Black Knight (42 page)

That was it, that was all he had to say. Marc was surprised at James’s brevity but appreciated it as well. He knew he couldn’t have described her better.

On the way out of the church, Marc made a beeline for his car but heard someone call his name before he could make his escape. Since there was only one person at the memorial who could have recognized him, he was not surprised to see James walking his way. But he was shocked to see him holding Jessica’s daughter, Lara. Marc had known about Lara, of course, although Jessica had told him little about her except to say she was “special.”

At the time Marc had assumed she was saying what all moms said about their kids, but one look at Lara and Marc felt a wave of something so unique, there hadn’t been a word invented to describe it. Whoever the kid was, she was going to have an amazing future.

James offered his hand. “It’s Marc, isn’t it?”

Marc nodded. “Jessie always called you Jimmy.”

James smiled. “She never got used to witch world. She kept saying she only felt at home in the real world. I’m not sure why when her powers worked so much better here than there.”

Marc gestured. “I’m no different. This world is interesting but it’s not home.”

“Trust me, it grows on you over time.”

“Is it true you spend every day here?”

James kissed the top of his daughter’s head. “Lara and I both. We’re the odd couple when it comes to witches.”

Marc was surprised. “I’m sorry, I heard about your sacrifice and how you ended up on this side of the curtain. But Jessie never told me that your daughter had been killed in the real world.”

“She wasn’t. She was never born there.” James paused and looked around the parking lot to make sure they had privacy. “But my son was. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you.”

Marc hesitated. “Go on.”

“I know you don’t know me and that I’m in no position to ask a favor of you, but I was wondering if you could check on him from time to time. Jessie took care of him before we lost her but his mother’s grandparents have him now. He lives in Apple Valley and his name is Huck Kelter.”

Marc frowned. “How come Jessie’s father and mother don’t have him?”

“Jessie wasn’t his mom. And his own mother is dead.”

“I see,” Marc said, although he wasn’t sure he did. “If Jessie cared about him so much, he must have been important. I promise to check on him for you.”

James studied him. “You’re not just saying that. You really mean it.”

“You seem surprised.”

James shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m just used to people not caring about Huck. It’s an old story with me, I won’t bore you with all the details.”

A silence settled between them. Marc was surprised he didn’t feel more uncomfortable. James’s grief was clearly overwhelming, although he was doing his best to hide it. He kept rubbing his nose against the top of Lara’s head, which made the child giggle. Marc loved the sound of her voice, but wasn’t sure why. There was just something magical about it.

He could sense magic these days. Ever since he had put his green bracelet to the black wall as the victor of the Field. He could sense many things he never could before. Sometimes he felt as if his life had just begun. It was sad Jessie wasn’t around to share it with him. Even if they could only be friends. . . .

“I should probably let you go,” James said finally.

Marc glanced at his watch. “Have you had lunch yet? I’m feeling kind of empty. Would you like to meet somewhere and talk?”

“Talk about what?”

Marc shrugged. “You know.”

James glanced in the direction of the scattering family and friends and pulled his daughter close to his chest. “I’d like that. Where would you like to meet?”

“How about that deli where you spied on the two of us?”

“She told you about that?”

“Yes.”

James chuckled. “You going to head straight there?”

“I was going to Malibu to drop off a piece of jewelry that belongs to an actress. But I can always do that later. Yeah, I can head straight there.” Marc paused and stuck his finger near Lara. It felt pretty cool when she grabbed it. “But only if you bring this little angel with you.”

“I don’t go anywhere without her,” James said as he turned in the direction of his car. But he stopped and glanced back at Marc. “Do you mind telling me one thing? Before we eat?”

“Not at all.”

“Do you think we’ll see her again?” James asked.

“No one’s seen her in over a month.”

“I know. Tell me what you think.”

Marc considered. “She’s not gone.”

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I
am a vampire, and that is the truth. But the modern meaning of the word vampire, the stories that have been told about creatures such as I, are not precisely true. I do not turn to ash in the sun, nor do I cringe when I see a crucifix. I wear a tiny gold cross now around my neck, but only because I like it. I cannot command a pack of wolves to attack or fly through the air. Nor can I make another of my kind simply by having him drink my blood. Wolves do like me, though, as do most predators, and I can jump so high that one might imagine I can fly. As to blood—ah, blood, the whole subject fascinates me. I do like that as well, warm and dripping, when I am thirsty. And I am often thirsty.

My name, at present, is Alisa Perne—just two words, something to last for a couple of decades. I am no more attached to them than to the sound of the wind. My hair is blond and silklike, my eyes like sapphires that have stared long at a volcanic fissure. My stature is slight by modern standards, five two in sandals, but my arms and legs are muscled, although not unattractively so. Before I speak I appear to be only eighteen years of age, but something in my voice—the coolness of my expressions, the echo of endless experience—makes people think I am much older. But even I seldom think about when I was born, long before the pyramids were erected beneath the pale moon. I was there, in that desert in those days, even though I am not originally from that part of the world.

Do I need blood to survive? Am I immortal? After all this time, I still don’t know. I drink blood because I crave it. But I can eat normal food as well, and digest it. I need food as much as any other man or woman. I am a living, breathing creature. My heart beats—I can hear it now, like thunder in my ears. My hearing is very sensitive, as is my sight. I can hear a dry leaf break off a branch a mile away, and I can clearly see the craters on the moon without a telescope. Both senses have grown more acute as I get older.

My immune system is impregnable, my regenerative system miraculous, if you believe in miracles—which I don’t. I can be stabbed in the arm with a knife and heal within minutes without scarring. But if I were to be stabbed in the heart, say with the currently fashionable wooden stake, then maybe I would die. It is difficult for even a vampire’s flesh to heal around an implanted blade. But it is not something I have experimented with.

But who would stab me? Who would get the chance? I have the strength of five men, the reflexes of the mother of all cats. There is not a system of physical attack and defense of which I am not a master. A dozen black belts could corner me in a dark alley, and I could make a dress fit for a vampire out of the sashes that hold their fighting jackets closed. And I do love to fight, it is true, almost as much as I love to kill. Yet I kill less and less as the years go by because the need is not there, and the ramifications of murder in modern society are complex and a waste of my precious but endless time. Some loves have to be given up, others have to be forgotten. Strange as it may sound, if you think of me as a monster, but I can love most passionately. I do not think of myself as evil.

Why am I talking about all this? Who am I talking to? I send out these words, these thoughts, simply because it is time. Time for what, I do not know, and it does not matter because it is what I want and that is always reason enough for me. My wants—how few they are, and yet how deep they burn. I will not tell you, at present, who I am talking to.

The moment is pregnant with mystery, even for me. I stand outside the door of Detective Michael Riley’s office. The hour is late; he is in his private office in the back, the light down low—I know this without seeing. The good Mr. Riley called me three hours ago to tell me I had to come to his office to have a little talk about some things I might find of interest. There was a note of threat in his voice, and more. I can sense emotions, although I cannot read minds. I am curious as I stand in this cramped and stale hallway. I am also annoyed, and that doesn’t bode well for Mr. Riley. I knock lightly on the door to his outer office and open it before he can respond.

“Hello,” I say. I do not sound dangerous—I am, after all, supposed to be a teenager. I stand beside the secretary’s unhappy desk, imagining that her last few paychecks have been promised to her as “practically in the mail.” Mr. Riley is at his desk, inside his office, and stands as he notices me. He has on a rumpled brown sport coat, and in a glance I see the weighty bulge of a revolver beneath his left breast. Mr. Riley thinks I am dangerous, I note, and my curiosity goes up a notch. But I’m not afraid he knows what I really am, or he would not have chosen to meet with me at all, even in broad daylight.

“Alisa Perne?” he says. His tone is uneasy.

“Yes.”

He gestures from twenty feet away. “Please come in and have a seat.”

I enter his office but do not take the offered chair in front of his desk, but rather, one against the right wall. I want a straight line to him if he tries to pull a gun on me. If he does try, he will die, and maybe painfully.

He looks at me, trying to size me up, and it is difficult for him because I just sit here. He, however, is a montage of many impressions. His coat is not only wrinkled but stained—greasy burgers eaten hastily. I note it all. His eyes are red rimmed, from a drug as much as fatigue. I hypothesize his poison to be speed—medicine to nourish long hours beating the pavement. After me? Surely. There is also a glint of satisfaction in his eyes, a prey finally caught. I smile privately at the thought, yet a thread of uneasiness enters me as well. The office is stuffy, slightly chilly. I have never liked the cold, although I could survive an Arctic winter night naked to the bone.

“I guess you wonder why I wanted to talk to you so urgently,” he says.

I nod. My legs are uncrossed, my white slacks hanging loose. One hand rests in my lap, the other plays with my hair. Left-handed, right-handed—I am neither, and both.

“May I call you Alisa?” he asks.

“You may call me what you wish, Mr. Riley.”

My voice startles him, just a little, and it is the effect I want. I could have pitched it like any modern teenager, but I have allowed my past to enter, the power of it. I want to keep Mr. Riley nervous, for nervous people say much that they later regret.

“Call me Mike,” he says. “Did you have trouble finding the place?”

“No.”

“Can I get you anything? Coffee? A soda?”

“No.”

He glances at a folder on his desk, flips it open. He clears his throat, and again I hear his tiredness, as well as his fear. But is he afraid of me? I am not sure. Besides the gun under his coat, he has another beneath some papers at the other side of his desk. I smell the gunpowder in the bullets, the cold steel. A lot of firepower to meet a teenage girl. I hear a faint scratch of moving metal and plastic. He is taping the conversation.

“First off I should tell you who I am,” he says. “As I said on the phone, I am a private detective. My business is my own—I work entirely freelance. People come to me to find loved ones, to research risky investments, to provide protection, when necessary, and to get hard-to-find background information on certain individuals.”

I smile. “And to spy.”

He blinks. “I do not spy, Miss Perne.”

“Really.” My smile broadens. I lean forward, the tops of my breasts visible at the open neck of my black silk blouse. “It is late, Mr. Riley. Tell me what you want.”

He shakes his head. “You have a lot of confidence for a kid.”

“And you have a lot of nerve for a down-on-his-luck private dick.”

He doesn’t like that. He taps the open folder on his desk. “I have been researching you for the last few months, Miss Perne, ever since you moved to Mayfair. You have an intriguing past, as well as many investments. But I’m sure you know that.”

“Really.”

“Before I begin, may I ask how old you are?”

“You may ask.”

“How old are you?”

“It’s none of your business.”

He smiles. He thinks he has scored a point. He does not realize that I am already considering how he should die, although I still hope to avoid such an extreme measure. Never ask a vampire her age. We don’t like that question. It’s very impolite. Mr. Riley clears his throat again, and I think that maybe I will strangle him.

“Prior to moving to Mayfair,” he says, “you lived in Los Angeles—in Beverly Hills in fact—at Two-Five-Six Grove Street. Your home was a four-thousand-square-foot mansion, with two swimming pools, a tennis court, a sauna, and a small observatory. The property is valued at six-point-five million. To this day you are listed as the sole owner, Miss Perne.”