t open the cooler yet.”

“I’m here,” he called back.

Everyone turned to look at Kaleigh. A couple of teens on the far side of the bonfire stood up to get a better view.

“What kind of soda is he going to get?”

Kaleigh hesitated. She really didn’t like being the evening’s entertainment. But these were her friends…and she supposed it was harmless enough.

“He’s not going to get a soda,” she said dryly, folding her arms over her chest. “He’s going to dig around and realize that Pete hid a six-pack of beer under the sodas.” She eyed Pete, sitting to her right, beside Katy. “Your dad’s going to figure out tomorrow that you snitched them and you’re going to be on restriction this week so you can’t go to the Coheed and Cambria concert with Rob and Joe.”

Everyone stared at her, eyes wide with amazement.

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Pete groaned. “If I’m going to get busted, I ought to at least get to drink the beer.”

“Go ahead,” Katy hollered. “Pick a soda and then come back and show us what you have.”

Joe sauntered toward them across the sand, one hand behind his back. He halted just behind Kaleigh and to her left. She didn’t look at him.

“What kind of soda you get?” someone shouted.

With great fanfare, he produced a sweaty can of beer.

People started clapping and hooting and hollering. Kaleigh stood up. Everyone was congratulating her. Joe was protesting, saying she must have cheated. Kaleigh just walked away. It was hard being sixteen and the sept wisewoman. Hard because she wanted to be a teen like all the others and she knew she couldn’t. When she reached the water’s edge, she turned north toward the bright lights strung between the booths, thinking she’d get something to eat. As she walked, she could feel someone following her. She knew who it was and he made her smile.

Rob.

She halted and waited for him to catch up.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” He fell into step beside her and they walked up the beach.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “You hungry?”

He walked with one hand in his pocket, the hand closest to her kind of dangling at his side. “I’m always hungry.”

“I was like that the first few weeks, too. It’s nice to have decent teeth again.”

They walked in silence, their hands bumping once in a while. “So, what’d you think about my trick?” she asked. “You really didn’t say anything.”

“It’s cool and all.” He shrugged. “But I don’t like everyone making a big deal about it. They all know who you are, what you’ll be someday. I mean, I’m just starting to remember, but it’s a pretty big deal. Pretty big responsibility. I don’t like joking around about it. It’s your powers that have kept us safe all these years.”

She was, again, touched by his understanding. Pretty cool for a seventeen-year-old, gangly boy. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration. We all keep each other safe.” She glanced at him, feeling shy, but warm inside. Maybe a little bit safe, here with Rob.

“I still think you’re pretty cool.” He flashed her a reticent grin and surprised her by catching her hand in his. “You want oyster fritters or a crab cake?” he asked. “My dad gave me money so I’m buying.”

They cut across the softer sand, headed toward the street and all the vendors. “Hard decision. Can we have both? Like, share?”

He squeezed her hand. “Whatever you want, Kaleigh, that’s what I want.”

“So fine. Don’t come.” Fia perched on the bumper of a car that was illegally parked on the street at the north end of the food and game booths. It was dark here, and she was out of the foot traffic, giving her a little privacy. Still, the music coming from the bandstand was so loud that she had to plug up her other ear with her finger to hear Glen.

“I’m sorry. I thought I could get out of here sooner,” he said on the other end of the line.

And he truly did sound sorry, although it might have been guilt fueling his sorrow. Feeling sorry for himself, the sorry ass. He was in Baltimore again, with another lame-ass excuse. Fia wanted to just come out and ask him if he was seeing his ex, Stacy-the-hygienist, again. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. At least, not yet.

“Look, I have to go.” She lowered her head to the heel of her hand, her hair falling over her face. She’d worn her hair down tonight, despite the heat, so she’d look sexy for Glen. Now she was wishing she’d brought a hair tie. “We’ll talk tomorrow night? Dinner?”

“Sure.” He sounded as if he was trying to be enthusiastic, but she wasn’t quite feeling it.

She hung up without saying good-bye. When she lifted her head, Arlan was standing in front of her. He was wearing faded, knee-length swim trunks, a T-shirt from a surf shop, and flip-flops. His sunglasses were up on his head, pushing his hair off his face. He looked suntanned, relaxed, and damned good.

“Hey, surfer boy. Where’s your HF?”

“Where’s your HM?” He sat on the car bumper beside her.

“Not coming.” She held up her phone and then slid it into the pocket of her capris. “Just wish he’d told me before I shaved.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. He didn’t want to come, anyway. He thinks I’m from a weird town. He thinks you’re all strange.”

“He’s right.”

She leaned back against the hood. “I just wanted him to walk around with me, have something to eat, maybe take a stroll on the beach. Talk about something
other than work
. Make love in the sand, maybe.” She looked at Arlan, feeling oddly close to tears. “Am I being unreasonable? Greedy? Am I looking for too much in a relationship with a man?”

“With a human? Probably,” he joked. But then he grew more serious. “No. No, of course you aren’t. You deserve to be happy, Fia.” He rested his hand over hers. “So you think it’s over?”

She stared at the string of bright white lights that ran between the funnel cake booth and the Italian ice booth. The funnel cakes smelled good. Fattening, but good. “I think so. Stupid thing is, I’m not even sure why. Too many secrets. Not enough in common. Him being mortal, me being a bloodsucking
immortal
.”

Arlan chuckled, but he understood. She knew he understood. His hand felt good on hers.

She glanced at him and then away. “So where’s Macy?”

“She walked back to the hotel to drop off her camera and get a sweatshirt. She should be back any minute.” He squeezed her hand. “I needed to talk to you alone.”

“She come clean with anything else? Because so far, I’m not getting any information out of that box of crap, except that our guy may be even nuttier than we guessed, if that’s possible. And I’m still waiting on info from the Missouri police. Seems their inactive records room was water damaged when a contractor accidentally set off the sprinkler system. The files were moved to another room, only whoever logged them out didn’t exactly keep accurate records.” She looked at him, gesturing with open arms. “How the hell does that kind of thing happen?” She dropped her arms to her sides. “Anyway, they swear the file wasn’t destroyed, just
misplaced,
and they’ll have everything to me by Monday, Tuesday at the latest.”

“And no new evidence has come out of the Miller case?”

She shook her head. “No, there are no loose ends. No fibers, no footprints.” She chuckled without humor. “The lab did say that a hair collected appeared to come from an animal of the
Canis lupus
family.”

“A wolf in Pennsylvania?”

“They’ve sent the hair to another lab. There were several dogs on the property. I’m sure it belonged to one of them.” She shook her head. “I swear, I think he’s getting better.” She clenched her fist. “This is such a frustrating case. I just wish Macy could help me more. I’ve talked to her a couple of times, but she’s all but shut down on me. Which is certainly understandable, now that we know her connection,” she reasoned aloud. “But she doesn’t want to talk about the details of her family’s death right now, which leaves me with not knowing any more than what I could get from newspapers and news magazines.” She looked at Arlan. “Macy tell you why she wasn’t murdered along with her family?”