CHAPTER 23

This had been one freakish day after a weird damned week even by my standards, and my mind was still trying to catch up to it all. The time difference had also left me a bit disoriented. I missed Quinton’s easy ways and willingness to listen to my strange tales. I felt like a clinging idiot—or just a plain one—for thinking of him so often, and after the cold set-down I’d had from Cary, that was the last thing I wanted to be. I let go of my urge to page Quinton and told myself there was nothing he could say or do that would help and I didn’t want him to worry about me. I’d been gone only a day, after all. What I wanted most after his sympathetic ear was a meal and a nap before I tried to make sense of the puzzles I’d been handed in Clerkenwell, but I thought I’d have to settle for just one or the other.

After I’d changed clothes and eaten, I returned to my room to make notes and call Bryson Goodall, who was acting as my contact to Edward for this trip. It would be dark here in a little while, but it was still daylight business hours back in Seattle, I thought.

Goodall answered his phone on the second ring. “Goodall. Go ahead.”

“Mr. Goodall, Harper Blaine.”

“How’s England?”

“Mixed. I arrived at the hotel about six hours ago. Since then I’ve tried to contact Purcell, but he was abducted about eighteen days ago. Looks like some faction within the local branch of the fraternal order of bloodsuckers, but I don’t know whose yet or where Purcell is now. Purcell’s. assistant is still around, but he’s not much use—he’s homicidal and disinclined to help, to be blunt about it. The upside is that Purcell is still walking around somewhere. Or that’s my guess based on the relationship between Purcell and his flunky.”

I heard his thoughtful grunt and the sound of typing. “So no idea where Purcell is or who’s got him. Any leads?”

“Not specifically. His office had been stripped of papers, except a few incomplete items. I’m following up on those tomorrow, since the business offices are closed here now.”

“What sort of items?”

“Some bills and letters about taxes and rents. A lead from Jakob—the minion—that might be undevelopable. It comes off as gibberish, but he’s not an idiot, so I’ll have to see if I can make anything of it. It’s not quite dark enough here yet, but I’ll be going out again soon to see about Edward’s other local contacts. No idea how that will go. So far, it’s looking bad.”

“Anything else?”

I didn’t say I’d been followed. The sinister Mr. Marsden didn’t seem to be part of the vampire community—quite the opposite—and I thought it was wiser to keep his presence to myself for now.

“That’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

“I’ll report. Stay in touch.”

“Planning to.”

We disconnected and I took my map out again to plan my evening stalking vampires. Prep can make up for a lot when you’re not familiar with an area and I was going to do my best to case the vampire neighborhoods before I hit the streets again. At least this time I might not walk down an alley that had ceased to exist unless I wanted to.

Funny thing about vampires: They’re arrogant. Sometimes stupid-arrogant, and I’ve used that to my advantage in the past. This was tricky, however. I couldn’t just say I was there on Edward’s behalf, since something had gone against him and I couldn’t risk bringing the wrong attention to myself.

I made the rounds of pubs and clubs, looking for signs of vampires on the prowl. Drunks and romantics were easy marks, and in the right kind of club, the herd would be especially pliable. Any place that catered to the emo and the fashionably disaffected would provide a preselected pool of easy, even willing, victims, but frankly any bar or club could do the same once the hour was late enough.

Clerkenwell hosted a lot of possibilities around Cowcross and across the road from Smithfield, as well as farther up St. John’s Street, where another fairy ring of pubs and clubs had sprung up around Clerkenwell Green near the small church of St. James Clerkenwell. The rowdy workingmen’s establishments were unlikely to be useful, and I quickly learned to recognize them from their traditional signs and loquacious crowds spilling onto the street. The more avant garde and exclusive places with quiet frontages proved better stalking grounds.

As I poked about, I began to discern a pattern of local investment and caching that was interesting but not entirely clear. Several of the buildings that housed pubs heavily favored by vampires appeared to be in office blocks that were otherwise empty but very well-maintained. One of the pubs was located near the only gas station—petrol station, as the sign read—in the area. It also had a small, locked yard nearby where cars, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles were stored. Remembering what my limo driver had said about the difficulty of negotiating traffic on anything bigger than a bike, this seemed to be a storage yard for a transportation pool. It looked like the vampires of Clerkenwell had collectivized a bit. Whether they could afford it as individuals or not, in such a close-packed environment owning a private car would be comment-worthy, and vampires don’t like to draw comment. London’s vampires were being discreet and careful. Centuries do that for you, I supposed.

I found a pale, pale woman in a club called Danse Noir. I’d never seen a vampire who looked so much like one—more than most—but I knew what she was by the gruesome red and black of her energy corona and the odor of things rotten and painfully dead. Her face was long and gaunt. Her skin was translucent, almost pearly, with the palest of blue lines suggesting veins and cold vessels in a vague reticulated pattern below. Her long hair was naturally colorless, a dead, icy shade of white that had been streaked with wide swaths of artificial black gleaming like an oil slick. I glanced at her eyes, not wanting to be caught in her stare, and found them a strange, flat brown. The color was like my own, but lifeless as paint. Then I realized they were contact lenses, dry from a lack of tears but seeming to gleam from some inner light the color of hellfire.

I started backing away, some instinct urging me to flee, though I’d backed away from only one vampire in my life. Then she stood up and lunged, grabbing my wrists and pulling me onto the bar stool beside her.

“No,” she whispered. “Can’t have you causing a scene. I’d like to stay a while longer. So you stay, too.” Her fingernails bit into my skin like claws.

“I’ll stay if you let go of my hands.”

She looked surprised. “But if I hold on, you can’t leave. Can you?”

I smirked at her—I had tried to smile but the still-panicking part of myself had twisted it a bit—and shifted aside through a cold ripple of temporaclines, wrenching my hands from her grasp as I slipped.

She twitched in surprise but didn’t try for my hands again. “That’s a wicked trick.” Her voice was low and a little sibilant, with broad vowels. “You must be the American creature there’s been so much talk of.”

“Who’s talking about me?” I asked.

“Can’t you guess? I’d heard you were clever.”

“I prefer not to make wild suppositions,” I replied, still feeling a ridiculous urge to get away. She reminded me a bit of Wygan, and the fear and disgust that particular vampire engendered in me was welling up in the back of my mind as I sat next to this one.

“Oh, but I don’t want to tell you. What fun would that be? It’s so much more delightful to feel you fret. Let’s play a game.”

“No.”

She snatched my hand again and twisted my wrist. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t,” she hissed. “She won’t like it. She wants it to be a surprise, but I think it’s much more fun to build the fear a bit first. I’ll be doing you a favor if I tell you.”