“Huh,” he said, then wadded it up and threw it into a corner.
“At least when that happens to you you can go shirtless,” I said. “I have to walk around with my arms crossed.”
The trousers, boxers, and shoes were intact enough. He put them on and gave a satisfied sigh. Straightening, he squared his shoulders, indicating that he felt increasingly more human. I wrapped my arms around his middle and rubbed my faced against his chest, letting the hair there tickle my skin and taking in his scent.
He hugged back, then picked at the T-shirt on my shoulders.
“That’s not your shirt,” he said.
“Yeah. The last one was kind of covered with blood. It seems to be the theme of the night. That guy loaned me one.”
“That guy—the on the street where I found you? I remember him. What was up with him?”
“I don’t really know,” I said. “He seemed nice enough.”
“That’s kind of what’s weird about him,” Ben said. “Did he even want his shirt back?”
I looked down at myself and furrowed my brow. “Why do I suddenly want to look for a homing device stitched into this?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing you walk around with just your arms crossed,” he said.
“Later,” I said.
“I knew we wouldn’t be going back to the hotel room just yet. Can’t we go back just for an hour?”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious about how all this is going to turn out?”
“Not at the expense of losing you,” he said, smoothing my hair back from my face. “I don’t ever want to get that close again.”
I wanted to tell him that he wouldn’t, that I’d always be all right. But I couldn’t make that promise.
Hand in hand, we followed the others through the door and into the next room.
It wasn’t much of a room: bare tile on the floor, off-white walls, no windows, a couple of floor lamps in the corners giving off muted light. About fifteen by fifteen, the place reminded me of a cell.
“What do you use this for?” I asked Boss.
“Time-outs,” he said.
“Time-outs? Like, if one of your vampires gets violent?”
“You ever seen what that looks like?”
Until recently, I’d have said no, but the starving vampire we found near Dodge City gave me a pretty good idea of why vampires might need a room like this. A question remained: Just what did you do with a vampire that far gone? How did you get them back to normal, or what passed for normal among vampires? Answer: they needed blood. And what did that look like? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. The place smelled innocuous enough—it had the cold, clean scent of the rest of the lair. I surreptitiously hunted for stray bloodstains on the floor and didn’t find anything.
We kept to the edges of the room. Cautious, Grace stood in the middle, waiting for Cormac, who paced around the room, touching walls, studying the ceiling. His lips were pursed, thoughtful.
He took off his jacket and put it on the floor in the corner. His gray T-shirt showed off his rugged frame—he’d grown up on a ranch and it showed. He let his arms hang loose, tipped his head back, took a deep breath. When he released it, he made the soft hiss of a slowly deflating balloon. He rolled his shoulders, his head, stretching his neck. Then, blinking, he gazed around the room as if waking from a nap. His scent became bookish, older.
“What’s happening?” Boss asked.
“He’s Amelia now,” I said.
The vampire glanced at me, his expression questioning, but I couldn’t explain.
Brisk now, businesslike instead of watchful, Cormac returned to his jacket and pulled a few items—small, hidden in his hands—out of the pockets. Going to Grace, he handed her a piece of red chalk. “Draw a picture of the Dragon’s Pearl, right here.” He gestured at the center of the floor.
“I can’t draw that well. I’m not an artist.”
“It doesn’t have to be an exact likeness. Just a suggestion. A symbol.”
Tentatively, she took the chalk from him, crouched, and began drawing. I stood on my toes and craned forward trying to see what she drew, but the image remained hidden. While she was drawing, Cormac unfolded a street map of San Francisco and spread it on the floor.
Next, he spread a layer of a fine, dark-colored powder over the map. It smelled a little like charcoal.
“What is it?” I whispered to Ben.
“Gunpowder,” he said.
This ought to be good. The last item in Cormac’s hands was a lighter.
I didn’t know enough about magic to be able to guess what spell, incantation, ritual, divination, cantrip, or whatever Cormac was going to work. I was learning more all the time. Amelia’s magic seemed to be rooted in items and in ritual. Objects she could manipulate, procedures she could perform, tapping into external symbols rather than drawing on any innate power. Apparently, in some cases magic could be learned and didn’t depend on natural psychic ability. This should have been comforting—it meant anyone could control it, and it wasn’t so mysterious after all, right? But for the true wizards and magicians I’d met—Odysseus Grant, Harold Franklin, and Amelia Parker—magic wasn’t a hobby they’d picked up in a few classes or weekly knitting circles. They’d dedicated their whole lives to the study. It consumed them. In some ways, they became something other than human—as monstrous as I was. They no longer fit with the human community.
That wasn’t such a huge change for Cormac, as it turned out. Maybe that was how Amelia had found him—or how they’d found each other. I wondered if I’d ever learn the whole story.
“Are you finished?” he asked Grace after a moment.
She sketched the last couple of lines, then got back to her feet, brushing her hands on her jeans.
