coffee mug with her out on the balcony to think. The night was clear, the view from the condo balcony as spectacular as she remembered, but the wind coming down from Canada had the bite of winter. The house seemed as much of a haven as it ever had.
“Haven,” she said, and sighed. She particularly didn’t want to think about Jebel Haven. Which meant she needed to concentrate on why she was in Seattle, andshe had to consider that last night’s mortal sorcery might somehow be involved.
“Would rather chalk that up to being a coincidence.” The coffee was stone cold, which led her to believe that she’d been mindlessly watching the view longer than she thought. What did she think this was, a vacation? She turned around and went back inside.
She’d left her laptop on the kitchen table. She sat down and turned on the computer. That Char didn’t want to think about sorcery wasn’t unusual. Witchcraft was hard to look at straight on, difficult to confront. Magic was something that happened to vampires once, maybe twice in their lives. It was something they performed to change long-time lovers into strigoi. Not every vampire did that, and most of the ones who had children didn’t make them very often. Other than the rituals of change that continued the community, the strigoi sanely and sensibly left magic alone as much as possible. Last night, Char’d been caught in a blast of the stuff, and the immediate aftershock had made it far easier to consider.
Now that her head was clear, Char would much rather brave the world armed with logic, technology, and her highly enhanced psychic abilities than deal with spells, potions, incantations, and all the other volatile and dangerous ways of harnessing energy.
She wasn’t much for doing something as simplistic as turning on the television in search of local news. No, she checked the websites of the Seattle newspapers instead. She found no new missing person reports and no grisly tales of bodies drained of blood or victims having their hearts ripped out. She saw no lurid headlines aboutritually slain fresh corpses, either. Not that she looked too hard for such evidence of magic. She was in town to find a missing baby vampire. Her supposition was that the young vampire was being used by a serial killer as a form of accomplice or even as a murder weapon. She had no trouble imagining a mortal madman getting off on watching an uncontrolled vampire attacking his victim. Infant nestlings were more interested in sex than anything else, but under really sick circumstances, the sex could go too far.
Of course, the only evidence she had that Daniel was involved with a group of linked murders were the newspaper clippings a justifiably disgruntled but not necessarily rational mortal had sent to Helene Bourbon. That was no proof at all. Char knew she might have to talk to Della, but she wanted to look around on her own first. No use bringing a mortal into the mix if it wasn’t necessary. No matter what Della might have been once, her connection to the strigoi was now tenuous and dangerous.
Technically, Char supposed, Della shouldn’t be allowed to live. Char also supposed that if she didn’t actually have to see Della, she wouldn’t have to make any Enforcer-type decisions about the woman. But where was she supposed to start an investigation without encountering Della?
That brought her back to sorcery, of course, which she wanted to think about or deal with even less than she did with a widowed companion.
“No, it doesn’t.”
What was the matter with her? Char shook her headviolently as the computer screen faded in and out of focus. Sometime in the last few minutes she’d gone off-line and was now staring at the laptop’s screen saver. She stood up and pushed back the chair. She made a sharp gesture and began to pace from the kitchen, across the living room, out onto the balcony, and back again. She tried to wrap her thoughts around something that was obvious, but it slipped
“Haven,” she said, and sighed. She particularly didn’t want to think about Jebel Haven. Which meant she needed to concentrate on why she was in Seattle, andshe had to consider that last night’s mortal sorcery might somehow be involved.
“Would rather chalk that up to being a coincidence.” The coffee was stone cold, which led her to believe that she’d been mindlessly watching the view longer than she thought. What did she think this was, a vacation? She turned around and went back inside.
She’d left her laptop on the kitchen table. She sat down and turned on the computer. That Char didn’t want to think about sorcery wasn’t unusual. Witchcraft was hard to look at straight on, difficult to confront. Magic was something that happened to vampires once, maybe twice in their lives. It was something they performed to change long-time lovers into strigoi. Not every vampire did that, and most of the ones who had children didn’t make them very often. Other than the rituals of change that continued the community, the strigoi sanely and sensibly left magic alone as much as possible. Last night, Char’d been caught in a blast of the stuff, and the immediate aftershock had made it far easier to consider.
Now that her head was clear, Char would much rather brave the world armed with logic, technology, and her highly enhanced psychic abilities than deal with spells, potions, incantations, and all the other volatile and dangerous ways of harnessing energy.
She wasn’t much for doing something as simplistic as turning on the television in search of local news. No, she checked the websites of the Seattle newspapers instead. She found no new missing person reports and no grisly tales of bodies drained of blood or victims having their hearts ripped out. She saw no lurid headlines aboutritually slain fresh corpses, either. Not that she looked too hard for such evidence of magic. She was in town to find a missing baby vampire. Her supposition was that the young vampire was being used by a serial killer as a form of accomplice or even as a murder weapon. She had no trouble imagining a mortal madman getting off on watching an uncontrolled vampire attacking his victim. Infant nestlings were more interested in sex than anything else, but under really sick circumstances, the sex could go too far.
Of course, the only evidence she had that Daniel was involved with a group of linked murders were the newspaper clippings a justifiably disgruntled but not necessarily rational mortal had sent to Helene Bourbon. That was no proof at all. Char knew she might have to talk to Della, but she wanted to look around on her own first. No use bringing a mortal into the mix if it wasn’t necessary. No matter what Della might have been once, her connection to the strigoi was now tenuous and dangerous.
Technically, Char supposed, Della shouldn’t be allowed to live. Char also supposed that if she didn’t actually have to see Della, she wouldn’t have to make any Enforcer-type decisions about the woman. But where was she supposed to start an investigation without encountering Della?
That brought her back to sorcery, of course, which she wanted to think about or deal with even less than she did with a widowed companion.
“No, it doesn’t.”
What was the matter with her? Char shook her headviolently as the computer screen faded in and out of focus. Sometime in the last few minutes she’d gone off-line and was now staring at the laptop’s screen saver. She stood up and pushed back the chair. She made a sharp gesture and began to pace from the kitchen, across the living room, out onto the balcony, and back again. She tried to wrap her thoughts around something that was obvious, but it slipped
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