Federico closed his eyes. I could feel the thirst in him, the urge to drink from Matt and his will fighting back.
I flinched at the image of a human held prisoner in his room.
A quick smile twisted Federico’s lips.
I grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled at him. “Let’s go,” I said, cajoling him as I would one of Ryan’s friends. “Becquer will bring Ryan to my house. Your mother may come with them.”
Matt didn’t move.
“Go,” Federico said. For a moment his eyes glowed red.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.
I sensed Federico’s reluctance to share with the young man his need for blood, and underneath an undercurrent of feelings quickly suppressed. I remembered how, earlier at the party, Becquer had stopped Beatriz from calling Matt. His reasons were clear to me now. Matt couldn’t come, because he was with Federico.
A light of understanding lit Matt’s eyes. “Did my mother steal your blood too?”
“No. Becquer took it,” Federico said. “He needed his strength to find your mother.”
“I’m sorry.” Matt’s voice was soft now and the anger in his eyes was gone, replaced with concern.
Federico nodded. “I’m sorry, too, about your mother.”
I stepped back to give them privacy. Whatever had happened between them, it was obvious a new understanding had been reached. Federico had acknowledged Matt’s feelings for him. And, judging by his present reaction, he might return them as well.
“I’ll wait outside,” I told Matt. After nodding my goodbye to Federico, I walked to the glass door and slid it open.
I found myself in a graveled space between the back of the house and a stone barn. Light escaped through one of the windows on the first floor, which I guessed would be Matt’s room.
The white limousine Matt had driven before was parked to my right; on my left, Ryan’s red Prius blocked the access to the front of the house.
The driver door was wide open, I saw when I got nearer, which evoked in my mind the image of Beatriz stepping in front of the car as it turned the corner, of Ryan braking not to run her over, and of Beatriz forcing the door open and dragging him out.
I ducked my head and looked inside the car. Ryan’s guitar was on the back seat as was his blue and white duffel bag, both items sending the message no mother wants to hear: that her son is moving out. Ryan had returned home after our discussion to pack his guitar and his clothes. He was moving out, not because he was ready, but to be free of my interference. Moving where? To the couch in one of his friends’ apartments? Hopefully not Emily’s, for Emily, the Goth girl with whom he had been going out on and off for a year now, was still using. Or so Ryan had told me only the previous week when he’d also told me he was clean. If only I had believed him! Not that his moving out mattered at the moment. What mattered was that Becquer reach Beatriz before she could hurt Ryan or kill him. Or make him one of them.
“Carla, my car is in the barn, would you come with me?”
Matt’s voice startled me, and as I turned to face him, I saw the car key still hanging in the ignition.
“Thanks, Matt. But that won’t be necessary. I’ll take Ryan’s car.”
Matt didn’t move. “May I go with you?” His reason for coming —
I hesitated for a moment then nodded. “Of course.” Settling in the driver’s seat, I started the car.
We drove in silence at first, which suited me fine for my mind was going in a thousand directions at once covering all the possible outcomes of Beatriz’s kidnapping of Ryan.
Becquer had said he could track Beatriz. But could he? Beatriz was immortal now, and immortals, Federico had told me, could block their thoughts, hide their presence from each other. And even if Becquer found her, what were his chances of convincing her to let Ryan go? Beatriz had been raving mad even as a human; I couldn’t imagine how she would be now driven by the thirst of her newborn condition.
“I understand you hate my mother.” Surprised by his words, I said nothing. Matt continued, “I hate her too, most of the time. But for all her faults, she’s still my mother.”
He said this matter of factly, as if there was a bond between mother and son nothing could break. I didn’t argue, although in my case the duffel bag on the back seat said otherwise.
“You hate her,” I repeated to keep him talking, for I didn’t want to dwell on my fears.
“My mother didn’t raise me,” Matt said. “She left me with my dad when I was about two, while she went to pursue her career. She was a model, did you know?”
“No. I didn’t.” That didn’t mean she wasn’t famous. Unlike Madison, who studied fashion magazines with the intensity a scholar gives a rare manuscript, I had never been interested in couture.
“She was well known back then,” Matt said. “Made it to the magazine covers many times. I collected them all and hid them under my bed. If my dad saw them, he never mentioned it. We never discussed her. Then, when I was about ten, he got married again, and sent me to boarding school. Mother left modeling around that time and became Becquer’s secretary. Lured by the promise of immortality, I guess. But not knowing who Becquer was, her choice struck me as odd.”
“And Becquer? When did you meet him?”
“I saw him when Mother took me from school, at Christmas or summer vacation. He spent more time with me than she ever did. I think he liked me and I liked him too. Mother seemed to resent that fact.”
“When did you learn he was immortal?”
“He told me last year when he bought his house in Bucks County. I had just finished college and was looking for a job. He offered me free room and board and a salary if I looked after the house and the grounds and drove his guests when needed. I agreed, of course. It’s a great arrangement for me. It allows me to pursue my music while I build my freelance business. And the pay is good. But living so close to him, he figured I would notice … ”
His words faded as if sucked into a vacuum that silenced the world around me and stole the air from my lungs. It was a sudden change that came and went too fast for me to understand. A second frozen in time, I would have probably dismissed as a product of my imagination, but for the image it left, burnt in my mind, of a body suspended in midair between a concrete walkway and a dark mass of water.
I swerved off the road, braking hard until the car came to a halt.
“What’s wrong?”
“Didn’t you feel it?”
Matt stared at me.
“Never mind,” I continued, for the answer was clear in the puzzled look in his blue eyes, which I noticed were the exact shade of Beatriz’s.
I returned to the road, made a U-turn, and headed northwest.
“Becquer is at Peace Valley,” I explained to Matt.
“How do you know?”
