Kiss Of Darkness

That was New Orleans, too. Most diversions could be found somewhere—if you had the money to pay for them.

“I see. You just wound up at a peep show, or…someone solicited you on the street, or…?”

She was startled when she saw that her question had left him seriously perplexed.

“Jake?” she prodded gently.

“I—I don’t remember.” He stared at her, still looking lost and confused. “I mean…I knew that I had drunk blood. But now that you ask…”

“Were you alone?” she asked him.

The confusion was gone. There was a hard mask in its place. “I can’t tell you who I was with. I won’t tell you who I was with. You can’t make me.”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything,” she said with a shrug. “Tell me what you want, but I hope you’ll learn to speak freely.”

“There are others. Many others. And more are coming,” he said.

“Oh?”

Once again he appeared confused. Her heartbeat quickened. This was worrying.

“I’m not the only one,” he said.

“I’m concerned about you, Jake,” she told him. “And since I can’t make you tell me anything, I’ll tell you what I think, and we’ll leave it at that. You have friends who feel as you do, and you were out with one or more of them. I don’t think you had a particular destination in mind, and you wandered into a bad area, where you were accosted. Don’t take offense—you were easy prey. And when you left, you were probably minus every cent you had in your wallets, and maybe a nice watch or some jewelry, as well.”

His hand instantly went to his throat, though he wasn’t wearing any kind of medallion. His lips tightened, and she could tell that she had hit on the truth.

“Jake, I want you to do a couple of things for me. First, we’ll rule nothing out, okay? So I’m going to have you go to your primary-care physician and get a complete physical, all right?”

“Look, I’m fine. I just—”

“Then, because it would be good for you, you’re going to see a nutritionist and start on an exercise program.” Before he could start complaining, she added, “Jake, I know you’re extremely intelligent and can slide right through all your schoolwork, and that part of the reason you don’t care if you make it to class is that you’re way ahead of most of the work going on. That may mean you need to skip ahead, or start adding some university classes onto your schedule. We have a long way to go to get to the root of your unhappiness.”

“I’m not unhappy.”

“You’re not?”

He flushed again, looking down. “I just don’t belong.”

“Then we’ll find out where you do belong. And where you want to go.”

“Games,” he said.

“What?”

“I’d like to design computer games. I think I could do it. I think I’d be good at it.”

“I’ll bet you would be,” she assured him. “Next week, same time. And I’ll give your parents a call to—”

“I thought you couldn’t repeat anything I said here,” he demanded angrily.

“I’m not going to repeat anything. I just want them to get you set up with the right professionals. Now, if you want to say anything else, if you think we haven’t covered anything, we still have a few minutes,” she told him.

She was startled when he stood and took a step that brought him right in front of her chair. His eyes were alight; he was tense, excited. “I heard you were there,” he told her. “In Transylvania. I read about it in the paper. I heard you blew the whistle on the vampires, that you were the one who called the police.”

Oh, God, this again!

But she didn’t intend to be secretive and feed into his fantasies. She stared at him levelly.

“I met some students over there. One of them left me a note, and I passed it on to the police,” she said.

She was startled again when he set his hands on the arms of the chair. Leaned down and looked deeply into her eyes. “Aren’t you afraid? Afraid the vampires will come after you—for revenge?”

She stared straight back into his eyes and let out a weary sigh. “From what I heard, Jake, someone freaked out way before the police got there, and the party was already over. Am I afraid the vampires will come after me? No. Feel free to stay if you have something important to discuss, Jake, but if you’re just trying to turn the tables here, forget it. Okay?” Her voice was calm and steady. Bored. He had expected to get a rise out of her, but she knew better than to let him.

He shrugged, pushing away from the chair. “Sure sounded like a hell of a party,” he murmured.

“Yeah, great party. A girl is still in the hospital,” Jessica said, making a mental note to drop by the hospital over the weekend. She had left Romania soon after the students’ parents had arrived, but she knew from the newspaper that Mary had been brought home to a New Orleans hospital. The papers had turned the event into a decadent costume party and little more, but anything that mentioned vampires intrigued the public, and even the national papers had picked up the story.

When Jake was gone, she walked to the front desk. Since they were expecting a lodger, she’d sent Stacey home early. Now she pulled out her appointment book, curious to see what her schedule was for the following Monday. When she opened the book, she sat back thoughtfully.

Jeremy had made an appointment for himself.

Bryan MacAllistair felt he’d arrived at the perfect time in New Orleans—not just the season, but the time of day, as well—when he first stood in front of the old Montresse place.

The dead heat of the day was gone, and night was just coming on. It came softly, perhaps deceptively, to this area of the French Quarter, just beyond reach of the neon lights, the blare of the music and the laughter of inebriated tourists. Here, only the faint sounds of a distant waltz could be heard, or perhaps they were only imagined as shadows fell over leafy trees. The Montresse house stood back beyond a brick wall and iron gate, gently cradled by the darkness. The night was kind, he thought. There was no aura of decay about the place. The grounds were slightly overgrown, and looked as if the paint were threatening to peel but hadn’t quite reached the point where it was willing to abandon the splendor of the facade.

He stared at the house for a while. Then he found the hinge on the wrought-iron gate and entered, following the stone path from the sidewalk to the porch. Montresse House was old, built when there was still space to be had in the French Quarter. There was a graceful lawn, dotted with flowers and trees that dripped lazily with moss. The porch was more reminiscent of an old plantation house rather than a city dwelling.

As he walked, he was aware that, above him, from a window on the second floor, a curtain had been pulled back.

His arrival was being watched.

With a shrug, he stepped up on the porch and reached for the heavy door knocker, but before he could touch it, the door swung open.

The woman standing there appeared to be in her early twenties. She had a pretty face and a cheerful smile.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he returned.

“You’re the professor the travel agency booked?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s me. Bryan MacAllistair.”

“Cool. Come on in.”

He stepped inside, and the woman shut the door behind him.